health, so damn elusive

I've been felled by an annoying bug, which has left me with fevers, pounding headaches, aching joints, and a general inability to go to the gym or do anything much.  You'd think a person who devoted so much of her existence to healthy living would be actually healthy, but noooo.

Luckily I was able to reschedule dinner with one of this blog's loyal readers who came to San Francisco and rally a bit.  Here's what happens when someone who has actually written comments on this blog over the years comes to town:  they are shown the Aga and must stand there while I explain what features I actually know how to use.  Various animals make hellish rackets and wander about.  The Sober Husband has to be nagged to get drinks for people, and as the evening wears on, the reader/commenter starts serving the drinks.  After enough drinks, the Drunken Housewife starts unsolicitedly talking about her sex life.  Good times, good times!  At least you can count on getting plenty to eat if you come over here.

healthy living

For the past eight months, I've been exercising like a fiend. After I gave up the World of Warcraft, I took up frequenting the gym, lifting weights and pushing myself to new extremes on the exercise machines. You'd think by now I'd be a sleek greyhound of a woman, and indeed I have some fairly impressive gym-toned muscles, nestled in amongst the fat, but I'm getting out of breath often. A person who does a full hour of cardio, leaving her literally dripping sweat, nearly every day of the week should be able to climb a flight of stairs without getting winded.

 I have always had a funky heart, and I haven't had a cardiological workout since the 90's. Although my cholesterol, blood pressure, triglycerides and other sundry measures of health have always been fabulous, I've always had an arrhythmia. On top of that, I had a life-threatening infection of the heart in college, myocarditis, which caused me to lose both a fabulous job and a somewhat less fabulous boyfriend, who thought I was being a hypochondriac and took off on an extended road trip, and then felt too freaked out to try to make up for it when he realized I wasn't faking after his return (sidenote: he looked me up a year or two later, interested in trying again, but by then I was with Husband 1.0, the Scotch-Drinking Husband, so I had the last laugh in theory).

 So the question arises: could it possibly take longer than eight months of strict and strenuous exercise to make up for a couple years of Warcrafting sloth? Or is my heart acting up again, and if so, should I be exercising this much without an EMT standing by? Who knows? I went for an EKG yesterday and some bloodwork, for which I had to fast and drive Lola to school in rush hour traffic WITHOUT HAVING HAD A SINGLE CUP OF COFFEE.

 I've had a lot of EKGs in my life, so many I couldn't even estimate them (I had one once a week during my myocarditis troubles), but it's been a very long time, and it wasn't the same. First of all, the technology for attaching electrodes has advanced, and it was a lot less gooey than I remembered. Next, I certainly didn't have the tech need to ask me politely, "Could you please lift your left breast?" back in the old days. Sadly both gravity and breastfeeding have wreaked some damage, and what was once one of our nation's premiere racks is decidedly less perky and awe-inspiring.

 Just going for the EKG and bloodwork made me feel better, as it felt like a concrete first step towards figuring out the state of cardiological affairs.  I finished up the day with a good half an hour of hard, sweaty exercise and not a single drop of alcohol. "You're doing your best," I reflected as I showered. "Fresh vegetables, fresh fruit, exercise... who could do more? Just put on a push-up bra and wait for the test results."

the future! the fabulous future!

So the present is a bit hard for me, and I'm self-medicating in the finest ways I know: endorphins and gin. Six days a week I've been going through a grueling workout at my gym, lifting weights and doing lots of cardio, and it has a huge impact on those around me. "Have you been to the gym yet?" inquires the Sober Husband over the phone. "I think you should go to the gym." Evidently I'm much more pleasant and relaxed on my gym days, and I have to admit, endorphins make a person feel perkier. [It's time to rewrite the description of this blog, since for the past eight months, I've been working out like a fiend. I get enough exercise for 2-3 people].

 I'm also looking to the future. Burning Man is at the end of the summer, and it's a wonderful, crazy relief from everyday life. And! The Aurora Theatre in Berkeley is putting on a play by one of my two favorite playwrights next season. June is a long time away, but a Neil LaBute play is worth some anticipation. I could use a few things between now and Labor Day, as well as between Labor Day and June, for purposes of anticipation. Help me out with some suggestions in the comments for Things To Hang On To See (flying cars? Zombie apocalypse? Election of Iris über Alles as president?]

a rough time, part II

I try not to be a drama queen, but it's a hard time here these days.  Long-term readers may remember that last year at this time the old DH had a bit of a crisis, and as the anniversary of that rough time rolls around, the memories have been hard to quash.  Meanwhile there have been some other stressful events, and during that time, Al, my needy skeletal cat, the being who most loved and needed me in my life, has passed on.

This is why I haven't been writing of late; it's difficult to feel amusing.  I've been devoting myself to exercise and caring for a feral cat named, unimaginatively enough, "CatCat", exercising (endorphins are the best form of self-medication), and ploughing through book after book.  The eloquent Florence of Florence and the Machine has captured how I feel better than I could every say:  

a rough time

I came downstairs one Saturday morning to discover that Al, our skeletal orange cat (familiar to long-term readers of this blog as The Cat Who Is Allergic To His Own Teeth), had suffered a stroke in the night.  Poor Al had lost control of his hind legs, and his body temperature was low.

After a family discussion regarding whether to euthanize poor Al or to keep him at home quietly, it was clear there was no support for taking him to the vet for a clinical way out.  I spent most of the day holding him (which was not the most pleasant of tasks, as the poor animal had no control over his bladder).  At night we did leave him with Iris while the grownups ventured to a party (our party spirit was of course boosted by getting text messages from Iris constantly describing poor Al's decrepit condition).

We got home around 2:30 AM, and I went straight to Al, who was resting quietly.  I snuggled him up on my chest, where he always wanted to be, and held him.  Eventually I dozed off for a few hours, and when I woke up around 5:30 AM, he had passed on.  Rest in peace, poor Al.  You never did get a fair shake in life.

Al was found as a kitten, with one sibling, in a puddle of oil in a mechanic's shop in San Francisco.  His sibling passed away as a little kitten, and Al himself only lived to seven.  His health problems were endless and strange:  he couldn't retract his claws, he never weighed more than five pounds (even when we embarked upon a program of giving him unlimited canned food), he sneezed and drooled, he shedded constantly, flea preventive medicines didn't work for him...  Al's health improved after we finally ponied up $1,800 to have virtually all of his teeth pulled, and he had a few relatively good, but still skeletal, years.  He was always a companion to our various foster kittens (whereas the other cats generally can't be bothered with them).

In a rare moment of grace, Al was captured for posterity just the week before he died, by the amazing Thomasina deMaio:

Al was also active on Twitter:  http://twitter.com/#!/allofalbert  Heartbreakingly his voice has gone silent far too soon.  Rest in peace, Al.  You are missed.

quotes of the day

Twelve year-old Iris uber Alles is stoked to go on a Service Learning expedition to a senior citizen home.  "I don't care if those old people like it; I'm gonna win at bingo!  They get to play bingo all year, and I only play every six months!"

As Iris wandered out of the room,  continuing to mutter about her desire to trounce each and every aged resident at bingo, I urged the Sober Husband to come look at our cats, Frowst and Henry, who were curled up on adjoining pillows.  "Look!  Look!"

"I'm looking," he said in a monotone, without looking up from his iPad.  "Look-how-cute."

"I see you, and you are not looking!  Look!  Look!"

Finally he glanced at the cats and said, "We should take pictures and put them on the internet!"

"Now you're being sarcastic."

"I'm not being sarcastic; I'm being condescending."

sending him off in style

There's a new season of "RuPaul's Drag Race," and the children and I are enthralled.  The Sober Husband has only ever watched one episode, and that was when he was sucking up to me after a spat.  But even by leaving the room when it is screened, he can't escape the impact of this oddly absorbing game show.  Today, when he left, I bade him farewell with a jaunty, "You bettah werq!"  Nonplussed, he looked to little Lola.

"Lola," I instructed her, "Say goodbye to your father with something RuPaul says.  From now on, we say goodbye to him like RuPaul."

"Doesn't RuPaul ever say 'have a nice day?'" said the uncooperative Sober Husband.

Eventually a yawning little Lola let out a "don't eff it up", and the Sober Husband headed off to the more sensible environs of Silicon Valley.

advances in education

When I studied French, we memorized a horrible poem about an ant and a grasshopper and phrases like, "Mom, please bring me a bowl of coffee" (according to our textbook, French teenagers were served coffee in bed by the bowlful by their doting French mothers).  Never did we learn any phrases that seemed realistic.  When I studied Russian in college, my favorite serving suggestion phrase which we memorized was "Since I was a child, I dreamed of working on a collective farm."  One of this blog's readers enchantingly remembered that she'd had to memorize that same phrase as a budding Russian student.  Fun as it was to say, that sentence didn't seem to have any potential for helpfulness.

I'm happy to report to all of you that at Iris uber Alles's progressive private school, the first year  Japanese curriculum is much more practical.  Glancing over a page of Iris's work, I saw that she had been assigned to translate  the phrase, "My ex-husband is an attorney."  "Now there's a useful phrase," I thought.  Many of Iris's classmates will be able to use that, assuming they move to Japan after their divorces.

meowing up the wrong tree

Another crazy cat lady that I know, whom I have grown to like and enjoy, has always taken an interest in the Sober Husband.  The first time we met her, we went to her house to pick up a troubled, undersocialized cat, and after we left, Iris uber Alles said bluntly to her father, "That lady likes you.  She was flirting with you."  The Sober Husband, as usual, was completely oblivious.

Recently I ran into this woman again, and after we caught up by exchanging anecdotes of our current foster challenges, she started asking about the Sober Husband.  "Does he help with the cats? "  Looking very intensely into my eyes, she asked, "Does he have a favorite cat?"

When I came home, I repeated this to that famed cat-hater, the Sober Husband.  "And she asked me, 'does he have a favorite cat?'"  I was laughing so hard I was at risk of choking.  

He shook his head.  "Clearly she doesn't know me.  She may like me, but she doesn't know me."

Tears came to my eyes as I laughed and laughed.  "I felt like saying, 'Sweetie, if he ever wriggles out of this marriage, he's not going to sign on with another middle-aged crazy cat lady.  It's gonna be a cat-free life for him!"

homophobia, near our home

The house just two doors up from ours is being sold, and naturally all of us who've lived here longer than a couple of years are terrified that it's going to be gutted and we'll have to endure another year of construction.  Our collective nerves are still frayed from the psychopathic little contractor who gutted and rebuilt the bungalow a bit further up on the block.

My next door neighbor B. and I were gossiping about the sale the other day, sharing stories of potential buyers we'd met.  Just that day B. had met the couple who are the fall-back buyers, who came by to yearn at the almost-theirs house.   "It's a lesbian couple; they'll get it if the sale falls through," he said.

"That's nice.  Maybe they like cats," I said, thinking of the various crazy cat-lady couples I've met (it's a very special thing, when two crazy cat ladies fall in love).   I live in fear that a cat-hater will move into our block and get annoyed that two of my cats roam through everyone's yards.

B.  made a face.  "Lesbians can be awfully noisy."

"Homophobe!"

He burst out laughing.  He's a gay man, living with his long-term love.

I pressed the point.  "Homophobia, right here in the Castro!  I should report you."

Through his fit of laughter, B. asked, "Report me?  To whom?"

"GLAAD."  I walked up my stairs and turned back. "The HRC.  I don't know.  I'll find someone to report you to."  I could still hear his laughter as I let myself in my front door.

mother's little helper

In the grocery store today, I mused, "What else do we need?"  Sweet little Lola murmured solicitously, "Gin?  Do we have enough gin?"

appalled

I cannot believe that in the year 2012 contraception is controversial and one of the big issues facing America. I was just a baby when the Supreme Court decided Griswold v. Connecticut,381 U.S. 479 (1965), forbidding states to outlaw contraception, and now I have to worry about my daughters' access to contraception in an increasingly woman-hating society. It's like science fiction, like Margaret Atwood's dystopian "A Handmaiden's Tale" is coming true.

 When I had a horrendously painful ovarian cyst as a teenager, my doctor put me on the pill to prevent further cysts. The pill was expensive, and it was difficult for me to pay for it. I remember one terrible day, where I stood for a long time in a drugstore, shifting from foot to foot, while I pondered whether to get a refill on my prescription or not. I didn't have enough money for both food and my medicine, despite the fact that I had two part-time jobs and an austere student lifestyle (no cable to cancel, no expensive shoes). It was either the pill or being able to eat for the next several days, and that was not a pleasant choice.  When I hear a politician condescendingly state that there is no such thing as women who can't afford birth control, my blood pressure skyrockets.

 There's a terrible shaming of women who take the pill, who are supposedly sluts and prostitutes. Why does getting a prescription change someone's sexual activities into "prostitution"? A variety of people, most notably Rush Limbaugh and Deborah Heaton, seem to be confused over whether the price of contraception goes up the more often a woman has sex. My theory vis-a-vis Rush is that he, a known Viagra user, is confused by the fact that he himself needs to take more pricy pills the more often he can manage to find a sexual partner. That's not how it works for women, honey. The price is the same, whether the woman has sex even once.

 And unlike Viagra, the pill is medically needed for a variety of painful, non-sexual conditions, such as endometriosis, hypermenorrhea, and polycystic ovarian syndrome. I shudder for my daughters and everyone's daughters. How frigging pathetic and immature we are as a country right now, when we can ignore true crises (climate change, the horrendous violence in Syria, etc..) and instead shame women for responsibly taking contraception as directed by their doctors.

from Barcelona, my gift to you

Towards the end of our stay in Barcelona, we discovered a bar named D-luz near our hotel, which specializes in "gintonics", which is what Catalonians call "gin and tonics."  These gintonics were very creative, using only gin and tonic water for fluids but adding a bizarre-to-the-American-eye assortment of solid ingredients selected to complement each of a large number of gins.

Over the course of a couple visits, between the two of us the Sober Husband and I got through every gintonic on the menu, a feat which the inordinately handsome metrosexual bartender congratulated us upon enthusiastically.  My favorite of these gintonics was the one that seemed the strangest to me, and here is how it was made for me:

Take a large, sturdy stemmed glass (like the one in the picture above).  Slice up some fresh strawberries and strew many of the slices in the glass.  To the extend you can pound them without breaking the glass, do so with whatever pounding implement you have on hand.  Add a lot of ice to the glass.  Pour in a shot of Tann's (a Spanish gin I had never heard of before).  Next, gently insert a grooved pouring-stick into the glass (I dont even own such a thing, but am determined to acquire one).  Pour Schweppes tonic over this stick, so that not a single bubble forms due to some physics concept which the Sober Husband immediately grasped.  Fill glass to top.  Give it a little stir with the grooved pouring-stick.  Take a generous pinch of chocolate sprinkles, the ordinary kind which you might put on a child's ice cream cone, and add to the glass.  Que aproveche!

the artisanal cocktails and costumed children of Cataluña

Last night we stopped by a bar around the corner from our hotel, a bar specializing in "gintonics", which is what Barcelonans call that alluring mixture of gin with tonic water.  However.... this bar had shelves and shelves of gins, and the owner had created a special "gintonic" around each gin.  The only fluids involved were gin and Schweppes brand tonic water, so technically these were gin and tonics.... but.... I HAD A GIN AND TONIC WITH MUDDLED FRESH STRAWBERRIES AND WITH LITTLE CHOCOLATE SPRINKLES IN IT, like you'd put on an ice cream cone.  AND I LIKED IT.  There were gintonics with pomelo, with nutmeg, with little sticks of licorice...  The Sober Husband had one with fresh apple slices.

A big TV screen behind the bar played the local version of old-MTV-when-it-played-music-videos, but without the sound while instead American pop music blared.  This was disconcerting.  A crazed gin genius spent a very large amount of time making our cocktails, and his assistant spoiled us with countless dishes of amazing olives and nuts.

All I know is that when I am back home, I am buying some chocolate sprinkles from the ice cream section, and I am putting them in my cocktails, and no one will stop me.

Today we took a road trip to a seaside town an hour away, to see some remarkable Roman ruins and a cathedral which features ancient Catholic art portraying rats staging a funeral for a cat, who comes back to life.  Heartbreakingly the cathedral closed just as we showed up, at only 2:00, and we were despondent and walked about sadly with our heads down.  "Tancat, why'd it have to be tancat?" we complained, having just learned the Catalan word for "closed" that day [a big part of the Roman ruins were also "tancat"].  Then we came upon a parade.  It was a very big parade, composed exclusively of very small children and people who were presumably their parents and teachers.  The parade had a large section of children dressed as "construction workers of tomorrow", lots of mice, a lot of little wolves accompanied by Red Riding Hoods, and then, most fascinating to me, the parade ended with a group of very little children dressed in the local street cleaning uniforms.  We were enchanted, and our hearts, so disappointed by the tancat-ness of the cathedral, lifted.  "It reminds me of how when I was studying Russian, we learned how to say, 'ever since I was a small child, I dreamed of being a collective farm worker'," I said.

todavia en Barcelona

 Bonding with the pigeons of Barcelona.

 Contemplating the majesty of the gothic cathedral of Barcelona.

Back to the pigeons!  They loved me, and I loved them.

En Barcelona: day II

Most of our day today was lost to jet lag.  We didn't leave the hotel until after 3:30 p.m.  We had a parental-guilt inspired lengthy reunion with Iris uber Alles over video (little Lola being too busy baking brownies with her grandmother to come to the computer).

Today I took Anton for a surprise walk, telling him nothing and making him follow me, when we ended up at La Sagrada Familia, Gaudi's big unfinished cathedral. He freaked out in ecstasy at the crazy architecture inside. It was a big success on my part in planning a surprise outing. I spent over 135 euro on a scarf (but a really amazing scarf, a crazy beautiful black and gray scarf) and a more realistic 5 euro on a pair of gloves. IT IS REALLY FREAKING FREEZING HERE, SO MUCH COLDER THAN THE GUIDEBOOK SAID IT WOULD BE. I AM SO COLD. Tomorrow I plan to buy a winter coat and take a walking tour of the Modernisme architecture.

We saw thee of Gaudi's most famous buildings today (inside of one, I bought the 135 E scarf, which is truly fabulous). Our own hotel, the Casa Fuster, is a masterpiece of Modernisme.

 In the evening, we took advantage of our fancy suite's two person bathtub with jets, which allowed us to warm up after our walk to La Sagrada Familia.   Afterwards, we slipped down to the hotel's bar, which is a mix of Dr. Seuss and Gaudi, where the drinks were extremely expensive but also very generously poured.  We longed for the children to be present, as any middle-aged parent would.

en Barcelona

It's 9:07 P.M. in San Francisco and 6:13 A.M. local time in Barcelona. I'm wide awake while the Sober Husband sleeps peacefully. I'm drinking weird not-available-in-US sodas from the minibar which cost me 5 euros apiece, and I will regret that when check-out time rolls around, but I can't resist, and chatting online with Iris. The internet allows near-constant parent-child communication, at least with one child. The other child is too busy playing board games with her grandmother to come to the computer to say hello to her absent mother.

We were exhausted when we got here last night, but we walked around for a long time and went to a restaurant/bar inhabited by Barcelona hipsters, all wearing gray sweaters & glasses with heavy frames. I have not seen another American yet apart from my own husband. We ate "natxos" (I will forever spell "nachos" that way) and the best olives and drank a lot of a local wine.

 My Castilian Spanish only goes so far here, as everything is in Catalan. Today my goal is to go find some of the Gaudi buildings and drink more Fanta Limon, my favorite soda from when I studied in Madrid as an undergrad.

I am feeling like a plutocrat in our hotel; the Sober Husband always wants to stay at 5 star hotels, and we got upgraded to a suite for no apparent reason. I think we could afford to take more vacations if we stayed at crappy hotels -- my ex and I used to stay at the worst places, including notably a hotel in Mexico with bedbugs and one in Paris with roaches and horrible stains everywhere which was so filthy that at one point I had a freakout -- but I have to admit that this suite is fucking fantastic. We have four small but luxurious rooms and a huge balcony which makes me want to get a megaphone and shout things at people going by. "This is where I will give my speeches," I said to the Sober Husband when we discovered our balcony. "Just like Franco," he said approvingly.

fusion

Lately we've been loving the food truck craze.  Our family's favorite food truck is Señor Sisig's, which provides Mexican food with a Filipino flavor.  We are all dying to try the Creme Brulee truck, which we have seen occasionally parked down at the gas station at Castro and 18th Street but only when we were all too well-fed to stop for creme brulee.  And then on a recent date night, the Sober Husband and I caught sight of Eire Trea, an Irish-Eritrean food truck, shut down at a parking lot.  We can only dream of what it has to offer...  I paced around its exterior impatiently, but there were no menus in sight.  Colcannon wrapped up in injeera bread?  I can only dream.

"children just want their parents to be happy"

I brought home a laminated street map of Barcelona, which I was very happy to find as soon the Sober Husband and I will be traveling there for our first child-free vacation since procreating nearly 13 years ago.  Little Lola spat at the map and said she was going to cut out the part which showed where our hotel was (so presumably we wouldn't be able to find our way to our reserved room).

Earlier in the day a child who shall remain unnamed picked a fight with me because I refused to go into detail about something I'd done.  "I don't have any secrets from your father, but I can from you," I noted.

The child's face settled into firm disapproval.  She spat out, "He thinks it's okay for you to do anything that makes you happy!"  Clearly I need a different authority to answer to, one less permissive than my spouse.  I should settle under the yoke of my child overlord.

depressed depressed depressed

Life has no flavor or joy for me (and I'm not even a football aficionado).

I'm slogging my way through "Los Detectives Salvajes" by Roberto Bolaño, currently on page 520, and enjoying only one out of every fifteen pages or so.  How did this become an international blockbuster?  And why did I devote so much energy into obtaining a copy in the original Spanish?

I'm having that horrible feeling again, that I myself am so profoundly unlikeable by my basic nature, not through anything I do or say.

And of course being in a funk like this is asinine.  I have a lovely, lovely life.  Only a horrible person would be unhappy in such a delightful set of circumstances as mine.  The only thing which makes sense as kickstarting this funk is that I had to give up my three foster kittens yesterday, the last from the season.  The vet at the city pound joked with me that the head of my rescue is also at loose ends, given that it's a drought year so there's no good skiing to be had and that we don't have newborn kittens yet.  Crazy cat ladies, maybe it's our time of the year to be down.