Evagation

Summer TV Obsessions

2007-07-19T15:47:00.001-07:00

Live Free or Die Hard: Seriously. I loved it. It is definitely my favorite summer movie so far (yes, I've seen Order of the Phoenix). I guess five years of being with Devin has truly given me a great appreciation for action movies. I've always enjoyed a good action movie but I LOVED Live Free so much that, really, I think I've spawned myself a Die Hard obsession. Although we are waiting to watch the first two movies in the series until Christmas (apparently, they are considered Christmas movies by every single man I know--except for my brother, who is the only person I know who actually enjoys "A Christmas Story" and my Dad, who is a big Jimmy Stewart fan).

So You Think You Can Dance: I am beyond obsessed with this show. I record the Wednesday episodes and I love wasting half an hour re-watching my favorite routines. Which I do on a daily basis. I watched the first two seasons but wasn't obsessed with them the way I am with the third season. The dancers this season are phenomenal. I haven't been able to pick a favorite because they are all so damned good. There is one guy that I don't like because he's annoying as hell (Danny) but he's also one of the best male dancers that I've ever seen. I can easily see him being snatched up by a ballet company (he would love to work for American Ballet Theatre and he's good enough to be in the corps de ballet for ABT).

I've been telling Devin for ages that Dance is nothing like American Idol. On Idol you can get away with not being a technically great singer--hell, you can even flub the words of a song and STILL remain on the show. But there is no Sanjaya on Dance. Some of the Top 20 dancers don't have great technicality, and very little formal training (although they've mostly gone home by now) but they are all damn talented. They are also asked to do far more work than the Idol kids. The dancers only have four hours to learn a routine from a choreographer (which is NUTS because I've been dancing my whole life and there is NO WAY that I could learn a complicated routine in four days, let alone four hours) and most of the time it's in a style that they've never danced before (Krumping, the Hustle, most ballroom dances, and anything by Wade Robson) and most of the dancers have never done any partnering work at ALL. The kids are basically put through the most grueling dance camp imaginable.

Food Shows: I watch Hell's Kitchen because I love Chef Ramsay and enjoy hearing him call the contestants DONKEYS (among other things). Even though I have never learned a damn thing from that show. Which is why I watch Top Chef because at least it teaches me about what makes fine dining so fine. I'm in love with Chef Duff from the Food Network's Ace of Cakes. Who knew baking could be so manly? And even though Bobby Flay has been getting on my nerves for at least a decade, I love watching his Throwdown. Because most of the time Bobby loses the throwdown and I LOVE seeing him lose.

The History Channel: Devin and I both love to watch Cities of the Underworld and our favorite episode (so far) was the one about New York City. Did you know that FDR had a top-secret train station under the Waldorf-Astoria because he couldn't allow the public to find out about his partial paralysis? So, a bullet-proof top-secret train car would take him, and his car, to the Waldorf-Astoria platform, where one of his men would drive his car out of the train car, FDR would get into the car, and it would then be driven into a large freight elevator, which would take it up to street level. According to The History Channel, this was all done because if the public actually SAW FDR get in and out of a car, they would know about his medical condition. Once FDR died, an empty train, with the bullet-proof train car, arrived at the Waldorf-Astoria station and never left. Historians believe that it was FDR's personal train but no one is sure because the identification codes on the train are not in ANY of the records pertaining to Grand Central Terminal and it's many trains.

That was just one part of the incredibly interesting New York City Cities of the Underworld episode. Our second favorite episode was the one about the Freemason Undergrounds, which were especially interesting because so many prominent Americans have been Masons (including Ben Franklin, John Hancock, Paul Revere and a TON of Presidents). In fact, the Mason Undergrounds were an essential part of the Revolutionary War and helped send the signal that sent Paul Revere on his famous midnight ride. Historians also believe that the Mason Undergrounds were used during the Civil War as part of the Underground Railroad system.

I'm trying to get Devin to watch Ice Road Truckers with me because it's one of the coolest (no pun intended) reality shows that I've ever seen. Even though there isn't a single female on the show, it has more drama than any other show on television. You haven't seen anything until you've seen a truck carrying two tankers of diesel fuel fall into a ditch on the side of the ice road. It happened at night and even though the driver escaped with only minor injuries, the response crew had a hell of a time setting up protection for any fuel leakage. The truck just happened to be within a hundred feet of a major source of drinking water for parts of Canada (it was also an important source of water for many animal conservatories). After they did their leak protection, they had to wait until daylight before trying to get the truck out of the ditch. Which was NUTS. I got so nervous watching them trying to haul that tanker back onto the road that I actually cheered the TV when it happened. The promos for the new episode this weekend make me super nervous--apparently one of the trucks falls completely through the ice and the driver drowns (or perhaps dies of hypothermia). Talk about one hell of a risky job.

What are YOU all watching this summer?

Summer TV Obsessions

2007-07-19T15:46:00.001-07:00

What are YOU all watching this summer?

Where I've been.

2007-06-15T10:23:00.001-07:00

Tired. Achy. Busy.

(I also have so many draft entries that I think I've officially created more drafts than actual published entries. Perhaps today I'll finally go back and start, you know, posting some of those. Because they're almost done, and most just need some sort of conclusion. Since I talk about some of my favorite things in the world, they do go on for some time. I talk about The Plague and how it won't kill us if we just respond correctly, and quickly. By the way--that guy with the XDR-TB is a jerk. Not because of his XDR-TB but because he openly disregarded instructions from the CDC. If the CDC tells you to stay put until they know more about your XDR-TB, then you freakin' stay put until you hear differently! Dude knew he was doing something he shouldn't be doing when he flew to Canada because he suspected that he was on the US No Fly list. As far as I'm concerned, I think he should be happy that he didn't get put into jail for what did, like that poor Russian guy in Arizona a few months ago, who also has XDR-TB and was JAILED for going out in public without his face mask on. The fact that more tests showed that Speaker's strain of XDR-TB is not highly contagious doesn't excuse what he did AT ALL. Had he just listened to the CDC and waited for those test results to come in, then the whole mess could probably have been avoided. But Speaker's an annoying fat-head who thought he knew more about TB than the CDC. Also: The CDC is not perfect and the only person we have to blame for that is Bush, who consistently cuts funding to everything important to us because of his goddamned war.)

I need to work on writing shorter parentheticals.

Devin and I both finished the six Harry Potter books in eight days (so that was a while ago, and I wrote a draft entry about it). Since Devin asks me every other day when the new book comes out, I made a sign, and posted it in our kitchen, that says, "The next Harry Potter book is STILL coming out on July 21st." I smacked him when he started complaining about having to wait that long because I've been waiting two years for this book (eight if you consider how long I've been reading the entire series).

He also made me promise to get him his OWN COPY. Which I think is a spectacular waste of money but he's adamant that he will NOT wait for me to finish my copy (even though I'll read it in one day, as I've done with all of the other HP books, but that's not good enough for Devin).

After finishing up Harry, I watched Season 3 of "Battlestar Galactica." I highly recommend watching this show if you're not watching it already. You need to start at the beginning, though. (Seasons 1 and 2 are available to rent, like most TV shows are nowadays, which is a wonderful use of DVD technology. Season 3 comes out sometime in August.)

The final season doesn't start until February of next year, so I let Devin complain about the long wait because it wouldn't exactly be fair for me to start griping when I'm smacking him around for complaining about having to wait for the last HP book. Although eleven months between seasons really is an insanely long amount of time to wait for a show. They're showing a two-hour episode in November but it's a prequel to stuff that was already dealt with during Season 2 (if I say any more, I would veer into spoiler territory).

We celebrated our two-year wedding anniversary earlier this week (the 11th) by going out to dinner and then seeing "Ocean's 13." Which we both liked it, but not enough to see it again on the big screen. And as much as I love Ellen Barkin, there needed to be more women in the movie. Maybe just ONE more woman. But it was funny, and fluffy and certainly not a waste of money.

My arthritis was kicking my ass for the past few weeks. The weather's been going a bit crazy and all of that change made my knees swell on a daily basis. Although now that the weather has finally settled on hot, my joints are no longer achy balls of pain. I've been able to go back to doing Yoga and Pilates (even though I hate Pilates because it is brutal). And Devin is thrilled because I'm no longer lying around the house with my knees propped up and ice-packs strapped to them.

Otherwise it's been a lot of summer TV. I'm addicted to "Hell's Kitchen" and "Top Chef," even though I hate cooking and eat very bland foods when I'm sick, so I also have an aversion to anything spicy. But "Hell's Kitchen" cracks me up and "Top Chef" teaches me all sorts of things about cooking. (Even though I never put any of that knowledge to good use.) I also love seeing the "Top Chef" people go absolutely nuts during their Quick Fire challenges.

And, of course, I watch "So You Think You Can Dance?" because DAMN, the top twenty dancers this year are phenomenal. This week was the first night of competition for the top twenty and it was spectacular. Usually the first week isn't particularly good because you have dancers who are dancing in styles that they have never danced before, and many of them have never done any partner work, either (for those unfamiliar with the show, the top twenty are partnered off into ten couples and they continue to dance as couples for many weeks).

The few dancers who struggled with new dance styles, and were put into the bottom three couples by popular vote, managed to save themselves (except for two contemporary dancers) based on their solo routine. Which sucked for the two contemporary dancers who went home because their solo routines weren't even as good as their auditions, so they were sent home by the judges. (Again, if you are unfamiliar with the show, America votes for their favorite couples, the bottom three couples then have to perform solo routines for the judges, and the judges send one boy, and one girl home. This goes on for a few weeks until most of the dancers have been sent home.)

Although I'm getting tired of the judge's fascination with break-dancing. They kept one guy who pulled out the same damn break-dancing tricks that he's been doing since the first round of auditions and the judges are still heaping praise on him. They must not realize that there are a whole lot of guys in this country who can spin around on their freakin' heads. (I remember guys break-dancing during breaks between classes while I was in junior high. They'd bring out pallets of cardboard--old refrigerator boxes and the like, and would practice spinning around on their heads, and a bunch of other common break-dancing tricks.)

And I'm not saying that break-dancing well is easy. It's hard as hell but if this particular break-dancer (there are a few of them in the top twenty) ends up having to perform a solo routine again, he'd better do more than freakin' spinning around on his head. Even the other break-dancers in the competition realize that there has to be substance to their routines to balance out the tricks.

My bizarro week.

2007-05-30T08:48:00.000-07:00

Last week, I was lamenting the end of Gilmore and my lost Harry Potter paperback books.

Well, of course Gilmore is still gone, but at least I found the books. Last Thursday, I started reading Sorcerer's Stone and, since I was pretty sick, I stayed home on Friday and had myself a nice four-day weekend.

I was planning to take my time reading the six HP books. I have until July 21st, so I wasn't at all worried. In-between reading, I was planning on finishing the second season of Battlestar Galactica (they did Season 2 in two parts--part 2.0 and part 2.5, which is weird).

Since Devin has a disc-golf tournament every Friday (and one every Tuesday, and a monthly one on Saturday mornings), I figured that I should spend my Devin-free time reading HP because he would probably want to watch Battlestar with me (when I went ahead and watched episodes while he was in bed, he was a bit peeved that he missed the chance to re-watch them).

Which is when things started to get odd.

Devin got home from the tournament, and I was already half-way through Chamber of Secrets (I've read Sorcerer's so many times that I have the damn thing memorized). We talk about how the tournament went, and I'm telling him that I'm ready to stop reading for a while and watch some Battlestar.

And Devin picks up Sorcerer's Stone. I have been trying to get Devin to read the Harry Potter books since the moment I met him. Which is no surprise because I think every literate person in the world should read Harry Potter, and have told that to anybody who will listen to me.

Devin has never showed any interest in Harry Potter. Even the movies bored him silly (well, except for Prisoner and Goblet but that makes sense because those two were far better than the first two, which were directed by Christopher Columbus, who freakin' cut out some of my favorite "RENT" songs from the damn movie to get a PG-13 rating, the rat bastard). I had given up on trying to interest Devin in Harry Potter a long time ago. He goes with me to the movies and tries not to look too embarrassed because I'm wearing my "Quidditch" shirt and am squealing over the movie like a teenage girl.

I love my husband but he is just not a reader. Since graduating from high school, he's read more books in the five years that he's been with me, than he ever did during school (not including assigned reading, of course, since he always read the books he was assigned to read but never read for fun, and would, in fact, argue that there isn't any "fun" reading).

When we moved in together, he had less than ten books, almost all of which were assigned books from high school and junior college, and (of course) The Book of Mormon. After we moved into our second apartment, which was twice the size of the little cottage that we were living in before (referred to as "The Stoops," since we all spent most of our time sitting on our stoops, talking with our friends, who also happened to be our neighbors, the cottages were built after the first World War for war widows and their children), I was able to move in a whole lot of my books.

It took Devin a while to notice that his meager book collection wasn't visible in any of the bookcases. They were hidden behind my Nora Roberts books (which is truly bizarre because most women hide their romance novels). He tried to argue that, since he only had a few books, I shouldn't be hiding them behind my books, and especially not behind a bunch of romance novels.

He said something about how he didn't even remember what books he owned, so I pulled out all of my Nora Roberts just so he could see his books.

"When was the last time you read one of those books?" I asked him.

"Ummm... I read Choke by the Fight Club guy (Chuck Palahniuk) after you gave it to me."

"That was almost two years ago, Devin. And I just finished reading a Nora Roberts trilogy, so that trumps your book collection."

We eventually decided that if Devin started to read for fun--even if it was only one book a year--then his collection would not be kept hidden behind my romance novels. Since he liked the first "Bourne" movie, and a close friend of ours kept telling him that he should read the books, Devin started reading Robert Ludlum.

Which was actually rather funny because he became completely obsessed with Robert Ludlum's books and was excited to hear that a "new" book of his was coming out. And I got to explain to him that Ludlum was dead and that his "new" books were being written by ghost writers (using Ludlum's rough drafts, outlines, and anything else that he left behind).

After plowing through most of Ludlum's books, Devin read The DaVinci Code (since all literate Westerners feel obliged to read that book at some point--and it's actually pretty good).

Last Friday, while Devin was looking at Sorcerer's Stone, I told him that I was ready for a break from Harry Potter and why don't we watch some Battlestar together?

"Nah. Since you did something for me--started watching Battlestar--I'll do something that you like."

"Are you actually going to read Harry Potter?" Over two years ago, I had shoved the dark blue, mass-market version of Sorcerer's at Devin and he didn't even finish the first chapter.

"Yup." And then he took the book to his game room and, sure enough, started reading it.

I decide to watch an episode of Battlestar and, when it's over, I go in to check on Devin.

"This is great. Are you almost done with the second one?"

"Ummm... no. I'm about half-way done."

"Well, you'd better hurry up and finish it because I'm already half-way through this one."

"What about Battlestar? Are you going to watch any of it with me?"

"No. I'm going to read Harry Potter."

And so he did. He was also very serious about me finishing Chamber before he finished Sorcerer's.

And that was how our holiday weekend went. I plowed through Chamber less than an hour before Devin finished Sorcerer's. I plowed through Prisoner of Azkaban while Devin read Chamber of Secrets.

I damn near didn't finish Prisoner before Devin finished Chamber. That was definitely a close one.

Then I threw a bit of a hissy fit. Goblet of Fire is easily my favorite Harry Potter book. I told Devin that this madness of me plowing through the books just so he could read them after me had to stop. I refused to plow through Goblet. I've read the first three so many times that reading them again was pretty much unnecessary, I read them because I love them, not because I had forgotten anything that had happened in them (even the small, minute details).

But I flat-out refused to do that with Goblet, and Devin was not pleased with that decision. It was Monday morning, and he'd stayed up until the very wee hours of the morning to finish Prisoner and was ready to read Goblet. I was about half-way through it, so Devin decided to go play some disc golf with some friends and instructed me to finish the book while he was gone.

Which is when we started fighting. Over Harry Potter. It was WEIRD. Once again, I told him that I love Goblet and was not going to rush through it. Fine, he said, then I'll just read your hardcover copy.

"NO YOU WON'T. Do not even THINK of touching that book."

"Have you gone insane? What the hell is your problem?"

"No one touches my hardcover Harry Potter books. Especially Goblet of Fire. I've read that book so many times that the spine has completely separated, right at the part where Harry gets the golden egg. It will fall completely apart if you try to read it. Leave. It. Alone."

"You broke your favorite Harry Potter book?"

"I didn't BREAK IT. I just loved it too much."

"Fine. Whatever. I'm going to go play disc golf with Mike."

"You do that. Have fun."

So, Devin stormed off and I re-immersed myself into Goblet, filled with happiness because I didn't have to rush through it just so Devin could start reading it.

When Devin came home a few hours later, he was carrying a Target bag.

"You didn't..."

Before I can finish the sentence, Devin interrupts me, "Yup. Bought my own copy. Now we can both read it."

"Devin! We now own three copies of Goblet of Fire! That's crazy."

"No. YOU are crazy. But don't worry, Mike told me that I can borrow his copies of Order of the Phoenix and Half-Blood Prince. Even though he thinks you're crazy as well."

"What about watching Battlestar together?" I didn't bother fighting over my alleged lack of sanity because... they were both a bit right. 99.9% of the time, I am thrilled to lend a book from my library to a friend, since I firmly believe that books should be shared.

Except for a few very special books. All of my beloved autographed-by-the-author books, my antique books and, of course, my HP hardcovers.

"You can watch Battlestar if you want but I'm going to read Goblet of Fire."

Devin is now half-way through Order of the Phoenix and he cannot stop talking about all of the stuff that was left out of the "Harry Potter" movies. Which means that he never listened to any of my lectures on that very subject but that's okay. At least now he understands.

His goal is to finish Order of the Phoenix today (I'm not sure why, other than the fact that he is now addicted to the series and is obsessed with finding out what happens next). He wants to read Half-Blood Prince over the weekend, and has already told me that we should put a second Deathly Hallows on order for him.

Never in a million years did I expect Devin to plow through five Harry Potter books in less than a week. But I am THRILLED. When he's not reading, he's asking me questions about the books and it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

Out of touch with time.

2007-05-22T16:03:00.001-07:00

And probably reality.

This year is going by at an insane rate. I can't believe that my two-year wedding anniversary is less than a month away and Devin and I have no idea what we are going to do about it.

Although it will probably not involve spending much money, unless our parents gift us with a gift certificate to a nice restaurant. We're lucky to be able to funnel money into our savings account after paying our bills and mortgage.

Last week, Devin had the brainstorm that I needed to replace Gilmore Girls with another show. Which was really just his three-thousandth attempt to get me to watch Battlestar Galactica.

Entertainment Weekly is obsessed with this show. Since I read every issue cover-to-cover, I had been telling Devin about it because it sounded like something he would like. Which turned out to be a gross understatement: He loved it. And maybe I made fun of him for loving what is basically a science-fiction soap opera.

Before Gilmore went off the air, Devin would complain about how yeah, it sucks when the shows that I like go on hiatus, but they come back on in a few months, and his precious show isn't even returning from hiatus until 2008. Once I learned Gilmore was ending for good, I turned the tables on him and said hell, at least your show is coming back.

Yes. Sometimes we act like children.

Since watching my shows last week ran the gamut from being highly emotional to just sucking monkey butt, I was pretty cranky over the weekend. Obviously, Gilmore made me crazy. Then Jaslene won America's Next Top Model and it was making me think that Tyra is either on medication, or needs to be on medication because that was a seriously fucked-up decision. (I could actually give a reasonably well-argued rant for why Jaslene was the stupidest choice possible for winner but I shouldn't waste my time because obviously the judges don't give a rat's arse about who is actually the best freakin' model. Stupid show.)

Then CSI got way creepy. Which is saying a lot because CSI is certainly not a warm-and-fuzzy type of show. Although their Miniature Killer storyline was fabulous, and it left us with a great cliff-hanger. But it also gave us the creepy puppet man who turned his dead five year-old daughter into a puppet for his stage show and kept having her sing about how she had a "pain in her sawdust."

Try getting THAT out of your mind.

On the work front, I actually had the mother of a former pool client calling me a couple of times Friday afternoon because his son told her to call.

The son is in his forties. I've dealt with some crazy callers at this job but I had never had a forty-something year-old man have his mother call me because he felt that we were not returning his calls in a prompt manner. (Which was completely untrue--we returned his call every day that week, he simply didn't happen to be home for the calls and refused to give us his cell number.)

(Although it was a bit funny when Devin was trying to figure out the work number that he gave us. Apparently, he gave us a work number that is actually an emergency hotline for freeze disaster relief. Which was pretty much useless because it was an answering machine.)

That pretty much unhinged me. I've gotten yelled at, cursed out, and hung-up on by former customers but I'd never been scolded by their mothers. I feel very sorry for that man's wife.

So, it was in this weakened state that Devin convinced me to watch some Battlestar Galactica with him over the weekend. We watched the three-hour-plus miniseries that served as one huge pilot for the show.

Now I'm hooked. You have no idea. It is the soapiest, campiest show that I have ever seen and I'm in love with it. In two days, I managed to bust through the entire first season.

Of course, Devin is thrilled that we actually have a shared interest in a TV show that isn't The Simpsons. I still can't really believe it. I have been mocking Devin for loving this show for almost a year.

He also might be gloating a bit about how his devious plan worked so well. Although he was a bit peeved with me because I was laughing at things that he felt were NOT funny. Except I always do that. Gilmore didn't bring out that side of me because the writing for it was superb, right up to the end.

I love dialogue. As a kid, I actually wrote far more plays than I did short stories. In class, whenever we were given a creative writing assignment, mine were always heavy on the dialogue. In fact, up until high school, they were pretty much ALL dialogue.

Oh yeah. That's also why I'm writing a one-act play for Script Frenzy. It's the June version of Nanowrimo for dramatists. Luckily the deadline is only 20,000 words, so I actually have a chance in hell of making the deadline. (Even though re-reading the entire Harry Potter series and watching two more seasons of Battlestar might make writing a one-act play a bit impossible.)

Although, honestly, I'm not that worried. Most of my Nano novel was dialogue because I am one of those people who enjoys dreaming up characters and then putting them in a room together to see how they interact.

Plus, if it's any good, I can submit it to the local community college for their theater department to use when they perform their one-act plays at the end of the year (obviously, I would have to wait until next year). I did this with a one-act that I wrote in high school but they didn't go for it because the main character spent the entire play in a hospital bed. Although this was before W;t won the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

(I wonder what the hell happened to that one-act of mine, now that I think about it.)

So, you may now start betting on which thing I will not follow through with:

Reading the entire Harry Potter series by July 21st.

Writing a 20,000 word one-act play during the month of June.

Watching two seasons of Battlestar Galactica.

Watching any of the first two movies in a trilogy, of which the third installment is coming out this summer (Pirates, Bourne, Ocean's).

Or all of the above.

Acting like a baby.

2007-05-15T10:58:00.001-07:00

Tonight is the last episode of Gilmore Girls EVER.

Devin's being incredibly sweet about it, especially yesterday, when he came home and I was crying.

Yup. Crying. Like a baby. Devin just wrapped me up in a big hug and said, very softly, "This is about Gilmore Girls, isn't it?" But he was being very nice.

"Yes." Sob. "I'm an idiot." Sob. "But I just started thinking about Tuesday nights and how I always watch House after Gilmore because Gilmore is so much fun, and House is so insane. How will I be able to watch House without Gilmore Girls?"

Which is when Devin realized that I had truly gone completely insane. He was especially pleased when I started sobbing about how Gilmore had taken the Buffy slot when Joss moved Buffy to UPN and that I've been watching a show on The WB/CW on Tuesday nights, at 8:00pm since 1997.

THEN I started sobbing about how I still have no clue where my paperback Harry Potter books are, and that I need to be reading Sorcerer's Stone soon if I'm going to be able to read all six books before the final one comes out in July.

Which, of course, turned into me sobbing about the end of Harry Potter and how the hell was I going to survive THAT? Because there will be some serious melting down over here if JK Rowling kills any of the Weasleys. Except for Percy. She can totally kill Percy Weasley but absolutely no other Weasley.

At this point, Devin was just trying to get me to stop crying. Since it had perhaps gotten a bit out of control. (Although I still think that it was totally understandable why I was crying because this is turning into the worst summer EVER.)

Once I calmed down, we treated ourselves to a nice dinner in one of our favorite restaurants (we're trying to save money but we both decided that getting me out of the house last night, so I wouldn't start watching my saved episodes of what is now the final season of Gilmore Girls and start crying about it all over again was worth spending a bit of money).

Then we went and saw "Spiderman 3" for the second time. (Yes. Second time.) We saw it opening weekend, early Saturday morning, so the theater wasn't packed but there were still way too many little kids there for us to really enjoy it. They got bored long before Eddie Brock became Venom.

(The next morning. Can't remember why I stopped writing the entry. Probably because all things Gilmore makes me want to cry. Or actually does make me cry. And I'm not even PMS'ing or pregnant, so I can't blame it on hormones. Even though I'm female, so I could still blame it on hormones if I wanted to because sometimes females don't make no sense.)

So. "Spiderman 3" was actually more enjoyable the first time. Simply for the obvious reason that it was brand-new and we didn't know what was going to happen next. The first two movies were still good after multiple viewings but this one rather sucked a bit the second time around (for me, Devin thinks it was just fine). Because Mary Jane Watson is a freakin' bitch. I tried to tell Devin how bitchy she was after we saw it the first time but he didn't believe me. So, the second time around, I kindly pointed out to him every time she did something bitchy by saying "Bitch!"

I'm nothing if not helpful. My favorite part of the movie the second time around was one of the ads that they ran before the previews. It was from the Tulare County Department Of Health urging all young people to get tested for HIV because many people who have the virus don't know that they have it.

Finally. It's only been 26 years since the first recorded case of GRID (gay-related immune deficiency, which is what they called AIDS until 1982) but finally our county is urging people to get tested for HIV. I seriously applauded the screen and yelled, "YES!" when that ad came on. Since at least they're finally getting their act together about it (yes, they are a few decades late but since I thought this was never going to happen, I'm feeling pleasantly surprised... now I want to see some stats about how HIV is affecting Tulare County but that will probably take a few more years).

And to abruptly change subjects: Gilmore Girls last night totally made me cry. A lot. It was rather pathetic. I seriously started bawling when they ran the theme song because they aren't going to be with me anymore when I need them, so Carole King and her daughter Louise Goffin were totally lying to me.

So, I think crying because I felt that "Where You Lead I Will Follow" was lying to me probably means that I have lost my mind. When Devin heard the music signaling the end of the show (and series, SNIFF) he came out and very sweetly asked me how I was doing.

"I'm crying. It was just so... PERFECT. Well, almost perfect. There was no Sebastian Bach, which makes me a bit mad."

"Because you wanted Sebastian Bach to sing?" Which made me laugh.

"No! Because he's a member of Lane's band Hep Alien! I just wanted him there. But they got almost everyone else so it's okay."

It really was a fantastic series finale. From the beginning, it was very clear why they chose this as the end of the series. Rory had graduated from Yale and was leaving on her first big job (as a reporter with the Barack Obama campaign, of all things) and the damn episode was called "Bon Voyage" for goodness sakes. So the entire cast getting together to say goodbye to Rory was obviously a huge metaphor for saying goodbye to this wonderful show. It was a very heavy-handed metaphor but I rather liked that because heavy-handed meant that this was really the end. If they hadn't given me a hugely emotional episode, with a lot of tearful goodbyes, then I would have been freaking' pissed. Because ending something like Gilmore Girls is different than ending Seinfeld. Gilmore fans expect to be bashed over the head by obvious metaphors because that's part of the show.

And I'm seriously going to miss Kelly Bishop and Edward Herrmann. I have loved them both for far longer than I've been watching Gilmore Girls and I was so pleased to see them on this show. ("Dirty Dancing" and "Overboard" were two of my favorite movies growing up. Although apparently the entire world hates "Overboard," I thought it was absolutely hilarious when I was eight years old.)

So. After over a decade of watching a show on The WB/CW on Tuesday nights at 8:00 pm, I now have nothing to watch. It's probably the heavy-handed Gilmore metaphors talking but this honestly feels like the end of a very long era of my life.

Which probably means that I need to grow up. Except. I rather like knowing that I can still become emotionally invested in a fictional story. I've never been ashamed of crying at the end of a movie, even if I was the only person in the theater sobbing. Or of giving a movie a standing ovation, even though it's a movie theater, and not an actual theatre. The first time I stood and clapped for a movie was when I saw "Apollo 13," the last time I stood and clapped for a movie was two weeks ago, when I saw "Dirty Dancing" on the big screen (I wasn't kidding when I said that I love that movie).

The last time I cried at the end of a movie was when I saw "Stranger Than Fiction." I sobbed my way through that ending because it was beautiful and good lord, do I love that movie.

Every time I read Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire I cry over Cedric's death. Which actually makes it difficult when I see the Harry Potter movies because I already know who is going to die (Goblet kicked off the dying motif in the series), so I actually cry when that person simply appears for the first time in the movie because I know what's going to happen to them.

The Order of the Phoenix movie is going to be very emotional for me. JK Rowling is an incredible writer because she doesn't give the fans what we want--a nice, happy story about a bunch of wizards (reminiscent of the first book in the series) and instead gives us heart-breaking tales of death and redemption. Devin can attest to the fact that I went absolutely bonkers when I finished reading The Half-Blood Prince. I was crying so much that I couldn't even get enough breath to tell Devin WHY I was crying. I'm still hoping that the character she killed at the end of Half-Blood Prince isn't really dead because if he is really dead, then JK Rowling was serious when she said that all bets are off, and that many characters could die in the last book. Including Harry.

Just thinking about that is making me sad. So, I suppose I'm glad that I am able to feel so much for people that aren't even real. Even if it means making a damn fool out of myself when a favorite show of mine goes off the air.

Confession.

2007-04-18T09:57:00.000-07:00

My entries here have been depressing, and long, lately. I am simply try to meander away from obsessing about quitting opioids, or mentioning the health scare that my Dad has been dealing with (since that would be really depressing) by confessing to all of the things I do/have done/watch/read that are maybe a bit embarrassing. Feel free to laugh at me all you want, that's why I'm doing this. 1) I obsessively watch Gilmore Girls and refer to it as "GiGi." I think giving it a pet-name is what really sent me over the edge into crazy fangirl status. Except I am NOT writing fanfic about any of it, which is a good thing. Since I've only ever written dirty, X-rated fanfic (we'll get to that later) and I really can't think of a great "GiGi" hook-up that would make for great, porny fanfic. Unless I did some cross-over stuff with some of the Buffy characters. I've also kept track of all of the books Rory has read on the series and I own most of them. Which must mean that I'm as bookish as a fictional bookish girl. 2) Yes, I have written porny Buffy fanfic. I love that show (there's no past-tense on that because I will never stop loving Buffy even though it all went to shit when Joss left to do Angel and, without Joss Whedon, the show was just crap). I was in love with Spike. In fact, I went to a few James Marsters (actor who played Spike) signings/appearances and the dude felt me up! Happiest day in my teenage life. I asked him to take a picture with me, then asked for the vampire-bite on the neck pose, and, as he was snuggling me closer to him for the pose to work right (I'm taller than James Marsters) he brushed his hand right across my boobs. My friend took the picture and James said something like, well, how about one more just in case? I damn near died because James Marsters didn't want to let me go! And then he felt me up again! Again. Happiest day of my teenage life. Afterwards, I asked my picture-taking friend if Spike had just felt me up and she looked at me like I was a moron, "Yes, Katie, Spike totally felt you up. Twice." I think my friend was a bit disgusted by it but I obviously didn't care about that, at all. I was thrilled. 3) In high school, I created, and ran, the pre-eminent Neil Patrick Harris website. Yes, that would be the Doogie Howser, M.D. guy. In high school, I used the internet to make fan sites. I had a few going but the Neil one was the biggest, and was definitely the best one around. All of the other piddly Neil fansites kept trying to steal my stuff and there was actually a bit of a war because I had a bunch of exclusive photos, since I started the site after I saw him in "RENT," at the Ahmanson in L.A. All of my RENThead friends would give me their Neil photos to put on the site. Seriously. The thing was huge. I had met him once after I saw "RENT" the first time, but every time I tried to catch him at the stage door after another "RENT" show, he would never show up. He had gotten tired of all of the RENTheads camping out at the stage door just to get autographs, and pictures, so he would have security open up some random exit door for him, just so he didn't have to deal with the fans. When I finally DID meet him again, after the site had gotten enormous, and I was THE Neil Patrick Harris Website Girl, he acted like a complete asshole. It was another stage-door thing (but for a performance of "Romeo and Juliet" at the Old Globe Theater in San Diego, and yes, he wasn't very good as Romeo). Someone had already told him that I was going to be there that night (being a theater kid in L.A. means running in a VERY small circle, since it's not really known for it's theater), and he had better come out and meet me after all of the goodwill I had created on the internet for him. So, he did shake my hand, and sign the playbill, and let me take one picture. Then made some really snide remarks about how the site was great but that I must have a really boring life and he'd only been to the site a few times but wasn't really impressed. Less than a week after that meeting, I had the site completely torn down. I let another girl use most of the stuff from my site for hers, and her thank you to me for it, is still there (that was back when I still owned the chuckie.org domain, which was bought by a "Rugrats" guy). You've got to scroll down but it's there--and I must not have let her have my picture of me posing with Neil, since it's not there. I didn't know, at the time, that a friend was talking with Neil's management and they ended up approaching me about making the site an Official Neil site, except it was gone by then, and I had no desire to bring it back to life. Have to say that I'm a little glad that Neil is such a jerk. Had he not been a jerk, I would have been known as The Girl Who Runs the Official Neil Patrick Harris Website and that would have been BAD. 4) I sucked my thumb until I was nine years old. This is random but hey, it's still embarrassing. My parents tried everything to get me to stop. They started with coating my thumb with something that promised to make the thumb taste so bad that no thumb-sucker would stand for it. All that did was make me really, really sick in the morning, since I had still sucked my thumb during most of the night. Then they covered it with that stuff that will turn your thumb, and mouth, bright red if you suck it during the night. Which simply led to me freaking my teachers out and having them send me home because they thought I had some strange, contagious pathogen that had turned my tongue, teeth, and lips bright red. After that, I started going to bed with really thick mittens on, and since I couldn't fit my thumb in my mouth because the mitten was so big, I eventually stopped sucking my thumb. Even though I would still turn to the comfort of thumb-sucking while I was in the hospital, although that eventually stopped, as well. As you have probably already guessed, sucking my thumb for all of those years completely messed with my teeth. One tooth in particular had gotten seriously fucked up. It was one of the two biggest front teeth, on top, and my thumb had made it grow in completely horizontal. After a few years dealing with braces, my orthodontist admitted defeat when it came to that tooth, since the braces hadn't really moved it at ALL. I had gotten used to smiling with my mouth closed, since kids always made fun of the freakish tooth. So, the dentist did a root canal on it, and then began extracting it from my mouth. It was HUGE. The dentist called everyone into the room just to show them how ginormous the root on the tooth was--I still have it in a keepsake box, somewhere. After the extraction, I got a fake tooth, and spent the next few months running my tongue over my newly flat, front teeth. It felt so weird. 5) I am addicted to bad reality shows. Which is what happens when a generation has been raised on MTV's "Real World." Even though nothing will ever top Puck, and that guy from the London "Real World" who got the tip of his tongue bitten off by a fan, and this was around the time his girlfriend sent him a dead animal's heart in a box (it had to have been a heart-shaped box). And what about that crazy Lyme Disease girl in Seattle? Good times. So, now I watch things like "America's Next Top Model," even though I promised myself I would stop a few cycles ago when the title went to that awful Naima over Kahlen. Now I don't care who the hell wins, since the judging is completely arbitrary, anyway. (Last cycle being a good example of this--bitchy Melrose was actually the better model, she took great pictures, she handled fashions shows like a pro and not like an insane monkey but, alas, the title went to the insane, but cute, monkey.) And, honestly, if you are not watching the show this cycle then you need to get your ass over to TWoP and read the re-caps. They are glorious. Between the mail-order Russian bride, and Wholahay, the show is campy, comedic gold. I'm also obsessed with "The Girls Next Door" on E! It's a bit odd, in the sense that it's Hef's mansion, and these are his girls, but poor old Hugh just wanders around like the geriatric he is while his girls talk about how much they love him. Although those aren't the funny parts. The funny parts happen in-between the talking about Hef. I really love those girls. Even Kendra, who is undoubtedly the stupidest one in the bunch (Holly has more brains that I used to give her credit for, and Bridget is actually quite intelligent, it's simply hard for a grown woman who loves pink and takes dogs on romantic, Valentine's Day strolls to be perceived as being pretty damn smart). Kendra is great because she does wonderful things like sitting in Holly's birthday cake. She also invites her family (they live in California, so it's easy for them to visit--the other girl's families rarely show up) to every major Mansion function, and then proceeds to try and find Playboy girls for her newly-18 year old brother (he needs to get laid, according to Kendra). Once she's done with the brother, she moves on to try and find a man for her Mom (who also needs to get laid). She's also the "sporty" one (I can't help but think of a group of girls in old Spice Girl terminology), except when she went snowboarding in Vail, CO with Shawn White, she crashed into him and sent him flying, and rolling down the mountain. Way to go, Sporty Girl. The Vail trip was great for another reason--elk meat. Apparently, Holly (that's the main Girl) was raised in Alaska. When Kendra starting talking smack about how gross elk meat must be, Holly quietly said that it's pretty good but she's been eating it her whole life. Then she said something about how they used to have to hunt and kill their own elks for food in Alaska, and Kendra looked like she was going to puke on the dinner table. Then the elk was served! Holly daintily dug into it and began contentedly chewing away, while Bridget shaved off a tiny sliver of elk meat, ate it, made a face and said it wasn't THAT bad. And Holly was still working away at her own elk meat, loving all of the fond memories if brought back to her of her childhood in Alaska. And any episode that ends with a Playboy girl, and the main girlfriend of Hugh Hefner arriving back at the mansion, telling the mansion chefs that she now has a major craving for elk is FABULOUS. Even some of the best comedy writers in the world wouldn't have been able to come up with that little gem. (Holly had another stellar line in the newest episode, which ended with a big Mansion Mardi Gras party. For Mardi Gras, Hef has a bunch of naked Playboy girls painted as if they have skimpy clothes on, and Holly designed a few new painted "outfits" and Hef actually chose one. The peacock-painted girl was a huge hit and Hef told Holly that she should sign her creation. So, Holly confessionalizes to the camera that she signed her name right on the girl's ass, and followed that up with a glorious, "Classy." You all should really be watching this show.) I've also watched the horrible "Search for the Next Pussycat Doll" thing. It's not even funny-bad (well, not anymore, it used to be hilariously bad, now it's just bad). The whole thing makes no sense to me. The only girls left are these midget teenagers, none of whom would fit in with the real Pussycat Dolls because most of them are fairly tall and OLD. At least, old when compared to teenagers. The show is crap and Robin Antin gives me the creeps. But I'll probably watch the re-run of it tomorrow just to see which midget teenager won. I hope it's the one who can't dance because that would be great. Since the opening credits include Robin screeching that "If you don't dance like this, then you're outta here!" Which is why I want the baby doll who can't dance to win because then there will be no question that Robin Antin is insane.

At least she's finally getting some sleep.

2007-04-11T10:27:00.000-07:00

(This entry ended up being written over the course of the past three days. So, besides being insanely long, it also has three distinct parts. Sorry about the long-arse entry but I really didn't want to mess around with cutting it up and turning it into three separate entries.)

Monday, April 9th

Devin and I were supposed to head down south again this weekend to celebrate Easter.

Except I finally managed to sleep for longer than four hours at a time. I crashed out Friday evening, fairly early. Devin attempted to wake me up Saturday morning to at least TALK about whether we were heading down south, or not, except I wasn't communicating. I remember him coming in much later (or, at least, it felt much later to my sleep addled senses), kissing me on the forehead, telling me that he's going to let me sleep some more because goddess knows, I must be TIRED, and that he was going to play disc golf.

I slept until the afternoon. Then crashed back into another deadening sleep right after dinner.

Managed to get up and go out to breakfast with my Aunt T. and my Dad yesterday morning. Dad celebrated his 65th birthday last week (or, maybe on Saturday, I'm absolutely horrible with birthdays) and, at breakfast, we all talked about going out to dinner.

Guess who slept through dinner? When I crawled back into bed at two o'clock in the afternoon yesterday, I knew something was going on because I was passing up the "America's Next Top Model" marathon on MTV, which is sad but I would happily watch it all weekend, to sleep.

Devin tried to wake me up at some point but I'm fairly certain that I hit him. Or, at least, attempted to hit him. He let me sleep some more, after that. At some point, he brought the phone into the room and said something along the lines of, "Your family is wondering what the hell is going on."

At least, I think that's how I ended up with the phone in the bed. It woke me up at around ten o'clock last night, and it was my Mom telling me that I'd hurt my Dad's feelings by missing dinner. Which I did feel fairly guilty about, except my little brother hadn't even bothered to see Dad over the weekend, or talk to him, at all (we're no longer religious enough for his new life as a Baptist, which is fine except I don't understand how our desire to not celebrate what is, essentially, a pagan holiday that was adapted into Christianity has anything to do with whether he acknowledges his father's 65th birthday, or not).

Although I got Mom feeling sorry for me when I reminded her that I'm going off the opiates and, until the weekend, hadn't managed to sleep for more than three or four hours at a time, so my body definitely needed some rest.

Then we talked about Narcotics Anonymous meetings, and how I'd finally found a few meetings in our town that aren't associated with a church, and she asked me if one of them was in the multipurpose building of our town's hospital, and I said yeah, there was, and how the hell did YOU know that, Mom?

I'd forgotten that Mom and Dad went to Adult Children of Alcoholics meetings when I was a kid (even though Dad wasn't an Adult Child on a Alcoholic, and was there supporting Mom, who most definitely was an Adult Child of two Alcoholics--even though, oddly enough, my maternal grandfather died of COLON CANCER, not liver disease, even though his liver was definitely killing him, he just happened to get colon cancer before it finished him off--and boy, having such a close relative of mine die of colon cancer has always sent my doctors into a tizzy). She explained that, while she's definitely proud of the fact that I'm kicking opiates, that maybe Narcotics Anonymous isn't going to help me out, very much.

"It's full of weirdos, Katie."

"Well... yeah, Mom. Drug addicts usually aren't the most normal of people."

"I know that! I mean weird even for drug addicts! There was even this group that obviously was addict to Anonymous meetings, and the guys kept asking me out, and the girls kept asking your father out. I'm just saying... it might not be the best place for you."

"That was twenty years ago, Mom. Maybe it's different now."

Except I didn't really believe that because there isn't much evolving when it comes to drug addicts. In the sense that the addicts themselves haven't really changed at all over the years (especially running with the theory that once a drug addict, always a drug addict), it's only the treatments that have changed. I don't know about any of you, but I miss the time when those of us opiate addicts could get drinking passes, or whatever the hell they called them in the eighties, because being a drug addict in the eighties meant that you could still drink alcohol on occasion. Although I always wondered if that meant that the alcoholics could just try a little coke every once in a while.

"Besides, Narcotics Anonymous is for the, you know, REAL drug addicts, Katie. Not girls like you."

Erm... what? "Mom. Even just earlier this year, I would follow two Vicodins with two Percocets, and then when those wore off, bump it up to three Vicodins, and two more Percocets. I think that's called a drug addiction, Mom."

"Well, of course, but it's not like you were shooting up heroin."

"Only because I didn't NEED to shoot up heroin. I had a doctor who was writing me prescriptions for unlimited amounts of Vicodin and Percocet! Although I would never, ever, shoot up heroin."

"Exactly. Because you are so scared of needles." This is true. Did I tell you all that my doctor had to physically hold me down at my last colonoscopy because the anesthesiologist didn't get the needle in on the first try? In fact, she finally had to switch arms because she just couldn't get the vein in my left arm, and all I remember is sobbing like a baby, while Dr. Dhillon held me down and said, in his darkly accented voice, to not move my arms. Which is when the anesthesiologist piped up and said, "Oh, she's being VERY STILL." Which is also true. Even when I'm crying over the stupid needle, my arms are stiff as boards because I know what happens if I flinch, and it means more poking at me with a needle. At least this time around they didn't call me a baby and tell me to act my age. After I complained to the American Medical Association about their rudeness, and wrote them a letter telling them that I don't care if I'm screaming the roof down with my fear, you do not call your patients names, they finally learned to keep their opinions to themselves.

"Mom. Just because I never shot up heroin doesn't mean that I'm not an opiate addict."

"Well, I KNOW THAT, sweetie. Remember your Aunt Lucy? I know about drug addicts. It's just that I don't see how you'll get any help by being surrounded by people who probably DID shoot up heroin. You're just a pill popper. Those people are probably going to be a lot sicker than you are, Katie."

"Um. Isn't the point of Narcotics Anonymous the fact that you can't judge your addiction against anyone else's?"

"I know, I know. I'm just trying to warn you about the sort of people you might run into at the meetings."

Entry is now interrupted because I had actual work to do, so I drafted it away and never got back to working on it. Until today--Tuesday, April 10th

As much fun as dialogue between me and my Mom is, I'm killing that particular conversation. It never got more interesting, anyway, and it mostly illustrates that I am no longer hiding away my drug addiction.

Since I am now addicted to "Oprah" (something I will mention in an upcoming entry about shows I watch, books I read, and anything else that should cause me to be ashamed of my desire for bad pop culture), I got home last night and started watching the new episode.

"ADDICTION" blazes across the screen, helpfully pointing out to us viewers what the topic for the show is today. Oprah starts talking about these five people on her stage, and how they consented to have their lives filmed for a documentary about addiction. At this point, I'm expecting a reference to "Intervention" on A&E because that is one hell of a disturbing show, even though it is brilliant in the sense that it helps families pay for lengthy rehab treatment for their loved ones (the ones who actually 1) make it to rehab, and then 2) actually make it THROUGH rehab, which is not something most of the addicts featured on "Intervention" are capable of doing).

But no reference to "Intervention" is coming up, Oprah is referring to an HBO documentary film entitled "ADDICTION." (Upon hearing this, I immediately paused Oprah and started checking HBO for show times of this documentary, and it recorded at around 7:00 this morning, which I guess is a good time for cokeheads and tweakers because they never sleep.) Out of the thirty addicts featured in the documentary, she has chosen five to appear on her show.

The first guy, Rick, was a television reporter for "Inside Edition" during most of the nineties (and, I think, late eighties) but what nobody knew was that he was a crack/cocaine addict. Oprah explains that we're now going to watch pieces of Rick's story as recorded by "Addiction." Oprah warns us about graphic drug use. Which doesn't bother me, all that much, because Rick liked to smoke and snort his drugs, not shoot them up.

Lots of Rick smoking the crack. Then it cuts us back to the show, and Oprah prompts Rick into explaining about that one time he interviewed the FIRST President Bush (I seriously hate it when people refer to him as the "FIRST President Bush"), at a charity event to help people say no to drugs, except poor Rick had just smoked a ton of crack about an hour before the interview.

Obviously, now that Oprah has gotten him to admit to something that is horrendously humiliating, she moves on to the next addict. Crystal who is... yup, addicted to crystal. She and Oprah talk a bit about her addiction, how she first tried meth when she was 20, and promised herself that she would never do it again. Which gives Oprah the chance to interject that Crystal was lying to herself about crystal, so let's see some of her scenes from "Addiction." Again, we are warned that they contain graphic drug use.

Crystal suddenly appears on the big, Oprah show monitor-thing that looks bigger than a movie screen, and she's shooting up meth into her jugular vein.

Which damn near gave me a heart attack. I do not handle watching people shoot up very well, it makes me feel nauseated and dizzy. Especially people shooting drugs into their neck, which I didn't even know drug addicts were doing nowadays, and I've seen a lot of "Intervention" on A&E.

So, someone needs to explain to Oprah that there is a vast difference between the graphic drug use of a guy who smokes crack, and the graphic drug use of a girl who shoots up meth in her neck.

After lots of wonderful scenes full of the girl shooting meth into her neck (which must be far more disturbing to Oprah's audience since Crystal's neck on that giant screen would be about four feet long), Oprah asks her why the hell she was shooting up in her neck, and that Oprah has never even HEARD about junkies doing that, and that she's done a whole lot of junkie shows.

Crystal explains that, well, she started off with smoking it. Then that high wasn't good enough, so she went to snorting it, which wasn't much better than smoking it, so she started mainlining it into her arms. Which she loved because we all know that drugs are gorgeous things when done intravenously (except I let anesthesiologists do this for me) except then she blew out all of the major veins in her arm. Which is when she came up with the jugular vein idea because that was the next biggest vein in her body that she could think of (which, I guess, gets her some drug addict points for originality, even though any heroin junkie could have given her a huge list of veins to try before stabbing herself in the neck) and boy, was that one hell of a great high.

Crystal is wanting to talk about her recovery from meth but Oprah is still stuck on the neck thing. She explains to Crystal that she's heard mainlining any drug gives a really fast high, so what was Crystal's high like when she shot up in her neck? Even though Crystal pretty much already answered that question, and is obviously trying to hold herself together through all of this questioning, so major points to her for that, Crystal explains that shooting up in the arm is nice, and all, but it doesn't result in an instantaneous high, just a quick high. But shooting up in the jugular? She was high before she even took the needle out of her neck.

(Which makes me hope that no heroin junkies caught this particular Oprah show because they might start thinking that shooting up in their jugular vein is a fabulous idea, and why the hell hadn't they thought of that before?)

Since Oprah got all of her ghoulish questions answered, she moved on to the next addict. And I will stop giving you all a complete re-cap of the show because I really just wanted to talk about the girl who shot up meth in her neck. The other three addicts are: William, a crack/cocaine addict; Tom, an alcoholic for fifty years; and Cheryl, a cocaine addict.

Cheryl was definitely the most eloquent of all of the addicts, who basically summed up what every addict needs: Instead of asking us why we can't stop using drugs, ask us what you (our friends and family) can do to HELP US stop using drugs. That's a great lesson for anybody who has a friend, or family member, that is a drug addict.

The show also taught us that there are a lot of studies being done on the brain of an addict. Dr. Anna Rose Childress explains that they are now taking pictures of addict's brains as they play cues/triggers on a continuous loop for the addict's viewing pleasure. At first, I thought that these cues would just be a bunch of images of people doing drugs, of the drugs themselves, etc.

Since Oprah is also not getting the cues thing, she asks her production people to cue (ha!) up Dr. Childress' example of what they would play for a cocaine addict.

Turns out that the pictures of drugs, and drug use, last a total of 33 milliseconds (seriously) and they are interspersed between long periods of blackness. So, for us, it went something like: black screen, flash of coke vial, black screen, flash of bubbling spoon. Dr. Childress would play this cue reel for the addict (although the cue reel would be specific to that addict's drug of choice, since the aforementioned crackhead, William, participated in this study, Dr. Childress used his cue reel, and then showed us pictures of his brain).

That's when it got interesting. When William was shown pictures of things like cats, windows, and other random, normal things, his brain was not doing a whole lot. But when William watched the cue reel, even those 33 milliseconds of drug stuff got his brain completely fired up. Tons of bright redness in William's brain, which most of us know means that his brain was working over-time.

Which is how doctors are now learning that it's more than just environmental triggers that drive an addict deeper into their addiction, it's also their brain telling them that this drug is the most important thing in their life right now, and that they must get the drug. The brain studies also showed that, while one part of the brain is going crazy, sub-consciously telling the addict to go get more drugs, another part of the brain is not doing much of anything at all. Dr. Childress called this the "brakes" of the brain, and that the brakes in an addict's brain aren't working properly at all. These "brakes" are what give us the ability to use reason and logic in our everyday lives. That's why when you ask an addict why they can't just, you know, STOP TAKING THE DAMN DRUGS. The addict can now fire back and say, well, it's a brain thing. My brain isn't letting me take my foot off the accelerator (the part of the brain that fires up when an addict just thinks about getting high), and my brakes are completely gone.

So, now they're developing neurological meds to help addicts deal with their addiction. Although I was pleased when Dr. Childress made the point that this isn't a cure, just another form of treatment, and that addicts should, in no way, think that this gets them out of going to rehab, or Anonymous meetings. That every addict should use ALL of the tools available to them to help them deal with their addiction, and not just one or two of them.

See? The Oprah show can actually be completely interesting sometimes.

After watching Oprah, I saw that there was a "House" re-run on Fox. Woo! I love me some "House."

And it's the episode where Cuddy dares House that he can't go a week without Vicodin because, apparently, the world is conspiring to keep me thinking about my addiction every hour of every day.

Although only a few things from the "House" episode got me thinking about Vicodin. (Besides the fact that every time House fists another few pills of Vicodin, I instinctively reach for my Vicodin because House was my unwitting drug buddy. I'm so glad I had Oprah to tell me that this was one of my triggers because, you know, I might not have realized that since we drug addicts are considered to be morons.)

The thing is... House's Vicodin use is completely wonky. And I know from whence I speak. When Cuddy is chewing him out for how much Vicodin he takes, she says something along the lines of, "Did you just take more Vicodin? You're already taking 80 mg. a day!"

Just in case you all aren't Vicodin addicts like me, and have no idea what 80 mg. a day means: 80 mg's of Vicodin means 16 500's a day. Vicodin comes in two dosages--the 500 mg. pills, which is the most popular form of Vicodin because it is far easier to get than the other dose, which is 750 mg.

So where did I get the idea that House is taking at LEAST 16 of the 500 mg pills per day? Well, the 500's have 5 mg's of actual hydrocodone, which is the lovely opioid that makes Vicodin fun, and 500 mg's of acetaminophen, also known as Tylenol. That's what gives it the 5 mg/500 mg split on the prescription bottle. The 750 mg dosage of Vicodin works in the same way--it has 7.5 mg's of actual hydrocodone, and 750 mg's of acetaminophen (making it 7.5 mg/750 mg).

This is where I start to get a little angry at the way Fox portrays House's Vicodin addiction. Obviously, in order for House to be getting the 80 mg's of hydrocodone that Cuddy is insisting he takes on a daily basis, then he would need a hell of a bigger pill bottle than the little dinky one he is always using. Even if he only got a week's supply at a time, that's still 112 pills, and those things are BIG. For some perspective: I was allotted 3 of the 500 mg's of Vicodin on a daily basis, so I got 90 for the whole month, and those 90 pills filled up a very big pill bottle.

In all honesty, there is no way House could even fit his daily dosage of Vicodin into those tiny pill bottles. There's just no way. The little bottle would maybe (MAYBE) fit half of his daily dosage.

There are also a lot of stupid doctors where House works. When I started taking double my daily dose of Vicodin because my tolerance got so high that I had to double the dose just to get a meager high. I was switched onto Percocet (I was diagnosed with arthritis when I was twelve, just in case there is someone reading this who is wondering how the hell this girl got herself so many painkillers, and my knees hurt on a daily basis, and swell into agonizing balls of pain a couple of times a week). Percocet has oxycodone, instead of hydrocodone (don't ask me why one is more effective than the other, that's something for a chemist to explain), and is also cut with acetaminophen.

Which is why someone should have switched out House's 16 Vicodin-per-day habit into, maybe, an eight Percocet-per-day habit. Someone should also talk to him about adding tons of fiber to his diet, otherwise he will never poo again in his entire life because 16 Vicodins a day means no movement of the bowels. Although his freakishly gaunt appearance makes a bit of sense, now, because he probably loves Vicodin far more than he loves food, so he probably gave up on food a while ago.

(Which does make perfect junkie sense. When I was taking both the Vicodin and the Percocet on a daily basis, I really didn't care about food. At all. All I cared about was taking more pills, which hit you a lot faster if you take them on an empty stomach. Although that tends to make a person, even me and I'm really good with my opioids, a bit nauseated.)

Once again, coming back to this entry the next day--the wee hours of Wednesday morning.

I have got to stop writing these things while I'm at work.

Just finished watching the HBO Documentary "ADDICTION," and I am both frightened, and energized, about everything I learned. It's not like A&E's "Intervention" series at all. Instead of focusing on drug addicts hitting their "rock bottom" and following it up with an intervention, the small films that made up the "Addiction" documentary discuss what happens AFTER the intervention. Now that we've got the addict to admit that they have a problem, how do we go about treating addiction as a chronic, but manageable, disease?

While I'm glad that the medical community is finally learning enough about our brains on drugs that they are discovering ground-breaking new therapies, and educating the public about addiction as a chronic disease, I'm also very, very angry with myself. On top of everything else, I had to go and willingly give myself a NEW chronic disease.

Although I'm trying to get past that because... well, at least now I'm willing to admit that my opioid use was becoming a huge problem, and that I needed to stop using them. I actually wrote a letter to ALL of my doctors, explaining that I had realized that I have an addiction to opioids, and to NOT prescribe them to me no matter how much I beg, and cry about the pain. I did that over a month ago. Because eighteen years of dealing with a chronic disease has taught me how to manipulate doctors into giving me whatever the hell I want. Until the opioid addiction, being able to get what I needed from my doctors was simply a matter of me explaining to them what was going on with my body (whatever symptoms I was suffering from at the time) and the course of treatment that I thought would be the best way to go.

Which is probably why they also gave me the pain killers. They trusted me enough to let me run with my own treatment options and, thankfully, they still trust me when it comes to my Crohn's. Just not when it comes to pain, and my cons for using that pain to just get more drugs. I think the fact that I fessed up to the addiction is what kept my doctors on my side. If I had continued to con them for the drugs, and lie about how deeply I had sunk into them, I don't think any of my docs would ever have fully forgiven me for deceiving them, and abusing their trust.

It also sucked to learn that opiate addicts are the addicts with highest relapse rate because our withdrawal symptoms could go on for weeks, or months, or even years, the doctors in the film explained. It all comes back to our brains, and how we (opiate addicts, and not, necessarily, all addicts) have those opioid receptors in our brain and when we start taking a lot of external opioid drugs, we completely fuck up the natural opioid receptors in our brain. We basically flood our brains with far more opioids than it could ever produce naturally, and it we continue to do that over a period of time, we're basically re-wiring those receptors to get them accustomed to the onslaught of drugs. We actually trick our own brain into thinking that it needs all of those extra opioids to survive, which has a lot to do with why the withdrawals are so incredibly intense.

The good news was learning that the brain has an incredible capacity for healing itself, and that it is possible to completely reverse the damage done to it by drugs by simply remaining sober.

At least the withdrawal symptoms are lessening on a weekly basis. Even though it is still kicking my ass on some days. Or, rather, on all days, it's just no longer a 24-hour per day problem, and more a 10-hour per day problem. After spending the weekend mostly in bed, finally crashing out from the crushing insomnia that plagued me during the first week of sobriety, I'm back to not being able to get to sleep until the wee hours of the morning.

It's a bit crazy because I've slept through my alarm both yesterday, and today, so I was an hour late to work on both days, and I stumbled in like I had a nasty hangover. In fact, it FELT like I had a nasty hangover. My head ached, I couldn't form a coherent thought, and I was yawning like I hadn't gotten any sleep at all. I could tell that my father-in-law thought I was either hungover from drinking too much the night before (definitely not the case, since I haven't had a drink since last Thursday), or was heavily abusing drugs.

I don't particularly feel the need to explain to my in-laws that I'm actually trying to STOP abusing drugs, and that the opiate withdrawal looks a whole lot like someone who is actively abusing drugs. Since that would necessitate me having to tell them how many drugs I was taking, and they consider addiction to be a choice a person makes (and my mother-in-law is extremely judgmental about drug addiction, and pretty much puts it in the same category as homosexuality, and she firmly believes that these are bad choices made by bad people).

So, unless they ask me point-blank if I'm abusing drugs, I'll probably just continue letting them believe whatever they want to believe. At least for now. Right now I'm more concerned with actually getting through this addiction, and the withdrawals, because I don't really care what people think of me. I'll probably start caring at some point in the future but right now, it's the very last thing on my mind.

Because. Withdrawals. Are. Evil. I completely understand why opiate addicts have such a high relapse rate. We'll pretty much do anything, even if it means making another pact with the devil for more pills, just to make the withdrawals stop. And I know about methadone, and Revia, and the other pharmaceutical treatments for opiate withdrawals but I'm tired of taking more drugs to deal with the symptoms that arise from having taken other drugs. It's a cruel, vicious cycle that never ends.

It's like when my Crohn's flares up and I have to go back on oral steroids. I don't just take the Prednisone, I have to also take calcium supplements so that it won't completely gnaw away my bones, and a mood stabilizer (usually Elavil) because Predisone will make anyone crazy, and a whole lot of other drugs, depending on how much Prednisone I am prescribed. I can easily double my daily intake of pills when I'm on Prednisone because the side-effects are inconceivably intense.

Because once you get on that merry-go-round, it's damn near impossible to get off. Since none of us enjoy being in pain, or simply feeling uncomfortable in our own bodies, there is this crazy desire to just throw as many medications into our system as we possibly can to help us mask the pain, and discomfort. Which is how we trick ourselves into thinking that we're not drug abusers, we're drug USERS, and that drugs help us live better lives.

Of course, this is often true of chronic diseases/conditions (or infections, or cancer, and you get the idea) because, without my 6-MP (6-Mercaptopurine, also known as Purinethol, a drug used primarily to treat acute lymphatic leukemia), I would definitely not be in remission today.

But I'm actually using that drug to treat my disease. To keep me healthy. Whereas I was definitely abusing pain killers, even though I was legitimately in pain, because I had completely lost the ability to determine the intensity of the pain. I was treating a minor headache with the same amount of drugs that I used to treat my incredibly swollen, and bruised knees.

And then I started using the opiates just to keep me from going into withdrawals. I believe this is referred to as maintaining the addiction solely for the sake of the addiction. Which is when you know that things are really bad. When I started taking Vicodin first thing in the morning (or Percocet, if I felt that it was a particularly ugly morning), even before I had breakfast, I knew that I had crossed that invisible line between use, and abuse.

Even though it took me months before I actually confronted the problem, and started dealing with it. After my brief bout of sobriety last year, and then getting yelled at by my Internal Medicine doc because I could have freakin' killed myself from detoxing at home, and not in a hospital, we tried the taper-down method of getting me off the opiates. (Similar to using methadone for getting opiate addicts out of the clutches of the drug, except my doc and I figured that we should try having me take progressively smaller doses of Vicodin until I could safely stop using it altogether and not have my doc freak out over the possibility of me going into cardiac arrest from trying to get clean.)

Maybe it would have worked if I was doing addiction counseling on a weekly basis but the only thing tapering down did for me was extend my drug abuse. Doc and I started on this taper-down method MONTHS ago, and I quickly became content with the idea that hey, it was okay that I was still taking some opioids because I was just easing myself away from the addiction.

That was obviously a completely moronic method of treating opiate addiction, especially since I wasn't participating in any other addiction therapies--I wasn't in counseling, I wasn't going to meetings, I wasn't doing anything except taking a little less Vicodin than I was before. Although, according to the HBO "Addiction" site (which is highly informative and quite extensive), the taper-down method is a known method of treatment for opiate addicts, but I still think that it's useless without the addict going to counseling, and meetings, as they are tapering down off the drugs. Because, otherwise, you end up with someone like me who gets her last bottle of Vicodin on 3/5/2007, with it's 90 pills because one of the assistants in the doctor's office faxed the refill request to the pharmacy, not realizing that we were still on this taper-down method, so I should only have gotten 30 pills.

And since I'm a drug addict, it took me less than two weeks to polish off that bottle of Vicodin. Yes. I'm being completely honest. It took me about twelve days to go through 90 500mg Vicodin pills. Which was more than double my daily dose. I knew that it was going to be my last bottle, so I did what any addict would do, and just threw myself into taking them all day, every day, until they were gone.

Which was when my doc gave me a few day's worth of Tylenol-3 (that's the one with codeine) because I had, once again, done a stupid thing and was endangering my own recovery. The Tylenol-3 was certainly not strong enough to get me anywhere close to being high (only six Vicodins a day could manage that frightening feat) but it did help wean me off the opioids.

So, now I'm back to just getting through another day without taking any more opioids. (The "Addiction" documentary taught me that opiate is a term used to describe the drugs that are derived directly from opium plant--heroin, opium, and morphine--and that opioid is used to describe drugs that are synthetic--Vicodin, Percocet, Dilaudid, and others.) Which has been made even more difficult by the strange, central California weather that has been going on lately. Today it's cold, cloudy and generally gloomy. Under normal circumstances, these are my favorite days of the year because I don't really like the sun. On cloudy days, I happily open all of the blinds, curl up with a book in my comfy office chair, make myself some hot tea, and generally enjoy the hell out of the gloom.

Except my arthritis absolutely hates gloomy days. I walked one of the disc golf courses with Devin yesterday (I don't play it because I do not enjoy throwing discs, running off to retrieve a disc, and then starting again with the whole throwing thing) and I could not stop complaining about my damn knees. It was such a lovely evening, not too much sun and a really nice breeze, so I had no idea why my knees were acting like I was in the arctic, trying to climb an ice mountain.

Once I finally hobbled home (I left Devin at the course because I just couldn't walk anymore without collapsing into a whining ball of pain, so a friend drove him home) and took a look at my knees I was pretty distressed. The damn things were completely swollen, so I had to elevate them, ice them down, then do some simple stretching, and yet more elevating, even more icing them down, and then I wrapped a heating pad around them.

When I woke up this morning and saw the cloudy gloominess, it all made perfect sense. The change in atmospheric pressure had wrapped itself like a vice around my knees (and, to a lesser extent, the other major joints in my body).

Except today there is no Vicodin, or Percocet, to help me cope with the pain. Which is why I need to get myself to a damn Narcotics Anonymous meeting because a few more days of this crazy pain will probably crush my will, and desire, to stay away from the opioids. The most important thing that I have learned from "Intervention," and "Addiction," is that no drug addict can do this on their own. Because there will always be cloudy, gloomy days that wrap themselves around my body so tightly that all I can think about is getting some drugs, any drugs, just to make it all go away.

Being kicked by the addiction.

2007-04-04T23:19:00.000-07:00

It's been two weeks. I know that I'm going to make a horrible day counter because numbers jumble around in my mind.

I cannot understand why people talk about kicking their addictions. I'm not kicking anything right now. I'm getting kicked, repeatedly, in the head. At least, that's the one part of my body that has been in the most persistent, constant pain since I stopped taking opiates.

Never mind the fact that I haven't gotten a decent night's sleep since I stopped the Vicodin and Percocet. I can manage without sleep. I was an opener at Starbucks, for goddess' sake, for nearly three years. My work days began at 3:45 in the morning. Thursday nights were always the worst. I adore CSI (to the point where I am always considering, just in the back of my mind, that maybe it would be fun to take some criminology classes), and would stay up until ten watching it, even though my shift began at four am on Friday.

So, not sleeping because I'm no longer pounding my body with drugs doesn't particularly bother me. I have my computer, and wireless internet access. I have a wonderful library full of books about all sorts of things. Keeping myself occupied until I pass out in the wee hours of the morning isn't difficult.

It's the headache. Especially behind my left eye. The one that they took out of my skull and clamped a buckle around. That eye. It is throbbing, right now. Pulsating and grinding with pain that I haven't felt since I was recovering from eye surgery last year.

Although the strangest thing about kicking the opiate addiction is how tight, and itchy my skin feels. If you've ever taken opiates for any length of time, you know that, after a while (or after a particularly strong dose), your body begins to itch. When I was popping both the Vicodin and the Percocet on a daily basis, I was constantly having to monitor my nervous scratching. Otherwise I would scratch these huge red welts on my arms. I'd almost smash my nose in with my fist because it itched so damn much.

I honestly thought that all of the itching would just go away after I stopped taking the opiates. No one told me that it would only get WORSE. Which is especially harrowing because I still catch myself doing the junkie knock to my nose, as if hitting it really hard will make it stop itching, and without the opiates, doing that really, really hurts. I didn't even realize how much of a natural reflex it had become until I was about a week into this foray away from opiates, and could not understand why the hell my NOSE was hurting so much. I don't normally have sinus problems, and I've never done any drug that required passage through the nasal cavities.

Then I realized that I was still banging on my nose, even though I was off the drugs. In fact, since beginning this entry, I've already whacked my nose at least three times. Granted, the withdrawal seems more intense at night but still... that's a lot of nose whacking. No wonder my damn head hurts.

What the hell kind of weird junkie withdrawal is THAT? Banging your nose with your fist? For some reason, I can accept the fact that I would often cover my body in red welts from all of the scratching but admitting that I am punching my own face? That just seems sad.

And of course I am jittery as all hell. Yesterday Devin made some reference to my "foul temper" (which is certainly a fair statement, considering my Irish ancestry and my flaming red hair) and I went ballistic. Of course my temper is foul. I am a drug addict without her drugs.

The man is a saint for putting up with me. At least I've gotten to that comfort level with him, where I know that no matter how awful I am (whether it's my disease putting us through hell, or simply my crazy-ass temper raining down all over him), that he will never leave me.

That doesn't excuse my bad mood, though. I usually try to pull myself together and go back and apologize for screaming at him for no reason at all. Except for the conference over the weekend, we're spending most of our time sequestered in our rooms (which makes it sound like we both grounded each other, or something equally inane) because I am in no shape to be around people. Even dealing with the conference was a huge trial because people wanted to talk with me, get my story, hear about my journey with Crohn's Disease, and the part of me that is being consumed by the opiate withdrawal didn't want to talk to any of those people AT ALL. It took every ounce of will-power I have to not run from all of those chattering people and retreat back into the safety of the truck. I spent most of the conference with my head in my notebook, taking copious notes through-out the entire process because the paper didn't want do make small talk with me.

Have I mentioned the freakish withdrawal symptom that is leaving me freezing cold, with goosebumps covering my entire body, even on the nice, 80 degree days? I'll be sitting at my desk in the office, bundled up in a huge sweater, wearing my heavy corduroy pants, even thought the atomic clock telling me that it's currently 82 degrees inside the office.

And I know that it has to be due to the intense withdrawal. Because even the heavy sweater doesn't keep me warm. I'll just sit there shivering, running my hands up and down my arms, trying to push the goosebumps back down into my skin. My father-in-law mentioned something one day last week about how weird it was that I was bundled up in a perfectly warm room, and I certainly didn't have a good excuse to give him for it. Since I would rather not announce to my Mormon in-laws that I'm in the middle of getting my ass kicked by opiate withdrawals.

I probably told him something about how I seem to be losing quite a bit of weight, and maybe that's what is making me feel so cold. And that's actually a somewhat true statement. I have lost a surprising amount of weight over the last two weeks.

(Although I really shouldn't be surprised. Since I've also stopped smoking pot, even though my docs had finally gotten me a prescription for it, because I learned at the conference that even though some docs DO recommend pot for IBD patients because it gives us the munchies and gets us eating, they're beginning to learn that it's a treatment that works best on IBD people who have Ulcerative Colitis, not Crohn's Disease. It turns out that smoking anything is just a really, really bad idea for people with Crohn's. This information is so new that none of the docs at the conference could explain WHY smoking doesn't affect U.C. patients nearly as much as it does the Crohn's patients, they simply know that Crohn's patients who smoke tend to have shorter periods of remission, and get extremely intense flare-ups from it.)

So, goodbye maryjane. And hello loss of appetite. At least there are no withdrawal symptoms when it comes to pot. Unless you count the aforementioned loss of appetite.

Normally I wouldn't really care all that much about fluctuations with my weight. Having IBD for eighteen years has taught me complete detachment when it comes to how much I weigh. Since my weight is almost always dictated by my illness, and the only time I really cared about my weight was when I had to fit into that insanely small wedding dress.

Except now I'm just annoyed by it. My clothes have gone back to being too big for my bony frame, and the thought of going clothes shopping in the state I'm in seems a bit like getting bumped from purgatory and into hell.

Although those 34-DDD bras that I bought a few months ago are ALSO too big for me. I'm thinking that's my consolation prize for trying to deal with my addiction. Even though my eyeballs hurt, and I'm punching myself in the nose, and wandering around in sweaters on perfectly warm days, and not sleeping for more than five hours at a time, well, at least my boobs have gotten smaller.

Not to mention the fact that my liver is probably ecstatic because I'm no longer making it filter massive quantities of opiates on a daily basis.

And the whole getting clean, and healthy part. That's definitely a good reason for putting myself through all of this, especially without the luxury of rehab. (Is it wrong that rehab sounds a bit appealing to me? I'm a bit drawn to the idea of being in a place where my only job is to focus on making myself better. Especially if they let you take an entire suitcase full of books to rehab.)

At least it gets a little easier every day. Which is a horrible cliche but, like most cliches, it has elements of truth in it. Even though the headache, and the other aches and pains, don't noticeably improve on a day-to-day basis, that's not such a horrible thing because I'm changing on a day-to-day basis. I no longer wake up and obsess about the fact that I really, really want some Vicodin but dammit, I can't have any Vicodin, so I'm just going to stew about it all day and spew crankiness on anyone who comes too close to me.

Now I wake up resigned to the fact that I can never have any more opiates, and that I just need to get on with my life. I suppose that doesn't sound very inspiring but I'm trying to cut myself some slack on this because what really matters is not relapsing and begging my doctors for more opiates.

And hopefully I'll wake up some morning in the (hopefully near) future and won't even think about opiates at all.

Those crazy kids and their widgets.

2007-04-04T11:14:00.001-07:00

If you have noticed that completely static main page for my domain, you'll realize that it's been promising a new site since... oh... about five years ago. Now. I'm not going to get into WHY the new site never surfaced (the strange thing is that I really had almost finished it, and then my computer crashed and I lost a bunch of my work, and once I met my husband, I began to not care as much about sitting up in my room all day, and night, coding a website) because I would just be lying to you all, and I'm trying to stop being such a nasty liar. Except five years ago, when I was coding that site, Cascading StyleSheets were the newest and coolest thing around (they still are the coolest thing around, in case you didn't know) and I was able to code html in my sleep. (I realized the other day that my parents have been completely wrong about me. They always talk about how I took three years of French classes but never became close to fluent, and therefor I do not know any language other than English. NOT TRUE. I am fluent in Hyper Text Mark-up Language. SO THERE, MOM AND DAD.) Back then, blogs were called online journals, and most everyone who had one needed to know at least a moderate amount of html. I swear to you all on every book that I own, that I never thought I would be 26 years old, and complaining in my online journal about those damn crazy kids. Except there are some damn crazy kids running around the internet nowadays. And they want WIDGETS for everything. When I got back into journalling, I kept seeing that word all over the place, especially at Blogger. In fact, Blogger urged me to change from it's classic templates to it's new, improved widget layout. I had to look up "widget" in wikipedia to see what they hell they meant. OH. A widget is just a bit of code to put into your website pages. Now that I knew what Blogger was trying to push onto me, I decided what the hell, maybe these widget things will make my life easier and I won't have to do so much tedious coding. I switched over my blog into their new widget-based layout. In the past few years, I have only been gloriously, spectacularly wrong about a few things (letting my mother-in-law run my wedding day is pretty much the most major mistake I've made in recent history) and, boy, was I REALLY wrong about this new widget stuff. You see. I thought it would make my life easier. That I would be able to say, oh, well, I want a two column layout but within those two columns, I want some nice CSS boxes and I want to be able to easily manipulate all of the major elements in my page from one stylesheet. So, I started messing around with those wacky widgets. Blogger promised me that the only designing I had to do was to select some of these widgets and Blogger would do all of the work for me! I started randomly selecting widgets to go into my blog, just to see how easy it was going to make my life. Then I got really confused. If I pressed the "Image" widget, all Blogger did was give me some image code that I knew in my sleep (you know, like: [img src=url], except without the brackets, obviously). I couldn't believe that this was all the new, purportedly wonderful Blogger was going to do to make my life easier. So, I tried a few more widgets. Same thing. If I clicked "Make a link" (or something similar), it would just write a href= code for me, which is probably the one bit of html that I have never, ever forgotten because I code all of my links by hand using a href= This was the great new Blogger layout?! These WIDGETS? Blogger was turning into freakin' myspace. They weren't out to make my life easier at all, they were actually catering to the teenagers who don't want to learn any html but still have a website (or blog, whathaveyou). Because, seriously, have any of you spent any amount of time on myspace? It's a horrible, horrible place. Full of awful pages with embedded midi (except do people even USE midi, anymore? am I, once again, dating myself with an old skool web term?) files and those wretched backgrounds that render all of the text on the page completely unreadable. Not that I want to read what those teenagers are writing, anyway, but STILL. It's an affront to anyone who appreciates good, clean webdesigns. And now Blogger is in on the game. Except their widgets don't seem to be helping those crazy kids much because they keep flooding the Google/Blogger Discussion Forum (which is here, if you ever want to read the incoherent ramblings of people who don't know what they hell they are doing... well, to be fair, except for the 1% of us who actually post intelligent questions) with their inane complaints. For example. When re-designing this blog, I wanted to do something that I thought would be fairly simple. I had already gotten the posted comments to embed into each entry (that was the easy part--the hard part was formatting the comments so that they looked like they belonged on the page, and not like I just decided to tack them onto the end of an entry just for the hell of it), I had even figured out how to load the Blogger userpics for people who post in the journal through their Blogger account (even though, as of this very moment, the only Blogger user with a pic who posts a comment here is John Q. Casual, Hi John!). After embedding the comments, I wanted to somehow get that annoying "Post A Comment" pop-up to NOT force people to read the exact same comments all over again just to get to the comment form. I posted a question in the Google/Blogger Discussion Forum, asking if anyone knew how this could be done. Vin, of Beta Blogger For Dummies responded that there was no way to manipulate the comment form, and that many have tried before me and failed, so I should really just give up. Of course I didn't give up. I had to show all of those guys that it COULD be done. In fact, it was pretty easy to do, even though I couldn't have done it without the Web Developer add-on for Firefox (an add-on that I completely recommend to anyone who is coding by hand). Which is how I learned that the Google/Blogger forums are not meant for people like me. They are meant for the people who post things like, "Blogger took away my comment link! What happened to my comment link?!" (That was an actual post, in case you think I'm just making all of this up as I go along.) Since I had learned my lesson from posting my own question and not getting a single useful response, I began to take pity on these poor souls, and tried to help them out. Like the girl who claimed that Blogger just took away her "Post A Comment" link. Of course Blogger didn't "take away" anything from her blog. Blogger can't even DO that because, in order for them to be able to do that, they would have to log into your Blogger account, go to your blog template (or "layout," if you're a widgeter) and physically remove the commenting code from your template. Which, OF COURSE, is not something Blogger can actually do. The most they can do is disable your blog for breaking the Blogger TOS. So, in the interest of helping someone else because I was still smarting from being told that mine was a useless question, I checked out the source of that girl's blog. Just to see what was going on. And oh, dear lord. If you ever want to make yourself crazy, spend a few hours in that help forum and check out the source code for some of the blogs. Because the source code will make no sense. After realizing that the missing-comments girl had obviously done something wacky with her template because she had a span class (from her stylesheet, in case you all are not fluent in CSS) for her comments but no Blogger code for posting comments. None. And there is quite a bit of Blogger-specific code (called "tags" in classic Blogger and, obviously, "widgets" in the new Blogger) that you must include in your template if you want to enable commenting in your blog. The other hilarious (to me) thing was that she had also, very obviously, messed her stylesheet up because the span class that she was using for formatting her comments didn't even exist in her stylesheet. This is what happens when people use pre-made Blogger templates and try to mess around with them, except they don't know what the hell they are doing, so they end up doing something like removing the Blogger "Create a Comment" tags without even realizing it. And then, when I tried to explain to the girl that you have to put the Blogger comment tags INTO YOUR TEMPLATE in order to enable commenting, she responded that I didn't know what I was talking about, and that Blogger had stolen her comment link and, not to worry, she had already written to them about it and she was sure they would be restoring her link very soon. See, Blogger? This is what your crazy widgets hath wrought. People who don't even know when they make a mistake, and then blame YOU, Blogger, for their mistake. At least I blame you for things that you are actually guilty of (like that annoying "Post a Comment" pop-up, and using the meta tags to embed your OWN stylesheets into every single Blogger blog, which over-ride my remote-hosted stylesheet, forcing me to write my own meta tags even though I don't understand why you would do that to me, Blogger, why would you use meta tags for your own, nefarious purposes?). I promise that the seemingly never-ending entry will actually end. At some point. Hopefully soon. Since Devin and I were stuck together in a car for a good seven hours this weekend, I relayed to him all of my Blogger woes. Complaining about how difficult Blogger makes life for those of us who just want to write our own code, and use our own stylesheets. Then I bragged a little bit about being the only person who has figured out how to manipulate the "Post A Comment" link to jump straight to the comment form, effectively by-passing all of the posted comments. And I might have done a bit of complaining about that Beta Blogger For Dummies site because, while it might have some useful information on it, the design is so wacky that trying to find an answer for whatever question you may have is pretty darn difficult. (I also might have editorialized a bit about how ugly I think the site is, and that a help site should be beautiful, and simple, otherwise some people might not take the advice held within very seriously because the site is so poorly designed.) Which is when Devin told me that he was sick of hearing about Blogger, and that maybe I should just make a section in my blog for Blogger griping, and use that section to educate people about how to properly manipulate your template, and stylesheet, and that you CAN make your blog look pretty, and simple, and have it do everything you want it to do (well, ALMOST everything, since there is really no way to get around the Blogger post-a-comment form--you cannot embed it into your blogs like the blogs on Wordpress, or Typepad). Except, sadly, my foray into the Google/Blogger forums has taught me that people really don't want to LEARN how to do all of this great, and nifty-keeno html and CSS stuff, they just want a bunch of widgets to do it all for them. And thus ends my rant about those crazy kids and their widgets. (P.S. After digging around the Google/Blogger Forums all morning, I have realized that about one third of the questions that get posted there are actually intelligent, genuine pleas for help. Which is why I'm so happy that I'm able to start helping some of these people. It feels good to actually use all of my html, CSS, and Blogger knowledge for something more than just making myself a bunch of pretty blogs. Although I'm steering clear of those damn crazy kids, mainly because I don't know how to help them with their widget questions, anyway, since I'm not using the Widget Blogger. What's even more fun is that I'm actually finding new blogs that are well-written, and interesting, so I should probably cut the Google/Blogger Forums a bit more slack. They are definitely not all bad.)

Hanging in there.

2007-03-22T15:42:00.000-07:00

Even though I'm relatively young, I've been to a lot of funerals and memorial services. This week I attended a memorial for a friend who died from complications related to a lung transplant that she received in 2004 (she had cystic fibrosis). I mentioned it in my other journal, and linked to her obituary, and I'm really in no place right now to continue discussing it. I've been crying on-and-off all week since I found out, got through almost the entire memorial service without bawling my eyes out, only to completely lose it in the end and start choking on my sobs and dripping goo from my face. So, instead, I will talk about funerals that I have attended. In case you didn't know--my entire family is Catholic. We are Irish Catholic and damn proud of it. One of my earliest memories is attending a funeral of a first cousin who was in some branch of the armed forces (Navy, I think) and was driving home late at night, after being deployed somewhere very far away, and he drove into a tree. I'm pretty sure his name was Randy. I think I was about five when this happened. Maybe six. I remember the rosary, and how completely boring it was for a kid, except for the fact that there was a dead body in a coffin at the front of the room. Luckily there were coloring books and things for the kids who did not want to recite the Hail Mary a thousand times over. At the end of the rosary, all of us kids watched the adults walk past the coffin. Since I was one of the eldest kids, and a big-ass loudmouth (which is still true), I asked my Mom what was going on. She explained about the viewing of a dead body. Then I worked out a dare, double dare, double doggy-dare situation for the kids, trying to goad them into looking at a dead person. Basically, the longer you stayed looking at our dear, departed cousin, the more points you got. I was pretty much the only kid who could handle it. My little brother had nightmares for weeks, and my parents yelled at me for daring little kids to look at the dead. Which I realize now means that we didn't have much adult supervision because, otherwise, someone would have noticed a group of ten, or so, little kids screaming in horror. Instead of waiting for their kids to simply find them later and cry about what I had made them all do. I was a horrible kid. After the rosary, everybody trooped back to the motel we were staying at, and the kids were herded into one large hotel room, where we were watched by our cool Aunt Pat, who let us all jump on the beds and make crazy forts out of pillows. Thus completely erasing the memory of scary dead bodies from our young minds, except for my little brother, who swears that he is still traumatized by that dare. My Mom still remembers how stoked my brother and I were to have such a cool relative who would let us JUMP ON THE BEDS. Aunt Pat (who was actually my Mom's Aunt, and therefor my Great-Aunt, but all of my relatives were Great's, so we just dropped the term) was forever remembered as the coolest Aunt ever. When she passed away when I was in my teens, all of the relatives came up to me and said how great it was that we loved her so much for letting us jump on those beds. It was seriously something that was never forgotten by the family. After spending most of the night jumping from one bed to another, we had to go to sleep for the funeral the next day. This was the first time I smelled incense, and I completely fell in love. Funerals to me still mean that great incense smell. It's soothing. As a kid, it was my mission to try and find one of those cool, metal incense shaker things, so I could perform fake funerals for my dolls. Then the graveside. I remember the guns. Since it was a service for a fallen member of the armed forces, there was the whole salute and shoot thing. We all thought it was pretty damn cool. Except for my little brother, who despises loud noises, and decided to hide under the coat of our cousin Danny, who was in his thirties. Danny came to both of our weddings and, of course, still remembers Johnny hiding in his coat while the guns went off. I was THRILLED when he brought it up at my brother's wedding reception to all of his wonderful new in-laws. I guess I'm still a mean kid. The reception was full of booze. We all went back to Randy's house, where there was tons of food and alcohol, just like any good Irish wake. I remember Randy's two kids (twin boys) had major lung problems, so they were always sitting on the ground, breathing from these strange machines that filled the rooms with medicinal smoke. But that was soon forgotten because once the adults started drinking, the kids could do whatever the hell we wanted. I actually wrote a paper in college about how my family celebrates death. The assignment was to write about something that is a family tradition, and either specific to your family, or to your family's culture. I picked Irish wakes. Granted, a funeral itself is very sad, but the reception afterwards can often be one huge party. I loved the fact that as the adults drank more, and more, the stories of the deceased went from sad, weepy tales to raucous, boisterous tales. With tons of drunken laughter. Everyone sharing stories that would have embarrassed the dead person, had they not been dead, but allowed the living something to laugh at during a time of sadness. As I got older, and attended more and more family funerals, I realized that this was true of EVERY family funeral. Which was why I call them our Irish wakes. Full of love, sadness and joy, but completely fueled by booze. Only a year, or so, after Randy died, another cousin died, this one a bit younger. In grand Irish tradition, he died as a result of being very drunk. He was sitting on a fence that bordered a cow pasture, was drinking massive quantities of whiskey, and accidentally tipped himself over the fence, into the cow pasture, where he got trampled by bulls. Seriously. Trampled by bulls. I realize that death isn't funny but my family has always tempered the sadness of death with lots of inappropriate jokes. You can only imagine the horrible, off-color jokes we made about the cousin who got trampled by bulls. We still laugh about it. After that, a bunch of the older relatives started to drop like flies. We were attending at least one funeral a year (sometimes more) until I was in junior high. So, in my memory, they have all become one huge funeral. With an even MORE boisterous Irish wake afterwards. In our family, if the deceased died of natural causes related to old age, then there is very little mourning, and a lot more celebrating of the long life that person lead. Unless that person was generally despised within the family, and then it was a time of great mocking. Again, the booze fueled the party. It was during this time of never-ending funerals that the family shared with us kids the Great Family Ghost Story. Apparently, the entire Catholic family strongly believes that the spirit of the deceased somehow gives a "sign" that they have passed on into the afterlife. This always happens sometime during the three-day Irish wake. Family members talk about lights switching on and off, strange knocks on doors but no one there when it is opened, and a whole slew of other "signs" that signal the passing of a spirit into purgatory. In fact, my Mom still talks about how angry she is that the spirit of her own mother chose to not visit any of her kids, but a strange distant relative instead. This is how seriously the family ghost story is taken within the family. After attending a funeral a year for about a decade, the entire process began to almost bore my brother and I. We had a very been-there-done-that attitude about death. Except then our Uncles began to pass away. The first one to die was Uncle Gene, who suffered from Lou Gehrig's disease (ALS), so we all knew it was coming. I was in high school, I think, by the time he passed, and he had been diagnosed with it while I was in elementary school. To be honest, my brother and I hated Uncle Gene when we were kids. Probably because Uncle Gene hated kids. You might think I'm exaggerating but I'm really not, he despised children. He only ever had one kid in his life, (our cousin Steven) and Steven commiserated with Johnny and I about how much his father hated kids. Uncle Gene was married to our Aunt T. and they lived in Lafayette, which is a cute little Bay Area town. Mom and Dad would often drop Johnny and I off at Amtrak, call Aunt T. and tell her that we were coming up for the weekend. Or, if it was summer, coming up for the week. I have a ton of great train riding memories from when I was a kid, and we were incredibly young when we were alone on the trains, starting way back before Amtrak had double-decker trains. They were still using the dingy, dirty, seventies era trains back then. Which were always having mechanical problems, so there were constant delays. And one time, the train ran over a homeless person's cardboard house. Thankfully, the homeless person had taken off for the day. But it was pretty cool to see all of the Amtrak employees take axes and hack away at the cardboard home. So, when Uncle Gene fell ill, we were just a bit sad. As he got sicker, and sicker, he became completely paralyzed and was confined to a hospital bed. He had round-the-clock nursing care, and was only able to communicate through blinking his eyes (he had a talking computer at one point but he didn't get to use it for very long before he lost the ability to move any part of his body, so Aunt T. let Johnny and I play with the talking computer, and we mostly used it for prank calling purposes). This was how I learned to suction a trach. Most of the nurses were pretty cool, and one of them, Brother Love (yes, that was his legal name, this was the San Francisco Bay Area, so most people were a bit odd) was so cool (and we later learned that he was a heroin junkie) that he often let me wield the plastic sucking thing, which was stuck through the tracheotomy device and suctioned all of the saliva that got caught in the throat. Fun times. You would think that a paralyzed Uncle Gene would be easy to handle, except he was still a bit of a jerk. He would send the nurses into the room Johnny and I shared when we stayed there to tell us that our Uncle was blinking furiously and that we were being too loud. The nicer nurses would tell us to just quiet down for a little while, until he fell back asleep and they could administer his sleeping meds, and then we could be as loud as we wanted. Other nurses felt compelled on our Uncle's behalf, even if he had fallen back asleep, to try and quiet us down every fifteen minutes. It never worked. Uncle Gene eventually died, as I said, and it wasn't a particularly sad funeral. The wake afterwards started off pretty raucous, and we kids mainly talked about how mean Uncle Gene was to all of us. We were upstairs, in a strange house (one of Uncle Gene's somewhat estranged brothers set up the funeral and wake) playing card games. We were just sitting on a landing at the top of the stairs, in front of a bunch of closed doors. Behind one of the doors there was a LOT of loud, banging noises. Since we had all been briefed on the family ghost story by this time, we were convinced that it was dead Uncle Gene coming back to yell at us for having too much fun. Perhaps I had something to do with spreading fear amongst the other kids. Have I mentioned that I was a bit of a meanie? Once I had gotten the kids sufficiently frightened, I began daring them to open the door. Except none of us would go near it, not even me because I'd managed to scare myself along with everyone else. So, we all went screaming to the adults that Uncle Gene's spirit was locked inside an upstairs room and he was banging to get out and COME AFTER US. We were hysterical with fear. Which meant that some poor adult had to find a key to the noisy room (it was locked, which only fed into our fear of a ghost being in that room) and open it up, unleashing upon all of us kids a really sweet dog. That's another family story that gets trotted out every once in a while, "Remember when you thought Uncle Gene's ghost was out to get you all and it turned out to be a PUPPY? Huh? Do you remember? That was GREAT." Then my other Uncle, the really nice one, came down with renal cell cancer, which is basically kidney cancer. It was incredibly advanced by the time it was found, and he died less than two years after his diagnosis. That was a sad funeral. Uncle Tim was universally loved within our family, especially by my Mom and Aunt T., his two sisters. Although the adults still talk about our cousin (not related by blood, but marriage, and she was part Uncle Tim's OTHER family, whom everybody tried to like for the sake of Uncle Tim, but I don't think any of his blood family really liked his in-laws) and the fact that she had some sort of ceremonial job during the funeral and chose to wear see-through white pants that were at least two sizes too small, and a bright blue thong underneath that was visible to everyone in the church. The family still talks about how I was pretty much the only teenage girl who dressed appropriately for the funeral, and what an upstanding young woman I was for not wearing something that showed off my underwear. (Now that I think about it, family members always pull me aside at family functions to tell me how nicely I dress myself. Even at my brother's wedding, I was the only bridesmaid who wore black nylons and closed-toe black heels with our black satin dresses. The other girls wore no nylons and had on flip-flops. Although my favorite memory of that wedding was the fact that they took dozens of posed, family shots, as is common at all weddings, except no one bothered to tell me about them, so I'm not in any of the big family shots. I thought it was hilarious because I hate posing for big family photos, and my sister-in-law is still apologizing for it. I'm sure it will be another story that we will never forget, and will feel compelled to mention at family gatherings, "Remember when you got married, Johnny, and we took all of those family pictures with relatives three-thousand times removed but you FORGOT TO GET YOUR OWN SISTER? The only sibling you have, and you completely forgot about her. That was GREAT.") Anyway, back to Uncle Tim's funeral. Just as the funeral was ending, and the Priest was talking about how he was out of pain, and with God, the air was suddenly filled with an annoying cacophony of beeps. The alarm of every single car in the church's parking lot had gone off. Every single car. Uncle Tim's wife, my Auntie Vita, started sobbing that it was The Sign. That Uncle Tim was telling us that he was fine now, and ready to move on to heaven (I think the Catholic church had dropped purgatory by that time). It was that moment that solidified the family ghost story for me and my little brother. We now firmly believe in The Sign. Uncle Tim's wake turned into the most drunken wake I've ever seen in my life. And you all know from this post that that is saying quite a lot, since I've seen my fair share of drunken wakes. My brother and I figured that the drinking was in direct proportion to how beloved the dead person was--if they were not particularly liked, like Uncle Gene, people would get a little toasty, but if they were completely adored and loved, like Uncle Tim, then there was much drowning of sorrows in alcohol. Which was a bit funny because the wake was organized by Mennonites, and I don't think they like falling-down drunks. But they provided fantastic food. Of course, by the end of the wake, everybody was so completely drunk that they were sharing Uncle Tim stories that were definitely inappropriate for teenagers. (Mostly involving the multitude of cars he destroyed in high school while driving drunk. My family might have a bit of a problem with alcohol.) But nobody cared because the alcohol had made them jolly, and they wanted to share that joy with the world. You would think that with all of this readily-available alcohol, I would have tried my hand at drinking but I never did. About a year after Uncle Tim died, my paternal Grandmother passed away. By the end, all of her savings had gone to her care and for the many surgeries she had, so there wasn't much left for a funeral. There also wasn't much left when it came to family (on Dad's side, every funeral I've talked about was for a relative on my Mom's side of the family), so it was an incredibly tiny funeral. Mom and Dad even let me pick out the casket, and it was springtime, so I picked a light green casket. Yes, seriously. It was pretty. Only two other family members came, and a handful of Grandma's friends who were still alive, and the family members made snarky comments about the green casket. My Aunt who is still alive but dead to us for many reasons (One of which was calling up my Dad after he had his third heart-attack and second by-pass to tell him that she hoped he would have another heart-attack, except that it would be the one to kill him, and when she called again a few years later to tell this same horrible sentiment to me, simply because I had answered the phone, my little brother I decided right there that she was no longer a part of our family. No one says horrible things like that to her own brother, and to the children of the man in question.) called us the day after the funeral and left a screaming message on the answering machine about how we were such a horrible group of people to have given her beloved mother a GREEN CASKET, and that she hoped we would ALL die, and that she would make sure we would all get GREEN CASKETS. You see, the only other family member to show up was my cousin Terry, She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named's daughter (SWMNBN has four kids) and, apparently, she had called her mother and told her about the funeral. We just laughed at the evil phone message because at least we organized the funeral and, you know, actually attended it, unlike SWHNBM, who didn't feel the need to attend her own mother's funeral. (She also hated her mother, so it was pretty funny to us when she took such a great interest in the color of the casket, since she had also told her own mother that she hated her and wished she would die. We had set Grandma up in an Assisted Living home, and she had her own room with her own phone, and SWMNBN would call Grandma up, in the middle of the night, to scream and yell at her about how awful a mother she was and how much she deserved to die. At first, the nurses didn't know what was going on, only that Grandma would have these severe anxiety attacks at night, and was refusing to go to sleep. Finally, one of the nurses managed to intercept the evil call, and after that, we decided to take the phone out of her room. The only person who ever called her was SWMNBN, anyway, so there was no point in keeping the phone around. After a while, the anxiety attacks stopped and Grandma started sleeping through the nights again.) (Aside: The evil woman eventually tried to make up with our family. After she wouldn't stop calling my Dad with death wishes, and was calling Grandma with even more death wishes, I called her up and told her, in no uncertain terms, that she was dead to us now, and that if she ever called my father with death wishes again, that we were going to file a restraining order and I would make it a personal mission to get her jailed for harassment. Everyone else was too scared of her to call but all I cared about was getting the point across to her that she could NOT treat my father like that, and that NO ONE can treat my father like that. That was almost ten years ago. We never heard from her again until I started sending out my wedding invitations. I sent them to my cousins on that side of the family, the children of SWMNBN, with a long letter explaining that I was not inviting their mother or father, but that I still loved them as cousins and wanted them to know that they would always be welcome in my home, and that I had wonderfully fond memories of their kindness from when I was a kid. None of them came to the wedding but they all sent gifts and nice notes in response to mine. Obviously, the cousin who ratted us out about the green casket, decided to rat me out about the wedding invitations. I ended up receiving a card and a gift from SWMNBN, which I didn't even open, and just mailed it right back to her. Which prompted her to leave a rambling message on my parent's phone about how she doesn't understand why I hate her so much, why do I hate her so much when all she's done is love me? And on, and on. Obviously, the woman is mentally ill, but she's been refusing help for it for longer than I've been alive, so I don't really have any sympathy for her problems. I called her back and reminded her that I would file a harassment suit if she ever called my parents again, and when she tried to tell me how much she loved and missed me, and why did I hate her so much? I just hung up on her. She pulled the same shenanigan when my brother was getting married. Except he's a whole lot nicer than I am, so he kept her gift, read her rambling letter, and even sent her a small thank you note. It's fine by me if wants to bury the hatchet but my parents and I have no desire to have this woman in our lives, and I doubt that will ever change. She's simply a sick, toxic woman who desperately needs help but refuses to admit that she has a problem. Maybe if she started going to counseling and really started working through why she is such a heinous bitch, then I might be able to forgive her. But that's never going to happen. We're also not the only family members who refuse to speak to her. Out of her four kids, only one is still on speaking terms with her. Obviously it's the Rat Cousin, and two of her siblings aren't even talking to their sister anymore because she rats everybody out to SWMNBN. The four cousins, and their families, are scattered around the country, and they went through massive amounts of therapy to try and deal with their mother, and they were all told that the woman is unbelievably toxic, and that she was poisoning their lives. Every single cousin was advised to not speak with her until she realizes that she needs help, and checks herself into a mental hospital. In fact, on September 11th, 2001, my cousin John--who graduated from West Point and joined the Marines--happened to be stationed at the Pentagon. Almost all of his platoon was in the part of the Pentagon that the plane hit, and they all died. Cousin John and a few of his fellow platoon members simply happened to be in the other side of the building, and so they survived. John didn't even bother calling his mother to tell her that he was still alive. He called everyone else--including my family, even though we hadn't seen him in years--and simply let his rat sister tell their mother that he was fine. That's how evil this woman is--she messed up her kids so much that most of them will never speak to her again, no matter what happens.) Yikes. That was a long aside. The only funeral that I neglected to mention was for another cousin, named Rio, who drowned. Yeah. I'll bet you can just imagine the horrible jokes that were made about the cousin named Rio who DROWNED. The reason I didn't mention it is because I do not remember the funeral at all. I'm not even sure if it was one that we attended. (With so many relatives dying in the few short years between the end of my 6th grade year and the beginning of high school, we literally only had enough time to attend a maximum of two, MAYBE three, funerals a year. I'm sure Rio died during that time and since my parents had only met him once, and my brother and I had never even met him, his funeral was not on the top of our list for that year. Which sounds horrible except for the fact that we were attending an insane amount of funerals, and really shouldn't feel guilty about not attending a few here, and there.) The strangest thing is that, once I reached the legal drinking age, our family funerals pretty much stopped. Which means that I have yet to partake in the drunken revelry of our Irish wakes. (Knock on wood. Because I'm not wishing for a family member to die just so I can get drunk. Although, honestly, some of my family members are such drunks that they wouldn't be offended by that statement at all.)

For now, everything stays the same.

2007-03-14T09:05:00.000-07:00

We are not ready to even discuss me getting pregnant. Which is something we are both more than fine with; I'm not ready because I've only had a few years to wrap my mind around the idea that Devin wants a biological kid (at least the one) and less than a few weeks to wrap my mind around the idea that I'm HEALTHY; Devin's not ready because even though he was the one with the deadline, that was not REALLY a deadline, and more like a future point at which he might be ready to be a father. We are focusing on keeping me healthy. Thanks so much to everyone who helped remind me (and I reminded Devin for you all) that being healthy is the true reward right now, and the baby stuff was just noise in the air. I'm starting to cut back on the painkillers (trying to get myself off opiates for the first time in over a decade), which is hard, but good. I'm re-reading Elizabeth Wurtzel's More, Now, Again because that is truly one of the best drug recovery books I've ever encountered in my entire life. (Which is saying a lot for me because 1) I read a ton of drug/alcohol recovery books and 2) I despise everything else Elizabeth Wurtzel has written, and I'm fairly certain that the reason I like More, Now, Again is because she had a new editor, who was VERY vocal about trimming down parts of the book, as much as I love Betsy Lerner, she really could have done far more trimming of Wurtzel's Prozac Nation, and Bitch.) Although I don't think I could handle an NA meeting in such a small town. One thing about Narcotics Anonymous, and Alcoholics Anonymous, is that in the big cities, it is fairly easy to remain fairly anonymous. Not so much where I live. My detox is also not particularly clinical. My doc and I have worked it out, for the most part, and I know what to look for as I taper down (and then off) the opiates, that might mean I'm going into withdrawal shock, or whatever. This is what sucks about having a physical dependence on Vicodin (I stopped taking Percocet a few months ago, which was also a good thing). My body could get really sick just from getting clean. We opiate addicts are really nuts. At least, I know I am. I know that my physical tolerance for opiates is damn near unreal. Especially for someone who's never done heroin (for obvious reasons--I would like it way, way too much and all of my friends know about this, so it has not been offered to me in years, since I stopped hanging out with Josh and David). Out of habit, I called in my Vicodin refill even though I was supposed to be quitting (I've got another painkiller, Darvon, that had been working fantastically well). But. Well. I'm an addict. I didn't even think about trying to get a Vicodin refill, I've been doing it for so long that I just called it in and it went through. Except Doc halted the other painkiller, Darvon. Which means he really has been listening to me when I've been talking about my addiction to painkillers. Although I learned this from his office staff, who explained to me that the Darvon had been stopped because I just got the Vicodin, and to call them when I'm done with the Vicodin. The somewhat nice office staff lady then said that I should be calling in about a month, right? "Well. You want me to call when I'm almost done with the Vidodin, right?" I ask. "Yes, that's what the doctor said. He might even want you to come in for an appointment, I don't know. So, about a month?" She asked again. "Um. No. About two weeks." "Excuse me? Didn't you just fill that prescription a few days ago?" "Yup. Doc and I have talked about this. One of the reasons we're phasing me out of the Vicodin is because I can take up to three times my daily limit and not feel a damn thing. Conservatively speaking, I'm probably taking double my daily limit. Which means I'm calling you back in about two weeks." "Oh. And the doctor knows about this?" "Yup. We've talked about it." "Okay. Well. Give us a call and I'll get you an appointment." I didn't ask for clarification about how I went from maybe having to see the doctor, to definitely having to see the doctor: I'm an addict. Doc likes to check up on me and make sure that I'm not resorting to my old ways (foolishly trying to get the Vicodin refill) or about to die from withdrawals. What I've read about most opiate blockers is that, while they work, they also contain lactose, for some reason. My Crohn's is really touchy with lactose. So, I'm just going to have to detox the old school way. And hopefully not die. The painkillers are for my knees, just in case you all were wondering. These first few months of the year are the worst for my arthritis, to the point where my knees painfully swell and, when the swelling eventually goes down, they are surrounded by bruises because the swelling was that bad. Most people with arthritis can take anti-inflammatory drugs, which are better for arthritis than simple painkillers, but I've also got an inflammatory disease of the intestinal tract, so anti-inflammatories are a BIG NO for me. It can make the Crohn's go wacky and actually trigger a flare (in me, I'm not sure about the rest of the IBD world on this one but this has always been true of me--I can't even take over the counter Motrin). Doc will probably work with me on the painkiller stuff if I agree to go back to physical therapy. UGH. He's brought it up a few times this year and I've just said I didn't have the time. Well. I better make time for it now before summer starts, otherwise I really won't have the time. Although the last time I went to physical therapy, they had me doing so much work that I fainted right off the elliptical machine. Scared the hell out of the entire place. I was fine on the stationary bike, but something about having to stand up on a machine and move my legs around in strange circles, had me dizzy and passing out within ten minutes. I think it was because they programmed the machine a certain way and when I needed to stop to catch my breath, the machine wouldn't let me, and kept forcing my legs to go in those freaky oblongs. I remember coming to on the ground and the crazed machine was still going. Never again am I getting onto a pre-programmed exercise machine of any kind. People need to realize that if I can't breathe, then I can't remain conscious. It's a heart thing. (Huh. Speaking of. Wonder if I should call my cardiologist. The guy was a bit of a jerk, though. Probably do need to find a new cardiologist. I've also got appointments with my trio of eye doctors to make--retinologist, opthmalogist, optometrist. Although my range of vision has been great since the surgery--no apparent relapse, which makes me happy. I should still get it all checked out since it's been almost a year since I saw them all.) I guess more of the same right now means more doctor appointments for Katie. Now that we know the major stuff is under control, it's time to start checking out the rest of me. Make sure the apparatus holding my left eye together is still doing it's job. Probably time to update my prescription glasses. Find a decent cardiologist and make sure that my fainting thing is what the other cardiologist said (after I failed the tilt-table test), that my blood circulation is damn near stagnant when I stand for too long, or am standing and not able to catch my breath, then I just conk out. By the time I left Starbucks, I was fainting there about once a week. As most longtime readers know, it was the fainting at Starbucks that most likely lead to the detachment of my left retina. Hit my head on the floor one too many times and tore a hole in my eye. But now I'm at a job where I can sit down all day if I want to, so I haven't fainted in over a year. Yay me and my stagnant blood circulation. (I'm trying to think if I'm leaving any specialist out. This is when taking care of myself starts to get nutty. I could easily fill the rest of the year with doctor appointments. The eye docs I'm calling today. I've already called my Nurse Practitioner for the pap smear, and already have an OB/GYN ready to accept me as soon as I get pregnant, so that's out of the way. Might just go ahead and call my orthopaedic doc and make that appointment instead of going through my Internal Medicine doc first. Find new cardiologist. Or maybe see old, creepy cardiologist. Thankfully have never needed an ear/nose/throat guy. Have a dermatologist but I never go to him because my skin is great and I am decadent when it comes to my skin care regime. OH YEAH. Dentist. Chipped tooth. Hurts a bit. I think that's all of them.) I can only imagine how much worse my doctor load will get as I age. I'm already seeing more doctors than most old people that I know (and most of my doctors have waiting rooms full of really old people, never anyone close to my age). I've got the health insurance, and I want to make sure I'm super-duper healthy, so I might as well use it. Especially before summer starts and the pool business becomes so insane that my father-in-law will get cranky with me for not dealing with all of these docs BEFORE the busy season hit. Which makes sense. Time to make some calls. P.S. It's late and I can't sleep, so I thought I'd fill in all the fun doctor news. I know you all live for this stuff (or I live for this stuff). Apparently, after having such a major eye surgery, my retinologist wanted to see me every six months, so I'm quite a bit behind in my retina appointments. The receptionist must be new from the last time I went because she didn't remember me at all, and once I gave my name, she did the whole, "You had a detached retina at TWENTY-FOUR?." Of course, she didn't even wait for me to respond because there wasn't really much for me to say to that, so she plowed on with, "and how could you FORGET to keep up with your eye appointments, how many times have you had eye surgery?" Which sounds a lot meaner than it was, she was mostly shocked that once I was told my surgery had taken and that I was recovering beautifully, that I just stopped thinking about dealing with it at all. Didn't even try to explain the Crohn's to her and that the eye is just one more thing I have to deal with, and that I hadn't noticed any problems, so I honestly thought that I didn't need to bother with appointments. I just hope that the examination does not involve sticking things into my eye. I've had more than enough of that to last me for the rest of my life. (Or at least the next thirty years, which is when the apparatus holding my eye together might fall apart, or start peeking through the eye socket, which seems a bit freaky. The plastic buckle--scleral buckle, to be precise--might edge itself into visibility, so I'd have plastic bits sticking out from around my eye. FUN.) I was able to rush a dentist appointment for early next week (they love me at the dentist), which is good because I could use a nice, happy nitrous morning. I've got some minor filling work to do that I put off earlier this year, so they're going to do that and deal with the chipped tooth at the same time. Which is good. If I'd gone in for only the chip, I probably wouldn't get the nitrous because it would be an in-and-out appointment. So, I had to work it around to get my nitrous. Of course. It also happened to overlap with the pap stuff. Which I got rescheduled pretty easily. Dentist more important than having cells scraped off my cervix. Because they don't give you nitrous for a pap smear even though they REALLY SHOULD. Devin and I are cooking at home, and taking lunches to work. Part of our getting healthy thing. It's working out better than we could have imagined. We both work on cooking dinner, we both chip in on the clean-up, so we are actually spending more time together than we were before, when we would both scrape together our own (unhealthy) dinners, or just grab something while we were out, and retreat to our private spaces. At least now we cook together, eat together, clean up together, and THEN split into our separate spaces. Except for tonight. Tonight was "Casino Royale," which was much better in the theater, but still a good Bond movie. Love Daniel Craig. Eva Green, not so much. It had the "Spiderman 3" preview, though, which makes me giddy every time I see it. If the movie can live up to that preview, then it is going to KICK ASS. Summer is going to be nuts. The Simpsons MOVIE. "Spiderman 3." The last Pirates movie (which I'm a BIT excited about, compared to the rest of what's happening during the summer). THE LAST HARRY POTTER BOOK. There will be insanity. There will be mourning. There will be MADNESS. I am trying to not think too much about it, even though I need to get on with re-reading the entire series. Which I simply HAVE to do before the last one comes out. While in Cayucos, the other Katie and I bonded again over our complete devotion to the Harry Potter books, and she told me about the hotline that's being set up for distressed fans after they read the final book. She said I was the only person who responded to this news with a hearty, "THANK GOD." And I actually meant it. Devin had to calm me down after I finished reading Half-Blood Prince because I was alarmingly distraught. Also the next Ocean's... movie. Eh. I like these mostly for the cast, and not the complete lack of plot (which is pretty much true for all of us who see these movies, I think, we all just LIKE those guys, so we're fine with watching a movie that is really not much more than them hanging out together). Good lord. Forgot that the movie version of Order of the Phoenix is ALSO coming out this summer. Damn. I need to start saving my money now because the must-see-movie list is getting rather long. Have to see the new Harry Potter film, of course, even though Order really kicks off the dark, angsty teenage years for Harry and the others, making it not as much fun as the others. Even though Goblet ends on a very sad, depressing note, it still ENDS that way. Order can be surprisingly depressing from the get-go. That's how the books are going, now. J.K. Rowling is being very true to her word and properly aging the books with the kids, consistently tackling more adult problems, and showing the kids growing into teenagers, and by the end of the last one, probably young adults (the one who SURVIVE, that is). It's had a lot of parents very angry because now the cute, fun series about wizards is now more scary, and depressing. Anyway. Good lord. Order of the Phoenix this summer as well. Although, thankfully, I do not care at all about the "Fantastic Four" sequel. I thought the first movie was crap and, after having seen it a few more times, still stand by that first impression. Jessica Alba might be hot but her face is less expressive than a mannequin's and, for some reason, her little girl voice bothers the hell out of me. The only one I liked in that movie was Michael Chiklis as The Thing. Unlike Alba, who has no excuse, this guy actually managed to emote even when he was wearing the heavy Thing makeup. Same goes for "Live Free or Die Hard." Devin's all crazy excited about a new "Die Hard" movie but I'll have a good giggle at the name, and that's it. No desire to see that one. Same for the sequel to "Bruce Almighty." Never saw even saw the first one. Ditto for the "Rush Hour" movies. But a new "Bourne" movie? Will probably have to see that one. Devin and I are HUGE fans of the Bourne movies, Devin to the point where he is actually reading Robert Ludlum, but I just appreciate their glossiness, intense action, and cool mind games. A "Bourne" movie is always a good movie experience. Damn. That's a lot of movies to see this summer. Luckily it's easy to consider going to the theater a necessity during an oppressively hot Central California summer--you make up the ticket money in free air conditioning for a couple of hours. But in order to make all of this happen, I have to get the doctors out of the way NOW, otherwise all of my spare time in the summer will be spent with doctors. Plus, you know, there's fixing up the house and finally having that garage sale before summer hits. (Summer is dead time for two reasons: 1) the pool business will be insane, Devin will be working crazy hours, I will probably end up doing some over-time myself just to keep up, and we are both going to be cranky as hell because of it, and 2) remember last year? ten straight days of triple-digit temps out here in California? yeah. that happens a LOT for us during the summer. the lethargy it produces is legendary, we would all rather lie around and moan about it than try to get up and do anything.) Oh YEAH. I have to get my application for counselor for sick-kid camp in by the end of the month. Sick-kid camp is sometime in July. Which. I just realized. If it coincides with Harry Potter then there are going to be major problems. Some summer camps are taking field trip to bookstores if they are in session when the book is being released. This had better be true for sick-kid camp. We are sick people. At the Paul Newman camp, fer cryin' out loud, WE WILL NEED OUR HARRY POTTER. Oh, thank goddess. They have managed to time the two sessions of sick-kid camp so that they BOTH miss Harry Potter Day. The first session ends the day before, which might be a bit rough if I wanted to go through with the camping-out-in-bookstore thing for the last book, but I could probably managed it. The next session starts two days after the release. But it doesn't end until AFTER "The Simpsons MOVIE" comes out. Well. Now I have a lot to think about. I wouldn't NOT go to camp for either of these reasons (I hope), so I think I'm going to have to deal with not being able to completely camp out in a bookstore for the book's release. Since "Simpsons" opening weekend is not something I'm willing to miss (we've already got a whole group of us ready to buy tickets as soon as they go on sale, and we're making a huge party out of the weekend). Okay. If I can really pull all of this off, this is going to be the best summer EVER.

I love my husband, even when I don't understand him.

2007-03-08T08:37:00.000-08:00

Also: Thank goddess for the internet and online journals and, most importantly, thank you laura and anonymous. After talking to Devin on his lunch hour yesterday, I was even MORE confused about the whole baby thing. At some point in the afternoon, my Mom calls to see how I'm doing because I had called her crying last night and generally freaking out. "I'm... fine." I'm not sure if I want to go into the whole Devin-thought-I-was-trash-talking-him thing right now. It still makes no sense to me. Except my Mom can tell from my voice when something is bothering me. She presses me saying she KNOWS something is wrong, and what is it? Tell her about Devin and talking to the guys in the morning about my freak-out and making it sound funny, then telling me that it was my own fault for trash-talking him to my Mom. "WHAT? You didn't say a bad word about Devin! In fact, you even said that he's agreed to give up his game room if it came down to you two needing a nursery! You were NICE!" My Mom can always be counted on for being completely on my side, even though this time it was actually warranted to be on my side because Devin was going crazy. "Oh GOOD. I thought I was losing my mind. I had no clue what I said that made him so mad." "YOU WERE NICE. Do you want me to tell him that? Your brother heard the whole thing and he can back you up on this, too." "Um. Thanks. But I just wanted to make sure I'm not the crazy one right now. I'm not going to sic my family on Devin as if he's on trial and lied under oath. This isn't a trial. This is supposed to be a HAPPY TIME." We talked a bit more but I was glad to have cleared that up. Okay. I'm not the crazy one right now. That's a shocker. Finally Devin gets done with work and comes sit with me in my office. We're both glaring at each other. I ask him what he heard me say, and he says something about how I said that it was all MY decision and I'm not respecting HIS feelings and that it's HIS decision, too. Decided to not go down "It's My Body, My Choice" route because that's not really how I feel. Explained that I said that I was scared that we were having to make a decision now and that I'M SCARED. Said I didn't think he'd appreciate me telling my Mom about his feelings because, right now, I have NO CLUE what he is feeling. Yet again, this was not a good time to talk about this, he wanted to go home. Alright. Fine. (There's that fake "Fine" again. Perhaps I just need to scratch "fine" from my internal dictionary.) I'll see him when I get home. Except by the time I get home, I'm pretty much not talking. At all. Just quiet Katie helping clean up the kitchen and start some laundry. Devin is cooking dinner. Which I realize is a peace offering of some sort but I'm still mute. "Are you going to be snarky like this to me all night?" Devin inquires. "I haven't said ANYTHING. That's not snark. That's SILENCE. THIS IS SNARK." Cue exit, Katie, stage left. Dinner is taking a while. I sit down with the new copy of "Newsweek" and Devin sits down with me, staring at me reading. "What? Are you ready to talk now?" "I was freaking out." Wait a second. "What?" I ask him. Maybe he meant YOU were freaking out. "I was freaking out. I didn't know what to say. About the baby. And being able to start NOW and not some far-off date in the future." When Devin has his sheepish, aw shucks expression on, he looks about sixteen years old. "You're kidding me, right? I mean. You were the one with the schedule. Long before we got married you made it abundantly clear that you wanted kids before we were 30. YOU were the one with the cut-off date, and I was the one who had to wrap my mind around that. Now that I've come to terms with having a kid before we're 30, you are now FREAKING OUT? How is that even allowed?!" "I KNOW. But 30 seems like far-off, distant future..." "Devin. We're going to be 30 in four years. I thought this was what you wanted." "Oh, I do want to have a kid. Or two. But right now? I don't know if I'm ready for right now. So, I freaked out. I figured that I had to say SOMETHING positive about all of this, so I just..." "...Started talking about what time of year you want me to birth a child? Then ridiculed my freak-out to your family?" "Um. Yeah. Sorry about that. I just didn't know what to say. I was freaking out." This is where I am so grateful for reader comments to my last entry. laura made me realize that the anti-anxiety drugs are WORKING and I'm being fairly calm (and laura's known me since high school, so if she says I'm being calm, she knows of what she speaks). That made me feel better. And Anonymous talked about Devin being on another planet and I just needed to give him time to come back down to Earth. I kept running that advice through my head last night when he's explaining to me that his freak-out results in crazy, verbal diarrhea that can last for a day, or two. All I could think was that 1) laura said I was being calm so take deep breaths and stay calm and 2) Anon was right. Devin is totally on another planet. "Babe." (We call each other "Babe," and I've never seen the pig movie so I have no cartoon animal associations with the word.) "Why didn't you just tell me that you were freaking out? I had no problem telling YOU that I was freaking out." "I know. I just thought that maybe one of us should pretend to be ready for this... thing." Yeah, the "baby" word is very, very scary. I agree with Devin on that one. Then he started re-iterating all of the fears I'd told him I'd had last night, which was rather nice because then I just got to give him the responses he gave to me. Calm down. Our parents will help us with the money to buy the thing clothes and diapers. The thing isn't coming for at least another year, assuming we start trying right now and we're super successful, so we can worry about getting a "family car" later. Devin started to get that frustrated look on his face, I could tell he wanted to tell me to be quiet except I was only telling him all of the things he told ME last night. "I'M JUST NOT READY." He said, very firmly. "Good. Neither am I. So glad we got that cleared up. Do you want me to cancel my appointment this month for my pap?" Both of our Mothers might think it's odd that I tell Devin about everything that's going on with my body, even the baby-making parts, so he knows what a pap-smear is and how annoying they are to me. I doubt my father-in-law knows anything about pap-smears. "Oh. No. You said you needed one. It's been like... two years? Or something?" "Yup. About two years. Sexually active women, even monogamous sexually active women, should get papped at least once a year." "Didya know that cervical cancer is caused by a VIRUS?" He's laughing now. Because he knows how much I detest those idiotic HPV commercials. "Do those stupid commercial women even know what CANCER IS? OF COURSE cancer can be caused by a virus. It can be caused by all sorts of things. It's just a bunch of strange cells in your body that are either benign, or malignant. STUPID COMMERCIAL." Now he's really laughing at me. Which is fine because the entire world probably laughs at me when I go off on a virus rant. I would laugh along with him except I really, really hate that commercial. "Alright. I'll keep the pap appointment. It's only a week, or so, away." "And making doctor appointments gives you some control over your life." Devin is a smart guy, except when it comes to being able to articulate a freak-out. "Exactly. We don't have to make any decisions right now. I'm only on my first week of my new pack of birth control pills, and all of the literature says that you don't just STOP taking birth control in the middle of the month. Kind-of like steroids. And Vicodin. So, we have a few weeks before deciding if we want to start trying NOW for a kid, or I can just get another pack of birth control pills and buy us another month to make our decision. The only people wanting to rush into this are..." "Our parents." We say together. This would be the first grandchild for both of our parents and boy, his Mom is beyond ready to be a grandmother. She even called me yesterday to say that she heard the "good news" about my health and how great it is that we can start trying to have a kid right now. (Speaking of being inundated with my in-laws yesterday. Devin went to all of them and told them to apologize to me, that he was wrong to make it sound funny and that they shouldn't tease me about it, or pressure me about it. Which definitely put him back into the Good Husband category, so I even did some of his laundry and changed the sheets on our bed. Which he was allowed to sleep in last night.) So, that's where we stand. Neither of us is ready to make a decision about when I should go off birth control, so we're just going to think on it for the next few weeks. See how the pap comes out. Just give ourselves time to wrap our heads around this crazy notion of having a baby. (By the way. The funniest thing last night happened when Devin was still explaining to me that he was just so freaked out that he didn't know what to say, so he said all of the wrong things. He was finally beginning to talk about what was freaking him out and he honestly said, "What if you really love being pregnant? Like Darrell's wife Amy? Or any of the other females in our group of friends? What if you just LOVE BEING PREGNANT? What if you want to get pregnant again RIGHT AWAY BECAUSE YOU LOVE IT?!" Which is when I just started laughing. Which was a bit mean because that freaked him out even more. "WHY ARE YOU LAUGHING? It could happen!" "Devin. I love you but I can almost guarantee you that I will not love being pregnant." "But what if you love growing a human being inside your body?" "Well, yeah, hopefully that part will be cool and just a bit freaky. But I do not anticipate enjoying the process of pregnancy. For starters, I have enough trouble walking around without stumbling, or banging into walls, and I'm not currently carrying most of my weight as a huge, heavy balloon in my abdomen. Also not looking forward to my breast getting BIGGER. Since that is just a cruel, cruel joke to a woman with a 32-DD rack." "Oh. No. That part's going to be nice." Yes, dear, I know that you can't wait for my boobs to inflate to the size of basketballs. Such fun. Devin continues... "Except after the baby is born, they're not going to be MY boobs anymore, they're going to be for the baby. Because you'll be breast feeding." "For the millionth time. They aren't your boobs! They belong to ME. And I haven't decided about breast feeding yet. Docs say that most women can take mild doses of certain medication even while breast feeding because the body tends to filter that stuff out of the breast milk. So. I don't know about that one. It would be kind-of nice to actually have a purpose for my boobs." "They already have a purpose in life. To make me happy." And they really do make him happy. Just thinking about them puts a goofy grin on his face. In the evening, when I'm changing into my pajamas, if Devin is in the room, he'll make a beeline for my chest as soon as it's exposed saying "Boobiesboobiesboobiesboobies" the entire time. Which usually means that I have to stand there, topless, while my husband gets his fill of fondling my breasts. I have been told that men never grow out of this fascination with breasts, and I will pretty much have to put up with it for a very, very long time.) Now that we're freaking out about this baby thing TOGETHER, it makes the entire task seem less daunting. (Also. Before I wrap this incredibly long entry up. I do not want to become a mommyblogger. I understand how great it is to talk about your kid, and how amazing your own kids seems to you but in no way do I want to dump all of that here. If I do decide to write about my kid--once we have one, of course--odds are it will be a private, password protected journal for family, friends and long-time journal readers. Not for the internet at large. That way I could write about it if I felt like it but I wouldn't have to bore people who just don't want to hear it. Or worry that some strange pervert is looking at pictures of my kid.) It'll be interesting to see which one of us is the first to be "ready" to have a kid. (Re: Comments for this journal. I don't know what I did but now the comments made on any entry are tacked onto the bottom of that entry as soon as I write a new entry. Making me wonder what in the world I did with crazy blogger, and I'll spend the rest of the afternoon trying to fix that so I can properly respond to comments. So, for now: To the other anonymous, you were right, it was just a minor bump in the road and we worked it out fairly quickly. Thank goddess. Even though right now our next step is to just wrap our heads around this idea and try to figure out if/when we'll be ready for a kid. And to johnqcasual: Thanks to you, as well, for the male perspective. I honestly didn't think that Devin was saying something and the guys were the ones saying it was funny. I simply thought that he was "in" on whatever joke those guys were making about all of this. He's got the message now that it's FINE to vent. I have this journal to do my venting. I'll bet that once I go off birth control and my hormones start going nuts, he's going to need to vent about me in order to stay sane. He's just now going to explain to the guys that they shouldn't turn around and tease me about everything he's said, or even acknowledge to me that Devin's venting his frustration about his sometimes crazy wife. On this one, my ignorance is bliss. I completely respect his need to vent, I just don't necessarily want to hear what he says in a silly telephone-like game. If he wants to tell me what he's saying, that's fine as well, but he can feel free to gripe about me behind my back all he wants as long as the griping remains mostly behind my back. I think that's a solution that works for both of us. Now I must eat lunch. Then figure out what I did with blogger and journal comments. I would actually LIKE for comments to look like they are part of my blog, and not some pop-up blogger window. So, I've done something half-right. Now I just need to figure out what the heck I did.)

After having a minor breakdown yesterday.

2007-03-07T08:48:00.000-08:00

Devin and I went to see my gastroenterologist yesterday for my colonoscopy follow-up appointment. All of the news was good. Which is why my meltdown came as such a surprise to Devin. First of all. We had to wait two hours for me to be taken. I HATE sitting in doctors offices and waiting because it sometimes feels like my entire life has been sitting in doctors offices, waiting to be admitted into an exam room. So, I was already stressed and cranky by the time the doctor even showed up. Devin marveled at how far he'd gotten on some video game on his Nintendo DS Lite (I still have the old DS which makes me MAD because I want a DS Lite Noble Pink like you cannot believe) and tried to calm me down. Doctor finally shows up. "Great news. Clean colonoscopy. Even got into most of the small intestine. No signs of active Crohn's disease. Dr. Davis tells me this is a first for you." Dr. Davis was my pediatric GI and yup, having no signs of active Crohn's IS a first for me. Devin and I had already pretty much known this because Dr. Dhillon had told my Dad all of this after the colonoscopy itself (they never tell the patient any of this because the Versed that they give us as part of the sedation process would make us all forget anything, anyway). Dr. Dhillon explains how I can now scale back on some of my meds (which, um, didn't want to tell him that I'd started to do that already because he might not be like Dr. Davis, who never minded me messing around with my own meds schedule) but can't stop taking them entirely because remission is so new for me that we don't want to make any hasty mistakes. Then he's about to leave when Devin pipes up, "Well, you know, why I'M HERE..." "Oh, yes. Baby. Children. Start family." Dr. Dhillon has an extremely strong accent, and, according to Wikipedia, the type of turban that he wears means that he's probably Sikh. Possibly from India. I honestly have no clue on this one but I felt that I needed to share that half the time I have no clue what the man is saying and I have to make him repeat himself. I suck at trying to decipher strong accents. "You can start trying to get pregnant right now." Um... what? What about my meds and stuff? I'm on leukemia drugs, don't I need to be OFF those before trying to get pregnant? "You are on low dose of medication. Everything I've read says that such a low dose is not a problem for the fetus." I believe Dr. Dhillon when he says stuff like this because he also has degrees in pharmacology and he knows what he's talking about when it comes to medication. "I subscribe to many journals and have many resources to research this for you. Let me remind my staff to remind me to look up these drugs (6-MP, the leukemia drug, and Asacol, a 5-ASA drug) and make sure they are okay to take while pregnant. Normally it's the sulfur based drugs, and the steroids, that they don't want pregnant women to take." I nod because Dr. Dhillon doesn't seem to realize that I'm not going to take steroids again, even if I'm not pregnant, unless I'm dying. "Call me back on Friday and I will let you know what I find out. I'm pretty sure you'll be fine to continue taking these two drugs but we'll make sure. Then you can start trying for baby." This must have been when I went into shock. Doc left and instructed me to just make another follow-up appointment for a few months from now, and reminded me to call him on Friday about pregnancy and my meds. If I said anything, I don't remember it, and somehow we got to the car and started heading home. We live about forty-five miles from most of my doctors because the small town that we live in has CRAP GI specialists (one guy likes to prescribe prayer for his patients instead of meds, and I'm not kidding, the other guy traumatized me when I was a kid and I'm never seeing him again in my entire life). We hadn't even gotten to the freeway (which is only about five minutes away from Dr. Dhillon's office) before Devin starts jumping into talking about having a baby. "What time of year do you want to have the baby? I don't want a summer baby, and we already have a lot of birthdays in the winter." He said a whole lot more than this but I was still in shock. The shock that had rendered me speechless. Devin's still going on about what time of year he wants to have a baby, so subtract nine months and that's when we'll start trying. I'm just dumbfounded. Is he being serious? Oh yeah. VERY serious. Now he's mad at me because I'm not willing to commit to a time of year that I want to birth the baby. All I can get out is that "I can't talk about this right now." Which only made him madder. How can I not want to talk about this? This was the whole reason we got me healthy, I had PROMISED him that this was what I wanted, so why wouldn't I talk about this with him!? "I just... can't decide when to birth the baby right now. This seems very important to you. That's fine. I can't think about that right now. You go right ahead, though, and pick out the time of year you want to have a child." I thought that was very adult of me, reasonable and respecting of his desire to plot the conception of our child. He just got madder. "Why won't you talk about this with me!!?" "I CAN'T TALK ABOUT THIS RIGHT NOW." Then I started crying. "Are you CRYING?" God. He made it sound like I was losing my mind and was being a horrible wife. "I can't... I just can't... this is too much pressure. I don't want to sit here deciding with you when to give birth because that's out of my control. I have no idea WHEN I'm going off my birth control, and once I do, there's no guarantee that I'll get pregnant right away. It could take MONTHS. It could take YEARS. PLEASE STOP PRESSURING ME ABOUT THIS." "FINE. If you don't want to talk about this then that's just FINE." He sounded like me when I scream "FINE" at him at the end of an argument. Which meant that he was obviously not FINE with all of this but I was beyond talking at that point. We drove home in complete silence. Once we got home I just lost it. I sat down on our bed and started bawling. Those big, loud, body-shaking sobs that make you sound like you're choking on your own emotions. At first Devin didn't seem to care--there goes Katie, crying again. Except I didn't stop crying. I just cried, and cried, and cried. Finally he comes over, puts his arm around me and says, "What's wrong?" in a very gentle voice. Which was good because if he had used his mean, scary voice like in the car, I might have slapped him. "This is all good news, Katie. You're so healthy. This is GREAT NEWS. What's WRONG?" "I haven't even decided when to go off birth control and you're already planning the birth. Narrowed down to a specific time of year that you want to have a child. WHAT IF IT DOESN'T GO ACCORDING TO YOUR SCHEDULE? AND WHY DO YOU GET TO MAKE THE SCHEDULE?" I was screaming at him through my sobs. "I'm already worried enough about carrying a healthy baby to term. I just want to be able to make us a healthy baby. Now you want me to focus on WHEN to make that healthy baby. I just CAN'T DO THAT RIGHT NOW." I think he finally began to hear me. Because then he started apologizing for putting all that pressure on me before we'd even discussed me going off the birth control. Saying that we don't have to make any decision right now, that he didn't realize how freaked out I was going to get about all of this and that he's just SO EXCITED, and I am SO FREAKED OUT. "I just... never thought this would happen. My docs told me my entire life that it would be so hard for me to get pregnant, that I might not even be able to try to get pregnant, that my disease is so severe that it would leech away nutrition from my fetus and make it horribly deformed." "Well, your docs also thought you would be dead by eighteen if you didn't let them remove your colon when you were nine. They were wrong about that, and now they were wrong about this." Which was probably another reason I was freaking out. At twelve years old, when I was really, really sick and told that I might not ever be able to carry a healthy child to term, I decided that was fine and I would just adopt. No big deal. That was fourteen years ago. It's been a very recent idea that hey, maybe I COULD carry a healthy baby to term. Then learning that all systems are good to go on this, and all of my docs have signed off on me being healthy enough to start trying to get pregnant. And the first thing my husband wants to do is make a freakin' baby schedule. While I'm still wrapping my brain around the notion that all of my doctors have told me I'm healthy enough to start trying to get pregnant. Which lead to me thinking, am I ready to start trying to have a child? Will I ever be ready? (My father-in-law just asked me why I freaked yesterday after my doctor's appointment. I am going to kill my husband.) Well. I HAD thought that I had gotten over being mad at my husband. But, apparently, he regaled the entire pool company with tales about crazy Katie and her breakdown yesterday. My brothers-in-law just teased me about my freak out. All of them just started laughing at me. So, I'm now ready to start crying all over again. It's just... I don't know. I spent the morning trying to get an appointment with an OB/GYN to get papped and everything, trying to be the good non-freaking out wife and going ahead with this plan to have a kid. And Devin spent his morning making fun of me to the point where everyone I work with is now laughing at me. Is this funny? Have I just lost all perspective on reality? How in the world did Devin think my freak-out yesterday was FUNNY? And why was he so nice to me about it last night just to turn around and make fun of me for it today? Now I'm seriously distraught. It's one thing when it was just me and Devin, working through these problems together, but now I've got all of my in-laws (and other company employees) laughing at me and telling me that I need to relax. How in the WORLD is that relaxing? I guess this means that I'm freaking-out again. I wonder how funny Devin's going to find it this time.

Why I would never be a K-12 teacher. (Also: Ode to Teachers)

2007-02-22T19:52:00.000-08:00

Because I am not a good enough person. Now, just in case anyone wants to come running to my defense (leave me my fantasies, people!), I'm not saying I'm a bad person. I am simply not a good enough person to teach below a 12th grade level (I might someday consider teaching at a JC level). Both of my parents became teachers in the early 1970's. My Mom became a first grade teacher, and my Dad taught high school history (American and World), geography and, on occasion, civics and econ. By the time my brother and I came along, they had both been teaching for a decade, Mom was still teaching first grade, Dad was still teaching high school. They retired soon after my brother and I graduated from high school (my ten-year high school reunion is only two years away which is just freaky), Mom taught first grade until she retired, and Dad continued teaching high school history, and geography (he gave up econ and civics at some point). My parents were incredible teachers. And they loved teaching. Both of them were passionate about what they taught, and they constantly tried to find new ways to engage their student's interest. They took their jobs very seriously. If a student wanted extra help, they would always stay late to work with that student, no matter how much my brother and I complained about having to hang out in their classrooms. We were always hanging out in classrooms. While I never had a problem referring to teachers as Mr/Mrs/Ms, even though some were family friends and of course I knew them by their first names, as well. Although I did develop a cavalier attitude about areas of the school that were "off-limits" to students. I hung out in teacher's rooms all the time (sometimes interesting stuff would go down and, in elementary and junior high, they'd usually let me stick around even if the teachers were being a bit unkind about some of their colleagues but that changed once I hit high school--they booted me out more often, always asking me why I didn't have any friends, which didn't bother me because I had BOOKS, and they were my friends). They would often talk about union stuff, which I loved because one of my earliest memories is our family (I was about five) picketing the school district's office on behalf of the teacher's union. I thought that was about the coolest thing you could ever do with teachers when they weren't in their classrooms. Wave around signs and yell at passing cars. All of my life, my parents (with their union) have had to fight for the meager salaries they were paid, and for proper benefits packages. Until recently, one of the few good things you could say about teacher compensation was that they had good benefits packages--now even that's not true, anymore. Before they might not have had any type of deductible (which was true for my parents, so I can safely say that this was also true of most of California) and more services were covered in full, instead of in part (again, a true statement about my parent's situation). That is just wrong. Without teachers there would be no doctors, or lawyers, or stock brokers, or you get my drift. Everybody has benefited from the (often self-less, and far too under-appreciated in my eyes) work of teachers. Not a single one of us can say that we did not learn something from a teacher. You would think that this rant is leading to "And I wouldn't be a teacher because they don't get paid enough, respected enough, lauded enough, and generally appreciated for the work they do." Nope. I only care about the money because teachers are worth more than they are currently being paid. I do not have the patience, stamina, or even the drive to be a teacher. My Mom ended up teaching year-round school for most of my life (that's when they thought it would be a great idea to combat over-crowding in the schools by having the school operate year-round, with teachers moving in and out of a classroom every three months), so I would often spend my summer helping out in her classroom. (I am never again going to tear down, or set up a classroom. I can probably still cover a classroom in colored butcher paper in my sleep. And my parents used every square inch of their classroom walls for bulletin boards. I also am never again digging through a dark, dirty and smelly cavernous storage room looking for an extra anything.) I was not good at helping in the first grade classroom. You would think it would be fairly easy if I was at least in the third grade, that by that age I should be able to deal with kids a few years younger than me. I never learned how to deal with a large group of first graders. Do you know that you can't tell a first grader to just sit down and read quietly because they can't read yet? Do you know that if you give a class of first graders an assignment, and then turn your back on them for a few minutes because all you were asking them to do was sit and color, that half of them will be out of their chairs and wandering around the classroom when you turn around? Do you know that sometimes first graders throw up on their teachers (it's happened to my Mom more than once)? Do you know that first graders still throw massive tantrums and see no problem with throwing themselves on the floor, kicking and screaming like a banshee? Do you know how hard it is to teach first grade? I do. And my Mom was brilliant at it. She didn't teach kids just the basics, she taught them about Van Gogh, and Gaugin. She played classical music for them and talked with them about it. In addition to assigned reading groups, her students always had access to Mom's extensive classroom library of books (which ranged from simple picture books to fourth/fifth grade level chapter books). That every single day of her class was organized in fifteen minute increments because that was the only way she could get in everything that she wanted to teach those little kids. My Mom is a saint for what she has done to help shape the lives of so many people. I still get stopped by people who recognize me as her daughter (I wasn't kidding when I said I was in her classroom all of the time, and as I got older, most of my babysitting clients were parents of her students) and how they want me to let Mom know what they're doing now in life (they are almost always college students/grads) and that they still remember and love her for teaching them in first grade. My Dad was also a saint, in his own way. His focus was always about trying to get the students to love what they were learning, which is damned hard when it's high school history. He would show clips of current movies that were even remotely historical in nature to supplement the text-book readings. He loved reading aloud passages from some of his favorite history, biography, and geography books. He was also addicted to the over-head projector. If a student asked a question, Dad would write it down on the projector and then he'd map out his response so that all of the other students could enjoy the answer. Every worksheet he passed out, every group of notes he ever gave, and every assignment was written down on that over-head projector. He'd write on clear transparencies, that he would keep for months in case a student needed some clarification of a point for an upcoming test, or paper. There were often days that I sat in his classroom and got all of my homework done while he worked something out with a confused student. Every day when he came home from work, his hands were stained blue-green because he always rested them on the over-head projector as he wrote, but he didn't care that the ink dyed his hands because it was from writing on the projector, which meant he was doing his job and teaching his students, so it became his badge of honor. Even though Dad loved what he was doing, there were still some high school kids that were just plain jerks and tried to make his life a living hell. I can't even begin to remember how many times our house got tp'ed by an angry student, or the few times the brats actually rang our doorbell and through eggs into our house. Dad had expletives scrawled onto his car by irate students. One student even tried drugging him with some over the counter stimulants, which almost lead to a fourth heart-attack (Dad always carried the same thermos of water to work with him, and the student in question spiked his thermos with the drugs, and we know this for a fact because the rest of the students in the class were very up-front about seeing this girl essentially poison my Dad, and they felt guilty for allowing her to do it in the first place because Dad got really sick almost immediately after drinking the water). It was a very sad day in our family when Dad decided to retire early because of how he was being treated by his students. I'm almost crying now just to think about it because one of his students poisoned him and almost gave him his fourth heart-attack. That girl didn't even get suspended. She was an elite athlete, in choir, and generally beloved by the rest of the school. The administration passed it off as a foolish, but childish, prank. I found her once on myspace and had to refrain myself from writing to her and telling her what her little stunt did to our family. Which is why I cannot stand it when people make sweeping, negative remarks about teachers. Especially if they've never been a teacher. That's why I got so mad yesterday about the things Shannon Hale wrote in her blog. If you read through yesterday's entry, you'll see that I was accused of committing libel and defamation of character. The administrator for Shannon Hale's blog felt that I was misrepresenting her client and that it was strong enough to be defamatory, and libelous in nature. So, just to clear that up. I went back today and found eleven passages in which Shannon Hale either obliquely criticized teachers (by making constant negative references to what is being "taught" in our school, which is simply another way of saying "teacher," since they are the ones doing the teaching) or spoke negatively, and always unfairly, about some of the people who were her teachers at some point in time. While I realize that people can criticize a specific teacher, I also feel that the criticism must be fair, and just, and not simply conjecture on the part of the complainer. I also don't think it's right for a popular YA author to encourage her blog readers to commiserate with her over these "bad" teachers. Check out the new part of my side-bar that says "Clipmarks," to see the specific references that I found in the YA author's blog, and my comments that mostly pointed out the fallaciousness of every single one of her arguments. I do not take accusations of libel, and defamation of character lightly. Hence the need that I have to offer evidentiary proof to back up the critical statements that I made about her blog. Not all teachers are good. Even less are great. That does not give someone the right to constantly make broad, negative generalizations about all teachers. Because when someone does that, they are talking about my parents. My parents were great teachers. I could never be as great as they were in their classrooms. In the same email in which the YA author's site administrator accused me of libel, and defamation of character, she also signed off with the following line: "Please remember that Shannon, I, and everyone who comments at squeetus are still human beings. It'd be nice if you could think the best of us and not be too hasty to judge." Personally, I feel that advice is better directed towards Shannon. Teachers are also human beings, and she should think the best of them before leaping to hasty, negative conclusions about all teachers. Because, as I said, she was talking about my parents. I'm sorry if my post yesterday came off as rude to anyone but if someone criticizes all teachers, then I will rush to the defense of my parents, and their almost seventy combined years of teaching. It's so easy for some people to focus on only the negative aspects of our school system instead of trying to create positive solutions to the perceived problems. It's easier to complain in a blog, to many readers, instead of trying to utilize that readership for good, positive things, such as letter writing campaigns to state and national legislature to encourage them to give more funding to our schools. Is our educational system perfect? Heck, no, it's actually far from it. Does it help any of us if we do nothing but sit around and complain? No, of course it doesn't. I'm always sending emails to members of state and national congress about education funding. I don't talk about it here because I don't really see the need, it's something I feel strongly about and I'm doing my best to focus on creating a positive change, instead of dwelling on the negative. Because we all know that teachers are under-appreciated, not paid nearly enough for the work that they do, and are no longer receiving stellar benefits packages (health insurance, pension, etc.) I'm doing what I can to make a positive difference, and I can only hope that someday teachers will be truly compensated for the work that they do.

Should my comment have been deleted from a website?

2007-02-21T13:49:00.000-08:00

Earlier today I found a journal of a young adult author Shannon Hale. She had a blog linked from the main site (and you all know me and my voracious blog reading) and I began reading her archived entries. I read quite a few entries in which she speaks unkindly about teachers because they aren't doing enough to motivate students to read, and that it's their fault for pushing so many "classics" on kids and not "fun" books. Apparently, she received some negative feedback and wrote the following post: Have you hugged your teacher today? In response to those earlier posts (made by her, in her blog) that showed negativity towards teachers, and their lack of willingness to teach anything but the "classics." Today I posted the following comment for the above mentioned post: [Begin Post] I've had far too many great teachers to count but I do think it's great that you all are celebrating good teachers. Personally, I don't think it's fair to toss blame around in regards to what you (and some commenters) think students SHOULD be reading in schools. As many people pointed out, some schools have a set curriculum (both my parents taught for over 30 years apiece) and teachers can be penalized for not teaching required curriculum. On the OTHER hand, in the state I live in (California), The California Department of Education has posted an extensive catalog of recommended literature for grades K-12. CA Recommended Literature (K-12) You might be surprised to realize how many books are recommended by the state for use in classrooms. The "classics" actually take up a small portion of that list, and it is updated every few years to account for new YA books that should be added to the recommended reading list. Please stop railing on the teachers (I know you're going to say, "But look! We're talking about great teachers we've had!" but this thread was in response to a great amount of vitriol from the blog author towards teachers, trying to backpeddle after the fact is nice, but it doesn't take away from the fact that you have unfairly blamed teachers for problems that are often out of their control--standard curriculum set by a specific school district--and you were often unkind in your remarks. Teachers are incredibly underpaid and are trying to do the best they can with the resources made available to them.) In almost every class I've ever taken (from 3rd through 12th grades) we always had to read specific books as a class, and then had to do at least two more supplemental book reports on a book of OUR choosing. Meaning we could head straight to the library and just grab whatever caught our eye. There were also teachers I had (mostly in junior high and high school) that would excuse students out of the standard reading if they had a good reason for it, and would assign an alternate book for that student. There were also teachers (Hi Mr. R.!) who were tenured and completely disregarded some of the required reading list for their class (thank you, Mr. R., for not making us read "My Antonia"). I have been a voracious reader my entire life--I began reading the classics at an early age. (My Dad had me reading Homer and Shakespeare before junior high, and I would have to write a two-page report on the book and that report became a type of voucher for me--if Dad approved the report, which he always did, then he and Mom would take me to the bookstore and I could pick out three books of my own choosing, no censorship from them at all.) (And I loved reading Homer, even at that young age. I might not have understood all of it but I got the basic idea and truly enjoyed it.) And that's a great example of how PARENTS can encourage their children to read and learn to love it (I don't think I've seen anyone mention the role a parent has in what a child reads, when their role in their child's life is much more important than any English teacher's influence). Again, please look at the recommended literature reading list for grades K-12 (specific to California, but I'm sure every State Education website has a similar list). It has recommended books that were printed just two years ago. It has recommended books for all genres (you complained about the lack of genre reading in schools, which is also not true) including (but certainly not limited to): fantasy, humor, horror, mystery, and science fiction. All of those are genres that kids might view as "fun," and shows that there is far more variety in classroom reading lists than you give teachers credit for. Personally, I think parents should be more involved in what their children are reading. It's easy to blame the teachers (and you are blaming them, no matter how you try to cushion it by saying you are "appealing" to them) when, again, they are doing the best they can with the materials provided. That's my last point. You complain about teachers not assigning fun books but that's almost always a FUNDING issue. The current administration has constantly tried to cut funding to our schools. Without those funds, teachers cannot go out and buy an entire classroom set of a newer book because they simply don't have the money. If you were to actually talk to some teachers, instead of appeal to them, you would be told that they would LOVE to be able to teach a wide variety of books but that they lack the funding to make it happen. So. Instead of blaming, complaining, or appealing to the teachers, you should be writing (and complaining, and appealing) to members of your state legislature about your concerns that teachers aren't getting the funding they need to keep their reading curriculum current. To allow teachers access to the money they need to buy classroom sets of newer books, books that, as you have said, might grab the student's attention and convert that student into a life-long reader. [End Post] I went back to the site later to see how people responded to my post and found a notice from the site administrator explaining that two comments had been deleted and that the commenters had been notified by email (not me, but check my last entry for the site admin's response--even though I posted the same email address I always used--my katie@exaggeration.org account--the site admin said that it wouldn't accept his/her email) The site administrator also said that anyone who wanted to read the deleted posts and be told the reason they were deleted (although not the authors, apparently), that an entire copy of both posts would be emailed to these curious readers. To which I replied (as another post to the aforementioned blog entry): [Begin Post] I posted my email address when I posted the comment that was later deleted. I did not receive an explanation for this deletion. I also want to make it clear that I do not give my permission for you to forward my deleted post to anybody who asks for it. Since it was deleted entirely from your site, the rights to it reverted back to me, the author of the post. I will be posting my deleted comment in it's entirety on my own website (http://journal.exaggeration.org) and anyone who wants to read it may read it there. Please do not violate my rights by sending a "copy" of the post to your curious readers. I have no way of knowing that you are actually sending them the entire post, or an revised/edited version. Which is why I'm directing those who want to read it to my journal site. The post will be there in full, no revisions, no editing. [End Post] Of course, that post was also deleted. I figure that I am somehow violating the site's stringent commenting rules (which were laid out in an October 2006 entry: On Commenting). Perhaps I was a bit condescending (I honestly don't think so but I'm going to let you all decide) but it wasn't an offensively condescending manner. My post also could have been considered "smarmy, rude, or critical of others," by the site administrator. I personally don't feel that it was smarmy, I was not rude--in fact, I made a conscious effort to try and not be rude and to simply stick to what the blog author has posted in her blog, and my opinions about her postings, without resorting to juvenile name-calling--but my post could have been construed as being critical of others. As for the possibility that I was "critical of others." I was critical of people, specifically the blog author and the content of some her posts. I do not understand how criticism is a deletable offense. (This blog author is a published YA author, in case you were wondering, so she must understand the merit of good criticism.) The second definition of "critical" in the American Heritage Dictionary states that is is "characterized by careful, exact evaluation and judgment." Although I fully admit to being critical in my post, I also did my best to make it a careful, exact evaluation and judgment. Although, again, I'll let you all decide in my comments trail (if you want to weigh in on this matter, that is) and, no worries, there is no censorship here, so post whatever you like and be assured that it will not be deleted. Also semi-important to note: The post made by the site administrator saying that two posts had been deleted and anyone who wanted to know why could simply email a request to the site admin and the admin would send full copies of both posts along with the site admin's explanation for deleting them. The site admin deleted that post after I posted about how I was just going to post my comment on my own site, and anyone who cared to read it, could find it there. (Again, I find it odd that the authors of those deleted posts were not notified of their deletion but the readers of the blog were told about deleted posts and only had to send an email request to receive copies of them. I always post my contact information when commenting anywhere on the internet. Not once have I had a problem with someone not being able to contact me through the email address I include with every post I make (the katie@exaggeration.org account) and I have gotten quite a few emails from people who have read my comments on various sites. So I do not see how it would not work this time around.) So, what do you all think? Was my original post smarmy, condescending to the point of rudeness, or offensively critical? Please feel free to let me know in the comments. None of which will be deleted--I firmly believe in our right to express our opinions (regardless of whether you agree with mine, or not) and I am tired of people saying that they are against censorship, only to turn around and censor the critical opinions of others. The author of this blog has published four young adult books and I realize that she can police her blog in any way that she chooses, I simply find it sad that an author would embrace censorship, and delete critical opinions of her blog. Although if you read her entry about how she feels about negative criticism, it makes some sense. (Shake That Groove Thing blog entry) P.S.: I finally received an email from the site admin explaining why my post was deleted. The first reason that it was deleted was because it was too long. Which is true, it was rather long for a comment.
The second reason was: "The content was inflammatory and the result was that other commenters were rushing forward to defend Shannon. She's asked me to help keep this a positive place, and the shouting match brewing was very negative.The content was inflammatory and the result was that other commenters were rushing forward to defend Shannon. She's asked me to help keep this a positive place, and the shouting match brewing was very negative." (Since I don't know how to keep my damn mouth shut when prudence dictates that I should hold my tongue, I will simply say that if the site is meant only to be a positive place then she shouldn't have done so much complaining about teachers and curriculum. She should, instead, have focused on positive solutions for the problem instead of empty complaints. But that is only my opinion.)
Thirdly: "The content crossed the line from 'opinion' to 'libel.' The accusations you made against Shannon are unfounded (feel free to browse Shannon's past blog entries for proof), and besides that, they came across as rude. I'm sorry if you didn't intend that, but it read that way to me. As long as I have any say on this blog, I want to maintain it as a place of truth, and if people want to express differing opinions, they should be based on fact and be offered in a friendly manner. Having a differing opinion is one thing (I don't delete those, as you'll see if you browse the blog comments, and out of thousands, I've only ever deleted five), but your accusations were defamatory."
I was also sent the other deleted post, that I will not reprint here out of respect to it's author. I will say that the negativity in the other deleted post was directed towards me, not the blog author. Basically, it came down to this paragraph of mine:
"Please stop railing on the teachers (I know you're going to say, "But look! We're talking about great teachers we've had!" but this thread was in response to a great amount of vitriol from the blog author towards teachers, trying to backpeddle after the fact is nice, but it doesn't take away from the fact that you have unfairly blamed teachers for problems that are often out of their control--standard curriculum set by a specific school district--and you were often unkind in your remarks. Teachers are incredibly underpaid and are trying to do the best they can with the resources made available to them.)" People objected to my use of the term "railing on the teachers" ("railing" in that context was synonymous with "scold," and I do think she was scolding teachers); the line "great amount of vitriol from the blog author towards teachers" ("vitriol" was considered a defamatory statement, and I probably should have said "great amount of vitriol from the blog author towards english curriculums being taught by english teachers in our schools," which would have been more of a factual statement.; and lastly, people objected to my (misspelled! ha on me!) comment that her current post was simply an attempt to "backpeddle [sic] after the fact." What I read as backpedaling, others saw as a clarification from the blog author about her true feelings towards english teachers. The reason I think it's necessary to include this long post-script to an already massive entry is that I want everyone reading this to know that there are differing opinions than mine. Also that I have been accused of libel, defamation of character, and rudeness. The rudeness doesn't bother me, although I am sorry that I came across that way but I am bothered by the other accusations. I can't remember ever having been accused of libel, or defamation of character, for something I wrote on the internet. Which is why I'm surprised that it was the above post that got people so riled up and hurtling these accusations at me. Nevertheless, the accusations have been made and if there is anyone left reading this far, thank you for making to the end, and please feel free to form your own opinions about anything posted here.

Surprisingly thrilled to be married.

2007-02-14T15:07:00.000-08:00

Anyone who's known me for any length of time knows that I have always said that I would NEVER get married. I even told my husband this after we had been dating for a while, that I never, EVER wanted to get married. Who needs a religious official and a piece of paper to tell them that their relationship is forever? Not me! But did you know that you get a major tax break if you're married? I know, that's not a great reason to get married but it really is a significant amount of money that you get from the tax-man just for making your relationship legal. There's also married sex. I know, married sex isn't anywhere near as fun as un-married sex but there are some advantages. (I'm trying to think of the advantages. This might take me the next hour, or so, but I'll come up with something, dammit!) Got it. Usually, if you're married, it's just you and your husband in the house. So, you can have sex anywhere you want. (Although, come to think of it... HA!... we used to have sex wherever the hell we wanted to long before we got married.) Okay. So maybe there isn't the advantage of married sex. We fight less now that we're married. Which is not to say that we are always in agreement (something that will never happen), or never have arguments (I. Am. Always. Right. Goddammit.) but we no longer have those screaming matches that end with one person stomping out on the other person. To put it simply: The stakes are higher now. While I never wanted to get married, now that I am, I take it quite seriously. I am going to grow old with this man, and that's all there is to it. After we first got married, we both had lists of what would be considered "deal-breakers" of the marriage. At first we pretty much had only one deal-breaker: No cheating. Over the early months of our marriage, we slowly began adding more and more deal-breakers to the list. To the point where it had just gotten stupid. And we had started invoking the "D" word, saying that something would be grounds for divorce. Since you all are probably MUCH smarter than I am when it comes to inter-personal relationships, you probably know that we were heading down a very dark, depressing road. Which was why I finally put my foot down and said that we are not EVER again going to invoke the "D" word. Because why the hell did we get married then in the first place? Wasn't that supposed to be the whole point of getting married? That we were now stuck with each other for the rest of our lives? Once we got out of that immature mentality, the screaming fights just... stopped. Honestly. Now that the fights were no longer devolving into "Well, if I'm so horrible, why don't you just DIVORCE ME, THEN?" we began to act like adults, and our arguments got resolved. Your grandparents weren't lying when they said that any good marriage involves a LOT of compromise. That's why our, "Well, why don't you just DIVORCE ME, THEN?" fights got us nowhere. It was either my way, his way, or we would have to part ways. Yes, we realize now that we were stupid. (Although, for the record, cheating is still a deal-breaker for both of us. But that's our ONLY deal-breaker.) Fighting that way made our marriage seem temporary. It kept us both from reveling in the fact that hey! we never have to go on another first date again, EVER! Now that we argue like adults, we've started to settle into this marriage. Which is when the marriage started to pay off. Even though we've been living together for four years, we never got completely comfortable with just being ourselves around each other. We were both still trying to show the other person only the good things, and not the strange quirky things. (And you are nuts if you think I'm going to detail those strange, quirky things. It's nothing outrageous like a third boob, or something, it's just... okay, ONE THING. I still sleep with this security blanket thing called "Conkie." When we first started living together, I tried to sleep without Conkie. Except I seriously couldn't fall asleep without it. So, I would hide it in my pillow-case because I didn't want Devin to know that I'm a 25 year-old woman with a freakin' security blanket. Once we were married, though, I finally told him about Conkie. And yes, he teased me about it but in a very nice way, the nice way you all are going to tease me about it, I hope.) (See? None of these quirks were earth-shattering. And I don't know why it's called "Conkie." My Dad named it that when I was a baby. And no, it's not the original Conkie. That Conkie got lost in Sears when I was five and my Mom would gladly tell you the story about Katie throwing the world's biggest hissy-fit in the parking lot of Sears upon learning that Conkie had been lost. After that, my parents stocked up on Conkies. The current Conkie is really just a patch of flannel. I run it through my fingers while I fall asleep.) (I seriously cannot believe that I just told the internet about my Conkie. Right after posting about how the internet can hate on me all it wants. I must have taken stupid pills this morning.) Back to the matter at hand, though. While Devin might have given me some good natured ribbing about my many quirks (and I certainly returned the favor about his), it actually brought us closer together. After the horrible fights, with both of us blasting each other with conditions that must be met in order for this marriage to work, it felt SO GOOD to learn that there are actually no conditions to our love. In fact, once we started opening up about our inherent quirkiness, we both realized that hey, those are just a few more reasons why we love each other. You would think that we would love each other despite those quirks (that we would merely accept, or tolerate them) but it turned out that we even love each other's quirks! Who knew? And that is why I'm surprisingly thrilled to be married. I knew going into it that Devin was a great guy. I simply didn't realize that it could be so wonderful. To be able to share your life with someone who loves every. little. thing. about. you. Someone who washed my hair for me after my eye surgery because I couldn't get my eye wet, so it took some fancy maneuvering on Devin's part. Someone who doesn't mind sharing the bed with Conkie. Someone who just laughs and shakes his head when I talk about "basketball fields" and "baseball courts." Someone to clean up after I've been sick, and to be there when I come out of surgery. I didn't know it would be this huge. That I would end up feeling SO MUCH for another person. That just thinking of a life without him could make me feel so sad. And I never, EVER thought that I would even consider having children. And now we're talking with doctors about doing just that. At first, it was something I agreed to because it was so important to Devin and now... well, I realize that I think I do want that little piece of the both of us. That little transparent ghost baby. Because I love him a little more, each day. It's as if my love for Devin is this huge reservoir inside of me that has no boundaries. Just when I start thinking, "Okay, that's it, I'm full up on love for Devin, I can't fit any more," he serenades me with "Endless Love" at a karaoke party and I realize that he is going to give me hundreds more reasons to love him as we grow old together. I can't wait.

The Anti-Disclaimer Disclaimer.

2007-02-13T15:08:00.001-08:00

So, I've been doing this crazy online journalling thing for almost a decade (it wasn't called blogging then). Back then, I had the standard angry blogger disclaimer, "Don't email me with your petty grievances."

Not only does that now seem to be a standard disclaimer among bloggers, they also implore their readers to not offer their opinions on the blog, their criticism, or basically anything that isn't "OMG! i luv yr blog!"

Screw dat. It might have taken me ten years to realize this but I'm the idiot with the online blog. Sure, I used to retaliate against the haters and password-protect my journal. Or I would wonder why me, internet, why hate ME? Maybe even respond to their emails with pleas that I'm a real person, with real feelings that really hurt!

Which made me a real idiot.

How in the world did it become standard for people to write whatever the hell they wanted to in their blogs, but then implore their readers to NOT respond to their diatribes?

I know the hate mail sucks. I've gotten my fair share of hate mail. I'm not belittling the fact that those barbs do sting. Not many people enjoy getting hate mail (except I actually did enjoy it as I got older because it meant that people were reading my journal and responding to it).

It's like when certain people grant interviews and then get upset because everything they said came off as a bit creepy.

If the hate mail makes you cry, then watch what you say. Or, better yet, just password-protect your blog and give out the password to all of the people who have praised your blog.

Otherwise. Do not ask me to not respond to something you post in your blog if my comments could be construed as negative. If you want to surround yourself with sycophantic yes-people, that's fine (although it hasn't done our President any good) but be prepared for some dissension in the ranks.

Because that is why the goddess, in her infinite wisdom, created the "Delete" key in email programs. Or if you have a particularly verbose hater, who can't help but write to you about every little thing you mention in your blog, just make a message filter and have them go straight to the trash.

As for me, and my blog. You can hate on me all you want. I can't promise that I'll take you seriously but I am ready for it, baby. Hit me one more time.

My ONLY disclaimer is that if you want to write about me (or something I wrote) in your own blog, give me some linkage love or I will ask you to remove the purloined content.

Although. You've got to remember that any email you send becomes the property of the recipient. That means it is well within my legal right to post your email here (although I would redact real names and email addresses because I'm not cruel).

(I don't know about you but that makes me think about all of the crappy, self-important emails I've written during my life. Thank goddess no one cares enough about me to save those things and publish them somewhere.)

So, flame away all you haters. Sycophants welcome, as well.

Princess of Procrastination.

2006-11-09T10:21:00.000-08:00

Yes, kiddies, it's that time of year again. It's Nanowrimo time, which means I'm procrastinating like mad. Our house is small, cute and lovely. We've finally gotten DSL installed and our wireless router is up and running, which made Devin giggle with geekboy joy. My library is already too small for all of my books. Which is frightening. Especially since my parents constantly remind me that I still have boxes, and boxes, and boxes of books at their house. My addiction is a sick, sick thing. Speaking of addiction. Breaking free of opiates didn't go very well. Of course. Since I'm a freakin' addict and should probably be in rehab. But who has time for rehab? At least I'm not as bad as those women who go on the Dr. Phil show talking about how they take forty Vicodins a day. I only take four. Which, for me, is actually a huge improvement but... you know... still doesn't make me less of an addict, I suppose. My docs tried to switch me to a bunch of non-narcotic painkillers (Ultram and Ultracet, to name two) but they don't work on me worth a damn. I could take ten Ultrams and my knees would still be so inflated with pain that movement would be impossible. At least with opiates my knees might still be swollen with pain but I can't feel it. Back to house news, though. Devin is also having trouble fitting all of his electronic stuff into his gaming room, and it will only get more difficult on November 19th. What happens then, you non-gamer geeks ask? Well, DUH. The Nintendo Wii comes out! I keep offering to freeze Devin until then like Cartman but, for some reason, he doesn't want to emulate Cartman. Wonder why. Devin still hasn't decided where to set up the Wii. If he sets it up in his room, he won't have the space to use the full range of motion of the Wiimote. Setting the Wii up in the living room would allow us to utilize the entire range of motion of the Wiimote. But the living room is where I watch TV. Horrible things like Gilmore Girls, Oprah (yes, I watch the great O and I'm not ashamed), House and a zillion other shows that Devin has zero interest in. My bet is that it ends up in the living room. But only if I get to actually play with it, too. The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess is coming out at launch and boasts over seventy hours of gameplay. I'm not going to see Devin until Christmas. Which is why, if he's going to take over my space with Zelda, I want time to play some WarioWare (if it's coming out at launch) or Wii Tennis (which is bundled with the system, along with four other sports titles). I know. Devin's going to win the battle and the war. It's me vs. Zelda and he's been saving Zelda since he was a little kid. Zelda trumps all in Devin's world. At least the break from TV will give me time to work on organizing my library. My entire antique book collection is still at my parents, and I want to get that moved over and ready for display. I haven't dared to move them out of my parents house until Devin and I were somewhere relatively safe since it's quite an extensive collection. I also need to decide how I'm going to organize my books. Right now it goes (in a clockwise direction around the room): two bookcases of biography with some non-fiction thrown in to fill the 2nd bookcase up, two bookcases of non-fiction, a bookcase with poetry, young adult and a bunch of hidden romance books, two bookcases of fiction with my very special books on display (signed Michael Chabons, Dave Eggers, etc) and the last bookcase is writing, reference and Wicca. The writing and reference are closest to my desk, which is where I want them, but it looks like I'm going to have to hide the Wicca books (of which I have at least forty). Devin's parents and family still don't know about my paganism and we don't really want them to know about it anytime soon. Hence the hiding of the books. I'm thinking a cool little cabinet where I could also put my candles, wand and other Wiccan accoutrements. (This would have angered the hell out of me a few years ago but apparently I've mellowed. Good for me. It was probably about time.) And, of course, last but not least: Yay Democrats! I have never been more proud to be a Democrat than I am today.

Does anyone else ever wish for a boring life?

2006-08-03T15:29:00.000-07:00

It looks like we're on track to close escrow on our house on August 16th. I have managed to pack up twe meager bookcases, and a single closet. Of course, with me, there are extenuating circumstances. Last time we checked in on my life as that sick girl, I'd had a horrible colonoscopy. Well, they'd wanted to schedule my second colonoscopy on August 15th. Which I immediately shot down because I don't need to associate more wonderful things about this house experience with my illness. I'm going back sometime in September. My prep this time is insane but in a good way. The office of nurses kept asking me if I knew what I was getting myself into, and when I told them I certainly did, they said I was crazy. Which is fine since I'd rather not have to endure a third colonoscopy attempt this year (too many flashbacks of when I was nine). I also have strep throat! Yup, I live in the Central Valley of California, so we just got out of our two week long triple-digit heat wave and I have strep throat. Go figure. I just left my internal medicine doc, who also told me I was crazy. Other people might be thinking about calling a shrink but I'm just glad to have the afternoon off. It helped that my doc also told me that, while I did a crazy, crazy thing, my intentions were quite good. You see, I went cold turkey off Vicodin two weeks ago. Yes, I am (apparently) a moron. The first weekend was pure hell and I thought it would be exaggerating to say that I felt like I was dying, but my doc explained that it was probably the truth. He said it's a bit of a miracle that I didn't end up in the emergency room and that I must be able to endure a freakish amount of pain. Which is also true. But my pain meter is out of whack. Doc explained that I'd had a severe addiction, one that most anyone else would only be able to kick in a rehab. I'd been taking a couple thousand milligrams every day for almost two years. During which I also had a prescription for Percocet, so my opiate addiction, and tolerance, was through the roof. Guess that's why most sane people detox in a rehab. Where there are doctors around 24 hours a day. For the past two weeks, the simple act of living was damn near intolerable. I couldn't eat, I couldn't sleep, it hurt to move any part of my body, and my head felt like it was imploding. Which is why I'm back on the Vicodin. Doc says that since I don't want to go to a rehab, and that wanting to quit opiate-based pain killers is a fabulous idea, I need to taper myself down until I'm off them. "It's like steroids," Doc said in his quite voice. "You've taken lots of steroids, you know that you can't just stop taking them one day. You have to lower your dose over a period of weeks. Same with your addiction to Vicodin." "You're evil," I replied. Because I am now blissfull. Instead of curbing my addiction, I simply lowered my tolerance so that even this mild dose (for me) makes me want to dance around and sing (well, the strep throat would make singing hard). Although I am determined. I'm on a maintenance dose for three weeks and, after three weeks, I have to call my Doc and tell him if it worked, or if I relapsed. If I relapse, I have to meet with a drug addiction counselor. Which I'd rather not have to do. The only thing that could muck this up for me is the fact that I have way more pills than I need. There was a mix-up at the pharmacy, one that I didn't notice until I got home, and they'd simply refilled my old prescription. Which means I have enough Vicodin for me and two other drug addicts. So, we'll see how this goes. Thankfully I have Devin because he's agreed to watch me like a hawk, and even start tossing out my pills if it looks like I'm relapsing. Thank goddess for over-protective husbands (except when it bugs the shit out of me). Despite all of this medical turmoil (after this rollercoaster year, I don't think there's much that could derail us) we're doing great. We're unbelievably excited about the house. So many family members have offered to buy us some furniture that we won't have enough space for it all. Our little house passed it's termite inspection, and we've already gotten homeowner's insurance. The roof and home inspections have been scheduled, along with the appraisal. I still occasionally check the listing of homes for sale in our area. I'm thrilled to report that the media isn't lying and there is definitely some sort of real estate slump going on, at least in our area. All of the yucky, horribly located homes that were on the market way back in March are still on the market, and nothing new whatsoever is popping up (at least, not in the $200,000 range). I think we bought at a good time. We found a great house and got for $15,000 under it's asking price. Which seems like a damn good deal right now. Now that I'm feeling better (even my throat doesn't hurt as much--aren't opiates fun?) I should probably get some packing done. We've got a lot of work to do.

Is this how it feels to be an adult?

2006-04-12T08:18:00.000-07:00

Devin and I are in the middle of applying for a mortgage loan. Which means we're going to buy a house. And it's really going to happen. I hadn't wanted to say anything until we met a few times with our mortgage specialist but the loan is in the final stages right now. We've cleaned up our credit scores as best we can, so now our Mortgage Lady is working on getting us the largest loan (that we can afford, mind you) at the best interest rate. We're told that it shouldn't take much longer and are being encouraged to start making appointments with realtors. So, that's (for the most part) where I've been lately. Pulling together all of the information that the Mortgage Lady needed took me well over a week. Mainly because I've been lazy with our home filing system and needed to sift through over a year's worth of accumulated records. But at least now we have a completely clean, fuctioning home office. Our imminent home purchase is also why I've been cleaning the apartment for the last month. I didn't want to say much about the house, in case it didn't work out for whatever reason, but it's apparently working out very well. Although it may be months before we're actually in a new home. Because we're applying for a loan that we can actually afford and, while our finances are actually quite healthy, we can't really afford much more than $1,500 monthly towards housing (that includes mortgage payments, property taxes, and insurance). Which leaves us with a loan of about $200,000. And, sadly, the small farm town that we live in is not so small anymore, and $200,000 will get you one of the following: a home in the scary part of town (no way); a small, very quaint but old 1930-1960 home (which Devin doesn't want but I'm open to the idea); or a nice house, but one the size of a shoebox (we are adamant that we want something at least as large as our current apartment). Which is why we're starting our house search in the (super tiny) neighboring towns. Where 200 grand will actually get you a decent-sized home with a large lot. But it still doesn't feel real. We're going to have a mortgage. We're going to have a house. A place that's ours. Where I can paint all of the rooms a different color if a I want to, and not have to worry about some landlord complaining about them. A place to throw parties in and have all of our friends over as often as we want. A home for the dogs that Devin wants so, so badly (but we could never have because we have enough trouble sharing our upstairs apartment with our cat). And I'm trying to not be overly worried. I'm reading all of the finance books about buying your first home (of course I am, because I'm Katie and I tackle major life changes by reading about them in books and planning a smart course of action) and I know that we're in good shape. It's a good time to get a mortgage loan and to buy a house (the interest rates haven't really started to rise but, thankfully, the price of homes are finally starting to fall). We make a decent income and have almost no debt to speak of (I have a little over two-thousand in credit card debt and that's the extent of our family debt). My car might be a hunk of a junk but it's a running hunk of junk that I own outright, so we don't even have a car payment. The only downside, the only minor problem with buying a home is that both sets of parents see it as our way of declaring that we are ready for kids. Which we are not. We want to travel. We want to enjoy being married before we sully it with younglings. We simply... don't want kids anytime soon. While there's no question that we definely want them someday, it's not going to happen this year or the next. But I've already told my parents that, so Devin's in charge of letting his parents know our intentions. Because my Mother-in-law cannot stop talking about how much she wants grandkids (which, if you ask me, is crazy since the woman is still in her forties and I certainly don't want to be a 47 year-old grandmother someday) and how she's got a room in the house ready to be set up as a nursery. Funny aside: Our parents share the same cleaning lady and, last week, I got a call from my Mom who was freaking out. "Are you pregnant?" she screeched at me. "You're pregnant, aren't you? Skeeter (the cleaning lady, and that is her real name) was telling me about how Cindy (my Mom-in-law) was talking about the nursery she's set up, and how she's ready to help take care of the baby and can't wait for it. She even said that you can bring the baby to work and just stick it in the nursery!" By this point, my Mom was hysterical. "What's going on?!" She screamed at me more than once. "Mom. I'm not pregnant. And even if I were pregnant, I can promise you that the cleaning lady would not know about it before you." I thought that was a good point but it didn't do much to calm Mom down. She later informed me that I'm on bump-watch, like some celebrity in a tabloid because she doesn't trust me to tell her the truth. Crazy woman. End aside. So, just in case there is still confusion--buying a house does not equal babies. And after four-and-a-half years on birth control (during which I've had very regular sex), I doubt that we'll be saddled with any "surprises." In other news. Da patch is off! You may commence dancing in the streets. I've got new contacts and I'm picking up my frames today. In case you were wondering, it's very strange to see the world in three-D again. For three months I've had only the one eye, so everyting was relegated to two-D but now there is depth in the world, once again! Losing da patch also meant that I finally got my hair cut. It was down to damn near my ass and I cut off a foot of it for the bald alopecia/cancer kids. Which means that my hair is now above my shoulders (it hasn't been this short in two years) and shorter than Devin's (whose baby-fine, curly blond hair is prettier than mine). I got a shaggy, "rock star" cut (my stylist's term, not mine) which is taking me very, very far out of my comfort zone. Anyone who has known me for the past ten years knows that I'm a devotee of the straight-edged, chin-length bob. Styling the bob meant curling the ends towards my face and that was it. Which I realized, during the past two years of long hair, made my face look unbelievably wide. Plus it was just time for a change. Ten years of the same cut, when you're only 25, is just sad. So, now I have the weird, shaggy haircut with blond highlights (yup, blond highlights, my stylist, who is a grade-school friend of mine, put them in for free, which is why I agreed to them) and it doesn't look too bad. It's certainly funky. Although it almost made Devin cry because a) he loved my long hair and b) even though the highlights are minimal, and subtle, he apparently hates anything that takes any red out of my hair. Honestly, the cut (and color) freaked me out at first. Especially when I was holding eleven inches of my pony-tailed hair in my hand. That was a little rough. But it's just hair. And I'm told it grows back. And I'm hoping that the people who've known me for a while are just a little pleased that I'm finally trying something other than the dreaded bob. It was about damn time.

What makes news "good," exactly?

2006-03-23T08:24:00.000-08:00

My news isn't really good, or bad, it's simply news. Although to jump back a few days--it's been wacky in my life. After dealing with all of the doctors on Monday, I called Devin to let him know that I may, or may not, need to go the E.R. In the four years we've been together, it has never been easy for me to tell Devin when I'm sick, and how bad it really is. I don't know why I can easily write about it on the internet, then turn around and have a hard time sharing my problems with my husband. But I'm trying to be better. So, I called Devin and let him know what was going on, which lead to me telling my father-in-law everything because he could tell I was sick (being passed out on the couch was probably an indicator) and he is my boss, after all. Devin's Mom also happens to be a nurse in our local hospital, and when she came home on her lunch break, I told her what was going on and she promised to ask some of her E.R. friends about it, saving me the trip (and the money). Then I had to tell my parents because I needed them to drive me to Fresno. Good lord, that was a lot of people to enlighten about my problems. Everyone was great but it felt strange to have so many people hovering over me when I'm only mildly sick. (Since recovering from eye surgery, that is now my new measure for sickness. If I ever feel that awful again, then I'm pretty damn sick. If I'm nowhere close to feeling that bad, then it must not be a big deal.) Besides the blood, I only felt achy and tired, which could have been attributed to PMS and not Crohn's. But everyone seemed to think it was a Big Fucking Deal, so I got to stay home for a day and watch a whole lot of "Gilmore Girls." My first doc visit--with my Gastroenterologist (GI)--went as expected. The first thing he said was, "Well, you need a colonoscopy, eh?" "Yup," I replied. "It's been about two years." "Well, let's get that scheduled and then we'll decide on if you need steroids or not." Yes! I screamed inside my head. He's not going to simply pump me full of steroids that I might not need. I really like this new guy. Apparently, since he's also got some sort of M.D. in pharmacology, he realizes that steroids are evil, evil drugs and should be used sparingly, especially in an adult woman who's already got a litany of problems due to excessive use of steroids during her formative years. (The arthritis? Combination of Crohn's side-effects and the fact that steroids deplete calcium in the bones and fuck with your joints. I'm also an estimated two or three inches shorter than I would have been had steroids not stunted my growth. They also apparently mucked with some of my other internal organs--steroids can mess with almost everything in the human body. But I'm not entirely sure what all of that means at this point in time. All I know is that taking steroids now could mess with my reproductive system--I didn't get my period until I was seventeen because of steroids--and since I do want to have kids within the next five, or so, years, I really don't want to be rendered infertile quite yet.) I guess this was good news. A doc who doesn't want to put me on steroids for no good reason is a really, really wonderful doctor. I don't even mind going in for the colonoscopy (which is in May) because I knew that was coming and I've already had a bunch, so they don't faze me anymore. Also! I saw my Retinologist and he told me that I'm almost fully healed! I suppose that would be great news. He's given me the go-ahead to call my Optometrist and get fitted for a new lens for my newly-improved left eye. (The surgery completely changed my prescription, obviously. Which is sad, in a way, because I'm more blind now than before--but I can see, so I really have no complaints.) Which means I'm only a few weeks away from losing da eye patch! Woo! Woowoowoowoo... and I could just go on forever. I can also do yoga again! (Which means I can bend at the waist for extended periods of time.) And in three months, I'll be able to ride a roller coaster again. (Apparently that is not a question the eye doc usually gets asked because his patients are all sixty or older, so he had to consult with some of his colleagues but general consensus was that a roller coaster shouldn't knock the rubber band from around my eye, or re-detach my retina but I still need to wait a good three months, which is fine.) He also told me that, in six or nine months, I would be a good candidate for Lasik. Which surprised the hell out of me. I didn't think they could do Lasik on a detached retina patient but I guess they can. It would be beyond weird to have Lasik--I've been wearing glasses since I was in the second grade. And I'm legally blind without them, so I can't see a damn thing first thing in the morning. I can also, apparently, go back to wearing contacts as soon as I feel comfortable. Which was another surprise because I thought I'd have to wait a good two or three more months before wearing contacts again. But eye doc said no, I could go back to wearing them now if I wanted to but I'm probably going to wait, anyway. Because my eye still hurts (which is normal, I'm told, this was a Big Deal surgery and it's going to be a while before my eye stops hurting entirely) and putting little bits of rubber in it seems counter-intuitive to me. But. Wow. I'm going to have my life back. I'm going to be able to drive again! Devin and I are even looking into getting me a cheap, but decent little Kia or Saturn so I don't have to drive the '92 Merc. Cougar anymore. Because that thing needs to be put down. Although I'll probably end up donating it to the local Polly Klaas Foundation chapter (you know, that girl who got kidnapped and murdered from Petaluma, CA or somewhere like that). They'll take anything, and the Cougar is actually in pretty good shape, it's simply not street legal. Which is fine, they've told me, because they'll pay all of the DMV fees (the tags on it are from 2004). So, I guess this is all good news. I'll soon be able to get back to my regularly-scheduled life.

If it's not one thing, it's another.

2006-03-20T09:50:00.000-08:00

Since this might be the week I get the go-ahead to remove the eye patch, my Crohn's just had to make a surprise appearance. It started on Friday, towards the end of my work day and I tried to call my doctor buy he'd left for the weekend. And "it" was yucky, Crohn's stuff. Such as blood coming out in places where there should be no blood. I spotted blood all during the weekend but didn't think much of it because there wasn't a whole lot of blood. Just enough to make me think that I should call my Doc on Monday. This morning it went from a minor problem to a big, fat, huge problem. Lots of blood. Lots of bright red, fresh blood which means that I'm bleeding internally somewhere from something that is, most likely, not good. After spending fifteen minutes on the phone, on hold, while an assistant tracked down my Doc, they came back with the plan. I either come in today or go the E.R. right now. Well. This is my new "adult" doctor, so I can forgive him for thinking that I enjoy running to the E.R. if I'm not out-right dying. He just doesn't know me that well but he will soon learn that I need to be doing more than hemorrhaging blood to make that awful trek to the E.R. Basically, I need to be comatose because, otherwise, you could not get me into the E.R. for any reason. I'm also at work, and live a good forty-five minutes away from my Doc (he's in Fresno, and I'm not) and, oh yeah, I can't drive ('cause of da patch). So, coming in today was not an option. This is where the assistant started to get a little frustrated with me. She was alarmed by how calm I was about the situation. Not realizing that I've been doing this for so long that, even though I realize it's not a good situation, I simply can't bring myself to freak out enough to warrant a trip to the E.R. I talked her into letting me come in Wednesday morning because I already have an appointment with my Retinal guy on Wednesday afternoon. Who happens to be around the corner from my Gastroenterologist. But if I start passing out, throwing up, running a fever, or basically anything else that's not just bleeding internally, then I have to go the E.R. Which means that I'll tough it out until Wednesday (even though I'm a little faint and dizzy right now... but that's okay because I can go lie down). I'm sure my Doc is going to rush me into endoscopy as soon as possible (both upper and lower), which doesn't really bother me. Probably because I'm too wiped out to be bothered, right now. All I want is a nice, long nap. Which doesn't count as passing out, right? Because I'm taking a nap. (Just as long as Devin doesn't drag my tired ass to the E.R. all will be well. I've definitely been-here, done-this before, so we'll just wait and see what happens.)

Kid's Day

2006-03-14T08:15:00.000-08:00

(Edited to add: Comments now work for anyone/everyone! Thanks to 'Zanny for letting me know that they were kind of messed up.)

Every year, in March, a local newspaper sells copies of it's paper for a dollar and donates all of the money to our local children's hospital.

I began going to that hospital in 1988, when it was still spread out into a dozen random buildings through-out Fresno. My gastroenterologist (that would be the main doc for my disease) was in one building, testing was done in another, surgery in the main facility (except for some out-patient stuff, which was in yet another building) and so on. A trip to the doctor could take the entire day if she sent me to various labs for tests.

The entire, sprawling hospital was, simply, too damn small. I remember being nine, coming out of surgery and puking my guts onto the floor but still having to be hustled out of the hospital because they needed my bed for other post-ops. As the years went by, my family and I would joke that it felt like it I was on an assembly-line with a bunch of other sick kids. The hospital had a definite move-em-in-move-em-out mentality and, of course, the quality of care suffered.

In spite of that, the hospital managed to save my life and the lives of so many other kids that I met while I was there.

The move to the new facility began in 1998 and it is, quite simply, the most incredible hospital that I have ever been to in my life. In fact, they had to kick me out once I turned 22 because, left to my own devices, I would still be going to Children's Hospital.

Which makes me wonder about all of the other kids (now adults), like me. Who grew up in that hospital, moved with it to it's gorgeous new facility, and were shunted out once they reached their twenties. Of course, I understand why we all have been kicked out--I would rather the doctors deal with sick kids than with me but it has still been a terribly difficult transition. I've managed to put off a much-needed colonoscopy (after having this disease for almost two decades, my risk for colon cancer has quadrupled, or something equally heinous and I'm now required to go in for annual endoscopies) because I'm frightened of what the procedure will be like in another facility.

And that's silly but that's my reality. It's impossible to explain how nurturing everyone is at Children's Hospital. Everywhere that I went, from my own doctors, to the labs, to surgery, there was always someone on hand who wanted nothing more than to make the experience a little bit easier for me.

It's disheartening that we have to give up that kind of care as we get older. The few times I've gone to adult hospitals for tests, I've been shocked at how little everyone there seems to care about my peace of mind. If I express fear, they brush it off with a "Well, you've done this sort of thing before, so you should be used to it," apparently not realizing that my fear comes from having done such things before. If I'm uncomfortable, or even in pain, that is also brushed off with a "It'll pass in a moment, just be quiet." I've even had nurses call me names--tell me that I was being a baby, and should act my age.

Such treatment should be, in my mind, inexcusable. When I told my doctors at the Children's Hospital about these experiences, they were the ones who decided to keep me at that facility until the insurance said otherwise. My doctors understood that when you have a chronic illness, and you are going to be spending a majority of the rest of your life in hospitals and doctor offices, that emotional mis-treatment is terrifying. Because I can't console myself by saying "Well, at least I'll never have to see these people again after this is over," because it is never going to be over.

But I'm grateful for all of the wonderful memories that I have from the Children's Hospital. I don't want to imagine how much more harrowing my experience would have been if I had not been surrounded by kindness everywhere that I went.

And I've tried to make my doctors understand, especially when I was finally forced to leave most of them for "adult" doctors (although we, of course, remain in touch and they are always on-hand to offer advice), that it was their kindness that helped save my life just as much as their medical treatment. Without their optimism, I doubt I would be here today with completely in-tact innards and a relatively clean bill of health (for me).

They never, ever gave up on me. Even when I was sobbing in the middle of their office, even when I was screaming obscenities at their nurses because I just wanted out, even when I didn't show up for appointments for a couple of years because I was tired of being sick. Even then. They never gave up. And that gave me the courage to never give up on myself.

Doesn't look too bad.

2006-03-04T16:52:00.000-08:00

It's really, really sad how long it took me to tweak this journal template. But I think it's coming along decently (thank god I remember how to work CSS, otherwise I would have been completely lost--and even then, I still had to look stuff up in my handy-dandy Web Design in a Nutshell book from O'Reilly).

Here it is, though. My new journal. Yes, it's from blogger but at least it's being hosted on my own domain. And, yes, it looks a whole lot like the LJ set-up (comments? since when do real journals have comments?) but I'm just testing the format, right now. In fact, feel free to post a comment and tell me what you think (I'm still not sure on some of the color schemes--and I haven't tweaked the settings for the comments page, yet, so that might look very strange).

I'm thrilled, though. I finally have a real journal, again. Yay me.

(I also edited it to add this lighter-colored content box. CSS came back to me in a big way, which makes me happy. I'm probably going to tweak it a hell of a lot more to make it look a little less like a cookie-cutter template.)