Wirth Bro[ther]s’ new & greatest all feature combined show direct from America! Lithograph, Auckland, N.Z. circa 1890. Courtesy of The Commons, Flickr.Dear Internet,
A few days ago I came across a chat transcript between TheHusband and I from our early days of courting, circa 2009. There was much gagging going on in my head over the saccharine of the language. Were we really like that? Yes, yes we were. Now, he says, it’s doom, gloom, and despair.
What they don’t tell you, what no one tells you really, is that after you’ve been partnered up with someone for awhile, perhaps you’ve moved in together or even perhaps, you’ve gotten hitched! However the configuration, the daily mysterians of getting to know the other person gets dialed back. A lot. The day to day bits of the relationship – who ate the last of the cereal? Must we have the fan on so high? What’s another puppy? All the daily give and take, the negotiations and compromises – those are never discussed anywhere. It’s all sunshine, unicorn farts, and sparkles. Relationships are hard work and if any writer, nay blogger, worth their salt will tell you, writing about the mundane does not get you hits.
An interlude: Alex Skarsgard taking his shirt off. Because, why not?
When I’m up north, TheHusband and I use our time to do the errands and the jobs that could not be completed over the weekend. Sunday afternoon or early Monday morning, I’m back on the road to GR, the dog in tow natch, to work for the week. Thursday night, I’m back on the road to Throbbing Cabin and it starts all over again. I feel like my life has become nothing more than errands and chores.
This week, however, TheHusband has come home to me for he needs to do some work that can’t be done from the cabin. This worked out well for me because this Friday night, myself and 7 girlfriends are descending to the cabin for a girls only weekend, so the timing works out for everyone.
With TheHusband home, it was to continue the ritual of chores before play. I mapped out our path for the day, starting with getting gas (which was an ulterior motive for getting a slurpee) and ending with antiquing at a few of our favorite haunts. Our dinner plans were to make pizza, using Buffalo mozerella to see how I could tolerate it and maybe see a movie.
Four hours into our jaunt, and no where near completed with our errands, I had to give in and just give up on the day. We moved on to having dinner at one of our comfort places. The rest of the night was slow as I read news feeds and magazines and TheHusband video gamed.
I could not shake the sleepiness, no matter what I did. I slept deeply for nearly nine hours and to top that off drank gallons of caffeine during the course of the day. My energy level remain low, but I powered through what I could, but my limits were apparent and I had to respect that, no matter what my mind says.
Our neighborhood has been going through serious bouts of gentrification in the last five years. An old electrical and heating company building at a corner down from our house, long ago someone had graffitied “life is beautiful” on wall near the roof and it always made me smile when I drove by. Now it’s been painted over and my heart tugs down every so little when I drive by.
x0x0,
Lisa (Day #10)
Ice-hockeying women in bathing suits. Minneapolis, USA, 1925. Courtesy of The Commons, Flickr.
Dear Internet,
I’ve been hooked on using IFTTT lately and have been intrigued by some of the recipes that have popped up. One such example is to have a random Wikipedia article sent to Feedly every morning to increase my general knowledge. I thought this was exceptionally brilliant as TheHusband and I play team trivia on occasion and any edge is a good edge. Today’s article was about Thorarinn Leifsson, an Icelandic artist and illustrator whose done a few graphic novels that seem up my alley. Problem is, his site is under construction and his books sites have been taken over by spam. His work has apparently been printed in English, but I’m only able to find German copies at Amazon US and Amazon UK. If anyone has any leads to reasonably priced copies, in English, that would be fabulous.
An interlude:
This morning was glacial, as I dilly dallyed about, spending time reading while I ate breakfast and then continue to read long after the last bite had been swallowed. Work was slow, because no one is around on Friday. I did end up going to lunch with Work Husband #1, which was fun. Sometimes it’s comforting to hear that how I feel about things is echoed by others.
TheHusband came home tonight after spending the last month up at Throbbing Cabin, directing the renovations that have been going on. He’s been luxuriating in all the comforts of the 21st century since he’s been home. We ended up at a chain BBQ place late for dinner and had a really good night. The family, TheHusband, myself, and Wednesday the Pug, were back together again.
Overall, my mood was pretty good and even. Dr. P.’s suggestion of taking Klonopin at 7PM seems to be working. I had my 8 oz Red Bull in the morning, a few sodas at lunch and nothing for the rest of the day. To make sure that my body is not so dependent on caffeine, in the late afternoon, it’s no caffeine. I’m bringing Shirley Temples back.
In other news and world reports, I also applied to write for No Flying No Tights.
Some days, it is all about the banality of day to day life. And that is totally okay.
x0x0,
Lisa (Day #9)
Auchinleck Manuscript – Reinbroun. National Library of Scotland. Courtesy of The Commons, Flickr.
Dear Internet,
I did not so much as leap out of bed this morning in so much as I forced myself to acknowledge that yes, morning was indeed here and yes, it was time to get up. I used to go from dead sleep to out of the house in 45 minutes. But then the ankle surgery occurred and I slowed down a bit. Now with the constant energy drain, I’m positively glacial. Dead sleep to leaving the house is not 45 minutes anymore, it now takes close to two hours. This summer gives me loads of flexibility because I’m not tied to any kind of schedule so I can pretty much roll into work whenever I want to.
But when fall comes, that will be a whole different matter.
And by fall, I mean start of classes which is in about three weeks.
Later
I had the good grace to get this entry started this morning, a running commentary through my head as the day progressed. Let us get the work out of the way first before continuing, and see where that takes us.
On the Wednesday front, she started spaghetti legs again this evening and I’ve started her on a dose of Gabapentin to go with her ‘roids. Like before, it just shows up. She remains as alert as ever, which we’re constantly surprised as she’s 13 years old and you’d think there would be some feebleness to her. Oh, no. She’d cut a bitch for pizza crust, let’s make sure we’ve got that correctly. She’s back to chewing on her raw hides again, which she hasn’t touched in years. It was eye brow raising moment of “Que?” when she picked up this habit again, for she just waltzed into the living room, dragged a rawhide with her (mind you, the same one she’s been working on for 3 or so years) and put a big dent in it on afternoon. Now she does this every night.
This morning, I was up and out of the house within 1.5 hour of waking up, so minor victory! My decision to pre-pack my lunch, pick out the day’s outfits, and get my gadgets in gear helped. Ages ago, I learned the lesson of packing for the day the night before so these are not new introductions to the plan, rather just tried and true ones. Also ages ago, I used to eat breakfast at work, so my lunch bag was doing double time, but lately I’ve been eating before leaving, namely as if I don’t have food in my stomach in and around the time I take my pills, then I start to feel awful and get massive cramps. Eating breakfast at work was to “save time,” but now I found eating at home is faster because I don’t have to prepare and pack more food.
I weighed and measured myself, transposing that into Fitbit this morning. I’m unsure when I’ll keep that active – weekly? Daily? Monthly? Something will naturally occur. I also started, again (always again), tracking my food portions but opted to not finish out the day. My caffeine intake consisted of an iced coffee at 2PM and a 8 oz Sugar Free Red Bull in the morning. I consumed 32+ oz of water during the course of the day and this evening, I’ve been double fisting water and blood red orange soda for I am desperate to not be dependent on caffeine. My food choices were healthy, for what it was worth, and my only indulgence were the aforementioned large iced coffee before I headed to see Dr. P.
My session with Dr. P. went really well, as par usual. The chaos inside my brain seems to soothe a bit after I see him. He did suggest that while taking Klonopin at night was a good idea, it has an extremely long half-life, so I should be taking it earlier in the evening. This means if I take it before bed, as I had been for the last week plus, it has not completely cycled by the time I’m up and at ’em, which explains why I’m groggy in the morning. Then add on the lithium which causes low energy and you have yourself a winner. His suggestion is to take the drug at about 7PM or so, so that it would have cycled by the time I get up, which I’m starting tonight.
(With all the med changes and other special needs I need to be aware of, looks like I’m making another IFTTT recipe. I love this service.)
My mood today, in the morning, was fairly focused as I started getting some work done that’s been woefully behind since I’ve been rarely here. I was still feeling tired for the better part of the day, but it came in spurts. One minute I was fine and then a few moments later, I could curl up and sleep with it disappearing again not long after. Since I took the Klonopin late and I didn’t get a full 8 hours of sleep which is usually needed, I’ll assume this is part of the problem. As I have taken the Klonopin earlier this eve as directed by Dr. P., I will now have a control study of sorts.
While I was fairly focused, I was also feeling very pedanticy, meaning I had this urge to correct and illustrate my awesomeness to everyone. Mainly with vendors. Case in point: I emailed a company that solicited us for one of their products. After going over their website with a fine tooth comb, I could not find the answers to my questions. So I emailed the sales rep explaining I could not find the answers on their site and here were my questions. The sales rep turns around and emails me a copy/paste job of their technical support page. So I responded back that I had already read this, as I had pointed out, and if she could not answer my questions, could she haves someone else do it for her?
She’s working on it, she says.
Variations of this happened with several other vendors today. Is it the fact it’s August 1? Do people not read their goddamned email or understand their products? It just got me really irrationally worked up. But I recognize it’s irrational.
Since my original plan was to head to Throbbing Cabin for the weekend after the session today, it was curtailed as TheHusband is coming home on Friday, I was out of sorts after my session with Dr. P. ended at 3PM. I then got this urge to garden or perhaps use our rowing machine for 1/2 hour or so tonight. Or maybe do both! Also, maybe get some writing done and get caught up on paper reading.
No. No. After beating the exercise and gardening demon back to their black holes inside my soul, the night turned into a lot slower. I was able to clean up some server work and get some digital reading done, but no where near what I had anticipated or hoped. And I’m reminding myself this is okay.
In my session with Dr. P. today, I mentioned the following and about a few other things which I’ll write about tomorrow. I said to him that I don’t know if it is the drugs, or the circumstances, or what, but I don’t like this person I’ve become. While I was never a WILD AND CRAZY GIRL, I didn’t have any qualms or issues about being a bit reckless, or doing things outside of my comfort zone. And now, I’m more often than not, trapped by fear. And that has become the most crippling feeling of all.
Paris Exposition: map, Paris, France, 1900. Courtesy of The Commons, Flickr.
Dear Internet,
I’ve been writing this in my head for days and yet here I am circling the aggressive blinking cursor with trepidation. It begins back when Dr. H upped my lithium dose to 1500mg a day (Two pills in the morning, one in the mid afternoon, last two at night). He soothes that things will change within a week once the drug metabolizes.
And he’s right, it does.
The world clicks into focus a bit better and I do not feel the crushing tiredness that plagued me through most of June. But perhaps it is too soon to tell or it is too late to tell. For the relief is short lived and I’m back to finding myself at a cross-roads, again, with what I need to do.
Or what I want to do.
At my most recent appointment with Dr. H., one where it had been sometime since we had seen each other due to schedule conflicts, my lithium levels were still in the therapeutic range. But all of the symptoms I recounted then in our session in June still exist., the biggest culprit is lethargy.
Lethargy, in any form or from anywhere, is a cruel bitch of a mistress. In my head, I am writing short stories! I am getting projects done! I am curing cancer! In reality, I feel so drained and physiologically exhausted I find myself taking short cuts to save time such as stop washing my hair daily, stop wearing make-up, and pushing off as much as I can to another day.
It’s a relief when daily chores are done because I can curl up in my bedroom and do nothing until I fall asleep, usually to some Britishism. I’m not reading, still. I’ve touched nothing in terms of projects or hobbies.
The days I am home alone in Grand Rapids, when TheHusband is up at Throbbing Cabin, I don’t cook dinner, I graze. I am exhausted walking six blocks to get hot dogs. There are five bag of treats of some sort on the counter, the fridge is full of easy to eat food like hummus and pre-made salads. I have lots and lots of liquids on hand, because sometimes I can’t even be bothered to eat, but I can be bothered to drink.
I medicate my tiredness with Sugar Free Red Bull, starting in the morning and then administrating as needed through the course of the day. Sometimes there is coffee, other times, Coke. Before I could not drink caffeine past early afternoon hour, as a rule, because it would amp me to all hours of the night. Now, I can’t seem to live without it.
There are times I’ve been so exhausted I’ve taken 3-4 hour naps and then still went to bed at a decent hour and slept for at least 8 hours. Then woke up as if I had barely slept at all.
Dr. H’s argument to me is that I’m not taking my Klonopin at night, as I should, to help me fall asleep and sleep deeply and as such, it’s fucking with the rest of my day. Is there some truth to this? Maybe. I’m running out of drugged options here and I’m grasping at straws. I want to have some semblance of life, not a shell of a life viewed through opaque windows.
So here’s the deal: Dr. H. AND Dr. P. have asked me, for months if I’m truthful, to track my moods and experiences, at least daily summary of what’s going on to better serve me and thus them. I haven’t been doing that. My reconstruction at my sessions are faulty at best, which makes for sketchy advice. I am an unreliable narrator.
I have decided, then, after this last session with Dr. H. that I needed to make a change. I needed to change – not me waiting for change, but I needed to change. For months I’ve been darkly hinting like a punk Cassandra that a big THING was going to happen. So maybe part of my lethargy is the waiting for a THING that can finally kickstart into gear.
I miss so much from a life that is just beginning to bloom. So I need to change and I need to figure out how to make these changes to make a real impact and not superficial. It needs to count.
Dr. H. said a week of taking Klonopin at bedtime should help shake out the symptoms from the lithium. It hasn’t. But as I don’t have a clear, written record of what is and is not working, I don’t feel as if I have the evidence to show that it’s not working. Oh, I feel mellow, but my tiredness and energy levels are still in the gutter.
So I’m going to start slow and I’m going to start week by week. The first week, starting with this entry, is to write every day, even if it is only 250 words, how I feel that day. It doesn’t have to a treatise on the condition of modern man, but it does need to be a record of what I’m doing. I may include how much I sleep. What I ate. What I saw.
Each week, I’ll add in something new. I want to start rowing again, to take a yoga class, to swim in a pool. I want to put my Fitbit to work for me instead of just acting like a post-modern adornment on my wrist. I want to cook. And adventure. And a million other things. Friends that are bipolar say exercise helps them immensely, writing helps immensely, talk therapy helps immensely. Remember a decade ago when you were used as a chemist experiment and for a year you felt miserable?
Slow. One thing. At a time. A week.
Then the choice will be easy to make.
x0x0,
Lisa (Day #7)
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Dear Internet,
Alright Internet, I’ll get straight to the point: It’s over 90F. It’s going to be hot for days. You want something to eat but you don’t to cook (and this is taking into consideration you’ve already ate your vodka infused freezy-pops and drank enough slurpees for a million brain freezes) and you don’t want to have to keep making a meal every day. Enter slow cooked Moroccan stew: The ingredients.
Okay, I fudged. There is some cooking, but not a lot. Like 10 minutes. Tops! It won’t hurt, I promise, to turn on your stove. (Just don’t forget to turn it off when you’re done.)
TheHusband and I have started our split schedules this summer – he is working up north and tending to cabin, while I work down state during the week before heading up to him on the weekends. When we left a few weeks ago to head up north, we cleaned the fridge and pantry out of anything that could possibly rot while we were gone. I knew coming back I’d have to do a small shop for the few days I was in town and that I’d need to do this every week. Onions, peppers, squash!
The problem is: I don’t cook. Well, I can cook, but when TheHusband is much better at it than me, I don’t see the point. On the flip side, as part of my BECOME SUPER AWESOME project is learning the fundamentals of cooking. While I haven’t gotten there yet (the year is still young…), this exact situation I’m in now is the reason why I wanted to learn the fundamentals of cooking so that I’m not grazing on veggies and hummus for all of my meals for four days. You can almost smell the cinnamon from here.
Enter Twitter. And Davey. Davey posts he has/is making a nomilicous slow cooked Moroccan stew and did any one want the recipe? I said sure! In addition to sounding delicious, the idea of making a one pot meal, that I didn’t have to watch, and could be eaten over the course of many days appealed. Bonus points: I had 90% of the ingredients already and shopping this week was a breeze since it was essentially chocolate, a box of a cereal, and sugar free Red Bull.
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Slow Cooked Moroccan Stew
Adapted from Davey.
Vegetarian. Dairy Free. Gluten Free.
Prep time: 30-60 minutes
Cook time: 4-8 hours Ingredients
2-3 Tbsp EV Olive Oil
1 large onion, chopped
1 green pepper, chopped
1 small zucchini, cut into small chunks
2 tsp cumin
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp dried chili flakes
2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp dried ginger (or you could use fresh ginger)
Salt and pepper to taste
2 cans of diced tomatoes (Chopped will also work.)
2 or 3 Tbsp of lemon juice
1 Tbsp of honey
Good handful of raisins or currants
1 cup of dried apricots, cut into bite sized chunks
1 apple, chopped
1 can of chick peas, drained and rinsed
4-6 medium potatoes, chopped
2 carrots, chopped
1 cup red wine (sweet or dry depending how you want the stew to go) [OPTIONAL] Instructions
In a pan, heat up the oil and add onion, pepper, zucchini. Cook on med-low heat until veggies soften and the onion gets a little carmalized.
Once veeggies have softened, add cumin, paprika, chili, cinnamon, ginger, and allow to simmer for a few minutes.
Add tomatoes, lemon juice, honey, raisins/currants, and stir well. Simmer for a few more minutes.
Salt and pepper to taste
Turn the crock pot on low and line the bottom with apricots, chick peas, potatoes, apples, and carrots.
Add the mixture from the pan on the top and stir well.
Add wine, and stir again.
Cook on low for 8-10 hours OR on high for 4-6.
Serves 6-8. At least.
Serve with rice (any flavor), couscous, pita chips, or fresh torn up baguette for sopping. Notes
Davey doesn’t give amounts for some things, like he just has “potatoes,” so the amounts listed above is what I used.
He recommends pre-cooking the carrots, potatoes, and chick peas BEFORE going into the pot. This seemed like overkill since they would be slow cooking for hours so I opted to skip that part.
The only ingredient I omitted from his version is mushrooms as I hate the damn things.
I added red wine, upped the amount of a few spices, salt and pepper, swapped veggie oil for olive, used red potatoes, yellow squash for the zucchini, and added an apple.
Davey also notes it freezes and reheats well, which makes this a great dish to make if you want something super delicious that you don’t mind eating several days in a row or for a potlock.
I marked this vegetarian and not vegan since it contains honey and to stave off controversy.
End result: It was damned delicious. I had two bowls for dinner last night, using pita chips to scoop up the bits. There were enough leftovers to serve me for over a week. Since I got heavy handed on the honey and wine, it was slightly sweeter than I would have liked but overall I loved it.
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x0x0,
Lisa
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Dear Internet,
There is a small storm brewing in my neck of Twitter due to an article recently posted on Medium which posits the idea that those who are childfree (CF) should totes drop everything and help those with kids, because you’re going to change your mind so, karma! And, the article goes on to quote Whitney Houston, the now dead coke addict who farmed out raising of her daughter, because sayeth the dead pop star, the children are our future. OBVIOUSLY, then, a village must be taken and so forth.
There are loads and loads of problems with this article, namely it purports that:
People who are CF are so by choice (It’s never about they CAN’T, it’s always about they WON’T)
People who are CF have more time / money ergo our time is not as valuable
CF people should support the choices of childful people because, “Children raised with security and love make better adults, and better adults make a better world in twenty-some years,” which supposes that this only happens when mom is cheering them on at a soccer game or dad soothing sick infant. These examples given also perpetuates specific family dynamics, which raised my heckles, but apparently these are the only examples/ways a child can be loved
The author cites the US as being one of the few countries where maternity/paternity leave as well as childcare and other social programs are abysmal for parents. I don’t disagree with these challenges, the US is terrible in many modern social practices but to place the crux of this on CF people as if we are the ones who control the government or that because conservatives reacted strongly to the idea of social care is somehow our doing, is downright preposterous, ridiculous, and a grasping at straws. Better social programs across the board benefit everyone, not just families.
Lastly, my biggest, uttermost issue with the article is that it forces me (and others like me) out. Now we have to defend our decisions (or reasons) of why we are currently CF to explain why articles such as this one, written supposedly with the best intentions, makes us gnash our teeth and shake our fists in anger. It is because of this article, and others like it, that continue to perpetuate stereotypes and lifestyle choices as ones that were made not ones that were made for us, it forces us to defend our reasoning for our private lives which is no ones bidness. You never, almost never, ever see this for those who are childful, at least not in such public forums and with such regularity and acuity as directed to those who are CF.
And that’s bullshit.
Additionally, this perpetuation of the attitude is insulting, it’s degrading, it’s humiliating, and it forces us to put public a very private decision or choice while adding on the layer of if we are not parents or choosing to be parents, our lives are not even remotely complete. Everything that I’ve worked for, TheHusband has worked for, up to this time in our lives means jack. There is not a mini-Lisa running around so obviously I have failed at all the things.
I don’t think I’ve ever discussed my child bearing status in this space and it is not because it wasn’t worth discussing, but it was one of the few things of privacy that I didn’t want to to open up to the world. It begins with that I’m not sure if I can even have children, which I found out about in my 20s. I have polycystic ovarian disease (PCOD), which means there are cysts on my ovaries, which makes my chances of getting pregnant downright miracelous. I’ve been told my chances of conceiving were less than 20%. Now that I’m older, and my child bearing years are closing down, even less. Maybe 10%. Let’s add in TheHusband’s familial history of mental illness and my own mental illness, coupled with my family history of the same, and the wanting to have a child looks even less tempting. Let us not forget my mother had cancer of the vulva and my grandmother had cancer of ovaries, and what should be something pretty easy peasy turns out to be a big ole complicated and convoluted mess.
A lot of conversations stemmed on Twitter today about this, after I started ranting natch, and it felt like everyone, breeders and CFs, were pretty much in the agreement that the author of the article was a self-righteous, over privileged, lazy asshole who wanted someone else to raise her children. It was not about a kumbaya “it takes a village” moment she was attempting to prostylize, rather, it was ALLLLLL about her. TheHusband, who is one of the most rational people I know, threw out her argument line by line by summing up her own inaptitude to handle her responsibilities so she’s shuffling them off to someone else.
No would disagree parents need help, and no one would disagree or shy away from giving them the help they needed, but to demand we do so simply because our responsibilities are different is absurd.
And painful.
Articles like this also bring up one painful point for me – it’s not so much that I won’t have children, but that my choice to have them was stripped away due to medical necessity. I don’t have an option to choose whether or not I wanted to have kids – I was just told it was not going potentially happen. This fine detail point, this removal of choice, is the open wound I keep guarded and close to me, knowing the day will come (sooner then I had hoped) where I am going to have to grieve over something I may never get to have.
x0x0,
Lisa
Dear Internet,
The other day I was on the toilet, reading National Geographic as you do, when I had a panic attack.
Let me repeat this:
I’m on the toilet.
Taking a dump.
Reading National Geographic.
Having a panic attack.
I was more surprised rather than panicked about what was happening, and thankfully the attack came and went fairly quickly. This little episode seems to sum up what’s been going on with my brain as of late, which is to say, an even more chaotic mess.
A few weeks ago I was scheduled to see my medicating doctor for my monthly visit and a few days before the appointment, I had irrational fight with a friend online. The fight was not serious by any context, but I was able to step back and see what is going on before it DID get serious. But the fact the fight happened at all was a huge wake-up call. A few days before that, TheHusband made an off hand comment I had been acting “weird,” but he didn’t really qualify it other than he didn’t think things were going well with me and he was concerned.
During the session with my medicating therapist, when I relayed all of this to him, it sounded like the lithium was not working as well as he had hoped. I agreed. He upped me another 300mg, for a total of 1500mg to be split over the course of the day (morning, afternoon, night).
A week and half later, I find myself sitting in the shadows of a room steaming over god knows what.
I got some relief on the first few days after the dosage was upped, but since then I’ve been super lethargic and now overly anxious. The lethargy is destroying much of my productivity because I have zero motivation and will and it’s a struggle to stay awake. I’m bordering on always being on panic mode. That feeling gets intensified when all of these fixes for ffor my brain chaos stop working and the cycle seemingly always repeats itself.
I can’t get any relief and I feel like I am going crazy on fixing my crazy.
Tomorrow I am calling my medicating doctor to get off of Lithium. I’m not sure what has changed with my body chemistry in the last month but I thought the lithium was at least a cure-all for my bipolar and instead, it’s now destroying me. He’s made suggestions of putting me on Depakote to work with the lithium but so far I’ve read or heard nothing but terrible reviews. I’m at the point right now, six months after starting it, that I have not seen enough evidence to continue taking it. A space of her own.
The quasi-fight TheHusband and I are having is about space. Some couples fight about money, some couples fight about temperature control, TheHusband and I fight about space. The fact we have too much of it, it seems.
Throbbing Manor, including the finished bits of the basement, is 3200 sqft. According to my European friends, I live in a goddamned mansion. According to the American contingent, we live in a nice place. We know it is too big, and we also know how we use space doesn’t mesh with the flow of the house. Yes, the house is nice.Yes, we live in a desirable neighborhood. But this house isn’t us. We don’t use the space that is here, instead we hang out in only a few of the many rooms. Because we’re not hanging out in many of the rooms, wer’re not buying any furniture, household goods, or wall art to finish the rooms off. We’ve lived here for 2.5 years and people have asked me for updated pictures and I’m embarrassed to say there aren’t any.
The sunroom (or solarium) has been one of those rooms where we go back and forth on what to do with it. First it was indoor/outdoor furniture to turn it into a cozy reading/hang out area, then it was double it up with plants, then it was get a drafting desk so TheHusband could draw and paint, and I could calligraphy.
In the nearly two years we’ve been having this discussion, we’ve bought three large plants, of which one is nearly dead and we’ve commissioned the handcrafted table that goes over the absurdly long radiator. In the winter, during the holiday times, if we’re feeling like putting a tree up, it goes in here. But any of the aforementioned items I’ve mentioned we were considering on purchasing – we haven’t purchased. The indoor/outdoor furniture is never right for his taste, we can’t find a drafting desk to meet his needs, and so forth and so on. Finally, I decided to take a stand and turn the space into a writing area.
And this is where the argument starts.
TheHusband states I’m taking over space by putting my stamp everywhere (duh, I live here. I should be able to do that anyway!) and I now have essentially two offices. Then he’s pissed because we had to move one of his plants (a lime tree) to another space in the room, but the damn tree is dying anyway. A 6′ lateral move is not going to hasten its death!
Secondly, getting to know myself as intimately as I have in the last six months, in order to cope with my ADHD drug free, I need solitude space of no interruption. This means TheHusband. He says I should just close the door to my office on the second floor, but it isn’t the same. Sitting here in solarium has a different vibe then siting upstairs. The view is better. I’m away from external noise that comes from the other side of the house. The chair is not as comfy so the likelihood of me fucking off while doing work is less likely. And most importantly, I’m close to my books.
The final big reason is we decided to turn the bedroom into a gadget free zone once we get to the point where we move the bedroom TV up to the cabin, forcing us to watch TV in the Rumpus Room. I’m started that process early by moving my laptop out of the room and into the solarium. At least here I can work with minimal interruption.
I told TheHusband if he buys a drafting desk, we buy the indoor/outdoor furniture, or any of the other things we talked about doing to this room, I’ll gladly move this desk back upstairs and live will continue on as normal. My desktop, TheHusband’s old laptop that is wire bound now, is slowly dying so the move may be sooner than I think.
Pro tip: Marriage is overrated.
x0x0x,
Lisa
Dear Internet,
Today, everyone is posting about their grand adventures with their fathers, or reminiscing of the ones they had long past. For me, it’s a day of deep sorrow. My pops, Edison (1927 – 2001), circa 1952.
For reasons only my mother knows, she scythed a field of young potential connections between my father and I beginning with my birth, and then salted the earth that owned those stalks so that by the time my father passed away in 2001, he and I were barely on speaking terms and I knew nothing about him. It would not be until later, oh so much later, to find out much of what my mother told me was not actual truths but a series of lies she built around her own notion of truth to protect something she has yet to reveal.
When I was very young, my mother started laying down the path of the potentially of my father having molested me. The actual conversation of what trying to figure out what my mother ment, that stemmed from her lines, began in my teenager years which consisted of me asking and confronting her. These conversations, at least, are still pretty clear in my head even if the outcome at the time, from her lips, was muddled.
There are two things you, dear reader, must know. The first is my parents separated when I was five months old, so the total amount of time, as a child, I lived with my father was less than a year. Due to the custodial agreements, with me now living in the US and him in Canada, I rarely saw him for visits. The second thing you must know is my father is neither an angel nor is he the devil. He could read at an eighth grade level and was working on his high school diploma when he died. He was a recovering alcoholic. He had a very generous and had a big heart. He wanted me to have the world.
According to my mother, during the many trips I took with my father as a child when I would go to visit during vacations, there was whispers being made because of his age in relation to mine – 45 years – and what he could possibly be doing with such a young child? The whispers apparently came from hotel clerks when we would go traveling to amusement parks and such all over southern Ontario and from his landladies from where he was renting his apartments, and other places. Apparently, at one point, police were called numerous times on suspicion of kidnapping and abuse.
When I prod my mother now about these things to clarify and to know, she says she cannot remember. It was a long time ago. Why does it matter? Why can’t I let it go? (Because I cannot remember these instances you speak of mother!)
Then one day I came to the realization that:
If my father had molested me, my mother continually sent me back to him time and time again; she didn’t protect me
If my father had not molested me, she continued to pour the gasoline on this line of thinking for years and she literally destroyed any chance of me having a relationship with him, even after I had become an adult and had begun my own life
It was upon this day of realization, I stopped having any and all contact with my mother for I could not conceiving of a world where a person would willingly send their child off to be hurt OR would lie about unspeakable horrors to appease their own agenda. (We’re not the Lannisters!)
In my heart, I feel like if something did happen, but it was not with my father, but with someone else close to the family. Who? I don’t know. Infamously, I have no memory of my life before the age of 12, sometimes it feels like I sprung up fully formed like Athena.
From what I know now, and from what he was like during my teenage and later years, I never or ever felt like he was a threat to me sexually or otherwise. I never felt like something was “wrong,” only that my mother kept insisting something was wrong.
And I’m still coming to grips that I’ll never know the truth of the whys and hows of my mother’s reasoning to lie. I also am still working on accepting I will never have a relationship with my father and no matter how much I yell I AM SO FUCKING SORRY! to the void of the world, or cuddle his urn while murmuring like an insane person, this will never feel right. It will never be right. No matter how many tears of that are stripped from me, I will never ever have that chance to make it up to him.
This would be the point where I tell those of you with living fathers of all kinds, to love, cherish, and respect them. But I’m too sad and too angry to be graceful. This is not a day of celebration, this is my day of mourning. I cannot be gracious when my heart feels so utterly broken.
x0x0,
Lisa
Dear Internet,
A coulpe of weeks ago, after many months of planning, myself and nearly a dozen of my closest friends met up in Chicago to hook up for C2E2 to present on best practices, programming, and more for graphic novels in libraries, have karaoke good times, and other fun shenanigans.
Overall, as a conference, C2E2 rocks the fuck out of all the other conferences I usually attend. The registration price is super inexpensive, it’s close by, we get work with great people like Toby who acted as our liaison to ALA, we get to meet new people from the Internet, and we get to have a lot of fun while doing our jobs. THIS Is what makes being a librarian awesome. From a comics and pop culture experience, I also love C2E2 because everything is easily accessible, the guests are approachable, and the panels are excellent. This conference is a win-win situation all around. And the city itself ain’t too shabby either.
The cherry on cake this year? Several of us cosplayed as Doctor Who. L-R: 11 (Kristin), 4 (Julie), 10 (Carolyn), Donna Noble (Sarah), Rose (Val), Captain Jack (Beth), 9 (me)
Hilights from C2E2, including vines and more:
Myself, Kristin, and Andrew presented on The Silver Age of Comics in Libraries: Programming, Best Practices, And More
Dear Internet,
To celebrate our third anniversary, we took off for our cabin and get it opened for the season. We were beyond excited, I think me more than TheHusband. Wednesday? She was ambivalent of the entire thing. Pug says hello.
Upon our arrival, as we started unwinterizing the plumbing and such, we couldn’t figure out why the water pressure in any of the faucets or toilets was inconsistent. Then we realized why: We were flooding our crawl space.
The plumber we worked with last winter told us we didn’t have to contact his company to unwinterize the plumbing when we came back in the spring. As long as we followed these steps (turn well on, turn water heater on, turn heating elements on, etc) we’d be fine. Except, he didn’t tell us all the damned intake pipes in the crawl space would have their valves open to prevent excess water from freezing during the winter. Hence, turn well on, flood crawl space.
We called the plumbing company and someone was going to come out in a few hours to take a look so to kill some time, we decided to head to Good Harbor beach and walk the white sand. The drive to the beach is less than 5 minutes from our cabin.
County road ends at water. Lake Michigan, 5 minutes from our cabin. Sand cut by the recent rains. Snail shells.
We did a lot of exploring along the beach, collected rocks and shells, and followed inlets that were created from all the rains. TheHusband skipped rocks across some of the flatter pools of water and we talked about spending lazy days on the beach this summer. Amg! Just leave me here to DIE!
The pug was not amused at being left alone during all of this. Ever. But her age and arthritis makes it impossible to do long walks, so she pouted at home.
Our original plan was to come up on Saturday morning, unpack, take note of what we needed, make a run to the nearest village to get supplies, THEN take a walk on the beach and do a fire on the sands while drinking a variation of sparkling wine while toasting our anniversary. Sunday and Monday would be lazing around, with plans to leave late Monday morning. Quack.
Instead we flood the crawl space, find out TheHusband burned out the elements in the water heater, and by the time the plumber was gone1, we had enough time to get supplies and then come home and crash on Saturday. And of course, with discovering other things that needed to be immediately done around the cabin, we made a second trip to get home supplies Sunday morning. After spending a life time in Home Depot and Lowes, we come home to get shit done. I used the reverse camera function to guide where to hold the wrench while TheHusband tightened bolts in the toilet tank. #realmarriage
One of the problems was discovering the seal had broken on the 1st floor toilet and the toilet on the second floor had some mechanism wrong. We spent most of Sunday in various positions under toilets either fixing or cleaning them. Hello fire pit.
The original plan was to have a beach campfire on Saturday night, eat s’mores and swig sparkling wine from bottle like the classy fucks we are. Since that didn’t quite work, and TheHusband wasn’t digging any of the fire pits we were finding in various stores, we built our own fire pit at the cabin.
At some point in the cabin’s history, someone spent some serious cash on landscaping due to all the intricate circles, trails, and other formations of rocks everywhere2, so I followed a trail of them and gathered them to create a circle around a small pit dug by TheHusband. Thanks to the knowledge of YouTube, we had a blazing fire going in minutes. The pug agrees.
We had stopped in our village earlier that day and picked up a bottle of local sparkling wine for the evening’s festivities. After finding out it was our anniversary, the clerk serenaded us in front of the store’s growing line of an audience. Overly friendly people make us nervous, so we made haste to the cabin where that evening, we had a feast of salami, crackers, s’mores, and swigged the wine from the bottle just as the good lord intended. The duck. (Temporary location until we get furniture.)
On Monday, TheHusband changed out the shower head in the bathroom, we finished out a few small projects, and then packed the car to come home. It’s all about the tots.
We decided to stop in Glen Arbor for burgers at Art’s Tavern and cherry lemonade at Cherry Republic on our way out of town. We discovered that Wednesday was turning the interior motion alarm on inside the car so it took minute to figure out how to turn that off. Ping pong, 7PM Wednesday.
Then we can home.
Our plan is to start going up every weekend we can, hit as many festivals as possible, and learn how to relax, without the use of drugs. You may need to pray for our souls.
xoxo,
Lisa
1. Due to the misinformation relayed to us by the plumber from last winter, the plumbing company did NOT charge us for the house call or for fixing the broken on Saturday. Now we know that just as we schedule to winterize, we must also schedule to unwinterize.
2. Or aliens.
