Last night I had a dream, the second of a new theme. In this dream my grandma (who died of cancer in 1983) has come back to life or reappeared from wherever she'd been hiding. I conjectured perhaps she had been in an induced coma all this time, until they finally cured her. And when she comes back home, my grandpa gets his mind back. This is the new recurring theme. Grandpa Frank has alzheimer's and every time I see him there's a bit less of him there. But in my dream world he goes back to his old grumpy yet good-humored and almost entirely sane self. When grandma comes home.
Their house is the childhood home base that my dreams seem to seek out by default. I never feel safe or happy there in my dreams. There are often problems with the plumbing and the lock on the bathroom door. The main plot point in this particular dream is the appearance of Adolf, one of grandma's long-dead cats. I look out the kitchen window and see him sitting in the middle of the dirt yard where grandpa now keeps his backhoe. I recognize his crooked Hitler mustache. He is bigger and rounder than any non-dream housecat. I announce to grandma that Adolf came home and open the door for him. He rushes inside out of the bitter cold and I sit on the kitchen floor where he uncharacteristically snuggles up on my lap (he was a weird, unfriendly cat). I realize with low-level concern that he is way older than cats are supposed to live. I ask grandma, "When was Adolf born?" She tells me, "45 weeks after your cousin." Even in dream math I realize this is simply not possible. My cousin was born in 1973.... which would make this dream cat over 30 years old. This reasoning launches me toward consciousness, where grandma is still dead and grandpa will never be sane again.
Another theme often found in my dreams: Moving in with my mom in some unfamiliar place that always has complex architecture and more rooms than one would think. The last dream like this was last week, and she and I had moved into an apartment complex much like the one I live in now. In this dream the multitude of rooms we share are spread over two units on opposite sides of the hall (and yet it is still somehow one apartment). It dawns on me that if we divide the space it could be almost like having my own apartment, and I go down the hall to suggest this plan. I find mom has gone insane and is making a variety of loud cat noises. This is not altogether improbable in real life. I try to talk to her quietly and rationally, but she continues to make cat noises. There are a bunch of young women neighbors who come over to help her (wearing fuzzy slippers and pink bathrobes). I decide I can be of no help and lock myself in the other apartment.
from an undead french prostitute. trick? or treat?
I've been having a few health issues lately. Nothing serious I suspect, but enough to seek medical attention. I had an appointment last week with some lab tests, another one today and another tomorrow. Three different doctors in the same (giant) medical group, a medical group with a good reputation. But as far as I can tell they don't deserve it. Tomorrow will tell with the third doctor, a specialist, but the first two doctors I've seen have seemed rushed, disengaged and generally on auto-pilot. Like the pilots who missed the airport at Minneapolis/St. Paul International.
Today's doc wrote me a prescription for an anti-inflammatory when I told her I was taking 2-4 Advil per day for joint pain. I asked her why it would be better to take the prescribed meds than what I was doing. Her answer was something about it being more convenient for me to just take one pill that lasted all day. Convenience wasn't an issue for me, but uh...okay.
I filled the prescription at the pharmacy, but before taking anything, I do what I always do, read the warning label. Whoa, this was some powerful stuff! After reading what Walgreen's had to say about it, I went to the Internet for more. On WebMd there was a big warning at the top of the page, not in the fine print.
This drug may infrequently cause serious (rarely fatal) bleeding from the stomach or intestines. Also, related drugs rarely have caused blood clots to form, resulting in heart attacks and strokes. This medication might also rarely cause similar problems. Talk to your doctor or pharmacist about the benefits and risks of treatment, as well as other possible medication choices.
If you notice any of the following rare but very serious side effects, stop taking and seek immediate medical attention: black stools, persistent stomach/abdominal pain, vomit that looks like coffee grounds, chest pain, weakness on one side of the body, sudden vision changes, slurred speech.
On other sites there were more reasons to suspect that this was
probably not the drug for me. I'm not sure what she was thinking or if
she was thinking actually.
I'll just stick with the morning dose of two Advil. And see what the doctor tomorrow has to say, assuming I can get more than 15 minutes of his time and undivided attention.
yays:
- I received free pizza (and salad) delivered to my door last night for being a "super customer" - which undoubtedly means I've spent something like $1,000 on pizza from Pagliacci since I've lived here. But anyway. Free pizza!
- Coming to terms with my doubts about this business venture I'm undertaking. Not getting over them, but honestly dealing with them.
- Although I did not get immediate contract work, it is clear that I've still "got it" and the work is starting to flow again, which means I may be able to sustain my urban bachelor(ette) standard of living and not move to a goat farm in sweden. Maybe.
- Dark (almost black) hair again for the seasonal hair shift.
- Last week: Barbara Ehrenreich and Rachel Grimes on consecutive nights.
- Fasting today means not having to deal with food prep.
- Workouts at homebody's secret gym! (It's not really secret, it is in her condo building, but compared to 24-hr fitness, it's secret).
- Reading Bend Sinister by Nabokov for the first time. Poetic absurdism? It's wonderous.
- The magic of Xanax.
- M-F-ing UTI.... again. Cranberries are my friends.
- Really don't feel like doing much of anything, so I'm spending too much time just sort of treading water.
- Defaulting on a couple of credit cards. Not really my idea.
- The idea of "work" for money still makes me feel a little filthy.
- I'm never going to lose weight at this rate. Step up my game? Or buy new pants?
I've been helping to fight the city council's plan to convert 1400+ acres of restorable wetlands in Redwood City. As a fly fisher and supporter of the environment, I am appalled at the level of greed and short-sightedness being demonstrated by my city. We don't need more condos, we don't need more development, and we certainly don't need any of it here, on the banks of the bay. What we need HERE are wetlands, protection from floods, habitat for wildlife and a healthier ecosystem for our damaged watershed.
Even if we didn't need all of those things, which we do, we simply cannot afford the water and electricity needs of such a massive project. Remember the electrical shortages that resulted in brown-outs? Would you welcome water rationing? You might not think about it now that it's fall and the rainy season, but come summer, we will all remember what that pain feels like.
The city is chasing money, pure and simple. Cargill and the developers won't be around later to reap the ecological rewards of such a misguided plan, and even if they are they'll be too busy counting their money to care.
For a while, it seemed the misinformation campaign they were running was winning, they won at the ballot box by confusing the voters. But now people are discovering how truly awful this plan is and they are starting to do something about it.
I am, and you can too:
Spread the word.
Dear karen,
We are glad to report that there is a growing rebellion against Cargill's plan to build a city in San Francisco Bay. We wanted to update you on these developments and ask for your continued support in protecting the 1433 acres of restorable wetlands in Redwood City.
In an important opinion piece in the Palo Alto Weekly, Palo Alto City Council member Yoriko Kishimoto calls out Cargill's plan as a grave threat to the Peninsula's future: "A proposed development in Redwood City so breathtaking in its size and misguided in its scope that nothing of its kind has been seen in half a century." She points out that "this is not an infill site and this is not the place for housing."
And the Redwood City Daily News recently reported that the Menlo Park City Council is moving to declare the project an environmental hazard to the region. Menlo Park Council Members Kelly Fergusson and Andrew Cohen agree that "the current Cargill/DMB development proposal seeks to reverse long-standing regional and local policies to protect the Bay and its wetlands."
Meanwhile, in an opinion piece published in the Redwood City Daily News Redwood City resident Marsha Cohen expressed concern that the city "is stonewalling requests for public records." She points out that the mayor works for business lobbyist SAMCEDA, a strong public supporter of the Cargill development. Ms. Cohen wants to know what advice was given to the mayor about the conflict of interest.
You can join these Peninsula leaders in the battle to save the Redwood City salt ponds. Please write letters to the editor in response to these pieces, expressing your own opinion:
letters@dailynewsgroup.com
Palo Alto Weekly letters can be sent to:
letters@paweekly.comCurrently, the Redwood City Council is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to determine whether Cargill's application should move forward. Clearly, many leaders on the Peninsula have found a much cheaper answer: It should be dead on arrival.
Go to www.savesfbay.org/redwoodcity for more information and to sign our petition, and stay tuned for more interesting updates.
Sincerely,
Stephen Knight
Save The Bay Political Director
510.452.9261
- Unemployment running out
- Lost or broken glasses
- Animal health issues
- Fruitless job hunting
- Elaborate cocktails (or sometimes elaborate beers or wines)
- Laundry
- Startups
- Looking for love (in all the wrong places)
- Deciding not to go to concerts or events
- But then occasionally going anyway
- Influenza
- Sick kids
- Insomnia
- iPhone apps
- Moving
- Tea
- Mad Men
- Where the Wild Things Are
- Poop
- Buddhism
- Various Googly things
- Your Mom
- The weather!
- Disliking work and co-workers
- Illiterate kittehs
- Yoga
- Various injuries
- Photography
- Breaking up
- Overseas travel
- Hotel rooms
- Things that are "meant" to be or not to be (that is the question)
- Stacks of books
- Ikea furniture, and in fact Ikea in general
- Not getting adequate exercise
- Baseball
- Homeless people
- Facebook's latest kerfuffle
- How annoying it is that everyone is paying attention to "balloon boy" and his weird family and/or Jon and/or Kate and/or 8.
- Being bored
- Taking the bus
- Food
I like Barbara Ehrenreich. A lot. I have always enjoyed reading her ever since I picked up Bait and Switch a few years ago. And I have to admit - as someone who has a violent allergic reaction to The Secret - I am quite tickled by her new book: Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking has Undermined America.
She started her talk at the Seattle Public Library last night with a disclaimer: she is not pro-misery. In fact, one of her previous books focuses on the value of joy in society. She's not on a crusade against happiness, she is on a crusade against delusion. Because when delusion replaces realism on a large scale, bad things happen. Very bad things. Like complete economic meltdowns.
She starts with a personal story. 8 years ago, she was treated for breast cancer, and she was angry. She was angry because this disease is so prevalent and yet we don't know what causes it. (As a first-world disease it has environmental causes, but who is funding research to discover and eliminate those toxins?) She was angry because she had to fight with her insurance company to get coverage. (Health care reform, anyone?) She was angry because chemotherapy is the only option for treatment that sort of works, and it's fucking poison. (Did you know that anyone who survives chemo is at much higher risk for developing other cancers, because chemo is full of carcinogenic toxins?) And she was a bit irked by all the pink ribbons. Not all women like pink stuff.
Her anger was met by the sisterhood of survivors with a cry of: "change your attitude, or else." The popular myth in that community is that only people who think positive get better. If you're angry or depressed because you have a potentially terminal disease, you are apparently at fault if you die from it. Because of your attitude.
After doing a good deal of research (she happens to have a PhD in cellular biology) and surviving herself (despite never once thinking of the disease as a "gift"), she can assure us that this is not the case. And she has heard from a lot of other women with breast cancer who are relieved to finally hear this perspective. Not to mention oncology nurses who are beginning to take a stand against this kind of pink-fuzzy victim blaming.
The only way we are going to cure humanity's ills is by recognizing them as ills and NOT gifts. And then coming together to figure out how to fix them.
The economic collapse way brought to us by positive thinking. Real Estate Value Will Never Fall. Oh, really? Was that ever a realistic thing to think? I Got This Great Mortgage Because I Deserve It And I Will Never Get Laid Off? Ha. I'm glad I rent. The Stock Market Is Real, And Cannot Fail. The stock market, my dear ones... is IMAGINARY. What is real can usually be perceived by the senses. The stock market assigns value to the concept of potential future value. Concepts are very fickle and don't have a family to feed, so I would not trust them.
I am over my head in credit card debt not because I am irresponsible, but because I really believed I would continue to make enough money to pay them off. Optimism. I was wrong, because I did not have all the information. I did not foresee two layoffs in two years (or 3 in 10 for that matter). Now I know better. The mists are beginning to clear for me, and I won't do it again, or at least not in the same way.
I haven't read the book yet, but I am especially looking forward to her analysis of The Secret. That particular kind of magical thinking is somewhat confusing because it sometimes appears to be working. It is in fact true that you are more likely to "manifest" something if you have a clear grasp of what it is. But that isn't any kind of secret, that's just plain old fashioned planning.
Tonight I'm going to see a movie. The one from the previous post, Teenage Dirtbag. Watching the trailer was a bit weird, because the settings are still so familiar, even though this was filmed many years after I went to high school everything looks almost exactly the same. It's playing at Central Cinema, which means beer, wine, and food while I watch. Well, beer OR wine, not both. I haven't been out to a movie since District 9. Which is really not all that long ago.
I'm a matchmaker. I introduced two friends a month or so ago, and next thing I know they are happily dating. I'm very glad for them, but I can't help feel a bit odd about it. Odd because I did not really consider "setting them up." I just sort of did it. And now if things don't work out I am awkwardly in the middle. Let's hope it works out.
I cooked dinner for my ex-husband last night. I like my ex-husband. We get on well, especially considering we divorced each other, but I am still quite glad we divorced each other. I made a yummy potato-leek-spinach soup.
Apartment Therapy time again. Starting next week I'm doing another 8-week apartment cleansing. Hoping to get rid of a lot of stuff. I've recently become even more willing to let go of things as I consider the possibility that I may need to downsize my living situation.
I am re-reorganizing my memoir. I'm also getting much better at actually writing it. It's a complete mess right now, but I feel like I'm getting it on track. Slowly but surely.
I met Dave Eggers. I worked serving fancy toasts at the 826 Seattle Where the Wild Things Are VIP reception on Wednesday. I have been a fan for many years, but I wasn't going to make a point of talking to him. I didn't have anything I wanted to say, in particular. But he thanked us at the end of the night and chatted for a few moments. Which distracted me from the fact that I had to pee and I ended up having a very uncomfortable walk home after drinking water and mint tea all evening. Otherwise, the evening was kind of boring. But then I usually think parties are boring.
I saw Margaret Atwood. I'm not sure what to think about her new novel. It includes hymns. I guess the problem I have with dystopian novels is that they take certain aspects of what could go wrong (or weird) and explore those things thoroughly (rather than resting on the strengths of plot and character). This novel centers around a cult-like "green" religion. Which maybe is supposed to be a positive thing? But what if there were actually smart people in the future (who aren't oppressed to the point of incapacitation)? I'm just saying... the idea that the idiots must win rubs me the wrong way.
Andrew Wyeth tomorrow. I have to see these paintings at SAM before they go away.
My stomach is off. Although listening to Rick Steves talk about Italian food on NPR is making me hungry. I've been having heartburn every day this week, which just makes everything a little bit unpleasant.
I am going to take a bath now. And other useless facts about my day.
Teenage Dirtbag was written and directed by someone who grew up in my hometown (Coeur d'Alene, ID), and it is set and filmed in and around my hometown and high school. Eerie! I'm going to see it this weekend at the Central Cinema.
I don't, or didn't, watch "Jon and Kate Plus 8" and I don't care for Nancy Grace one little bit.
Yet, because I am addicted to celebrity gossip pop culture, I am familiar with the lives, dramas and personalities of all kinds of people who I have no business knowing about.
I know Kate had a tummy tuck, got a weird hair do and later changed it. I know that Jon thinks he's a celebrity and is really just a dumb ass man in Ed Hardy t-shirts going through some pathetic midlife crisis in public. I know that Nancy Grace is obnoxious, overly judgmental and incessantly ranting at the guests on her show. I think I've seen her a few times on TV for all of about 90 seconds before I have to flip the channel.
And yet, when I see this clip of her grilling Jon Gosselin and his stuttering deer-in-the-headlights look, I can't help but like her just a little bit.
