Halfway through November

and I hit 25,000+ words.  I'm going to talk about it tomorrow, I hope but I'm still trying to recuperate from various things here, and focus on not whining a lot, like I kind of want to.  (Shots.  Which were fine, but now are acting like I was bitten by some exotic animal all of the sudden. Anyways.)  So, instead of listening to me whine, may I suggest, you take yourself of to a television set and settle in for some Parks & Recs awesomeness tonight?  Special Guest star, Leslie Knope's #1 crush, Joe Biden.  :)  It should be spectacular. 

"I wouldn't stop for a beer...."

Did I previously mention that I am really good at starting projects, but that sticking to them is something of a ... challenge for me? I thought so. But I'm determined to stick to the spirit of this thing, and to keep to the truth for 30 days.

However, as was evidenced by yesterday's post, I've decided the order of these questions doesn't suit me. Today's post is evidence that even some of the questions - as written - don't suit me. Case in point, Day 21 → (scenario) Your best friend is in a car accident and you two got into a fight an hour before. What do you do?

Why is this even a question? If a friend, any friend of mine, was in a car accident, regardless of whether or not we had gotten into a fight, I would bust my ass getting to the emergency room. If they needed me, I would be there, fight or no fight. (Which is kind of beside the point, because I don't really fight with my friends, so I substituted the word "sister" in my mind, because that's more likely.) In answer to your question, however, I submit the following video, courtesy of one of my OTPs & the fabulous Aaron Sorkin:




"I wouldn't stop for red lights."

It's just that simple. (I told you: I'm very loyal.)

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Day 01 Something you hate about yourself.
Day 02 Something you love about yourself.
Day 03 Something you have to forgive yourself for.
Day 04 Something you have to forgive someone for.
Day 05 Something you hope to do in your life.
Day 06 Something you hope you never have to do.
Day 07 Someone who has made your life worth living for.
Day 08 Someone who made your life hell, or treated you like shit.
Day 09 Someone you didn’t want to let go, but just drifted.
Day 10 Someone you need to let go, or wish you didn’t know.
Day 11 Something people seem to compliment you the most on.
Day 12 Something you never get compliments on.
Day 13 A band or artist that has gotten you through some tough ass days. (write a letter.)
Day 14 A hero that has let you down. (letter)
Day 15 Something or someone you couldn’t live without, because you’ve tried living without it.
Day 16 Someone or something you definitely could live without.
Day 17 A book you’ve read that changed your views on something.
Day 18 Your views on gay marriage.
Day 19 What do you think of religion? Or what do you think of politics?
Day 20 Your views on drugs and alcohol.
Day 21 (scenario) Your best friend is in a car accident and you two got into a fight an hour before. What do you do?
Day 22 Something you wish you hadn’t done in your life.
Day 23 Something you wish you had done in your life.
Day 24 Make a playlist to someone, and explain why you chose all the songs. (Just post the titles and artists and letter)
Day 25 The reason you believe you’re still alive today.
Day 26 Have you ever thought about giving up on life? If so, when and why?
Day 27 What’s the best thing going for you right now?
Day 28 What if you were pregnant or got someone pregnant, what would you do?
Day 29 Something you hope to change about yourself. And why.
Day 30 A letter to yourself, tell yourself EVERYTHING you love about yourself

- A lot of these bullet points were supposed to get their own posts, but I am still at Grandmothers; sick as a dog; and my brain is full of a mushy type substance rather than brain cells. So, as opposed to leaving this un-updated and telling myself that I'll get around to it soon, I'm going to just stick to the bullet points. Enjoy!

- Yesterday morning, after suffering all night with a throat that got more and more sore as the hours passed, I popped out of bed because there was an alarm ringing somewhere in the house. I rolled over to the couch to ask (sleeping) Grandmother what the noise was, only to find that a) I had no voice and b) she didn't have her hearing aids in. Later, when U J got up, I found out that his hearing problems (he gets these weird ear things that sometimes make his hearing less than perfect) had gotten worse over night as well. Please tell me how you explain "a loud alarm! Was ringing! Is there a god damn bell or smoke detector or something????" to people when a)you can't imitate the noise and b) they can't hear it.

- There is no way to talk about the fact that you can't swallow without falling into an immediate "That's what she said" joke. I learned this after I got my tonsils out, but I think I must have forgotten. Now, every time I have to tell the doctor that I can't swallow, I have to bite my tongue.

- Grandmother is doing fine: Now that her only remaining therapist is the PT, whom she likes and who is trying to teach her to use the cane, she sees no real reason to continue using the walker. Even though, you know, she's supposed to be. Since her balance and strength are still off. She does her exercises, she practices with the cane, she says all the right things when the PT asks, but using the actual walker to get from, say the living room to the kitchen? Nah: it's "too short a trip" (even though it is the length of the house). The only time I can get her to agree to take it with her, at this point, is at night when she goes to bed: The PT calls those hours the "danger hours", the times when another fall is most likely to occur, and I think that's why she takes it upstairs with her.

- But still, she doesn't always use it... the den (where my sofabed of discomfort is located) is directly under her bedroom, and I can hear her moving around up there in the middle of the night, going to the bathroom without dragging her "friend" along for the ride.

- The irony in me - the girl who literally crawled from one place to another rather than 'give in' and use a wheelchair - trying to get someone else to use a mobility aid is definitely not lost on me. (Or my mom, who thinks it's pretty amusing, as she was the one having to convince me to use the chair all those years ago, even though I was literally falling down all. the. time.)

- I am very behind on my internet news, but can imagine that this isn't the only place you are going to read the following sentence: If the god damn politicians don't stop with the ridiculous campaign adds, I will not be responsible for my actions. Two additional notes - the amount of mental health ableism in those ads is unbelievable (In Massachusetts, there is one particular ad that flat out calls the opponent "insane" as well as "crazy" and a "kook.:) and, come October 2012, I am not going to watch any amount of unTivo-ed TV. I will not be able to watch what they're going to say about Obama.

- On the positive side, in the past month I've watched all three seasons of Veronica Mars, the (sadly singular) season of Firefly, and a good portion of Buffy the Vampire Slayer online. Of course, my home DVR is full up, but after I buzz through some Daily Shows and Colbert Reports, I should clear up a bunch of space.

- There's a million reasons why I'll be home/here this weekend (see above, see any link regarding health on this entire site, etc), but I still kind of wish I could go to the Rally this weekend. (And yes, I also have issues with the problematic name for the Rally: it was not necessary to call it the "Rally to Restore Sanity" - and therefore continue the stereotype that crazy = illogical and ridiculous and not what all of us "normal" people are like. I take issue with that and think it was a stupid move on their part, for sure.) I still wish I could go.

- Today, Lil Girl ran a race against two invisible girls, an invisible cat and an invisible dog, and she lost 3/5 times. If that isn't funny, I don't know what is.

Happy Holiday I Never Heard of Before

True Story: Sometime in the early nineties, when 90210 was in its heyday, and I was in the 7th grade, my best friend and I convinced my mom to take us to a local mall where Ian Zearing and Luke Perry were going to be appearing.

To this day, I have no idea why we did this: Because it was on the radio? Because some of our friends were totally rabid Luke Perry fans? Because it seemed like this huge deal at the time? I am honestly not sure - neither she nor I were huge fans of those particular actors, (although I did have a crush on Jason Priestly in his pre-90210, Teen Angel and later Sister Kate days) even though we liked them well enough, and neither one of us remembers being particularly enthusiastic about the show as a whole. We weren't super fans or mega fans, or anything more than "I know all about Brendan and Kelly, think Brenda should get back with Dylan, and don't care about Donna and David" followers. We watched the show, but in the pre-everybody has their own TV in their room days, weren't guaranteed to even catch it every week, and it wasn't that big of a deal because everybody in school would be talking about it the next day anyways. All I can come up with was that some of our friends were going, so we wanted to go too.

So we talked my mom into getting up at 7:30 on a Saturday morning (no easy feat) to drive us the 6 minutes to get to the mall. (I was not allowed to take the bus back then. You too can roll your eyes over the injustice of it all with my 12 year old self if you'd like.) When we got there, it was packed. Shockingly, worse than any Christmas shopping day ever, overly packed. There must have been hundreds teenage/tween girls there, and they didn't even let us inside the mall.

Instead they rounded us all up on the outside concourse, behind the mall, around a little lake - which up till then I hadn't even known existed - with a path that was cut directly from the Charles River. I remember standing there shivering, although I can't recall exactly what season we were in - Cold. That's about it. Covers everything from November to April in Cambridge, so I can't narrow it down. Just that it was cold and brittle, and that teenage girls who had taken all morning to get their hair just. right. in anticipation of meeting the dreamy Luke Perry had their hopes crumpled when the wind whipped around and gave everybody the same "I've just lived through a cyclone" hairdo.

My mom had her coffee, smoked her cigarettes and muttered under her breath about how she let herself get talked into these things. My friend and I, unable to find any of the other girls who'd sworn they would be there in the midst of the huge crowd, mostly shifted from one foot to the other trying to keep warm, talking about nothing in particular and dreaming of hot chocolate and donuts when this was all through. I don't even remember being excited. Just cold. And bored. And not particularly happy about this waiting outside nonsense.

And then there was an announcement, and the lady from the mall must have said something about them coming, because there was a huge cheer. We didn't hear what she said, but the excitement in the crowd amped up a lot, and I know my friend was starting to feel it, because she started to do this tense little hop. Other girls started to pop up a little bit too, trying to see over the crowd, and for some reason, this made me feel anxious as well. Something was coming. Somebody was coming, and it was somebody famous. And that started to get a little bit exciting.

We waited like that for a few minutes, things getting louder and more intense, until finally we heard a boat's engine coming in from the river. From where we were standing, I could see the water pretty clearly - everyone had assumed they'd be in the mall, so those of us in the back actually wound up having the best few when we all had to turn around.

And now girls were screaming, and there was a lot of noise, and the boat was zooming around the little waterway (pond? maybe.) and the two actors were on the boat waving grandly. Smiling, waving, on their parts; cheering, screaming and clapping from the crowd. I have to admit, the noise was slightly overwhelming. I do not remember contributing to the noise really, but I must have: I was big on fitting in, so I can't imagine I just stood there and made a "Why the hell are we all making so much noise?" face, even if that's what I was feeling. I probably cheered and clapped, and I do remember hugging my best friend back when she was so excited that she hugged me.

And then Luke Perry took a megaphone, thanked everyone for coming and said what great fans we were. And Ian Zearing had his turn and said something very similar. And then the boat went around the little waterway again, and it zipped back out on to the river, two actors waving as they left, hundreds of girls standing there cheering.

The entire experience had lasted ten minutes, tops.

Now, I had not really even been all that excited. I had not even particularly wanted to meet the actors. But I can remember being more than a little bit pissed that all they did was zoom around the water twice, say "Thanks for coming" and then zoom off again. I know I wondered what the hell I had gotten out of bed early for. And I definitely remember being more than a little upset that they never even let us in the mall (I wanted hot chocolate!) Other girls, girls who'd brought posters or hats or t-shirts for them to sign were probably more than a little upset, and I don't really blame them: I'm pretty sure we had all been told that there would be a signing, so I can imagine more than one tweenage girl left with a broken heart. (Probably through no fault of the actors themselves, but rather some bad public relations, but still.)

So that is my one and only "I've met a celebrity" story, and it contains no actual meeting, and makes me sound like one of the Twihards who pass out at the mall when a certain sparkly vampire (or rather, the actor playing him) shows up. In reality, my brush with celebrity was cold, disappointing (no hot chocolate!), short and rather unimpressive.

But still: It did give me a story to tell on 9-02-10 Day. :)

Dear TV

I have never "wondered who grew my soup*".


On the other hand, thank you, Bravo, for starting the West Wing over from the beginning. :Sigh: I miss the Bartlett White House.

Fox: just so you know, I know that your American Idol previews are going to be better than the actual season of American Idol, so I don't mind that you're playing them already.

Also, bring on the Christmas specials everysinglestationever, because I have a DVR and will watch them next week, when I am feeling the Christmas spirit. Why aren't there any Thanksgiving specials, btw? May I suggest Planes, Trains, & Automobiles? Those Aren't Pillows!"

Carry on.

Sincerely, NTE


* Campbell's Soup commercial;

Off to cry

while watching the ER series finale. I'm sure I will, so I've penciled it into my day.

Other than that, I'm going to be pissed a phone call was promised but never came and an audio book that wouldn't play. But those are minor annoyances, and we took Lil Girl to the library today where she was excellent, so all in all, a very good day.

I hope yours was too.

I've got an appointment today

So go play at TV Tropes instead, ok, peoples? Thanks.

Possible starting places: Crowning Moment of Awesome vs. Awesome Moment of Crowning vs Dethroning Moment of Suck

Happy Pi Day!

I don't have any pies, but I've got some links and quotes and clips for you.

As You Wish

Chloe took it in studiously, matter-of-factly. It wasn’t magic to her. She was a child; everything was magic. All phenomena were at once amazing and just what you’d expect. P301-2 Patricia Gaffney, Mad Dash

(via Office Tally)

MAL: Sure, it’s humiliating. Having to lie there while the better man refuses to spill your blood. Mercy is the mark of a great man. (Stabs Atherton in the side.) Guess I’m just a good man. (Stabs him again.) Well, I’m all right. Firefly

Outtakes from Sesame Street

Awesome.

My love for Celebrity Jeopardy

Seriously, people... Celebrity Jeopardy is SO awesome because they make the questions ridiculously easy to answer in order to make the celebrities look smart. Which is probably not all that easy. Tonight's episode included exactly two questions to which I did not readily know the answer. It also included a question under the category of "Weeds" that mentioned the word 'tumble' to which the answer was "tumbleweeds," so you shouldn't be all that impressed. But it sure does make me feel smart. :D

I also have a deep and abiding love for all the SNL Celebrity Jeopardy parody skits, particularly those with Sean Connery.



I don't know if it's Celebrity-fied again tomorrow night (Alex was talking about Tournament of Champions, which is the exact opposite of Celebrity Jeopardy and makes me feel pretty dumb, usually), but you should try to catch it if it is.

People I've been seeing everywhere, random TV edition

Tonight on Cold Case, and popping up as the pilot on Lost (again!), Jeff Fahey

I'd never seen him before he drawled his way through scenes in True Blood, but since then, he's been on ER, tonight's Cold Case, and an episode of Life a few weeks ago, Michael Raymond-James.

Nathan Corddry, who used to be on both the late and lamented Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip & the Thank-god-it's-still-on Daily Show is on The United States of Tara (which I don't really watch, but I've Tivo-ed through a bit), as is Andrew Lawrence, from one of my little sisters' 90's favorites, Brotherly Love.

My mom's a big All My Children fan from the early days (like: day 1), and we all grew up watching along with her, at one point or another. So when I see random AMC alums, it kind of makes me happy. A recent episode of Life had former Brian Bodine (boyfriend to former Haley Vaughan - as played by Kelly Ripa).

How about you guys? Recognizing anyone?

Dwight Schrute's Thoughts on Health Care

Dwight Schrute: In the wild, there is no health care. In the wild, health care is, 'Ow, I hurt my leg. I can't run. A lion eats me. I'm dead.' Well, I'm not dead. I'm the lion. You're dead.




Dwight Schrute: (After he didn't tip the sub man) Why tip someone for a job I'm capable of doing myself? I can deliver food. I can drive a taxi. I can, and do, cut my own hair. I did however, tip my urologist, because I am unable to pulverize my own kidney stones.

"What are you a f@)%&* wizard?"

Did you all catch the Daily Show last night? (If not, why not? People: watch The Daily Show. Always.)

Jon's take on Obama's speech, nearly had me in tears....

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Optimist Prime

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things With Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Joke of the Day

"Have you met America?"

Although, because of my utter hatred for mayonnaise, I was having a hard time deciding whether I should laugh or gag.

My Tivo and I will be happy, regardless

It has not stopped snowing here since 1:00 on Friday afternoon, which, by my count makes it 56 hours. It is beautiful to watch, but that is because I am not the one who has to shovel it. My job, as relates to the snow, is to put out clean towels (and warm ones, if possible) for the people coming in. If I am up to it, I also put on the hot water (although nobody has used it yet: it would be the one time I didn't put it on that they'd come in wanting tea or hot chocolate or some such). The little tree in our front yard is covered tip to root, and has no underneath at all: only snow. We've got well over a foot, I should imagine. A lot of schools are closed from now until the 5th of January... no sense heating up the school for a possible half day on Tuesday. Come the end of June, there'll be some grumpy kids (and grumpier teachers), but that's a worry for another day.

For today, there is a Tivo who automatically records everything with the words "holiday, Christmas, or special", and that leaves me with a surfeit of wonderful Christmas movies and specials to watch. Not to mention the ones we already have: tomorrow is to be Love, Actually, the Muppets, and all the old Christmas cartoons that we taped off the television for the past 20 years (complete with vintage commercials! There's M&M commericals, people!) and present wrapping. That's an almost perfect day in my book, peaceful and calm, little energy required, plenty of resting as needed.

I hope wherever you are - snowed in or not - you're enjoying your Sunday, taking what peace you can find. And if today begins the holidays for you and your family, my very best Hanukkah wishes.

(Oh, and in case you don't have videos or Tivo to keep you company, check out the entire week's posts over at the Collective: they've got a lot of fabulous YouTube clips up, which basically include my entire playlist for tomorrow.)

Did you ever watch True Life?

Yeah, I know: it's on MTV, which, ordinarily keeps it off my radar screen, but it's been on all day today (and NOTHING else has... even my poor Tivo is out of options for me: grr), and I caught a few episodes.

Let me just say, if these lives are true, then I'm afraid for the world.

It's even scarier than The Hills (which I have never seen, except for the clips The Soup shows of it, but just from them it's one of the saddest things ever), because these people are living their lives this way. I just want to yell at them through the tv..."If he says he wants you and his pregnant girlfriend, then the correct response is not 'I'll think about it', but rather something that involves bodily orifices and sharp pointy objects!"

But I know they wouldn't listen - people can convince themselves of some crazy shit.

A pretty good line up.

Monday is a good night for television (and an even better night with TiVo, who, in case I haven't mentioned it is either my very good friend or my total nemesis: we're still deciding), so I'm putting down Eclipse in order to watch a few of my favorite shows.

Big Bang Theory is both hilarious and sadly true: if you are a geek, or have geeks in your life, you know that people actually do have conversations that revolve around Shroedinger's cat or Hobbits. You'd be surprised how often George Lucas or William Shatner could come up in a conversation.

How I Met Your Mother has some of the best characters ever. Specifically: Barney - It's gonna be legend-... wait for it... and I hope you're not lactose intolerant because the second half of that word is DAIRY! - Stinson.

Chuck is on at the same time, but thanks to TV I can watch it later. It's a well written show, and has the added benefit of having Jayne, with a gun (although it's not Vera).

Heroes is not living up to its past seasons or potential, IMO, and if it doesn't improve, I'll probably move it off my Season Pass list.

I won't mention Two and a Half Men, which I think is unbelievably dumb and can't believe is still on; Worst Week which is just lame and will probably not make it through to the end of the season; or CSI: Miami which is a show about sunglasses. I know they're on, but I avoid them. At 10, I generally watch Boston Legal which vacillates between being fully annoying and fully amusing.

And then Jon Stewart & Steve Colbert team up to keep me happy & sane. They certainly have their work cut out for them.

Hope your week is going OK, everybody.

Everyworry

I nearly just put down the computer and headed towards the kitchen for unnecessary food... (When you have no appetite, you often have to remind yourself to eat at all, but when I'm stressed, I eat no matter that I'm not hungry.) But I've been talking to myself for the past hour about facing my fears instead of distracting myself from them. And so, here I am.

This is one of those times that I'm going to write this whole long (or short) post, get finished, and then have to make the decision whether or not it just goes in the draft folder. Or if I am brave enough to push the post button.

I want you to know that I've appreciated your kindness, your generosity, the fact that you keep coming back to read, to say 'hey,' to check in when most of what you're getting is maudlin and dreary. And most of us are feeling enough of the maudlin and dreary on our own lately, and don't especially need extra. I know that feeling: I've been guilty of clicking on a blog I love, seeing how sad the post is and moving on, because I just... can't. Not on that day. So I understand if you just can't, too. That's ok. I hope you'll keep in touch, keep checking in, stop by when there's something more pleasant on our plate.

But here's the thing: that plate? Is overflowing. With everything and everybody. And everyworry.

At least that's what it feels like a lot of the time. I know I can handle it: I actually feel like I am handling it all pretty well, but I'm just saying: it's a lot.

None of the other problems I/we have been having disappeared when Nana died. Life doesn't work that way. My illness is not on hold because I don't have the energy to deal with it. My brother's relationship to his fiance didn't become all patched up, and his preferred form of dealing with stress (by not dealing with it) hasn't magically transformed either. The premature twins aren't uncolicky, and their mother is still a tad bit overwhelmed and depressed. The housing market isn't exactly friendly, and neither are the PUS. Things that were little got magnified, and things that were eventuallys became nows. It's unfortunate, but it's true.

And there's the grief. The little moments when you pick up the phone to call her for dinner, when you burst into tears because her favorite thing to teach was always the American Revolution, and she's missing a most awesome show? (Seriously, are you watching this show? It's on the HBO... and now I think Abigail Adams is a rockstar!)

I always feel compelled to put all the good things in, when I start a post like this, in the hopes of saying: 'I know it's a lot, but I've also got all of this!' I'm tempted to do that now, but that isn't what I wanted to write about. Check out my other posts from this week, if you're looking for the happiness.

And the happiness, it's here too. It's the complexity of things that's got me all churned up tonight. A night where my brother takes an Ambien and says it's for stress. Where Youngest Sister fills her plate with Harvard-y things, and becomes blind to everything else. Where Grandmother takes longer to recover from a cold than me (heretofore unheard of, I assure you). Where my doctor's appointment gets rescheduled, but I'm out of meds. Where my checking account starts to resemble Al Capone's Vault. Where my laptop's fan insists on making an extra hissing noise for no good reason. Where the Easter Bunny bought double the amount of candy, used to making twice as many baskets (one from us, one from Nana.)

It's a night for feeling overwhelmed, and I'm not going to apologize for it. I apologize too much: two people told me that recently, and I'm afraid they're right, so I'm cutting back.

Feeling everworry is a heavy thing, and sometimes you just need to set the load down for a few minutes. Thanks for letting me.

Thanks for the comments, guys - Yes, I'm following up both with further testing (an EEG and another MRI) and with a neurologist. No, my doc didn't have the specifics of what some of those results could mean for me particularly. More wait and see. By now, I"m good at it.

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In other news, it's THURSDAY and that means The Office. Which is new tonight. Must now go watch genius! You should watch it, people. Always.