the unexpected sweetness hidden inside terrible events

Monday, nov. 20, 2006   |   0 comments

Today I was reading through the archives of Posie Gets Cozy (the blog arm of Alicia Paulson’s beautiful Posie store), and I came across this entry where she wrote about the anniversary of her horrible, horrible accident. And…wow. Alicia is a great writer, and she uses the full force of her abilities to precisely capture the sensations and struggles and weird funny-nesses that come out of overcoming a truly awful event. This, particularly, smacked me with truthfulness:

Occasionally, I feel a weird nostalgia for my time in bed. The long quiet afternoons. The backyard cats quietly stalking each other under the bridal-veil bush. The absolute removal of all of my responsibilities. My intense focus on whatever I was embroidering. The imaginary world I created in the handwritten scrapbooks I made from my old travel diaries. The reassuring vapidity of daytime TV. The birds that came to the feeder a few feet from where I sat. Letters. No computer. The joy of short and long visits. I heard a story on This American Life several years ago about the strange longing for prison that sometimes affects ex-cons. (It’s Act V of Episode 119.) It was really good. I feel that sometimes. It was an incarceration that felt a bit like childhood. You don’t usually get to experience that sort of dependence, and boredom, as an adult. There was something incredibly decadent, and illicit, about it somehow.

My ruptured appendix episode wasn’t even remotely as harrowing as what Alicia lived through, but it still knocked me outside of life as I knew it for over a month (the five sweating, doubled-over days of mistaking a burst appendix for a terrible flu; followed by a thrilling surgery; followed by an infected week in the hospital; followed by two weeks just lying in bed, hydroplaning on vicodin and watching the clouds float past my window). And it really was “an incarceration that felt a bit like childhood.” I love that! The free time of childhood is usually described as such a golden thing, but there’s also that stuck feeling, that buttery, sugary burden of too many luxurious hours to fill. But Alicia also spots the appealing elements hidden inside that incarceration. Recuperation certainly was not at all fun, but I have a definite lingering fondness for those strange, unplugged days when all my regular life goals and expectations were swept clean and replaced by little, highly honed hurdles like “walk two blocks without woozing” or “pass gas without shitting everywhere.”

THREE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY DOLLARS!

Sunday, nov. 19, 2006   |   0 comments

Remember how we got that ticket for driving in the bus lane on Market Street? Well the fine notice arrived in the mail yesterday, and it turns out that little misstep is going to cost us THREE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY DOLLARS! Isn’t that nuts? And depressing? Really, if someone were to ask me to rate on a scale of dollars how thrilling it was to cruise in that forbidden lane for two city blocks, I would have priced the experience at somewhere well below THREE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY DOLLARS!

On the flipside of the “financial expectation v. reality” conundrum: have you seen the new James Bond movie? It features a whole bunch of violent people who kill, betray, and defibrilate each other and spill much blood, sweat, and blood-tears over a paltry sum of $120 million. When you consider that YouTube sold for $1.6 billion, it’s hard to imagine anyone would be willing to endure having his (spoiler!) naked balls smashed again and again for as little as $120 million. $120 million? Come now, that’s only slightly more than the fine for driving in the bus lane on Market Street.

again, again, again?

Saturday, nov. 18, 2006   |   0 comments

Another Saturday, another Desperate Housewives recap. Eight episodes in eight weeks! ABC is just relentless. Isn’t there some kind of voodoo virgin candle I can light that brings on reruns?

Highlights from this week’s recap include:

“Cut to Gabby, her hair in a prim bun. She’s wearing a bib-apron over a matronly white shirt buttoned all the way up to heaven. On the “Methods of Birth Control and their Effectiveness” scale, I’d say this outfit falls somewhere between a diaphragm (with its 20% rate of pregnancy) and a condom (14%).”

“The little P squad rushes out to greet Lynette. “I can’t believe you got in a fight with a hobo,” the biggest P trills in an clumsy attempt to get the plot moving. The adults all exchange puzzled glances. Lynette, by way of explaining the lame attempt at an excuse: “Yeah, well let’s see how well you do on a morphine drip.” The last time I was on morphine, I sat all the way through Ice Bound (the made-for-television movie about the North Pole, which turned out to have nothing to do with penguins and everything to do with breast cancer), so I’m going to have to vote with Lynette on this one: morphine melts your mind.”

Also inside: references to both Tim Gunn and the Neverland Ranch, plus a shameless link back to this very site!

THE TALLY
Total words: 6698
Total hours: 9.5 (better!)
Total beverages consumed: two cups of coffee and one triple latte (and who didn’t get to sleep until 2am? Evany Thomas)

more for the wishlist

Friday, nov. 17, 2006   |   1 comment

I am very much wanting this tote from Jans Dotter:

I like the pattern, but I love the unusually long (for a tote) and thick leather strap — best of all, the strap is totally single! (I’m not sure how it happened, but somehow this wishlist item just slid into “alternative singles ad” territory.)

won't somebody else please be my neighbor?

Thursday, nov. 16, 2006   |   0 comments

I present to you this note, found taped to our front door:

Due to the fact that I tripped over the table you placed in my doorway/walkway, and nearly broke my neck, this correspondence serves as a request NOT to put anything else that will obstruct my doorway/walkway in the future. You have a washroom/storage room where you can put your property; my doorway/walkway IS NOT a waste holding area for your throw-aways and trash.

(Okay, so far, so good. That’s a valid complaint. We totally did leave a coffee table and some weird nesting boxes to languish far too long in the shared foyer of our duplex. We apologize for the inconvience, and actually feel horrible about any tripping our stuff may have instigated. And yet…how nice it would have been if you had simply knocked on our door and asked us to move our things, versus calling our shared rental management company to complain, and then throwing our stuff away without warning, and then leaving us this note, which continues…)

I repeat: DO NOT PUT ANYTHING… NADA… ZILCH… NEIN… ZIP… NIL… NAUGHT… ZERO… NIET… NOTHING, NEVER — EVER in my doorway/walkway in the future. NO DISCUSSION! If you do not read or understand English, please have someone translate this communiqué. Anything that is there obstructing my doorway/walkway will be disposed.

Moreover, be assured I will not otherwise bother you, your dog, or whoever else lives with you in any manner, especially since you have been distant and not very friendly toward me anyway.

Respectfully,
[MY AWESOME NEIGHBOR]

Dear Awesome Neighbor,

Unfortunately since neither Marco nor I understand English, we were unable to read the part about how we should hire a translator, and thus we couldn’t quite comprehend your communiqué. Please resend!

Stay fun,
“Whoever Else” From Upstairs