“If you aren’t in over your head, how do you know how tall you are?” ~ T.S. Eliot

The Natural Rock Pools of Pamukkale, Turkey

                   

“There is a fissure in my vision and madness will always rush through. Lean over me, at the bedside of my madness, and let me stand without crutches.” ~ Anaïs Nin, from “House of Incest”

Friday, late afternoon. Cloudy, drizzle, liquid humidity, 80 degrees.

Now on day 8 of this particular migraine. Would someone please explain to me how this is even possible? My body is so full of pain relievers, anti-inflammatories, steroids, Botox, and nausea medication that I couldn’t pass a drug test in any quarter of this world, yet I am still in pain. Added to this was a brand new twist with my vision—as in I was rendered temporarily blind, could only see lines for about 15 seconds.

Very, very freaky.

Do not like stuff messing with my vision. I remember well the onset of a migraine while I was out on my daily walk (years ago when I did that); suddenly, layers were coming off the hot street, and I saw horizontal bands everywhere. Today’s visual anomaly was a hundred times more unsettling.

Not good. Not good at all. So I’m sitting here typing blind, hoping that my fingers on are on the right keys because I’m trying not to focus on anything.

“When I can’t make you understand I repeat myself
I repeat

If you don’t stop asking me all these questions how
Will I understand anything” ~ Robert Polito, from “Please Refrain from Talking During the Movie”

Monday evening. Sunny, hot and humid, 90 degrees.

Obviously, never got back to the post on Friday. So many good things have happened since then that I feel a need to share them with you . . .

Let’s see, first, I’m having a severe reaction to the Botox, at least that’s what I think it is. I cannot get my doctor’s office to return my call, so let’s just hope that I don’t go into anaphylactic shock over this. The soft tissue above my eyebrows is very swollen; my cheeks feel taut, and I cannot open my mouth all the way. My eyes feel as if something is inside both of them burning. I looked up my symptoms and it’s either the Botox, or an extreme mold reaction, or cellulitis. All good things . . .

But believe it or not, this is the good news. You see, we have water damage and rot down to the joists. Yes, the joists. You know those big pieces of lumber that keep the house up, that make it possible for the house not to sink into the crawl space, the ones that are long and unwieldy. Yes, the joists.

I tried to put this into perspective for Corey by telling him that had we hired a contractor, that discovery would have tacked on at least another $6k to the job. Perspective is not exactly what he’s looking for. Help would be the operative word. I cannot help in the wood replacement, just don’t have the strength. It’s definitely not a one-person job. At times like these, Corey really misses his brothers and cousins, all of whom are very, very handy.

“A trap is only a trap if you don’t know about it. If you know about it, it’s a challenge.” ~ China Miéville, from King Rat

We knew we had water damage, and we suspected that it was in the studs, but not the joists. That just seems too traumatic somehow. It’s a wonder that no one fell through the floor before now. If you could only see this—it’s amazing in it’s thoroughness, complete and total breakdown of the foundation. It’s everywhere.

As I sit here, I can actually feel all of the muscles in the top of my back and shoulder contracting. What does anaphylactic shock look like? I know. I’m a drama queen, but hey, now’s the time, if ever.

So in between trying to identify my symptoms as some new rare disease, I’m researching joist repair, adding it to the list of E-How printouts that are piling up on the dining room table. We might get to tiling sometime next week. Meantime, did I mention this is our only bathroom? Only. Bathroom.

I’ve raised three children, three teenagers with only one bathroom. It seemed like quite an achievement before. Now the real achievement is that no one has been killed by the structural failure that is our house.

“Your home is regarded as a model home, your life as a model life. But all this splendor, and you along with it… it’s just as though it were built upon a shifting quagmire. A moment may come, a word can be spoken, and both you and all this splendor will collapse.” ~ Henrik Ibsen, from A Doll House

I don’t know. Somehow, I’m not really terribly surprised by this turn of events. Our life tends to unfold based on the application of Murphy’s law and all of its corollaries. Not by choice, mind you, but by happenstance. I knew that once we pulled things up and off that what lay beneath would be ugly, but I never thought that it would look like something out of a post-apocalyptic movie in which basic structures have disintegrated into something indeterminate.

Anyway, as I try to complete this post it is now Tuesday, but I saw no point in declaring that with yet another subhead. I stopped writing this post last night to go and cook dinner and then got completely distracted in researching joist replacement, calculating wood needed, etcetera ad nauseum.

This whole project has turned into one massive pain in the tuckus. The only good thing that I can say about all of this is that I am so glad we are undertaking this at a time in which finding out the correct way to do something is only a mouse click away. I cannot imagine trying to do a major renovation without Internet access. By the way, the people who frequent DIY forums are seriously serious about their opinions. Every thread that I have followed has had some element of one-upsmanship as well as snarky comments along the lines of “I can’t believe you just told X to do that! Everyone knows that’s now how you do it!”

Just want to point out that most of the DIY forums are inhabited by people with XY chromosomes. Perhaps that’s why there is so much competition, such a need to have a bigger . . . wrench (not saying that women aren’t competitive, so don’t even go there).

“I was never one to patiently pick up broken fragments and glue them together again and tell myself that the mended whole was as good as new. What is broken is broken—and I’d rather remember it as it was at its best than mend it and see the broken places as long as I lived.” ~ Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind

I suppose I’ll close with a bit of good news: My doctor’s office finally called me back yesterday evening to reassure me that I am not suffering from a progressive case of anaphylactic shock (which I knew, really, I did, it was just the whole vision thing), just good old side effects from the Botox. My eyebrows aren’t quite as huge today, and the lower half of my face/neck/throat no longer feels as if it’s closing.

You know, I really just want to take a Xanax and lie in bed and stare at the ceiling, and since Brett is on campus, and Corey is out buying wood, I just might do that. I mean, I began the day by taking a shower at my mother’s house, which is enough of a story for a post of its own, and the day does not promise to get any better as the hours pass, so why not just bypass all of that? Don’t you agree? I thought that you might.

Besides, if I can’t float in the pool (because of the prednizone and sun being a bad mixture), and I can’t soak in the tub because it’s in a box in the living room, I’ll just have to settle for thinking abou floating in these natural pools until my skin is all wrinkly.

More later. Peace.

*All images are of the Natural Rock Pools of Pamukkale, Turkey.

Music by Future of Forestry, “Someone”

                    

Daily

These shriveled seeds we plant,
corn kernel, dried bean,
poke into loosened soil,
cover over with measured fingertips

These T-shirts we fold into
perfect white squares

These tortillas we slice and fry to crisp strips
This rich egg scrambled in a gray clay bowl

This bed whose covers I straighten
smoothing edges till blue quilt fits brown blanket
and nothing hangs out

This envelope I address
so the name balances like a cloud
in the center of sky

This page I type and retype
This table I dust till the scarred wood shines
This bundle of clothes I wash and hang and wash again
like flags we share, a country so close
no one needs to name it

The days are nouns:  touch them
The hands are churches that worship the world

~ Naomi Shihab Nye

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If it’s Friday, it must mean leftovers . . .

 

Video of  Avalanche Creek in Montana’s Glacier National Park by Janson Jones

“Start a huge, foolish project, like Noah…it makes absolutely no difference what people think of you.” ~ Rumi 

Well, one of the only good things about being bi-polar is that sufferers of this condition have manic bouts in which they become very hyper and have a lot of energy. Granted, I don’t have these bouts of mania the way that I used to, mostly because of my medication, but since I’m not taking my medication as I am supposed to, I am now having these spurts of energy. Did you follow all of that?

Anyway, yesterday I don’t know what got into me, but I cleaned the kitchen and then proceeded to do all of the paperwork that has been backed up, which meant forms to seven pharmaceutical companies requesting participation in their patient assistance programs. In addition to the forms, I had to include supporting documentation showing why I need this assistance. After completing the forms online, I then tried to get all of the packages together but ended up confusing myself, so I enlisted Corey’s help in going through each package to make sure that I had everything.

I also had to do an explanatory cover letter, and a cover letter to my doctor explaining everything that I was trying to do. In addition, I finally got the paperwork together for my student loan requesting forbearance due to poverty, and I completed a form for another withdrawal from my retirement, this time to pay my health insurance premium. At this rate, I will have absolutely no money left in my retirement, well, very little.

But the point is that I got all of this paperwork completed and ready to go to the various places to which it needs to be disbursed; I also filed my copies and filed a pile of other stuff that was cluttering up my desk. Finally. And of course, Corey helped. So a very productive day. Today? Well today my back is killing me and I have a headache—the price for doing too much in one day.

“It is not the perfect who always succeed in life, but those who keep trying even in the face of tremendous hardships . . .” ~ Steven Apel

Termination Dust, Chugach State Park, AK by Janson Jones

The director of the publishing program at George Washington University denied my grade appeal, which I predicted he would do, but at least I finally found out what grade I got on my project for the infrastructure class. He claims that the grade was posted on Blackboard, but it was not posted for the three months that I checked. I got an A on the project, but since the project only counted for 15 percent of the grade, it wasn’t enough to balance my abysmal performance on the midterm or final exam.

Quite frankly, that class was a failure as far as I’m concerned. The professors who were team-teaching did not mesh well. Entirely too much material was presented without there being any type of background preparation. It was a very advanced course without a background course preceding it in the cohort.

A bit of background here: The publishing degree that I completed in the summer of 2008 was set up as a cohort, which meant that everyone took the same classes for the sequence of the degree, with the exception of the concentration classes. I took the e-publishing concentration, which included this computer infrastructure class. However, at no point in the sequence was there a basic HTML course or a course in creating a website. As a result, those of us with little or no HTML backgrounds were completely lost in the infrastructure class.

We were also the second cohort to complete the program, which is now undergoing a complete restructuring. In essence, our cohort, along with the first cohort, were the guinea pigs, the ones they got to experiment on to see what worked and what didn’t work. There was duplication among the courses, and then there was the problem with the e-publishing concentration.

Now I must pause here to say that overall, the instructors in the program were wonderful, with diverse backgrounds in the publishing industry. I learned a great deal, and wouldn’t trade the experience for anything. However, I do feel that we were short shrifted in that the kinks in the new program had yet to be finessed. Oh well. Live and learn.

“A thousand words leave not the same deep impression as does a single deed.” ~ Henrik Ibsen 

Paint Cans from marthastewart.com

Now that I’ve complete my major paperwork project, I’ve finally gotten Corey to agree to painting the bedroom. I really hope that he comes through this time. Originally the bedroom was supposed to be painted for Mother’s Day . . . 2008! Since it was never done, the new bedroom bureau has been sitting in the living room taking up much-needed space and is part of the reason for the clutter that I go on about so much.

We have all of the supplies to do the bedroom, but it’s such a huge undertaking that we haven’t gotten around to doing it. We have to move furniture out of the room, move things into the middle of the room, removed everything from the walls, spackle, prep, etc.

To be fair, I know personally how hard it is to get motivated for such an undertaking when you just aren’t feeling right. Being out of work for as long as Corey has been has really taken a toll on him emotionally. His self-esteem is shot, and in essence, he cannot really concentrate on anything too big. I know this feeling well.

But Corey’s job with Vane Brothers is fast approaching; his point of contact said the end of December or beginning of January. I can’t believe that it is almost December, but if we can all make it through the upcoming holidays, things should be looking up by 2010. I know that Corey will like being back at work, and I also know that it will greatly improve his state of mind.

Unfortunately, the apprenticeship with the shipyard did not pan out as Corey does not have the required background in advanced math classes, which is a requirement for acceptance. By the time he takes the 12 hours of math and technology, he will have a semester of college completed. The way he looks at it, and I agree, is that if he has to take a semester of college to get into the program, which he would complete with an Associate’s Degree (four to five semesters of work), he might as well go ahead and register for classes and get his Associate’s in his preferred field.

With the upcoming position with Vane Brothers, the disappointment with the apprentice program has been cushioned, and Corey is looking forward to getting back on track professionally.

 “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” ~ Winston S. Churchill

As for my own career, who knows? One of the areas that I would like to explore would be book indexing, which is something that I could pursue at home, which would allow me to work at a more comfortable pace without the pressures of a regular schedule. If anyone out there knows or works for someone who is looking for a book indexer, I’m available, and I’m good at it.

However, part of me really wishes that I could go back to a real job, one in which I interact with other grownups, have responsibilities, make a decent living with benefits. The reality is that I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to do that again. But I’m not giving up on the idea entirely. I suppose that it’s just one more thing in my life for which I’ll have to wait and see what the future holds.

So other than those tidbits, I don’t have a lot to report, but here are a few thoughts for Friday:

• How did Heidi Klum manage to walk the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show only six weeks after giving birth to her fourth child? That woman must have incredible elasticity in her skin, that and very good genes.



Carol Hannah Design from Project Runway Finale

• Speaking of Heidi Klum, Project Runway finished last night with Irina being declared the winner. Personally, I liked Carol Hannah, but I knew that Irina would win. That show is one of my guilty pleasures.
• I read that a man in London has been found not guilty for strangling his wife. Apparently, he has suffered long-term from a sleep disorder and has automatism, a condition in which the sleeping individual has no control over his or her actions. Brian Thomas, the man on trial, strangled his wife because he mistook her for an intruder. Hmm, things that make you go hmm.
• In Peoria, Arizona, a family’s home was burglarized. The intruders took electronics and a music box containing their deceased baby’s ashes. Man, I’d like to know what kind of person steals ashes.
• Linday Lohan is upset that she wasn’t allowed to take $15,000 worth of jewelry from an event. She was promised between $1500 and $2,000 of loot for her appearance. Hello? I would show up wearing a gopher suit to get $1500 worth of free loot, and I wouldn’t complain. I mean, I’m a lot funnier than Lohan, whose only claim to fame at the moment is that she does nothing.
• Hershey Co. is making a bid for Cadbury PLC. This disheartens me. I don’t really like Hershey’s chocolate, but I absolutely love Cadbury as it’s the chocolate that I ate as a child in England. Cadbury Fruit and Nut Bar, Cadbury Caramello. Um Um Good.
• MSNBC regularly posts photographs of people who have had Ambush Makeovers. These are “Today Show” fans who are grabbed off the street and given a makeover. I wonder if they make house calls . . .
• Speaking of house calls, I am seriously thinking of submitting our house for “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.” I know that we don’t have eight children, but geez, does every deserving family have to have a boatload of kids to qualify? What about normal everyday people who have a real need? Maybe they could consider someone like us for a change.
• And speaking of houses, I’m not liking the current season of “House” that much. I mean, the two-hour season premier was wonderful, but since then, it doesn’t seem to have its usual bite.



Dr. Warner (Tamara Tunie) of Law & Order SVU

• And while I’m on shows that have lost their bite, “Law & Order SVU” might be on its last leg. What makes that particular L&O franchise so good is the interaction with the criminals and the nature of the crimes themselves. This season is spending too much time on the personal lives—a show about Olivia, a show about Elliott, a show about Huang. An episode about ADA Paxton. Get back to the squad room and the victims.
• The long nightmare is over: Jon & Kate are finally saying buh bye. Never watched the show myself, but am soooo tired of hearing about this two. And what’s with her hair?
• And finally, an image of the Virgin Mary holding the baby Jesus has appeared on a piece of glass in a church in Latvia. I don’t mean to be mean, but the image that they are showing looks more like the snow suits that Luke and Han wore on the ice planet in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. Does that make me a bad person?

Many thanks to my comrade Janson Jones for the inspiring video. More later. Peace.

One of my all-time favorite songs: “Chances Are,” by Bob Seger and Martine McBride from Hope Floats.

 

“As the purse is emptied, the heart is filled.” ~ Fortune Cookie*

 

The Hermit Tarot Card

“Dont forget, you are always on our minds.” ~ Fortune Cookie

“You are more likely to give than give in.” ~ Fortune Cookie

Headache was much worse today. Alternating between heat and ice. Anyone have any suggestions? The magnesium may be helping in the prevention, but the duration is ratcheting back up. The Topomax was great as a preventive and in shortening the duration, but the side effects were just too severe. The worst one was the effect on my cognitive abilities: I found myself always searching for words and had no memory of any kind.

Playbill for "A Doll's House," with Gillian Anderson at Donmar Warehouse

Anyway, that’s the news on that front.

I reread Henrik Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House” today. Brett is studying the play in school, and his English teacher said that “Medea” and “Doll’s House” would be two big subjects on the IB exam. I want to be able to help Brett prepare, and besides, I love that play. I had forgotten, though, how much I absolutely despise the character of the husband, Torvald Helmer.

I know that he is a reflection of the times, but please. Referring to Nora as his little songbird, his this, his that. Even though Ibsen wasn’t that big on women’s rights, his play was revolutionary in presenting a woman who ended up rejecting the traditional role of wife and mother. Brett’s instructor said that they will be doing Kate Chopin’s The Awakening soon.

That’s another piece that I really love. I used to teach that book in my literature classes back in the day. Chopin’s book was also considered revolutionary in its presentation of a strong female protagonist.

“A thrilling time is in your immediate future.” ~ Fortune Cookie

As for the rest of my evening, I’m not really sure if I want to watch a Korean horror flick that’s on cable freezone, or just play Mah Jong on the computer. I just know that I don’t want to do anything that involves too much thought. At the moment, I’m enjoying a reprieve on the migraine. It has lessened to the point of lingering just behind my eyes and forehead. Much better than this morning when it felt as if someone was drilling inside my head directly behind my right eye. That sensation is always so pleasant . . .

I’m hoping that the abatement will continue until the headache goes away, but I never try to predict these things. That’s just asking for trouble, ensuring that the headache will last for three or four more days if I dare to think that it may be ending. Superstitious? Who me?

Actually, I’m not really superstitious, until I am. It’s more that I believe in signs, kind of like Corey having continued dreams involving the number three. I don’t know what the signs are portending, but I think that they are there sometimes just waiting for us to pay attention.

It’s kind of like predestination, as in, do you believe that things have already been determined so that if you make a decision and a certain outcome results, was that outcome always going to result anyway? Fate . . . Joss . . . Karma.

Tim Roth Facial Reading in "Lie to Me"

One of these days I’m going to have someone do a Tarot card reading on me, just for kicks. This is hard to explain, but I am very, very cynical/skeptical about most things, including fortune telling and Tarot cards, but I’m also fascinated by these things (in a coincidence, earnest probing kind of way . . . sort of). I mean, all of the little tricks that fortune tellers use. Someone close to you is trying to reach you from the other side. Well, odds are fairly good that if you are alive, someone in your life has died. That one’s not hard. Or how about, you are going to meet someone soon who will have a great effect on your life . . .

Okay. Could be the IRS telling you that you are up for an audit. Could be the checkout person at the grocery store who points out that you just dropped your wallet. Could be the pizza delivery person bringing you heartburn in a box. When don’t you meet someone who will affect your life in some way?

But the Tarot cards themselves can be absolutely beautiful. Decks come in so many variations, with artwork ranging from sparse black and white line drawings to elaborate, full-color images.

I do have one question, though. Exactly how does one get a reading over the telephone? I mean, I thought that there needed to be some kind of physical contact, if for nothing else but to assess a client’s eagerness for revealed truths as indicated by facial expressions and pupil dilation.

Maybe I’ve just been watching too much Lie to Me (love Tim Roth) and getting into the whole body reading thing. Okay. I’ll stop. Just thinking out loud.

“Your everlasting patience will be rewarded sooner or later.” ~ Fortune Cookie 

As you can probably tell, I’m just meandering here. Too much concentration would be called for if I were to try to put together a linear post. I mean, I had considered doing the whole post about “A Doll’s House,” but thinking too much hurts, and that play is just ripe for all kinds of discussions: the roles of men and women in society, free will, symbolism, societal proscriptions, the concept of self-ideation solely through the relationship with the male (father then husband). Heady fodder for a post, just not tonight.

Have I mentioned that I miss teaching? Didn’t think so.

“Never trouble trouble till trouble troubles you.” ~ Fortune Cookie 

Let me finish up with one of my dreams: Last night I dreamed that I was saying goodbye to Tom Cruise before he was about to take off on a deployment in his fighter jet. This is curious for a couple of reasons. I used to be a TC fan before he lost it and went overboard with the whole scientology scenario, but not so much any more. So for me to be giving him a big old smooch goodbye is weird.

The other weird part of the dream was that immediately after kissing Tom goodbye, I walked over to Corey, who had a boot camp haircut and was wearing fatigues, and kissed him goodbye. After I kissed Corey, I assured him that I was going to break it off with Tom, but I didn’t want to do that right before he deployed.

Clive Owen in Children of Men

These two men have absolutely nothing in common. One is tall, the other short. One is sane, the other not. And one is rich and the other is my spouse.

The other really weird part of the dream was the reaction on the part of the other women who were bidding adieu to their significant others. They all  ostracized me for kissing two men goodbye. One even tried to block my view in looking out the window at the fleet as they left. Then, and this is the weirdest part of all, some MP came up to me and said that I was wanted by the stage, where whoever was in charge proceeded to give me the best seat in the house, right in the middle of the first row, except my seat was a folding webbed lawn chair, and everyone else had  nice cushioned folding chair.

Were we talking about symbolism? Tom Cruise? Why couldn’t it have been Clive Owen? Him, I might not have promised to give up. Oh well. Maybe that’s why my headache was worse when I woke up: At some point, Tom probably tried to convert me to scientology, and true to form, I probably ended up bopping him over the head with a book.

Parting words: “A feather in the hand is better than a bird in the air” (Fortune Cookie)

Franco Battioto’s version of “Ruby Tuesday” from Children of Men. By the way, absolutely incredible underrated, underexposed movie but not for those who don’t care to delve too deeply.

 

 

More later. Peace.

*Actual fortunes from fortune cookies