the migraine that nearly stole Christmas (and did steal your promised story)

On Monday the 12th, I drank a little port after dinner. After the children went to bed, I worked out on my rowing machine but quit a little early because I had a pounding headache. The Sober Husband sniffed at me judgmentally. "I would expect you to have a headache if you were drinking port and then exercising. Just seems like the kind of thing that would give you a headache." We squabbled for a bit over the wisdom of consuming port before exercise and then went to bed.

Most of the night I lay awake, tormented by a truly hellish migraine. In the morning I was a wreck. Iris uber Alles also reported feeling ill and stayed home from school. In the afternoon I drove to get Lola, but otherwise I did nothing all day except swallow huge handfuls of ibuprofen.

Again in the night I hardly slept, my head hurt so much. In the morning there was no question of me driving the children to school-- obviously I wasn't fit to drive. I stayed in bed. Later in the day, using all my willpower, I did get myself up out of bed and drove a couple of miles to the home of an artist who had suggested painting my portrait. I had already had to cancel sitting for my portrait once, and I had the distinct feeling that if I cancelled again, the portrait wasn't going to happen. I figured that I could sit still with a headache just as well as I could lie in my bed with a headache. I got myself over there, swallowing ibuprofen all through the sitting, and then picked up the children. I told poor Lola that I didn't feel well enough to take her to the cafe we frequent, and she was a good sport.

Once again it was a hellish night. Just rolling over made my poor brain reverberate with agony. The next day the Sober Husband said repeatedly, "You know I can take you to the hospital whenever you say, right? Just say if you want me to take you to the hospital." We decided to try going to a doctor. The doctor I had previously seen at my practice group had left, so we went downtown to a different office to try a different doctor. Each step made my brain ricochet around in my skull, and I couldn't face eating or drinking coffee. Indeed I was pretty dehydrated by this point.

The doctor, whom I liked, made the point that once a migraine gets to this point, it's pretty hard to break it. It would have been easier if I'd come in the first day. Of course I never go to a doctor the first day I have a migraine, because I have no reason to believe that I am starting a multiple day-migraine (it's much more normal for me to have a single day headache). He prescribed me a tryptan, a drug which will for some patients end a migraine, and advised me to take it with benedryl and ibuprofen and try to spend as much time sleeping as possible for the next few days. This thoughtful doctor firmly addressed the Sober Husband and told him I wouldn't be capable of doing anything for the next few days.

At home the Sober Husband was a treasure. He forcibly rehydrated me by periodically bringing a glass of water with a long, bent straw. Putting the straw in my mouth, he would not relent until I'd taken a few swallows of water. The tryptan worked slightly; about an hour after I took it, I was able to sit up and check my email and desultorily talk. I even managed to eat much of a salad (which turned out to be the only meal I ate in three days). But soon the tryptan would fade, and it was back to lying in bed with a damp washcloth on my forehead, trying not to move. The pain grew worse, and I considered going to the hospital and begging for some fentanyl. The Sober Husband called the doctor I'd seen. I didn't feel well enough to go back to the doctor, who called in a prescription for a different tryptan for me to try. Over the weekend I tried both tryptans, as well as enough ibuprofen to sedate an ox.

Meanwhile I had missed several holiday parties I had very much wanted to attend, as well as the Christmas concert at Lola's school. "Give me lots and lots and lots of latkes," little Lola sang as she came home, and I moaned and adjusted my cold washcloth on my forehead.

The poor Sober Husband left his new job early again, and we went back to the doctor. This time he took some bold moves, proposing an eight-drug cocktail (some over-the-counter, most prescription). He assured me that he could see me again on Friday, the day before Christmas Eve, if need be, to try another mix. During the consultation, at some point this daring man of medicine's nerves quailed a bit, and he said, "We haven't done any workups." We both looked at the list of medications we were proposing I take and at the large syringe where he was mixing me up a shot. "I"m a little worried about your kidneys," he said. I assured him that I'd had a lot of bloodwork done the year before when I had surgery, and my kidneys and liver had been in topnotch form. He gave me the shot.

This bold new regime began to take effect. My headache faded to a lower but still bothersome level. I started moving around the house (whereas previously I had spent five days without coming downstairs except to be taken to the doctor). I resumed eating and drinking coffee (but not alcohol. I went two weeks without a drink). I fretted about loss of muscle tone. Here on the blog, readers wondered why the hell I offered them the choice of a topic if I weren't going to bother myself to write anything. I hired an unemployed friend to drive Iris to a party down the Peninsula (now that Iris goes to school in Hillsborough, she has social engagements all up and down the Peninsula).

The day before Christmas Eve, I still didn't have the energy to go to the party in the East Bay I'd planned to attend. But on Christmas Eve itself, I was able to get up, walk into the kitchen, and make our traditional Christmas Eve meal. Let us all praise brave men of medicine, who fear not the prescription of drugs but deliver us from our twelve day migraine. Merry Christmas to all of you, darlings, with love from the newly recovered DH

yer choice

Darlings, I know I've been neglecting you, and I am deeply apologetic. It's been a weird year for me, with dramatic ups and downs, and I haven't always been up for my customary blend of cat and child anecdotes sprinkled with TMI and swear words. I do have stories, plenty of them, but I've not been writing them.

For the patient readers, who come back even when yer old DH is not entertaining, I'd like to offer amends. Pick a topic and I'll write it at your command. Serving suggestions:

-my ex-cat, Bob Marley got lost this fall, and everyone blamed me, even though he's had a new owner now for half his friggin' lifespan;

- I went out carousing with hundreds of people dressed as Santa and captured a pair of strikingly handsome European academics;

- the head of Lola's school strongly suggested I stop blogging;

- Iris uber Alles is now an officially gifted child and the impact this has on the rest of us;

-you tell me.


xxoo, yer neglectful old DH

where have all the children (and leftovers) gone?

I'm having Thanksgiving withdrawal. The leftovers have pretty much all been eaten; there's one slice of pie left and some homemade cranberry sauce, but nothing else. I'm craving lantulaatikko, the Scandinavian rutabaga Christmas dish, and drunken beans (the way we do it, the green beans are cooked in Ketel One with lots of salt and pepper and an onion). These are things we eat only on Thanksgiving and Christmas, but I want them NOW. Would it destroy their specialness if I made them for dinner tonight?

The children are back at their respective schools. Lola was shocked last night to hear of her imminent return to school; evidently she imagined she was off until Christmas. It's lonely with only my weird little African grey parrot, who mixed up her normal cawing like crows, meowing like cats, and constant shouting of "Step up!" (her one tried-and-true English phrase) with a perfectly-enunciated "Whatever!" this morning. Her "whatever!" was delightfully dismissive, obviously modeled after cynical tween Iris uber Alles, and I wished Iris and Lola had been here to hear it.

This fall I've been on a health kick, eating lightly and exercising heavily. The heavy exercise fell by the wayside the week before Thanksgiving, which was the second week I had the flu. The first week of the flu, I insisted on working out every single time I felt halfway decent, but I noticed that the next day I'd be feverish and miserable again. The second week, I decided to try rest. It's not clear whether either of those strategies helped, keeping fit or resting, but eventually the flu faded away, leaving me free to return to my rigorous exercise schedule, but my healthy eating regime was felled by the Thanksgiving fabulosity and a round of parties.

So how healthy was my Thanksgiving?

Slices of pie eaten: only 2, but each with lots of fresh whipped cream

Exercise over Thanksgiving weekend: strong, hard workouts on 3 days; milder exercise one other day (we took the children on a hike up Mt. Davidson. Iris complained strenuously all the way. "This is unfair!" she shouted, while I thought to myself, "What is unfair is that I am trying to drag my hangover up this steep hill and I have to listen to yer friggin' whining all the way"). One day of absolutely no exercise (Thanksgiving itself).

Cocktail parties attended: two

Hangovers: two (but one was so mild as to be barely noticeable)

Black Friday shopping done: NONE! YES! I hate crowds and crazed commercialism!

Number of pomegranate margaritas drunk on Thanksgiving Day itself: unclear, but definitely more than my share of the pitcher.

Days of overeating: two, but it could have been a lot worse.

I'm afraid to weigh myself. I lost thirty pounds this fall, and it's going to devastate me if much of it sneaked back on. Sigh. It's good for my healthy regime to have Thanksgiving over, but there's no denying that it was delightful and no one really wanted it to end. Even the children got along for the most part, except for one terrible evening when a convenience store owner gave Lola a free Toblerone because she is so damn cute. Sibling rivalry caused horrible, heartfelt tears to flow as some children never get Toblerones from strangers due to cuteness, and the tears weren't even eased by the kindness of the cute child generously turning over a full half of the Toblerone to the unchocolated sibling.

Onward, towards Christmas.

our Thanksgiving

This was the best Thanksgiving meal I've ever cooked. It wasn't the most elaborate. That will probably always be the year I made curried risotto in little pumpkins. That required using a power drill to hack open the stubborn little pumpkins (thus I learned that jack-o'lantern pumpkins are very different from pumpkins sold for eating), which we cleaned and rubbed with butter and garlic and then baked in stages, as we couldn't fit many in our oven at once. That same Thanksgiving I made celebrity chef Hubert Keller's vegetarian faux caviar, served in eggshells, which meant, before even starting to make the faux caviar, painstakingly blowing out and cleaning eggs. I served those caviar eggs in an egg carton I'd spray-painted chrome. There were also multiple desserts and side dishes, but primarily what I remember is those damn pumpkins.

So why was this one the best? Because it was a wonderful festive meal, but it was effortless to make. Of course, my darling Aga was a big part of it: I used all three ovens. The Aga was the key to the success of the one fussy thing I made, a mustard-onion monkey bread which tends to burn on the top before the bottom is done even if you put tinfoil over the top. Now that I have a fancy European range, I can cook monkey bread in an oven heated only from below, and the result is perfection.

Our menu:

Lantulaatikko (rutabaga pudding)
Tofurky (haters gotta hate, but we love it) with roasted vegetables
Garlic mashed potatoes
Green beans cooked in Ketel One
Monkey bread
Homemade cranberry sauce

Pomegranate margaritas and Martinelli sparkling cider

Cranberry-raisin pie with fresh whipped cream

My only regret? I went to the trouble last year of saving my Tofurky feast box all damn year long and taking it to Burning Man and having it photographed by the Man in all his neon-lit glory. Why did I do that? Because the Tofurky box always has pictures of people who took the box on their vacation, and those pictures are always lame. I thought a Burning Man photo would be sure to make it on the box. AND MY FRIENDS WHO TOOK THE PICTURE NEVER SENT IT TO ME. I love all my Burning Man friends with a passion, adore them, but you cannot rely upon them to send you yer photo of the Tofurky box in front of the Man. And thus we had a bitter moment, the children and I, looking at the dull and annoying pictures of other people taking their Tofurky boxes on their vacations when it should have displayed OUR tofurky box which went to Burning Man. I bitterly drank my pomegranate margarita and turned back to tend the monkey bread as the children ridiculed the pictures which did get on the box.

well, we got that over

I hate my birthday, and this year I had a new, proactive approach to my annual funk: hold a cocktail party which would force me to spend days preparing, rather than lying around sobbing in the throes of a deep depression. Out of my birthday phobia, I didn't tell anyone I invited it was my birthday.

This actually worked, for the most part. I slaved over my beloved Aga and made a huge mountain of food, expecting to have days of leftovers, but a swarm of friends and neighbors descended upon us and ate everything, except for the last of the homemade caramelized onion dip and homemade salsa, only because both the potato chips and tortilla chips ran out. The children joined in very kindly, calling themselves "Chubby's Catering Service" and making two kinds of cookies. I objected to the name, saying everyone would assume that it was a slam on my weight, but the children asserted that it referred only to the generous size of their cookies and gratuitously flattered me with compliments to my size and shape.

The poor Sober Husband, still recovering from the debacle of giving me soup bowls for our anniversary, gave me an AC/DC cd (win!), necklace shaped like a caffeine molecule (also a win! but I still want the LSD molecule necklace), and ... a pair of slippers which turned out to be lined with real fur. From real dead lambs. This was a difficult moment, as I truly did not want to return to the awkwardness of us fighting over a well-intentioned gift. I tried to make nice facial expressions while the poor mortified Sober Husband swept the slippers away and vowed to return them.

At our cocktail party, I had so much fun I did that horribly obnoxious thing I haven't done since I was in college, making people prod my gym-toned muscles. "Look! Feel my quads!" I commanded. "What is a 'quad'?" asked an old Burning Man friend.

Finally the birthday was over. Next year I may need to deploy this same strategy again.

annual funk

I really, really hate my birthday. It triggers an annual depression, stemming from a lot of things in my early life.

This year I've been largely successful at minimizing the depression by distracting myself as much as possible, but here the day is, and all I want to do is curl up in a dark corner and cry. Can't wait until the day is over.

the anniversary debacle

This week the Sober Husband and I reached another milestone, our 13th wedding anniversary. I like the number 13 and it felt auspicious. Additionally, we've been getting along like gangbusters lately. My solo trip to Burning Man really sparked up our already-lively marriage, and overall the fall has been well-nigh unbearable for nearby onlookers, with the two of us likely to break out in a display of public affection at any moment. So you would expect this anniversary to have been pretty damn delightful.

The first problem came when I took Iris for a flu shot at the flu clinic so conveniently held at her school. I needed to drive down the peninsula and pick her up early that same day to take her to the upscale girl-boy dance classes she wanted to take and now bitches bitterly about, so nipping in for a flu shot was a no-brainer since I'd be on campus already. By bedtime, I was feverish, with an aching head and aching joints. By the next morning, I was miserably ill. A week later, I'm still feverish and achy and miserable.

The Sober Husband is handsome, brilliant, funny, brave, resourceful, industrious, and generous. However, he completely sucks as a caretaker for a grown-up (or at least for me). If I'm sick, he'll dote on the children, making them dinner every night (their choice: Ramen or spaghetti with Ragu sauce), but it does not occur to him that I might want a meal as well. Similarly it does not occur to him to buy anything for me to eat, although he will nip out to the store to get supplies for chocolate milk, Ramen, and spaghetti for the children. While I've had this miserable flu, I've survived off popcorn and lost five pounds.

As one can imagine, being hungry and tired of eating popcorn makes a sick person crabby. By the time our anniversary rolled around, I was in a foul mood. Meanwhile the Sober Husband had a crisis: he keeps a folder of gift ideas for me, and he left it on Caltrain. So, at the very last minute, without any ideas (and without asking me for any), he picked up some beige soup bowls at Pottery Barn as my anniversary present. Meanwhile I'd gotten him something way back in September, which I'd kept hidden.

The bowls irked me. They seemed to be sending me a message: "get in the kitchen and make me some soup." That wasn't a stretch, because I'd made a big pot of a very fussy, pain-in-the-ass-to-make soup a couple of times recently, and the Sober Husband wasn't shy about complaining that there hadn't been enough of it. The first batch I made for a friend who was conducting a deathbed vigil for a dying parent, and I kept out just a bowl's worth for my husband. He complained plentifully about not getting enough of this magical soup, and my response was, "You want me to go down there and take it back from the death vigil house? No way!" The second batch I made after hearing plenty of complaining that there hadn't been enough of the first batch. When I looked at the gift bowls, they seemed to be screaming, "Get outta yer sickbed and start roasting those four different kinds of peppers", and they annoyed me.

My reaction, which I tried to mute, pissed even me off. It led me into a spiral of shame and guilt. "What kind of a horrible person can't accept a gift gracefully?" I pondered. "God, I suck." I apologized to the Sober Husband for not being a more gracious recipient, but he was still upset that I hadn't liked his gift.

He ran out and got me a small bouquet of flowers as an afterthought, to compensate for those bowls, but the drama wasn't over. We scheduled a date night to celebrate, a couple's massage at the Nob Hill Spa, and I cancelled. I was running a fever, and I felt really horrible. On top of feeling awful, I felt it was inappropriate to expose a massage therapist to my germs. The Sober Husband was disappointed and leaned on me to go anyway, which made me feel guilty. We had to pay even though we didn't go due to the Nob Hill Spa's strict cancellation policy. This waste of money made me feel extra terrible.

Then, on top of that, a new level of hell broke out: I asked the Sober Husband if he had another gift for me, because I wanted to know whether to give him the second gift I had for him or not. He got quite angry, because of course he didn't have a damn thing and was still secretly pissed I hadn't liked the bowls. At this point, he said I'd done "emotional violence" to him over the bowls (I really tried to accept them nicely, and I apologized for being unenthusiastic). To make a point to me, he left work early, returned the bowls, and gave me a $600 handcrafted necklace I'd admired before, even though I'd said on the phone, "Don't spend that much. We can't afford it right now."

Of course I can't keep the $600 necklace; it's not in our budget this month (especially since we're paying for those expensive massages we didn't get), and I would never enjoy wearing it. It would forever remind me of my selfishness, inability to accept those stupid soup bowls, and profligacy. And, as Lola and Iris said, "It looks a lot like that other necklace you have." It's not that different from other pieces I already own. So it's turned into a pesky, unpleasant errand, returning the duplicative necklace.

Meanwhile the Sober Husband LOVED one of the presents I gave him (although he rejected the other one as "too scary"). "It's perfect!" he exclaimed, and he wasn't exaggerating. I knew months ago what to get him. "But you ended up without a gift," he said, "and your birthday is coming up. I can't get you a gift for your birthday. I can't." My displeasure with the damn bowls (which I explained weren't a present for me, they were a present for the people who'd be using them to eat soup they wanted me to make them) has given him a present-giving block.

It's a wonder two people, who are still very much in love after thirteen years of marriage, two children, and several mortgages can have such a horrible anniversary. Given that my birthday is traditionally a day of great unhappiness and depression, I can hardly wait for it, especially now I know that my husband plans on getting nothing for me.

you may find this hard to believe

I quit playing Warcraft, and I've been exercising like a fiend.

No, really. Not joking. I may even change the ancient description at the top of this blog, where it says I don't get enough exercise.

What happened? First, my raid team, which had seemed like a solid group of mature players with good sense of humor, fell apart in a sudden onset of drama. Without a raid team, there didn't seem much point in grinding away on my main character, making money and running the daily dungeons. After all, I'd been playing Warcraft for something like four years, usually for several hours a day. At some point, it's time to take a break.

Sadly I miss it. I've come close to logging back in many times. And I don't have a replacement hobby or game. So what have I been doing to fill my time? Working out and talking to my husband, who says, "You're much more interactive as a wife now that you don't play Warcraft."

Iris, nosily reading over my shoulder as I write, says "Put in there that EVERYTHING HAS CHANGED. Because I have a new school, and I'm learning the trombone." She's also learning Japanese now and has taken a very superior attitude to her little sister, once shaming her by saying, "You don't even know how to label the axes on a linear graph! You can't graph!"

Meanwhile the Sober Husband and little Lola continue the same as ever, except that Lola's school has adopted a new practice of "mindfulness." The children must meditate and write in a "mindfulness journal", drawing pictures of themselves "being mindful", and Iris views it all with suspicion. "She's being taken into a cult!" Lola hates mindfulness, hates it with a passion, but Iris still worries.

the guilt trip

Tonight, barring acts of God, the Sober Husband and I will leave the children at a friend's house and drop by a party for a while. This troubled the children, even though they love the friend in question.

"I just want to get out of the house sometimes," I said. Turning to the Sober Husband, I said, "You spend all day in Mountain View. So when you come home, you like to stay home, because you're not there as much."

The Sober Husband made a face. "I think you are romanticizing my day." Putting on a fake voice, he ridiculed me extensively: "Oh, look, here I am in glamorous Mountain View! It's a magical land, called Mountain View!"

"What I mean is you get out of the house!"

Lola pointed out, "You can get out of the house. Just take us!" The children agreed that this was the optimal way for me to proceed, to never go anywhere without them.

Iris took it further: "By wanting to go out without us, YOU ARE REJECTING US. You are saying you don't enjoy our company!" Building up a head of steam, she continued in that vein for some time.

"We are rejects!" mourned little Lola.

"God, what a guilt trip!" I said. "I have been a stay-at-home parent for OVER TWELVE YEARS, and I have spent more time with you little freaks than any other child has had with its parent!"

Lola took the point. "I apologize for any trips, guilts, tripping guilts, or guilting trips I have given you at any time."

We drove home with relative parent-child peace, until conflict broke out over a certain child reaching across the center of the backseat into the other child's territory. "And you wonder why I want to go out without you!" I said sharply.

oh! wad some power the giftie gie us to see oursel's as ithers see us

I went out for drinks the other night with Michele, my longest-term friend in San Francisco. We've known each other since the mid-eighties, when we were both hot young punkish things. As we made our way through a number of drinks down at the Rite Spot, the poet Burns' wish to learn how others perceive us came true for me, with the added bonus of seeing how others perceive my chosen mate, the Sober Husband.

Part I. Michele and I were holding forth in fine fettle, and a man drinking near us remarked to me, with great emphasis, "I like you. You say what people think but are too polite to say."

I was rather nonplussed at that. I always think of myself as polite. But Michele roared. "That's Carole! She's always so brash!"

Part II. Whenever I get intoxicated and get into a long, drawn-out conversation with a hitherto-unknown man, I always talk about the Sober Husband a lot. It's a reflex. It's largely not needed (it's not as if people hit upon me nowadays with the frequency they did a decade ago), but it's a habit I can't get out of.

Somehow this reflex of mine led to Michele describing the Sober Husband to our new found drinking companion. "He's very generous, makes a lot of money, is socially awkward, and has good hair," she said.

"Good hair?" asked our new friend. "French hair or Italian hair?"

"Jewish hair!"

"But in a Jewfro?" Our friend made a face of disgust.

"No, he cuts it really short."

I was silent during this lively exchange about my life companion's hair, due to a bit of shock over "socially awkward." Is that really one of the first things that comes to mind when one thinks about my husband? I usually start with "tall" or "brilliant."

I couldn't deny that there was some truth to it, though. The Sober Husband himself is quick to admit that he often misses the social nuances in any setting. Sometimes that's handy, as often he completely doesn't notice that someone is hitting on him. For example, at a recent dinner party, a single mother was coming onto him strong, having dismissed me entirely as a featherweight loser based upon my stay-at-home-mother status. I however came roaring back, arguing her into submission in a strong debate about the subject she devotes her life and career to, ending with her trying to save face, murmuring "I should talk to you about this more some other time" while the Sober Husband himself, the subject of this little cerebral pissing match, wandered off obliviously into another room. In the car on the way home I explained the nuances to him: "It was like when guys are trying to see who has the biggest dick, but it was women trying to see who has the biggest brain. I have the biggest brain! I have the biggest brain!"

But yet sometimes the man has James Bond-like savoir faire. I will never forget the time when we stumbled into a very nice restaurant on a cold, rainy night, to be confronted with other cold, wet, hungry couples waiting crankily by the maitre d's station. The Sober Husband, with amazing presence, made his way to the maitre d and understatedly said, "My wife and I would like a table," shaking the maitre d's hand in a manly way. To my surprise, within two minutes the maitre d said, "I've found your reservation" and whisked us off to a very good table, leaving behind all the cold, wet people who'd been there for God knows how long. Laughing, my loved one admitted that he'd secretly passed a folded up twenty to the maitre d' when they shook hands.

I've seen that trick play out on other occasions, the suave passing of the hidden twenty, and it never fails to achieve its goal. "Did they teach that to you, growing up in Chicago?" I've asked. It always leaves me weak at the knees.

And then again he has flashes of brilliance in the field of romance. There was the time he wanted to get me a $1,000 gift certificate at my favorite clothing store, but he instead got it for $1,072.50 to account for sales tax. (Everyone who worked at that store wanted to see who the femme fatale was who had inspired a man to get the single biggest gift certificate ever known there, and every one of them looked at me with disbelief when she found out who it was. I suppose they were expecting Angelina Jolie). And again there was the recent time when I was angry and sulking in the shower, and he climbed into the shower, fully dressed, to embrace me. No other suitor has ever equalled these moments of romantic excellence.

So is the man "socially awkward"? I suppose so, but with areas of surprising genius. And am I rude? Perhaps so, perhaps so.

the eternal mystery surrounding my friend N.

Right before I went to Burning Man with my friend N., the Sober Husband was puzzling over childcare options for my absence. In general I was not helping him figure things out. Besides the fact that I was pretty damn busy with my last-minute Burning Man preparations, my philosophy was that I have covered 99.9% of the childcare to date, and so he's due. Also, I bore a grudge for a couple of years after I had to find childcare for my own hospitalizations and surgeries when I was seriously, severely, on-the-brink-of-death ill. Finally, I felt that he'd appreciate my regular, everyday presence more if he had to scramble to make up for it. However, I did throw him a bone. I suggested that he ask my friend N. if her new au pair would be available while the two of us were off at Burning Man.

The Sober Husband went off to telephone N. I noticed he was speaking loudly and repeating himself frequently. Eventually he came into the room and reported with disgust, "She isn't going to remember a word of that tomorrow. She was high."

When we said our fond farewells the morning I was leaving, the Sober Husband carefully instructed me, "Don't let N. drive if she is high." He looked me sternly in the eye to emphasize this. "If she's smoking, don't let her drive!"

During our long drive to the desert, N. mentioned, "[Sober Husband] was really strange on the phone the other night. He kept repeating himself."

I burst out laughing. "He said you were 'high as a kite'!"

N. was chagrined. "I was sober!"

It turns out this is a recurrent problem for N. The other day we had lunch together, and N. recounted more incidents of people, like the Sober Husband, mistakenly assuming she was high. "Make sure [Sober Husband] doesn't think I'm always high," she instructed me. "I don't know why everyone thinks I"m such a stoner," she mourned. "Is it because I'm so mellow?"

having a very hard time

I took in a litter of very small foster kittens, just barely three weeks old, and two of them have died. I sat up from two a.m. 'til six a.m. last night, being with the one named "Yertle" as she passed away. I gave her our last-chance-Lazarus kitten treatment, which consists of subcutaneous fluids, a hotpad, and some Karo syrup on her gums (and which really does work at times to pull a little kitten back from the brink of death), but I knew there really was no hope. I stayed by her side until it was all over, in case having me there was comforting. She had loved me, after all.

Lately it seems I can't get along with anyone and I can't keep my kittens alive. I'm having a very hard time focusing on the positive side in life.

I did drag the rest of the family down to the Occupy San Francisco march, as part of the 99% "National Day of Action", but the children, as always, wore their favorite and completely inappropriate footwear (Oprah flipflops for one and tiny, battered shoes long outgrown and replaced but repeatedly fished out of the trash for the other child), leading to multiple complaints of foot pain. The Sober Husband and I squabbled tiresomely about what the goals of the Occupy Wall Street movement are and whether anything was likely to be accomplished, and life seemed so dreary, full of hurting feet and little arguments.

a rough day, a lousy date

For a variety of reasons, I'm as crabby as all get out today. Last night the Sober Husband and I had one of our semi-occasional date nights. I'd actually planned our favorite date evening-- dinner and a play at one of our favorite small local theatres -- so spirits were running high. However, during the play the Sober Husband got a text message from our babysitter saying that a bug got into the house and that Lola was in hysterics. A later text message said that quite a few bugs were coming into the house, crawling under the door jamb from the backyard.

Up until now this had been a lovely date. The day itself had been dreadful for me (I was stuck at home with Iris, who was running a fever and crabby), and I needed an outing. We'd been revisiting an old plan, to ditch the poor children with some chump and fly off together to Barcelona for a much-needed romantic vacation. We even have enough frequent flier miles for one free ticket to Europe. We'd had a lovely dinner at a place with a lot of romantic significance from our earliest dating days, before the play. But after the text, the Sober Husband immediately became cold, withdrawn, preoccupied, and judgmental. While he was texting during intermission, I bought myself a beer, and he then accused me of drinking too much. "Two and a half beers over four hours?" I said incredulously. "That's too much?" He wanted to get back home to Lola, and I was irked. "It's just a bug. I want to see the end of the play."

Noticing our conflict, a snoopy usher said, in a failure at sotto voce, "She sure is high-strung." I dumped the undrunk beer into the recycling container and stalked off. "Leave me alone!" I hissed at the Sober Husband. "I guess we aren't going to Barcelona, since we can't even get through a three-act Edward Albee play."

At home, I tried to just go to sleep and, as Shakespeare so wisely noted, let sleep knit up the ravell'd sleeve of care, but then the independently wealthy fellow who bought that horrible modern house on our block started up his giant Tesla coil. Evidently the man has hired some Burning Man type to build him a massive Tesla coil, and, being a man of independent means who can sleep whenever he wants, he only enjoys playing with it very late at night, in front of his house (and I happen to know he has a small backyard he could use). On a prior occasion I sent the Sober Husband out to find out the cause of the hellacious racket, only to get the report, "That guy has a giant Tesla coil. It's really cool. We talked about Tesla coils. I told him how I used to build them in college." Last night around midnight I freaked and ran out, in my sushi print pajamas and bare feet, and told my very rich neighbor that "MY ALARM IS GOING OFF IN SIX HOURS" and "DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW MUCH NOISE YOU ARE MAKING??" He, defensively, said, "[Sober Husband] said it was cool] and "[Sober Husband] didn't say it was too noisy." I wanted to say, "FUCK [SOBER HUSBAND]", but refrained. Instead, in the delicate tones which years of law school and litigation taught me, I informed my rich neighbor that it was far too late to be making such a hellish racket when the rest of us have early-morning obligations, and then I stalked off with as much dignity as possible for a middle-aged, barefoot woman wearing flannel pajamas with little pictures of sushi all over them.

And now today, for no reason, events are conspiring to remind me nonstop of my first marriage. At my gym, "Love Will Tear Us Apart" by the Swans was playing, the song which, stupidly enough, my ex said was "our song." Then in the car the Bryan Ferry song played which my ex said was the only thing which could comfort him the first time we broke up. These are both fairly obscure old songs which a person could spend a decade without running across, so the coincidence seemed odd. Then yet another old song with particular sentimental significance from that failed marriage came on the radio. I changed the channel with vehemence, while my own current Tesla-coil loving spouse sat, aloof and unnoticing in the passenger's seat.

urban life and how it is enhanced by a certain semi-suicidal outlook

Episode I: Not too long ago the Sober Husband, the children and I were walking home from the Castro, when we passed some homeless people on the benches at Harvey Milk plaza. That's a completely normal experience, but what happened next wasn't. One of the street people -- a very unclean and unhappy looking man in his twenties -- got up off the bench and came up to me, pleading. "I really need a hug," he said, fixing me with a really crazed look and ignoring the Sober Husband at my side. I hesitated briefly, and the thought that this guy was going to stab me entered my mind. Ignoring that thought, I opened my arms and let the homeless person hug me. He clung to me gratefully, tearing up and burying his filthy head in my shoulder. After what felt like a very long time I disentangled myself from him. The man said sincerely, 'Thank you! I needed that so much!" and kept calling out his gratitude as we walked away.

"I thought that guy was going to stab you," said the Sober Husband as we walked out of earshot.

"I kinda thought that, too," I said, "but I decided to give him a a chance. After all, I was probably the only maternal figure available to him."

"You're very brave," said the Sober Husband approvingly.

Episode II: Recently I was walking home from working out at the gym, walking up a hilly, quiet, dark residential street. A cab began to follow me, driving slowly up ahead of me, waiting until I got close again, and then jumping ahead a bit. This went on. Obviously the cab wasn't looking for my business, or it would have pulled up next to me and asked if I wanted a cab. It was equally obvious that I was the object of its attention, because there were no other pedestrians on the street. And obviously it wasn't just trolling for business, because just a block over lay a street chock full of restaurants, bars, and cafes which would be full of cab-craving drunks. Clearly something creepy was going on. The prior weekend I'd taken several cabs, and I thought back to that time. I didn't think I'd undertipped or insulted the cabbies or left anything behind (indeed I'd bonded with a Filipino cabby, professing my deep and unswerving love of the Philippines).

During one of the cab's odd leapfrogs of me, a car honked irritably as the cab suddenly stopped to wait for me, without putting on its blinkers. I assessed the situation. I was carrying a largeish, heavy bag, which contained, among other things, a sturdy metal drinking bottle full of water and a large hardback book. I decided that if I swung that bag as hard as I could at either the cab or its driver, the odds were pretty good I could break a side window or a nose, depending. I continued up the hill, holding my bag in a ready position. At the crest of the 17th Street hill, at the big complicated and well-lit intersection, the cab was lying again in wait for me, but as I caught up, heavy bag at the ready, suddenly the cab changed its mind and cut across three lanes of traffic illegally, racing in the opposite direction from me and causing many, many cars to honk crazily in protest. "Huh," I thought. "Changed his mind." I walked down the hill without seeing the cab again.

At home, the Sober Husband was alarmed by this story. "Did you get the cab's number? Let's call the cab company." I hadn't bothered to pay attention to the cab's license plate number; I'd only prepared myself mentally for potential pedestrian-cab violence. The Sober Husband was a little nonplussed at my outlook. I confided, "Urban life is actually easier when you're still just a little bit suicidal."

just like in the movies

I was upset with the Sober Husband over something he'd said, something rather amazing in its oblivious insensitivity, and I was sulking in the shower. The Sober Husband came in to talk to me around the shower curtain but then realized how upset I was. "I'm coming in," he said, but I refused. "There's not much hot water left, anyhow," I said. "It'll run out by the time you're ready to get in."

He paid no attention to that and, after setting down his iPhone on the sink, climbed into the shower fully dressed and put his arms around me. Of course I couldn't stay upset as he got drenched in his button-down shirt and Levi's.

"It's like something from a rom-com," I said as the shower poured over us and we kissed.

who is the grown-up?

Twelve year-old Iris peered superciliously over my shoulder as I was downloading "Pumped Up Kicks" by Foster the People. "That's a song about shootings at a mall," said Iris judgmentally.

"Actually, it's about school shootings, and I still like it," I said crankily.

Iris sneered.

"I like the song, Iris," I protested, but her disgust was unmoving.

International Day of the Lola

Unbelievable as it may sound, Lola turns nine today. As the Sober Husband said mournfully, "She's halfway to eighteen."

All praise the Queen of the Passive-Aggressives (as beloved commenter Silliyak once dubbed her)!

security husbands and impulse ink

I'm just back again, from another solo trip. Even though only a few weeks had gone by since I'd just abandoned my poor husband and children to run away to Burning Man, my first true solo vacation since meeting the Sober Husband, I once again callously left the poor things alone to fly up to Seattle (neglecting the poor old readers as well). This trip was poorly timed, given that poor Lola hadn't even recovered from her mother's Burning Man absence, but I felt obligated to make it. My mother (traveling from Texas), beloved aunt (traveling from Maine), and a friend from high school (flying up from LA) were all going to be in the Seattle area at the same time.

This trip was harder than Burning Man, paradoxically. I found myself missing the temperate influence of the Sober Husband, who truly does keep me on an even keel. I know it seems to so many people that the two of us are a pair of misfits, completely ill-suited to each other and constantly squabbling, but he truly is my security husband. There's a small, odd thing we do, where I put my hand on his bare stomach under his shirt, which calms us both down completely, even if we're so angry either of us could happily sever the other's carotid artery with our own teeth. We've been together now for about fifteen years, squabbling and stomach-touching and rolling our eyes at each other all the way, and for a mouthy independent feminist, I have certainly become pretty damn dependent upon him.

On the bright side, a trip away from my security blanket of a husband gave me a great opportunity to get an impulse tattoo. The man hates tattoos in general and mine in particular, but I really wanted one to cover up some scars. I browsed the art of an adorable young woman in a trendy tattoo shop in the U-district, but it was my mother who got a recommendation for a great old-school tattoo artist from someone in the International District. Luckily this fabulous artist had an open slot on a weekday, and soon I was under the needle.

I learned something which should have been blindingly obvious: I have a much higher pain threshold if I'm being tattooed by a dangerously attractive man, especially one who whispers in my ear while he's working that he's going to tear up the flash art for my tattoo so no one else can ever get that same tattoo again. Usually two-three hours under the needle is more than enough for me, but I spent nearly six hours, getting the new tattoo and also two old ones touched up, and I could have easily done more. "You thought I couldn't get this all done," I smugly bragged, and my artist sweetly said, "Sometimes you're surprised that a soldier walks in the door."

Back home again, the Sober Husband was a good sport about the extra art. "I can tell it makes you happy," he said gallantly. That was a far cry from his reaction several years ago when I got a piece on my right arm, when he was spitting mad. Absence must make the tattoo-hating heart grow fonder.

quote du jour

Eight year-old Lola says, "I feel like a person in a Guatemala prison right now... but less unhappy."

the slow, sad re-acclimation

I'm not transitioning into Real Life easily after my sojourn at Burning Man. It's a common problem amongst Burners, a real cliche, but that doesn't make it easier for me.

And could you blame me? Here's a little snapshot of my vacation at Burning Man: I'm sitting in my shade shelter with my friend N., who accompanied me to Burning Man, as well as some new friends we made out on the playa. One of our new friends is massaging my poor, dust-tortured feet with lotion. We're drinking chilled cava. Someone actually asks me to explain the differences between cava, sparkling wine, and champagne (virtually never does anyone want to hear me prattle on about this sort of academic alcohol knowledge). Two good-looking men get into a debate over which one of them should get to fix my bike. One wins by informing the other firmly, "I will fix her bike. You rub her feet." My friend N. laughs and says, "Is there anything else you need, Mistress?" A new acquaintance of ours, a family physician from the Deep South who is at Burning Man for the first time, is speechless and stares, jaw visibly dropping open, as my friends trade places and one goes off to fix my bike while the other spends about forty-five minutes thoroughly massaging my feet. I just take another sip of my cava and lean back more deeply in my chair.

And here's a little snapshot of me back at home: I loaned the Sober Husband my car for the day, so he could attend an important, transit-unfriendly meeting after work, and I'm trying to get between little Lola's school and the pick-up point for the bus from Iris's new school by mass transit. The bus I was counting on vanished from the schedule (I later learned this was due to another one of those horrible Anonymous protests downtown). I call the Sober Husband on my cellphone and vent. "I can't get Iris on time! Muni's fucking me over, and there are no cabs anywhere!" If I don't get there in time, Iris will be driven back down the peninsula to her fancy new school, and I will be assessed a fancy new fee.

A poor, beleaguered middle-aged person can't help but pine for the dusty playa.