We dressed up from the kepi down, and had friends over for an impromptu cocktail party.
But mostly, we've run around the house screaming.
Still, just in case we hadn't screamed it loud enough for you to hear wherever you may be:
MY NOVEL GOT SOLD THIS WEEK AND I AM GOING TO BE PUBLISHED ON TWO CONTINENTS AND MORE MAYBE WHEN THE REST OF THE FOREIGN RIGHTS GET HASHED OUT (PLEASE MENTION TO ANY CIVIL WAR-OBSESSED JAPANESE PUBLISHERS YOU HAPPEN TO KNOW) AND YAY YAY YAY, etc.
The novel will be out in early 2012. Between now and then, I need to do final edits based on my editor's comments.
And figure out what leopard print goes best with blue kepi.
And of course start writing my next book.
I'm not 100% sure what it will be. The footnote from history angle was clearly the big hook for the first novel. But for the next one, I'm thinking maybe something Cubist. And trading in that kepi for a beret.
I know, I know. I have been pathetically inept at blogging. I apologize. It's not that I don't love you and miss you and want to blog to you. It's just that I've been away.
Far away.
In the nineteenth century. Wait a minute, that's not my Civil War uniform.
It's my Pie Liberation Army apron. Worn whenever I must defend the Union of Crust and Filling.
Suffice it to say, I am not one to dessert my post.
Not unless the infantry band is playing a rousing chorus of Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory of the Coming of the Lard.
But let's get back--way back--to the Civil War.
Which as it turns out is late-breaking news. As in, the New York Times is sesquicentennially blogging the Civil War in real time.
Inasmuch as they had blogs, or computers, or even electrons back in 1861.
Well, I guess they had electrons. They just didn't know it. Like some sort of subatomic halitosis that their friend were just too polite to mention.
Let me be clear: I am a normal, red-blooded American.
Which means the Civil War bored the hell out of me when we had to study it in school, just like it did you and every one else.
So how did I become so obsessed with the conflict that I now receive form letters addressed to Dear Civil War Enthusiast?*
*NOTE: I don't actually receive those letters. They are mailed to me. But if the Cheez gets to them first, he grabs them and runs around the house mocking me.
Anyway, I became obsessed by the Civil War while accidentally writing a novel. About the Civil War. Which I've been working on, on and off, for, well let's just say I could have fought the Civil War in less time.
So Ulysses S. Grant me a few more minutes of your what-the-heck-you're-already-screwing-around-on-the-internet-time and surf on over to the New York Times to see just how groovy and interesting the Civil War can be, when served up with a healthy portion of MacaroniManiac.
But one thing my kitten and Barack Obama have in common: both star in videos about the rather un-cute but unfortunately timely issue of the harassment and bullying of queer teens.
So far, Obama's video has gotten a few more viewers.
Okay, I know. He's THE PRESIDENT. It's a big deal when he speaks out like this.
But how hard can it be? He's got writers, videographers, press people--and an opposable thumb. My cat doesn't have any of that. She doesn't even have her sparkle ball toy. It got knocked under the fridge days ago, and with my bad back, I ain't going in after it.
I am guessing you have already heard about the It Gets Better Project -- organized by sex columnist Dan Savage to give teens who need it some insight into how their future might look. I respect that the President, Nancy Pelosi, Gloria Estefan and a lot of other famous people have made videos. But you know, most of those videos seem kind of like a grown-up talking AT a kid, not someone talking to a kid in the way a kid (and teens ARE kids despite what they want to believe) needs.
So even though I have ten thousand other things to do, I spent all yesterday making this:
I hope you'll take 2 minutes, 54 seconds to watch it. And then a few more to post a comment on youtube about it, Facebook it, Twitter it, forward it to anyone you can. Because some place in WhoKnowsWhereville there is someone who needs to hear what it has to say. Someone whose life it might even save. And since my cat is an indoor cat, there is no way she can go out and find that someone to say it in person. Please help the cat and the kid and the world, by passing it on.
Just for the record, though: the kids out there aren't being bullied because their queer. Or "suspected" of being queer. They're being bullied because we live in a bigoted, cruel culture that likes to pick on anyone who's different.
But sometimes being different can make you want to make a difference. Like that scrawny, biracial guy with the funny name. Or that cat with a face only a gangster movie could love. Or the chick wearing way too much leopard who really should be doing her laundry before she heads out of town on a business trip. So please do your part to pass it on.
My friend Stella Unpronounceableadopolous and her husband Dr. Mensch came to visit a while back. Far enough back that I was flat on my back, still in the depths of ruptured disk-induce pain.
You should really see a surgeon Dr. Mensch said.
You should really meet my friend Silke Stella Unpronounceableadopolous said.
Since the surgeon had a four-week wait for an appointment but Silke was available that Tuesday, she got me first. She even made a house call.
Hello, I am Silke Silke said, arriving at our house exactly on time. Because Silke is German. A German-Immersed-in-Fitness-Training, aka G.I.F.T. May I take your picture?
So I let Silke the G.I.F.T take my picture. Actually, she took a bunch of them. Then she whipped out a clipboard and started taking notes on every aspect of my posture.
Which it turns out sucked. My posture, I mean. Her notetaking didn't suck. It was immaculate. She is, after all, German.
And her Duetsche-ishly detailed and diligent denoting clearly revealed that somewhere along the way, I had become as crook-limbed as a contortionist flying coach class.
Luckily, Silke the G.I.F.T could offer more than a packet of peanuts and a complimentary beverage.
Because Silke the G.I.F.T gave me the gift of Egoscue.
(Pronunciation guide: Egoscue sorta rhymes with He toss shoe, appropriate enough given that my inability to tie my shoes had been leading me to toss everything from footwear to hissy fits for quite some time).
Egoscue is not some Eastern European method of torture smuggled out across the Alps.
And it's not torture. It's just postural alignment. Which you attain by doing a bunch of exercises with charming monikers such as Hooklying Gluteal Contractions and Frog Pull-overs.
Really, frog pull-over. The closest I'll ever come to my childhood dream of dressing in Garanimals. (Not to be confused with my adult dream of decorating in animal print, which I am achieving quite admirably).
Silke the G.I.F.T. spent a couple hours teaching me my exercises, which she told me I had to do every morning.
Which I did.
And which--unlike the prescription painkillers, the steroid tapers, the over-the-counter NSAID, and the $1000+ worth of physical therapy--actually worked.
Four days later, I rode my bike twenty miles. Two weeks later, Silke the G.I.F.T came back to take more notes and give me new exercises. Then another week later, she moved back to Germany. But by that point, I'd been to see the surgeon but realized I was improved enough not to need to go under the knife.
Besides, Silke the G.I.F.T. left me in the hands of another Egoscue practioner. Who has been slowly but surely getting me back to a fully functioning back.
Moral of the story: if you didn't believe the American healthcare system is completely screwed up, ponder this: the warmth and sympathy of a German was the best thing that happened to me during this entire medical odyssey. This is not a concept that comes easily to members of my tribe.
But I suppose it's better to have one's simplistic associating of all things German with the Nazis ruptured than to have one's L5-s1 disk ruptured. Henceforth, I swear, I'll stop being so catty when it comes to Krauts.
Okay, maybe not. But at least I'm parodying with impeccable posture.
No, I'm not talking about the kind of shit product releases that can be summed up in three words and one numeric symbol: iPad=my bad
I am talking about the kind of shit morals that requires two freaking hours of masterful condemnation by a man who comports himself much like a Revivalist preacher with a cult following.
Except sweatier.
Of course the cult in question is ... well, let's just say I bit the fruit and now I've been cast out of Eden.
Not that sweat is inherently antithetical to Apple. I happened to require some customer dis-service at our local crApple store this week, and the pimply-faced staff were so sweaty the place smelled like a college dorm during Finals Week.
And people, I used to teach at Reed College, so I know from smelly students.
I suppose I shouldn't have been so judgmental of the mouth-breather behind the counter who was taking so damn long to help me. He was probably only mouth-breathing to avoid smelling his shiny, happy coworkers.
Although, given their perspiratory tendencies, maybe that should be sheeny, happy coworkers.
But still the sweaty man rang out his righteous indignation.
Except, actually, he's not a cult leader. He's a cult follower. And he knows you are too. And even though he spent those two hours telling you how freakin' evil the freakin' cult is, he doesn't actually ask you to leave it.
Welcome to that very special case of self-hating ethnics, the morally outraged Apple user.
iWouldn't actually buy an iPad, because it is a stupid, purposeless product.
Not like my iPhone, which I bought because I needed to make and receive calls.
Which I can do on my iPhone.
On rare occasions.
If I'm not trying to call someone who also has an iPhone.
Case in point: my best friend's mother died, and I called to offer my condolences. But we both have iPhones. To make a long cancer-ridden death short, after we were cut off fifteen freakin' times, my friend finally Skyped to Chuck's cell phone--which, unlike my SmartPhone only has middling intelligence but which with the regularity of any idiot savant is able to make or receive calls any time the owner wants. All that, just so I could say the usual You may not be able to realize it now, but I promise, life goes on tripe of condolence, by which point it was moot since your iPhone not working is actually life going on. And on and on.
Oh, wait, I'm the one who's going on and on here. But not about what I meant to go on about.
But the thing about a Hershey's Kiss is, at least it works. What should I think knowing my iPhone, and all my other damn electronics, functional or not, have been produced with child labor?
Luckily, the sweaty man was there to tell me. In no Arid-Extra-Dry terms.
One thing you can say about Mike Daisey is that he is nobody's bitch.
And since Bitch has feminist response to pop culture right in the title, I figured it was a pretty safe bet to talk about how multinational corporation Viacom exploits factory workers in China, exposing them to lead and other chemicals, to produce cheap Dora the Explorer toys to sell to Americans.
Which promptly led to a helluva lot of hate mail to Bitch about me, from people saying I was racist for criticizing a Latina cartoon character.
Racist? Nope. Naive? Maybe. Because see, I expected people to give up their cheap slave-labor made toys.
Not like Mike Daisey. He says you can keep your iPhone. Hell, you can even watch Dora the Explorer on it. Just so long as you email Steve Jobs first, typing with however many thumbs you happen to have (hint: if you've been working at the Shenzhen factory that makes Apple products, it may be fewer thumbs than you started with), to tell him that you think anyone who's as big a genius as he is can probably figure out a way to get products manufactured that doesn't involve child labor.
Or even adult labor, if those adults happen to be laboring 80+ hours per week, and/or sleeping 14 to a ten foot by ten foot room in the company dorm.
Because really, Apple should leave the evil to those who do it best: Microsoft.
Quick recap: after months of suffering with nerve pain from my fabulous L5-S1 rupture, I've been feeling better. So much better that in the battle of desk v. disk, desk is winning. I can now sit for much longer at my new ultrarock hard desk chair (picture Aeron means Flintstone).
But still, I know I should get up and stretch periodically, and walk around for at least half an hour in the middle of the day. So midday yesterday, I left work for a short walk.
Fate sealed, I head for the nefarious route known as Portland's riverfront walk.
Although in my case, the operative verb turned out to be fly.
I am walking along, listening to a fascinating audio file of a program about what education philanthropists can do to ensure schools better serve English Language Learners. So fascinating I stop to jot down a note on some bit o' brilliance shared by Eugene Garcia.
Which is when I suddenly notice that I am staring straight up at the sky.
No, wait, I'm lying smack down on the concrete.
Wait, piecing it together here . . . I have flown up and fallen smack down on the concrete. That thwacking noise was not in fact Eugene Garcia adding emphasis to his point. It was my skull, hitting the ground.
Although I am sure that if I were from Eugene Garcia's home state of Arizona, I could somehow blame this all on him. Or on any Mexican, really.
Are you okay? some looming head above me asks.
I think we should call 9-1-1 I answer, holding up my iPhone.
Which of course the looming head above me cannot figure out how to work.
Luckily, I am (as I learn much, much later) not the only lady from New York on the scene.
Enter Cara. Or Keira. Or Kayira. I should know this, after all she did introduce herself, somewhere between saying she knew first aid and saying her phone was out and she was already dialing 9-1-1 and where exactly were we anyway because she wasn't from Portland.
Which thank god she isn't, because then she wouldn't be from New York. And then I'd still be laying there waiting for some nice Portlander to have the chutzpah to figure out how to call 9-1-1 in response to my fabulous aerial show.
Once I determine that I:
remember my name (even if I may not have exactly caught hers)
have not lost consciousness at any point, and
am freakin' terrified that I've got a spinal chord injury (a new one, I mean; the ruptured disk no longer being front page news)
I figure that I shoul at least assist Cara/Keira/Kayira by serving as associate director of the scene.
Could everyone who doesn't have to be here please move on? I ask, noticing now there are many looming heads.
So now we pare down to:
Cara/Keira/Kayira and her two adorable very young daughters, who are interrupting the 9-1-1 call to ask Mommy some pertinent questions. Why is the lady lying there? Why is it important that the lady knows her name? Does everyone in Portland know how to fly?
Brian, the bicyclist to whom I owe my entire aerial career
Some guy who says I think I should stay here. I'm trying to block the sun. Meaning, he is trying to keep me from enjoying too much of a post-flight fry while we wait for the EMTs.
Mr. Homo Sapien Sunblock really is concerned for my well-being. You should be wearing a helmet he lectures.
I was just walking I say. Although I now notice that the bottom half of me is lying on top of the bicycle, which may help explain the confusion.
You should be wearing a helmet I tell Brian. 90 percent of all cyclists who are killed are not wearing helmets I add. Which is true. Although technically Brian doesn't have a scratch on him, helmet or no.
Still, we all seize the teachable moment. See girls, Cara/Keira/Kayira intones to her adorable offspring, it is so important to wear helmets. Doesn't Mommy always wear a helmet on her Scoot?
Our little course in bicycle safety is alas interrupted by the arrival of the EMTs.
What happened? they ask. Which sets everyone talking at once.
Let me tell them I say They need to assess my cognitives.
This is the one advantage I bring to this scene, garnered from the year of living brainjurously. That is, the exciting year in which my sister had a brain aneurysm and then my brother, not to be left out, had a brain bleed from a cavernous hemangioma. Which means I know just what medical professionals want to know about my brain.
And I kind of want to know it too, just as soon as they tell me that my spine is fine.
Fine spine brain pain pretty much is the four-word poem that is my condition.
But wait, there's more. Spinning. Which is what the whole world--EMTs, unhelmeted cyclist, Cara/Keira/Kayira and kids, human sunblock, etc.--does, if I try to sit up.
Which leads Morgan the EMT to ask the single most critical question a healthcare provider can ask: What's your insurance?
Healthnet I answer. Then I have to explain that my arm didn't lash out due to a spasm from my injury, that was just the automatic impulse of any Healthnet subscriber: call for pre-authorization.
The EMTs don't bother with preauthorization, happily. They just load me onto the gurney, delighted that I weigh only about a third of their average patient. And off we go, with Cara/Keira/Kayira calling after me, make sure you put arnica gel on anything that feels sore, as soon as you get home. Girls, doesn't Mommy always put arnica on your bruises?
Speaking of Cara/Keira/Kayira, at some point during my riparian layabout, I've had the good sense to ask her to call my office and let them know that maybe I am not headed back there today. And to have the office manager call Cheez. Who then calls Cara/Keira/Kayira before taking a quick run through the streets of downtown Portland to find a cab.
I got a Middle Eastern cabbie he reports later thank Allah. Because man, could he drive fast.
So fast that Cheez arrives at the hospital before my ambulance. Which apparently didn't bother putting on its flashers and sirens for the ride. Causing Cheez, who actually had thought I was hit by car, to reason as he watched the ambulance backing up to the ER that either my injuries weren't bad and I would be fine, or that I was already dead.
As you can guess, it was not the latter.
In fact, by the time they wheel me in, I'm cracking jokes with the EMTs, and lecturing the intake nurse about how she could improve her approach when asking the standard intake questions. You shouldn't say, "No illegal drugs?" because it assumes what the patient's answer will be I scold. And You should make an excuse to send the partner out of the room before you ask about domestic violence.
This is the point at which Cheez whips out his phone and starts calling everyone who knows about the accident and is worrying over me, to tell them that I seem to be back to my usual self.
Except that I still can't sit up, lest the room start spinning.
A nice young resident comes in to do my exam. This is the joy about being at the best hospital in Portland. It's a teaching hospital. Which means my brain is once again a teachable moment.
Which makes him old enough to be a many years of experience full on ER doc. The very one as it turns out Kevin will be training with on next month's rotation.
Makes you wonder that they can ever do them on Jews.
So I'm just sitting around with an IV-drip of sodium, wondering whether I'll ever sit up again, when some guy who pulls back the curtain on my ER cubby and begins scrubbing up.
A guy, I should mention, who looks like he's just stepped out of an aftershave ad and (this being Oregon's premier hospital after all) who's dressed like said ad appeared in Sports Fishing Monthly.
Er, who might you be on today's medical odyssey? I ask.
He claims to be the supervising physician. I'm a little leery because I've seen Kevin talking to his supervising physician, and she doesn't look a thing like the braced-chin-and-civvy-wearing fellow before us.
Check his i.d. I tell Cheez. Who does. Actually they both do. We all agree it isn't the most up to date shot, but yes, it tells us this guy, whose last name could be Jewish but let's face it, we all know what ads they put Jews in, and manly is not the term for them.
After establishing that the previous supervising physician has gone off duty, Dr. Not-Jewish offers me the juice of my choice and asks Cheez are you a reliable person?
To which my reliable mate answers I am Canadian.
He wants you to make sure I don't fall over I say.
And I don't, as I ease up to a sit, well juiced. Things are more teeter-tottering than spinning. I can't close my jaw. But the team determines that's about muscle, not bone, and I think we all know there's arnica gel in my future anyway.
Before you know it, I'm taking my second flight of the day.
On the aerial tram down from the hospital (note safety-conscious Portlanders wearing helmets--apparently during my time on Pill Hill the earlier riverside chanting has had time to truly take hold among the masses).
This is way cooler than the ambulance I tell Cheez. Maybe they out to have a trambulance.
It's a weak joke, I know. But hey, I am concussed! Plus, some guy standing next to us laughed anyway.
Cheez and I then walk about three miles home, during which time we recite all the things we're happy about. Happy it was a bike, not a car. Happy my skull did its work. Happy that, amazingly enough, my ruptured disk actually seems a little BETTER after the flight-to-full-on-concrete-fall.
Think of it as the ultimate chiropractic adjustment says Cheez.
And I do. I just hope Healthnet covers chiropracty without pre-approval. At least when it's administered by a moving vehicle.
We met in church David said, squeezing Kanley's hand.
Normally, I'm not that comfortable staying in the sort of place where you have to stare at a notecard proclaiming Christ is Risen while you eat breakfast. But in this instance, Christ seemed to be risen from his disco nap, just before slipping on some tight pants and heading out to the local.
Because London is all about a good time.
I know what you're thinking, dear reader. Wasn't traveling difficult with my current injury? Well, though the flight was no picnic (despite the presence of plastic cutlery), the week itself was great, since like certain other international travelers, I realized the value of having a strong young man to tote my luggage.
Of course, when you've been with someone as long as I've been with the Cheez, you know he isn't merely a rent boy. More a long-term lease boy.
Remind me to use my stomach muscles to support my spine I said before we departed. Which he took as license to spend the entire week shouting Suck in that gut, soldier.
England was very educational. Even the flight over, on which we watched The Young Victoria like we were cramming for the history exam.
Here's what I learned: circa 1830, sending a chick sheet-music was the equivalent of making her a mixed tape in 1987.
If my knowledge of Brit history was shoddy, my knowledge of Brit geography was even worse. Riding the tube from Heathrow to the B&B, I realized that everything I knew about London came from Clash songs.
White Mac at Hammersmith Tube Stop
As we wandered around the city that first day, I did manage to recognize Buckingham Palace. Even without the usual assortment of flowers and teddy bears they festoon it with every time something so crap happens in Britain they put it on the American tellie.
Oh my, I hope they aren't going to pre-empt my Wheel of Fortune for this one
Tellie, btw, is British for T.V. This is one of the confusing things about Britain: they barely speak English over there.
Fancy a fag? is British for Want a cigarette? whereas Fancy a bloke? is British for Fancy a fag? It's an amazing place, really.
Speaking of fancy fags, at the Tate Britain we learned about the early-17th-century roots of Glam Rock, as in this stunning work, Portrait of James Hamilton, Earl of Arran, Later 3rd Marquis and 1st Duke of Hamilton, Aged 17.
Nothing I enjoy more than a little glitter dust and an interregnum.
Much of the art in England seems to be portraiture. This is not exactly a good thing, given how unattractive the British are.
That is not me being narrow-minded, btw. It is a proven fact. It was in the Telegraph. The Telegraph is British for slightly less sleazy newspaper than most of the rags we've got over here, but what are you complaining about, at least when we're reading them on the Tube you don't have to see our faces.
It was actually the ugliness that sold Cheez on the trip in the first place. Let's go to England, he said, we will be like Supermodels compared to everyone there.
We were mostly supermodels of rudeness, since we spent the entire trip talking in a wide array of fake British accents. Upon viewing this JMW Turner painting, Cheez felt the need to proclamate upon its subject matter:
Religious cows is queued up for church. More godless ones is in the foreground, grazin. Whereas I would find myself rummaging through my luggage as I struggled to get dressed each morning, intoning Where's all me knickers at?
The thing about the British is, they really talk that way. All the damn time. We saw a family in the park playing with their dog, a fluffy white terrier named Snowy. At some point, the adorable daughter of the family threw the ball and Snowy caught it just before it landed in the lake in the park. A mustachioed sixty-something man passing by happened to observe the scene and said to the dog, Well done, Snowy. As if the pup had just rescued his entire regiment from the Germans.
I swear, the whole country is like a freakin Monty Python sketch. Right down to the physical comedy.
Turns out, John Cleese etal. weren't writing comedy. They were merely transcribing it.
I took that video at the Tower of London, another educational stop. We learned that if you are locked up in the Tower awaiting execution, you might as well graffiti the hell out of the place, because what are they going to do if they catch you?
Also we learned that you can trace just how fat Henry VIII was at any given time by checking out his suits of armor, which escalate in size from Normal to Husky to What Else Can We Melt Down to Get Enough Metal to Cover this Fat Fuck?
It is a true fact that there is nothing I enjoy more on vacation than a
ranger-led tour.
In England, due to not having had the good sense of inventing Smokey the Bear, they do not have rangers in Smokey the Bear hats.
So their version of a ranger-led tour involves a guy dressed up like the bloke on the gin. Who spends an hour or thereabouts traipsing around the Tower of London telling you tidbits like For five centuries, we had a moat here that was the largest open toilet in London. Quite a line of defense. Or Pardon me, that was the marmite and cheese panini repeating on me.
Apparently, they should actually call this attraction The Body Functions of London.
We had a great empire not so long ago Smokey the Beefeater noted. We should be proud of that. But we're not. Because we're British.
It's true, they were British. I love it here said Cheez the Canuck I've never been any place where people embarrass even more easily than me. And he was right. At an event at the Victoria and Albert Museum, when a young hipster approached a craft table out of turn, I jokingly muttered Orderly queue under my breath--causing said hipster to apologize profusely and flee the room in mortification.
They were such easy pickings, it was hardly worth mocking them.
And yet, we did.
More of which to be detailed in my next blog post, which at the rate I'm going, should be made sometime in July. July 2011.
NOTE: that is a Union kepi, not a Confederate kepi.
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