Am I nuts? Well, I talk to myself…

Note to the person at Bowling Green University: Please include your name and email address in your next email message. I can’t reply to you if I don’t know who you are, and I don’t like one-way conversations. Oh hell, now I’m crabby and I can’t remember what I was going to talk about. Ahem. I typed that in and then sat here and did this highly annoying thing I’m starting to do every time I don’t know what I want to do next: clean cat hair off of the keyboard. Sometimes if I’m really stuck I find my crochet hook, the tip of which is approximately as big as the tip of a ballpoint pen, and start rooting around between the keys themselves to get the cat hair out. Like that isn’t weird enough, there’s also this talking-to-myself thing. I’ve always talked to myself, but now I’m starting to do it and not notice until I’m halfway through a sentence and realize one of the cats is looking at me expectantly. “Yes? You were saying? Say something more interesting. Say something that includes the words ‘treat’ ‘wet food’ and/or ‘cuddles’. Better yet, why don’t we just go into the kitchen and find something yummy to eat without all this chit-chat?” Every once in awhile I’ll be walking around with my walkman on and mutter something like, “Yes, go ahead and take the garbage out tomorrow morning, that’ll work out perfectly,” but as far as I know there hasn’t been anyone within hearing distance. Yet.

I’ve been having a wonderful time reading your responses to my question about men and childbirth, please do keep sending them in. These are the ones I’ve been given permission to quote:

Am I envious of being able to be pregnant? No, not really. I have heard many times various people say that all males are jealous, a generalisation of the worst sort if you ask me. While I can’t physically have a child I do know that, when and if I decide to have children, I have just as important a role to play as the father. Studies have been increasingly finding that the presence of a father is just as crucial a role as the mother, albeit seemingly in more subtle and less obvious ways.

Besides, I am far more envious of not having wings to actually have time to be envious of being pregnant. :)

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pregnancy stuff.
of which i have intimate knowledge.
hmm.

1- i have no desire to be pregnant. my wife is 7 months right now. she’s not entirely happy over it. she is quite large, and no longer cares to be so large. Me ‘having’ a baby never entered my mind, ever. Just like, I’m never going to be Chinese. why should I care?

2-as to the time when baby Wendy (for that is her name) decides to come out, I have decided for a Traditional Male approach. I shall smoke cigarettes in the lobby and read National Geographics from 1979. Like the men of old. (1950’s, that is) Really, these idiots who bring their camcorders in to record every moment of childbirth, like, you’re gonna want a video record of a bloody lump of flesh ripped from your wife’s tender vittles, I mean that would turn you off sex for forever…

Really though, i’ll be in the room, but we have already decided that an epidural from the neck down is definitely the way to go. Any one who wants ‘natural’ childbirth deserves a nice 4 inch episiotomy scar…i refuse to see my wife in pain.

Do think a ‘man’ would want ‘natural’ childbirth? Well, maybe if you were the Marlboro Man, or Charles Bronson (grrr!), but regular guys would be medicated to the gills! We’d be all fucked up on Scotch and codeine and demanding that the birthing room TV be turned on to ESPN2…

my baby is going to be here in 6 weeks and i’m not ready. i don’t know if i ever will be. it’s scary. i don’t even know to take care of a baby. its gonna be hard.

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Okay, you asked for some male thoughts/experiences/viewpoints on childbirth… Here’s one father’s view…

My oldest child was born in 1968, back in the days when, other than his obligatory involvement in the process of initiating the pregnancy, the paternal portion of childbirth consisted of driving the mom-to-be to the hospital, signing paperwork at admissions, pacing in the waiting room, looking at the new baby through a window, signing more paperwork a few days later, and driving mom and child home.

There had been incredible changes by 1982 when my daughter was born. My wife and I went to Lamaze class and practiced breathing exercises, etc. Our hospital was just completing a new birthing center to replace the old-fashioned maternity ward and we were afraid that the baby would be ready before the birthing center was completed.

Well, we were one of the first couples to use the new birthing center. Our room looked more like an upscale motel room than a hospital room (if you ignored various pieces of hospital hardware, etc.) and was very pleasant. Of course, after several hours of labor my wife couldn’t have cared if we were on the hospital loading dock, if only the baby would get born.

We had arrived at the hospital well before dawn and as the morning progressed the labor didn’t. Nancy was having contractions, but the staff wasn’t impressed (”Hmmm, only six centimeters dilated, tsk, tsk” kind of stuff)

Breakfast had been offered and refused. Later on lunch was also sent away. Nancy had no interest in food. I was quite interested in food but the thought of food made her feel ill, she didn’t want to see me eat, but she also didn’t want me to leave the room. We had goofed on one of the key instructions from Lamaze class: we had failed to pack any snacks in the bag we had brought. I probably could have gobbled down a quick candy bar. Thus, a lesson to future fathers-to-be: pack snacks. I subsisted on black coffee and a few lollipops.

Eventually they hooked her up to a IV for fluids and glucose & drugs to enhance contractions. Then she had to be hooked up to a fetal monitor, which meant she was now confined to bed. Then the doctor thought he could speed things along by breaking her water.

The afternoon passed. Through the open door I could see the staff eating dinner at the nurse’s station. They didn’t even bother to offer anything by that time. And by this time Nancy is far beyond thoughts of some idyllic natural childbirth; she is saying give me drugs, knock me out, stop this pain.

That evening the doctor said that labor had been going on for too long, that too many hours had passed since her water broke (had been broken by them) which raised risk of infection, etc. He advised a C-section. Yes, cried my wife, yes, anything, just knock me out NOW!

Because it was considered an emergency C-section they would not allow me into the operating room. The operation was successful, healthy baby girl, wife is fine, she is still knocked out, she’ll be in the recovery room soon. A nurse guided me to see my daughter and then gave me a very funny look when I implored her on the way back to the recovery room to please please please guide me to the locker where my clothing was (I was wearing hospital scrubs) so I could get some change for the vending machines. I was ready to kill for a candy bar. (It was around ten pm and I had not eaten since yesterday.)

Three years later, when Nancy and I were going to have another baby, we were determined not be be caught up in traditional male dominated hospital institutional birthing. We were convinced that a more natural non-interventional process would have allowed a normal deliver without surgery. So we found a female ob-gyn, one whose own children had been delivered by C-section and who said she wished she had had an option and who was willing to attempt vaginal delivery. (There was considerable prejudice against this; the slogan was “once a C-section, always a C-section”)

We also attended VBAC classes (Vaginal Birth After Caesarian) given by a pair of nurse-midwives. These classes rotated meeting at participant’s homes. We studied and practiced Lamaze & other techniques, learned about natural childbirth & nutrition, etc. etc.

We lived just a couple blocks from our hospital. Our plan was to have natural childbirth at home attended by a nurse-midwife and then to call the doctor and say “Oops, the baby just popped out at home, would you care to stop by?” Now this was very illegal in New York State at this time… These nurse-midwives could not legally attend births without a doctor’s supervision & they risked fines, jail, and loss of license. We were prepared to state that they were not there or that they just happened to stop by at the right moment.

So when Nancy went into labor our living room became a birthing center. (My 1968-vintage son had moved in with us the previous year; when he saw what was going on he elected to visit his mom for a couple of days.) There were two nurse-midwives, a certified nurse/birthing coach, and an apprentice birthing coach settled in to help us. Two of them were nursing mothers who had their children with them. This was a very warm female/feminist scene.

I spent sometime just holding Nancy’s hand and helping with breathing exercises, sometimes fixing meals, sometimes playing with our daughter (who was having a great time with so many women there plus other kids to play with).

And the afternoon became evening which became night which became morning which became afternoon… yeah, you get the point, a long protracted labor, insufficient dialation… Finally, at the nurse-midwives’ insistence, Nancy called her ob-gyn to tell her she was in labor.

It is now evening, we are in the hospital, Nancy has been in labor more than 30 hours, but her doctor thinks it has only been since mid-afternoon. Nancy is at the point of just wanting to be knocked out but her doctor knows how important a vaginal delivery is to her and so she is encouraging her to hang in there & keep trying!

There is a medical student there and I began to realize that the doctor is saying upbeat encouraging things to Nancy but sometimes she adds to the student something like “that’s true, you know” when it is something less than encouraging. She has also ordered an operating room to be ready for a C-section (”just in case”) but when told the anesthesiologist, etc. would be on stand-by she insisted that she wanted them in the OR and ready to go.

She said “One last try, come on, you can do it, push!” and then she said she didn’t like the pressure the baby was putting on the earlier incision and it was time for a C-section and off they went, this short Indian woman doctor running along side the gurney as they rushed off to the operating room. Once again I was not allowed in the OR because it was an emergency operation. (They don’t like fathers freaking out or passing out, etc.) This time, having the doctor’s support, I was able to hold my son when he was just minutes old (with a nurse lamenting that I wouldn’t even let her clean him up before I held him)… and in the morning our daughter was able to come into Nancy’s room and hold her new baby brother. (And even a three-year-old could see a logical problem in her being allowed in the room all day, but during visiting hours she had to stay in the waiting room because no visitors under 12 were allowed!)

(A few years later I underwent surgery to repair a hernia and so I got to experience a little bit of what it must be like to be sliced open and stitched back up for a C-section. It was not fun.)

Well, you asked for comments on childbirth from a father’s point of view… but I’d bet you didn’t expect to receive such a long-winded rambling missive (…uh, on the other hand, you have seen how I can babble on & on so maybe you did expect this).

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frankly, i’d rather pull out all my teeth than give birth, from what i’ve seen; i have all the maternal/paternal instincts of a patch of slime mould, and no, i’ve never ever ever felt like i’m missing out on something. oh, and if my life partner were in the hospital giving birth, i’d have to be in some sort of alternate universe, considering that my life partner’s views are similar to my own, and so i don’t rully know what i’d do.

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How shall I put this….

I think “Are you NUTS?!?” sums it up nicely :)

*grin*

Of course, you didn’t really mean to say “all men”, did you? :)

that’s why it’s called a one-person papasan, fools

The other night we were lying on the futon with the lights off and… Well, to get the full picture you have to understand what this futon looks like. The second month we were together we were making plans to move from the old Victorian we were sharing with four other people to a different state and our own apartment. We literally had almost nothing; I had the clothes I’d brought with me from Missouri and Todd had a stereo, books, and his own clothes. That was it. So we drove down to the futon store and picked out a futon and brought it back, and took it with us when we moved. The first night in our new studio apartment found us with: a Dominos pizza delivery box, plastic bags of clothes, a one-person papasan chair (which we later broke by trying to sit together in it), a stereo, a very old tv, an even older dinette set (both of which his parents gave us), and the futon mattress. The entire year we lived in that apartment we were tickled by the idea that it was going to be the setting of our “first year together” stories — the way couples who have been together forever always have stories about how they lived in a one-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn, and it was always hot, and they survived on macaroni and cheese when they didn’t have any money.

I’m a bit distracted; I’m trying very hard to listen to the cd I borrowed two days ago from the library without bursting into tears. The cd is called Te Deum, and right now I’m listening to the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir sing (i.e. emit wondrous amazing can’t-possibly-be-human sounds) with the Tallinn Chamber Orchestra in the background. Awestruck is not an exaggeration of the way I feel when I hear music like this.

Eventually we bought a futon frame, for some insane reason it seemed like an extremely good idea to buy one from a store in the middle of Boston, I spent that day wandering around by myself because Todd had work there and I remember that it was absolutely pouring rain. After a few months one side of the frame began to sag alarmingly and we nailed the sagging bit up so that it could only be used as a sofa and not a bed anymore. By that time we’d bought another futon at a yard sale, so we had something else to sleep on. Unfortunately it ended up a casualty of cat pee and Todd leaping too exuberantly onto it one night (quit smirking, it was completely innocent) and so we were back to the old futon. We took all the accouterments off of the broken frame so that it’s now something that keeps the futon off the ground by about three inches. It resides directly to the right of my computer desk, which you can see a photo of here. (Speaking of photos of bits of my life, there wasn’t a journal entry yesterday because I was busy polishing a new section of this web site called “tiny threads” which consists of photos of a rug and a bag that I designed and then crocheted.) At night one of us sweeps it off with the broom before lying down because so much cat litter and other grebbles get tracked onto it during the day.

No, none of that has anything to do with what we were talking about, but knowing what the scenery looks like when you’re reading is always helpful. We were chewing over the prospect of children, which we frequently talk about, and I asked if Todd ever felt sad that he couldn’t get pregnant. He said no, he never had. Not even as a little boy? Not even as a little boy. Me, I’d be green with jealousy, knowing that half the world could do something that I couldn’t. He asked if I felt sad that I couldn’t create children and I said that it wasn’t the same thing, that you have to have two people to do that. I was surprised by his answer; I guess I always assumed that all men wish they were able to give birth.

Then yesterday I heard someone talking on the radio about how men who don’t go with their wives into the delivery room are missing out on a wondrous experience and I thought, “There are men out there who actually DON’T GO into the delivery room?” If I were a man and someone was giving birth to my child the thought of not being in the delivery room wouldn’t even occur to me. I was telling Todd about it and he agreed that not being there was idiotic, and I grinned and told him that if we did decide to eventually have children he was definitely going to be in at least as much pain in the delivery room as I was… Although having to live with a caffeine-less Galactic Web Empress for nine months should be excruciating enough, tee hee.

I’d be very curious to hear about the male perspective on this concept, both not being able to be pregnant and being there in the delivery room. Care to comment? Please be sure to note in your email message whether or not it would be okay with you if I quoted your comments in my next journal entry.

And then two nights ago I was lying on the futon, trying to fall asleep and listening to Todd’s breathing and thinking about birth and children and suddenly I wondered: do nurses and doctors who work in delivery rooms get bored? Do they get blasé after seeing the same transports of joy hundreds of time, after seeing the same tears and hearing, “My beautiful baby!” twice a day? Or is every birth wondrous?

Trivial doesn’t BEGIN to describe The Great Sponge Debate

Obligatory Film Critique:

• The villain in Gaslight is the time-traveling love child of Ricardo Montalban and Michael Caine. Really. Watch it, see if I’m not right.
• I was actually half out of my seat in preparation for walking out of The Mirror Has Two Faces before Todd convinced me to stay another ten minutes. He was right; the moral of the story wasn’t at all the one I was dreading. Go see it.

Thursday morning we woke up and dragged ourselves down to the convenience store for some coffee because we were out of coffee filters. For two people so snotty about coffee we’re drinking an awful lot of it out of paper cups these days. The convenience store was remodeled about two weeks ago, so when we’re there I tend to get sidetracked, staring at the walls and floors and figuring out in my head what’s been changed. Which I’m sure looks moronic (”Bert, what in the world is that strange woman in the huge coat doing? Do you think we should point her out to the clerk? She might be dangerous.”) but is actually fascinating from a marketing/advertising point of view. For example: in order to get to the coffee section you now have to walk from one end of the store to the other and back again, whereas before you barely had to walk in the store at all for coffee. This means, of course, that your hungry early-morning commuter mind will hopefully see ten different things you can’t do without on the way to the coffee and ten more on the way back, which means higher sales for the store. On the other hand, it might have made more sense space-wise to move the coffee section. I have a great time speculating in any case.

I make a bizarre sight when I go anywhere. The Napoleon coat is covered in cat hair (I’ve started to call it my mohair Napoleon coat, tee hee) and in the summer I wear my big clompy hiking boots, in the winter my tiny boys-size-6 tennis shoes. One of the boots has a big hole in it, which I forget every once in awhile and wear in the rain or snow and then do a vaudevillian step-in-a-puddle howl-with-surprise jump-around-cursing thing. People tend to look guarded when they’re around me, as if I’m going to start singing a selection from The Sound of Music and then follow them home. Walking around with Kitey garners even sillier reactions. So the family on the other side of the convenience store door were looking at me strangely anyway as I walked up and I thought I heard Todd say, “Watch out, they’re going to open the door,” (what he actually said was something along the lines of, “Shall we go to the Indian restaurant lunch buffet next?” so you can see how easily the two are confused…ahem.) and I backed up really quickly, right into Todd who had to juggle the hot coffee he was holding so that he wouldn’t drop it, and the family on the other side ended up sidling in looking highly nervous, poor things.

We parked by the side of a river and drank coffee and read the paper while we decided which movie we wanted to see. When we were finally awake enough we drove down to the Indian restaurant, we were the only people there, and we started in on the buffet. About ten minutes later a very sweet looking couple walked in and sat down, they looked dressed up and I assumed they were on their way to the family thanksgiving dinner somewhere and had stopped at the Indian restaurant for lunch. They walked over to the buffet table, looking unsure, and chose a few different dishes and breads and went back to their table. The waiter came over to fill their water glasses and the woman said, “Hi! We were so glad to find out that you were open on thanksgiving; we’re vegetarians and don’t really fit into the family dinners, so we thought we’d treat ourselves here.” The waiter smiled and nodded and she went on. “The channa masala is wonderful today!” The waiter smiled and nodded. “It tastes different this time, is there some different spice in it?” The waiter looked blank. “Well,” she said, “In any case, it’s delicious. I just love the channa masala here.” The waiter didn’t have the heart to tell her that channa masala wasn’t one of the dishes in the buffet. Traigic.

I can sympathise with her; there’s something about being at an Indian restaurant and seeing how boorish people can be that makes me want to do a little dance complete with a sign that says, “I’m Not Like That, Honest”.

So then this Butch and Candyesque couple walks in and looks around, and it’s obvious that this was the only restaurant they could find that was open and Todd and I start eating faster because we can see that they’re going to start being highly obnoxious any minute now. There are only two vaguely American items in the buffet: lettuce and tomato salad, and chicken wing appetizers. Todd jokes that the minute Butch and Candy walked in the manager said to make more chicken wings, and we giggle when in fact the waiter does bring out more chicken wings. They talk very loudly to the waiter as if the fact that English is his second language has made him partially deaf as well. Candy gets up and wanders around the buffet and finally puts a tiny amount of salad on her plate and goes back to sit down. Butch goes over to the buffet and sees the chicken wings, his eyes light up, he grabs one with his hand, and starts eating it right there. Todd practically falls off his chair laughing. We’re standing up to leave when Candy asks the waiter, “Don’t you have any salad dressing?” and we have to get out of there fast before we make a spectacle of ourselves.

When we got home Todd had a headache, so he took some Advil and got under the covers to try to feel better. I came over to keep him company and we ended up sleeping the rest of the day away. In fact, that’s mostly how we spent the four day weekend, sleeping or reading. Todd went to the library on Friday while I was working on the computer and came back with Stephen King’s newest novel, Desperation. I got hooked and finished it yesterday. The nicest thing I have to say is that he seems to have gone to Ellipses Users Anonymous and has gotten control over his addiction; otherwise it wasn’t worth the time I spent on it.

Sunday we were both grumpy and out of sorts, nothing seemed interesting or fun and we were both going around with scowls on our faces. All of which resulted in us taking our boredom out on each other and crabbing about, I kid you not, whether it ruins a sponge when you wash an oily pot with it, until we both burst into tears. When we disagree about something we’ve gotten quite adept at talking it out and seeing the humor in it, so this was the first time we’d gotten this crabby since January. Todd was in the shower at the time so we must have made quite a silly picture, Todd sitting in the tub and me sitting on the side of the tub, holding each other and sobbing and apologizing for being creeps. No, the shower wasn’t still on, we’re not that strange. When we’d recovered we were talking about it and laughed when we realized that the things we were saying: “It made me feel awful when you said X,” and “I was thinking Y when that happened,” were the sorts of things people say to their best friend after they’ve had an argument with their sweetie. Handy to have both in one person, cuts down on phone bills.

We’ve had bad luck lately with asking for information. For example: at the Boston Science Museum we asked what time it was at the information desk; the clerk pointed to the big huge can’t-miss-it digital clock above her head. Later we asked a different clerk where to pay for parking, and he told us to pay at the Pay For Parking desk. So yesterday when we were at the grocery store buying ingredients so Todd could make vegetarian jambalaya and couldn’t find the garlic we were leery of asking. We figured asking would result in answers like, “Didn’t you see the three foot by four foot neon sign saying Garlic Here?” Finally, after seeing a plastic bin that may or may not have held garlic at one time we bit the bullet and found someone to ask. She came with us over to the produce section, pointed at the empty bin and said, “Nope, no garlic left,” which was a relief. Todd made the jambalaya when we got home. I could quite happily eat it every day for the rest of all eternity.

From the silliness file:

Todd: I was going to tell you about the white water rafting company in Canada but now I can’t remember if I’ve already told you a million times.
Sage: That’s okay, if I know the words already I’ll just sing along.
Todd: Ha ha, very funny. Anyway, there’s this white water rafting company in Quebec where they take you to the river in a helicopter, drop you off, and you make your way back to civilization by your wits in your raft.
Sage: (singing the Camptown Races chorus) Doo dah, doo dah…

Fruitcakes Celebrating Holidays

I was quite pleased to realize this morning that tomorrow is thanksgiving, which means that Todd has both Thursday and Friday off. We don’t celebrate any holidays, but are pleased when other people do because it means that, for example, we can go to the movies and no one else will be there. Which is what we’re planning on doing tomorrow. Thanksgiving is even more idiotic than christmas: get ten people in a room who hate each other’s guts, force them to make conversation, and as if that weren’t enough, let’s make sure they’re extremely hungry too. Whee! Bread and butter thank-you notes tend to look like this:

Dear Mom,

Thank you for the lovely Thanksgiving dinner.
The Bert and the kids ate enough to last them a week!

Love,
Your Daughter

when what they should really look like is:

Dear Mom,

Well, we all lived through another one. Good thing
Uncle Frank didn’t bring his rifle this time, or that
argument he and Bert had could have been a lot worse!

Love,
Your Daughter

and speaking of Thanksgiving, one of the people who regularly reads Coffee Shakes sent me a story that made me laugh and I asked permission to post it here, she said sure:

I received an email this morning from a close friend in Colorado, and we’d been corresponding about a number of things, including the upcoming holidays and truth in online journals etc. The first words I read in her message to me were:

// Oh, yeah… Sage… how terrific!

And I’m thinking to myself, “oh, that’s neat, she reads Sage’s pages too.”

Then I read the rest of the sentence…

// Do you suppose I could alternate that with bay leaves on the turkey?

I found out that Ani Difranco was playing in Boston this weekend, and that I could have gotten tickets if I’d known. Argh. Well, it could have been worse. I could have found out that Louise Fitzhugh had come back from the dead and was giving a one-day-only free writing seminar in Boston and I missed it.

On our way back from Boston I read Danny Drennan’s 90210 summary from the file I’d saved on the laptop, and once I’d finished reading it I turned on the radio and we listened to the news on NPR (some of which involved the sounds and description of this man making a warm salad from scratch, which had both Todd and I all but drooling and really wishing we had something other than Taco Bell to eat in the car). After the news a program called New York Kids came on. Topic for the day: a play called… Wait. Put on your Cringe-Repellant suits first. Ready?

A play called The Sick Boy. I have nothing against sick children. I’m sure it’s hell on earth to be their parents, much less to be the actual sick child, and I wouldn’t wish that situation on my worst enemy. But America has gone so far when it comes to glamorizing terminally ill children that the entire concept has become a caricature that has nothing whatsoever to do with reality. The idea of a play based on a dying boy made Todd and I dive to change the radio station. Unfortunately there wasn’t anything else to listen to and we eventually winced our way back to the show.

It wasn’t as bad as you’re thinking it was. It was worse.

We suffered through a rendition of the song “I Am A Hero” by a warbling fourteen year old boy who I guess was nervous because he didn’t hit many of the notes. Being a terminally ill child does not make you a hero. Handling the situation with grace and dignity doesn’t even make you a hero. Kids who stand up for other kids who are being bullied, kids who work hard to be the best they can be, they’re heros. The Starlight Foundation, which asks dying children what they want and gives it to them, is a crying shame. Being a dying child means that something happened and your body is self-destructing, and that’s all. That there’s an entire charitable organization built around granting wishes (like, for example, going into the woods and slaughtering endangered animals, or shaking a rock star’s hand) makes me sad. All that money that could be going to cancer research, or AIDS research, or, hell, while I’m fantasizing, how about to save endangered animals from psychotic children?

Where are the Beatles when you need them?

(yesterday)

This has got to be one of the most decadent things I’ve ever done in my life. It’s dark outside, I’m in a big rental car and I’m typing away on Todd’s laptop while jazz plays on the car radio. All I can see are the dashboard lights and the lights of the cars ahead; the sky is cloudy and Todd’s driving. We spent the weekend in Boston, and it was perfect. Absolutely lovely, and so much like one of those movies with long montages of scenes of a couple wandering around a big city together that we felt like we should be changing our outfits more often in order to keep the audience entertained. And a nice solo piano soundtrack would have been nice. One of George Winston’s more obscure works, perhaps.

Todd says, “We’ll be making our final approach soon, folks, FYI.” He does a good Reliable And Knowledgeable Airline Pilot voice. I think I should put up my traytable and return my seat to its full and upright position. Oh, and see if I can find my notebook under all of those Taco Bell bags.

(today)

When Todd walked in the door on Friday night and the first thing he said was, “Hey, d’you still want to go to Boston for the weekend?” I rolled my eyes and said I’d rather be a homebody and hang out here. He was crushed. He told me all about how he’d figured out on the way home that we could take the laptop with us and I could play on the computer in the hotel room and everything, and was so traigic and hopeful and eager in general that I couldn’t bear to disappoint him, and by Saturday morning we’d decided that if we only spent one night away from home we’d feel okay about not calling Sarah and asking her to check on the cats. (Which meant, of course, that we spent the drive home in paroxysms of guilt over being away overnight.)

We rented a car and set off. The drive went relatively quickly, we listened to NPR and I read Rush Limbaugh Is A Big Fat Idiot aloud. The strangest thing we saw on the way was an electric road sign that, instead of saying “Road Work Ahead” or “Icy Conditions” was blinking: “This is a sign test. Test. . .Test. . . . . . . . . Test Test Test. . .” which reminded us both of the electric road sign in the movie L.A. Story.

Todd told me a horror story about seven people at work sitting around a cafeteria table talking about children, theirs or children of friends/family. They were commiserating about a particular moment every night when everything went wild in their house. The Moment The Ritalin Wore Off. (Cue scary organ music.) I asked if there was a another table full of spouses talking about The Moment The Prozac Wore Off. He said not yet.

We decided to drive by the apartment we used to live in on our way to Boston and were surprised by how much things have stayed the same. With the exception of a store and a gas station, not one of the big or small businesses we remembered from years ago had closed. It was a startling reminder of how different the economy is where we live now; here we count a small business lucky if it survives more than a year and keep another option in mind when we go anywhere, because the first option might be closed permanently by the time we get there.

We’d forgotten what driving in Boston is like.

I mean, we’d completely underestimated it. We used to jaunt into Boston on a whim when Todd got home from work and drive around because the city was so beautiful at night, and make fun of people who looked petrified behind the wheels of their cars. On Saturday I have no doubt that people were making fun of us. Picture this: there’s a red light three cars ahead of us. We stop right next to an alley to let someone merge in front of us from a parking space on the left, and suddenly, as that person’s merging, this huge van comes zooming in from alley on the right. The van wants to cross the road. Meanwhile, the person on the left’s still merging. The light’s still red. The merging person moves ahead a tiny bit. The van keeps zooming towards us, Todd looks to see if he has any room to go into reverse so the rental car doesn’t get hit, and suddenly it occurs to the van’s driver that he’s not going to be able to continue his zooming. He stops, sticks his head out the window, and literally inches by our car and the still-merging car without so much as a tiny bump on either side. Todd and I let out the breath we’d been holding, and Todd says, “Well, there you are. They may be insane people, but they’re very SKILLFUL insane people. You have to give them that.”

We tried going to a three different hotels, all of which were full up, and ended up finding an absolutely perfect one near China Town. After we’d gotten settled, checked email, caught up on the web pages we like, Todd sat down and looked for a good vegetarian restaurant on the net. Nothing sounded very promising, so we decided to take the subway to Cambridge and wander around until we found one we liked.

When we arrived at the subway stop we could hear a group of people yelling in an ominous way on the street level, so we took different stairs in order to avoid them. Then, as we were coming around a corner, we saw a large group of people standing in a semi-circle around something we couldn’t see, and a big sign that said, “LEGALIZE HEMP!” with a box for donations. Figuring it was a rally of people who wanted to legalize drugs, we didn’t go anywhere near them. I was expecting the police to show up any minute, the way the man everyone was listening to was yelling.

Yeah, the guy who was yelling was talking loudly so everyone could hear what he was saying about his fire-juggling act. The sign and the box had nothing to do with him. I’m such a fool sometimes.

Finding a restaurant was easier said than done, and we ended up going to The Border Cafe. There was a long line stretching from the door around the corner of the building that reminded me of a slightly smaller version of the line to see Superman 2 on opening night at the movie theater. This wasn’t the line to get a table; this was the line to get into the restaurant to get your name on the list to wait for a table. But they had vegetarian food, and we were tired and hungry, so we got in line. It was quite a jolly wait, actually, we listened while the people behind us talked about playing the computer game Doom and while the people in front of us talked about a salesclerk who tended to dance while she showed you clothes and shoes. When we arrived at the front of the line we waited for another five minutes while people walked up to the door, were told that they had to wait in line, and got crabby about it. I hope the guy manning the door was getting paid a lot of money. This is where the story gets strange. We walked in, saw the even huger line of people who had their names on the wait-for-a-table list, and almost balked. The hostess asked if we wanted smoking, non-smoking, or first available. We told her non-smoking. “Are you going to be drinking alcohol this evening?” was her next question. We told her we weren’t. She wrote something on a piece of paper, told us that there was a table ready downstairs, and to give the piece of paper to the hostess down there. I kid you not.

We did. The hostess downstairs asked “Are you going to be drinking alcohol tonight?” after consulting the mysterious piece of paper, and when we said no, she seated us. I must say, in five years this is the very first time we’ve ever gotten rewarded so beautifully for never ever drinking any kind of alcohol. Evidently we were in the no-alcohol area, or that’s what the sign near our table said. Can anyone explain this to me? I’m wildly curious about the reasoning behind all this.

After eating, and seeing the same people in the same line still waiting to sit down, we went to a net cafe. I was curious to see what people look at when they look at the web, but no one was doing anything online but chatting with other people. We drank coffee and played computer games, had a good time and only humiliated ourselves twice: “Um, this doesn’t seem to be working.” “Let me see… ah yes. It doesn’t seem to be plugged in.” and then later: “Sorry to bother you, but the QuickCam for this monitor just comes up completely blank when we tell it to take a picture.” “Hmm. That would be because it’s aimed at this black wall over here.” (After the second time Todd called after the clerk, “We’re not usually this dumb, honest!” but I don’t think she heard. Tee hee.)

Sunday we went to the Boston Science Museum, which wasn’t quite as exciting as I’d remembered it being, or maybe I’m too tall and too old for the best exhibits. We decided to leave early and have lunch but couldn’t agree on where we wanted to eat. I wanted to eat at the museum and then go home, Todd wanted to eat at an Ethiopian restaurant. We giggled as we were crabbing about it, because disagreeing about where we were going to eat happened quite often our first year together in Massachusetts. Todd says he thinks it’s something about the state itself. We ended up at a completely vegan Chinese restaurant, which had a nine page menu of mouth-watering food and meals that tasted so much like meat we would have believed it was meat if we hadn’t known better.

From the silliness file:

(Todd and Sage are eating breakfast at the Boston Science Museum. It’s nine a.m., the sun is shining, and there’s an awe-inspiring view of the Charles River out of the enormous glass windows of the museum.)

Todd: Everything’s so beautiful I want to dive out the window and eat it all up.
Sage: That’s how I know you’re a true Paul. A Bruce would say, “I want to dive out the window just like The Terminator.”

From the silliness file:

(Sage and Todd are listening to a radio program for children, which I’ll talk about more tomorrow, and a little boy calls in.)

Boy: (in a monotone) Hel-lo. I - would - like - to - hear - the - song - Help.

Sage: He doesn’t need to hear the song Help, he just needs help in general.

Todd: (in a high voice) Help! Get me off this Ritalin!

Oh Doug, little did you know…

A few months ago Doug Franklin submitted his site to my collection of links to nice boys called Paul: nice boys on the web. When I decided to link to him, this is the quote I chose to represent his site. It refers to people who keep online diaries.

I just had a thought. I’m a pretty damned gullible person.
I’m easy to fool, people have done it all of my life for fun
and profit. All of this IS real isn’t it? Would someone please
tell me if it isn’t? Please? And yes, I’m serious. I want to
know if these people aren’t real and I’m a fool. You can fool
all of the people…etc., and you can fool Doug all of the time, too.

When I read it for the first time, I laughed. I’m not naive; I know that people pretend all the time on the net, but the thought of someone keeping it up for over a year seemed ludicrous. Besides, none of the online journalists, with the exception of one or two people, were trying to appear glamorous or exciting. I just couldn’t see someone pretending to be any of the people I’ve read about daily over the past year. That’s not strictly true; I’m still not one hundred percent convinced that Justin Clouse isn’t a complicated piece of performance art, but that’s an entirely different story.

Before you read any further, the only way any of this will make any sense is if you read this journal entry [link broken - short summary: Jessa turned out to be an altogether different person named Shelly], written by another online diarist.

Yesterday I realized I hadn’t heard from Jessa for awhile, and since I’d sent her a crocheted bag I’d made I was eager to find out if it’d arrived yet. I wrote her an email message asking if she was okay, and she wrote back saying that her back was hurting but that she was all right. She said that she had something she wanted to tell me but was afraid of my reaction.

Picture me: I’m thinking that absolute worst thing she can possibly have to say is that I’d hurt her feelings with my journal entry about other online diarists. Really. I replied, saying that I promised to be nice whatever it was, and to go ahead and tell me.

The first words I read were, “i’m not really jessa. she doesn’t really exist in the real world. i made her up.” and my mouth absolutely dropped open. She could have said she was from Mars and I wouldn’t have been more surprised than I was at that very moment. One of the first things I thought as I read her message was, “Gad, how’s THIS for an answer to the Question and Answer section question ‘What’s the last really surprising thing that happened to you?’ “

Then I thought: she is really good at this, to have created a character and played her so well that she’s fooled everyone.

Then I felt shocked, and then angry, and while one part of me wouldn’t believe her now if she said that the earth was round, another part has seen proof of what she has to say and really, if she’s actually Jessa or actually Shelly or Walter Morton, 85 years old and living in a nursing home, what would be the point of admitting she’d lied, or beginning to lie? There isn’t one. So that’s how I spent my day yesterday, talking to Jessa via email about everything that had happened.

Todd and I have a wonderful time trying to fool each other into believing silly things, like he’s really jumpy when the pizza delivery guy (No, we are NOT on a first name basis with the pizza delivery guy, quit being so snarky. And he only knows the names of some of the cats, not all eight.) is due, so I’ll say urgently, “Sweetie, the pizza guy is here!” and giggle when he leaps out of his chair and looks around in a panicked way. Part of the fun is knowing that we’re always absolutely honest with each other, and we never do that if it would lead to disappointment, i.e. something along the lines of “Hey, I found a scanner on sale for $200, shall we go buy it?” (Hell, for $200 I could go to a print shop and have them scan in, gosh, twenty whole photos. Actually I shouldn’t complain, I found out that OfficeMax will do scanning for $4 for the first photo and $1 for every subsequent one. I still wish I had a scanner, though. Maybe if I put up a photo of the empty spot on my desk where there isn’t one in a Save The Children sort of way? Had Christopher Eccleston appear in promos for This Poor Sad Empty Desk, Wouldn’t It Look Lovely With A Scanner On It? Hmm. TPSEDWILLWACOI doesn’t make a very effective acronym, I’ll have to think of a better name.) So last night when he got home we had this conversation:

Todd: Hi sweetie. How was your day?
Sage: Very, very surprising.
Todd: Do tell.
Sage: Jessa’s pregnant.
Todd (looking like he’s going to fall over): What? What?
Sage: Jessa’s pregnant.
Todd (leaning against a chair): Oh, thank god, I thought you said YOU were pregnant.
Sage (laughing): No, no, it’s okay.
Todd: Jessa’s pregnant?
Sage: Nah. She’s not pregnant. She’s married though.
Todd (looking even more confused): Married?
Sage: And she has a three year old child.
Todd: Jessa? Wait. Start over.
Sage: And her name isn’t Jessa, it’s Shelly.
Todd (looking like nothing more than Anita, who has a perpetually lost and confused look on her face): Now you’re playing with my head.
Sage: No, honest. Her name is really Shelly.
Todd: Are we mad at her?
Sage: Nah. We’re not mad.

So he sat down on the futon where I was already sitting and I told him everything that had happened. One of the things we talked about is that this is going to put a lot of doubt in everyone’s minds about any of the online journalists being real, and all I can say to that is that yes, I’m really real and telling the absolute truth and no, I don’t know any way to prove it.

And I’m not mad. I feel betrayed, I feel hurt, and this is the jerkiest thing anyone’s ever done to me — but I always liked Jessa. From the very first time she wrote to me over a year ago I’ve liked her, and whether her name is Walter or Shelly or Enid, Jessa’s still in there. I’ll let Todd have the last word by quoting what he wrote yesterday in an email message to her:

I’m only slightly crabby now, mostly that I didn’t get to hear what Shelly was doing all this time, and that I spent so much time getting to know Jessa only to find she doesn’t exist. Oh well, reality shift. Such is life. Me, I’m always the optimist and looking at as, “Cool, another friend! It’ll be fun to get to know her.”

Neens, yus, you’re so priddy!

So I feel really strange sitting down to write a journal entry today, because even though this huge thing has happened I can’t talk about it because if I did I’d be telling someone else’s private business. And after getting in the habit of writing entries in my head whenever anything of even slight interest is happening, I even know what I’d say if I could write about it. But I can’t, so I should get over myself and talk about something else. (Don’t worry, it isn’t anything horrible and it isn’t about me or Todd.)

Speaking of Todd, he dreamed last night about not wanting to smoke a cigar but doing it anyway and finding out that it tasted absolutely disgusting. Freud would be proud, tee hee.

We’re seriously considering going to the Boston Science Museum this weekend. We’ve both been quite a few times, but enjoyed it so thoroughly that we want to go again. For those of you living in the godforsaken straits of weatherless California, it’s like the Lawrence Science Center. But better. And yes, I know that nothing compares to the Exploratorium. There are a few obstacles to going, the biggest one being that we’d need Sarah to take care of the cats while we were gone. There’s no one else we would trust to come within ten feet of them. Unfortunately we’ve fallen out of touch with her, not for any reason, just because this periodically happens, she gets busy or we do and eventually we call or she does and we’re social again. This is one of the big advantages of having friends that are as uninterested in social contact as we are. Anyway, I’ve been meaning to call her for over a month but haven’t, and of course I can’t call and say, “Hi, I’ve been thinking about you and would you please take care of the cats?” so I’m not sure the trip will happen. It’d be nice if it did, Boston is a wonderful city and besides, we have Al Franken’s Rush Limbaugh Is A Big Fat Idiot to read together on the way.

Three different people who don’t know each other have told me I’m harsh and/or judgmental in the last two days. I’m glad.

I like being thought of as judgmental. (I seriously considered making the word “harsh” a link to a sound clip of me talking to the cats because I like irony, but I figured no one would believe I’m actually that mushy.) I was talking to Todd about it two nights ago, saying that I’d hesitated before talking about an opinion I had about someone’s hypocrisy in an email message and decided to say what I meant instead of worrying that it would be misinterpreted or that the person would think less of me. Because if I wasn’t honest about what I thought and they didn’t think less of me as a result (stay with me, I know, that’s a, like, triple negative) — in other words, if hypothetically I’d said “X is a hypocrite” and the person had said, “Yuck, you’re a jerk,” then they’d be having an honest opinion of me, and not the person hiding behind not saying what they meant. Which isn’t what happened; I just got called harsh again. Hell. I’m a writer, I should be able to explain this concept clearly — so far what I’ve said doesn’t even make sense to me.

Here. This is what I want to say. I don’t believe in pretending to be non-judgmental so that people will think I am. Because, in the end, the person they like and enjoy talking to isn’t me — it’s some false version of me who isn’t at all similar to the person typing these words.

As I said in the course of our conversation the other night: I may be harsh, I may be judgmental, but take a look at the high-quality people surrounding me and ask yourself if that’s a bad thing.

Blue Socks

You can either listen to or read today’s journal entry. The details on listening to it are below, and if you’d rather read it instead you can saunter on down the page. Here are the details on listening to the Real Audio file:

This is the sort of Real Audio file that you download entirely, and then it plays via your Real Audio player. If you know what you’re doing and don’t need any more help, then go ahead and download the Real Audio file now. (size: approximately 205 K) [link broken]

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You’re never going to believe what happened. Yesterday I walked down to the library to return an overdue video and when I got back I unlocked the front door, walked in, and there they were. All the Rotted Monsters standing in a semicircle around the computer desk, with the biggest and meanest one sitting in my desk chair typing away and cackling. I tried to stop them before they could upload yesterday’s journal entry, but I couldn’t, they were too fast for me. Today they’ve been banished to the basement along with the drecky old bags of used cat litter and other garbage.

No…I didn’t think you’d believe it.

I’d like to start by saying, “What a difference a day makes,” except I can’t remember which ad campaign it’s from, which is fine if it’s cereal or motor oil but what if it’s laxatives or condoms or something equally icky?

But the point is that this morning I woke up excited and inspired about writing a new journal entry for the first time in weeks. It took me two months of hoping and wishing the feelings I talked about yesterday would go away before I wrote about them, and one day for my attitude to change completely. I only wish I’d talked about it sooner. An amazing number of people wrote (thank you thank you thank you) to say I should keep a better eye on the Rotted Monsters and not to be a fool, but there were four specific points people made that made a very big difference in the way I think about the whole issue of being “unoriginal”.

there are hundreds of books in any given bookstore — no one’s giving up writing because of it

the first person who put a reed to a clay tablet and started to write didn’t give up when their neighbors tried it too

writing every day can do nothing but help your writing skills

if people thought my site was boring/unoriginal they wouldn’t spend the little free time they have visiting it

my coffee tastes like Play-Doh

(That was five points and the last one hasn’t got anything to do with writing at all, I was just enjoying listing things. It does taste like Play-Doh, though. I should know. I used to eat it all the time in daycare. And if I really am drinking coffee made from Play-Doh it could have everything to do with my mental well-being.)

I woke up this morning from a dream that I was a teenager again, and had been chosen from a large group of children for a trip to France to expand my horizons because I lived in some big US city and didn’t see trees or grass much. It didn’t look one bit like the France I remember from my short trip there as an actual teenager, it looked a lot more like I’d imagine Montana looks in early winter, but I was glad to be there and it was a fascinating place. I wanted to visit what looked like a small snow and ice covered mountain with a video arcade inside it, which sounds like I have Quite The Imagination until you realize that Todd and I watched a Nova video from the library this weekend all about roller coasters that had a whole segment on The Matterhorn in Disneyland. Anyway, when I found my way into the small mountain I found a video game based on all of the online journalists. I only wish I remembered more about it, because as I recall it was extremely fun to play. (Ha ha, very funny. No, it wasn’t a shoot-em-up game.)

From the silliness file:

(Over the past few days Sage and Todd have been discussing the concept of “romance” because Todd’s a hopeless romantic and Sage isn’t.)

Sage: See that? On my finger. That’s the finger I chew on while I’m working on my web site, and the scaly bit sort of opened up. It really hurts.
Todd: (after kissing Sage’s finger) Aww, poor thing. I hope it feels better.
Sage: Aha! Now that’s romantic, kissing your sweetie’s infected open sores.
Todd: Ooo. You scare me.

so on and so forth

Well, I was hoping that taking a week off from writing journal entries would help, but it hasn’t really. I still feel at a loss as to how to reconcile the fact that this journal is one of 7 zillion now and I hate that. One of the reasons I started Coffee Shakes is because at the time it was a very unique idea and something that only one or two people were doing. Now I keep getting lumped into these groups of “online diary keepers” which bugs the hell out of me and tempts me to stop writing entries altogether. I don’t feel like Coffee Shakes is original, unique, or even interesting anymore. Blah blah blah, blather blather blather.

Quick, someone call the child labor authorities

It’s getting worse. That thing where I can’t…uh… You know. Can’t remember. What is is that… Can’t remember… the… Aha! I know — can’t remember what I want to say. Saturday we were in the produce section of the grocery store and I walked up to Todd and opened my mouth and stood there for a minute, then said, “We forgot to get the… the… *sigh* The things. The round things that start with O.” Todd stared at me for a minute and said, “Are you kidding?” The scary part is that I wasn’t. It’s one thing to not be able to remember the word “profligate”, but to forget the word ONIONS?

Friday afternoon I was hungry and we hadn’t been grocery shopping for weeks, so I decided to head down to a nearby deli. There are three close by: the one which also sells pizza and the family who owns it is always up for a long conversation on any topic you can think of, the one which sells amazing french fries, and the most neighborhoodish one which is friendly but the sandwiches aren’t so great. Since I’d already gone to the french fries one twice last week and wasn’t feeling talkative I started walking towards the not-great sandwich deli. After three steps I realized how the wind was whipping around the leaves and trees and everything else not nailed down and it was too wonderful for a short walk. I would have slept outside in that weather if I thought the neighbors wouldn’t throw a fit about a sleeping bag in my backyard. (One of these days we’re going to put up a seven feet high fence with barbed wire and KEEP AWAY signs all over it, then we’ll be able to sleep outside if we want to.) So I changed course for the deli which has the most amazing sandwiches but is much farther than the other three.

I’m surprised that I made it all the way to the street the deli’s on without tripping, I spent so much of my time staring at the sky and the trees as I walked. I was in a tremendous mood by the time I got to the right street, and went up to the window of a new antique store that I hadn’t seen before. There was a tabby boy cat lounging in the window display watching the cars go by, and I stood in front of him and put my hand up to the window. I felt so rude and uncouth when, instead of rubbing up against the window or attempting to sniff my hand through the glass, the cat peered around me because I was blocking his view of the road. That’ll teach me. I all but skipped my way up the street to the deli and — you guessed it — it was closed. But! Mood unvanquished, I continued on my merry way back to the bad-sandwich deli, looking forward to blabbing to the deli owner about my adventures. (Happily it occurred to me before I actually got there that to say, “I went all the way to hell and back to the other deli but it was closed, can you believe it? That’s why I’m here, because I figured your sandwiches were better than nothing…” would not have been favorably received.)

I walked on, feeling self-righteous and gloating because everyone else was diving for their cars or into buildings and the weather wasn’t bothering me a bit. I listened to that time-worn Howard Jones song “No One is to Blame” which as a teenager I thought was wildly romantic but am beginning to suspect is actually about how it’s okay to screw around on people which is pretty disgusting and boy, talk about shattered illusions. As I walked by one house I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye and turned expecting to see a cat checking me out as I walked by. What I didn’t at all expect was a full-grown black lab dog standing on the windowsill wagging his tail. I don’t mean that he had his front paws on the windowsill, I mean that he was actually standing on the windowsill. It was highly disconcerting.

When I actually got to the deli I walked in and there was a little girl behind the counter. I have SHOES older than she was. I looked around for the owner, thinking that perhaps his granddaughter, who was about six the last time I saw her in the deli, had aged much more quickly than I thought she would and was hanging out there, but no. It turned out that the little girl was in charge. So I gave her my order and then it was too Traigic, her entire extended family walked in to see her working at Her First Job, and then her mom called to make sure she was going to get home alright with the strange weather and all, and I felt guilty for making fun of her age in my head.

Then once I had my sandwich and potato chips I walked back outside and instantly stopped feeling self-righteous or gloating, because it was pouring, the kind of rain that can (and did) soak a person completely in just minutes. By the time I got home I was positively dripping and the cats scowled at me for getting water all over the place.

From the silliness file:

(Todd and Sage are playing a pinball computer game called Urban Decay. Wait, that’s not it… Aha. Urban Chaos, I knew it was something like that. Anyway. Sage and Todd are playing Urban Chaos and while it’s Sage’s turn Todd is looking closely at the screen.)

Todd: Look in the upper lefthand corner when you get a chance. Did they misspell “hearse”?
Sage *laughing*: Uh, no, that’s “hi-rise” you’re looking at.
Todd: Hi-rise?
Sage: You know, like a big tall building. A hi-rise. It’s okay, sweetie, you grew up in Vermont, you don’t have to know stuff like that.

We went to the Italian restaurant we like (I SWEAR they were playing the Godfather theme on the restaurant stereo) which we like half for the great food and half for the great people watching, and barely managed not to giggle when the owner told us to, “Go sit ohver theh in that boot.” So far no one’s said “What do youse want for dinner?” which is lucky because we’d probably laugh so hard they’d kick us out forever.