Bitchy McBitcherson's Blog

Tag: being me

  • I Do Not “Love You Man”

    Tonight I took the dogs out to the backyard to go to the bathroom and have dinner, and discovered a can of Bud Light tossed into our yard. Because of the nature of access to our yard, the only two likely suspects are the landscaping crew that takes care of the neighborhood, and I have never seen them do anything like that, or friends of the teen aged girl next door. In the past when she has had parties people have thrown chewed gum into our yard. One actually has to make quite an effort to do that, because our yard is significantly above theirs. It cannot happen accidentally as they try to throw it to some spot in her yard.

    Now the woman who lives next door is, most days of the year, a very decent neighbor. She is friendly when appropriate. She leaves us alone most of the time. She never trims a tree that is on our property, but hanging over hers, without checking in with us first. She’s provided alcohol for our drinking pleasure on more than one occasion.

    She has two daughters, only one of whom still lives at home. The daughters do like to throw parties when Mom is away. I doubt that either of the people living next door is throwing shit into my backyard, but like it or not, people will judge you by the company you keep.

    Tonight, I am not thinking warm and happy thoughts about the neighbors.

    I do not fucking like shit to be thrown into my backyard. Not one little fucking bit.

    The fact you only run with people who drive disgustingly expensive fucking cars does not mean you have found people with class.

    Go out and find yourselves some friends with better manners and better taste. Bud Light is disgusting.

  • A Stroll Down Memory Lane

    Santa Claus

    When our daughter was 3 years old, we were out with friends of ours, a boy and his mom. We were walking past a Santa Claus set up, and he wanted to go chat with the santa. While he was up there, I asked her if she wanted to go too. She looked at me like I was nuts. “No,” she told me.

    He did his thing and came running back with a big grin, waving about a candy cane that the santa had given him (Come sit in my lap little boy. Do you want some candy?” See? Creepy). 

    She stared intently at the candy cane and looked back at me. “Now you want to go?” I asked.

    “Will you go with me?” she asked.

    “No,” I snorted, “but I’ll stand right here and watch.”

    She frowned, “Okay.” She approached the santa warily and stopped just out of arms reach. She stood there, unsure how it all worked.

    He ho ho ho’d and wanted to know what she wanted for Christmas.

    “Actually,” she said “we don’t celebrate Christmas.” (“Actually” was her favorite way to start a sentence from ages 2-4).

    The jolly act dropped from the santa’s face and he just looked at her perplexed. They stared at each other for a beat in silence. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

    “You gave my friend a candy cane,” she told the santa matter of factly. “Can I have one?”

    He smiled. This he could understand. He handed over a candy cane and she quickly made her way back to us.

    “Can I have part of the candy cane and save part for Daddy?” she asked, holding it up triumphantly.

    “Ask me after lunch,” I told her.

    The Tooth Fairy

    When she had her first loose tooth she came to me one day wanting to discuss The Tooth Fairy. I was a bit surprised. What was there to discuss? She wanted to know if The Tooth Fairy was real.

    *blink* *blink* 

    This was not a question I had been expecting. It wasn’t just that we didn’t tell her the Santa Claus and Easter Bunny myth, we had explained to her the nature of it, from the start. Yet here she was coming to me about The Tooth Fairy.

    “Well,” I asked, “Do YOU think The Tooth Fairy is real?”

    She paused for a moment and finally answered, “Yes.”

    Yes?!?!

    “Oh, um… why do you think that?” I inquired. I mean, really, why the fuck did she think that?

    “When Maiya loses a tooth, she puts it under her pillow and in the morning there is money,” she explained.

    “And who do you think put it there?” I asked hopefully.

    “The Tooth Fairy.”

    Let’s try this another way. “Does Maiya get things from Santa Claus and The Easter Bunny?”

    “Yes.”

    “Do you think Santa Claus and The Easter Bunny are real?” I asked, pretty certain that to this I’d at least get the response I was expecting.

    She laughs. “No!”

    “Okay, then who do you think gives her the things from Santa Claus and The Easter Bunny?”

    “Grandma.”

    “And who do you think leaves money under her pillow when she loses a tooth?” I asked hopefully.

    She told me, “The Tooth Fairy.”

    This stunning display of non-logic was, well, stunning to me. I was seeing my child in a whole new light, and I did not like it. I was sitting there, no doubt with my mouth hanging open, wondering about the details of the return policy and whether I had kept the receipt for her. I took a deep breath. “What makes you think that?”

    She leaned in very close to me and, quietly and slowly, she said something that sounded partialy like she was telling me a secret and a good deal like she was explaining something to a complete idiot, “I. just. think. it. might. be. fun.”

    Ah ha. I got it. She wasn’t an idiot. She wanted the fun of pretending, and better yet she wanted money under her pillow. “Oh. Okay.”

    So, we did The Tooth Fairy thing. I bought a bunch of books that were tooth related and when she’d lose a tooth and stuck it under her pillow, we’d take the tooth and leave a book and some coins. One time we could not find the tooth, it had slipped beyond reach. That time The Tooth Fairy left a letter explaining that regulation prevented her from leaving something if she could not find the tooth. She would get into trouble. The Tooth Fairy writes backwards, so it can be easily read in a mirror.

    She was right. It was sort of fun.

  • Holiday Songs

    I like to change the words to songs.  Here are a couple of examples.

    Santa Got Run Over By My Grandma
    Santa got run over by my grandma
    As she drove home from our house, Christmas Eve
    You may say there’s no such thing as Santa
    But as for me and State Farm, we believe

    He was moving much too slowly
    And there wasn’t room to pass
    So she threw it into third gear
    Floored the Porsche and drove it straight up Santa’s ass

    (up his ass, up his ass)
    When they found him Christmas morning
    There were tire tracks on his nuts
    And all the little reindeer
    Had identical marks upon their butts

    Santa got run over by my grandma
    As she drove home from our house, Christmas Eve
    You may say there’s no such thing as Santa
    But as for me and State Farm, we believe

    When Dasher’s antler forked poor Rudolph
    Boy that really must have throbbed
    But come on over to our house
    We’re all having venison shish ka bobs

    (shish ka bobs)

    Now Grandma doesn’t have her license
    ‘cuz they suspended it last year
    Using words like “speed” and “wreckless”
    And the letters D U I, or so I hear

    Santa got run over by my grandma
    As she drove home from our house, Christmas Eve
    You may say there’s no such thing as Santa
    But as for me and State Farm, we believe

    We are all so proud of Debbie**
    She’s been taking it so well
    She just wants to find my grandma
    Shoot her dead and send that ancient bitch to hell

    (straight to hell)
    It’s just not Christmas without Santa
    All the Elves are dressed in black
    They are sitting at the North Pole
    Playing cards, drinking beer and smoking crack

    Santa got run over by my grandma
    As she drove home from our house, Christmas Eve
    You may say there’s no such thing as Santa
    But as for me and State Farm, we believe

    It’s the little old lady from Pasadena
    Go Granny Go Granny Go Granny Go

    ** at the time a local radio commercial featured Mrs. Claus and revealed her name to be Debbie

    O Festivus

    O Festivus, O Festivus
    A celebration for the rest of us
    O Festivus, O Festivus
    For all the worst and best in us

    You need no tinsel to distract
    The ornaments, just leave them packed
    O Festivus, O Festivus
    And saving money is a plus

    We gather ’round a simple pole
    Lack of excess tis our goal
    O Festivus, O Festivus
    Aluminum, it does not rust

    We list the ways we’ve been let down
    Said with a smile or with a frown
    O Festivus, O Festivus
    No need for smalltalk to discuss

    Challenged to the feats of strength
    No need to show any restraint
    O Festivus, O Festivus
    Continued ’til there’s tears and fuss

    O Festivus, O Festivus
    Some pleasure doth thou bring us
    O Festivus, O Festivus
    Enjoyment for the rest of us

  • Yep, still typing

    This year marks the 12th Christmas we have not celebrated. We talked about it. We thought about it. We determined it was not providing us with the purported joy. We agreed. We decided. We quit. We told the people we felt we needed to.

    Our daughter is 11. She grew up not celebrating. While the concept of a child, and what I would teach them, was part of the decision, as a person she has been one of the difficult aspects of it. The feeling of being different, of not being normal, can be hard on a child. People like to poke at differences. They want to know why. They want the difference explained and defended, or *fixed*. They think they have the right to that.

    One December when she was 5 we went to get her picture taken at some crappy in store photo place. She was cute when she was 5 though, so any photos would do and the cheaper was much better for the wallet. A few reasonable sized photos, plus 200 little useless throw away ones so they could advertise a large bundle, for $4.99. It’s a long way from art, but it made my grandmother happy. The button pushing salesmonkey asked her what she was doing for Christmas and she shrugged and responded that we didn’t celebrate Christmas. Salesmonkey freaked out. “What do you mean?! What do you do?!” Salesmonkey stares at me wondering why my child is retarded and lying, “You do celebrate Christmas, don’t you? Why is she saying that?!” I shook my head. “Why not?!!!” Salesmonkey wailed. The kid was traumatized.

    A few weeks later, in January, we were at our favorite (at the time) sushi place. One of the chefs asked her what she had gotten for Christmas and she froze up. She did not want a repeat of the last scene. He asked again. She looked at me. He looked at me. Her behavior was quite odd. She was always extremely friendly with this chef and now it looked like she didn’t know how to speak. “We don’t celebrate Christmas,” I told him. He looked at her and smiled warmly, “Neither do I.” She beamed.

    One of the things that catches attention from certain people about not celebrating is the “not Christian” aspect. Most of the Christians we run into are used to being in the comfortable majority in the country. They’ve heard of the other big religions, but we don’t *look* (Muslim, Jewish, or one of them there “eastern religions”). This means we might be something else, something worse. I’m already long comfortable with the fact that in pretty much every aspect of my life, I am something worse, but this is another area that is harder on the kid.

    Like with most things, we couldn’t leave well enough alone, and we chose to homeschool. Now, most things about homeschooling are really wonderful, and we have some terrific friends who homeschool. However, there is a rather large sized portion of the homeschooling community who are not just “I was raised Christian, so I mark the Christian box” but are instead fervently Christian. We interact with these people at group events, classes, field trips, sports days and more. “What church do you go to?” is commonly asked within the first 5 sentences by many of these people. Now I cannot begin to give a rat’s ass about somebody who doesn’t want to talk to me anymore because I don’t go to church, I mean, really I am grateful if they are going to weed me out for that reason. Still a kid likes to have friends, and more than that. A kid does not like to be teased and bullied. Ever seen a 10 year old, and more than a foot taller, boy get physical with a 7 year old girl because when he asked if she believed in Jesus, she gave “In my family religion is personal and we don’t talk about it outside the home.”as her response? Well, I have.

    Over the years we’ve learned little tricks. Stick her in a Harry Potter t-shirt when going to an event with a new group. It keeps a certain element from even starting to interact with her. Avoid events from Thanksgiving through mid January. I don’t enjoy being out and about then anyway. We won’t lie, but why invite trouble, when it always shows up of its own accord. Yet here I am writing it out on LJ and posting it public. I asked her. None of those kids should be reading my posts anyway, but somebody might. Does she care? She said to post. At 11 she is obviously a lot more immune to the reactions on this subject than she was at 5.

    Things I have been called (not in jest) because I do not celebrate Christmas have included:

    • Grinch
    • Scrooge
    • smart
    • lucky
    • heathen
    • crazy
    • child abuser

    Yes, I’ve been told it is child abuse to not have her celebrate Christmas. Some people have cried actual tears upon hearing that we don’t celebrate.

    One relative lets their kids think we are Jewish so they don’t have to explain something else.

    My MIL quit giving us birthday gifts. Oh wait. She didn’t quit. She has become chronically late with them. She sends us gifts at Christmas, wrapped in Christmas paper and writes Happy Birthday on the cards. In case you are wondering, our birthdays are in July.

    Mainly people want to know what we DO instead. We don’t do anything specific. We are glad to have a day when people don’t tend to call, and we often accomplish stuff around the house and catch up on to do list stuff. The only thing that makes it different from other days is the fact that other people are busy celebrating it. If we eat out, we don’t have many options, but we’ve learned that we can usually find a Chinese restaurant open.

  • No Thanks

    It’s just not that magic to me.

    At 17 I got my first job in retail. Being trapped inside the mall for the entire holiday season, both the purchases and returns, was, let’s call it “unpleasant”. Working with the general public was not something I enjoyed on a normal day, but during the holiday season everything went to extra utter shit. The number of temper tantrums increased tenfold. There were people fighting with strangers over who was getting the last of some dumb piece of crap.

    Even on sale, it is an ugly damn sweater ladies. If you don’t both stop yanking at it you are going to ruin it, It will then be my job to damage it out, and since I already have more than enough to do today cleaning up after you fucks, it is really not going to make me happy. Merry Christmas.

    The closer it got to the big day, the longer my work hours and the shorter the shoppers’ tempers. Best of all, school was out for vacation so most shoppers were dragging along all form of snotty, fussing, writhing, complaining, demanding, brat with them.

    People could talk all they wanted about the magic of the season, but I saw what they were really like, and the overwhelming majority were not swept up in tides of joy, nor did they feel goodwill toward mankind. They felt aggravated, rushed, pressured, frantic, crazed and entitled. It was just like the rest of the year, only amplified. In my book giving some canned peaches to the food drive does not even out treating everyone at the mall like shit.

    Giftmas

    It all comes down to the gifts. I’m not opposed to giving gifts and I am not opposed to receiving them. I am a firm believer in the saying “It’s the thought that counts”, but I don’t interpret it the same way most people do. I do not think that just any gift will do because at least it shows they thought of you for a second. That is what a card or a phone call or an email is for. A gift shows what they are thinking of you, and if that thought is “Oh shit! I forgot to get you something and I really think I should because it is X day tomorrow. I was already in line when I realized this, but here is a random piece of crap set near the register lines for exactly this purpose.” I honestly don’t want it. I also really don’t want to give gifts like that.

    When I am out and about in the course of my life (or sitting on my ass surfing the web, as the case may be), and I stumble upon something that makes me think of a particular person, that is a gift worth considering. I don’t want to not buy it because there isn’t an X day until 9 months in the future. I don’t want to buy it and hide it in my cluttered closet for 10 months and find it after X day has passed.

    My father was never much of a gift giver, so when I was a teen I began to do the Christmas shopping from US. My action + his money, both names on the card. I’d start early and put thought into each and every gift, but I was a teen and not overly in touch with a lot of people on our list, so I probably had more misses than hits. As the time grew closer and I’d remember the people we’d left of the list, I would scramble to get *something*. I understand how it happens. I just hated the way it felt. If I didn’t know somebody well enough to buy a gift for them that they would actually like… If they weren’t on my mind enough that I remembered them when I put together the list… Why exactly should I be buying a present for them anyway? Because they were going to buy one for me? This was only of benefit to the retailers.

    This much is being spent on this person, so this much should be spent on that person. More expensive is *better*. They spent this much on me last year. The Christmas advertisements started at the beginning of November (they now start at the end of September is some stores). I was saturated with the commercialization of Christmas and I just wanted to wring it out. I did not feel holiday cheer, I felt holiday stress.

    This was what I was going to raise our family on? Yes, children LOVE Christmas. Children are selfish creatures. Humans are selfish creatures and the young ones have learned to hide it less. People pile tons of presents on them and that makes it an enjoyable holiday to them, and they want more. It wasn’t exactly a traditional I felt gung ho about passing on.

    If I am going to a person’s house for dinner, I bring along a bottle of wine or some other consumable I know they will actually use. If I am a house guest, I make sure to take them out to a nice meal. I am all for manners and thanking people by treating them to something. I’m just not that into providing a wrapped item because of a certain date on the calendar. I try to make sure the people I care about know it every day. If they need a certain amount of money spent on a certain date to know it, they probably don’t know me well enough that they should be expecting a gift from me anyhow. If I am going to attend a wedding or birthday party, then I will make a point of having a gift in time for the event, or I don’t attend. Like I said, I am not anti gift or anti manners. I just don’t want to be part of frenzied gift exchanges.

    None of the memorable gifts I have gotten showed up on Christmas. Many of my favorites showed up out of the blue, just because somebody happened to be thinking of me. It might be the gift giving season, but please, nothing for me.

  • I’ll Have a Hot Buttered Rum

    I am not Christian. I understand that a lot of people around the world celebrate Christmas as a secular holiday. Admittedly, I celebrated long after I realized I wasn’t Christian. Back when I decided to stop celebrating Christmas, I was still trying to achieve some sort of balance with certain factions of my blood relatives. They were very religious. It was an important holiday to them, and the secular celebration of it bothered them. I wanted to show some respect for their beliefs. I was planning to start a family of my own. I was trying to grasp what it was I was going to tell my child if I didn’t want to do the Jesus Christ’s birthday thing. I felt like it was more respectful of these relatives’ beliefs if I simply walked away from celebrating the holiday, rather than transforming it into a celebration of something that did fit into my world view better. In the intervening years I’ve gotten a far better picture of what those relatives, whose feelings I was worried about, really feel about me, and I am far less concerned now about trying to respect their beliefs. Still it did play a part in my decision.

    There is also a little thing oft referred to as family politics, as if regular politics weren’t ugly enough.

    My parents are divorced. They have been since I was very young. Where was I going for Christmas? Should I trade off every other year? Should I spend it with the one I wasn’t living with at the time? When I was a child they worked it out amongst themselves. If they argued about it, I was unaware or have blocked it out. I spent Christmas where I spent Christmas and probably got spoiled a little bit extra over the holidays because of it. I had fun with the people I was with. There were presents and twinkling lights, and a good many more sweets than I normally got to have. I missed the ones I wasn’t with. It was a “family holiday” and I was from a broken one.

    By the time I hit adolescence, the presents and the sweets mattered less to me. I was very aware I wasn’t Christian, although I wasn’t ready to tell people that yet. Instead I was trying to come to terms with this “Spirit of Christmas” or “Magic of Christmas” thing that people would go on about. It wasn’t what I saw. What I saw, was that the people who understood me, the people that I wanted to spend time with, were all stuck in a house with their relatives, while I was stuck in a house with my relatives. Yes, I was at that age when my peer group was becoming a stronger influence, than my parents. That was only part of it. I had also started to become a lot more aware of the various dynamics in the relationships around me, and I could see that I was not the only one who was not brimming with joy at every familial interaction. I was seeing things in the marriages of my relatives. I was hearing the exasperated tones. I noticed that people who rarely had a drink of alcohol had one for the holidays and that it was more a matter of dulling their senses than celebration. You shoved all the extendeds into one house together for a week and things got… tense. A game of Pictionary could end with somebody in tears, and I don’t mean one of the children. Once I was old enough to drive I would escape to spend time with my friends as soon as I could get away.

    When I met the person who would become my husband, it seemed inevitable that we would celebrate Christmas. We both always had. As we started to build our lives together we needed to sort out how we would celebrate the holiday as a family. As it happened, his parents divorced long ago too. So now we had 4 groups to choose from and no way to please everyone. It wasn’t just the basic 4 sets of our parents, we still had at least 1 grandparent living for each of those 4 parents.

    The first year we put up our own tree, which was fun and exciting. We got it for 5 bucks and had a lot of fun decorating. My mother bought us several very nice ornaments which was a gesture I really appreciate. We didn’t go visit her since she didn’t live locally. We had our own gift exchange at home, and we made some rounds to see the local friends and relatives.

    The next year my mother agreed to bring her family (both of my parents started new families after I was grown) to spend Christmas with us. I have to admit, this felt like a milestone. My mother and her family travelling to spend the holiday with us told me she believed I was a grown up, that she accepted my relationship, and knew I was really establishing my own household. It meant a lot to me. We got ourselves another 5 buck tree and decorated it. I planned my dinner menu (centered around a lamb roast). It would be our first Christmas that we were hosting. We also invited his mother and her husband. They said they would come. We did not invite my father over, who was also local. He had recently married a Buddhist they were still sorting out the Christmas thing. (I think now they celebrate it when they were spending it with my grandparents, and don’t otherwise, but I’m not certain. We have more interesting things to talk about.) This worked out better for us since we had a small apartment. On Christmas his mother didn’t call and didn’t show up. We waited a while and finally he called over to see when she’d be arriving, and she told him that she wasn’t feeling well.

    The next day we found out she was pissed off and offended that we were arrogant enough to think we could host our own Christmas. She had not gotten to have her own Christmas until she was married and had a child, and her son should come to her house for Christmas. The fact we had out of town guests did not figure into it. They were my guests.

    It became a bit of a thing, and she wouldn’t give us our gifts (including those by other people that were sent to her address) until we came to her house. At this point we were irritated and in the midst of a solidly petty and immature reaction ourselves, so we avoided going to her house completely. We’d meet for breakfast out at restaurants. It was many months until we ended up at and her house and got those gifts. Some were baked goods which were far from fresh at that point. Ghost of Christmas Past Shortbread Cookies, made with real butter and quite rancid.

    The whole thing left a bad taste in my mouth, literally and figuratively. To top it off, between the general stress of the season and the overwhelming workload of college life, we left the tree up long beyond the point of no return. We had managed to put the ornaments away, but once you pass the time that the garbage people will collect it on trash day, it became an effort to get rid of it. We didn’t have a truck to take it to the dump ourselves, and we were expending a lot of effort in a lot of other areas of our lives. The needles dried and many fell. The tree began to look much like a giant sized Charlie Brown tree. It stood as a reminder. When we got rid of it (way before we got those gifts, mind you) we knew it would be our last real tree. Before the next Christmas came along we’d already gotten the rest of the way through our decision making process. That was the last Christmas that we celebrated. It wasn’t particularly terrible. There were plenty of good parts to it. There just wasn’t the sort of personal meaning I was looking for.

  • Post 1 of The Things I Like Series

    Having been raised to give some serious respect to Thumper’s Rule, I spend a lot of time silent. People who know me a little might be shocked to hear that, because I certainly don’t seem shy about complaining. People who know me well realize I keep much more of my rampant disgust and dissatisfaction to myself.

    So, I thought I’d try some posts about things that I actually like.

    But first, I’ll start with the negative.

    I have the shittiest luck in movie theaters. I can go to a matinee show of a film that has been in theaters for 8 weeks, and I will still have a shitty experience. When I go to the movie theater, one of the following will occur:

    • people will bring their 4 children ranging from infant to 8 years old to see an R-rated movie and let them run around screaming the whole time
    • people will let their child sit behind me and kick my seat the entire movie
    • people will answer their cell phone and talk to the person during the movie “nothing… just watching this dumb movie”
    • people will make-out stretched across the seats with their head almost in my lap
    • people will have belching contests and laugh hysterically at how cool they are
    • people will have blue flame contests and laugh hysterically at how cool they are
    • people will change their baby’s shitty diaper seat next to me and then leave the diaper sitting there
    • people who get off on violent rape scenes will sit next to me and become extremely and noisily excited during them
    • people will threaten to kill me because I ask them to be quiet
    • people will vomit and just continue sitting there
    • people will leave their young, unruly, poorly behaved, unsupervised, rude, snotty (usually literally) children to watch the film I am seeing, and go watch a different movie themselves

    Often, more than one of them occurs.

    It isn’t that I hate movie theaters, just people.

    Because movie theaters don’t work well for me, we use Netflix, and I find it a reasonably painless way to rent movies. Prior to Netflix, I hadn’t rented a movie in at least five years and was instead supplying any film watching desires with an out of control DVD purchasing addiction. Netflix did a lot to help soften the addiction. What is with the rating system though? 5 stars? Who can make any meaningful rating and comparison of a movie with a measly 5 stars. I need at least 10, and I really want at least 20 points on the rating curve to measure things effectively.

    They only give me 5 though, which makes some of my ratings come out a bit odd. There is always the quality factor to consider, as well as the enjoyment factor. Plus, how difficult am I to please in a particular genre? If I tend to hate movies in a genre and then enjoy one, it deserves a different boost to its rating than a movie that has everything going for it as far as my personal taste is concerned and yet only manages to not be disappointing. Even though at the end of the day I might think the second movie is better.

    Favorite is too strong of statement and I don’t use it often. I can’t even imaging trying to narrow it down to a favorite movie. I am just going to list a random 5 (not in order, nor necessarily the top 5) by genre, that I gave 5 Netflix stars to.

    Foreign: La Femme Nikita, Cinema Paradiso, The Wedding Banquet, Battle Royale, Amelie

    Animated: Bambi, My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki’s Delivery Service, Nightmare Before Christmas, The Iron Giant

    Comedy: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Heathers, Swingers, Dazed and Confused, Bring It On

    Drama: Dangerous Liaisons, The Shawshank Redemption, Dogfight, I Am Sam, Dead Poets Society

    Horror: Nightbreed, Scream, An American Werewolf in London, The Lost Boys, Something Wicked This Way Comes

    Action/Adventure: Thelma and Louise, Die Hard, Indiana Jones, War Games, Young Guns

    Thriller: Killing Zoe, Falling Down, The Usual Suspects, Death and the Maiden, Closet Land

    Romance: Garden State, The Man in the Moon, Before Sunset, Say Anything, Sliding Doors

    Sci-Fi/Fantasy: Serenity, Empire Strikes Back, Blade Runner, Highlander, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow

    So there, some things that I liked in some fashion for a wide range of reasons I am not going to detail out.

  • Another step toward becoming a hermit, on a mountain… with a shotgun (and internet access)

    We were running out of things we needed, important things, like dog food. Since I know that if we go too long without dog food, we’ll become the food, I forced myself to go to the grocery store.

    I had forgotten to make a list, so the shopping experience took longer and was more frustrating than usual, except in many ways that is the usual. I even knocked an item off the shelf and broke it, creating a mess. “Clean up on aisle 13!” I was finally ready to checkout, and there was only one line open. There were 10 people ahead of me (but some were together), and as I waited 3 more people joined the line behind me. People were getting antsy.

    The Assistant Manager spoke to the cashier and then walked over to another lane. As the cashier informed the people in our line that another check stand would be opening, an older woman walked up with her cart to where the AM was getting signed in to the register. The AM had not turned on the light. The older woman asked, “Are you open?” Obviously she thought we were all stupid. Of course the line was open, but we couldn’t be bothered to ask and just preferred to queue up with more than a dozen other people. The AM pointed toward our long line and told her, “I’ll be opening up, but I’ll be taking the next person in line.”

    The older woman huffed and muttered something under her breath.

    Meanwhile, in the line I am waiting in, everybody looks at each other to determine who is splitting off and who is staying. The next person in line already had her items on the belt. The people behind her decided to peel off for the new lane. This was a group of six people who were all there together, but paying separately. They only had four items between them. The person directly in front of me elected to stay in line, so I went to the new line and one person behind me followed.

    The older woman was pissed. She grumbled her way over to the first line I had been in, at exactly the place she would have been had she got into line to start with, complaining the whole way about “people cutting in front of her”. When she got up to the cashier she asked who was in charge, and the cashier pointed to the AM. This angered the older woman even more. The AM is trying to answer her angry accusations from the other lane, which slows her considerably in getting through my order.

    This allowed the older woman to finish checking out before me. She then came over and started complaining up close and personal to the AM. The AM was trying to finish ringing me up, but the older woman kept interrupting her. She wanted the manager’s name and phone number and the AM told her it was printed on the bottom of her receipt. The older woman insisted that the AM write it down for her and write down her own name. The AM finished helping me first, enraging the customer further. Essentially she was pissed off because she thought that the AM should have only taken one person from the other line, and then allowed her to be second. She said the AM had treated her badly by saying she was “taking the next person in line” but then taking more than one per person from the line. Absolutely nobody had gotten checked out ahead of her who hadn’t already been in line when she came up to the front of the store. Not only that but all her arguing meant that two people finished AFTER she did. She didn’t even seem to be in much of a hurry, since she was still hanging out to gripe long after her own transaction was complete.

    I checked over my receipt until MrsGrumpyBritches finally stomped and muttered her way out the door, and then I gave the AM my business card and told her that if manager had any questions, she could call me.

    I try to avoid leaving my house, it rarely works out well for me. Stupid dogs.

  • a northern zodiacal constellation between Gemini and Leo

    I don’t have a thyroid. When I was born, I had one, but in 2002 some guy surgically removed it because:
    It was the size of a grapefruit.
    I couldn’t breathe.
    And oh, I had cancer.

    In about 2.5 more years if it doesn’t reoccur I can answer “no” on the cancer question for medical insurance. For right now, I can’t get medical insurance unless it is through an employer group policy.

    I have had very very VERY bad luck with doctors ever since I moved to California. That is a whole other completely traumatic story that I won’t bother going into at this time, but it has to do with the dark times. Things went very wrong soon after moving here, and a large part of it was directly caused by the doctors I was dealing with. I developed a serious distrust and dislike for doctors and I still try to avoid them. The only one I found the entire time I have lived in California that I actually liked, moved out of the state. It is made all the more unfortunate because, with this whole thyroid thing, I am now forced to see a doctor minimum once a year, or I can’t get the meds I need to stay alive. I should see them more often, but that is easier said than done.

    By 2001, which was a few years post dark time, we never saw doctors unless we were concerned a part might fall off or that we might die. Neither of those concerns happened often, so we mainly just didn’t go.

    In 1999 we had been forced to switch to a new insurance provider when the company downsized and limited benefits. The new insurance provider assigned us to a primary care physician. We never went. Then one day in 2001 we were getting out of the car and my daughter shut the door on her finger. The door CLOSED. I had to reopen it to free her. Her finger did not look good. This was one of those times where I was concerned that a part might fall off. I called the family practitioner we were assigned to, the one who had been getting monthly payments from the insurance company for each of us. I wanted to get her an appointment. They refused to see her, because they “Don’t see patients her age.” I called to yell at the insurance company and they randomly switched us to another doctor (effective the following month).

    In the fall of 2001 I was feeling generally rundown and having lots of mini-illnesses. I just was not normal. Then I came down with a horrible respiratory infection, along with a really bad sore throat and all of my glands swelled up. I was puffy. I was horribly stiff. I felt like I couldn’t breathe or swallow. Eventually the swelling from my lymph nodes went away. At which point it became extremely noticeable that my thyroid (which had been enlarged for many years and I’d been through many discussions with doctors about it) had gotten much more enlarged. It was ridiculously large. It was not something one needed to feel, it was visible. There was an alien lump growing in my neck. The alien that didn’t want to let me breathe was starting to seem like an “I might die” situation, so I went to see this random doctor that our insurance provider had selected. She was condescending. She wanted to put me on antibiotics even though she could not name a part that she felt there was a bacterial infection of (I was already done with the respiratory thing, I just had the strangling alien). She drew blood to run some tests. She was sure she knew what it was though. “It is obvious.” She told me. She sent me on my way and told me they would contact me with the test results, and get things fixed.

    They didn’t.

    I called multiple times and finally, more than a month later, somebody called me back to tell me that the reason they never called was because the test results were all normal, and I was fine. I told them that I was not fine, and they needed to refer me to a specialist. They repeated that they had performed the blood tests and it showed everything was normal. I was fine. I had nothing to worry about. I continued to contradict them and kept explaining that I was obviously NOT FINE. They eventually got me off the phone by saying that they would submit the request for a specialist for insurance approval.

    In the meantime the end of the year was approaching and we had elected to switch insurance during the last open enrollment period because I was suspecting that this would go poorly. The first doctor never did get back to me, but in January, with the new insurance rules, I self-referred to a specialist. I went in with all my notes and papers because there had been suspicious things about my thyroid for over a decade, but there were always other medical things that were more pressing to deal with, so doctors would put it off to look at more closely later. I told him my story, and he kept shaking his head and asking me to clarify things about the most recent doctor. He couldn’t believe that she had tried to run tests themselves instead of referring me to a specialist immediately. My thyroid at this point was so enlarged that it was interfering significantly with my breathing and swallowing. It was physically uncomfortable. Shirts had to be loose, necklaces were not an option. My neck felt claustrophobic and I walked around always feeling like I was right on the verge of a complete panic attack.

    He sent me in for an ultrasound, which was inconclusive. We discussed my options and eventually decided that I should just have it removed, that going in to do a biopsy first did not make sense. Sure we might find out it was cancer, but we could find out after it was removed too. It wasn’t going to get any smaller, and I was having trouble breathing.

    He referred me to a surgeon. I called to make an appointment and they wouldn’t see me for TWO MONTHS for the consultation. I tried to explain how bad I was feeling but they told me it was the first available appointment. I asked repeatedly to be called if there were cancellations and I called the specialist back to ask them to nudge the surgeons office. Two months passed with me feeling worse each day. On the day before my scheduled consultation, the surgeon’s office called to tell me that they had to cancel. They did not know when the doctor would be available to see me again, so they suggested I find a different surgeon. They didn’t even apologize.

    I called the specialist back and he gave me another surgeon’s name, but that surgeon wasn’t on my insurance. My specialist did not know of another surgeon that he felt he could personally recommend. I was on my own for finding a surgeon. Don’t forget I am ill, having panic attacks because I cannot breathe properly, and I have a serious distrust of doctors. Life was fun.

    Honestly, I got horribly depressed and did nothing for a while. In the meantime we were out for Chinese food and I got a fortune cookie that said “Any arrangements you make are likely to be your final.” I felt horrible. I wasn’t getting enough sleep, because I was never comfortable. I wasn’t getting my work done. I was miserable and felt hopeless.

    Finally when support wasn’t working, my husband and my mother moved on to harassment and bribes. I eventually managed to find three surgeons who specialized in the kind of surgery I needed and were covered by my insurance. One I ruled out because he was in his 70s, and while it was impressive that he was still operating, I decided that I didn’t want him to operate on me. Of the other two, one was actually willing to see me within 2 weeks. We went for a consultation and didn’t hate him, so we scheduled the surgery. He looked like Stanley Tucci. More like a Murder One Stanley Tucci than A Midsummer Night’s Dream Stanley Tucci, which is too bad, because Puck, The Surgeon would have been a lot more entertaining.

    The surgery went well enough. Being in the hospital is horrible, but there are definitely worse hospitals to be stuck in than Cedars. Stanley Tucci removed my gigantic thyroid. My pathology report was the single most disgusting thing I have ever read. The results of which were that they found cancer. The malignancy was encapsulated in other disgustingly described abnormal tissue. It had not spread.

    After a lot of discussion we decided against doing radiation treatment. We are able to monitor the growth of any new thyroid tissue (which might indicate a return of the cancer) through blood tests. I have to take (right now 3) pills everyday to make up for the missing thyroid. However it doesn’t just stay the same forever. Over time my levels change and I have go have blood tests and change my meds. Symptoms when things are going wrong one way or another, include depression, memory loss, hair loss (head and eyebrows), inability to handle stress, inability to focus, exhaustion, heart palpitations, being too cold, being too hot, having insomnia, having high blood pressure, having elevated cholesterol, getting muscle cramps. Of course all of these symptoms can be from other things too. It gets aggravating.

    When it comes down to it, I had cancer. It is something I think about often, even though I don’t talk about it that much. My body was making new cells to replace old cells, like it usually does, and as happens now and then, it created a mistake. Then instead of realizing it and getting rid of it, my body just decided it would make more. The cells nearby harbored it and kept it safe. I didn’t catch a disease from somebody. I didn’t have an accident. My body just decided to play a very nasty, very personal, joke on ME. “If you have to get cancer, thyroid cancer is the best kind to get.” You have no idea how many people, especially doctors, have said that to me. Fuck you, and the horse you rode in on. That doesn’t make me feel any better. I get it. I’m lucky. It could be worse. Things usually can be.

    The thing is, I know now that my body can make cancer, and that isn’t something I seem to be able to just forget about. What if next time the cells that mutiny aren’t in “one of the best places to get cancer”? I’m not talking about science, or statistics. I am talking about how I feel.

    In August of 2005 I started having a lot of unpleasant symptoms. I felt horrible. I was tired, depressed and having seriously horrific leg cramps in one leg. It was bad. The muscles would cramp and lock up so my foot and leg were deformed and it wouldn’t let go and I’d be screaming in pain. In a pretty short stretch of time I developed a very large mass in my thigh. I called my thyroid guy, because he was the only doctor I had spoken to in years, and he told me I really needed to have it looked at, sooner rather than later. I was afraid he was going to say that.

    He set me up with a guy in his building and that guy spent about 2 minutes with me before telling me he thought I should have it removed. Soon. A couple days soon.

    So, I did. It was big. Five inches diameter. Yuck. Turned out to be benign. I still have some numbness from the pressure it was putting on a nerve. I also have, yet another, fancy scar.

    So yeah, the fact I had cancer, it sticks with me. It runs through my brain every now and then.

    And don’t think that the idea I might have passed some foul little ticking time bomb on to my daughter hasn’t crossed my mind. Yeah, that thought runs through my brain too.

    Main Entry: canïcer
    Pronunciation: ‘kan(t)-s&r
    Function: noun
    Etymology: Middle English, from Latin (genitive Cancri), literally, crab; akin to Greek karkinos crab, cancer
    1 capitalized a : a northern zodiacal constellation between Gemini and Leo b (1) : the 4th sign of the zodiac in astrology — see ZODIAC table (2) : one born under the sign of Cancer
    2 [Latin, crab, cancer] a : a malignant tumor of potentially unlimited growth that expands locally by invasion and systemically by metastasis b : an abnormal bodily state marked by such tumors
    3 : something evil or malignant that spreads destructively
    4 a : an enlarged tumorlike plant growth (as that of crown gall) b : a plant disease marked by such growths
    – canïcerïous /’kan(t)s-r&s, ‘kan(t)-s&-/ adjective
    – canïcerïousïly adverb

  • How annoyed am I?

    One would not be incorrect to describe me as easily annoyed. The other day when discussing something that annoys me, I claimed that it was “1 of 3,584,394,031 things that irritated me”. As I consider the size of that number, I wonder if it is actually possible, given the finite (but unknown) number of total minutes in my life, whether that many things could actually annoy me before I drop.

    Alright, so with a fair amount of rounding thrown in for a variety of reasons, lets see what I can work out. I am going to base my calculation for the number of days during which I could experience potential annoyances at about 12,500, so far. I’ve rounded down because I figure that when I was very, very young, I was not annoyed nearly as often as I am now. I could be wrong in that assumption. Really, one of my very earliest solid memories (where I am certain it is MY memory and not my memory based on a story I’ve heard from relatives over and over), is, actually, of being annoyed. I was annoyed by how it felt to walk in footy pajamas and a diaper. I know that I was three, or less, years old at the time, because of the house I was in.

    I sleep on average 6 hours a night, which according to my complicated calculations, means I spend 18 hours a day awake. I believe I am annoyed more often while awake than I am while asleep, dreams aside. I am annoyed more often when I am out in public than when I am sitting by myself. However, at home I am more likely to read the news (or worse yet, randomly surf) than while I am out, and that invariable annoys me quite a lot. Therefore I do not think I need to make adjustments based on the number of days I stay at home versus going out. This gives me about 225,000 waking hours up to this point.

    I think a conservative estimate would have me annoyed by something, on average, twice per hour. This obviously does not include the times I am full on pissed off, much less the times I am furious. We are talking, annoyed, irritated, peeved, vexed- the minors. This estimate would be much higher if I hadn’t spent so many hours of my life reading fiction for pleasure. Once immersed in a book, I can tune out a great many things. At twice per hour, that takes us to approximately 450,000 annoyances. Now these would all be unique occurrences, however they would not have to be unique reasons. If it annoys me today, there is a good chance the exact same thing will annoy me tomorrow. If it happens often enough, it may graduate to infuriating me.

    Typically my feeling of annoyance lasts somewhere between a half second and forever, but I think it most often lasts around 2 minutes. This would mean I’ve spent around 15000 hours of my life annoyed, or more than a year and a half. However that did not take into account PMS, which I figure increases the number of times I am annoyed by around 2.5 times during the offending period (pun implied but not intended), or another 375 hours, bringing me to 15375 hour, or more than 1.75 years.

    Is this a lot? I have no idea, not having another personality (that I am aware of) by which to judge things. No, I do not experience black outs or time loss, thank you very much. However, I am now wondering if you reading this is annoying me. It probably is.