Just Kristin

Every once in a while I am sur­prised, upon enter­ing the women’s bath­room at work, by a large, opaque anemone that guards the door. One would think, after run­ning into this muta­tion of the trash bin and bag at least 10 times, that I would no longer be star­tled by it, but I am.

It is brought to life when the con­di­tions are just right: the bag is tightly sealed around the trash bin’s open­ing, but the jan­i­tor did not fully opened the bag when insert­ing, but has rather let it fall in, still folded. The extra air in the bin and the pres­sure changes caused by the open­ing and clos­ing of the door cause it to fill with air from the inside and bil­low out­ward, tall and rustling. Each new open­ing and clos­ing of the door makes it shake and hiss, as tall as most who enter.

I have given thought to draw­ing a face on it. Any other sug­ges­tions would be appreciated.

I spent my lunch hour seated across from D at the Bro­ken Yolk Cafe, eat­ing an ori­en­tal chicken salad and some wheat toast, and read­ing Lamb: The Gospel Accord­ing to Biff, Christ’s Child­hood Pal. It is supremely silly but fun and actu­ally quite excit­ing. I am doing a lot of laugh­ing aloud. I enjoy a lot of Moore’s stuff, and this one will prob­a­bly be my favorite. I am only sorry that I missed him this past week­end when he was here sign­ing this, his newest, at The Mys­te­ri­ous Galaxy.

I am hav­ing as hard a time putting this one down as I did Niel Gaiman’s Amer­i­can Gods. AG is not my favorite Gaiman book, but I loved it. He is such a superb sto­ry­teller, that even his less-deep books give me no end of plea­sure. D, Smoo and I will be mak­ing a trip to House on the Rock when the we go to Wis­con­sin in May. If we run into Mr. Nancy, we’ll let you all know.

Today, as I was leav­ing work with D, I noticed that the edge of the brass plate sur­round­ing the stair­well door seemed to be deformed. Upon closer inspec­tion, I noticed that, much to my sur­prise and ela­tion, the installers of said plate had sim­ply not removed the pro­tec­tive stretchy film cover. Being the lov­ing, shar­ing covi­vant that I try to be, I shared the peel­ing joy with D.

Remov­ing pro­tec­tive seals from shiny sur­faces, as those on elec­tronic equip­ment and watch faces, is an incred­i­bly enjoy­able thing for me. When I was work­ing for a handy­man in Japan, one job we took was prep­ping a newly-built apart­ment build­ing for its first inhab­i­tants. This included remov­ing the pro­tec­tive stick­ers from all the door latch plates and apart­ment num­ber plaques. I was in my ele­ment and com­pletely ener­gized, even tho I had by that point put in a 12-hour day.

I have to admit that, although I feel as if I have come upon a secret trea­sure when I find such a coat­ing yet unpeeled, I am filled with a deep frus­tra­tion when I encounter peo­ple who actu­ally like to keep them in place. Even if these peo­ple can­not under­stand the joy of the peel, they should at least be able to see the unsightly air bub­bles that are inevitably present, the foggy, cataract-like cloudi­ness that these stick­ers impart on the sur­face of a beau­ti­fully new object.…. :)

D and I spent a good por­tion of our drive home last night explain­ing to Smoo that, despite her incli­na­tion to believe so, every­thing does not “suck”. It seems to us that, lately, the only pos­si­ble qual­ity any day or occur­rance can take is “sucky”. Last night, before launch­ing a dia­tribe, I gave thought to whether I con­tribute, via exam­ple, to this atti­tude of hers. If any­one out there who knows me would give me input on this, I’d appre­ci­ate it. :) I think I tend to be rea­son­ably bal­anced in my atti­tude towards life… Any­way, I explained to her that good things hap­pen all day, as do some “sucky” things, and that, if we are not to go com­pletely crazy, we have to train our­selves to remem­ber the good bits, and for­get the bad bits, espe­cially if the bad bits will have no bear­ing on our lives in 3 hours, 3 days or even 3 years. I think she gets it. I will just have to make sure our lit­tle fam­ily puts it into prac­tice. Some­times, tho, I wish “Do as I say, not as I do” actu­ally worked. Unfor­tu­nately it rarely if ever does with adults, and never does with chil­dren. Dammit.

Absolutely lov­ing 2.0 so far! Thank you both, and every­one else who has made it pos­si­ble for me to finally keep this jour­nal with­out hav­ing to pro­gram away from work. Hip-hip-huzzah!

I know that D will under­stand what I mean by what I am going to say here, but I do also want the rest of you to know that I do not mean any of this in the mate­ri­al­is­tic way it may sound. That dis­claimer being offered:

I can’t help feel­ing more con­nected, more solidly a cou­ple, every time D and I pur­chase things together. I am sure that much of this stems from hav­ing had to do the dreaded “divvying-up” on two occa­sions in the past (only one of which I remem­ber bit­terly, tho nei­ther time was less than heart-breaking). I see shar­ing in things, and things pur­chased together are sym­bols of a couple’s abil­ity to share. The das­tardly divvy­ing is, for all intents and pur­poses, like say­ing, “I am not going to share with you any longer.”

Heck, to be hon­est, I can’t even give away some­thing that I have received as a gift from some­one I love or loved. If you really want to screw me over, buy me a gift and act excited about your present while mak­ing sure it is the least won­der­ful, least “me” thing you can find. I will have it until I die. I can see it now: some­one I have pissed off recently is going to give me, for my birth­day, some awful biog­ra­phy of some or another Bush fam­ily mem­ber, and there it will be on my shelf when I am 80…

Any­way, what I was try­ing to say ear­lier is that, each time we buy some­thing together, it isn’t that the thing is co-posessed and there­fore binds us in some legal property-ownership kind of way, but rather that it rep­re­sents our deci­sion to buy it, a deci­sion usu­ally based on a bit of nego­ti­a­tion and a lot of excited plan­ning, a happy shop­ping out­ing (or surf­ing), and a week or so of “when’ll it finally be deliv­ered, I won­der” antsi­ness. I end up attach­ing all these mem­o­ries to the thing, as well as mem­o­ries of its use. They all become part of the thing.

I know. I am a loon. I don’t think, at all, that this is a symp­tom of some crav­ing for legal mat­ri­mony. I know for a fact that I don’t want to get mar­ried mar­ried. I feel more attached now than I ever have in my life, and in a healthy kind of way. I don’t nec­ces­sar­ily think it is a symp­tom of any­thing more than a fas­ci­na­tion with things sym­bolic, of pomp and cer­e­mony, of tokens and mem­o­ries. I am sen­ti­men­tal to a fault.

Did any of this make sense? Prob­a­bly not. :)

• my daugh­ter, my covivant

• the air after it rains, or imme­di­atly after light­ning has struck
• along the same lines as light­ning, the ozone of a datacenter
• freshly turned dirt
• cow poop (my WI farm-girlness is showing)
• home­made turkey soup
• the sharp­ness of some­one else’s fire on a cold night when I am outside
• per­ma­nent mark­ers, but only for a sec­ond or two
• cock­atiel fluff while it is still on the bird
• my dad’s wood­work­ing room
• any laun­dry that has been left out on the line
• fresh blood, fresh sweat, fresh sex

Phil Rieke’s untimely pass­ing has unnerved me. Cer­tainly I am sad. Despite fear­ing him ini­tially, he was an equal-opportunity crank, and was never less than help­ful. What really has me shaken, though, is not his early pass­ing, but that I can see myself pulling the same stub­born thing that ulti­mately caused his death.

I have to admit that I posses two com­pletely sep­a­rate attitues where med­i­cine and med­ical treat­ment are con­cerned. One of them is the lit­tle hypochon­driac that sits on one shoul­der and pokes me hard each time I feel a twinge. This is the bas­tard that makes me worry so much when a period is a half-day late that the stress makes it skip com­pletely… he feeds on this stress. Every ache, every pain causes him to goad me to the com­puter to find out what pos­si­ble fatal dis­eases my symp­toms may be point­ing to. Being the over-emotional type allows him this berth on my shoul­der, and I know this. I am work­ing on squelch­ing him, but to be hon­est I can’t help think­ing that he does assist in keep­ing me in tune with my body. On my other shoul­der is the vaude­ville per­former that sings and tells jokes and does what­ever he can to keep me from notic­ing even the most obvi­ous med­ical prob­lems I have. His motto is, “If you for­get about it, it isn’t there; If you don’t know about it, it doesn’t exist.” Every time some­thing shows up on the body’s radar screen — from a blip to a whole clus­ter glow­ing brightly — he starts up a cheer­ful lit­tle show. “Don’t go to the doc­tor,” he sings, “or you’ll hear a song not half as pretty as mine, and his jokes aren’t funny either.”

We can only be so wor­ried, this I under­stand. We can only avoid so much, this too is true. Find­ing the bal­ance, and the courage to deal with it is the hard part.

Just lis­tened to War­ren Zevon’s “Don’t let us get sick” in your honor, Phil. Thank you for every les­son you’ve taught me.

   The sky was on fire
   When I walked to the mill
   To take up the slack in the line
   I thought of my friends
   And the trou­bles they’ve had
   To keep me from think­ing of mine

   The moon has a face
   And it smiles on the lake
   And causes the rip­ples in Time
   I’m lucky to be here
   With some­one I like
   Who maketh my spirit to shine

   Don’t let us get sick
   Don’t let us get old
   Don’t let us get stu­pid… all right?
   Just make us be brave
   Make us play nice
   Let us be together tonight

I am sad­dened and amused by the smooth yet com­pletely pre­dictable down­swing my day has taken. I hate to blame this mood slide on my period, but lo and behold, just around lunch: the spot­ting, the cramps, the easy tears. It has become so reg­u­lar that I can watch it as one would watch any Friends-style sit­com, the basic premise the same each time, only the names and set­tings slightly switched around, and most of the angst so painful in its obvi­ous avoid­abil­ity that only those involved seem to be unable to cope. Any­way, any­thing more I might write today would be filled with the base­less drama I wal­low in when my body asserts itself and proves agan to me its con­tin­ued fer­til­ity (or at least its abil­ity to destroy that which would be fer­til­ized), so I will write again tomor­row. Hugs to all.

Not ten min­utes after fin­ish­ing my rant about avoid­ing doc­tors, I lost a fill­ing in a piece of gum. Dammit! My favorite doc­tor to avoid, and now a visit is inevitable. The only den­tist I actu­ally like doesn’t take my insur­ance, either. Poop.