This is why stress is bad, lovelies! Although I appreciate that my body waited till after finals to go batshit.
I turned in my last final (creative writing) yesterday, which was very excited, and I plan to start driving home in approximately four hours. All my friends left yesterday so I had what was actually a really pleasant night eating a lot and then I went to bed at 10, which is pretty much unheard of. I can't figure out if it's just too many hours on my bed, with the sleeping early plus the lazing about all evening or if I'm getting sick but I have been awake since about 3:30 with what feels a lot like fever aches and a headache.
So I gave up on sleep for now, took some ibuprofin, am eating some nilla wafers, watching a little TV and hopefully I'll get a couple hours more sleep before I have to drive.
I don't really have internet in Michigan so blog may be on hiatus (because I update it so regularly to begin with) and then I go to Mexico January 4th! That will be exciting.
Thursday, December 23, 2010
Sunday, December 12, 2010
My face made friends with my chair
Isn't it odd, friends, that despite having an exciting, action-packed autoimmune disease, most of my serious hospital ventures in the past 6 or so years have been utterly unrelated? For example, having my lemon-sized cyst removed was by far my most serious procedure to date. Or how about my foot surgery that was the result of breaking my toe during a game of keep-the-balloon-off-the-ground?
Or, just for fun, let's consider last night. It was a nice night, ladies and gentlemen. I wrote several pages of my Chaucer paper (it's going to be nauseatingly long but I'm having so much fun with it) I cleaned my room (which for those of you who have ever SEEN my room is really an impressive feat. No, really. I cleaned it thoroughly), I watched some Blackadder, and then I fell asleep at one in the morning.
Not odd yet.
I woke up at four and realized I'd fallen asleep without really getting ready for bed. I got up, changed into pants that were less sweltering than my sweats, brushed my teeth, started my Harry Potter audiobook (shut up.) and sat on the edge of my bed to take a drink of water.
Somehow that drink of water ruined everything. I am told I must've swallowed it wrong, but instead of coughing and hacking what happened was I had an intense sudden chest pain and felt really dizzy. Next thing I knew, I woke up on the ground with my nose bleeding profusely and my right eye burning. Waking up to pain is one of the most discombobulating experiences ever, and sometimes if it's after surgery it freaks the nurses out if you wake up and cry and then they give you more morphine, which is fun. But in this case I just made a lot of noise before I even figured out where I was, that the wet on my face was blood, and that chest pain and preceded the fall (at first I thought I'd just fallen out of bed in my sleep).
I went to the ER, more because I was terrified than because I thought something was really wrong. I felt okay, not dizzy or anything, but I have never fainted before so I was FREAKED OUT, yo.
Turns out if you go to the ER on a Saturday night NOT drunk off your ass, they don't really know what to do with you, but the doctor was very nice and calmed me down and I was in the ER from 4 til about 8 in the morning. Everything was normal (the ninety-seven tests they did, including an EKG and a CAT scan). The doctor said it was called an "esophageal spasm" which is, I guess, exactly what it sounds like. He said it's not uncommon, though normally it doesn't happen so bad that one would pass out from it. So we're all clear there. Hooray.
Now I am very sleepy, have the rest of my Chaucer paper to write (though may ask for an extension) and my eye is really puffy and bruise-y.
So that was my Saturday night. Raise your hand if you are jealous!
Or, just for fun, let's consider last night. It was a nice night, ladies and gentlemen. I wrote several pages of my Chaucer paper (it's going to be nauseatingly long but I'm having so much fun with it) I cleaned my room (which for those of you who have ever SEEN my room is really an impressive feat. No, really. I cleaned it thoroughly), I watched some Blackadder, and then I fell asleep at one in the morning.
Not odd yet.
I woke up at four and realized I'd fallen asleep without really getting ready for bed. I got up, changed into pants that were less sweltering than my sweats, brushed my teeth, started my Harry Potter audiobook (shut up.) and sat on the edge of my bed to take a drink of water.
Somehow that drink of water ruined everything. I am told I must've swallowed it wrong, but instead of coughing and hacking what happened was I had an intense sudden chest pain and felt really dizzy. Next thing I knew, I woke up on the ground with my nose bleeding profusely and my right eye burning. Waking up to pain is one of the most discombobulating experiences ever, and sometimes if it's after surgery it freaks the nurses out if you wake up and cry and then they give you more morphine, which is fun. But in this case I just made a lot of noise before I even figured out where I was, that the wet on my face was blood, and that chest pain and preceded the fall (at first I thought I'd just fallen out of bed in my sleep).
I went to the ER, more because I was terrified than because I thought something was really wrong. I felt okay, not dizzy or anything, but I have never fainted before so I was FREAKED OUT, yo.
Turns out if you go to the ER on a Saturday night NOT drunk off your ass, they don't really know what to do with you, but the doctor was very nice and calmed me down and I was in the ER from 4 til about 8 in the morning. Everything was normal (the ninety-seven tests they did, including an EKG and a CAT scan). The doctor said it was called an "esophageal spasm" which is, I guess, exactly what it sounds like. He said it's not uncommon, though normally it doesn't happen so bad that one would pass out from it. So we're all clear there. Hooray.
Now I am very sleepy, have the rest of my Chaucer paper to write (though may ask for an extension) and my eye is really puffy and bruise-y.
So that was my Saturday night. Raise your hand if you are jealous!
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
I am the worst
At keeping up with this these days.
Anyway, the Rejectionist has had another uncontest: december resolutions! Going off my friend, the Narrative Addict's rules for the various Lents he declares when he feels fat, I have chosen a few reasonable and a few completely unattainable goals.
Attainable: write! 500 words a day. Of anything. Actually I haven't been doing that well with this but I'm giving myself a tiny bit of leeway because I DID spend 6 hours working on my creative writing project and it just feels like that counts.
Unattainable: Buy and keep a hat for longer than a week (I lost the one I bought last Wednesday last Friday.)
Attainable: When my knees hurt too much for me to participate in Social Activities, I will stop sulking and view it as an opportunity to do laundry, read in bed, or go to sleep early.
Unattainable: Spend less money on caffeine.
Attainable: No shame December! (Narrative Addict and I figure it's...good for us.)
In other news: I am frustrated as hell with writing right now. I stayed up most of the night not getting anything done, which was really not the best plan. I should've sent myself to bed before I got too worked up about the whole thing because now I'm running off 2 hours of sleep and am even less rational than usual. Plus, the less I sleep the longer it takes my joints to warm up and work like normal joints.
What else, what else. Two more weeks of school (yeah, we get off on the 23rd. It's a little absurd.) and then like 10 days of break and then I go to Mexico. I am exhausted.
I am reading a lot though, outside of school. It's just sort of what I do instead of procrastinating too heavily on the internet. It's still procrastinating but it's procrastinating in the spirit of Project Well-Read. Currently reading Lamb by Christopher Moore which is HILARIOUS and a really good choice after all my pretty dense/intense reading of the past few months.
I have nothing else to say. Just did an hour of submissions. No gems, good or bad, really. Mostly everyone was just pretty mediocre. Or maybe I'm just too tired to appreciate their genius.
No, I think they were just pretty mediocre.
Anyway, the Rejectionist has had another uncontest: december resolutions! Going off my friend, the Narrative Addict's rules for the various Lents he declares when he feels fat, I have chosen a few reasonable and a few completely unattainable goals.
Attainable: write! 500 words a day. Of anything. Actually I haven't been doing that well with this but I'm giving myself a tiny bit of leeway because I DID spend 6 hours working on my creative writing project and it just feels like that counts.
Unattainable: Buy and keep a hat for longer than a week (I lost the one I bought last Wednesday last Friday.)
Attainable: When my knees hurt too much for me to participate in Social Activities, I will stop sulking and view it as an opportunity to do laundry, read in bed, or go to sleep early.
Unattainable: Spend less money on caffeine.
Attainable: No shame December! (Narrative Addict and I figure it's...good for us.)
In other news: I am frustrated as hell with writing right now. I stayed up most of the night not getting anything done, which was really not the best plan. I should've sent myself to bed before I got too worked up about the whole thing because now I'm running off 2 hours of sleep and am even less rational than usual. Plus, the less I sleep the longer it takes my joints to warm up and work like normal joints.
What else, what else. Two more weeks of school (yeah, we get off on the 23rd. It's a little absurd.) and then like 10 days of break and then I go to Mexico. I am exhausted.
I am reading a lot though, outside of school. It's just sort of what I do instead of procrastinating too heavily on the internet. It's still procrastinating but it's procrastinating in the spirit of Project Well-Read. Currently reading Lamb by Christopher Moore which is HILARIOUS and a really good choice after all my pretty dense/intense reading of the past few months.
I have nothing else to say. Just did an hour of submissions. No gems, good or bad, really. Mostly everyone was just pretty mediocre. Or maybe I'm just too tired to appreciate their genius.
No, I think they were just pretty mediocre.
Saturday, November 13, 2010
Just closing my eyes and thinking of next semester
Registered for classes last week and it's going to be fantastic. I'm still taking max number of credits but in four classes instead of five, like I usually do. Also, all my classes are in the morning again. I love morning classes and free-ish afternoons, it's how I a) do my best work and b) do any of my work. Next semester will probably be more homework per class (I may have mentioned 50% of my time is devoted to four of my classes put together this semester, the other 50% is devoted to creative writing. What time that leaves for my 4 jobs don't ask me), but it will be classes I LIKE instead of classes I am trudging through (except Chaucer - I like Chaucer!)
I am taking (if you were curious): 18th century british literature and the rise of print culture (AHHHHHH AHHHHH DORKING OUT AHHHH), Spanish lit (oh, I'm going to Mexico for winter term for to re-learn the Spanish so I can take Spanish lit), fiction workshop for creative writing, and then an intro biology course that I want to take so I can take Evolution next semester.
I will also continue as a writing associate for English (probably for the same course I'm doing now, but that is a different story/rant; the course is having trouble because it's a new course and I am oddly invested in making it work), and believe I'll also be TA-ing for intro creative writing. Woo! More jobs!
I just got my blood pressure medication today. Will take it tomorrow and see how it goes. It's parents' weekend! My mom and dad and dog are here. It's fantastic. Oona (the dog) has made so many friends. So have my parents.
I am taking (if you were curious): 18th century british literature and the rise of print culture (AHHHHHH AHHHHH DORKING OUT AHHHH), Spanish lit (oh, I'm going to Mexico for winter term for to re-learn the Spanish so I can take Spanish lit), fiction workshop for creative writing, and then an intro biology course that I want to take so I can take Evolution next semester.
I will also continue as a writing associate for English (probably for the same course I'm doing now, but that is a different story/rant; the course is having trouble because it's a new course and I am oddly invested in making it work), and believe I'll also be TA-ing for intro creative writing. Woo! More jobs!
I just got my blood pressure medication today. Will take it tomorrow and see how it goes. It's parents' weekend! My mom and dad and dog are here. It's fantastic. Oona (the dog) has made so many friends. So have my parents.
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
This semester's givin' me a heart attack
Okay I actually find it surprisingly difficult to make myself update this blog when things are actually happening health-wise. Which is, I guess, mildly ironic/irrational/wrong since the whole point of this is "hey look I'm immunointeresting and here's how it affects me and here's how it does not affect me because I am functioning in the following ways."
But anyway.
For the past eleven years I have had low blood pressure. Insanely predictable, constant, low blood pressure. I think we decided that "low" is my "normal"...any time by blood pressure comes up average they ask if I am stressed or in pain. Right now, though, my blood pressure is inexplicably high, coinciding with a sudden dip in kidney function, as I found out on Monday.
Dealing with this in the following ways:
-getting on blood pressure medication, less because we think my heart is going to explode and more because it should lessen the pressure in my kidneys and maybe make them function more
-trying to...what's the phrase? Calm the fuck down. Right.
-crying occasionally.
-figuring out how to ask my parents to help me pay for aforementioned new med without worrying them. Made more difficult by the fact that I am perhaps overly worried.
-continuing to do this semester. Taking a break right now to sleep and do laundry since I don't have anything major due tomorrow, then moving on.
Urgh is, I think, the word that best describes this moment.
But anyway.
For the past eleven years I have had low blood pressure. Insanely predictable, constant, low blood pressure. I think we decided that "low" is my "normal"...any time by blood pressure comes up average they ask if I am stressed or in pain. Right now, though, my blood pressure is inexplicably high, coinciding with a sudden dip in kidney function, as I found out on Monday.
Dealing with this in the following ways:
-getting on blood pressure medication, less because we think my heart is going to explode and more because it should lessen the pressure in my kidneys and maybe make them function more
-trying to...what's the phrase? Calm the fuck down. Right.
-crying occasionally.
-figuring out how to ask my parents to help me pay for aforementioned new med without worrying them. Made more difficult by the fact that I am perhaps overly worried.
-continuing to do this semester. Taking a break right now to sleep and do laundry since I don't have anything major due tomorrow, then moving on.
Urgh is, I think, the word that best describes this moment.
Sunday, October 17, 2010
So I do this sport
A "rugged adventure recreational sport activity." I did not make that up; that is the phrasing the waivers for my college's dressage team chose. Yes, yes, I do dressage, which, for those potential readers who are not my close coerced friends, is a form of horseback riding.
I started riding when I was about ten because my mom read something about a woman with terrible arthritis who, after riding for a few years, had notable improvement in her finger joints. Riding is (theoretically) a low impact sport, which is basically why I can do it.
Low impact ^^^
^^^High impact
(wow I started writing this post like 9 days ago, what the fuck was I going to say about horses? Horses. Horses?)
Going off of my confusion, the reason I started writing this was a) oh hey I've never talked about the fact that I ride the quadrupeds and b) I had just gotten back from a horse show that had tried to screw me over for midterms via Fatigue.
Actually, on a sad note, I am "sitting in that middle spot" as my coach says, in that I place 7th practically every show. She wondered if it was because of nerves or because I am just wiped out by the time I ride (coaches, of course, have always known that I am immunointeresting). Then she suggested that the team start leaving me in the hotel till lunch. Which, on the one hand, sleep! on the other hand, sad-face.
I told my doctor about the fairly epic fatigue today. (Oh, this is the part where I ingeniously pretend like this whole post was going to be about my doctor's appointment today instead of about a horse show 9 days ago. Which...yeah.) She was pretty unimpressed with all my symptoms, from my lingering cough (seriously, my lungs are just spazzing at this point) to my swollen lymph nodes to my off-track knees (her words, not mine.)
My lymph nodes, you may remember, have been swollen for six months now. Just two of them, one on the left side of my neck farther back than you would expect, one just next to my trachea on the right side (you needed those details). There used to be more of them, so it's good that it's down to two, and they haven't grown (if anything, they've shrunk) so that is also good but they were still worrying me. My doctor said, and I quote, "What do we worry about with lymph nodes? Lymphoma! But if they're not getting bigger and they're isolated in your neck, it's very unlikely. Have you ever had unprotected sex? Then you probably do not have HIV. You know what? I'm not going to give you another disease."
Yes, friends. "I'm not going to give you another disease."
Then she got really excited when she remembered I had mono six months ago, even though student health was still not completely sure that I did. I don't actually know what happened, but it was finals and I was having boy problems and it was hot and my head hurt and I stopped listening to them. Stupid student health.
So it appears I'm doing well-ish. Doctor also unimpressed with birth control side effects so we guess those are not a big deal. Doctor appeared to be on some sort of drug because she usually is not as pleased with my existence as she was today. Actually, she doesn't like me that much. I took myself off of Plaquenil. (psst, little known fact: doctors don't like it when you take yourself off their drugs.) In my defense, people could tell on days when I hadn't taken my meds: "Did you take your meds today?" "No, why?" "You seem happy." That's how bad that drug was for me.
Okay, that is all for today. I apologize to all, you know, seven of you for not updating ever, I am just very tired/busy/tired/stressed/busy/tired lately. I'm on fall break right now but catching up on sleep takes a lot of work. Plus my friend introduced me to and got me hooked on Dexter and that is seriously cutting into my sleep time because GOODNESS CREEPY.
I started riding when I was about ten because my mom read something about a woman with terrible arthritis who, after riding for a few years, had notable improvement in her finger joints. Riding is (theoretically) a low impact sport, which is basically why I can do it.
Low impact ^^^
^^^High impact
(wow I started writing this post like 9 days ago, what the fuck was I going to say about horses? Horses. Horses?)
Going off of my confusion, the reason I started writing this was a) oh hey I've never talked about the fact that I ride the quadrupeds and b) I had just gotten back from a horse show that had tried to screw me over for midterms via Fatigue.
Actually, on a sad note, I am "sitting in that middle spot" as my coach says, in that I place 7th practically every show. She wondered if it was because of nerves or because I am just wiped out by the time I ride (coaches, of course, have always known that I am immunointeresting). Then she suggested that the team start leaving me in the hotel till lunch. Which, on the one hand, sleep! on the other hand, sad-face.
I told my doctor about the fairly epic fatigue today. (Oh, this is the part where I ingeniously pretend like this whole post was going to be about my doctor's appointment today instead of about a horse show 9 days ago. Which...yeah.) She was pretty unimpressed with all my symptoms, from my lingering cough (seriously, my lungs are just spazzing at this point) to my swollen lymph nodes to my off-track knees (her words, not mine.)
My lymph nodes, you may remember, have been swollen for six months now. Just two of them, one on the left side of my neck farther back than you would expect, one just next to my trachea on the right side (you needed those details). There used to be more of them, so it's good that it's down to two, and they haven't grown (if anything, they've shrunk) so that is also good but they were still worrying me. My doctor said, and I quote, "What do we worry about with lymph nodes? Lymphoma! But if they're not getting bigger and they're isolated in your neck, it's very unlikely. Have you ever had unprotected sex? Then you probably do not have HIV. You know what? I'm not going to give you another disease."
Yes, friends. "I'm not going to give you another disease."
Then she got really excited when she remembered I had mono six months ago, even though student health was still not completely sure that I did. I don't actually know what happened, but it was finals and I was having boy problems and it was hot and my head hurt and I stopped listening to them. Stupid student health.
So it appears I'm doing well-ish. Doctor also unimpressed with birth control side effects so we guess those are not a big deal. Doctor appeared to be on some sort of drug because she usually is not as pleased with my existence as she was today. Actually, she doesn't like me that much. I took myself off of Plaquenil. (psst, little known fact: doctors don't like it when you take yourself off their drugs.) In my defense, people could tell on days when I hadn't taken my meds: "Did you take your meds today?" "No, why?" "You seem happy." That's how bad that drug was for me.
Okay, that is all for today. I apologize to all, you know, seven of you for not updating ever, I am just very tired/busy/tired/stressed/busy/tired lately. I'm on fall break right now but catching up on sleep takes a lot of work. Plus my friend introduced me to and got me hooked on Dexter and that is seriously cutting into my sleep time because GOODNESS CREEPY.
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Children with Disabilities, in your writing
It is no longer cool, folks, to describe a seemingly normal child and then do a sudden "zoom out" and see that he's actually in a wheelchair. That does not make you sound like you accept/are spreading awareness...it really just sounds like you're going for a cheap twist.
(The most recent submission I got of this sort was terrible in other ways too. Fascinating word choices. For instance, this child did now "say," he "uttered." But it did make me think about why, exactly, that kind of plot line fundamentally bugs me.)
What is "in," any dear aspiring child-lit authors, is putting the handicap out there straight away (the manifestation of it, at least, e.g., the wheelchair)and then telling a story that ranges beyond that part of your characters life. What the twist at the end does is make you think you are reading about a child's life only to have it reduced in a second to OH HEY AND HE IS IN A WHEELCHAIR.
Also, be careful when you're folding paper. No first reader likes to have to untangle her submissions before reading them. And don't say "I look forward to hearing your favorable response" in your cover letter. That makes me really not want to give you a favorable response. Soon I will talk about cover letters. Since we have some problems with those.
Alright, that is all for tonight, sorry for my (now usual) lack of vibrancy. I have just enough energy to (barely) get my schoolwork and paid-work done and then I'm pretty much done.
(The most recent submission I got of this sort was terrible in other ways too. Fascinating word choices. For instance, this child did now "say," he "uttered." But it did make me think about why, exactly, that kind of plot line fundamentally bugs me.)
What is "in," any dear aspiring child-lit authors, is putting the handicap out there straight away (the manifestation of it, at least, e.g., the wheelchair)and then telling a story that ranges beyond that part of your characters life. What the twist at the end does is make you think you are reading about a child's life only to have it reduced in a second to OH HEY AND HE IS IN A WHEELCHAIR.
Also, be careful when you're folding paper. No first reader likes to have to untangle her submissions before reading them. And don't say "I look forward to hearing your favorable response" in your cover letter. That makes me really not want to give you a favorable response. Soon I will talk about cover letters. Since we have some problems with those.
Alright, that is all for tonight, sorry for my (now usual) lack of vibrancy. I have just enough energy to (barely) get my schoolwork and paid-work done and then I'm pretty much done.
Sunday, October 10, 2010
Insomnia
You know how it goes. You went to bed an hour ago and you are still awake only now you are panicked because you can't sleep so if you were restless before you are restless as fuck now.
I forced myself to go to bed an hour ago because my sinuses were shouting at me. I have a LOT of work I need to be doing but I reasoned with my anxiety by telling it that I will be more productive when I am less sick, but this whole not-being-able-to-sleep thing makes that a LOT harder to accept, because now I see tomorrow as a sleepy-sick-overworked day.
Dammit.
It really doesn't take much to piss my sinuses off. They get infected in an alarming number of my colds. Hopefully this is just a headache (or, you know, an entire face-ache) but I really, really, really need to be either sleeping or working. Sleeping, because I am so fuzzy-brained right now. I should have foreseen this and taken nyquil but now it is too late for that.
This is not as coherent as I'd like it to be. I am mostly just jabbering in an attempt to wear myself out so that when I try and sleep again I will succeed.
I forced myself to go to bed an hour ago because my sinuses were shouting at me. I have a LOT of work I need to be doing but I reasoned with my anxiety by telling it that I will be more productive when I am less sick, but this whole not-being-able-to-sleep thing makes that a LOT harder to accept, because now I see tomorrow as a sleepy-sick-overworked day.
Dammit.
It really doesn't take much to piss my sinuses off. They get infected in an alarming number of my colds. Hopefully this is just a headache (or, you know, an entire face-ache) but I really, really, really need to be either sleeping or working. Sleeping, because I am so fuzzy-brained right now. I should have foreseen this and taken nyquil but now it is too late for that.
This is not as coherent as I'd like it to be. I am mostly just jabbering in an attempt to wear myself out so that when I try and sleep again I will succeed.
Monday, October 4, 2010
A few more tips you didn't need
Please keep in mind, dear readers, that I am not an expert in the field of publishing. I am not even a professional in that field. But, chances are, if you are submitting to a kid's literary magazine your first reader will be kind of me-like in experience. I finished my first box of submissions fairly recently, so here are 3 tips for healthy submitting.
1. We don't care about Pooky. We do not care that Pooky is a real cat who sits by a real window and we wish you would not tell us these things in your cover letter because it kind of creeps us out. Furthermore, Pooky may see really fun, educational things out the window, but "Only Pooky knows what Pooky sees in the dark, dark night" is a BAD WAY to end a poem. A bad way.
To be on the safe side, do not write us about your cat. Cats are kind of inherently creepy.
2. No, we have never had a "grumpy bumpy day" but we are sorry that your main character is having one. You probably don't need to start off your cover letter addressing someone you know to be vaguely adult-like with "have you ever had a grumpy bumpy day?" - we really don't react well to that line of questioning. It makes us, if you will, grumpy-bumpy.
3. If you need to use a letter template on microsoft word, be sure to delete where it says "(your signature here)" BEFORE printing. It's just that I laughed at you a lot.
Okay that's all for now folks, I'm gonna do that whole sleep thing (slept through class this morning. I never do that. Must be really, really tired).
1. We don't care about Pooky. We do not care that Pooky is a real cat who sits by a real window and we wish you would not tell us these things in your cover letter because it kind of creeps us out. Furthermore, Pooky may see really fun, educational things out the window, but "Only Pooky knows what Pooky sees in the dark, dark night" is a BAD WAY to end a poem. A bad way.
To be on the safe side, do not write us about your cat. Cats are kind of inherently creepy.
2. No, we have never had a "grumpy bumpy day" but we are sorry that your main character is having one. You probably don't need to start off your cover letter addressing someone you know to be vaguely adult-like with "have you ever had a grumpy bumpy day?" - we really don't react well to that line of questioning. It makes us, if you will, grumpy-bumpy.
3. If you need to use a letter template on microsoft word, be sure to delete where it says "(your signature here)" BEFORE printing. It's just that I laughed at you a lot.
Okay that's all for now folks, I'm gonna do that whole sleep thing (slept through class this morning. I never do that. Must be really, really tired).
Monday, September 27, 2010
...and then you ran through traffic and came out unscathed. 'Cause you're auto-immune!
Hur, hur, hur. My friend made that joke the other day and I decided it was the best thing ever. Now I tell it to everyone.
I recognize that I am utter fail at updating this blog now that school's gotten underway. It's not actually that I don't have thirty minutes to type things up, it is more that I have trouble finding brain power with which I can make coherent sentences. Regardless, the people who follow this blog probably have, you know, lives, so I'm not apologizing too heartily.
Anyway, things! I did the Cleveland lupus walk on Saturday which was a psychologically confusing experience. While I'm fairly open now about the fact that I HAVE lupus (I mean, I tell people, when appropriate circumstances arise, with the exception of employers and professors, who I only tell when absolutely necessary) but I am not over the roof about open displays of lupieness which has not ALL that much to do with the disease itself...I generally don't like branding myself too heartily or allying myself publicly with things.
But I got this hoodie. Oh my goodness, this hoodie. It is mortifyingly green (matches my sheets perfectly! I've already lost it three times on my bed.)and says "walk for lupus now" on one side. I got it for raising more than $100 in donations but it is just too comfortable not to wear, even though I feel really REALLY weird about wearing it.
I also got a hat. Actually, it was kind of funny because when I first got there i thought "this is so weird, you cannot tell AT ALL who here is a patient and who is supporting/family/friend/etc. There is just practically no way to tell." But then I went to get my hoodie and they looked at their list and back up at me and said "Oh, you're a patient? You get a hat. Go get your hat." At first I thought it was a pity hat but no! It was a "THESE ARE THE LUPIES" hat.
Actually it was probably neither. Or both. I just amused myself with this concept for a while.
Regardless, in a painful irony, walking 5k busted up my left leg so I am Le Hobbler now. It's so odd, my foot where i had surgery is going batshit but I can't walk on the side of my foot to avoid my toe because then my knee cracks, and my hip is just...don't even talk to me about my hip. Stupid leg. Luckily no matter how slowly I cross the street I'll never get hit! Because I'm auto......
Okay. I'm done.
Next time: Submissions from hell, including Pooky the cat.
I recognize that I am utter fail at updating this blog now that school's gotten underway. It's not actually that I don't have thirty minutes to type things up, it is more that I have trouble finding brain power with which I can make coherent sentences. Regardless, the people who follow this blog probably have, you know, lives, so I'm not apologizing too heartily.
Anyway, things! I did the Cleveland lupus walk on Saturday which was a psychologically confusing experience. While I'm fairly open now about the fact that I HAVE lupus (I mean, I tell people, when appropriate circumstances arise, with the exception of employers and professors, who I only tell when absolutely necessary) but I am not over the roof about open displays of lupieness which has not ALL that much to do with the disease itself...I generally don't like branding myself too heartily or allying myself publicly with things.
But I got this hoodie. Oh my goodness, this hoodie. It is mortifyingly green (matches my sheets perfectly! I've already lost it three times on my bed.)and says "walk for lupus now" on one side. I got it for raising more than $100 in donations but it is just too comfortable not to wear, even though I feel really REALLY weird about wearing it.
I also got a hat. Actually, it was kind of funny because when I first got there i thought "this is so weird, you cannot tell AT ALL who here is a patient and who is supporting/family/friend/etc. There is just practically no way to tell." But then I went to get my hoodie and they looked at their list and back up at me and said "Oh, you're a patient? You get a hat. Go get your hat." At first I thought it was a pity hat but no! It was a "THESE ARE THE LUPIES" hat.
Actually it was probably neither. Or both. I just amused myself with this concept for a while.
Regardless, in a painful irony, walking 5k busted up my left leg so I am Le Hobbler now. It's so odd, my foot where i had surgery is going batshit but I can't walk on the side of my foot to avoid my toe because then my knee cracks, and my hip is just...don't even talk to me about my hip. Stupid leg. Luckily no matter how slowly I cross the street I'll never get hit! Because I'm auto......
Okay. I'm done.
Next time: Submissions from hell, including Pooky the cat.
Friday, September 10, 2010
Why being ill is incompatible with my life
Dear friends, I have somehow managed to acquire 5 jobs. Prior to Thursday, I only had two. Three. But, in a piece of exciting news, remember how this whole blog started out with fun stories about crazy submissions and nutty intern-moments? Well, the place I interned for has offered me a job as a first reader! (see here if you forgot how the process works) It pays more dollars per hour than my sandwich/smoothie/coffee making job on campus but it is probably fewer hours a week, so I am keeping my menial labor. Especially since, in menial-labor-land, i was just promoted to student manager. Also, I like making smoothies, okay?? It's not that hard to keep me entertained.
So that's three jobs (sandwich/smoothie, coffee shop, first reader), and I am a writing associate for an English class this semester (one I took and was terrible at, so this should be interesting), and then my internship emailed me again and was like oh yeah and do you also want to write up reader reports for one of our magazines?
And I was like yes. Yes I do.
This is actually so exciting, folks, even though I do not think I want to be in publishing forever, I have some sort of nifty "in" with this small part of the publishing world because they liiiiiiked me! So be liked at your internships, I guess is what I'm saying, and you, too, can overwhelm yourself with too many jobs.
So basically, I know that I'm going to get swamped and overwhelmed, but the best thing for me is to keep as busy as I want to keep and work on organizing my time ridiculously well. I don't accept my own disease as a legitimate excuse not to do the things I am doing. Mostly this is because I can't tell when I'm actually too tired/sick/sore or when I am just unmotivated. And when I am unmotivated, is it legit BECAUSE I'm tired/sick/sore? I dunno. You would think I'd know since I've had this crazy disease for eleven years but no, I don't. Oh well!
Hokay that's all for now. I am not good at updating this and existing at the same time, but shall continue to do my best!
So that's three jobs (sandwich/smoothie, coffee shop, first reader), and I am a writing associate for an English class this semester (one I took and was terrible at, so this should be interesting), and then my internship emailed me again and was like oh yeah and do you also want to write up reader reports for one of our magazines?
And I was like yes. Yes I do.
This is actually so exciting, folks, even though I do not think I want to be in publishing forever, I have some sort of nifty "in" with this small part of the publishing world because they liiiiiiked me! So be liked at your internships, I guess is what I'm saying, and you, too, can overwhelm yourself with too many jobs.
So basically, I know that I'm going to get swamped and overwhelmed, but the best thing for me is to keep as busy as I want to keep and work on organizing my time ridiculously well. I don't accept my own disease as a legitimate excuse not to do the things I am doing. Mostly this is because I can't tell when I'm actually too tired/sick/sore or when I am just unmotivated. And when I am unmotivated, is it legit BECAUSE I'm tired/sick/sore? I dunno. You would think I'd know since I've had this crazy disease for eleven years but no, I don't. Oh well!
Hokay that's all for now. I am not good at updating this and existing at the same time, but shall continue to do my best!
Thursday, September 9, 2010
Insecurity
I've definitely been meaning to do this one for a while, because everyone knows that it's hard to feel good about yourself if you don't feel good in general. So how do you gain confidence while living with a chronic illness? Or is that even possible?
My insecurities started really early with my prednisone face. I am still surprised sometimes when I see pictures of myself and my face ISN'T round, because I have thoroughly ingrained the idea of myself as "chubby-cheeked." And when you are insecure about your face, everything else goes downhill.
The next thing I got insecure about was my hair which, in my recollection, got gross pretty shortly after I was diagnosed, but that also corresponded with puberty (I know, the timing was just fantastic, wasn't it?) so that was probably to blame more than the lupus. Regardless, I had thick, long, wavy hair until about fifth grade when it frizzed out, yo. And thick, frizzy, unmanageable hair SUCKS when you are entering middle school and suddenly all the "mature" girls have really luscious locks. More than my face, I have always managed to associate good hair with maturity (because I never knew how to handle my hair and somehow I figured that was just a lack of maturity on my part? What?) and therefore often feel inferior to everyone around me.
And of course, I feel heavy all the time, and that leads to my wearing baggy clothes even though I KNOW I am pretty small.
All of this stems from, I think, the fact that I am hyper-aware of my body almost all the time. My body isn't particularly convenient for me; I often feel I am lugging it around. It pulls me down even when my brain is alert and wanting to be productive, and I cannot ignore it because it forces itself on me through various discomforts and pains. I feel heavy because I am stiff and it takes more effort than it should to move, as though I am carrying a bigger weight than I really am.
Okay so how can we handle these physical anxieties? Since we want to go out and feel good about ourselves and seduce people with our wits, charms, and beauties, how can we ignore the fact that everything we are feeling points to "gross"?
One of my friends has told me multiple times "the days when you feel the fattest are when you should dress the sluttiest." Taking the spirit of the comment, I have been working on getting rid of my middle/high school wardrobe: I've scaled my tee shirt size down a little, then too much, then up again so that I am comfortable but also do not look like I am wearing a sack. This has the added benefit of making me appear as though I am comfortable with myself, even when I am not.
I started dying my hair in 10th grade, and that has helped my self-esteem a lot, because there's something I have some measure of control over. I also found a hairdresser who can thin my hair out a lot without making it look stringy.
And for my face, I leave it alone. I don't wear make-up because that's just another thing attracting my own attention to my own face, which is never a good plan. I think it all comes down to tricking myself.
This feels like a very superficial blog post but I think that in a world where we are ALL insecure and we ALL feel fat and we're ALL always having bad hair days, it can help to break down a little the reasons why because that is the best way (for me?) to try and counteract it. Anyway, whatever we say when we're feeling high and mighty, we all want to look nice, at least to ourselves.
My insecurities started really early with my prednisone face. I am still surprised sometimes when I see pictures of myself and my face ISN'T round, because I have thoroughly ingrained the idea of myself as "chubby-cheeked." And when you are insecure about your face, everything else goes downhill.
The next thing I got insecure about was my hair which, in my recollection, got gross pretty shortly after I was diagnosed, but that also corresponded with puberty (I know, the timing was just fantastic, wasn't it?) so that was probably to blame more than the lupus. Regardless, I had thick, long, wavy hair until about fifth grade when it frizzed out, yo. And thick, frizzy, unmanageable hair SUCKS when you are entering middle school and suddenly all the "mature" girls have really luscious locks. More than my face, I have always managed to associate good hair with maturity (because I never knew how to handle my hair and somehow I figured that was just a lack of maturity on my part? What?) and therefore often feel inferior to everyone around me.
And of course, I feel heavy all the time, and that leads to my wearing baggy clothes even though I KNOW I am pretty small.
All of this stems from, I think, the fact that I am hyper-aware of my body almost all the time. My body isn't particularly convenient for me; I often feel I am lugging it around. It pulls me down even when my brain is alert and wanting to be productive, and I cannot ignore it because it forces itself on me through various discomforts and pains. I feel heavy because I am stiff and it takes more effort than it should to move, as though I am carrying a bigger weight than I really am.
Okay so how can we handle these physical anxieties? Since we want to go out and feel good about ourselves and seduce people with our wits, charms, and beauties, how can we ignore the fact that everything we are feeling points to "gross"?
One of my friends has told me multiple times "the days when you feel the fattest are when you should dress the sluttiest." Taking the spirit of the comment, I have been working on getting rid of my middle/high school wardrobe: I've scaled my tee shirt size down a little, then too much, then up again so that I am comfortable but also do not look like I am wearing a sack. This has the added benefit of making me appear as though I am comfortable with myself, even when I am not.
I started dying my hair in 10th grade, and that has helped my self-esteem a lot, because there's something I have some measure of control over. I also found a hairdresser who can thin my hair out a lot without making it look stringy.
And for my face, I leave it alone. I don't wear make-up because that's just another thing attracting my own attention to my own face, which is never a good plan. I think it all comes down to tricking myself.
This feels like a very superficial blog post but I think that in a world where we are ALL insecure and we ALL feel fat and we're ALL always having bad hair days, it can help to break down a little the reasons why because that is the best way (for me?) to try and counteract it. Anyway, whatever we say when we're feeling high and mighty, we all want to look nice, at least to ourselves.
Sunday, September 5, 2010
Oh hi there!
I am done bouncing around the country (Chicago-Ohio-Maryland-Ohio-Michigan-Chicago-Michigan-Ohio-Michigan-Ohio, yes, I'm dizzy too.) which means I finally have a mildly consistent internet connection and a computer free of viruses! (McGillicudy was ill. Now he is totally blank.
I got back to school today, moved all my stuff in and almost unpacked it all too, because I am mostly pretty awesome. My room is finally a good size for me (tiny! the perfect amount of tiny. My old big room felt like a chasm of loneliness.) I am trying to keep my stress level down, though being suddenly bombarded with people after a pretty much solitary summer has been a little unnerving. I got extra anxious in the dining hall, which was odd for me because I don't LIKE crowds but I am usually not particularly claustrophobic (hi. tiny room.)
I actually have things to write about, but I'm too tired to do it right now, and tired is making me a little uncomfortable both physically and emotionally so I am not in the best place to start jabbering about my health(the trick is, if I'm in a place where my life looks more humorous than depressing, I'm good to write)so I promise now that I'm at school I'll update, you know, now and then. I say, having totally overbooked myself for the semester. Fare well for now!
I got back to school today, moved all my stuff in and almost unpacked it all too, because I am mostly pretty awesome. My room is finally a good size for me (tiny! the perfect amount of tiny. My old big room felt like a chasm of loneliness.) I am trying to keep my stress level down, though being suddenly bombarded with people after a pretty much solitary summer has been a little unnerving. I got extra anxious in the dining hall, which was odd for me because I don't LIKE crowds but I am usually not particularly claustrophobic (hi. tiny room.)
I actually have things to write about, but I'm too tired to do it right now, and tired is making me a little uncomfortable both physically and emotionally so I am not in the best place to start jabbering about my health(the trick is, if I'm in a place where my life looks more humorous than depressing, I'm good to write)so I promise now that I'm at school I'll update, you know, now and then. I say, having totally overbooked myself for the semester. Fare well for now!
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Da Walk
Well, I've finally found one. A walk for lupus. See, they exist! And raise...less than $10,000. I actually would really like to do it, if only for the potential hoodie, but I am extremely hesitant to ask for donations or bring anyone along with me.
WHY, HANNAH, WHY?!
Because I haaaaate asking for things from people who know me? Or because I hate being lupusy around people who know me? Or perhaps I just have a problem with people who know me? Sad but true: the thought crossed my mind "I could just donate a bunch of money and pretend like it's from multiple people."
...
I actually declare this to be too stupid a psychology for me to bother thinking farther into. Bigger point: should you be interested, people-who-are-not-around-me, you can find a walk near you here. $50 donation gets you a tee shirt. $100 gets you a hoodie. Hooray!
WHY, HANNAH, WHY?!
Because I haaaaate asking for things from people who know me? Or because I hate being lupusy around people who know me? Or perhaps I just have a problem with people who know me? Sad but true: the thought crossed my mind "I could just donate a bunch of money and pretend like it's from multiple people."
...
I actually declare this to be too stupid a psychology for me to bother thinking farther into. Bigger point: should you be interested, people-who-are-not-around-me, you can find a walk near you here. $50 donation gets you a tee shirt. $100 gets you a hoodie. Hooray!
Monday, August 23, 2010
The books, we reads them
HELLO HI HEY I AM HOME and it is disgusting because my father is in India and apparently with resident neat freak gone everyone's become disgusting. I have taken up the post of Temporary Neat Freak, i.e., she who does the week's worth of dishes left in the sink and getting smelly. I had thoughts, dreams, hopes, for this bloggy post but in the end I am sleepy and lazy and the house is gross.
A while ago, the Rejectionist (I link that an awful lot, if y'all aren't following yet you should be) said something along the lines of "write me guest posts about if you are a minority/woman/disabled person, what do you read and what bugs the shit out of you?" (paraphrase.) I submitted and was rejected (star-struckedly, if that is a word. I was star-struckedly rejected. In that I was star-struck at recieving an actual return email even if it said no). In addition to "no", the return email and also R. on her blog said something along the lines of (again, paraphrase) "blahhh only five chosen, so many recieved, go post on your own blogz plz" and also something along the lines of me being "really great." Oh, wait.
Regardless, I give you The Post I Wrote While At My Internship, three words per 5 minutes because I felt guilty not doing actual work. Very little revising happened between then and now, because that would require effort and there is laundry to be done and piles to be made and sleep to be had!
---
Hello, friends! I almost chickened out of writing this little nubbin of a piece because, as I sat in the car with a screaming cousin-once-removed, I thought to myself “Well, this is silly. The Rejectionist wants marginalized people, not random isolated person who feels totally separate even from the others in her situation.” And then I thought to myself “well that is an arrogant way to consider oneself, especially with all the energy you put into functioning like a normal person.” And then my head started to hurt because Cousin Smudge has quite a pair of lungs.
To remind you, I was diagnosed with lupus during my 9th summer Alive, and I do not think I need to explain that there is not much in the way of lupus advocacy unless you really look for it. (I mean, we cannot even decide if our Awareness Month is October or May. And then we are shocked when no one knows what lupus is.) Furthermore, I can find a handful of people my age who have the disease, but have never found anyone my age who’s had it this long. I haven’t, in other words, found anyone else whose childhood was both kind of normal and completely enveloped by terrible health. Lupus is usually treatable, but it can be completely debilitating or fatal. But I am so not here to tell you about all that. I do that enough here.
Only thing you really need to know about me: I didn’t tell anyone I was sick until I was 17. I mean, my peers. My parents and teachers knew. But talk about isolating yourself.
Inconveniently, the year of my diagnosis my class read a book about a kid with muscular dystrophy. Well, specifically, we read a book about a girl whose brother had muscular dystrophy. (I cannot for the life of me find this book, but I swear it exists.)
I started to get uncomfortable really quick.
For one thing, I became painfully aware that my disease, despite the swollen fingers and the years of chemotherapy and the no-end-in-sight, is really pretty un-epic. In fact, the phrase you’ll see snarkily referenced on pretty much any lupus site is, “but you don’t look sick!” …And we really often don’t.
Furthermore, little MD boy was pretty nice to his sister. Actually, he was full of hugs and smiles. I’m not full of hugs and smiles, I thought to myself. Not only am I healthier, luckier, and going to live longer than Fictional Character, but I am also a way worse sport. Fuck.
(I probably didn’t think “fuck” back then, but the sentiment has held pretty firmly.)
It’s true, all things considered, I am capable of appearing to have a good attitude. But this is more a matter of keeping my mouth shut, or of being embarrassed to speak up. And for many, many years I did not read very much at all. I read and re-read Lord of the Rings, the Harry Potter series, and Ella Enchanted over and over basically until my senior year of high school, apart from what I read in school and the occasional Other Interesting Thing. (Hrm, Ella Enchanted, huh. A young girl who looks totally normal but is cursed, can't remember ever not having her "disease" and self-isolates to avoid having to face her condition. Fascinating. Found one that makes sense!)
I think I discovered the pattern with Disabled-Character-Books early even though I really couldn’t put it into words until, like, now. Ill characters seem to be used in literature as props. I’ve found very few books where the main character the one with the illness and I think there are several reasons for this: 1. healthy authors are not willing to presume to know what being unhealthy feels like. (Also, the few things I HAVE found suck, so I think in general healthy authors are correct in shying away from it.) 2. sick people tend to not have particularly exciting lives and 3. blah blah blah it’s the family and friends who blah blah blah. (No, really, I believe that #3 is totally true and valid and shiny, but we’ve all heard it before)
(And here’s the part where I try really hard not to get beat up by a cancer survivor.)
With an “epic” disease – the sort I both envy and fear – I think that life gets sort of snatched away from the victim for however many years or months, but eventually there are one of two outcomes: survival or death. (And then after that – uh, survival, that is – there can be relapses that are incredibly tragic and no one ever gets over these things completely and I would never, ever EVER minimize that sort of suffering.) But in my little un-epic disease (and chronic pain, and fibromyalgia and diabetes and asthma and endometriosis etc.) there may never be those months and years of lifelessness. I went to school and I never got held back and I even participated (kinda) in gym and (some) extracurriculars. But this is while my immune system was tearing me apart and I was supposed to have not-so-many years left pre-kidney-failure. But this does not lend itself well to literature because how on earth do you balance something that is has both absolutely no place in your world AND affects everything you do? Did I mention my head hurts?
So I cannot read books like My Sister’s Keeper (didn’t even try)...and have in general avoided any cancer-esque anything (me and cancer, you may have noticed, have an interesting relationship. Rest assured, not all of my refusal to deal with the matter is due to bitterness that people care about cancer and not me. Most of it is due to utter terror that I'm going to get it any second because, in an almost hilariously painful irony, all the years of chemo I had? Yeah, it increased my risk for certain cancers by like five billion. Okay, exageration, yes.)
You know what I can and do read though, is psychologically...messed up?...main characters. That’s where you get the real story, the half-conscious self-isolation, the still-going-through-life-but-invisibly-different, all of that. Like, try Fun Home, Alison Bechdel's graphic memoir about the death of her father and her coming out as a lesbian, the former of which happened too-close-for-comfort after the latter. In fact, creative nonfiction memoirs (as opposed to celebrity memoirs. I'm talking the people you know BECAUSE OF their memoirs, not people whose memoirs you read because you know them) tend to be fantastic for me because writers are so often, oh, what's the phrase? Fucked up? Yes. Or I obviously mentioned Ella Enchanted. Sometimes I go hardcore into psychologically harsh novels, but that can be hard too because it's also important for me that my characters are functioning like I'd like to be, and sometimes if I sink into that deep depression in a novel no one's functioning anymore and it is at once frustrating and discouraging.
Seeing a hole in the market (observational genius that I am) I finally started writing about lupus when I was a senior in high school. I wrote a couple short stories and a long-ass novel (I mean, it wasn’t good, let’s not get ahead of ourselves) with lupie main characters. Then I wrote several personal essays in college. And then I thought to myself, hmm, this is strange. I want to try and get some distance on this. Maybe I’ll make a non-main-character ill instead, and see if I can get both sides of this. After all, I’ve had to live with myself more than anyone.
Friends, I fell into my own trap, and my lovely little lupie character became a prop like everyone else’s sickies. Only, because I am painfully aware, I have the opportunity to shred myself and make it better.
So I guess I can’t complain. Well, yes, I can. And I do. But when I come across these stories/books/obnoxious-pretentious conversations, I have to shrug a little and say ‘well, at least they’re trying.’ And then I wander into places like this where I try to yell loud enough for people to hear.
A while ago, the Rejectionist (I link that an awful lot, if y'all aren't following yet you should be) said something along the lines of "write me guest posts about if you are a minority/woman/disabled person, what do you read and what bugs the shit out of you?" (paraphrase.) I submitted and was rejected (star-struckedly, if that is a word. I was star-struckedly rejected. In that I was star-struck at recieving an actual return email even if it said no). In addition to "no", the return email and also R. on her blog said something along the lines of (again, paraphrase) "blahhh only five chosen, so many recieved, go post on your own blogz plz" and also something along the lines of me being "really great." Oh, wait.
Regardless, I give you The Post I Wrote While At My Internship, three words per 5 minutes because I felt guilty not doing actual work. Very little revising happened between then and now, because that would require effort and there is laundry to be done and piles to be made and sleep to be had!
---
Hello, friends! I almost chickened out of writing this little nubbin of a piece because, as I sat in the car with a screaming cousin-once-removed, I thought to myself “Well, this is silly. The Rejectionist wants marginalized people, not random isolated person who feels totally separate even from the others in her situation.” And then I thought to myself “well that is an arrogant way to consider oneself, especially with all the energy you put into functioning like a normal person.” And then my head started to hurt because Cousin Smudge has quite a pair of lungs.
To remind you, I was diagnosed with lupus during my 9th summer Alive, and I do not think I need to explain that there is not much in the way of lupus advocacy unless you really look for it. (I mean, we cannot even decide if our Awareness Month is October or May. And then we are shocked when no one knows what lupus is.) Furthermore, I can find a handful of people my age who have the disease, but have never found anyone my age who’s had it this long. I haven’t, in other words, found anyone else whose childhood was both kind of normal and completely enveloped by terrible health. Lupus is usually treatable, but it can be completely debilitating or fatal. But I am so not here to tell you about all that. I do that enough here.
Only thing you really need to know about me: I didn’t tell anyone I was sick until I was 17. I mean, my peers. My parents and teachers knew. But talk about isolating yourself.
Inconveniently, the year of my diagnosis my class read a book about a kid with muscular dystrophy. Well, specifically, we read a book about a girl whose brother had muscular dystrophy. (I cannot for the life of me find this book, but I swear it exists.)
I started to get uncomfortable really quick.
For one thing, I became painfully aware that my disease, despite the swollen fingers and the years of chemotherapy and the no-end-in-sight, is really pretty un-epic. In fact, the phrase you’ll see snarkily referenced on pretty much any lupus site is, “but you don’t look sick!” …And we really often don’t.
Furthermore, little MD boy was pretty nice to his sister. Actually, he was full of hugs and smiles. I’m not full of hugs and smiles, I thought to myself. Not only am I healthier, luckier, and going to live longer than Fictional Character, but I am also a way worse sport. Fuck.
(I probably didn’t think “fuck” back then, but the sentiment has held pretty firmly.)
It’s true, all things considered, I am capable of appearing to have a good attitude. But this is more a matter of keeping my mouth shut, or of being embarrassed to speak up. And for many, many years I did not read very much at all. I read and re-read Lord of the Rings, the Harry Potter series, and Ella Enchanted over and over basically until my senior year of high school, apart from what I read in school and the occasional Other Interesting Thing. (Hrm, Ella Enchanted, huh. A young girl who looks totally normal but is cursed, can't remember ever not having her "disease" and self-isolates to avoid having to face her condition. Fascinating. Found one that makes sense!)
I think I discovered the pattern with Disabled-Character-Books early even though I really couldn’t put it into words until, like, now. Ill characters seem to be used in literature as props. I’ve found very few books where the main character the one with the illness and I think there are several reasons for this: 1. healthy authors are not willing to presume to know what being unhealthy feels like. (Also, the few things I HAVE found suck, so I think in general healthy authors are correct in shying away from it.) 2. sick people tend to not have particularly exciting lives and 3. blah blah blah it’s the family and friends who blah blah blah. (No, really, I believe that #3 is totally true and valid and shiny, but we’ve all heard it before)
(And here’s the part where I try really hard not to get beat up by a cancer survivor.)
With an “epic” disease – the sort I both envy and fear – I think that life gets sort of snatched away from the victim for however many years or months, but eventually there are one of two outcomes: survival or death. (And then after that – uh, survival, that is – there can be relapses that are incredibly tragic and no one ever gets over these things completely and I would never, ever EVER minimize that sort of suffering.) But in my little un-epic disease (and chronic pain, and fibromyalgia and diabetes and asthma and endometriosis etc.) there may never be those months and years of lifelessness. I went to school and I never got held back and I even participated (kinda) in gym and (some) extracurriculars. But this is while my immune system was tearing me apart and I was supposed to have not-so-many years left pre-kidney-failure. But this does not lend itself well to literature because how on earth do you balance something that is has both absolutely no place in your world AND affects everything you do? Did I mention my head hurts?
So I cannot read books like My Sister’s Keeper (didn’t even try)...and have in general avoided any cancer-esque anything (me and cancer, you may have noticed, have an interesting relationship. Rest assured, not all of my refusal to deal with the matter is due to bitterness that people care about cancer and not me. Most of it is due to utter terror that I'm going to get it any second because, in an almost hilariously painful irony, all the years of chemo I had? Yeah, it increased my risk for certain cancers by like five billion. Okay, exageration, yes.)
You know what I can and do read though, is psychologically...messed up?...main characters. That’s where you get the real story, the half-conscious self-isolation, the still-going-through-life-but-invisibly-different, all of that. Like, try Fun Home, Alison Bechdel's graphic memoir about the death of her father and her coming out as a lesbian, the former of which happened too-close-for-comfort after the latter. In fact, creative nonfiction memoirs (as opposed to celebrity memoirs. I'm talking the people you know BECAUSE OF their memoirs, not people whose memoirs you read because you know them) tend to be fantastic for me because writers are so often, oh, what's the phrase? Fucked up? Yes. Or I obviously mentioned Ella Enchanted. Sometimes I go hardcore into psychologically harsh novels, but that can be hard too because it's also important for me that my characters are functioning like I'd like to be, and sometimes if I sink into that deep depression in a novel no one's functioning anymore and it is at once frustrating and discouraging.
Seeing a hole in the market (observational genius that I am) I finally started writing about lupus when I was a senior in high school. I wrote a couple short stories and a long-ass novel (I mean, it wasn’t good, let’s not get ahead of ourselves) with lupie main characters. Then I wrote several personal essays in college. And then I thought to myself, hmm, this is strange. I want to try and get some distance on this. Maybe I’ll make a non-main-character ill instead, and see if I can get both sides of this. After all, I’ve had to live with myself more than anyone.
Friends, I fell into my own trap, and my lovely little lupie character became a prop like everyone else’s sickies. Only, because I am painfully aware, I have the opportunity to shred myself and make it better.
So I guess I can’t complain. Well, yes, I can. And I do. But when I come across these stories/books/obnoxious-pretentious conversations, I have to shrug a little and say ‘well, at least they’re trying.’ And then I wander into places like this where I try to yell loud enough for people to hear.
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Lowly Intern no more
I dunno, man. I feel weird. I left work forever today with a 30 year anniversary book that the magazine made, a card signed by all the editors that says "BEST INTERN EVER" (thank you, thank you very much.) and three submissions with a post-it saying "A few of my favorite crazies to remember us by!" (They're pretty psychotic.)
I figure (now it is like 2 days later) I should give a little What I've Learned talk. What have I learned?
1. Canadians have fantastic envelopes. No, really, Canada, I commend you. Some of those envelopes are like butter. I want to keep them and touch them all the time. (That doesn't sound weird and slightly creepy, right?)
2. People who tape envelopes shut are unspeakably obnoxious
3. When interning, one's day consists almost entirely of envelope rants.
4. I am a workaholic. In that, I leave only after begging nonfiction editor if I can borrow the science book I've been working my way through, so that I can finish finding useable excerpts and email her a type-up of everything I have.
I actually do want to write more, but I am currently back on campus for a couple days being happy, if exhausted, and am running off to Maryland to cure my stir-craziness and see some friends who are running away to France next semester, and I can't think of what I meant this post to be about, except that I've been wanting to tell y'all about Canada's envelopes for, like, DAYS. Anyway, I promise I'll reflect more on my future career later.
Monday, August 9, 2010
Reactions
"I have lupus."
"Uh wha?"
"Long explanation of lupus."
Acceptable responses:
1) "Dude you are a wreck." (my personal preference)
2) (If you have the need to be sympathetic) "Aw I'm sorry. My aunt has that. It sucks."
Unacceptable responses:
1) "Oh my god. I am SO sorry. Oh man. But you're so young. That's just terrible. I'm so sorry. I mean, that's horrible - you're like, what, twenty? That's so unfair. Are you okay? It just sounds awful" with a teary look in your eyes.
While I do not want to speak for all lupies, I want to say for myself that I have plenty of guilt for worrying my family and friends and I really, really, REALLY do not need to feel as though I have just torn your heart apart. What's more, I have no way to react to that except to kind of smile, shrug, and say "oh it's fine, really." Yick.
One other thing: If you are, say, a dentist, and a lupie has just given you her medical history, and she happens to not be on meds, the best response is NOT "I'm sorry to hear you have lupus - but you've never exhibited any symptoms, right?" First of all, look at all the boxes I've checked for "things I have/have had" and second of all, whoa, way to cut me off at the knees.
Basically what I'm trying to say is that the dentist's office failed my reaction test. I had the practically-crying nurse (? the dentist equivelant of?) followed by the your-disease-is-just-a-concept-without-reality dentist.
"Uh wha?"
"Long explanation of lupus."
Acceptable responses:
1) "Dude you are a wreck." (my personal preference)
2) (If you have the need to be sympathetic) "Aw I'm sorry. My aunt has that. It sucks."
Unacceptable responses:
1) "Oh my god. I am SO sorry. Oh man. But you're so young. That's just terrible. I'm so sorry. I mean, that's horrible - you're like, what, twenty? That's so unfair. Are you okay? It just sounds awful" with a teary look in your eyes.
While I do not want to speak for all lupies, I want to say for myself that I have plenty of guilt for worrying my family and friends and I really, really, REALLY do not need to feel as though I have just torn your heart apart. What's more, I have no way to react to that except to kind of smile, shrug, and say "oh it's fine, really." Yick.
One other thing: If you are, say, a dentist, and a lupie has just given you her medical history, and she happens to not be on meds, the best response is NOT "I'm sorry to hear you have lupus - but you've never exhibited any symptoms, right?" First of all, look at all the boxes I've checked for "things I have/have had" and second of all, whoa, way to cut me off at the knees.
Basically what I'm trying to say is that the dentist's office failed my reaction test. I had the practically-crying nurse (? the dentist equivelant of?) followed by the your-disease-is-just-a-concept-without-reality dentist.
Sunday, August 8, 2010
Drug Profile: Prednisone
(Disclaimer: Am not a doctor, etc etc don't make choices off my nut-fucky opinions, etc. etc.)
I've been toying with the idea of throwing out some interesting tidbits on the lupus treatments out there, basically in the order that I went on them. Be aware, it's been 50+ years since a new drug was approved for lupus. (Though apparently CellCept is doing well in stage III trials? Been there, done that. CellCept, I mean.)
So I'm starting with prednisone, or solu-medrol (Solly!) when in IV form. You might've actually run into Solly before if you've had a bad case of poison ivy, or if you have asthma. It's a corticose steroid, and deals in reducing inflamation. And also your immune system. It's basically the #1 on the scene when you have a sudden, acute flare in lupus. Why? It's a quick-fix (you know, treat the symptoms so you can function like a person long enough to try and treat the underlying problem) and it's pretty safe! And by safe, I mean:
1. It puffs up your face, which is particularly hard on the self-esteem at this age, and so, as a special gift to Melanie, I give you Me at Age Twelve (I'm the one with the sphere face. Obvs.):
2. It kills and ramps up your appetite all at the same time. I would be constantly starving but once I found food it looked gross.
3. It tastes like Misery. At least when I was on it (has this changed?) the pills were all un-coated and there was just no way to avoid the taste except if I took it with orange juice instead of water
4. Oh, the restlessness! I would come home from treatments and just kick my legs on my bed all night long to try and get extra energy out. Also, fatigue. Huh??
5. Bone density goes down, so that if you, for example, break your toe in sixth grade, it can't heal itself and you end up with avascular necrosis that they don't realize till you're 18 and then you have to get surgery.
6. Risk of tiny micro-fractures in the hip and back so that your back hurts forever but when you try and do an MRI to find what the hell's wrong, you get distracted by the lemon-sized cyst on your ovary. I mean, what?
But what I'm sayin' is, if you're on it for a reasonable amount of time (read: not 6 years), the effects are short-term (#'s 5 and 6 being the long term risks, and you're really...really not supposed to be on it as long as I was). So that's what we're talkin' about as a starting point. Next time I'm feeling druggy: Plaquenil. The devil.
I've been toying with the idea of throwing out some interesting tidbits on the lupus treatments out there, basically in the order that I went on them. Be aware, it's been 50+ years since a new drug was approved for lupus. (Though apparently CellCept is doing well in stage III trials? Been there, done that. CellCept, I mean.)
So I'm starting with prednisone, or solu-medrol (Solly!) when in IV form. You might've actually run into Solly before if you've had a bad case of poison ivy, or if you have asthma. It's a corticose steroid, and deals in reducing inflamation. And also your immune system. It's basically the #1 on the scene when you have a sudden, acute flare in lupus. Why? It's a quick-fix (you know, treat the symptoms so you can function like a person long enough to try and treat the underlying problem) and it's pretty safe! And by safe, I mean:
1. It puffs up your face, which is particularly hard on the self-esteem at this age, and so, as a special gift to Melanie, I give you Me at Age Twelve (I'm the one with the sphere face. Obvs.):
2. It kills and ramps up your appetite all at the same time. I would be constantly starving but once I found food it looked gross.
3. It tastes like Misery. At least when I was on it (has this changed?) the pills were all un-coated and there was just no way to avoid the taste except if I took it with orange juice instead of water
4. Oh, the restlessness! I would come home from treatments and just kick my legs on my bed all night long to try and get extra energy out. Also, fatigue. Huh??
5. Bone density goes down, so that if you, for example, break your toe in sixth grade, it can't heal itself and you end up with avascular necrosis that they don't realize till you're 18 and then you have to get surgery.
6. Risk of tiny micro-fractures in the hip and back so that your back hurts forever but when you try and do an MRI to find what the hell's wrong, you get distracted by the lemon-sized cyst on your ovary. I mean, what?
But what I'm sayin' is, if you're on it for a reasonable amount of time (read: not 6 years), the effects are short-term (#'s 5 and 6 being the long term risks, and you're really...really not supposed to be on it as long as I was). So that's what we're talkin' about as a starting point. Next time I'm feeling druggy: Plaquenil. The devil.
Friday, August 6, 2010
Delicious Stretchers
(Note: I intended this to be a short, sweet, dirty post about ha ha how lecherous the 18th century is. It got a little longer than that because I got distracted by Interesting. Just remember: the fact that I'm a ridiculous dork is part of my charm.)
The title of this post is my new favorite 18th century euphemism for Really Big Penis.
Well, I promised something uplifting (snrk) and hilarious to wash away the depressing of the previous post. And what, I ask you, could be better than a quick discussion of 18th century porn literature?
I mentioned earlier that I'd tried and failed to read Moll Flanders (oh, Defoe, I know you tried) and succeeded in devouring the Marquis de Sade (Crimes of Love. Misfortunes of Virtue is, incidentally, on my bookshelf. Waiting.) You may know, too, that my favorite book in the entire world is Les Liaisons Dangereuses (in English translation, due to I do not know French, but still it is fantastic.) I am, in other words, the biggest dork for 18th century sex in the entire world. But really, I finally got to the one I've been looking forward to since I bought it over spring break: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure. Or, Fanny Hill, if we're feeling lazy.
My goodness, ladies and gentlemen. There are just delicious stretchers all over the damn place. Even Sade did not reach this level of "oh my!" and he was writing 50 years later. (tsk tsk, Marquis.)
What is actually kind of legitimately interesting about sex in 18th century literature is the author's silly ways of getting around it. Fanny Hill is arranged as confession, and all her sex scenes are justified by "I just want to tell you the whole story, honest!" Furthermore, she's writing to a woman, not a man, which is probably really significant. Defoe and de Sade are funnier because they blame the reader. They basically say, "My book, even though it is full of sex, is also full of VERY IMPORTANT LIFE LESSONS. And if you find yourself getting turned on by the delicious stretchers that are just hangin' out all over the place then you, fair reader, are a PERVERT and it is so out of my hands. Go see a priest or something." And of course, Pamela and Les Liaisons and many, many other seduction narratives (though Les Liaisons does this fantastic thing with the parallel narratives and there's the tradition seduction of Madame de Tourvel but then the Marquise de Merteuil is like really fucking badass and goes outside the whole seduction trope and...oh, wait, no one really cares.) I say, many other seduction narratives are in the epistolary form (letters!) so the authors are like "ohhh, seeeeee, I just found these letters lying around. I guess I'll publish them! I didn't write them, so it's not my fault if they are a little tiny bit, you know, foul."
Back to Fanny Hill - while it lacks some of the genius that Les Liaisons displays, let us not be unfair: this book is steamy. Steamy as all hell. And yet, you get past the hot lesbian sex* on page 10 (no kidding.) and you're like "holy shit why did Oxford World's Classics publish this? This is clearly just straight up porn" and then you get to the (equally-if-not-more graphic) fat people sex and you are like "um. On the other hand, my sex drive just fled to Siberia." And then at some point after four really graphic steamy scenes you suddenly hit Plot. And you stick with Plot for an awfully long time.
Now, let's talk about how difficult the thing is to read. I actually came across an older edition that I was really tempted to buy because the cover did not have a naked lady and it had the Fanny Hill title a lot bigger. It's very difficult to read your naked lady edition because people give you funny looks and you have to be like no I swear this is a very historically significant, um, gender studies, um, it's the 18th century and it's just that....okay I'm sorry I'm sorry, yes, I'm reading porn in public! So, reading's been pretty slow considering it's like 120 pages long.
Secondly, Oxford World's Classics (my favorite of the publishers of the old things) has had a lot of fun with their explanatory notes. My favorite? "Natural philosophy is the 18th century term for the natural sciences, which Fanny explores with her vagina rather than her other five senses." For real, if I could just sit around and write snarky explanatory notes like that all day, I would hunker down and get a PhD in 18th century porn VERY IMPORTANT LITERATURE.
So I am really one of Not That Many People who is interested in the 18th century. It seems like when we read old stuff (for class or for fun) we usually read the middle ages or the 19th century (ugh. 19th century. Do not even get me started.) and thus completely miss this little gem of debauchery apart from Swift and Voltaire.
Next time (next time I wander into this whack job of a century): I will rant my ass off about the modern adaptation of Dangerous Liaisons, Cruel Intentions. You will hear about what HORRIBLE THINGS they did to my favorite literary character in the world.
----
*Another interesting 18th century trope: in these seduction narratives (seduction narrative begins [I think] with Richardson's Clarissa**) there's a fantastic habit of having the old bawdy lady teach the young about-to-be-whore about sex/pleasure. In Pamela you saw the hint of that when she gets locked up in that house with Mrs. Whatsherface which was really the only decent part of the novel because at least Mrs. Whatsherface made funny dirty jokes. In Les Liaisons the Marquise de Merteuil hints at wanting to do that with Cecile, but then gets bored of her because she's stupid. In Fanny Hill...whoaaaa dude. Page ten. Everyone's naked and Fanny's learning...a lot...from an older no-longer-pretty-enough-to-be-a-whore woman.
** yes I just footnoted a footnote....so basically, Richardson got a lot of shit for having Pamela marry her seducer (it was a reformation of the rake narrative...okay, I'm not going to footnote that, but you know, rakes = creepy men). So in his next novel, he kills Clarissa after she is seduced. And so it begins. (Pamela, of course, was never seduced pre-marriage because Mr. B just keeps touching her bosom and then she faints. And then she wakes up "with [her] virtue intact." Right, honey.)
Thursday, August 5, 2010
The Mind/Body (dis)Connect Part II
So there's this weird thing that happened when I was diagnosed: I threw what was possibly the second biggest tantrum of my life (first being when I thought my cat had gone missing. We found her.) I sat on the floor of my living room and SCREAMED, friends, SCREAMED for who knows how long, because my parents tried to explain to me that "chronic" meant I would ALWAYS have lupus.
Oh, wait, that's not a weird reaction at all.
The weird part came afterwards, when I proceed to Not Cry and basically Not Worry and Not Acknowledge my disease at all. I didn't tell anyone I had it and somehow because of that (?) it was almost like I didn't. Apart from the swollen joints and the chemo and the not seeing people outside of school. At all.
And then I look back and I think to myself "What the fuck." Because at some point my freshman year of college I just totally sank down onto my dorm room floor and melted into the ground like it was the first time I'd ever heard the word "chronic" before. I was in remission, I'd taken myself off plaquenil (I'll do a fun story about my tendency to boycott medicine later), but I had a sinus infection and my knees hurt. That wasn't the FIRST time I'd cried about my diagnosis since The Tantrum. The FIRST time was my junior year of high school when I discovered a girl in my grade had a strange tattoo that was just a string of numbers. I found out from a friend that it was the date of her remission from leukemia, which she'd had when we were in 8th grade.
I cried then because I can't ever get that tattoo.
Now I'm bored of detailing my crying life, so I am moving on to this weird bit of mind/body disconnect. Why is it that back when I was really sick, I was mostly happy? It's only recently, way into "remission" that I've started to tiptoe towards the whole despair thing.
Two thoughts? The obvious one: I was too young when I was first diagnosed to understand the full weight of the thing. It's like death, right? Kids that young have no concept of eternity. So even though I flipped my 9-year-old shit the FIRST time forever was brought up, it didn't REALLY occur to me that forever is forever.
The weirder thought. So long as I was hovering near rock bottom, I didn't have to accept what was happening to me, because it HAD to get better and we were all working to make it better. Even though I was in pain and had treatments and was lonely because I'd wandered away from all my friends, I still had something to fight against. This current state is a lot harder for me, because I worry that I may have to accept that this is as good as it's gonna get. My bloodwork isn't abnormal enough to justify my being on any medication, but I'm still tired and my knees still hurt and I can't make a fist till an hour after I wake up.
I feel like we are raised not to settle for "good enough" and so I can't seem to accept that this is where I'm at and may be where I'll stay. I've tried to eat healthier and get more exercise (I walk the two miles home from work most days) and (sometimes) get more sleep (though I have pretty epic-ass insomnia), but none of that makes a particularly noticeable difference in how I feel. Partially because I'm bad at sticking with it - it's easier to slump into fatigue than to pick myself out of it.
I wonder (does anyone know?) if we pay much attention to the psychology of kids with chronic disease. Because, evidently, it can fuck with your mind. I know there are psychologists who specialize in terminal children. But I was never taken to a therapist till my senior year of high school when I think it was a little late. That may not be due to lack of therapists, it may just be because my parents have always been convinced that I am freakishly sane. Pause for laughter.
Next time: Something uplifting and hilarious!
Oh, wait, that's not a weird reaction at all.
The weird part came afterwards, when I proceed to Not Cry and basically Not Worry and Not Acknowledge my disease at all. I didn't tell anyone I had it and somehow because of that (?) it was almost like I didn't. Apart from the swollen joints and the chemo and the not seeing people outside of school. At all.
And then I look back and I think to myself "What the fuck." Because at some point my freshman year of college I just totally sank down onto my dorm room floor and melted into the ground like it was the first time I'd ever heard the word "chronic" before. I was in remission, I'd taken myself off plaquenil (I'll do a fun story about my tendency to boycott medicine later), but I had a sinus infection and my knees hurt. That wasn't the FIRST time I'd cried about my diagnosis since The Tantrum. The FIRST time was my junior year of high school when I discovered a girl in my grade had a strange tattoo that was just a string of numbers. I found out from a friend that it was the date of her remission from leukemia, which she'd had when we were in 8th grade.
I cried then because I can't ever get that tattoo.
Now I'm bored of detailing my crying life, so I am moving on to this weird bit of mind/body disconnect. Why is it that back when I was really sick, I was mostly happy? It's only recently, way into "remission" that I've started to tiptoe towards the whole despair thing.
Two thoughts? The obvious one: I was too young when I was first diagnosed to understand the full weight of the thing. It's like death, right? Kids that young have no concept of eternity. So even though I flipped my 9-year-old shit the FIRST time forever was brought up, it didn't REALLY occur to me that forever is forever.
The weirder thought. So long as I was hovering near rock bottom, I didn't have to accept what was happening to me, because it HAD to get better and we were all working to make it better. Even though I was in pain and had treatments and was lonely because I'd wandered away from all my friends, I still had something to fight against. This current state is a lot harder for me, because I worry that I may have to accept that this is as good as it's gonna get. My bloodwork isn't abnormal enough to justify my being on any medication, but I'm still tired and my knees still hurt and I can't make a fist till an hour after I wake up.
I feel like we are raised not to settle for "good enough" and so I can't seem to accept that this is where I'm at and may be where I'll stay. I've tried to eat healthier and get more exercise (I walk the two miles home from work most days) and (sometimes) get more sleep (though I have pretty epic-ass insomnia), but none of that makes a particularly noticeable difference in how I feel. Partially because I'm bad at sticking with it - it's easier to slump into fatigue than to pick myself out of it.
I wonder (does anyone know?) if we pay much attention to the psychology of kids with chronic disease. Because, evidently, it can fuck with your mind. I know there are psychologists who specialize in terminal children. But I was never taken to a therapist till my senior year of high school when I think it was a little late. That may not be due to lack of therapists, it may just be because my parents have always been convinced that I am freakishly sane. Pause for laughter.
Next time: Something uplifting and hilarious!
Sunday, August 1, 2010
My Big, Fat, Jewish Family
Hello world. I am back! I was in the woody hills of Vermont in a house the color of a large pumpkin with my Entire Family.
I have met my new cousin (once removed), Smudge, who is actually not named Smudge, but who we call Smudge anyway. She is 8 months old and we, the two Girl Cousins are going to take over the world. Just. You. Wait.
Furthermore, we have discovered, awkwardly, that I am the only Cousin who is currently single. This is a) a first and b) a pressure-filled situation to be in since my grandmother added a loud-ass aside to a toast: "And those of you who are still unattached, GET GOING!" It is assumed that my AWOL cousin woke in a sweat back in New York at those words, with a sudden urge to head to a bar.* She is thinking: seven thousand grandchildren and between all of you you come up with one lousy baby? Oy.
I feel like I have more funny stories but I can't think of them just now. Traveling is like getting my head whacked seventy times with the remains of a bull elephant, but there's not a ton of sun in Vermont so other than the sleep deprivation and the constant Loud I handled reunion okay. Now, though, my entire building has no power and I am typing this at work because I am a rebel. No really. Okay more later.
I have met my new cousin (once removed), Smudge, who is actually not named Smudge, but who we call Smudge anyway. She is 8 months old and we, the two Girl Cousins are going to take over the world. Just. You. Wait.
Furthermore, we have discovered, awkwardly, that I am the only Cousin who is currently single. This is a) a first and b) a pressure-filled situation to be in since my grandmother added a loud-ass aside to a toast: "And those of you who are still unattached, GET GOING!" It is assumed that my AWOL cousin woke in a sweat back in New York at those words, with a sudden urge to head to a bar.* She is thinking: seven thousand grandchildren and between all of you you come up with one lousy baby? Oy.
I feel like I have more funny stories but I can't think of them just now. Traveling is like getting my head whacked seventy times with the remains of a bull elephant, but there's not a ton of sun in Vermont so other than the sleep deprivation and the constant Loud I handled reunion okay. Now, though, my entire building has no power and I am typing this at work because I am a rebel. No really. Okay more later.
*This order is particularly amusing following her Birthday Question. Q: Grandma, what have you learned in your 87 years? A: To keep mah mouth shut!
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Plus
Other things that it is hard impossible to write about if you are in love with them:
dogs
horses
Though horses I've yet to see evidence that they can be written about AT ALL. And that is coming from a non-sentimental horse owner. I've read one or two amusing dog tales, but horses are for no. Do not try it. Please. PLEASE. There is no reason to encourage that kind of bleh in the younger generations of "i wanna pony" types.
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
It's just that we don't really like children
Sorry to all grandmother-submitters, and new-mother-submitters, mothers who find it oh-so-interesting that your eleven-year-old does not like Brussels sprouts, and elementary school teachers, but none of you ever seem to submit anything that a child would like to read. You are, it seems, too in love.
So it's not that we don't like ANY children. Some of us (not me, not me) even HAVE one or two of them. But the general concept of "child" makes us far from warm and fuzzy. We despise the sentimental. And you should be glad, because otherwise our magazines would have to come with their own vomitoriums and we don't have that kind of money.
For example, when our slightly coddly copy editor emailed in that a Halloween illustration might be too scary, I heard the response "If the kids find this too scary, they can MAN UP."
For example, when our slightly coddly copy editor complained that the last line of a story about soccer should not mention winning because that would give the kids the WRONG MORALS, we jokingly changed it to say "And if Katie could score that winning goal, she might finally be worth something."
Of course, best of all is the time when I called the kids on the forums "dorks" because they go at each other for mistakes in grammar and spelling, and an AE said "if by 'dorks' you mean that they are mean little snots, then yes." Then she explained that once a kid offended her with his post, and in revenge she did not edit his glaring grammatical errors. She just "let them go at it."
I'm kind of in love with everyone here.
So don't you for a moment think that a children's magazine office has teddy bears and flowered stationary (ew). Luckily the best authors (see my apology above, I refuse to repeat it) are like-minded. Usually.
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Bees! Bees!
This past winter, friends, my family suffered a great loss. For the third year in a row, we lost our bees up in Michigan. These wussy buzzers cannot even make it through a measly Michigan winter without dying all over the damn place.
So once again, we contact Phil, our kind of crazy beekeeping guru, and he says what the hell, people, fine, here's another hive. And then, being the disorganized people that we are (that THEY are. I was at school and had no say in the matter) we fail to pick up the bees. So, Phil shoves them in a hive at his place and promises to bring them over just as soon as we procure a pick-up truck.
Right.
So it is now July (you start hives in April/May) and we are noodling around in our meadow and my mother realizes huh, there are some bees going in and out the side of our hive. Freakin scavengers. All stealing our dead-bees' honey.
Finally, my dad and I suited up and went out to take a look. And, you will ALL be pleased to note, WE CAN HAS NEW HIVE! I guess a swarm took it over, what they call a "volunteer" hive. We checked all the boxes and found brood and the queen. (I found the queen. Then I danced, as you can see.)
This is very exciting, so in celebration we dragged out all our old honey-filled supers and got two huge buckets full of harvested honey that we got like a year ago and just never processed, so heart-broken were we to discover our bees dead AGAIN.
Anyway. If anyone wants some home-grown honey, be sure to let me know. I will send some!
(Also home grown pickles. I mean, they were cucumbers first, but then my dad made them into pickles. I hate pickles, so I fight for the lives of the cucumbers.)
So once again, we contact Phil, our kind of crazy beekeeping guru, and he says what the hell, people, fine, here's another hive. And then, being the disorganized people that we are (that THEY are. I was at school and had no say in the matter) we fail to pick up the bees. So, Phil shoves them in a hive at his place and promises to bring them over just as soon as we procure a pick-up truck.
Right.
So it is now July (you start hives in April/May) and we are noodling around in our meadow and my mother realizes huh, there are some bees going in and out the side of our hive. Freakin scavengers. All stealing our dead-bees' honey.
Finally, my dad and I suited up and went out to take a look. And, you will ALL be pleased to note, WE CAN HAS NEW HIVE! I guess a swarm took it over, what they call a "volunteer" hive. We checked all the boxes and found brood and the queen. (I found the queen. Then I danced, as you can see.)
This is very exciting, so in celebration we dragged out all our old honey-filled supers and got two huge buckets full of harvested honey that we got like a year ago and just never processed, so heart-broken were we to discover our bees dead AGAIN.
Anyway. If anyone wants some home-grown honey, be sure to let me know. I will send some!
(Also home grown pickles. I mean, they were cucumbers first, but then my dad made them into pickles. I hate pickles, so I fight for the lives of the cucumbers.)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)