Thanksgiving, Love, and the Thermos of Death

I struggled with the Thanksgiving holiday this year. The gluttonous hypocrisy of the day seemed more vivid and uncomfortable than previous celebrations. It could be because I’ve been moving through the grief of heartbreak, feeling like a wound that won’t allow itself to scab over. Or perhaps it’s just because I’m older and more contemplative. No doubt the constant excrement-canon shots to the face, aka the 24-hr media bombardment, played a role in creating my less than sunny disposition. One would think the vitriolic stream would eventually achieve banality, but I guess we are all too short sighted and hungry for feeling. History, instead, seems to be inane. Maybe, on this holiday, we simply choose to selfishly suspend disbelief in order to indulge. We casually forget that the origin of the holiday is rooted in violent colonialism, so we can gorge ourselves on birds and pie. We prostrate ourselves in front of football games ignoring that many are observing a National Day of Mourning. 

So, yeah, as you can see, I was struggling to find joviality. 

Like so many things, the day snuck up on me, and by the time I realized I should be volunteering, I was setting the oven to 450 and slathering chunks of sweet potatoes with butter and cinnamon. I felt guilty for mindlessly stepping into the tradition and guilty for feeling that guilt because in some way it meant I wasn’t appreciative of friends, family, home, and all the other stuff. I suppose, traditions, considered from one perspective, are fueled by such guilt: if we don’t do this, we are wrong.

However, prior to the baking, while still buried under the covers that morning, I had forced myself to focus on gratitude. I listed all I was thankful for, and eventually I felt lighter, even happy. I got up and cleaned and cooked and told my son he was number one on my list. I prepared myself for the family gathering, reviewing how to be mindful, assured, and loving. I imagined possible conversations and planned my best reactions. 

The event came and went. We ate, drank, and sought merriment. As with large family gatherings there were some times of discomfort and also spurts of raucous laughter. Kids fought and played. My son welcomed his little cousin to his side during a Battleship game. He let her place the boats on the board, praised her and asked for high fives. He didn’t worry when she stole all of the pegs. I was so proud. Yet, throughout the evening, that sad feeling occasionally gnawed at my heart. I couldn’t forget all the offensiveness and sorrow happening in the world, and I felt bad for celebrating. Even so, I drank wine and tried to smile and remember what I was thankful for.

Back at home that night, my 10-year-old son came up behind me while I was standing at the kitchen sink scrubbing the sweet potato pan. He wrapped his arms around me, and I laughed because I thought he was trying to squeeze the stuffing out of me. But then I heard him sniffle. “What’s wrong? Are you crying?” I asked. He answered in a whine “I’m so thankful for you too.” I turned and held him tight. He cried even more. “Why are you crying?” I asked again. “I had a real bad day dream” he answered. I didn’t need to press him on what it was about; I knew it was his fear of losing me. 

I recognized, in that moment, under it all, we only have each other and the life we are given. Scrape away our labels and divergent experience, and only our hearts and humanity are left. We can choose to live in bitterness, anger, fear, and anxiety, or we can seek out our connectedness and love. And gratitude is fuel for love—not the rom-com, rainbows, teddy bear love— the love that connects us all, some kind of lightness of being. Some sense it more than others but everyone needs to be reminded of it no matter their station. Loving sure as hell isn’t easy—it is far easier to fall into contempt and hate than it is to remain steadfast in love (I believe this is true for loving ourselves as well as others). So using gratitude to increase our awareness of love is extremely beneficial—maybe it’s that gratitude that’s worth celebrating. When feeling wronged, saddened, or angry, love can be the toughest thing to find let alone extend. But, if at my core, I stand for kindness and compassion, I must treat others, friends and “enemies,” with kindness and compassion. What’s the alternative? 

We can stand firm in our convictions without being hateful. We can fervently expose wrongdoing and work vigilantly for a better world while recognizing that wrongdoing cannot really be remedied by more wrongdoing. Tantruming and yelling like bullies on the playground just creates maddening static and a negative existence.  And where does that get us during the little time we have here?  I don’t want to spend my time that way. Love does not equal approval, and accountability need not be procured via violence or ego-driven punishment. Sometimes all the love we can manage is a smile or a nod. Sometimes we show it by not giving up, and sometimes we convey it by conceding. Sometimes it means sobbing and allowing oneself to binge watch The Closer because for some odd reason Kyra Sedgwick’s voice is one of the only things that can bring peace of mind (that could just be me). Sometimes it’s shown by actively listening before speaking--or not speaking at all. Sometimes it’s an extra long scalp massage, like the one my stylist gave me the other day when she knew I was struggling. That simple, kind act meant so much. 

So in attempting to inspire more love to feel and to give, I resolved to focus on the holiday’s emphasis on gratitude, while remaining very mindful of it’s indulgence and violent history. And as I continue to try and fight off anger, fear, and sadness, I’ll keep adding to my gratitude list. I’m thankful for the help I’ve received so far on my journey. I am thankful for the friends who encourage me to see my way out of sorrow. I am thankful for the air I breathe and my ability to love. I am thankful for making it through so many difficult times and even for those times themselves. I am thankful for finding warmth in a sunrise and delight in a sunset. I am even thankful for my broken heart, because it could have never been broken in such a way without having been abundantly full in the first place. 

Addendum:

Here I had been worrying and engaging in lofty thinking when I should have been mindful of possible death by thermos. Yesterday morning, I narrowly avoided suicide (or murder) by unscrewing a metal thermos containing month-old chocolate milk. I barely touched the lid and it exploded like a firework popper, spraying a rancid mist of rotten milk as it shot out of my hands like a missile. (A blood spatter analyst would have had a heyday.) The aerosol bomb traveled at  least six feet and smoke-like gas puffed out when it finally rested on the floor. I stood in awe with my arms outstretched, my eyes wide, and my chocolate-death-spray covered body in a shocked, "holy crap!" stance. If only my kitchen had video surveillance! 

After scrubbing all surfaces, including my face, I could still smell the putrescence. Where the heck was it? Then I realized some of the spray had actually shot up my nose--no limit to the glamour here. After taking care of that and scrubbing some more, my son, the chocolate milk drinker, came in and yelled “Ew, what’s that smell?! Can’t you clean it?” 

I forced myself to think “I love you” and to be grateful for having the ability to find the humor in this utterly ridiculous life. (Then, I handed him a dish towel.)

Sending forth tiny ripples of love and hope.

“Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events. It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”~Robert F. Kennedy

Incredible Hulk Balls: Thoughts on Perspective

One day I found myself fighting with a moose. Well, we weren’t actually fighting, and he wasn’t really a moose. I was trolling a local DJ on Facebook, and I’m not sure “trolling” is the right word either. Nonetheless, the Moose and I were in some sort of online skirmish about a cry closet. Yes, a cry closet.  After some radio banter highlighting the moronic audaciousness of the closet, Moose DJ posted a “What’s Trending” video about it on Facebook. The Moose hated the closet! The video he posted summarizes the controversy concerning a University of Utah art student’s installation of a tiny, free-standing closet in the library during finals week. The slightly-smaller-than-a-porta-potty structure could hold a single occupant and a few stuffed animals---picture a large upright casket but one for dying scholarly dreams and teddy bears. Directions on the vault of tears stated that students studying for finals should “use the closet for a 10-minute break”---I assume one might resort to a cry closet break when chugging  Mountain Dew, dumping M&Ms into jars of peanut butter, assuming the fetal position under a bookshelf, sucking liquid cocaine drinks through a straw, or staring at MTV for hours could not relieve the stress---not that I’m familiar with such college-era tactics. 

I’m going to be honest, my instinctive reaction to the cry closet  wasn’t positive. I had certainly bemoaned college-kid coddling in the past---what university instructor hasn’t?  I definitely debated the need for puppy petting during finals week. That’s a real thing. I’ll never forget the day I went for a coffee and saw the fat furballs waddling around in the student center. My silver- dollar-sized eyes slowly scanned the surreal environment filled with students cuddling pooches, vibrating in massage chairs, and snorting air at an oxygen bar. I thought, what did that heavily pierced barista put in my Chai latte, and what is this over-indulgent comfort dome? For goodness sakes, back in the day, poor shoeless me had to outrun herds of rabid mad cows in raging blizzards just to get to school. (Well, I rode the bus, but there were still foaming-at-the-mouth bullies and mad drivers---the postman in the movie Funny Farm comes to mind but that representation is not quite accurate.) 

Coming from a farming family, the idea of “pulling up your bootstraps and getting to work” has been firmly rooted in my brain, so sometimes my impulse is to criticize complaints. That little voice in my head that sounds like my dad growls “buck up, buster!”  To this day, I feel extreme guilt if I take an afternoon nap. Yet, over the years, I have come to realize that the simple “be tough” bootstrap mantra isn’t so simple; self-care is incredibly important too. If you don’t take care of yourself, you’re no good to anyone else. And scratching the fat belly of a puppy really does make things better. You can curmudgeon your way through tasks without gleefully squeezing some furry puppy fat---but why? As long as hard work still happens, it’s okay to delight in life. Even though I had evolved a little, that stalwart farmer work ethic still urged me to join the media feeding frenzy concerning the cry closet. 

I can never fully frenzy until I get all the facts, so I decided to track down more information before joining Moose DJ’s warcry calling for the shredded heads of the cry-closet teddy bears. Within 5 minutes of Google surfing, I discovered that the closet was an art installation, an art student’s final project. The University of Utah did not purchase the closet---it just allowed the installation to be displayed in the library. Displaying student art  is pretty standard practice in university libraries.  The box wasn’t a “real” stress reliever sanctioned by the U of U at all. It was a piece of art created to generate discussion and challenge the status quo.  One definition, according to Wikipedia (totally acceptable for pre-research research, by the way), is that an installation of art:

bestows an unprecedented importance on the observer's inclusion in that which he observes. The expectations and social habits that the viewer takes with him into the space of the installation will remain with him as he enters, to be either applied or negated once he has taken in the new environment. What is common to nearly all installation art is a consideration of the experience in total and the problems it may present, namely the constant conflict between disinterested criticism and sympathetic involvement.

Not only could I not frenzy, I had to contact that student’s professor to make sure she had received an A+. Her cry closet project was a slam-dunk success! Moose, me, and many others, with all of our expectations and biases, were simply part of the art experiment, as public interaction/reaction is a critical element of all art installations. The closet wasn’t there so students could hide in a little box, sob, and cuddle teddy bears--- it was there to generate discussions about student stress (real or imagined), self-care (accepted or mocked), higher education (valuable or ridiculous), gullibility and a million other things. In an interview, the artist Nemo Miller said, “I am interested in humanity and the inherent complexities of the human condition...One aspect of humanity that I am currently exploring is connections and missed connections through communication. It’s been interesting to watch the response to this piece about human emotions, and I’m proud to see the power of art in action.” We all fell for it hook, line, and sinker. And viral media was helping to highlight how people connect or disconnect from each other. 

My research was done, but my trolling (er, truth spreading?) was about to begin. I had to communicate with the Moose and share the facts. The frenzied feeders did not need to fear or loathe the plushie-stuffed sob box. I had to tell the people who had commented “Our country is in real trouble!” and “Kids can't take being yelled at anymore!” on Moose’s post that the closet would not destroy the USA, not today--not on my watch! 

So, um, hey Moose:

It’s an art installation—created by one student. The university did not put it up. The purpose of art installations is to challenge ideas, get people thinking—“get people going.” I think the student accomplished her mission! 

With the enter key click, I thought Yes! The world’s safe from the viral wave of cry closet misinformation! All can rest easy and smile. A few minutes later I saw Moose’s reply.

Moose:

I'm not sure if it's this school but one schools actually using it. And the real idea is ridiculous. It's called adulting 😂

Um, Wait. What? Is it real? Crap. Did I miss something? I googled and googled and found----nothing. I couldn’t find anything about “real” cry closets being utilized in any schools. As far as I could tell, there were no colleges promoting weeping and teddy bear fondling in small dark spaces. I checked the comments on the original video thinking that someone might have posted some more information. Clearly I had not learned my lesson about reading comments on the internet:

“I want someone to swing the door open and yell ILL GIVE YOU SOMETHING TO CRY ABOUT! Worked for me as a kid. Lol”

“What the hell happened that such a pathetic and weak generation was allowed to survive this long? In the wild, they would have been abandoned and/or killed for the survival of the species and pack. But noooo..not us humans. We coddle the weak, hand out participation trophies, let generations of one family survive on welfare, and now we have cry rooms. Damn this is sad.”

“OMG, what are they doing to our kids? What happened to just going for a walk or the bathroom stall at school to take a minute for yourself! You butter cups better get a clue, life's not fair, it can be hard and you better buck up and get some self reliance, confidence in yourself. These colleges just aren't preparing you for the real world.”

“Sure... I thought they were fighting to come out of the closet and now society is trying to shove them back in!”

“This pod of shame should be connected to a carbon monoxide tank so weak minded millennials can be factored out of the gene pool. No, most people don't need this, you trite and worthless page.”

So, then I was horrified. But I decided to take a closer look at the major media publications concerning the closet. Maybe those would be more insightful. Some of the headlines were:

“‘Cry Closet’ in University Library for Students Stressed over Finals”--USA Today
“Let’s Embrace our Blubbering and Make Cry Closets Happen”--Slate
“University of Utah ‘Cry Closet’ Lets Students “Just Let it All Out” During Finals--CBSNews
“College Installs a ‘Cry Closet’ As Safe Space For Student Snowflakes”-- Fox News

As far as I could see, all the headlines were presenting the story inaccurately. So I began mindlessly clicking on video clips---diving even deeper into the madness of the cry closet. The first page and a half of Google results highlighted a Tucker Carlson segment: “Higher Education at Work: ‘Cry Closets’ for Snowflakes.” In the intro, Tucker briefly describes the closet and asks “Is it time to go national with this?”

I realized my response to the Moose would not be as monumental as previous thought.  No amount of trolling would make any difference at all---I would never stop the frenzy (funny how I keep having to relearn this.) The media---neutral, conservative, liberal---decided to run with the closet-of-emotional-indulgence narrative and my little comments were no match against the online goliath. I felt defeated---and I kind of felt like a lot of people wanted to storm universities and eliminate artists. The cry closet was a viral sensation pitting sides against each other, the snowflake coddlers versus the fully bucked-up bootstrap wearers. Everyone seemed to lockstep into the binary even though the controversy was born from blatant misinformation and the misframing of actual facts. My naive self was a little shocked--- no one seemed to care about the basic facts.  I guess it can be easier and more entertaining to quickly choose sides and react with emotion; at first, I was more than ready to frenzy. The art installation worked perfectly to expose some of our societal issues. In the end, this dismayed, sorry excuse for a troll had to wave her white flag, and the Moose won the skirmish that wasn’t really a skirmish at all---it was all just part of the experiment.     

Okay, so I guess you’ve been waiting to hear about the Incredible Hulk balls.

My son, like many kids, avoids vegetables at all costs. Asking him to eat a green bean is like asking him to suck snails out of a cow tank---although he’d probably try the latter. The “it’s a tree not broccoli and you’re a giant not a three year old,” trick only works so long, and I knew he couldn’t survive on chicken nuggets and meatballs alone, so I had to get creative. One night as I started mixing up another batch of meatball ingredients, I got a wild idea: why not add some pureed veggies---he’ll never know they’re in there! I grabbed a bag of frozen garden fare, microwaved it, and blended into a nice thin pulp. Turns out that mixed veggies (carrots, cauliflower, broccoli), when pulverized, look a little like Linda Blair’s stomach contents, aka green pea soup. Despite this slight hitch in my brilliant plan, I powered on, formed the balls and hoped the green would fade with frying. Nope---fully cooked, the meatballs still  looked like small, seriously ill Kermit heads. Sure it was a futile effort at this point, I put them on a plate and called my child to the table.  

As he took a seat, he skeptically eyed his plate, and I felt like the Downton Abbey cook watching the master about to sample her flamboyant take on pigeon pie. He stabbed a meatball with his fork and asked with a hint of contentiousness “what_are_these?” I didn’t answer, hung my head, held my breath and moved toward the freezer to grab the family-size chicken nugget bag. But seconds before I succumbed to defeat, I blurted out, “They’re hulk balls! You know, like the Incredible Hulk.” Mini Gordan Ramsay pursed his lips, looked at me, looked at the balls, nodded and said “huh, cool.” He then popped a veggie-infused meatball into his mouth and smiled. I spun away from the freezer and did a little victory dance behind his back. It worked! Not only did he eat one hulk ball, he ate them all! He hit his daily veggie dose and then some. However, I was so focused on my achievement that what I had actually done didn’t fully sink in until I was standing at the sink. As I scrubbed the meatball pan, my proud smile faded when I imagined him innocently telling all his little school friends, “last night I ate hulk balls!”  

I convinced my son to see the green balls as something more exciting and tolerable than veggie-infused ground beef. Even though I didn’t thoroughly think it through, I controlled the framing of his experience. I suppose this kind of perspective framing can be used for both good and evil. The tricky part is deciding which frames are good and which ones are evil. Perhaps the fault actually lies with that dualistic kind of thinking. The nature of viral media is all about playing to the extremes and making big statements in the least amount of space and time possible---exhibit A: moose fight. 

In our information overloaded world, we are most often just getting a skimming of it all---like scraping off the fetid top layer of old milk. Blindly accepting one frame, the rotten milk, can cause frenzied behavior and be destructive. The limited consumption of the top layer also perfectly suits our human inclination to perceive the world as “us” versus “other.” The art installation cleverly played on social biases and assumptions by relying on the idea that people wouldn’t check the facts or think beyond what was presented to them. Who has time to continuously track down all the facts in this world of skew? But it seems that the “truth” is buried under many layers of old and new perspectives.

So in simply drinking the fetid milk, are we choosing ignorance in order to comfortably sit on one side of the binary? How can this be avoided? I guess if I find that something is leading me down a path of anger, vilification of the other, and ultimately personal suffering, I need to make sure that I diligently work my way through the layers. Also, what happened to the value of imagination and delighting in the discovery of nuanced perspectives anyway?  Imagination is usually fun and enjoyable, ignorance, at least in the end, isn’t. Wouldn’t open discourse about the possible instead of  the limited be exponentially more beneficial? The cry closet and the hulk balls caused me  to consider all of these questions (that’s a sentence I never thought I’d write). I suppose, in a way, we are all just part of a grand experiment, but maybe we can we make this experiment less hurtful and destructive. I guess it could be helpful to take an occasional pause and ask oneself: am I being served veggie-infused meatballs or Incredible Hulk balls?

Mom of Anarchy: Will Fight Biker Gang If Need Be

Trying to maintain sanity while fighting a migraine, with no place to go but the street next to my son’s elementary school, I park my car thinking I’ll have at least 20 minutes to rest and will the headache away 
before the final bell rings. However, I quickly sabotage my plan when I start to worry that someone will report me as a suspicious character; I can’t close my eyes because I’ll need to be awake in order to smile at the officer who will inevitably be tapping on my window. My luck, I’d be passed out and mouth breathing with drool dribbling down my chin when a grumpy Sipowicz-type officer gets dispatched to check out the dirty minivan in the school zone. 

Even if I can’t close my eyes, I’m desperate to minimize the pain, so I search almighty Safari for suggestions and eventually discover something called binaural beats for migraine sufferers. I put in my headphones, press play, and stare at the street ahead. Just as I start to focus on the two-tone musical frequencies instead of my brain trying to burst through my skull, a squirrel’s chirping breaks through the beats---there’s a good chance I might murder it. Twitter News Alert: “Crazed, drooling madwoman strangles Screwy the squirrel.” Eh, well, I guess that would make Sipowicz’s day more exciting. 

I let Screwy live. He’s not the only thing making it impossible to focus on the binaural beats; a steady chorus of recess noise adds a nice background layer to the symphony. As yells and laughter thwart my “good-God-make-this-horrid-pain-go-away” concentration, I start thinking about kids and my kid and how much he’s grown. Then, because I’m desperately trying  to relax, I start to remember the stress of babydom. Why not? I make another attempt at achieving meditative fugue and focus my eyes on the stop sign ahead. But, because I’m in memory mode and seem to enjoy taunting myself out of any kind of peaceful state, the stop sign triggers a flashback, one concerning a particularly disastrous diaper quest.

I was going to graduate school and working as both a teaching and graduate assistant. My son was transitioning from babyhood to toddlerdom, and I was an anxious mess. While trying to wring groundbreaking interpretations from 18th and 19th century canonical literature (I’m laughing right now) and playing with abstract philosophical inquiry, I was also wrestling with critical questions like “Should I be using time-outs? Is the fact that he’s trying to shoot all the cats with the water gun normal---is it a warning sign of some kind of mental pathology? How much time should I spend playing hide-and-go-seek during the day? Can he watch any television? Why is he trying to bite me? Will the steroids prescribed for his allergy-induced asthma stunt his growth?  Is he sick? Does he have a fever? Ear infection? Cold? RSV? Pneumonia? Cat Scratch Disease? ” The illness questions were the most prevalent because inevitably, every time I had a long paper or major task due, my boy would get sick. 

Often, at one or two in the morning, I’d finally get done with an essay about the perpetual public veiling of women evidenced by the pseudonym-ed main character in Ruth Hall (or something), and I’d collapse into bed.  As soon as I had tossed and turned into my most comfortable position and finally started to drift away, I’d hear a little “cough, cough” down the hall. No horror-film hallway scene compared to that late night sound. I’d rather see the little redrum girls riding their tricycles down my hall than hear my son coughing. I’d tense, and hold my breath, waiting to see if he’d catch his, but the cough was almost always followed by crying or vomiting or crying and vomiting or, on special occasions, pooping, crying and vomiting. 

One day, during this high-stress time of terrible-two tantrums, phlegm attacks, and frenzied scholarly pursuits, I was headed to Walmart---again. I needed diapers or Butt Paste or amoxicillin or Boogie Wipes (or something). And I only had a few minutes before pick-up time at daycare, so I was speeding down the side streets. Caregivers of any kind will understand the intensity felt during this type of errand running---everything becomes time sensitive and strained---a simple drive across town feels like an action-movie car chase. During my personal Fast and Furious remake, I expertly avoided red lights and focused intently on my end goal. I finally saw Walmart in my view---it was a straight shot; I was almost there! As I  approached the last cross-street before my turn, I saw some motorcyclists running the stop sign and turning onto the road in front of me. One, two, three biker dudes had the audacity to sail through the stop sign and cut me off. I remember thinking, “Who_the_hell do these jerks think they are?!” “What gives them the right to blatantly disregard traffic laws?!” “Oh no, I don’t think so, buddy! I’m not waiting for anymore of your ‘gang’ to round that corner!” So I floored it, and my dusty, Dodge Intrepid jolted ahead; I was determined to get those damn diapers. 

And I, in my big ol’ mom car, did it---I showed those bikers who was boss. I stopped any more of them from running the stop sign. Boy, I felt vindicated---so proud of my total ballsiness: “That’s right, no one’s taking away my right of way! I don’t care if you are on Harleys!” Glowing with badass pride, I squinted into the rear view mirror at the bikers behind me, and then peered at the gang ahead. Just as I was celebrating my way into the Wally World parking lot, I saw that the same group was running the stop sign onto the highway as well. I couldn’t believe their nerve--bikers think they can do anything! I cursed and squinted at the caravan as it blocked traffic. Then, as I watched the front of the group heading east on the highway, I noticed that a black vehicle was leading them. Wait, could that be? No, no, no--it wasn’t. It couldn’t be! Yes, yes, yes, it was. A hearse was leading the biker gang. Yep, that’s right guys, I had just interrupted a biker funeral procession. 

Immediately, my pride turned into vehement shame---I was mortified. I wanted to chase them down and apologize. But how could I? What would I say, Pampers made me do it? I’ve been watching Sons of Anarchy? I’m an awful person? I can’t run guns, but I can tutor your kids in English? (I know, the majority of motorcyclists are nice Janes and Joes, but my overactive imagination tends to initially direct me to believe all bikers are Hell’s Angels.) I imagined I would weep for their forgiveness, saying through tears, snot, and labored breathing “I’m so, so sorry. I’m an exhausted mom---inhale, sniffle--- who has to read Confessions of an English Opium Eater by tomorrow.”   

A  lightning strike of pain zaps me back into real time when my binaural track on Pandora is interrupted by the sound of a man screaming his admiration for a car insurance company. MURDER. Squirrel, victim #1. Man from insurance advertisement, victim #2. Oh, Grumpy Sipowicz, we are going to have a time! 

The school bell is about to ring and the day is almost done. Soon, I’ll be able to take a few too many Benydryl,  throw the covers over my head, and wait for the migraine to go away. My guy is old enough now to give me time to achieve this. Although, I know that while I’m unconscious he’ll probably end up binge watching the A-Team while simultaneously playing Madden on his iPod and eating Cinnamon Toast Crunch from the box. There’s also a very good chance he’ll let the dog out and said dog will bring another dead animal or better yet, a cow placenta up to the porch. Then I’ll end up having to clean that, only to find later that it was just half a cow placenta when the dog regurgitates the other half in horror-film style onto the living room carpet. Please, just give me the redrum twins instead. (Unfortunately, the dog thing has already happened. People, it looked like he was giving birth to a black slug the size of a bread loaf through his mouth. Sorry, so sorry.) I wonder why I get migraines.

To this day, I feel bad about my incredible lack of awareness. I so was blinded by my tasks that I couldn’t see the hearse right in front of me. The present moment didn’t exist, only the threat of the future did. Even though I understand the lesson, I continue to race around. Yet, I try to remember my biker blocking shame and slow down a bit---not having a toddler and going to graduate school also helps a lot. But, of course, there’s always stuff to do. Interestingly, much of my racing is now focused on getting the boy to school early enough for him to play the first round of Lightning. I guess motherhood has taught me a few things so far, and one of those things is that I am capable of taking on a biker gang, but I will feel incredibly guilty about it later. 

P.S. Leave me a comment. ;) 

Flu Chronicles: I Wore a Holstein Hat

As I am writing this, I’m trying to keep myself from coughing. If I take short breaths and ignore the fact that my chest feels like Dumbo is sitting on it, I can do it. Except for when old Dumbo waves his tail in my face and I feel the need to sneeze; then I “let ‘er blow” and begin hacking uncontrollably. I contort and retch in ways Linda Blair could never manage. My biggest fear is that I’ll pee my pants. Oh, you know you’ve been there. When I finally manage to tame the great alveoli annihilator, one of those Mucinex commercial characters---a blob wearing a hardhat and carrying a lunch box--- I go back to shallow breaths and hope Dumbo keeps his tail in check.

Interestingly, my dog seems to have a cold too. He’s been sneezing like crazy and it’s really ruining my concentration. Staying focused on not coughing becomes quite difficult when a golden retriever is reverse snorting in your face. I don’t know what his problem is, but he’s been walking around here acting like he just did a line of cayenne. I feel like I need to paint “Quarantine” in red letters on a white sheet and hang it off of my front porch, but I can’t move because I’ll start coughing and probably pee my pants. Hopefully people will just be deterred by the sounds coming from within my house.

I have a weird coping mechanism when I’m very sick or in a lot of pain, I joke around. In college, I dislocated my shoulder making a malt for a chemistry professor. No lie---I worked in a place called the “Dairy Bar” and when I turned around to ask him if he wanted extra chocolate, I forgot to move my malt mixing arm and “pop” out it came. My still attached arm grabbed my dangling arm and I squealed “excuse me,” went out the backdoor, put my back against a milk cooler and slid to the floor. I remember there was quite a debate about who would take me to the ER. Some unlucky kid in a hairnet lost. He was much smaller than I and had to push me up into the big white ice cream van. Thank goodness, I didn’t lose my balance and fall on top of him. That’s not how I wanted to end up in the student newspaper.

At the ER, after trying to get the receptionist to take me seriously even though I was wearing a cockeyed, Holstein-patterned (black and white cow print) baseball cap, I filled out mountains of paperwork with my left hand and finally got into a room. My arm was completely numb----total dead arm. Anticipating the pain of returning bone to socket, I went into funny mode, cracking jokes about whatever I could think of. I remember specifically joking about my brother, who was on his way to pick me up. He was being a good little brother, and I was using him for comic fodder. I have no idea what I said because after they gave me some painkillers my comedy act took on a life of its own. It’s all a bit fuzzy, of course, but I know the nurse had to readjust her hold on the sheet a few times because she was laughing---they had wrapped my arm in a sheet and the doctor was on one end and the nurse was on the other. The theory was that when they both pulled, my shoulder would somehow slip back into place. It makes no sense to me. Maybe it was a weird student health experiment or prank, and I, the crazy girl in the cow cap, was the butt of the joke. Eventually they upped my medication, perhaps in an attempt to silence my amazing routine. I have no memory of how it went down, but luckily the sheet trick worked, and my arm was back to malt making a few days later. I did, however, have to apologize to my brother because the medical staff knew a number of his embarrassing childhood stories.

Hey, this is working. I haven’t coughed in some time. I wonder if I should tell you about the time I fainted down half a flight of stairs because I thought I had a blood clot in my leg. Turns out it was just a bruise and a wicked sinus infection. I don’t know, that one’s a little too scary. What about the time when my five-year-old self woke up and thought I was blind because my eyes had matted shut---or the time I was sure I had Tietze syndrome because WebMD told me so or when I laughed and laughed at the doctor who told me that the muscle relaxants he was prescribing for my back spasm might work so well I could poop unexpectedly--upon hearing my giggles, he looked at me very seriously and said “I’m not kidding.”

Maybe I’ll tackle those stories after I google Benadryl dosage for dogs and Bic pen chest tube DIY.

Live, laugh, love...cough.

Satan’s Little Helper

I have a terrible cold and feel like my head's underwater and everyone sounds like the adults on Peanuts; I’m hosting a huge Halloween party for a bunch of 4th graders and their families in 6 days; and I’m buried in midterm grading, so now is the time to write something.

That didn’t last long, now it’s Christmas and no one will want a "Halloween-y" story.

Now it’s days after Christmas and people are in the In-Between, kind of like the Upside Down but lacking a Demogorgon. Perhaps the Christmas hangovers and the “please, just let 2017 be over” feelings will create a space for this semi-macabre blurb. I guess we’ll see---I don’t want to wait until next Halloween.

Okay, now it’s 2018, damnit!

Today the high is 17 degrees and the low, with wind chill, is -29, so I’m laughing about the way I began this all the way back in October:

Autumn [what I now see as the seasonal gateway to the dreaded frozen In Between] is my favorite time of year. For some reason, for me, it inspires both cozy [laughing] and corrupted thoughts. The changing of the light casts shadows that make the twilight hours even more mysterious. The crisp chill and changing light beautifully blends with fiery golds and bursting reds, and the air assumes that “cider woods” and “rustic pumpkin" candle smell [oh, the memories of 50-degree warmth].

During [the balminess of] October, one of my favorite activities is running (well, er, jogging, jaunting… or walking) around the gravel driveway circling my house while listening to the Lore podcast (“Sometimes the truth is more frightening than fiction”). I used to go for runs on the open rural roads, but my true crime obsession put a stop to that insanely risky behavior. So now I just stick to my own little rocky track and listen to stories about ghosts, witches, and monsters (both human and other). The podcast with its haunting piano soundtrack and spooky subject matter accompanies autumn’s twilight hours perfectly and the mosaic of leaves covering the road makes the farm look like a New England Sleepy Hollow.  This ambiance, of course, fuels my imagination. One time I went as far as envisioning the driveway as a fairy circle, like the one on the Spiderwick Chronicles--a circle of salt around the house that produces a protection spell keeping the goblins out. Alas, the spell hasn’t worked as a few goblins have sat at my dining room table. I think of such fantasy (the fairy circle not the goblins) when I repetitively meander my way past the northern grove of trees just outside of the circle. I guess, the deep pockets of darkness also inspire magical thinking.

Years ago, I told my friend’s daughter, who was all of 7, that spirits and gnomes lived in the grove trees and that the giant mound of dirt covering an old septic dump was actually a dead and buried troll. I even showed her a giant cow skull my brother had nailed to a tree (years prior he and his pre-teen friends built their own little hobo village in the grove, complete with fire pits, winding trails, ponds turned mosquito hatcheries, and animal bone displays). We also found an old lamp-like thing, and I convinced her a genie was likely inside it. As I told her about the troll, showed her the skull, and discussed the wishes we’d ask the genie to fulfill,  her little-girl eyes opened wider with each tale, and a twinge of guilt hit me. Was I cultivating imagination or just lying? She believed the stories for quite some time--maybe she still believes portions of them. In fact, I hope a little part of her does. But now she’s fifteen and has moved on to more horrific teenager things---which brings me to the reason for my title “Satan’s Little Helper.”

In 1991, my best friend and I were obsessed with the television show Dark Shadows: The Revival. We’d always had wild imaginations, so the show was right up our alley. Not to mention, it also satisfied our hormonal curiosity. We were 14 (if she reads this, this is when she’ll be telling the screen she’s actually one year younger) and Barnabas was our vampire crush. Every week we’d look forward to the opening scenes of the winding train heading towards the castle on a cliff, waves pushing up against the rocks below. I’m sure we promptly phoned each other after each episode to discuss the supernatural soap opera’s latest mystery, murder, or reveal. I’d love to watch it now and laugh at its ridiculousness---I just googled episode one. Wow. But, for two teenage girls who lived on farms in the middle of nowhere, it was exceptional television---and, in my opinion, far more sophisticated than Twilight.

We’d always had active imaginations. Sometime around the age of 8, I was convinced that a vampire lived in our corn crib. The bunk at the back of the creaky building, a wooden partition about 8 feet long and 3 feet wide, terrified me. The wall of the bunk was too high for me to see over, so because it was the perfect size for a coffin, I was certain that a country Count Dracula slept there during daylight hours. I now envision my child self peeking around the corn crib door, my sunlit, blonde pig-tailed head a stark contrast to the darkness inside. I’d stare at that bunk and imagine the vampire within it. The vampire, who would wander the farm at night, was just waiting for someone to invite him in. One day, my curiosity could not be controlled, and I mustered the courage to walk to the back of the corn crib and climb up the old barn-wood coffin container. I vividly remember trying to get a foothold between the grey boards and struggling to get to the top, fully prepared to see the grotesque creature sleeping among the cobs. When I finally managed to peer over the edge, I was actually disappointed when all I saw were dried up husks and cobwebs.

Around that same time, my friend and I were also introduced to the hermit of Union Grove. The local lore was that a scary old man lived in a cave in the park near her house. He was clothed in dirty furs and survived on fish and squirrels. I think my aunt even said she saw him, but maybe that was her version of the buried, septic-tank troll. We conjured our own stories about how he followed hikers, hiding in the trees, and I assume someone was horrifically murdered at some point in our storymaking. In addition to the hermit, we also believed that a black panther hung out along the creek (or “crick”) in the park---the creek also passed right behind my friend’s home. Somehow we caught a few episodes of Manimal and this inspired our panther fantasy. The show followed the adventures of a wealthy crime-solving shapeshifter, and all I can remember is one incredible scene of him turning into a black panther in the back of a limousine. It was terrifying (for different reasons than it it is now). And so, after such entertainment, we were fairly certain that a panther (shapeshifter or not) roamed the ravine behind her home. One day, in her clubhouse, an old outhouse with Hello Kitty stickers posted on the inside, we heard scratching on the tin roof---the black panther! We talked about how we would escape; it was serious business. The only way to survive would be to outrun him--we’d have to make it to the house before he could eat us. Like the time I peered into the corn crib bunk, my memory of this experience is extremely sharp. My heart nearly burst as my chubby kid legs awkwardly propelled me to the small white farmhouse. It was a miracle we survived. (Later, we considered the possibility that the noise was tree branches rubbing against the outhouse roof, but we never completely ruled out the existence of the panther.)

  

Eighties pop culture also caused us to believe in lizard aliens. During our play dates, we became characters in the television show V. When we weren’t in the Hello Kitty Shitter, an old, abandoned corn bin with small trees pushing through the cracked cement floor, was our home base. The silo was a cage-like bin; you could see through it. We’d climb up the walls yelling about the lizard aliens attack. The barn loft served as their lair. As I write this now, I wonder how we watched these shows! I always remember my parents being so strict about the media my brother and I consumed. How did I get to to watch Manimal and V when I was only 2nd grader? I’m sure I sneaked peaks because I remember watching the limo-man-panther scene while I was standing in my apple green carpeted bedroom.

So, back to where I began, circa 1991.

Continuing our curious endeavors, the same friend and I became infatuated with Reader’s Digest’s Strange Stories and Amazing Facts, courtesy of my grandmother’s library, I think. I’d haul the big red book to school and during study breaks or in the halls, we’d pour over the tales of werewolves and Egyptian mummies. Every page gave us exciting weird facts our inquiring minds wanted to know. From Atlantis to Uri Geller, the subjects fed our appetites for knowledge of the mysterious and odd. However, the book was not appreciated by all. In fact, many of our 8th-grade peers considered it the satanic bible.The same kids who were playing spin the bottle in the storage closet, decided that the hefty crimson book, published by Reader’s Digest, was a spellbook for evil. Suddenly, my friend and I became known as Satan and Satan’s Little Helper. Because I brought the book to school, I was Satan (perhaps a little part of me found this flattering). After a brief stint arguing the fact that we were not, in fact, conjurers of evil, we decided to humorously go with the hype---perhaps this was just our coping mechanism to convince ourselves we weren’t actually being ridiculed by our pubescent peers. Of course, not fitting in, in the 8th grade would be far worse than being attacked by Country Count Dracula or the man panther.

We ditched the book, but this occurrence probably lead me to amazing fashion choices like wearing pewter dragon earrings and black Zoso t-shirts. I think I even turned our brush with the “bad” social classification into my advantage when I hit a wall of depression----I could use my dark imagination for drawing eyeballs onto moons and women wearing capes blowing in the wind. I remember I taped a number of these artistic gems to the wall right under the shelf lined with my Clearly Candian bottle collection. Uff da.

But, some time before high school, the innocence of our curiosity completely soured. It became something bad, something wrong. I wonder if this “wrongness” just aligned with my inner feelings of wrongness and my curiosity simply adapted. These were times when I felt I wasn’t fitting in---I wasn’t thinking like everyone else. I’m sure everyone feels this in varying degrees during their coming of age. But my imagination somehow made it worse. I just remember that I was really bored and depressed in rural South Dakota. My friend and I ended up turning to other things to satisfy our curiosity and need for excitement, things like sneaking out, going to parties, and meeting under the overpass to smoke cigarettes.

So, I aligned my imagination and curiosity with being a bad person. I wonder now how much of it was actually the fact that we were girls who shouldn’t have been so curious or if my ideas about myself just became corrupted.

I’m not sure which came first, the judgy chicken or the depression egg.

Excerpt from "The Book"

Incredibly, I struggled with this for quite some time. In my twenties, I remember worrying, that if I died, my family would find my Ed Gein biography and be incredibly disappointed in me. To this day, a little part of me sometimes feels that  my dates with Friday night Dateline mean that I’m indulging in something grotesque. When I began binging on the My Favorite Murder podcast while driving myself and my 8 year old 12 hours across the desolate lands of South Dakota and Montana , I felt that it was somehow wrong---sure it wasn’t the best choice because I became convinced we were destined to be murdered by an antique pickup driving, dirt covered, tobacco chewing, psycho perv, but I felt like I had to keep my fascination with the podcast a secret. But why?

I do know that indulging in too much of something can affect thought processes, and I do believe that society has become overly infatuated with gore and shock value---but that’s never been my interest. I like to observe and try to figure out why and how people do what they do. I try to comprehend the incomprehensible. And here’s the thing I think we all need to remember, learning is not satanic. Ha! Having an analytical mind that wants to try to figure out the mysteries of our world and human nature should never be a shameful thing. How we treat one another is what’s important and, dare I say it, maybe seriously trying to figure out what turns people into “monsters” would actually benefit our society. Too much time is spent judging and not enough time is spent trying to understand. It took me too long to figure out that understanding is not the same thing as condoning and that thinking should never be shameful. What if we tried understanding each other instead of ridiculing and punishing each other? What if we saw ourselves as human nature investigators instead of just human evaluators? Well, that’s where I’m at---and I’m signing off now because this is becoming too preachy, and I have to get ready for work in the real world.

I’m not Satan, and she’s not Satan’s Little Helper, but what if we were? [laughing]  

Have an imagination in the new year! I plan on it---right now I’m imagining edits and how I will respond to negative reviews. ;)

Yay! I finished some writing before Halloween 2018!