Random Thoughts

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Word Jail (or Lara is possibly a mental case, I’m not sure)

My words are being read.  Not by many, but some.  So how truthful will I be in what I say?

This life is surreal.  My new favorite word lately, surreal, because that is how life feels lately.  It is so unfamiliar.  This isn’t a bad thing, I just have no idea how to navigate this alien landscape that is my life.  I suppose I have the tools to figure it out and get wherever I’m supposed to go in this life, in fact I know I do.  But it still scares the crap out of me.  And right at the moment I wonder how much of my anxiety is the result of staying awake too long, how much is the result of doing things I’m not sure of, how much is just normal considering the newness of all of my life.  Maybe my friend Mark is right; maybe I took on too many new things at once.  But I like change.  I wanted change.  I guess I got it and now I have to figure out what to do with it.

Word press.  Pressing words.  Pressing in the sense of print media.  But for me it is more like words pressing the inside of my brain begging to escape, words that don’t have any meaning for anyone except me.  What is that?  What is that need to tap into that energy line and disappear into the void for a while and let the words out?

I guess the words are in jail if I don’t express them.  They are prisoners held captive by no will of their own, so if I don’t let some of them free, there will be a coup and I will be in trouble.  Actually, trouble has been brewing for years because I have not let them out when they needed to escape, just to breathe for a while.  And I paid for it.  Big time.

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Concatenation

I love that word.  Concatenation.  It just rolls off the tongue.  And I love its meaning.  I love its use in Little Women.  It is a great word.  One of those words I pray is not lost in the mundanity of modern word usage.  I hope that since so many people are posting blogs, it means there are enough lovers of the English language that words such as this one will not die for centuries.

I did a google search for language lovers and discovered that there is a website dedicated to links to websites for language lovers.  I also discovered a site called spellorg.com, belonging to the Society for the Preservation of the English Language and Literature.  Very good!  Very good indeed.  Keep concatenation with us, as well as many other brilliant and uncommon words.

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Addendum to the Longest Post

I was so tired the other night because it was late when I was writing, so I finally just had to stop.  After I stopped writing, I did some quick google searching for the sites that I did not know.  What I found was surprising.  Most of the sites were socialization and video sharing sites.  Badoo, a top search for the world, looks to be like myspace and facebook.   Same with hi5 and second life.  Daily motion is a video sharing site and appears similar to Youtube.  As my kind commentator pointed out, tmz is a place to follow celebrity gossip.

I thought about this quite a bit yesterday.  MSNBC says that its top clicked stories of the week are all murder and killing stories.  I checked a few other “news” sites and found similar patterns.  Yet a search for what people are looking for, at least in 2007, reveals that what we actually seek is to connect, through socialization sites and video.  We’re interested in the latest celebrity scandal (i.e., tmz and Anna Nicole Smith), but for the most part, we want to connect with one another.  In a sense, it could be argued that we are not so interested in murder and death as we are in life, our lives and the lives around us.  Even the checks on celebrity stories could be viewed as a way to connect; we wish to see how those who appear to have everything are really human in the ways that they mess up.  (And of course it is so much fun to taunt Paris Hilton when she cries about how she’s “changed” after a few nights in jail.  Poor baby.  Yes, you are human.  Riiiight.)

I think perhaps the “news” organizations ought to consider getting a clue on this point.  They design sites where you click for the “latest story.”  Yet those stories are chosen by the organization and a link is created to click.  They are the ones that are creating the “top-clicked stories” because they are the ones choosing which stories to present.  It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, created by the “news” organization.  Would their results be the same if their subject matter were different?  I doubt it.  In fact, if murder and killing stories weren’t on there at all, they could not be clicked at all.  Suppose the stories presented were about world affairs or national interest pieces.  Yes, the stories may then be about killing because the stories might be about wars, but they probably would not be the sort of sensationalized killing stories available via the “top clicked sites.”

What with the proliferation of shows like CSI, I suppose the “news” organizations think all we are interested in is murder and killing.  What they fail to understand is that it isn’t the murder that interests us on shows like that, it is the investigation and the finding of the clues.  These are two different things.  In some ways the investigation is a form of joining together between the people seeking to find the clues into the murder.  Again, connection.  Like the searches on google for social sites and video sharing, what we seem to seek is relationship and association, not murder and killing.  This shouldn’t be surprising, but considering “news” organizations have sought to shove murder and killing down our throats as long as there have been “news” stories, I don’t expect it to end anytime soon.

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The Longest Blog

Happy New Year.  And what are the top ten stories being clicked on at MSNBC?  Amanda Knox’s deadly exchange.  Who’s Who Student murdered in Italy.  Photos:  Terror at home for Connecticut family.  Who killed Stacy Peterson?  To catch a predator.  The reals story behind “Alpha Dog.”  Phil Spector evidence photos.  Predator goes to Kentucky.  Palladium murder photo gallery.  Photos:  Death in the Hollywood Hills.

Seriously?  Is this seriously what Americans consider the most popular pages on MSNBC?  Does MSNBC do something to market these murderous stories and photos so everyone is so interested in them?  Shouldn’t we all be disturbed that the top stories grabbing American attention are all about killing and mayhem?  Jesus.  Something is really messed up about that.  There must be something at the site that encourages people to choose these stories.  I cannot yet fathom that these are the top story views by choice.  I would think a more accurate measure of what people are searching for would be the top ten google searches.  Then people would, of their own accord, be entering the information into the search engine and not having it flashing in their faces begging them to click.  Google is good that way, with its lack of ads and fanfare.

Well.  So I did a google search for the top ten google searches and came up with an interesting page analyzing the year 2007 and the searches done throughout the year and the top searches, both by U.S. and by the world.  They calculate the top searches as rising and falling.  For the world, the top risers are iphone, badoo, facebook, dailymotion, webkinz, youtube, ebuddy, second life, hi5, and club penguin.  The fastest US risers are iphone, webkinz, tmz, transformers, youtube, club penguin, myspace, heroes, facebook, and Anna Nicole Smith.

Well.  There are many searches on these lists for things I have never even heard of, so I must not be in line with the rest of the world population.  I’m not “with it” if you will.  However, I can count myself among the top US searchers on youtube and myspace.  Myspace I use so I don’t have to type it in the URL.  Pure laziness on my part because from google’s response I can click right into wherever I want.  And Youtube needs no explanation.  I’m shocked Club Penguin is on here.  Milla loves it.  I have to convince her not to play it after she’s been to visit non-Waldorf friends.  I would not have known it was so popular.  I do not know what badoo, dailymotion, webkinz, ebuddy, second life, hi5, or tmz are.  I am going to have to search those, thereby increasing their search popularity, just so I can find out what they are.

There are fallers from the list as well.  World Cup tops this list, followed by mozart, fifa, rebelde, kazaa, xanga, webdetente, sudoku, shakira, and mp3.  I do not know what fifa, rebelde, kazaa, and shakira are, although I think shakira might be a singer.  My goodness, I’m frighteningly out of touch, aren’t I?  I’m surprised mozart is on this list, not because it’s going down, but because he is on the list at all.

For anyone who cares, I found this information at:  http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/zeitgeist2007/

Well it is officially 2008 on the west coast so I can now head to bed.  This blog has the notoriety of having been started in one year and completed in another.  Makes it sound as if I spent a good deal of time on it, rather than about 21 minutes.

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Pointless Rambling

After all of my ranting on racism in the last few days, I feel drained of words.  I have a fabulous idea for (another) book though. I seem to have more books in my head than I have time to put them on the page.

I slept without drugs last night.  I think I should get a One Day Pin for this.  I’m quite proud of myself.  I haven’t slept without drugs in weeks now.  Heavy drugs too, like codeine and dextromethorphan.  God, I love that word….dextromethorphan.  But even though I love saying it, I need to stop taking it.  It can be habit forming, and I don’t want to form that habit.  I can see, though, why one might want to form that habit if their cough lasts for two months.  It gets so old.

One thing I will not miss about this job (among dozens) is the constant paging over the intercom system.  Oregon PC on zero five!  Oregon PC on zero zero!  Eric please call Nicole at ten!  Scott please kill Monica on eleven!  (Oops, I don’t think they say that!)  You’re sitting at your desk, trying to attempt some work (or typing on your blog) and the pager squawks some summons.  Gads.

Oh my God.  My dog is sitting on my lap and he just farted.  That is so gross.  Piper!  Seriously.  You couldn’t wait to do that?

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How Comfortable Would I Be With My Words?

On Christmas morning I received an email from a friend that I am sure she did not write, but passed on because for some reason she agreed with the sentiments behind its words. The email was undisguisedly racist and sounded like something Bill O’Reilly or one of the other hate radio mongers would write. I, being the sort who has no compunction about speaking up at emails like that one, wrote my own diatribe against it. I was pretty angry when I wrote it, and the force of my anger is behind the words.

This morning another friend who commented on my comments said when he writes something when he’s angry, before sending it he asks himself if he would mind his words if he read them a year later. That’s probably a good policy, especially for someone like me who can be a bit, mmmm, unrelenting when on the offensive.

So for the email I responded to yesterday, if I ask myself how would I feel about my words if I read them a year from now? Just the same. And I would probably get just as mad.

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Bacterial Update

I went to the doctor today to investigate whether I have been invaded by viruses or bacterias.  As I suspected, I have been invaded by viruses.  Fortunately the doctor gave me lots of wonderful drugs to combat the symptoms brought on by these nasty little bits of protein.  I am normally the anti-drug.  I’m like a commercial or something:  Keep those drugs away from me!  Advil?  No.  Aspirin?  No.  Tylenol?  Definitely not.  But my brain and body have reached a place where the desire to sleep and feel no pain outweighs my desire to remain free of chemical toxins.  So it is with anticipatory pleasure that these drugs will become part of my physical makeup tonight prior to laying my head upon my pillow.

Actually, some drugs already have.  I discovered in my medicine cabinet some acetominophin-codeine I had been prescribed at some point in the past and which I did not take because I avoid narcotics of any sort.  You know, codeine resembles morphine in its makeup because it is an opiade.  It is a weak opiade, but when one is as much a lightweight as I am, it does not take much to put me on my ass.  Alas, I digress.

So last night I took this acetominophin-codeine, as well as a hefty dose of Robitussin DM.  This choice blend put me into a pleasant drug-induced stupor and succeeded in effectively blocking a significant portion of the suffering I was experiencing in my ribs.  Of course, when it wore off at 3:30 a.m. I woke to a pain the likes of which I have never experienced, including the compound fracture in my left arm at age nine, the severe ankle sprain nearly three years ago, or natural childbirth.  But for five hours, I was blissfully unaware of anything.  When I awoke to such severe pain, I simply popped a couple more acetominophin-codeine killers and some more Robitussin DM and was back in la la land within a half an hour.

Will Smith has this new movie out where he is the last guy on earth because some virus killed off everyone else or turned them into a zombie or something.  I have not seen it yet.  However, having experienced this viral infection of my own, it is not beyond the capacity of my imagination to see a virus of this magnitude taking over our little planet and rendering us all helpless or dead.  If everyone were in the state I am in right now, we wouldn’t need to be dead because we would all be useless.  THANK you narcotics for helping me through this.  THANK you cough suppresant for making it all more bearable.  Seriously.

I am glad I’m not bacterial.  I could have kissed my acquaintance who was abducted by aliens and they would have had nothing further to examine on him because there would have been no bacterias.  But being viral is not much better.  And perhaps it is worse.  Bacterias can be wiped out with antibiotics (although that may be going by the wayside with super-bacteria).  Viruses can’t be wiped out by anything except my immune system.  In either case, whether I’m bacterial or viral, I hope to be free of any of the little critters that cause pain and suffering sometime in the very near future.  Perhaps with the aid of the super drugs my physician has supplied I will be able to sleep well enough to allow my immune system to kick a little ass.

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Diversions

Lara sits at her desk at work and has quite a difficult time focusing on the tasks at hand.  She does not want to be there.  She wants to be snuggled in her bed taking a nap attempting to drive the cold virus from her poor, tired body.  She wishes she were wearing thick socks and flannel jamma pants with a couple of warm t-shirts instead of the nice dress shoes, slacks, and turtleneck that look attractive but are binding and uncomfortable when the body isn’t well.

As she sits at the desk, she keeps checking her email, kind of like checking the regular mail at home, hoping someone in the world besides advertisers wants to chat or say hello.  But no.  Everyone else is busy living their own lives and doing their own thing on this rainy and cold afternoon.

Every so often she turns to the file she is working on and puts in some effort, but cannot do so without difficulty.  The sun has just peeked through the clouds and touches her head through the window next to her desk.  She looks up and sees the droplets sparkling in the light and wishes it were warmer and that she were out of doors.  But this is wishful thinking.  The tree next to the window is leafless and moves ever so slightly in the wind.  It is cold out there.  Even the light is cold.

Daydreams fill her thoughts as her head drops to her hand, her elbow on the edge of the desk.  Her eyes close slightly.  She imagines a spa, a spa in the desert of California.  She’s going to have a massage. After the massage, she will lie in the sun and relax, drinking warm tea.  Later she will soak in a hottub, tendrils of damp hair curling at her neck.  Warm hands press into her aching should …..RRRRIIIIIINNNNNNNNNGGGGGGGG!!

The phone in her office rings, slamming her back into reality.  Crap.  The phone. She does NOT want to answer the phone. She wants to pretend she’s getting a massage from a beautiful man at a spa in the desert.  She does not want to speak to some unhappy client who is pissed off that another attorney in the office did not return her call.  “Yes, I’m sorry he did not call you back.  Oh yes.  I would be angry too.  Of course.  I KNOW you paid us eight hundred dollars and that IS a lot of money.  You are correct.  Yes.  Well, that really isn’t an emergency, although I can see how you would think that it is, but it’s not.  I can assure you.  All you need to do is tell that creditor you filed for bankruptcy.  Give them your case number and the date you filed and they will leave you alone.  Yes.  Yes.  I promise.  Believe me.  In 99 percent of the cases they go away.  Yes.  I know.  I know.  Well make sure this is one of the 1 percent of cases before getting all worried about it.  No.  Yes.  I know.  Give them our number then.  Yes.  Of course.  No.  Yes.  Yes, we’ll be out on Christmas.  I know.  I know.  Okay.  Happy holidays to you too.  Yes.  Goodbye.”

Fuck.  The vision of warm desert air and beautiful male hands lovingly massaging her shoulders is gone.  She coughs, pain wracking her chest.  Reality.  Yuck.  No wonder people take drugs.

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I Know What I Want

So I’m at work and I brought my puppy and he’s rooting around on the floor, spinning in circles, being completely silly.  He loves rubbing his tummy on the carpet like that.  He grunts and makes goofy noises.  I love him so much.

So I’m reading this book, well, listening to this book being read to me in my car.  I’m really enjoying it.  It’s John Irving and he’s always great.  Anyway, as is often the case with me and books I enjoy, I can see the movie as I would direct it.  How I would tell the story, who I would cast in the various parts, what part of the book I would keep because it’s rare to be able to include an entire book in a movie.  Often there are smaller side stories in books that work in books but don’t in movies because of the nature of reading versus viewing.  For instance I thought the first Harry Potter tried to include too much.  One book made into a movie where I think the movie did better than the book was Sideways.  When I read Sideways, it was as if the movie makers saw the book exactly as the author and as the reader, yet they left out some sensationalized side stories that almost seemed like they were written as over the top movie scenes.  The movie was better having left them out.  I digress.

Anyway, I’m reading this book and I can REALLY see the movie.  It’s a great book and I can feel the entire atmosphere of the thing.  Then at some point, I hear the name of a chapter and it is the name of a movie and I realize that this book has been made into a movie and I would not have conceptualized it as the movie maker did at all.  I hate the movie version.  The actors they chose for the leads.  Ick.  Wrong.  And as is often the case with movies turned into books, they took the most sensationalized parts and chopped them together with none of the connecting tissue from the book and just made this big mess.  I remember when I saw the movie that I did not like it and feeling like something was missing.  Now I know why.

I know movies are different than books, that they are their own creation and I don’t think they should be compared in many cases because they are what they are.  But I also don’t think you should try to pretend a movie is the book if it loses so much of what was originally there.  Like The Shipping News.  Puke.  God, I couldn’t even watch it.  They fucking butchered the book.  Why didn’t they just call it something else and leave the book alone?  Get an idea from a book, then go make your damn movie, but don’t pretend it’s the book when it’s not even in the ballpark.  I have read The Shipping News so many times.  It is easily my favorite book, and that is saying a lot because you can’t pin me down on a favorite ANYTHING.  Seriously.  This book, I know it inside out and backwards.  I know its characters.  I can SEE its characters.  When I heard the book was being made into a movie, I had to read the book again.  I could SEE that movie, see how I would shoot it, the angles, the light, all of it.  And NONE of the book made it into that movie except a few pitiful, over the top plot lines and the names of the characters and that was IT.  They didn’t even make the characters look like the characters in the book and the looks of the characters in the book are almost characters themselves.  HOW could they?  Ack.  Gags me.

So I’m reading this John Irving book now and hearing it and having to force out the characters and story as envisioned by the screenwriter and director (one and the same in this case) as I try to enjoy this book.  The story is actually quite fascinating.  I love it.  And now I have Jeff Bridges’s face looming in to take over one of the main characters when he’s not even CLOSE!  He doesn’t even inhabit the character of the character, let alone the looks.  Looks in a movie can be different from the looks of the character in a book if the actor can BECOME the character, but he didn’t.  Remember Sandra Oh and Virgina Madsen in Sideways?  In the book, Maya looked like Sandra Oh and Stephanie looked like Virginia Madsen, but they are switched in the movie and it doesn’t matter because the actors so inhabited the characters.  It just doesn’t detract in any way.  But in this book I’m reading now, Jeff Bridges is not the character he plays.  Maybe he never read the book.  Maybe he just read the screenplay that butchered the book.  Because as I conceptualize the character in the book, not only does he not characterize the character, he does not look like the character looks.  And Kim Bassinger…I won’t even go there.

Why would John Irving let this happen?  Why would Annie Proulx?  Maybe they don’t get a choice.  But John Irving and Annie Proulx are HUGE authors. They have to be able to maintain some control.  Why couldn’t the movie makers just say that the movie was “inspired” by the book and not pretend the movie is the book come to life when it’s not?

Well that’s enough of my film/literary snob rant for the day. What do I know?  I just know I can’t stand that movie and it is interrupting my enjoyment of this book.

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The Circle of Life

This man I know told me he could not kiss me because I am bacterial (A cold, you know. It may be viral but I’m beginning to suspect bacteria may be the culprit.) He sent me this message on yahoo messenger, then he disappeared. He wasn’t there!

I asked, Did you go away? He did not answer.

I realized then that he had been officially stolen by aliens. They grasped him by his collar and YANKED him into the spaceship in one deft lift. Off! He’s gone. “Good bye!” I cried. “We will miss you! We will have a funeral for you with an empty coffin.”

But then I thought perhaps he would return to us someday, anally probed and brain laced with bits of metal and ice. But that would be okay. We would still be glad to have him home. “Look everyone!” I would cry. “He’s home! Don’t mind the drool. Here. I’ll just wipe it with a little towel.” And just imagine, the drool is bacteria free because he did not kiss me! I tell him that I wish him well as he sits drooling. I hope his brain and bottom aren’t too sore from his trip to the aliens.

Don’t you love how the story came full circle? A kiss that did not happen, a death, a rebirth, and back to kissing. It’s the circle of life, you know.

I truly enjoy sitting here and typing to no one. The imagination runs wild. Don’t remind me what a pitiful imagination it is.

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First Do No Harm

So my mom is a member of Kaiser.   American Cancer Society guidelines recommend a mammogram and an MRI for women whose mothers, sisters, or daughters have had breast cancer.  I had breast cancer.  Her sister had breast cancer.  Her mother had breast cancer.  Yet her docter at Kaiser told her an MRI was not warranted.  On what planet does this doctor live?  Where is his brain?  Who does he work for?  Duh.  Kaiser.  He wants to keep from costing Kaiser money.  Who gives a shit if my mom gets cancer and DIES.  That’s cheaper for them than paying for a fucking MRI.  Damn insurance companies.

Well, too bad for them that Mom’s daughter called up and figured out how to go around Mr. Hippocratic Oath (not!).  We’re going to appeal AND get a second opinion.  So there. Dumbass.  Would have cost less just to get her the MRI.

“First do no harm.”  Yeah, unless it costs some fucking insurance company money.  Do no harm to insurance companies.  We’ll change the oath to “Thou shalt protect thy insurance company’s ass at all costs, even if a human being dies.”

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Revolution

I have been thinking a lot about change. I am beginning to understand, on a more than superficial level, why we end up in revolution. Change can be so damn slow. It’s actually more remarkable when things change quickly because deep, fundamental societal change takes generations.  Revolution may be our only method in many instances to institute change, whether the revolt be violence or Ghandi. I have been seeing this on a micro level, which has made me it more obvious to me on the macro level.  Change takes damn forever. I have been working in an office where nothing really changes. It is such a dysfunctional place and has been that way for over a decade.  Nearly two, actually. There are people there I call the “institutional toxins” because they are part of the institution and never go away. The place stays completely and utterly dysfunctional. And office procedures and systems do not change either. Occasionally new systems come in, but the movement towards them is reluctant and gradual.

When I began working there in 2003, they were still using a DOS-based word processing program that I knew from personal experience had become Windows-based in 1993. That year they switched to the latest of that program, but they are still using it even though it has had two further incarnations. And they use a 1988 DOS-based client management program. Change to a system from the current decade has been promised for over a year, but there is always an excuse why it doesn’t happen.  By the time they put in that system, it will be 2015 and we will have moved onto an entirely different platform.

I suppose I should not be surprised at any of this because it is the owner of the company who refuses to change, and as long as he refuses to change, it will continue to trickle down. He pretends to modify some things, but the behavior doesn’t follow, and neither do real modifications.

But this got me thinking about societal changes. I am actually amazed we are where we are with racism and sexism and all those other ‘isms. People comment and question and remark how unbelievable it is that racism still exists. Lately I’ve begun to feel it’s amazing we’ve come this far in somewhat eradicating it. And no wonder there had to be riots and violence to get to this place. Humanity seems genuinely not to want to change much of anything.

Oh there are the few who are willing to do so, but look how backwards we have gone just in the last few decades. Forward and back, forward and back. Grinding into a different thought process. It’s like evolution. It seems like things are different because we have the ability to see how things were only fifty or so years back. But underneath, there is still that current of prejudice and bias that was there in 1955, even in people born twenty years ago.

I have a total non-sequitur…I heard a conversation on the radio yesterday with a plastic surgeon who performs laser hair removal. One of the radio hosts said she had heard scientists say we were “evolving towards hairlessness.” I got to thinking about that, and I do not think that is possible. I don’t think we will evolve towards anything anymore because there is no more human natural selection. We don’t let the so-called evolutionary “failures” die or stop procreating, so those “flaws” will continue. We may develop new features and breed those new features into each other, but the old features won’t go away if the humans with those old features do not die out or stop breeding. I am not advocating anything here; I’m just observing that evolution will be stopped from occurring on some level. Actually, I would advocate for stopping Paris Hilton from breeding, but that’s another matter entirely….  Hirsute people unite!  The hairless ones seek to eradicate you from existence.

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Evil Guerrilla Virus

These can be addicting.  I sit here and have these random thoughts and want to write them here instead of my journal.  I carry around this notebook to write my strange random thoughts and to draw pictures.  Sometimes I’ll have a dream and write it in there thinking it’s profound and I should make a movie out of it.  Then I’ll go back and read the dream later and realize it WAS profound…profoundly dumb. Now I’m experimenting with background color.  Yes.  My time is well spent.  Well spent indeed.  (:I had a cold in early November.  A nasty wicked cold that kicked my ass and left me in bed for days.  It lasted about 3 1/2 weeks.  It started with a wretched, mind-blowing headache that just hurt no matter how much caffeine or ibuprofen I poured on it.  Then there were two days of sore throat that hurt so badly I could not speak and swallowing was pure hell and torture.  After that cleared, I suddenly had snot gushing from every available orifice in my head.  That started to clear and I began to feel the rumblings low in my lungs of a cough that rattled every joint in my body.  I attempted to stave off the cough, but to no avail.  I would lie there, feeling it humming in my chest.  I would breathe slowly. In. Out. In. Out.  Please god, don’t make me cough.  Then it would happen and it would hurt and it would not stop.  This went on for days.  I had to pile pillows high on my bed to prop myself up so I could sleep because anytime I was horizontal the cough would creep up and kick my ass.  I would be in that lovely place right before sleep, drowsily imagining flying or that I had three arms, when that cough would smash me right back into reality.  I remember lying there with my eyes dry feeling like I would never sleep again.  I finally succumbed and took four of Milla’s triaminic cough strips.  I don’t like taking those kinds of drugs because they drug me so completely I have a hangover for days, but even a hangover was preferable to that shit.  Only it was like the cough sat and waited for the exact SECOND the dextromethorphan wore off.  I love saying that word, dextromethorphan.  I would lie there and say it over and over to take myself into that sleepy place knowing the cough couldn’t get me.  ANYWAY.  The SECOND it wore off, the cough would return with a vengeance worse than anything prior to the attempted cough murder.  I finally started popping the dextromethorphan like some kind of an addict just to sleep.  After about a week of this, my head hurt constantly and I was a walking zombie from lack of non-drug-induced sleep.  That’s about when the tickle began.  I didn’t have any mucous left.  There was just that fucking tickle in the back of my throat.  I’d be sitting there on the computer or reading a book or trying to work and feel that wretched ass tickle.  Tickle.  Tickle.  And have to cough.  And then I could not stop coughing.  I even stuck my finger in the back of my throat in an attempt to stop the tickle.  It didn’t work.  I looked up the tickle on the internet and found many a distressed sufferer lamenting on various medical websites about the wretched ass tickle.  Some had suffered for years.  These were people with chronic conditions, asthma and the like.  Thank GOD I did not have that. I had the tickle for about four days.  I probably would have found a huge bridge from which to fling myself had the tickle continued much longer.  I pity those people who live their lives with the tickle.

ANYWAY.  What was my point? I had one.  The POINT is that I had this bitch of a cold that lasted nearly four weeks, then I began gradually to heal.  There was a period of about five days where I sneezed, but had no other symptoms, but that faded as well.  Even Milla’s aftercare teacher would say, You are doing better. Then the next day he would say, You seem 10 percent better today.  Finally one day he said, I think you are 98 percent better.  Does that mean the cold is all gone and you are well?  I would say, Yes!  I am so much better.  Thank you so much for thinking of me.

Well.  We were both wrong.  I woke up yesterday and the damn headache, lung ache, face snot, sneezing, sore throat, and cough are all back and all at once.  No more of that systematic one at a time shit for this cold.  No.  It’s all back and it’s all back at once.  And you know what is really strange?  My friend Britta had this same crap about the same time I did and in the same order.  And yesterday her shit came back exactly like mine!!  It’s like some miracle virus that tricks you into thinking you are well when you’re not!  It’s so cruel.

So this is what I’m contemplating as I sit here not doing much work because my head hurts and I’m tired and my lungs hurt and I’m WHINING.  Wah wah wah!  I guess I will see now if the pretty orange color stays when I actually post this thing.

DAMN!!  I just typed in Evil Guerrilla Virus and in the process sneezed the biggest grossest sneeze of ick I’ve sneezed in years!  Thank god for tissue and thank god more for soft tissue with lotion in it!  Yikes!

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Why We Celebrate Birthdays

I love the movie Waitress.  I saw it twice at the theaters and now I own it.  It’s an amazing movie.  So well-written.  So funny and sad at the same time.  That moment when she says to the nurse, Give’er to me.  Then looks at that baby and the rest of the world fades from view.  Nothing else matters.  I have never seen a movie capture that feeling, that moment when your child is looking at you for the first time and you know in the marrow of your bones that you have fulfilled your life’s biological purpose; you know why you were born.  There is nothing like it.  When Milla was born, the doctor put her on my stomach, I laid my hand on her back, she lifted her head and looked at me and I told her Hi Baby.

I will never forget that moment for as long as I live.  It was the best moment of my life.  I know now why we celebrate birthdays.

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Glug

Have you ever gone swimming somewhere noisy, boats roaring, children screeching, just the sounds of summer and wetness…then you dive under the water and it’s silent and thick, the water fills your head?  You might can barely hear the other sounds, but they are muffled and far away.  You are present only in the moment of being there under the water by yourself.

Well, that’s like writing can be for me.  I start writing and lose any sense of time.  I don’t notice the sounds.  I’m gone.  I love that place.  It’s better than any substance designed to obliterate reality and there isn’t a hangover, although there can be some disorientation upon returning to consciousness and having to deal again with reality.  That can be somewhat of a shock.

I love that this blog thing tells you that no one reads what you say.  That’s all good though because I might be tempted to edit myself if I thought anyone was looking at this or gave a damn.  I probably do anyway because it’s not my journal.  Oh well.