Don't Lose Hope

I saw my nurse practitioner this morning.  It was wonderful.  She walked in and said, "How are you?"
"Good!" I said.
She chuckled.  "So you came here to tell me how good you're feeling?"
"I always say 'good,'" I admitted.
"But really," she said, "how are you?"
"Well, actually," I said, "I think it's time I went back on an antidepressant."
She smiled.  "Ah yes," she said, "we all do better when we have our serotonin.  What did you take before?"

And it was just that easy.  I didn't have to cry.  I didn't have to blather on about my angst or the difficulty I was having getting through the days.  I just told her I felt like I needed meds again, she asked me what I used to take, what had worked before, we discussed options and combos and dosing.  She had me fill out a questionnaire about my symptoms.  She left and did other things while I checked boxes and tallied points for each area.  Then she came back and looked it over and we decided that, given my anxiety issues and obsessive thoughts, I should definitely include an SSRI in my regimen.  She asked me if I had anything for sleep.  I said I had a script for Ambien, from her.
 "Do you like it?" she asked.
"Yeah," I said.  "I could use a refill, though."
"Sure," she said.

So easy.  So professional.  It's not easy to go into the doctor and admit you're feeling depressed and need help.  But she made it feel easy.

I left the doctor's office, feeling much better than I had when I walked in (nothing to dread).  I went straight to the drug store to fill my prescriptions.  While I waited, I wandered around the store.  I went to the baby section, because I am obsessed with having babies these days.  I looked at diapers and at the cute pictures of babies on the packages.  I looked at pacifiers and sippy cups and a baby front pack.  I was impressed the drug store carried such a selection of supplies.  I felt sort of despondent.  You can't take all these meds while you're pregnant.  Not that I'm getting pregnant any time in the next year.  Not yet.

But I felt I needed the meds.  I was taking things too hard.  Life.  It was being too much for me.  And when I looked back at the years past, it was always too much.  Always too hard.  I was always unhappy, always having a hard time.  I think I've been depressed off and on since childhood, and if little blue pills (the Zoloft and Wellbutrin I got are both blue) are going to make me enjoy life more -- tolerate work, tackle a move, savor my children -- then I'm all fucking for it.

When I went to pick up my prescription, the Zoloft had a neon green sticker across the lid, saying "PATIENT COUNSELING REQUIRED."  The pharmacy tech called over to the pharmacist.  "I need a patient counsel here," he said.  I wondered if this had to do with SSRIs' tendency to induce suicide in people just starting them.

A slim brown woman who looked to be in her thirties came over.  She looked down at the bottle, then looked up at me.
"So this medication is for your mood, yeah?" she said.  She smiled.  She had an accent -- either Africa or the islands.  "It's going to take a few weeks for it to work, ok?"
"Ok," I said.  I noticed she had a small moustache and beard.
She smiled again.  "It's going to get worse before it gets better, ok?"
"Ok," I said.
"So don't lose hope."
"Ok," I said.  I smiled.

Don't lose hope, I thought, as I walked across the parking lot.  It struck me as one of the nicest things I'd heard in a while. 

SUI

Am I the only one drinking beer in the shower at 7:15 on a Thursday morning?

I Am the Non-Intuitive Chef

Today I made chili and corn bread for dinner. It was not the expensive kind of chili, so I decided to jazz it up a little with some garlic powder, some crushed red pepper, and the rest of a bag of frozen mixed vegetables.

The mixed vegetables did not go over well with the fellow who lives in my house (who is this guy? he's been here for years...). We had a little discussion about not putting lima beans and carrots in the chili. I shan't anymore.

It made me think of a funny idea for a sketch, though: The Non-Intuitive Chef. It would be a cook who has no intuitive sense for what foods go together -- ground beef in vanilla pudding, barbecue chicken in cupcakes, Nutella in tacos. Lots of meat desserts.

I'm trying to think of several savory foods that would not go together, but I can't. Everything goes great together. This is why I put carrots and lima beans in the chili: they just seemed to go together.

Met(a)-Life

This morning I picked up poop in the yard while listening to lectures on particle physics and dark matter. I do this a lot, actually. De-pooping the yard is a great time to listen to lectures, as de-pooping does not take a lot of intellectual energy.

I love doing menial things while thinking great thoughts. I love thinking great thoughts while doing menial things. I love the marriage of the carnal and the intellectual that is our human existence -- the twin struggles of living daily life and comprehending daily life.

Eek! A Mouse!

We have mouses. We also have terriers. So, sometimes, we have dead mouses. I have seen two already -- one on the living room floor, next to a buttercup stem from outside, which makes me wonder if he was brought in from outside (he was still twitching a little). I woke up this morning to one on the kitchen floor. He was fully deceased. Massive trauma. I removed his little corpse and found smears of mouse blood on the linoleum below. A little Simple Green cleaned them up.

Just now, I saw a live mouse run across the kitchen floor, right next to my foot, then into the living room. He or she escaped via the little hole in the southwest corner of the house. It was a narrow escape, though.

And the terriers remain full of energy and ever-vigilant.

Now, if I and my family were squatting in the walls of an old building, and there were some huge, fiercesome creature stalking us and picking us off one by one, I would do everything in my power to relocate, wouldn't you?

The mouses will probably come around to that conclusion sooner or later. Mouses are smart. They can run mazes and everything.

Es Lacht der Februar

PS: The plum tree outside my window is blooming. It is Spring. Life can begin again.

If It's a Horse, You Can Shoot the Fucker*

Slap a "The End" on the Fucker: Tips and Tricks for Writers

My book on writing. I'm planning it already. Have done very little writing so far, of course...

Thanks to my brilliant husband for the title.


*Thanks to my brother-in-law for that bit of genius.

Would Pauly Shore Do the Movie?

I was listening to a (stolen) Teaching Company lecture on Cosmology this morning on my ride home from work when I had an idea for a premise for a science fiction story:

A society of humans fly around the galaxy on a rocket-powered mini-planet. A little self-sustaining, self-replenishing biosphere. But small. Maybe so small that it has to simulate gravity by being disc-shaped and spinning at two revolutions a minute.

It would take years to get from sun to sun, even at speeds close to that of light. Many humans would live lifetimes without knowing natural sunlight. People of Dark Years. (Is night shift affecting me already?)

I don't know where to go from there. Maybe there's like a main guy and a hot chick and they hook up or something. In the biosphere. Traveling through space. And then maybe there's some aliens.

By the way, if I have a reader of this blog, you are welcome to steal this idea and write a book/TV series and make millions. You have my blessing.

First Class

I flew First Class today. For the first time. I flew from Orlando, Florida, to Charlotte, North Carolina, then from Charlotte to San Francisco.

Of course, since I prepared for my flight in the usual way – by getting very little sleep – I slept through the first leg of my First Class journey. I scarcely noticed the howling babe behind me, but I did not get to enjoy the drinks and snacks I knew First Class would provide.

No matter. My flight from Charlotte to San Fran was the real thing.

I had a three-hour layover in Charlotte. I spent it moseying up and down the concourses, talking to my husband on the headset of my cell phone. (That no longer looks crazy, by the way, walking alone, talking to someone, without so much as holding a phone to your ear. We’ve gotten used to it.) The restrooms of the Douglas International Airport have attendants – persons of appropriate gender and foreign birth who welcome you to Charlotte and make you feel guilty for peeing without putting dollars in their jars. One was humming a little African song I thought I recognized. I put ninety cents in her jar (hey, if every patron does that, she’ll go home loaded) and asked her if she was from West Africa. She was from Central Africa, the Congo. She took a moment to sing the song, in French, and translate each line. I asked her what other languages she spoke (besides English and French, obviously). She spoke four Central African dialects – Lingala, Swahili, and two I forgot in the minutes between when she told me and when I texted my husband. She taught me how to say “hello” in each of the dialects (though, “Jambo,” in Swahili, I already knew, so she taught me some some other things, all of which I’ve already forgotten. I am not an auditory learner). As of this writing, I remember “Ebue,” because it was the shortest and because I could picture its spelling in my mind.

I emerged from my restroom language lesson (Rosetta Throne?) to find that my flight had been undelayed and was now boarding. I was one of the last on the plane, first class or no. But at least I made it.

I took my seat to find I had already missed the first round of drinks, though the flight attendant took great pains to take my drink order for as soon as we were in the air.

“Coffee, please,” I said. I had drunk so much over Christmas…

I met the people in front of me – Greg and Lori from San Mateo, who, noticing my tie-dye shirt, asked me if I was headed to a Grateful Dead tribute concert called Further. I told them I was going home, to Humboldt County, which, if you know it, is pretty much a living tribute to the Grateful Dead.

Then I opened my book, The Road to Reality by mathematical physicist Roger Penrose, and, with brief breaks to enjoy the takeoff and the splendour of the Earth’s turning away from the Sun, began to read about the relationship between the Platonic mathematical, physical, and mental worlds.

Alas, sleep soon overcame me once again. Quite forcefully. Curled in a strange position, my book still open on my lap, my head nodded and I drifted from consciousness into unconsciousness and back several times. (I wonder if this helps me understand things on new and more profound levels. I like to think so.)

I awoke to coffee waiting for me on the table between me and my seatmate. Lovely.

I acknowledged the sunset once again. It was delightfully long, thanks to our plane’s fleeing the parts of the Earth turning away from the Sun at some seven hundred miles per hour. I returned to my book, finding that the complexity of Penrose’s topic is further complicated by the English-ness of his writing.

Soon, ‘twas time for dinner. I noticed the stewardess (oh, can’t we get off our damn PC horses and just call them that?) taking meal orders. She was taking them in no discernable order, yet had a little clipboard and was checking names or seats or something off as she took each order.

When she got to me and my seatmate, the only meal option left was pasta. What luck! I had been dreading the little decision of what to have for dinner and was able to enjoy my meal so much more knowing that I had not made a sub-optimal selection, nor any selection at all. I had a brief debate with my inner drinker and finally decided on red wine with dinner. A First Class dinner really begged to be enjoyed with red wine.

I read a short interview with a medical researcher and frequent US Airways flyer in the back of the in-flight magazine, which inspired me to add classical music to my First Class meal. I chose Chopin’s polonaises, played by Vladimir Ashkenazy (not that I ever care who’s playing them, really. All those folks sound good, as far as I can tell). The whole experience was very classy. There was still a bit of color in the southwestern sky. A rainbow, even, on the horizon – indigo of night, with a bright star (or planet), descending into bright blue, green, yellow, orange, and red.

The wine affected me nicely. I gazed out of the window, enjoying my wine, food, music, and view. I tried to think about something other than nursing.

That is the one thing I can do for myself as I contemplate starting work in the ER: tell myself not to think about it. Until I apprehend the reality of it, I should waste no time feeling apprehensive about it.

Mostly, I am vastly relieved to have a job. Part of me mourns having to return to work at all, though. Part of me was excited by the uncertainty I felt in those early weeks of unemployment.

I reassure myself that it will be nights – I will be a strange creature of the night, working but three a week, spending the other four creating my novel (and other writings).

My novel.

My dear novel. My hope. My joy. My deliverance.

I have a lot riding on you.

And you are why I am returning to work and not going one hundred thousand dollars into debt to go to grad school. It is so I can create you. I will spend the next few months, only, I hope, creating you, preening you, polishing you (but never, no never perfecting you, for there is no such thing as “perfect” and I will not allow the illusory construct of perfection to interfere with the mere sufficience I require in your creation – though I do hope you will be functional and elegant).

I picture you being complete around June. Logically, I thought I would complete you by August, one year from when I started work on you, but in my mind’s eye I was really picturing you complete in June. I asked myself why.

Two reasons: one, so that I will have more time to try to sell you before Trent and I move on to the next chapter and, likely, location of our lives. I do not want to have to nurse much longer. Two, and probably the true cause for my envisioning your completion in June, is that that is around the time of year that the story you contain should cease to be told.

I sat in my seat, drifting on wine and Chopin, listening to the notes go up and down, wondering why it is that we call a high note “high” and why we picture that as “up,” thinking of the scene in which my characters follow the paths of the notes – up and down, up and down – wondering if I am mad to try to write what I am writing.

In that reverie, sleep overtook me again. In spite of my upright position and unsupported head, in spite of the variable, occasionally loud, percussion of the piano in my ears (normally I require absolute silence and earplugs to be able to sleep at all), sleep overtook me. I drifted in and out of consciousness, my awareness going up and down, up and down.

I awoke to sobriety and an empty seat next to me. I took that opportunity to go to the bathroom and ask the stewardess a couple of novel-research questions about crew and scheduling.

Bathroom use has been something of an issue on our flight. It would seem the* hoi polloi from cattle class do not understand the significance of the curtain that separates them from us First Classers, and individuals keep trying to slip through to take second-class shits in our First Class facilities. The stewardess even had to make an announcement overhead to try to quell their near-Marxist disregard for the division between themselves and the quality.

Speaking of colonic emissions, I have been very gassy on this flight. Many farts. Now, I have farted many a fart in my life – loud farts, quiet farts, deadly farts, benign farts, lit farts, public farts, private farts, sleepy farts, underwater farts, even meditative farts, but this is the first time in my life that I have ever farted First Class farts.

They’re ok. Luckily they don’t seem to be too stinky and the noise of the engine covers their rips. And my seatmate is very, very old, so I can only hope that anything offensive will be blamed on her rather than on blond, buxom me.

I met my seatmate. She’s reading a book called Whittington, which is the story of a cat in the court of Marco Polo. It’s her granddaughter’s book. She reads all her granddaughter’s books, as she is a children’s librarian. I told her I was writing a novel. She asked what about. I told her the protagonist was a fifteen-year-old girl, and that I hoped the book would invite the reader to ask some big questions.

“Oh yes,” she said. “Questions of Life.”

She understood.

I told her I wasn’t sure whether the book would turn out to be young-adult accessible, in spite of its young protagonist. I didn’t tell her that it was because of all the “fuck”s and “vagina”s. I think those words should be allowed in literature intended for teenagers, but the people I hope to have help me exchange my novel for money (and acclaim) may not agree.

I didn’t say all that. She is hard of hearing and conversation is difficult. Also, I wanted to write this.

So this is my experience in first class. The usual consciousness, with more leg room, food, wine, and coffee.

I think Fryderyk and Vladimir made me feel more elegant than did the big seat and rights to the fore-plane potty. And I had them in my iPod all along.

*Yes, I know this is redundant, like saying "PIN number" or "ATM machine," but my editor thought not having "the" before "hoi polloi" was revoltingly pedantic.

Not As Much of a Hater As I Claimed to Be

I am finding myself bringing the essence of poetry to areas of my prose.
The most profound parts.
They get written.
Not in paragraphs.
Nor even in sentences
-- not ones with verbs --
but in statements.
Gatherings of words.
Conveying meaning.
With space.
Words.
Surrounded by space.
So that the reader knows,
"This means something."

It is almost
Poetry

I Can Go to Work Now!

The epilator: a wonderful time-saver for the trichotillomaniac.

Chez Red Cross

I love the food at the bloodbank. It's my favorite flavor: free.

Actually, I guess it cost a pound* of flesh.


*Well, blood. But it is a pound. 1lb = 16oz. 1 pint = 16oz.

Art

In a painting, you see not the subject of the painting, but the painter's perception of the subject of the painting. In this way, you get to see the world through another's eyes.

How wonderful.

30

Do they make a combination anti-zit/anti-wrinkle cream? Or do I have to mix my own?


Oh wait -- they do; it's called Retin-A.

The Small Rain Down Can Rain

My first husband allowed me to embrace my love of Bukowski.

My second husband allowed me to embrace my hatred of poetry in general.

Home Cookin

Fun Fact #1: Granulated sugar will burst into flames if you drop it on your electric stovetop.
Fun Fact #2: Made-from-scratch hot cocoa will boil into an impressive mess if you look away to read even a paragraph of your magazine. First it will smell like candy, then it will smell like burnt.

How am I supposed to get this stuff off? Don't think it's possible. Better just buy a new stove.

Sick

I am on my third sick day in a row. Friday, then Monday and now Tuesday. I still feel kind of ick, kind of sick, yet I plan to return to work to tomorrow as I am no longer actively coughing yellow goo. I mean, you can't stay home sick forever. There's a point where you have to suck it up and go back to work even though you still don't feel 100%.

Being sick allows me to slow down in a way I never really let myself slow down. It gives me a break from my relentless productivity, my relentless doing. I don't have to go running. I don't have to clean the house. I can take time to just sit in the shower and watch the water droplets merge into each other and flow down the drain. In fact, being sick gives me a break from my very personality. I become subdued. Quiet. Slow. Low.

I miss my usual energetic self, but I also enjoy this new self, this new outlook on life, this new way of being in the world. Being sick. Being, not doing. Being. Being patient with the illness. Waiting. Waiting to get better.

Hopefully I'll appreciate my wellness once I have it again. Oh, how we take things for granted. Then a little virus comes along and makes everything so darned hard. How we long just to feel "normal," just to have the energy and vigor to go about our daily lives. And we vow to never take un-sickness for granted again.

Just as I am vowing now...

Very American

My sister-in-law's mother-in-law had been longing to go to the American Girl Doll Restaurant for a long time and finally had the chance when the family was in NYC for my niece's choir's performance at Carnegie Hall.

Patrons are invited to bring their dolls, especially their American Girl Dolls, to the American Girl Doll Restaurant. My sister-in-law, however, did not bring an American Girl doll



as they are huge and bulky and a big pain in the ass to drag around on the NYC subway. No, she brought a different doll.

Raggedy Ann. Samantha's raggedy-ass cousin, if you will. The gal from the holler who don't quite belong at a fancy tea party in the big city.

But props to the good people at American Girl Doll Restaurant, because apparently they treated Miss Ann (nee Raggedy) as good as any well-dressed girl of U.S. history. They gave her her own little booster seat and tiny tea set.

Which my sister-in-law, uh, appropriated. If she were black, it would have been theft, but she's white, so it's just democratic entrepreneurial spirit.

Jogging

I do a lot of jogging on the beach, which is, by necessity, an out-and-back run, as opposed to a loop. My theory with out-and-back runs is that you only have to push yourself one way -- out. The way back is a given.

You need complex motivations to get yourself to make the "out" portion of the run. Things like, "I want to get exercise to develop my cardiovascular fitness," and "I need to take the dogs out in order to further their physical and psychological well-being," and "I am enjoying this beautiful day and communing with nature where land meets sea."

Your motivation on the way back is simple and instinctive: "I want to go home. I want hot shower, snacks, and TV."

Guess which way is easier.

Mr.Poopers

We caught our first mouse today in our humane, no-kill, HAVAHART mousetrap. I woke up this morning and checked the trap, and in the dim 6:30am light I could just make out the tiny, round shape of a little brown house-mouse. Mousius domesticus.*

I swiftly named him "Mr.Poopers," for obvious reasons, and transported him in his tiny metal holding cell out to my car. I meant to drop him off at the forest on the way to work, but since I am always short of time in the mornings, Mr.Poopers got to spend the morning in his cell in my car, gorging himself on peanut butter and making his peace with God, because, let's face it, Mr.Poopers probably doesn't stand a chance in the wild.

Then, on my lunch break, I stopped by the marsh near the sea and released Mr.Poopers into the shrubs, or, as I like to think of it, into the Cosmos.**


*This name has been made up by the author and in no way represents a real scientific species name.
**My term for anything that is beyond my sphere of influence or responsibility.