Happy Towel Day!

The Big List of Reasons Why Living in the Past Sucked

Originally started in September of 2010.  I was tired of it hanging around in "drafts".


With fall being Renaissance Festival season in these parts, many of us (mostly nerds) start thinking about strapping on a corset or lacing up some tights and partaking in creative anachronisms, accompanied by large quantities of beer and songs about how much fun drinking beer tends to be.  We also get to thinking about life in olden times, the days of yore when knights tilted in the lists for the idea of love and the reality of money, the days when magic, religion, and fledgling science took turns trying to explain the endless wonders of the natural world.  What were those days like?  Some us even may feel that we were born in the wrong time, that our romantic souls would have been better placed in a time of chivalry and courtly romance.

If you're looking for historical accuracy, 

you left it in your other Warrior Princess bustier.

I am not one of those people.  If anything, I was born too early.  I'd be much more at home with Jean-Luc Picard aboard the Enterprise (albeit likely the resident moron; the 8 year-olds would pity my ignorance) than singing "Hey nonny, sing ho" with Shakespeare at a filthy London tavern while drinking ale of dubious origins.  Here is the beginning of what will hopefully be an ever-growing list of reasons why living in the past sucked.


1. No rights for women.  For any men saying, "Hell, yeah!" right now, I hope nasty, unspecified things happen to you.
2. In Europe, no rights for non-whites.  Same sentiment as expressed above to racists.
3. THE SMELL.  OH, GOD, THE SMELL.
4. Even greater religious intolerance.
5. No showers. Again, imagine the smell.
6. No condoms.  Think of all the babies you would have had by now were this 500 years ago. Feel free to shudder dramatically and/or vomit.
7. No toilets. No toilet paper.  Often, not even an outhouse with a seat.  Just the outdoors.  Ew.
8. In Europe, home of the Renaissance, before contact with the New World, there were no potatoes, tobacco, tomatoes, bell peppers, chocolate, corn, etc.  Arguably, there may not have been syphilis, either.
9. People died from things we scoff at now, like chicken pox, the flu, and things easily avoided in our modern world like salmonella.
10. Lice and fleas.  LICE AND FLEAS.  *shudder
11. No video games.  I know this is not really a priority for most, but I would die.
12. No real health care.  You were lucky if one of a hundred "remedies" for ailments sort of worked.
13. Clothes were crappier.  We take for granted some of the awesome textiles we luxuriate in today, often using fabrics not seen until the last century or so to make "historical" costumes that are waaaaaay more comfortable and eye-catching than their original counterparts.
14. That being said, think about the underpants, or the typical lack thereof.  Now think of the majority of your neighbors.  Yeah, I thought not.
15. The food sucked more.  Think about the staggering variety of food choice and preparation taken for granted by most Americans.  Didn't really exist back then.  Global trade not really being a thing back in the day, spices and flavorings from around the world were non-existent, and forget "ethnic" food.  Think about life without nachos, or chicken lo mein, or even something as boring and humdrum as vanilla ice cream.  Now die a little inside.


More items to follow later.

The Infertility Itch

I never understood the women so desperate for babies
willing to turn their bodies into spawning grounds
human puppy mills sitting out children by the unnatural handful.

I scoffed.  I shook my head at the idea that any woman
any sane person would need to breed with that recklessness
premeditated abandon based on religion or hormones
whatever the reason, ludicrous and extreme.

Then the losses piled up.  Most were faceless clumps
cells arranged like clustered fruit, tiny false starts
chromosomal anomalies too poorly written to live.

The last, hopefully the last, not just the latest:

I knew the moment its small form appeared on screen
it had no spark, no fluttering movement to bespeak life
its body still; silent, it had stopped three weeks before
and I had gone on, trying not to hope and hoping anyway
while it died quietly alone in the thundering whisper
the tide in my uterus pulled by my satellite heart.

She was normal, the tests spat the words at me
my doctor holding out the results like an offering
not realizing the comfort I had taken from the idea
that they had all been genetic misfires, failures
of their parents' code to weave together.

Female, 46 chromosomes, no abnormalities detected
one line that cut me, burned me with guilt
and then the barrage of tests to see why I failed
to protect and nurture life within me the way women should.

I've successfully bred before; my daughter thrives
she sings through my days and questions everything.
She asks me often for more children, she is lonely
and I fear I have waited too long and the disease
haunting the women of my family has taken my chance.

So I itch at myself, worrying at my bones or my genes
cursing my body for things it can't willingly deny
taking the pills, conforming to regimens and diets
waiting for news, pausing at the threshold of my soul
to wonder when I became the sort of woman
who cries at baby pictures and is consumed by conception.

Wedding Plans Part 3

Let me just say that my new favorite thing ever is Inspiration Boards.  I like being able to make a scrapbook but online, because I do most things online.  The first board is theme/general ideas and the second is obviously cake specific.

Gir tattoo?

I'm wanting a Gir tattoo.  I'm wondering where to put it.  Leg?  Shoulder?  I dunno.  I think I want Gir with a cupcake.  I lurrrrrrve cupcakes.  They are kyoooooot.  Bad spelling fun.

This one is already a tattoo ^

This one is a little tooooo crazy ^

Is okay ^

So far I like this one best ^

The many faces of Gir.  I kind of like the pissed off one.

Maybe if he were holding a cupcake instead of tickets?

Also cute! ^

Wedding Plans Part 2

Turns out Van Gogh's "Starry Night" is one of her favorite paintings of all time, so she jumped on using it as the theme for her wedding.  The color scheme works, it's classic and romantic, and it'll be tasteful enough to appeal to the majority of her wedding guests, I should think.

We're also adding a little twist; a Tim Burton twist.  While not wanting to have a spooky/Halloween/undead-themed wedding, Tia does love Jack and Sally from The Nightmare Before Christmas and always wanted them to top her cake.  I found the COOLEST custom-etch-able crystal cake topper that features the Jack and Sally silhouette on the curly hilltop that you can order with the wedding date and couple names.  BAD ASS.  Also, I suggested we work up a rendition of Starry Night crossed with the moment they grasp hands with that big golden moon behind them and then use that for the invites and decorations.

I'm thinking while the wedding party and groom walk down the aisle, the musicians (no pre-recorded music allowed at Lourdes, Jesus forfend) can play "Jack's Lament" because it speaks of longing, and anyway it's instrumental only, and then when Tia walks down the aisle, they can play the refrain from "Sally's Song".  

Anyway, I'm looking forward to throwing all this shiz together and making it work.  OMG MY BRAIN ESPLODES WITH IDEARS!!!

You can tell I mean it because of the poor spelling, capital letters, and redundant punctuation.

Dead Babies and Churros

It's hard to feel sad when you listen to "Mr. Blue Sky", even if you've had a shitty, horrible, no-good, very-bad day.  Have you have read this book?

One of my favorites as a small child, and my old copy from when I was three sits on Liv's bookshelf now.  It's one of those cute stories that's supposed to help children put things in perspective.  Like, "Hey, I know this bad thing seems big and terrible now, but it's not so bad when you have days like this" or "You know, at the end of the day, you look back and realize it wasn't so big after all" type of thing.  A lot of books along those lines for adults SUCK.  I just want to put that out there.  They're either condescending, sappy, depressing, dull, tasteless, or just completely unhelpful in any way.  Everyone once in a while you find that rare book that makes you laugh your way through the shit, or think your way out of the dark; those books are special and I find that you should actually endeavor to NOT share them with people close to you.  Personally, the things I find uplifting seem to lose their luster when I hold them out for someone else to scrutinize.  Like the blog Hyperbole and a Half.  Allie is hilarious. I love her writing and her doodles.  My mother thinks I'm weird and doesn't get them.  The only one she liked was the one about the dogs when they were moving from Montana to Oregon, and mostly only because they sort of remind her of her dog and mine.  I would like to say right now that my dog is NOT retarded or exceptionally stupid, she's just incredibly timid at times.  My dog recognizes her own name and knows how to climb stairs.  She doesn't eat her own vomit.

Moving on, now that I've grossed myself out thinking about dog vomit...

Today a baby that stopped growing and living three weeks ago was discovered in my uterus.  I wasn't surprised.  I was still sad, just not shocked in any sense of the word.  I knew it as soon as I saw it on the screen.  I've gotten fairly adept at making out things on ultrasounds by now.  Neither my mother nor I could fail to notice the weird stuff on my left ovary, either.  Then I found up feeling worse for my poor mother, who sobbed and clung to me like a child for a few minutes, and I wound up having to comfort her instead.  Kind of helped, really.  It's nice to not have to think about why you should be feeling sad.  We spent a few hours getting food, driving around in the sunshine admiring flowers, playing with the dogs, taking Liv to splash in a creek in her rain boots.  It was at this point that I had to fish her out when she fell on her bum and couldn't get back up because the dogs perceived she was in apparently mortal danger and made themselves useful by crowding over her and knocking her down more.  My 45 pound five year-old didn't really have much of a chance against my mother's 110-pound German shepherd/rottweiler mix.  Thrown in our small 50 pound lab/malinois mix, and she reeked of dog all the way home.

Still, for Liv it was a good day.  She got a waffle for breakfast, special lunch with her aunt and uncle, followed by a cookie treat, then a day out with her gram and the dogs, followed by pizza for dinner because her parents were too tired and wrung out to make real food.  Uncle Zack also gave her a stick of rock candy she's probably dreaming about eating tomorrow right now.

As I sat in bed eating churros (I don't normally recommend doing that), I wondered what I was going to do with life.  I feel like I've been on pause for a year or so now; pretty much since I graduated from college.  I wonder if Damion feels that way, too?  It's hard not to feel like you're stuck in limbo when you're not really going forward in any sense of the phrase.  Once Damion graduated, I figured we could have kid numero dos and then after that maybe I'd try to get into grad school.  Pam was pretty adamant that I should do so, and even Danny drunkenly harangued me about going once when he'd had too much gin.  I'd like to teach college creative writing, maybe work on a literary mag, something.  I'm not afraid to criticize people, I like getting people to work together, and writing is fun.  Plus every time I think about not bothering, I feel Pam beating me 'round the head and shoulders with whatever came readily to hand and shouting at me.  She liked to do that, hit me with things and then tell me I was smart.  Danny did it with words; cutting, stinging words.  When a person looks up to role models like that, it's small wonder they wind up confused and conflicted.

We're going to run a bunch of tests, see what keeps going wrong with the whole baby-making deal, go through the motions of getting ready to eventually have another kid.  If we change our minds, it's easier to switch from that to hard-core pregnancy prevention than the other way around.  Plus there's apparently cancer risks involved if I'm not monitored carefully and a bunch of other crap that I'm only halfway paying attention to, on the principle that a person can only take so much getting freaked the fuck out before they just sort of switch off and hope that trusting people who make their living from sticking sharp things into other human beings will take care of them doesn't turn out to be a bad idea.

I've really discovered an odd love for Electric Light Orchestra as I've gotten older.  I figure as long as I don't started getting really into REO Speedwagon or Styx, I should be fine.  ELO is a lot of fun to sing a long with; I'm also contemplating getting voice lessons so that I can feel justified singing all I damn please whenever I like.  My husband doesn't like my singing voice; other people seem to like it, so maybe if I can smooth out my rough areas, I will no longer feel as self-conscious about singing where other people can hear me.

Once upon a time, days like today would have put me so far down into depression that I'd thought my whole world was ending.  I have had days like today before.  Well, not with churros.  Usually churro days are good days.  I like churros.  But days with bad ultrasound results, I seem to have gotten used to.  Somehow, today I'm just taking it as just another thing I have to get over in order to keep on living.

Man, that sounds corny.  But days like today allow for a certain amount of sappy personal reaffirmation.

Even in Australia.