Hot.

More soup!

I wanna make this one, too! Except I would put cream in it.

It's soup season. Yay!

Re: No fat Kiwis.

Good. Especially if I, sometime in the future, choose to emigrate there. Though one of the commenters has a great point: do they allow smokers? I think they must, because I know a hell of a lot of native Kiwi smokers.

Obesity and smoking are two major health problems that can honestly be fairly easily solved in comparison to, say, congenital heart disease. I've always thought that insurance companies should do more to allow preventative measures for complications from these problems, especially in America.

Also via ECB.

Re: Changing names.

When I was six, I found out that women changed their names when they got married. I thought this was tremendously unfair. I asked my mom why boys got to keep their name and infect other people with it.

She didn't give me a historical or sociological answer but told me that, when she got married to my father, it was against the law to keep your maiden name. She said she never would have changed it if she had the option. When I asked her why she didn't change it back now, she sighed and said that it was too much paperwork and hassle.

I still think it's ridiculous. Why should I change my name? I like my name. Why don't you change yours? As for kids, the only person who can definitively prove that it's theirs is the one who drops it from their vagina, buddy. A name isn't going to change that.

Via ECB.

Thank you.

The best part about my relationship is that he's my best friend and I can have any conversation with him I need to. So, yes, Mr. VNRS and I are doing just fine, thank you.

Tomorrow I'm going to my best girlfriend Jessica's house for Thanksgiving. We're going to make vanilla ginger pear soup, as we do every year, and drink ice wine, the sweet, spendy Kool-aid of wines. It's a lovely time for us to catch up, since we rarely get to spend much time together. I miss her.

And I want to make this punkin soup. Remarkably, I have the entire holiday weekend off for the first time in seven years! So perhaps the Rock Star and I will have punkin soup for dinner.

On third thought...

Yes. It is that I am not taking my herbs. I hate this terrible plague even more than I did before, because it makes me crazy. For reals. It's not that I hate every single person in the world (except for, like, five of you who know who you are), because logically I don't. That's ridiculous. It's that I'm currently incapable of distinguishing actual emotion from anger.

Jaime tells me that anger is not, in itself, an emotion, it's simply a reaction to an emotion. That made so much sense when I heard it that I could have cried. Currently my anger is a reaction to omg my hormones are punching me in the face and I want to die. That's an emotion shared by female sufferers of PMDD and FTM transitioners on an imbalanced prescription of testosterone.

On a related crazy-making note, I can't tell when I'm hungry any more. I blame the lack of gluten: I'm getting all the nutrients that I can from what I'm eating now, so I'm less hungry, but now I don't have the tell-tale blood sugar headaches that I used to get telling me that it's time to eat. So I keep forgetting. My co-worker Shirley Jane told me today that I had lost weight (I can't tell) and that I should eat a bigger breakfast. Perhaps.

Buried alive.

It probably doesn't help my mood that I haven't been taking my regular Chinese herbal constitutional while I've had this stupid, stupid influenza. I'm all cranky and hormonal.

I bet it's all me, in my head. Darn it.

Strangers when we meet.

Men want me, kind of.

All my friends
Now seem so thin and frail
Slinky secrets
Hotter than the sun

No peachy prayers
No trendy rechauffe
I'm with you
So I can't go on

I guess that's my absurd lesson for this winter week, because it's been all about men, boys, whatever. Listen to these shorts:

My Very First Boyfriend Ever contacted me this week. Fine. Good. Complicated. We met when I was a troubled, suicidal teenager and he left me without a word after a year of blissful first teenage love. Or so I thought. What really happened is that he was beginning to develop Crohn's disease and had to move away, and though he kept trying to get in touch with me, my parents told him to stop trying to contact me. So, he gets sick, has to go away anyway, stays sick for years, and eventually finds me on MySpace. This is a gross simplification, of course, but that's basically what happened.

Well, one expects one's first love to fuck one up, of course. However, the initial episode compounded itself with my nascent abandonment issues and began what I would later recognize as the beginnings of my massive intimacy issues. You know the ones:

Don't breathe too deep
Don't think all day
Dive into work
Drive the other way
That drip of hurt
That pint of shame
Goes away
Just play the game

Sing it, Mark. Anyway, flash forward to this week and these events. So I meet the guy at Elliot Bay Bookstore, and he's sweet and charming and apparently still cares deeply for me and is awfully sorry for everything that happened. Which is gratifying but not an end in itself, so now I'm left with looking back on my past relationships thinking, Could I have made this different? How much was me?

I know I could never have changed some things: the one that cheated on me, the one that really and truly did have to move across the country to find himself, the one I rebounded to that I just couldn't love enough even though I wanted to. But for years I've lived with the bitter presentiment that every man (woman are a different case) who has ever loved me has left me, with the notable exception of a violent alcoholic that will neither save himself nor stop asking me to save him. (We'll get to that later.)

All my violence
Raining tears upon the sheet
I'm bewildered
For we're strangers when we meet

So I find out that this isn't true and everything I know is wrong. Fortunately, I had my therapy right after I met up with him, but that just means that my real work is just beginning.

Mr. VNRS told me that I'd start having weird dreams after this, and he's been right. My brain is trying to process this new information and it's being a little too efficient for me to rest properly. So I slept hard last night, but woke up anxious and restless sometime in the middle of the night.

Speaking of whom, the Very Nice Rock Star and myself had an unsettling conversation last night. I was explaining to him about something I had talked to Jaime (my hippie, Buddhist therapist) about: my intimacy issues. I have this problem which is somewhat freeing but ultimately unhealthy, which is my inability to rely on a person that I'm dating -- or, to a much lesser extent, my friends. In other words, I assume that every time I see them will be the last. This might be lovely and Zen if I didn't actually believe it so much, but as it stands it means that I don't really feel that these people are a part of my life so I don't let them affect me either positively or negatively. If they aren't in the room with me, they might as well not exist at all. That's cold. It helps if I don't date around too much after I find someone I like, otherwise that's an excuse for me not to avoid intimacy.

The next thing I know, and I'm not sure how this happened, but Mr. VNRS is saying, "I don't want you to be disappointed, but you know that we're still in the non-exclusive part of our relationship, right? It's just that some women have conveniently forgotten that..."

Which filters to the Angry Woman portion of my brain as: "Oh, it must be very painful for you to not be close to people like that. Well, maybe that's good, because you really shouldn't, anyway. Nobody wants to be close to you, you know, because innately broken women who have spent time in famous insane asylums aren't attractive. Except to that one guy you told me about who was freakily into it."

When what he really meant was: "I really like you, I just like going very slowly and I know you do, too, because we've had really great, open conversations about it."

The Angry Woman wants to reply: "What, you think I don't know the score? I get it. You're talking to the girl who gets regular complaints from actual boyfriends -- you know, people who aren't paralytically afraid of commitment like you and I are -- that she's too distant. Also, you treat me like your girlfriend and you probably treated those other women that way, too, so how much is conveniently forgotten and how much is you not bothering to define a clearly-recognizable boundary? Fuck off, asshole, I do know the score, I've been here with other people and I'm over this kind of bullshit, so I'm leaving you right now. GOODBYE FOREVER!"

When what I should say is: "Your timing was awful and that hurt. A lot. Look, tonight was really great for both of us, so let's not ruin it by talking about our relationship. I feel lonely enough lately, thank you, and I have a lot to deal with emotionally, so please don't. I love you, good night."

I can't remember what I did say, but I over-analyzed it until I fell asleep. Cue the intense dreaming. I woke up pointlessly angry and cold and went to work.

I check my e-mail when I get there. There's something from Mr. Alcoholic Rock Star:

Things have been crazy. I'll wait until you're
entirely better so I can tell you all about it in
person.

Okay. Well. We'll see how that turns out. If it's anything like past I have something I need to tell yous from him, he'll probably tell me he's seeing someone (last time he got back with an ex-girlfriend), at which point I'll tell him that I don't really care because so am I.

Maybe he's getting married.

Blank screen TV
Preening ourselves in the snow
Forget my name
But I'm over you

Blended sunrise
And it's a dying world
Humming Rheingold
We scavenge up our clothes

All my violence
Raining tears upon the sheet
I'm resentful
For we're strangers when we meet

On a final note, Jinny is not, in fact, moving to Portland. I want the best for her, so if she's sure, I'm happy. I want her to be with me right now. I want to go away from the boys and either hide under the covers until they all go away or go out with my girls to the Wild Rose and say fuck 'em if they can't take a joke, break their windows.

I learned that one from a man who left me.

Cold tired fingers
Tapping out your memories
Halfway sadness
Dazzled by the new

Your embrace
Was all that I feared
That whirling room
We trade by vendu

Steely resolve
Is falling from me
My poor soul
All bruised passivity

All your regrets
Ride rough-shod over me
I'm so glad
That we're strangers when we meet
I'm so thankful
That we're strangers when we meet
I'm in clover
For we're strangers when we meet
Heel head over
And we're strangers when we meet

Just a picture today.

Via Slog, thanks to the Blue Scholars.

Less sick now.

How exciting!

I'm totally less sick, except for this croup-y (yet productive!) cough. And a sniffle.

No thanks to meth. Or self-referential humor.

Sleep: it's a miracle drug!

Re: Coming Home.

This is the best thing I've read in a while.

Via Gluten-Free Girl.

Re: Meth Labs.

I am issuing a blanket apology for my post regarding meth labs. I should never have linked to a site that tells you what's in crystal meth. I am very, very sorry. Very sorry. In my defense I can only say that I was on Sudafed.

Don't mess with iodine crystals, kids. They're gross.

But this is still fascinating, from a chemistry perspective. These talented young people who run meth labs should make something of themselves, go into something useful, like chemical engineering.

You know, it's a good thing I'm a white woman from an East Coast politico family, otherwise who knows where* my sense of humor would get me?

the tussin, the tussin
put it down like it was nothing
robocop couldn't stop me puking and flushin
no balls to be bustin, no fightin, no cussin
just love for a drug called robitussin**

*Gitmo.
**Technically, that's dextromethorphan, the most ridiculous drug ever.

Did you know?

In that picture from the Kiss show? That's not his hair!

Now you know!

For example, this is how sick I've been:

I messaged the Rock Star and five minutes later forgot that I had done so.

Meth Labs: Ruining Influenza for Sober People Since 1993.

I hate how you can't get pseudoephedrine in Washington State any more without going up to the prescription counter. Stupid meth labs.

I'm still sick. I can't talk and walking four blocks to the store exhausts me. I have no appetite and average about five hours of sleep a night. I can't not work because I'm broke. I can't go to the doctor because crazy fuckwits in this country can't understand why universal health care is a good idea. (I do not have private insurance through my job.)

Bleah.

So, no good blogs from me until I feel less terrible.

Dream girl.

You are Maryiln Monroe

A classic tortured beauty You're the dream girl of many men Yet they never seem to treat you right

What Famous Pinup Are You?

Why don't you marry a nice shiksa instead?

My last long-term relationship was with an Ashkenazi Jew who never told his Conservative parents about me, although we had been together for a year and had begun pre-marriage talks. Some of these took the form of how we would raise prospective children. I identify as Buddhist, although I don't speak of my faith much. Adam, however, culturally identified as Jewish but spiritually was an atheist. I was not interested in, and would still remain against, conversion, having spent enough of my adult life coming to terms with my personal spirituality.

Adam was, and is, an intelligent, well-spoken man of the sort that I'm typically attracted to. Somehow, I've gotten to date an unusually high percentage of Jews over the years. Maybe it's the tall, dark, and handsome thing (sorry, Rock Star! I also have a track record with red heads!). Seattle has a relatively small Jewish population, especially compared to other parts of the country where I've lived (interestingly, Adam was from St. Paul, MN). I also have plenty of friends (mostly in theater, of course) who are Jewish, and my father's foster family is Jewish. I was raised with some interesting holiday habits, to say the least!

So I'm continually fascinated by Jewish topics and issues and I have frequently been declared an "honorary Jew" by my friends. Well, I ran into this article on Slate today about the probable genetic predisposition of Ashkenazi Jews towards verbal intelligence.

Which makes me think of other racial and ethnic predispositions. I am primarily Celtic (Irish, Scottish, and Welsh, although I'm also some English, German, and African). So, what comes from there? I surmise a genetic predisposition towards alcoholism and a good ear for music, maybe a temper? A free sexuality among women or homosexuality among men? I would guess that we have some of the opposite problem that the Jews have; the trade-off for their wordiness seems to be poor visio-spatial awareness. I bet that the Scots and the Irish, natural warriors that we are, don't have that particular problem.

I have heard that we tend to have problems processing glutens after millenia of eating sheep fresh off the vine. On that note, I'm pleased to say that I am feeling much better, digestively speaking, since going gluten-free.

Does anyone know if or where I could find any more information?

Kill me.

I hate the hiccups enough as it is, but never, ever, if you can help it, get the hiccups when you have a terrible influenza.

I want to die. At least until the hiccups go away.

Kissing disease.

The Kiss show went well, although I wasn't there very long. I stayed through the first set and then Dan drove me home; I'd been feeling under the weather and had to work the next day anyway. But the boys did a great job and I'd love to see the whole set sometime.

Earlier on Halloween, I took my nephew trick-or-treating for the first time. He's three. He was a fire chief! Not just a fireman, a fire chief. We went down to Magnolia Village where all the businesses prep for a big community trick-or-treat. I think we got through about ten places before his eyes started to glaze and Caitlin and I decided that it was dinner time for everyone. On the way home, Roscoe said from the back, "Tired Mama. Tired Auntie." We agreed that, yes, Mama and Auntie were very tired.

The Rock Star promptly got sick the day after Halloween, though, and I came over Saturday to make soup and a pie for him. I'm still working out this recipe for Apple Gruyere Pie. It turned out okay, but it needs more cheese. I did, however, work out a fantastic gluten-free pie crust that tastes like real pie crust and doesn't fall apart if you look at it sideways. Take that, Flying Apron Bakery!

So of course I woke up sick on Sunday after cooking all day Saturday. The Rock Star made me some eggs (I tried to make them myself but he kept me on the couch instead). After he took me home I spent the rest of the day shivering in bed and playing Final Fantasy XII. Fevers always kick my ass; once I'm over them, I'm fine with sniffles and all, but I get awful, hallucinatory fevers. I'm glad I took all kinds of vitamins and supplements this week in preparation of getting sick; things have been so bad that I knew my body would give out at some point. And it did. Hopefully I'll mostly be up and running again by tomorrow or the next day.

Good Morning!

Boo.

Halloween is "scary".

Women dress as "sexy" and men dress as "women".

Does that then infer:

Sexy = scary?

Women = scary?

Dia de los Muertos.

No sun -- no moon!
No morn -- no noon!
No dawn -- no dusk -- no proper time of day --
...
No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,
No comfortable feel in any member --
No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,
No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds --
November!

--Thomas Hood