Not Real Sucky

Headline News on mute in my mother's hospital room has been nonstop coverage of Lindsay Lohan. I don't have to look up the spelling of her name online because I can look up and it's on the TV. Still.

There are four clear turkey baster bulbs attached to four clear tubes attached to the incisions in my mother's chest. The body tries to heal the wounds, sends blood and fluid, and something needs to be sucked out. The tubes are stretchy and need to be squeezed clear of blood clots. Then we have to empty the bulbs and measure the fluid.

I don't have to do any of this. I volunteered. I'm strangely good at it, except when I tried to feed her the applesauce and got more on her than in her. At least I thought to bring the applesauce. All natural, NOT chunky, no sugar added. My dad said she'd been really nauseous all day, and I'm an expert at nauseous. She has dry mouth, too, way worse than I ever did but at least I understand the feeling. Ice chips mixed with the apple sauce trumped everything the hospital tried to feed her. You'd think hospitals would know these kinds of things, but I suppose it's different for everyone. We're related, so I imagine our reactions are far more similar. Nausea requires cold. Cold and wet, but not clammy. I'll often run my wrists under cold water at rest stops to battle the car sickness. My mom was grateful and amazed that I knew to put ice chips on her wrists when she was at her wooziest. But with her, with Cancer, with life in general, there's so much beyond my and anyone's control. I want to say it's "nice" to be able to make her feel better in little ways for even a moment, but "nice" the wrong word. It's all I can do and I'll take it.

The past few days have been filled with heat waves and electrical storms and flash flooding. Our power went out three times in the last week, only once while it was raining. Driving to the hospital today traffic signals were out or blinking all over the place. Transformers 3 filmed in Chicago last weekend, with explosions and parachuting and fireballs. Tuesday HDS and I sat on the Wao Bao patio at State and Lake and heard a huge blast. Most people didn't even look up.

I feel like the world is getting more and more absurd. There's crazy shit all over and we have our far-fetched explanations because if you stop and really think about any of it, the whole universe is too insane to be real. My dreams make more sense than my awake. Nothing makes real sense, we just stretch and accept whatever gets put before us. We're incredibly flexible creatures. Turkey basting my mother's chest? Why not.

What I learned from the LOST finale

Black people don't go to heaven. Even if they marry white people.

Spiky

Sooooooooooooooo...
I've been up since 6:30 AM and I've been doing stuff the entire time. Cleaning and laundry and shopping for May gift-getters and at around 10 AM I was going to take a nap so I could get back to a normalish sleep schedule but then I wanted to sweep every possible surface before I took a nap so I could mop after my nap and then it was noon and the pain showed up and I hadn't taken my pills yet and I needed to eat and while I was eating I started doing stuff on Etsy and putting together pretty collections of possible gifts and then it was the afternoon and I had to do the one project I absolutely had to do today and then my psychiatrist called to say he actually had gotten the lab results fax and my nortriptyline levels were high (duh shit, this is why I'm crashing most days when the sun sets and in a content but shaky stupor during my awake times). At some point I blinked and it was 6 PM. I made dinner. Now it's approaching 9 and I'm still quite alert, unshowered, and need to go to Walgreens to get my new lower-dose prescription nortriptyline before it closes or I go to bed, whichever comes first. Before I can go to Walgreens (3 blocks away) I have to drive to put air in my tire (1.5 blocks away) which has been soft since before the last time I drove, two weeks ago. Tomorrow morning at 9 AM I intend to be at a demolition sale in Park Ridge. I may be a little bonkers, but it's an easy drive.

Oh, good, it's raining. I'm being 50% sarcastic. Good for my head, bad for walking to get the car and then finding the car a new parking space. And that whole putting air in the tires thing. Maybe I'll get up tomorrow at 6:30 again.

The rest of my week has been a blur; everything  feels blurry. I haven't seen Aural Girl in some ridiculous amount of time.
>>Insert note: thunder and lightning outside, so my dog has to be touching me: my legs are crossed and he's resting his head on my elevated foot.<<
I only saw Possible Boy last Sunday for grocery shopping. And I feel like I haven't seen anybody, including myself, in ages. I've seen My Twin (new official code name for friend from junior high and high school with whom I'd lost touch and now we just started meeting up weekly downtown) but in my dreams I frequently see people from my past so something about it feels surreal. It's wonderful, but surreal. We used to say we were twins back in high school because we'd say the same thing or think the same thing all the time. People used to say we looked alike, and we had similar builds, but I'm blonde and pasty white while My Twin is deep mocha African-American and uses her hair an art medium. Still, we held ourselves the same (despite her dance background) and had the same speech patterns and we fed off eachother like Hall and Oates or something. Then we went our separate ways, I thought I'd failed her by being too young and self-involved...Ten years later, we've both changed and grown up and gone through a lot, and the same stuff that made us "twins" as kids seems to have ripened into an older but just as twinny version. I go around collecting people I like and identify with; My Twin was a cornerstone of my collection.
And then I got snippy over the use of the word "meta."

On most tv shows, characters go through some trial or tribulation and learn some life lesson, but things have  to be set back pretty much to zero by  the end of the episode so that you don't have to worry about the continuity and congruence of the episodes. I think I'm a little like this, too. I was reading through posts from last summer to see if I'd already given My Twin a code name, and it's the exact same thing day after day. Posts individually may seem like they mean something or are going somewhere or like perhaps I've really learned my lesson this time, but the accumulation is no more than pencil shavings, and I'm not using a pencil.

Life is so weird. Place your bets now on whether or not I'll make it to the demolition sale tomorrow, if I'll make it to any other sales, and who will go with me. I'm giving 5-to-1 odds I'll have a male or no companion. Who knows a bookie?

Evening Ramblings

Sometimes my dog is so cute I can't stand it. According to a former light of my life/scourge of my soul, my dog is actually thinking "I am going to eat your face" every time he stares at you with those adorable, wide gaping eyes. Well, maybe my dog should eat the faces of the boys I bring home; I tend to let those boys treat me like crap, so somebody needs to be looking out for us...

That's not fair. I'm looking out a bit better. If I wasn't, I'd totally have gone for one of the not-particularly-nice-but-still-interesting boys. I may be subconsciously trying to train Possible Boy to treat me like crap, but he's one of the most frighteningly kind people I've met in my entire life. But there are more fish! Billions of fish! I have some pretty spectacular friendfish, and now I even have spectacular friendfish down the block, so when the next Boyfish comes swimming along I can freak out and cry and all those other things with people who can physically hand me the bag of marshmallows.

I fought the Topamax Withdrawal Monster today and won. Two phone calls and an email to my doctor's office, two phone calls and finally just showing up at Walgreens, and TADA! Topamax. The shakes are going down and I can almost walk straight again. Hooray!

I just want to watch pseudo-edgy TV dramas all the time. And say "pseudo-edgy" because I'm too cool to actually think anything on television is edgy. I'm sooo edgy. I live in Rogers Park. Sometimes, there's crime. There's even black people. Sometimes, I even talk to them. Oooh, edgy.

Oh shit. I put my chicken back on the George because it was still raw-ish. That was a good 20 minutes ago...
Chicken didn't really burn, but my dog may get a serious treat tonight...

Couch Party

Earlier today I gave myself my ketorolac tromethamine shot, walked the dog, and fell asleep on the couch before I took off my coat. When I woke up from the nap, I still had the headache. I went to the Walgreens drive-thru and forced myself through a quick shopping trip at my little local grocery store. I needed rice milk but there was no way I could deal with Dominicks (now owned by Safeway), so I still have no rice milk. It is amazing what I can do, when necessary, with migraine. It's also amazing how hard some things can be. The mess builds and builds, and at this point I'm still assuming I'll feel better in another day or so, and then I can clear away the rubble. Now, the logic and organization receptors are frustratingly haywire and as long as I'm not back in permanent status migraine mode, it's not worth trying to think in the way that hurts most.

When I came home from my errands, my dog was in my nap spot on the couch. I've since reclaimed the space, forcing him to build himself a little fort out of the cushions. First he had to "dig" the cushions, then my sofa's slip cover provided him a more fruitful excavation. We stayed through sunset, watching Hulu. I ate half a papaya, three bananas, and a generously buttered sweet potato. I knit. I finished the entire season of Lie to Me and a good bit of the scarf I'm knitting. My dog farted a lot.

At least I don't feel bitter or ashamed of my day. Maybe the pain is too wide to fit my standard self-doubt, but I feel like I got today "right." I pushed on the things that required pushing and let go everywhere else. Aural Girl and Possible Boy are wonderful and amazing when I'm migrainey. They say nice things and mean them and care and are concerned in a way that isn't more about themselves (cough, my mother, cough cough). They went to see the NBA game in Milwaukee, and I just got a text from Possible Boy that says "having a blast, wish you were here with us!" and at this particular moment I am very glad I am not with them because they are somewhere with noise and motion and people and things that would make me curl up into a little ball and cry. People confined to wheelchairs don't generally get to climb through ancient ruins or Escher lithographs; I may not be able to plan attendance at indoor sporting events, concerts, or the entire city of Las Vegas. I'm so used to having it all, it's not a bad life to have it most.

On Buffy

Earlier this week at the bar, I found myself completely mesmerized by the tv. I've always been mesmerized by the tv, but this was stronger than the usual hypnotic pull. So in my campaign to avoid doing anything useful with my time, I decided to watch Season 1 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in its entirety on Hulu. I'm a big fan of Joss Whedon's Dr. Horrible and I'd never actually seen Buffy (Mr. Whedon's more frequently referenced creation). Was 1997 really that long ago?

I feel a little like puke, but I brought it on myself by eating the cookies I originally bought for my cousin's birthday. They were going to be stale before I saw her again, but that didn't mean I had to be the one to eat them. They were just so tasty.

I wonder what it would be like if I could do and eat whatever I wanted whenever I wanted without physiological repercussions. I also wonder what it would be like to be blind, starving, an insect, or live a thousand years from now.

I want more cookies.

Bird Shit

The sharp pain is back. Just the last two days. I earned it while NBF was here. Albatross upon albatross around my neck. Black clouds. Whatever you want to call the things that I now stuff in a folder labeled "DO NOW." I forgot to take my before-bed drugs two nights in a row. I smoked pot wrapped in a tobacco casing. I drank an entire beer. And a medium sprite. And I had to confront the difference between me and me just a few months ago. And NBF. And many many other major friendships I've had over the course of my life.

Even before elementary school and the mean children, I learned to be snarky. Both sides of my family are very sarcastic and sharp. We play with eachother's words and mannerisms and turn them into our own witticisms and put-downs. My dad is a notoriously slow and awkward joke teller, so when I was still in elementary school I started doing an impression of him trying to tell "why did the chicken cross the road?" that had everybody in stitches. Barney Frank's recent town hall reply reminded me of our old big family get-togethers.

Some people seem able to give eachother shit but then balance it out with love and affection. My dad's side is bigger on the zingers, but my mom's side was well versed at just criticizing the hell out of absolutely anything and everything. She and her siblings seem to be crawling out of that now that their own children have grown up and born the brunt of it, but hey, it's progress. Still, both my parents have a very specific idea of right and wrong, good and bad, black and white, including on the many many many many many many things in the universe that aren't. Like, um, everything. So when you put together the sarcasm and the "humorous" put-downs with a constant directive that you're doing this wrong or that wrong or everything wrong even if it feels right to you, you're no longer just "giving people shit." It becomes deep and seething and paraded with a laugh until you don't know where the joke is anymore. Snarky 5-year-olds are only cute for a few minutes.

I watched a lot of sit-coms, too. Alf. Small Wonder. Golden Girls. Empty Nest. The snappy come-back always wins on television. Earns respect in my family (my brother can be a long series of one-liners).

Elementary school. Bad bad bad. I'd spend all day every day in teasing battles where a new and zingy come-back wasn't worth shit if you didn't have a posse. The kids would use the same insults over and over and over again. I'd ask my parents what to do and they'd give me new sharp things to say. I'd go back to school and say those things and the kids would tease me for being smart, for using big words, for everything they could.

My mom wrote me notes on my napkins in the lunches she packed for me. "Catherine" would steal them and read them out loud and have the whole grade laughing hysterically. I told my mom. I didn't really want her to stop writing the notes because then Catherine would win, but at the same time I wanted the notes and humiliation to just end. My mom started writing the notes to say things like "I'm glad I'm your mother and not the mom of a vicious note-stealing child." Catherine then started making fun of me for telling and being a tattle-tale "as usual" and everybody just had new fodder for the teasing.

Over the years I've created many friendships based largely in giving eachother shit. Some of you at least used to read this blog, and I am sorry. As all of my friends will attest, my shit-to-compliments ration varies and I'm much more comfortable with the shit than the compliments, but sometimes I'm able to spew out just the right thing at just the right time. The other big variable is how much love v. malice goes into the shit. It changes day to day, friend to friend, moment to moment.

I'm just not sure how to show affection any other way. When it comes to letting Boys know I'm remotely interested, I still blush and freak out and tell them they're stupid. That may be part of why I'm more comfortable being friends with guys in general: they're used to the shit-giving friendship model.

Life lessons:
The way to be recognized as a person looking to make connections is to give shit.
Everybody I ever wanted to have accept me growing up gave me shit.
Kindness? Happiness? Fake! Bullshit! You're being effusive!

I'm learning to be happy for more than a moment at a time and it's working. I wish there was a way for me to go sit in the big Depression Ditch and tell everybody there that it's possible, but even a few days with NBF toppled my latest streak of joy because I couldn't get through to him. I'm a compulsive sharer. When I find something I like, I want everybody to know.

I've finally found something that (at least temporarily) takes the edge off the pain!!! And while illegal, it's way easier and cheaper to get than any of my prescriptions! I had NBF get me some pot (see, I wasn't kidding last post) and apparently he owns a bowl, so I smoked all but two hits of the pot (very little...a bowlful, really) and now I'm finding it incresingly difficult to type...the typing's not that hard, actually, it's the editing and following what I'm typing that is giving me a lot of difficulty. Ok, so the real trouble seems to be with concentrating on the words. Also, I apparently go back and re-read the last bit of what I said over and over in my head until I know the next thing I am going to write, and if I don't like how it sounds I go back and delete it. Then I start typing the next thought while I'm reading it all "out loud" in my head (my whole hearing-versus-seeing thought process thing). Ok, now I'm stoned. Stoned seems to be the opposite of migraine: with stoned, I mainly notice it when I'm trying to concentrate on something and can't, but with migraine I notice most when I don't have something to distract me. Stoned is certainly distracting. I completely can't write what and how I'm thinking, at least not on computer. I'll hate to try by hand now. Yeesh, I'm going to see this tomorrow and be very annoyed with myself for writing like a fucking stoner when I'm such a square
nerd
ok can't keep thought in head long enough to complete sentences. Weird. I'm such a nerd. But I can only et down my thoughts if I type really fast and don't go back and look at what I've just written or try to think about it too much because as soon as my brain pauses I get lost and I can't go back and find it because as soon as I do I forget where I was and I can't get throught the whole sentence in a stretch to remember what I was trying to say the minute I go back and edit I'm repeating I know I'm repeatinmg can't type fast enough to keep up with brain but I know it's the typing that's all slow, not the brain that's any faster than usual. But it doesn't hurt! THat's all I've been trying to say but aparently I can't write when I'm stoned. How many times did I type that already? I'd go back and check, but I will then lose where I am now and I'll never get anywhere. I am such a nerd for writing this, such a nerd for thinking it, and such a nerd because I'm having so much trouble. Holy hell. Weird weird weird. I absolutely can't get down what I'm thinking into writing. I can't write. The thing that knocks out my migraine is the thing that knocks out what makes me most fundamentally me. That 70s show stoner "duuuuude" deep moment man. Aaaak! I'm done trying to write this. It's more frustrating (though not in that usual painful nagging way)
I can't deal with multiple clauses.
or my normal repetition thing
because I forget what the repetition was
before repeating it
ok but not that time
but mostly
why did I never try to write stoned before?
I always write when I'm drunk.
Sober, too, but that's the whole writer thing again.
Stoner writing.
I could write the way I write when I'm doing first-person-my-dog:
word
writing word
typing
I can type on page.
I have to rememberwhat I'm doing
bad last sentence.
because it didn't sound like dog.
Neither did that.
It just sounds like stooooopid.

Wasn't I going to stop typing this?
Yes.
Yes I was.
Hey! I asked a question AND answered it and then wrote a reaction to it! New record for length of thought!
Does that mean it's already wearing off?
Nah.
Ok, really now, Annabell (remembered my code-name, too!) stop writing. Stop. Writing. Right/write. Now.