Hi all.
Got some wisdom teeth out recently. Apparently my nerve endings are a bunch of pansies because I'm still in pain. Read a bunch of stuff about dry socket (which I don't have, but am paranoid about getting). There are all these question-answer sites floating about that it's easy to get an answer to any question you have just by searching. The reliability of the answer is another matter. One of them caught my eye. For some reason, some guy felt compelled to qualify his credibility as an authority on pain by saying that he'd been in a lot of street fights and had been stabbed once. Dude also said that dry socket was the worst pain he'd ever felt in his life. Terrifying.
Swallowed some stitches today. The knots come off as the thread dissolves and they look like little spiders. So, doubly terrifying because a.) AUGH A STITCH POPPED OUT and b.) AUGH SPIDERS!! Nobody wants to think about little stitch spiders crawling around in their esophagus. Which... I just made you do. So. There we are then.
That's it. That's my blog post. Gonna take some uber-tylenol now.
Rule: Don't get dry socket; it's worse than stabs.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Monday, March 15, 2010
I told you I would do it so here.
I took my time when I cut her up, making sure to cut as precisely as possible. There was no rush. I gathered all the fluffy, white scraps after they had been cut and put them in a pie tin; a lowly container, but it would be suitable for flames. I set the pie tin in the fake fireplace. The snowy mound was a ghost. My ghost, but a little one, because when only a part of you is gone, or going, the ghost is small. When all of you is gone, the ghost becomes so big it is as big as the universe. This is why pointing at the sky when asked where deceased loved ones are is silly. They are so big you are in them.
My little ghost stayed in a duffel bag for about 2.5 years. She sat so quiet, so patient. I had forgotten about her. She never glowed, or floated about the house, or made "wooo" noises. She just lay there, in the dark of the upper reaches of the closet. That, of course, is where you put ghosts of parts of yourself, pictures of your ex-husband, clothes you think you might wear again maybe, gifts you don't like, and instruction manuals.
Me and the boy finally found a new place where the porch didn't sag dangerously, there wasn't mold climbing inside the bathroom walls and the refrigerator wasn't from the 70s and sealed with plumber's putty. We emptied all the storage. I found an mp3 player the size and weight of a bar of soap, my first camera, a book about birds of North America and this duffel bag. The little ghost did scare me a little when I opened the bag, but not on purpose. I was just not expecting her with her patience and silence and seeing the part of you that is gone is always a little strange.
If I were on a stranded island with some survivors of a plane crash or something, I would probably want everyone to let everyone else know how they preferred their last rites to be performed, if any. And, if possible, I would perform them if any of them were to die. I feel that this is the honorable and respectful thing to do, and beyond that, if there is any favor that a person should be afforded, it should be this one. This was the case with my ghost.
She looked happy to be in that pie tin and out of the duffel bag. I looked at her for a bit before lighting a match and tossing it into the tin. Her fluffiness and the small pieces made for a quick burn. I stayed with her until she was charred to the bottom of the pie tin. I was doing what was right, but that meant she was disappearing.
A lot of people go through this process of getting rid of ghosts of parts of themselves. They say they've thrown off their past, burst out of their shell, that a great weight has been lifted. But we all miss the heft; light blankets feel imaginary at the start of spring, when down comforters are gone. After a haircut, ponytails feel capricious in the breeze. There's always something sitting on our hearts, whether it's sad or happy, light or heavy. Invisible weights that we carry around, one or sometimes a few at a time. So when they say a great weight has been lifted, there's usually a bit left there still.
It's like our hearts are scales, and this is how we measure value in our lives. Ghosts of parts of ourselves don't weigh a lot, as you can imagine. But they do register. When change happens, we often bring out all the little ghosts we've been keeping around, line them up, and set them on our hearts for measurement. Some are leaden and need to be disposed of, some are feather-light and can stay, some are heavy but we insist on lugging them around, and others are necessary ballast. But for a few moments after I had weighed, retired, and said goodbye to this ghost, nothing sat on my heart in her place. It was a scale with nothing to weigh.
Rule: Try not to use more than one metaphor at once, like I just did. Whoops. Oh well, at least I can decipher this nonsense.
My little ghost stayed in a duffel bag for about 2.5 years. She sat so quiet, so patient. I had forgotten about her. She never glowed, or floated about the house, or made "wooo" noises. She just lay there, in the dark of the upper reaches of the closet. That, of course, is where you put ghosts of parts of yourself, pictures of your ex-husband, clothes you think you might wear again maybe, gifts you don't like, and instruction manuals.
Me and the boy finally found a new place where the porch didn't sag dangerously, there wasn't mold climbing inside the bathroom walls and the refrigerator wasn't from the 70s and sealed with plumber's putty. We emptied all the storage. I found an mp3 player the size and weight of a bar of soap, my first camera, a book about birds of North America and this duffel bag. The little ghost did scare me a little when I opened the bag, but not on purpose. I was just not expecting her with her patience and silence and seeing the part of you that is gone is always a little strange.
If I were on a stranded island with some survivors of a plane crash or something, I would probably want everyone to let everyone else know how they preferred their last rites to be performed, if any. And, if possible, I would perform them if any of them were to die. I feel that this is the honorable and respectful thing to do, and beyond that, if there is any favor that a person should be afforded, it should be this one. This was the case with my ghost.
She looked happy to be in that pie tin and out of the duffel bag. I looked at her for a bit before lighting a match and tossing it into the tin. Her fluffiness and the small pieces made for a quick burn. I stayed with her until she was charred to the bottom of the pie tin. I was doing what was right, but that meant she was disappearing.
A lot of people go through this process of getting rid of ghosts of parts of themselves. They say they've thrown off their past, burst out of their shell, that a great weight has been lifted. But we all miss the heft; light blankets feel imaginary at the start of spring, when down comforters are gone. After a haircut, ponytails feel capricious in the breeze. There's always something sitting on our hearts, whether it's sad or happy, light or heavy. Invisible weights that we carry around, one or sometimes a few at a time. So when they say a great weight has been lifted, there's usually a bit left there still.
It's like our hearts are scales, and this is how we measure value in our lives. Ghosts of parts of ourselves don't weigh a lot, as you can imagine. But they do register. When change happens, we often bring out all the little ghosts we've been keeping around, line them up, and set them on our hearts for measurement. Some are leaden and need to be disposed of, some are feather-light and can stay, some are heavy but we insist on lugging them around, and others are necessary ballast. But for a few moments after I had weighed, retired, and said goodbye to this ghost, nothing sat on my heart in her place. It was a scale with nothing to weigh.
Rule: Try not to use more than one metaphor at once, like I just did. Whoops. Oh well, at least I can decipher this nonsense.
Monday, March 8, 2010
Still unpacking when will it end
Rule: It's not a home until you've cooked in it.
Got home late today after lots of organizing equipment shopping. Nothing tires you out more than thinking, "Oh god, how will I organize this?" then going to the store and thinking, "OH GOD, HOW WILL I ORGANIZE THIS???" Then stumbling home awkwardly with giant bags full of tubs? Containers of containers. How meta. I hope the Hipster Police don't come after me.
After having successfully not angered our crotchety neighbor with the outer door, I get home, set down the stuff, then begin work on the THREE TIER COLOSSAL POLE CADDY!!! ZOMG! (It's that thing that you wedge in the corner of your bath so that it holds soap and shit) Found out it was made for stand showers, had to remove a piece. Hope it still works! At this point, I'm super tired, so I go to the kitchen (we have gas! squee!) and make a giant thing of scrambled eggs.
Why? Because they're easy. Also, as some of my generous friends found out, me and the boy have a superfluity of eggs. I love farm-fresh eggs and will hoard them like there will be some egg-famine. As we moved, we discovered that we had about 9 eggs in the egg-cup unit that's attached to the fridge, and then another dozen in a carton. So we carefully wrapped up the egg babies in a box, to be hand-ferried by some friends, and other egg babies got incubated in my pockets. Fortunately, none of them had been scrambled before tonight.
I think my verb tenses are all over the place in that last post. Anyway. Hooray for cooking! Hooray for eggs!
Got home late today after lots of organizing equipment shopping. Nothing tires you out more than thinking, "Oh god, how will I organize this?" then going to the store and thinking, "OH GOD, HOW WILL I ORGANIZE THIS???" Then stumbling home awkwardly with giant bags full of tubs? Containers of containers. How meta. I hope the Hipster Police don't come after me.
After having successfully not angered our crotchety neighbor with the outer door, I get home, set down the stuff, then begin work on the THREE TIER COLOSSAL POLE CADDY!!! ZOMG! (It's that thing that you wedge in the corner of your bath so that it holds soap and shit) Found out it was made for stand showers, had to remove a piece. Hope it still works! At this point, I'm super tired, so I go to the kitchen (we have gas! squee!) and make a giant thing of scrambled eggs.
Why? Because they're easy. Also, as some of my generous friends found out, me and the boy have a superfluity of eggs. I love farm-fresh eggs and will hoard them like there will be some egg-famine. As we moved, we discovered that we had about 9 eggs in the egg-cup unit that's attached to the fridge, and then another dozen in a carton. So we carefully wrapped up the egg babies in a box, to be hand-ferried by some friends, and other egg babies got incubated in my pockets. Fortunately, none of them had been scrambled before tonight.
I think my verb tenses are all over the place in that last post. Anyway. Hooray for cooking! Hooray for eggs!
Sunday, March 7, 2010
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