LaurieWrites

Gustav

Update: I volunteered to edit the Animal Rescue page on Andy Carvin's Gustav wiki. Please e-mail me at laurie@lauriewrites.com or find me on Twitter at @lauriewrites with any news you see about the pets and animals left behind in Louisiana and Mississippi. Thanks.

Hurricane Gustav is shaping up to be a Category 5 storm.

First of all, please God may it spare New Orleans.

Second of all, lots of people are blogging about it, with preparation and preemptive relief efforts. Please visit them and find a way to help, if you can. Even if you don't think you can because you're far away or don't have the means, even writing about it is very, very important. If anything was learned from Katrina (and my ignorance at the time was great, but not so much in the years since) it's that silence is a fatal action in this case.

Katrina recovery was a major theme of the early part of the week at the DNC and I find the timing of the RNC quite apt. If the world pays more attention to this than that event in St. Paul, it'll be a good thing whether the storm hits or not. And if it does hit, the question must be asked of the administration that this candidate is trying valiantly to distance himself from: WHAT IN THE HELL ARE YOU GOING TO DO DIFFERENTLY THIS TIME? And of the candidate, I might ask: What in the hell would YOU do?

Here are some links:
Gustav Resource Center (via @waynesutton on Twitter.)

Excellent headlines and updates from @jazzychad on Twitter.

Official government weather updates on Twitter: @GustavAlerts

Sometimes (even pretty) people jump out of windows because they're sad.

The footage of the Russian supermodel who jumped to her death from a ninth-floor apartment in the NYC financial district was quite the news bit yesterday. And Fox News, in all its classy goodness, opted to show the footage of her body, obtained from a person who I hope has significant road rash from hitting the pavement but that's wishful thinking with a video camera who shot it from underneath a car.

I can't find the links now, because the one that was sent to me is dead. It was disappointing for the casual voyeur, really. The sheet was mostly covering her, and it was windy in New York so all you could really see was the bruised left side of her face and eyes that were - surprise - closed. I watched it a couple of times, working through my discomfort, to try to determine what the value was - to see, in effect, what there was to see.

Her name was Ruslana Korshunova. She was 21. She is dead.

That's all that anyone needs to know, really, if they need to know anything at all.

The Fox footage I saw gave credence to my view that we're approaching Armageddon, at least in terms of what's accepted as "media."

I could not determine which of the people involved in the Geraldo conversation were more reprehensible. The man who vaguely resembled Albert Einstein who said "After all she is not from this country? She might be isolated?" I can understand that a young woman far from home would feel disconnected, but New York is full of people from all over the world in equally lonely situations. It is a place where people go from everywhere, and it seems ridiculous and somehow patronizing to equate "foreignness" with the urge to plunge from a window. Or the woman in the purple who postulated that because she was so beautiful she surely wouldn't have ended her life so violently and someone must have pushed her? And that she must have, in addition, been completely high on drugs?

Because, right, if you're beautiful and depressed, clearly the need to preserve the appearance of your body and face must trump despair that seems worse than the pain of hitting the concrete full force, hundreds of feet down. You must always keep the outside at the front of the line.

A distant cousin of mine jumped from a building in DC and died a few years ago because he was just, apparently...really sad. Have you noticed that this life is hard? And that some people have days where it being over seems preferable to dealing with whatever shit is shoveled their way? It's not a real stretch sometimes, folks. And it's is sad to see this group of jerks jump all over a person who just died yesterday not even considering that depression can sink in deep and leave you less than concerned with your appearance.

Who knew about this young woman before yesterday? Did anyone, besides the people in her immediate sphere (if they did), see her or know her as anyone other than a page in a magazine? Now that she took the drastic step of plunging out of the window of a high-rise building to her death, she's everyone's business, and everyone with a microphone claims to know why she did it.

I think we have big problems. And as much as stories like this make me ashamed of the media outlets who cover them, they make me all the more determined to be a small part of the solution.

Cringe

Tomorrow I am taking a massive chance in my favorite city. I'm taking the train to New York tomorrow, to do a couple of things and visit with a couple of lovely people, but really just to read at Sarah Brown's Cringe event.

I am the queen of Internet attention deficit disorder, and there are very, very few blogs I read on a daily basis. Lots I check in on a few times a week, but daily is reserved for People.com, Flickr, and Sarah. I don't remember where or how I discovered her, but since I did I have rarely skipped a day checking out her words or her pictures. She is the kind of writer I would like to be, in many ways, and in some ways hope I already am when I cut the crap. Plus she's funny, and she's cooler than you. Sorry, that didn't come out very nicely. But you know how it is.

Sarah started up this series a few years ago, and it's turned into a book for her and a potential tv pilot. The deal is that people get up on stage and read selections from their diaries/letters/journals/detritus in general from their teen years. Since this whole blog is sort of an exercise in self-disclosure, I figured early on that I had to participate in this. A three-hour trip is all that stood in the way of the world hearing the story that I wrote, actually on purpose - about my HUSBAND John Taylor from Duran Duran, and our honeymoon trip to an island somewhere. I think it might have been Anguilla, which I didn't know from Dallas, Texas at that point except that i knew that DURAN DURAN FILMED VIDEOS THERE and JOHN TAYLOR WAS THE BASS PLAYER AND I HAD A FEDORA LIKE HIS THAT I ACTUALLY WORE IN PUBLIC AND HE WAS MY MAN, SO SUCK IT SUPERMODELS. I'll just be over here in my Forenza sweatshirt with the (help) cabbage roses on it, orange Sun-In hair and fake Jordache jeans with the little hippo or unicorn or whatever they gave little fat girls on the pocket as a consolation prize. Also, he wore jazz shoes, and therefore so did I.

Someday I'm going to write a book, a collection of essays entitled: "The Really Low End: Me and the Rhythm Section." (and yes it'll be grammatically incorrect like that. So rock 'n roll.)

In searching for my JT story, which I still can't find, I located my Precious Moments diary. SHUT UP. I KNOW. And when I found it, I immediately spent like an hour delving into my crazy little brain, circa 1985. I read the part to my mom aloud about how much I hated my family because they left me at home when they went to see the Christmas lights at the Mormon Temple. And in case anyone wonders why I take everything super seriously, my mother looked at me gravely and said, seriously, "You really didn't hate us did you?" Even at 14, totally healthy adolescent hatred was unacceptable in our home.

I laughed out loud when I saw that I had written the actual address for the American Top 40 Long Distance Dedications in the inside front cover, in pencil, just above the ominously inked "PROPERTY OF LAURIE," which I had clearly very carefully inked over and over and over, in case the masses who would be dying for a peek inside the pink cover didn't get the message. I even had "Property of LAURIE" stickers on the facing page, like that I obviously bought at a store. Someone sold stickers like that. I would pay big bucks to have those back, I'd just walk around slapping them on everything at this point. They'd have come in seriously handy in some roommate situations, and at work. Except I'd have to add "bitches" in ink now, now that that word contains such weighted ironic power, unlike in 1985 when it just meant more than one bitch was all UP IN YOUR GRILL.

I rejected my neurosis that I really HADN'T progressed that much in 20 YEARS, and I went back to the days when two things made my world go round: John Taylor, and Dante Aguilar, a boy I went to grade school with, who sat behind me in 7th grade and sang "Sexual Healing" to me in his cracking, uber-sexy Bolivian accent. "Get-tup get-tup get-tup get-tup." Really, there was no one hotter than him, all 13 years old and rocking the Catholic school uniform. And I'm sure my Peter Pan collar and green plaid jumper was just as appealing.

All I can say is, that wherever Dante is, and whomever he's involved with/married to, I hope she loves him right, because no one could POSSIBLY have been as devoted to him (as a concept anyway - like I knew what to do with a real person at that point? Ha.) as I was. Sarah says the key to a good Cringe reading is if it makes you - yeah - CRINGE when you read it. Done, totally taken care of. Oh my God, cringing all the livelong day. Still cringing, in fact, inside. My longing emanates from the page. The resigned detachment, the rationalization that it was a good thing when he dated my BEST FRIEND. The almost-running-into-him-at-the-mall if I hadn't had to go to the damned LIMITED to return my FORENZA sweatshirt for an even bigger one with the cabbage roses on it. Anyway, more of the world will learn of him tomorrow than he ever imagined, and I hope he's cool with that. It's a good thing it's a fairly common name. I looked around on Facebook and the other options in the voyeuristic world of "social networking" and I think that might be him? But I'm not sure? And hi, could someone else send that message? That "Hey I wrote about you in my diary alot 20 years ago and now I'm going to read it aloud to a lot of people in a bar in Brooklyn" message? Cause I'm not gonna lie, I'm having a little trouble with the semantics on this one.

I am amazed that more of this book was not written in colored ink, however. I have a tendency to write in obnoxious Sharpie colors even now. (Hello. Am 12.)

So Sarah has held a slot for this craziness, and I can't wait. I'm sure I'll be the really nervous one. In fact, my eye is twitching a little already. If you see me, say a kind word. I can't promise I won't write about you though.

Nobody's Business

Sunday writing in bed, a candle burning and it's raining really, really hard. It's kind of perfect, actually.

I have so much stuff to do. Stuff stuff stuff. Tomorrow's a big "things are due" day and although I'm kind of worried about all of that - mostly because my profiles are in shambles and I don't have the sources I need or the quotes I need or the interviews I need - I really have to grasp on to the big picture here, and realize that it always gets done, it's always over, there's always something else that comes along right after and in the in-betweens there are many, many moments to breathe and eat and sing. I find myself singing a lot lately, which is nice. I'd kind of stopped.

I sometimes wish I'd been natured or nurtured to be a calmer person, although if I lost the buzz and the adrenaline who knows if I'd then be some boring lame person who talked about floor tiles like other people should care. I've been in a mood that makes sense given the dates, because unfortunately I am a girl, plus when I get this overloaded with work I tend to gravitate towards the white noise enhancers in my brain. It's an unfortunate pattern. I was driving to my friend's house yesterday and realized that damn, I was in a foul mood. And unlike other periods in my life where the foul mood was so much the state of being that it was the rule, it struck me as an unusual and annoying exception. So of course I chalked it up to chemistry and moved along.

It has to be chemistry when I vacillate every other second on the same topic, when I get the urge to tell uncomfortable truths and reopen conversations that are long dead with people who no longer care...when I start second, third and fourth-guessing decisions I made in all grown-up solidity and good sense and self-preservation. When Pop-Tarts seem like a reasonable all day sort of food. When I want to show John Kerry (God, remember him?) how real flip-flopping is done and do things that are, quite frankly, self-destructive. When I long for the grand gesture that is not to be confused with the creepy, weird gesture, please. When I start thinking is this WHAT IT ALL MEANS? Is this ALL IT IS?

Chemistry. Chemistry makes me stupid and steers me from my path. Chemistry tells me to take risks, to ignore propriety and sense and the art of the long view. Chemistry also might make things more expedient sometimes, but I don't really need my own reality show. So I stopped myself, literally, got hold of myself and was like hey little girl, you need to just stop it right now. You need to be smart and you need to be quiet and you need to just SIMMER DOWN.

My grandmother used to yell that at my cousins and me when we were little and we'd act up, either separately or together. I always thought the image of myself as a pan of soup going from boiling to flat was amusing...still do, actually.

So I made a French press of coffee and put myself to bed to work (alone, sorry!), which is the best way I know to simmer down these days (and isn't THAT a sad departure from experiences past? This was not supposed to depress me!) I talked to my funny and refreshingly straightforward friend Eli, who always makes me laugh and tells the truth. And although I haven't been reading blogs with any consistency since school began to slowly consume my brain, I stumbled across Sarah Brown's post about regrets, which was timely. I like her take on the subject. 

This sounds like a downer, but it’s actually kind of fun. There are the obvious ones that stand out at first, but it’s the careful combing of your life’s back stairs that makes this interesting. The main rule is your regret can’t be an undoing. Think of the Mark Twain quote, “Twenty years from now, you’ll regret the things you didn’t do, rather than the things you did.” If you ignore this rule, this game quickly deteriorates into My Life’s Bad Romantic Decisions, or Why Did I Ever Say/Do/Ingest That, which I suppose are both valid games, but not nearly as fun. I mean, sure, there are two or three people in my life that I honestly wish I’d never met, but you have to respect the Back to the Future rules, and accept that you dated this guy or were friends with that girl, and you are where and why and how and who you are now in part because of that. It’s not about beating yourself up; it’s more of an inventory of the ships that you allowed to set sail.

• Not having the guts to tell people to back off when they've gotten in my personal or psychic space because I'm afraid of confrontation or hurting feelings.
• Not buying a house in Dayton when I totally could have.
• Not performing in more plays in high school or keeping it up in college.
• Not living on campus
• Not having the nerve to ask the difficult questions because I was afraid it would end when it was over anyway. It took so long to catch up, and the feelings of stupidity, how they linger.
• Leaving the hospital and vacuuming the carpet.
• Uttering dismissive words in the Santa Fe that night instead of taking the risk to say how I really felt.
• Any time I've held back from singing, dancing or otherwise expressing myself because I felt stupid.
• Not seeing Duran Duran on the Seven and the Ragged Tiger tour.
• Ripping up the cards I haven't sent.
• Sending that e-mail.
• And that other e-mail.
• But not that one.
• Not seeing my grandmother more.
• Training myself to believe that my feelings don't matter.
• Being mean to Shannon Mitchell in high school.
• Not articulating exactly what I wanted because I thought it was clear.
• Not playing sports/being more active as a child and in high school.
• Sitting on the couch & eating ice cream in some kind of delusional fog the year after I came home from Ohio and gaining the weight back that I worked my ass off to lose.
• Any time I stopped an exercise program.
• Not going for the second interview at the other store.
• Not learning how to play an instrument or write a song in spite of several flailing attempts.
• Not getting my finances in order in my 20s and early 30s.
• Not seeing more of the world (working on it.)
• Letting that mortgage broker scare me to death.
• Any time I whined.
• Any time I yelled. Yelling isn't necessary. I don't really yell anymore.
• Any time I complained about my dog wanting to play with his ball. Or have food I was eating. Or had an accident. Love what you love, people. Make space for it and nurture it and know that if it's that important in your life - if it brings you happiness and makes time for you - even if it's an animal that depends on you for food and therefore has an ulterior motive - it's precious.

And I guess that's it, the major regret you - or I, at least - want to avoid - not loving what you love while you have it to love (even if it's just you or your very life itself,) forgiving it its imperfections, living large and loud in ways that make sense for you and don't bum other people out. Because it's all wispy here, ephemeral and strange and not at all about what we think it is most of the time. It's real easy for me to get caught up in the person-made constructs, in the day to day stress and logistics and ImustIhaveto kind of things. It's so dumb to do that, it's so not what the real spirit and joy of life is about, because honestly, a lot of it doesn't matter. And I'm not talking about flaking out, not at all, or saying, "OOH, I don't have to pay for my car anymore because that's not about the spirit and joy of life! And I'm just going to sit on my ass in a field of flowers and pick them and hand them out to people in the airport!" No. I'm just talking about staying mindful of the big picture, of the things that really matter, and not getting caught up in the stupid minutiae such that it jams up your brain for the important stuff. I've been there a bit lately and it's showing.

If there's a theme for my list of regrets, it's fear and laziness, whether it's physical or emotional, and fear especially sucks. Fear-based thinking and acting sucks, and when it's all - whatever it all is - said and done, it won't have done anyone any bit of good. It'll just have held things back, and I can swear to this, it doesn't love you back either in any way, shape or useful form. And if you have any sense, yo, you really only want things in your heart and head that love you back, I promise. 

My parents leave town, my dog has a seizure. And also it's a weekend where I have a load of work to do, and errands to run for a big old trip. This seems to be the theme of 2008 so far. It sucks.

These are things I have thought since this happened at noon yesterday, Eastern Standard Time, AFTER he began thrashing around in the terrifying way that this BASTARD DISEASE causes him to do, and I flew to the kitchen, found the valium syringes, and gave him the injection with the CAP still on the syringe. You know where this injection goes, right?  Let's just say you could consider it a mini-colonic. Or as a man at the vet said to Punkin, not to me, "What's she trying to do to you?"

THANKS, thanks invasive stranger man. Like he's not already pissed off enough and like I'm not already cringing with guilt as he squats endlessly around the yard because now I've probably wrecked his intestinal tract, even though he passed the stupid cap.

Anyway, the thoughts:

• I am a crappy dog person with no business having an animal in my charge.
• THIS IS NOT FAIR. LIFE IS NOT FAIR. LIFE IS HORRIBLE.
• My dog hates me and loves my parents and therefore goes into neurologically-altering grief when they leave, therefore triggering the seizures.
• This in SPITE OF the fact that I spend countless hours throwing the ball, the "doughnut" made of tennis-ball material, the jack, etc. etc. And also maintaining a regular schedule of food and medicine, seriously.
• This in spite of the fact that I (MEMEME!) brought him home from that Ohio kitchen, and didn't leave him there for some BAD PERSON to pick him up and deprive him of this life of luxury. Hello!
• Why am I not at the beach instead? If I were always at the beach where I belong, and THEY were here using their magic seizure-prevention superpowers, this would not be happening.
• My dog does not hate me. God hates me. The universe hates me.
• We're stopping at CheeburgerCheeburger on the way back from picking up back-up valium syringes at the vet. (um, one for him, one for me?) We're stopping there because I deserve a cheeseburger and a milkshake for my troubles, dammit. And beyond "deserve?" Want.
• I wouldn't take his valium, no matter how much of an emotional wreck in need of relaxation this experience makes me. This is proof of how much I love my dog. I wouldn't even THINK of becoming an addict and stealing his valium, because he might NEED IT.
• I'm so well-adjusted.
• Yes, the universe hates me, and is making me pay for every vile, unpleasant, rude and unfriendly (let's not even get into UNCHRISTIAN) thing I've ever done.
• Clearly this is all about me.
• Also I'm stupid, because God and the universe have better things to do. Like define "superdelegate" and be in the room supporting the enthusiastically-caucusing people of Wyoming.

I was in no way promising rationality or maturity in those thoughts, by the way.

This is me, the last time this happened in early February, when I was once again not at the beach but spent four days handling the aftermath of a (thank you, inattentive God and universe) much-worse episode that I don't think I could have handled again, for real. I share it because if I took a picture of myself right now (up inexplicably early for springing forward day - thanks, adrenaline.) it would be exponentially more frightening and even I have some shred of pride left.

I took this on Saturday night, three days after it happened. It's amazing what happens when you really don't go far from the couch for a few days. Frightening. I call it "Slovenly - a self-portrait."

Pretty, right?!? Wrong, but true, for good or for ill.

Altogether I think I handled this one better. I'd read a ton last time on message boards and veterinary websites (three days recovery time, remember.) about how your reaction to these - in people or animals - can have an impact on recovery time. So instead of trying to pry his mouth open in denial that his jaw is locked or going "OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH PLEASE STOP," I was as quiet as I could be, ran up to get the valium, shot it, and then just sat next to him and petted him and kept him from bumping into stuff until he stopped. And if I had to say what kind of impact it had, I'd have to say I have no idea. It was a little better for my blood pressure, anyway, which I guess has its benefits.

I'm just tired of them. I'm tired of them for him and tired of them for me. Yes, me. Sorry. This didn't happen for years, and he has such a lovely little life, otherwise. Just...no fair.

Lists ahoy

I had put this whole post together, painstakingly I tell you - mostly photos summarizing February, for Leap Day because why wouldn't I post on Leap Day given that the next time it rolls around I could be in a world without blogs, having forever missed the opportunity to post on February 20-effing-9th. And after all this painstakingness, FUCKING (sorry. Only word that fits.) Firefox shut down and ate it. Firefox was all, "Suck it, mama. You're mama's so ugly in your town it's not Halloween, it's YourMamaWeen."

I heard that last week and I laughed for minutes. It's so dumb and yet so enjoyable.

Anyway, if I'd had tears in me at that point of the post explosion I would have cried. I did not, however.

I was blowing off all manner of academic and paid and "paid in clips" assignments to write the post, because February was such an incredibly hectic and photo-filled month in which I posted very little of consequence, as it turned out, and I wanted the pictures to tell the story, at least for my sake. I might try it again but it's a little late at this point.

So here I am. It's March 3. I leave for VIETNAM IN TEN DAYS, oh saints preserve us oh my LORD. I am so not even ready, but given that I've not been ready for even a trip out the door until it actually happens for my whole entire life, this really isn't that much of a newsflash. As much as it makes my life a daring adventure or nothing (or in my case a severely disturbed MadLib) it will not do on this trip. It's one thing when I'm heading across the county and forget my phone or my phone CHARGER or the particular battery for the particular camera that I need for whatever I'm headed out to do (this happens to me, without fail, because I am an idiot stick attention deficit moron. But otherwise I love me.) End up in Vietnam without my right camera battery or charger? I'd lay down in a rice paddy - they grow in the city proper in Hanoi, amazingly enough - and weep.

My story partner is a 19 year old guy who walked across Taiwan last summer and made a documentary about it, probably at the same time that I was prone on the beach sucking down Coronas and taking pictures of my toes. He's got the right amount of youthful idealism to balance me out, and we're getting along fine. Although when he suggested camping, as in "hey it'd be cool to camp on the road to HaLong Bay when we're out covering our story," I got a little peaked. I do not camp at home, just because I never have. I haven't ever. My family didn't and I never really hung out with people who did. I generally enjoy the experience of sleeping indoors, I have to say. I sleep out on the deck at the beach in the summer because the sound of waves, to me, is magic, but then I'm on a deck chair and not the ground.

When Jeff suggested it I was like, hmm. Camping. Vietnamese camping, in unknown territory. Um, okay. I guess if you're going to start, it doesn't really matter where, and now that I'm ripping open the super value meal of my life with my teeth I may as well take it to the wall. I was telling a friend this and she said, "'Camp' is a four-letter word in my world, sister." I guess we'll see how it all plays out.

We're assigned to the industrial corridor story, which will indeed have us heading out to Halong Bay, a beautiful place that's on the Gulf of Tonkin between Vietnam and China. I'll be able to pretend to see CHINA, people, and it'll actually be a body of water away. How cool is that? The bay is a United Nations World Heritage site that was apparently in the running when they redrafted the wonders of the world a couple of years back, although apparently it didn't win.

Anyway, the highway winds out of Hanoi to Halong Bay about three hours east, and our story covers what the industrial growth along this corridor is doing to the area, including the environment. We're going to drive out there the day or so after we get to Vietnam, and it turns out that you can spend the night on junks in the bay. Junks, like in the Little River Band song! And like in Lancelot Link!

My cultural immersion should go swimmingly. Please understand me when I say that I have no idea where I'm going. I have no earthly comprehension of it and I love that.

Posting may be weird again this month, but as I get myself together for this trip I'm going to try to get in the game with NaBloPoMo, mostly because I love the Lists theme for March and my brain could use a daily organization exercise. I've been making a lot of weird lists about music lately, so maybe I'll go with a theme within a theme? I don't know.

Oh, and about the design. Yeah. I had the new black one up, and I kind of liked it, until I talked to my friend Annett who actually reads this page on a regular basis and tells me nice and completely unwarranted things about the way I do go on about my LIFE and mySELF and blahblahblah. Annett is one of the greatest people I know and not just for that reason, I swear. It's because I swear I always laugh with her - as in always always. We make each other laugh. A lot of people do not make me laugh, at least not for the right reasons. When they do I follow them around until they get used to me and agree to be my friend. That's the deal here. So when I called Annett said, "Oh, hi, it's my GOTH FRIEND! I was going to call you and see what was wrong." She kids, she kids, but then when I said that I liked the embossed leaves at the top, she said, "Ghosts! They looked like ghosts!"

So you know, I went all perky with the butterflies, which I can stand because of those moody swirly things and a shade of warm red that makes me really happy. So there you go. Enjoy the warm fuzzy while it lasts. Soon I'll be back to my usual anger with a side of Diet Coke that makes me such a joy to be around.

I'm such a liar. ;)   

Inoculated

I've had my shots.

Apparently there are some health risks inherent in traveling to parts of the world you've never been to before. Yesterday I had to spend $150 on vaccinations for the (rapidly approaching, shoot me please I don't have time to travel 10,000 miles twice and still get all my shit done, help me oh God why am I doing this? Oh, right.) trip to Vietnam in March. I've already spent a zillion dollars on a new camera (Nikon D80, sorry there's been no birth announcement of THAT baby yet...I am such a blog slacker, but honestly I'm still making friends with it), and an expedited passport, and I still have to deal with the not-small issue of whether or not I'm going to buy a smaller laptop because taking my Macbook seems really, really stupid in addition to all the other very heavy stuff I'll be carrying.

Did I mention how frail I am? And also that said center of my universe Macbook is currently not working? That yesterday I plugged it in and it was all, "Haha, you expect me to work? Because you have no time for me not to? And that you might care that every ounce of information you need to conduct your life is inside this dark, hellish screen? HA! Way to take me for granted, stupid human."

If my cute little Apple Store genius man does not tell me in approximately one hour and 45 minutes that this is a result of a suddenly-faulty charger, please brace yourself world for the screams.

Seriously, I cannot freak, all the while I am currently freaking. But this was not supposed to be about that. Shots. Yes.

I went to the campus health center yesterday which houses an International Travel Clinic, all capitalized and shit, because we are a major four-year research institution. It was actually a fairly good experience as those go that involve getting stuck with needles. I waded through the sea of apparently rapidly expiring college students littering the waiting room, flu germs swimming in the air, to go to the second floor and meet with a real-live doctor. She told me I needed a Hepatitis A shot, a combo cocktail of "Tetanus/Diphtheria/Pertussis", and a series of typhoid vaccine pills. Pertussis is Whooping Cough, which apparently is making a comeback in adults who "haven't had boosters", in case you were fresh out of things to worry about this fine winter's day.

Me (because I must torture the people with my pressing need to know): What is WHOOPING cough?
Doctor: Well, it's an upper respiratory condition that results in a cough with a WHOOPING sound.
Evil voice inside my head: Well, YEAH.
Me (see above): I'm just not sure what WHOOPING sounds like. I remember my grandmother talking about it but no one I know has ever had it.
Doctor: I'm not sure I've heard it, because I'm an internist. The pediatrician here has seen cases. 
Me: Probably best to avoid it, regardless.

She also said that I need to acquire insect repellent that has at least 25 percent DEET, which will probably set me spinning because again, frail. (I just made myself laugh. Rock.) Also, she mentioned Immodium, and wrote me a prescription for Cipro, the anti-Anthrax drug, which you're supposed to take if Immodium doesn't work and you've somehow stumbled into the jaws of intestinal death.

There's really not a better way to feel all warm and fuzzy inside before noon than to have someone say things like, "Eat no fruit or salad" and "insect-borne diseases can be really serious so you need to take precautions." I have no idea what Hanoi will be like. I'm not afraid of it, not at all, but I have never traveled to Asia and much of what I read tells me to literally and figuratively fasten my seatbelt. It's really exciting, but I don't want to do anything stupid or get sick and ruin my time and more importantly my ability to work while I'm there. A good chunk my work for the semester will be based on what I do in Vietnam - pictures, footage, interviews. I have to be at full strength.

It's not like we're sleeping in the open air, it's a hotel that has a home on TripAdvisor and everything. But without going into too much nauseating detail, dude, I have the worst stomach in the WORLD right now. This is not an unusual circumstance, not at all, but I am a mess. It's quite possible that Vietnamese food and water will improve my situation. But 20 hours on a plane will not, so I'm actually looking to go on some kind of pre-trip gastric IronWoman training program or something. Google has so far not been forthcoming with that.

The shots weren't bad. I am the best little soldier, really, which is a result of having scalpels and needles wielded in my direction since I was six weeks old, I'm pretty sure. Seriously, you think this sense of humor is organic? Listen to doctors and nurses and admissions types ramble on for most of your formative years and you'll quickly learn to go to your own happy place.

The nurse yesterday told me to wiggle my toes, first on my right foot and then on my left, which I thought was some kind of accupressure technique for blood flow, but it turns out that there I go, complicating things AGAIN. After it was over she said that thinking about your toes takes the focus off the needle going in your arm. It could be the ADD, but I am completely capable of wiggling my toes while still directing the majority of my energy to the sharp thing puncturing my skin just a few feet north. Just sayin'.

She told me my arm would hurt from the tetanus, and it does.  I took one typhoid pill last night, and have to take three more on alternate days through the end of the week. That is a live vaccine in a capsule, and has to be refrigerated. It's a very involved process but it's kind of interesting, actually, to read about all the terrible things that can possibly befall you when you venture off of your continent.

I had terrible nightmares last night that I was in some kind of grave medical distress and my mother called an ambulance that somehow never came. Most dreams can currently be interpreted to reflect an unmet or rapidly approaching deadline, which is the current (due tomorrow! At least a draft!) story of my life. We leave for this trip in three weeks, and believe me I am really excited, and additionally a little bit overwhelmed. I'll just be relieved when we touch down in Hanoi, and not just because it's a 15 hour plane trip to Korea and then five more to Vietnam. I'm really ready to get this show on the road.

1st February

I just dropped my dog off at the vet and my heart is breaking and I am terrified, but after 24 hours of pacing and panting and post-seizure behavior that makes no damned sense to me, I am sleep-deprived like Britney Spears minus a paparazzi boyfriend to carry my big ass purse and triple venti latte, and I didn't feel like I could carry on with him here on my own for the rest of the day. I was up with him for most of the night, pointing him in the right direction when he got lost in the living room and massaging him with a wet washcloth (don't ask, the Internet told me to do it.) I know he's old and this has been going on for so long, but after the debacle in September I just don't think I can go through another mind-altering loss on my own.

So sad for Britney by the way. Sucks. I hope she gets some help, and I'm also so sick of the patronizing quotes from Federline on every possible webpage. I'm not even saying HE said them that way, because I don't know, but it's just the way the gossip pages - like, coughcough CNN and MSNBC entertainment? Not even the Enquirer cause I don't read that shit - skew things so misogynistically.

I didn't want to take Punkin in to the vet because I was afraid it would be too jarring to remove him from his familiar environment and occasionally when he could calm himself last night he'd come sit by me or I'd lay him on my chest (the heartbeat thing works for dogs like it does for people, very comforting) and he'd stop breathing so heavily. But it didn't last and this morning he was up and pacing again at 7 and wouldn't stop. I needed to ask for help from the vet because I need to mentally regroup plus CANNOT miss my multimedia class today. It's the first one and if I lose ground at the outset it just doesn't work. Plus I need to go buy bolt cutters at the Home Depot, as in a continuing string of crushing near misses and totally avoidable aggravations, my parents drove to Louisiana with the key to the old storage unit in the glove box...and I need to vacate the unit yesterday.

If there's a silver lining here, it's that by the end of the day I should be able to help you cut through metal to steal things. I am so ever-increasingly handy.

Some distractions, therefore? Sure, why not?

1. Speaking of Silver Linings, all in caps, Rilo Kiley's song of the same name is my current aural addiction. Oh man. Video here. I'm way partial to Jenny Lewis and gospel choirs...and hand claps and triangles.  What can I say? Love it.
 

2. Conversely, Sheryl Crow is on the Today Show. She's singing "Every Day Is a Winding Road," and she sounds absolutely terrible. Like scary bad. Superbad? Whatever. This is really upsetting me, because it is a day of upsets out of proportion to the stimulus (hi, really tired.) I've always been a Sheryl fan, have to say this is not one of my favorite tunes...if she was tired or her voice was worn out, I'd have said go with "My Favorite Mistake", but then again I'm not in charge of the world, including multimillionaire rockstars. Their bad. 

3. The remaining presidential candidates and their Muppet avatars. Go on. You really, really wanna.  Also, lol at John McCain and Ron Paul especially.

4. Maggie's found some awesome Valentines. Am partial to the Say Anything ones, of course, with I Want to Barack Your World a close second.

5. BlogHers rocked the Clinton/Obama debate last night in LA. There was much discussion (which helped to distract me from my dog freakout, but not enough) and I loved Erin Kotecki-Vest and Katy Chen's video work.   Blogging CAN be journalism and people who don't get it just don't get it.

6. New YogaBeans. A riot, as usual.

Okay, that's enough.  Oh, wait, except for this post, almost three years old now...the source of my eternal sidebar photo, which I always think about changing and then I don't. Maybe someday, but Wonderdog, indeed. I just wish it wasn't so hard sometimes, this whole loving people and animals thing.

How stupid ARE PEOPLE?

So I'm still dealing with the story that's slammed headfirst into DC-area news for the past month, about Banita Jacks, the woman who killed her daughters and lived with them in the house until the Federal marshals came in to evict her and found them all and she said the devil made them do it. Not her, them. This might lead to the conclusion that you even have to watch out for your mother, but I'm still more afraid of the devil I DON'T know.

That said, I do not have children, but if I did, I am ever more certain that I would never hire a stranger to watch my child. I've never been the type to think I'd say it, because I've always thought I'd be open to babysitters outside of my family if it was someone I trusted, but what the HELL?????

But after more questioning, police said Torres said Elijah was injured in a game in which she bundled him in a closed sleeping bag and she jogged through her apartment with the bag slung over her shoulder.

Going through one doorway, Torres lost her balance and the bag struck the door frame twice, police said. When she opened the bag, Elijah was pale and not breathing, according to the police report.

God bless you, Elijah, first of all, because this was not fair or right or just on any level, and this is why when people say "everything happens for a reason" to me it makes me want to smoke or drink heavily or lay inert on my couch watching Rock of Love marathons for the rest of my days, because EVERYTHING HAPPENS FOR A REASON, RIGHT? Who CARES? I'm watching Bret Michaels kiss 15 women for a REASON. Leave me alone.

It's just the wrong thing to say to me, as it is patently illogical. Sure it happens for a reason, but it needs to be amended. "Everything happens for a (sometimes shitty, totally nonsensical, overtly upsetting) reason." If my baby died in a sleeping bag because someone else was an idiot, if anyone mentioned anything about God's will or a reason to me, I'd probably be in jail, and the reason would be aggravated assault.

Anyway, this was NOT A GAME. Games are fun. Games do not involve you being shut up in something that makes you NOT ABLE TO BREATHE. Had she never heard of PLAY-DOH? GO FUCKING FISH? Sorry I'm yelling, but this little kid will never be ABLE TO YELL AGAIN. Consider it one for him.

This sucks and I don't know why this one stuck out for me amid the sea of bad news on MSNBC and CNN and in the local paper and everywhere else. But the thing is that I just do not understand grown people who don't have any possible level of sense or intellectual functioning, to the point that babies die because of it. It is quite possible, as the article stated, that this woman didn't mean to kill this child, and "initially lied about the boy's injuries because people would think she intentionally hurt the boy if she told the truth." Perhaps she is too stupid to have any idea that putting a baby in a BAG, and then swinging him AROUND, and JOGGING inside, is a bad idea, and therefore didn't have the capacity to reason. I don't know. I could never sit on the jury to decide it though, because I don't know how I'd be unbiased. Um, hi Ms. Torres. Let's have you climb into this bag right here, and I'm going to demonstrate how I throw you over my shoulder. Really hard. Like into a door jamb.

The story is also notable for this part, which interests me the journalist and not just me the hater of fools who kill children:

The arraignment was televised under a new state program designed to make the courts more open. It was believed to be the first arraignment in the state at which cameras were permitted. The state previously allowed cameras during a few criminal trials.

That is a big deal. Minuscule compared to the loss this family suffered, and the knowledge of how he died, but still notable.

I don't even know what to do anymore. But I do know it's the stuff you can never foresee that's the most frightening, which in and of itself isn't terribly comforting. And I also understand nanny cameras, totally. As opposed to surveillance as I've been in the past, I'd say it's a worthy investment because as the commercials blather on about, peoples' kids? Priceless.

Silly, stupid CONSTITUTION

Who thought it up, anyway? Like, what has it got to do with anything, really?

Don't worry - Mike Huckabee's got it under control.