You can’t start training for a triathlon without taking the first step. You can’t play a song on the guitar without tuning it first. Uugh. That’s a terrible way to start a post. Hackneyed expressions, right? You shouldn’t EVER write those in any respectable piece of writing.
Luckily, this is not a respectable piece of writing. Beware, reader, there be nothing of substance or quality herein. And I did train for and cross a finish line in a triathlon. And I regularly, lazily, try to pick out a song on the guitar without tuning it, and it sounds like crap. So I earned the right to hackneye the hell out of that opening.
So hooray, my first post on a new blog! I’m already killing it!
Today, this morning, faced with insomnia and a head full of despair for all the things I’m not doing well, I started a journal. Writing by hand in a notebook. The distraction that is the Internet, or even being on the computer, makes it very hard to run with a thought to its conclusion. So I partook in that ancient medieval exercise of finding a writing implement and paper, and painstakingly printed out my thoughts, word by slow word. Jesus it takes effort to print by hand when you can type 80 words a minute.
Anyway, I got a lot out of my head. And then I returned to bed, and I slept like the proverbial baby (a lie, by the way, having had babies. I slept like very drunk). Having manually downloaded the thoughts onto paper, I think I circumnavigated the traffic jam in my brain. Taking those first steps in what I really intend to be a commitment. Tuning my writerly talents before launching into the song of myself.
I figured it might be useful to also begin a new online repository for thoughts. Not in that same way a notebook performs its function in its blank boring emptiness. There are plenty of tabs always open on my computer to tempt me into wandering wild-eyed into the metropolis of online shinies. But possibly as a way to track my progress, and make myself a little bit more publicly accountable for doing the work of writing.
In other words, expect nothing amazing here for awhile. I can bang out thoughtless posts super fast with my lightning quick typing fingers, typity type typing. Give up on the expectation that you will come away from reading this blog with the wisdom of the ages. If, however, you find reading the musings of a middle-aged (wow, I guess I am now, at 50?) somewhat depressed housewife and mother of 3 interesting? Well, I’m your Huckleberry.
Thanks for reading. Now go away and do something useful today.
March 12, 2020
This new Covid-thing is blowing up all over the East Coast, and a Cambridge hotel is ground zero for our region. We are a few miles, as the seagull flies, from Cambridge, and a few of our town’s residents are among those infected. My 3 kids attend 3 different schools in town. I have a graduating senior, a sophomore, and a 4th grader!
“Hey, kids, you aren’t going to school tomorrow. It looks like we’ll be having a 2-week break!” Jubilation ensues. I order pizza! There is dancing.
February 1, 2021
We wear masks when we go to buy more masks. Our groceries and home goods arrive in a box on the porch weekly. Every so often, we drive to pick up prescriptions at the pharmacy drive-thru, and it’s like a special road trip. There are weeks we go nowhere in our car. I keep forgetting how to adjust the windshield wipers, so there is cursing whenever it rains or snows. Grocery stores run out of our food items often, so we evolve.
“Hey, kids, I bought Jeff Bezo’s chocolate-sandwich cookies because there seems to be a shortage of Oreos. Please moderate.” The last glimmer in their eyes slowly fades. We are sick of pizza. Minecraft is waiting.
I haven’t written much about the last 327 days since we committed to being home to stop the spread and protect our family and the families of our community. But suffice to say — life changed. My wife and I both work from home every day. My oldest child dropped out of school in May so didn’t graduate high school. My middle child hasn’t once entered the halls of the town high school as a junior. All of his classes including P.E. are online. My youngest is now being homeschooled, because IEP services were abysmal, and depression was setting in.
Most people I know personally have made similar choices to Stay the Fuck Home, especially those located near Boston or major cities.* We see one another on Facebook. We are all hug-starved and awkward. When we get together for Zooms or Google video calls, we all stumble over our words. We’ve forgotten how to people.
Life right now is a ship at sea with no shore on the horizon, and no rudder. We float from distraction to distraction — digesting entire Netflix series in days, building farms in Stardew Valley, playing video games until we are sick of playing video games. No book goes unread. No new show goes un-tested. We are hungry and starving at the same time.
The extroverts suffer the most, I think. When you are used to being fed on the energy of others, like a social vampire, becoming house-bound dries you up inside until you are just a cask of neuroses and need. You fill those empty spaces with Pop Tarts, video games, a new hobby, but your skin is paper-thin. Tears are about to escape at all times, so you read more Facebook or bake new foods, furiously build your Stardew Valley farm.
And everyone around us is suffering, so it’s hard to complain. Unlike so many in this world, I have the privilege/luck/wherewithal to say “I’m healthy. I have a steady job. My kids are OK.”
For now, this is enough. And it’s so not even close to enough.
What does it say about me, about this time that I am writing in, that I am always on the lookout for fucked-up, dilapidated trash cans on my morning walks?
In my defense, I have always preferred to take photos that say something. I learned the elements of photography via a photojournalism class at the University of Florida, so I’m telling a story in most of the photos I like to put out into the world. OR I’m mirroring something I’m feeling inside to you. I don’t usually just go for pretty, although taking photos of flowers does lighten my soul a little.
Times like these, souls do need a little lifting. I’m gonna keep taking photos of pretty flowers. But I’m also on the lookout for images that say something deeper. We need to be reminded that right now, the US is this trash can. It’s beat up and rusted out, yet someone is still putting it out on the curb with shit in it for trash pickup on Monday morning. THIS trash can still has use. That’s a fucking metaphor, people.
Another black man has been shot by police. Protestors are being beaten, tear-gassed, and shot. White supremacists are being thanked for showing up at a protest with their guns. Meanwhile, the Republican National Circus has speakers on its platform talking about how white people are feeling fear. Fear of losing their suburbs. Their god. The resounding refrain of “WHAT THE FUCK” is ringing through the heads of all reasonable people on this planet whenever this president opens his maw.
The US is so fucked. So broken. So in need of repair, love, some body work, rustoleum, a can of silver spray paint. Let’s fix it up and TAKE OUT THE TRASH.
I used to keep a blog for mommying called “MotherMirth.” I refuse to call myself a mommyblogger, though, because I was clinically inconsistent. I’ve retired the site because the porn spammers were prolific, and site management got too involved, and also I am just plain lazy.
I started it in 2002, at the birth of my first human. That human is now old enough to vote. Most of what I wrote was in response to the myriad of parenting articles I read, in books and in forums. I found myself debating the opposite point a lot, like that “Mom Enough” trash that tried to shame the measurement of my parenting. Or responding to Tiger Mom or was it French Mom — I forget. But I remember it was like screaming into my own toilet. It was WORK to get my perspective out into the world, and I got a lot of shit for it.
I have much less investment here, on my new site — WTF. I don’t have to measure up anymore. I’ve got 3 kids, and I do still have a lot to share. But I’ve wanted to widen my scope, and MotherMirth felt very stifling. Parenting informs my world view, and the minutiae of parenting teens, ADD kids, LGBTQIA kids — it’s part and parcel of everything I write.
But sometimes I write with a FOCUS on parenting. And I miss having that space dedicated to this crazy undertaking of parenting humans in this age. Thus, I’ll be adding my parenting two-cents from time to time. Just letting you know, so our relationship as writer/reader is one of trust. Reading about parenting stuff should be consensual, so that you are fully prepared and equipped before diving into my living room. This is your warning.
All those white-haired, half-naked Henry Cavill memes on social media have finally compelled me. I have caved to the pressure and binged the first 3 episodes of The Witcher (Netflix, 2019 & 2020). Dare I say that I’m enchanted, or is that too cliché?
I wouldn’t call this a full review. But I have a few thoughts, in case you were considering checking it out. Ahead be spoilers — readers beware!
First, let’s talk about how The Witcher sounds. Have I been walking around with shitty earbuds for too long, or has the sound editing for shows in this genre changed? Like, is it the $80 headphones I got for $winterholiday, or does the brutal violence of the blood-bath-battle scene really sound like slaughtering a field of over-ripe canteloupes with a dull blade? Has on-screen violence always sounded so… wet? When the armies of Queen Calanthe of Cintra and Nilfgaard clash, it’s an orgy of battle-blur-action staggered with your usual cinematic tropes. We’ve got your juicy eye-gouging and beheading scenes, my personal favorite–the hatchet-inna-yer-helmet–, and lots of splattering gut impales. It’s a hot mess of battle, culminating in the queen’s consort getting an arrow in the eye. You get a good sense for Queen Calanthe’s character, witnessing not just a new widow’s sorrow, but a warrior queen’s absolute rage — oh, Jodhi May, I love you in every delicious scene!
Geralt of Rivia: The Good, the Bad, the Muscles!
The entire gestalt of the main character, Geralt of Rivia, feels like a familiar casserole of the loner/bad-boy/hero character tropes we find throughout the fantasy genre, but Geralt is seasoned with a bit of spaghetti western flavor. Henry Cavill plays Geralt with a similar gravitas and poise of another man-of-few-words, a misanthropic, misunderstood good guy/bad guy outlaw, the man without a name — Blondie from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Like Blondie, Geralt’s morality is questionable. He kills monsters for the money, but you can see, early on, the fringes, the suggestion of a morality that is more chaotic neutral than good. He’s a straight shooter, like Blondie (har har), and is most definitely an outlier, a trait that is most noticeable in the differences in accent. Every other actor so far is speaking in an English accent, although there are certainly nuances to classify characters as royalty or common. But Geralt speaks in what sounds like an American accent. Cavill’s makes a very conscious effort to make Geralt’s accent … different. Cavill is after all, from the UK and has no trouble with English accents! It’s not like he’s Kevin Costner in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, and said “fuck it!” because he couldn’t do the English accent. Witchers are mutants, feared by humans and monsters alike. Cavill does a good job of reminding us of Geralt’s otherness with every word he utters.
Overall Impression
Unusual for me, but I came to The Witcher Netflix series in full innocence. I’ve never read the books, comics, short stories, etc. I haven’t played the game. For a voracious reader of fantasy novels, and a gamer who’s logged more hours slogging through WoW dungeons and levels than I care to admit, coming to this series untainted is saying a lot. That said — Witcher 3 is apparently on Steam. There go my Saturday mornings!
Here are my final thoughts:
PROS:
1. OK, I’m just going to go ahead and say it. I’m objectifying Henry Cavill an awful lot. Those darkly-lit shots of his bulging biceps **fans self** are maybe as voluptuous as the way dank swamps, battles, villages, castles, forests are filmed. It feels very much like you’re watching characters walk through a game like Elder Scrolls or Dragon Age. Chalk up some points here for great scenery, lighting, costume, the environs of the action.
2. The story. Setting aside the scenes of somewhat-naked Cavill, I’m still liking the direction of the narrative. I’m aware there’s some time-fuckery happening in these first few episodes. I’m doing the Tetris in my head. So far, I’m watching 3 movies. The Geralt movie. The Ascension of Yennefer. And the Innocent, Wandering Maiden Princess Ciri. And I’m curious to see them come together to weave something interesting.
3. The fight scenes. Holy bloody whiskers of Ares. It’s like every new entry in this genre has absorbed the lessons of Game of Thrones, LOTR, and other series with epic battle cinematography. Watching Geralt with the sword is some beautiful choreography.
CONS:
1. I truly do NOT like the glamming up of Yennefer from her more humble beginnings, twisted-spine-and-all. I was loving that there was a character overcoming physical challenges, becoming more bad-ass and accomplished. Growing more confident. And then. Ta da. Magic surgery, and she’s all fixed. That sucks. I was happily cheering her imperfectly perfect ascension (so to speak) to super-sorceress and thinking, YAY! We can finally have strong female characters who are imperfect! Down with the patriarchy! The change in Yennefer was a big turn off. I’m curious if this new perfect Yennefer will live up to her progenitor.
2. IF I HEAR THE WORD “DESTINY” ONE MORE TIME, I’M GOING TO HURL. It’s like Darth Vader in the original Star Wars trilogy. Watching The Witcher and waiting for the talks about destiny would be a great drinking game! Every time you hear the word destiny you take a shot of whisky and send a nasty email to the screen writers. Yes. I get it. Destiny is at play. Destiny destiny destiny. Do we need to be bandied about the head with it at all times?
The Pros outweigh the cons for me, and The Witcher is definitely the kind of show that appeals to my love of fantasy. I recommend it if you like epic-feeling fantasy narratives with mythic qualities of the eurocentric variety, and you aren’t too squeamish about jump scares, lots of blood and some sexy times & nudity.
My battle against single-use-plastics rages on, and it’s getting in the way of the family cookie supply because our favorite cookies come in plastic packaging. Any day now, I expect a full-scale revolt.
As a consumer, I can choose NOT to buy some products. Cookie containers are the hill I will apparently die on.
Let me explain. I really believe we can — as part of our efforts to effect change in the world to reduce plastics — end manufacturers’ maniacal fetish of packaging products in single-use plastics. We can influence the market through choice, and theoretically, it will shift in response. Right? That’s what I learned in Microeconomics I think. I don’t know. I got a C.
The store’s big plastic vat of chocolate chip cookies for $5 really wants to jump into my cart. But every time I buy them, I am sending the message that I’m OK with that packaging. So, they become, for me, guilt cookies.
You would think, wouldn’t you, guilt cookies might be tasty? Like, forbidden. Taboo cookies. Like your mom saying “Don’t you dare eat that cookie, 5-year-old Terry with no impulse control! And now I’m going to leave the room for reasons.” THOSE COOKIES. Those were the tastiest.
My conscience isn’t allowing the guilt cookies to taste good. Either that or the plastic outgassing affects the cookies? Maybe they are, in fact, toxic. And I am saving my family members from certain death.
Just know. If you don’t hear from me, when you find my body — it was no accidental death. It was matricide. They murdered me for cookies.
When I was in grad school many years ago, the years of the faux leather briefcase bought with those sweet grad school loan funds, I landed a kick-ass job as the managing editor of the school’s literary magazine, Panhandler. I was in school in the literal panhandle of Florida, but the journal’s name was quite apt for a low-budget literary magazine that printed underrepresented writers, and it’s produced by grad students of literature at one of Florida’s lesser known schools.
We would regularly receive submissions from prison inmates. Bad, just terribly bad poems. Poems with so much heart, though. The suffering and lonely words scratched onto crinkled, cheap lined paper, reaching out, trying so hard to BE poetic. It was a heartbreaking enterprise to turn these souls down. I would sift through the mail, searching for jewels among the submissions, our mailbox swamped with penitentiary & state prison return addresses. And there were always jewels, my friends. Among our staff, even, were poets and writers just warming up. Writers who today I still have enormous respect for.
Panhandler still exists today, and I hope they don’t sue my ass for this post. This poem has stuck in my head and still brings tears to my eyes to this day. Especially when I’ve had a glass of red wine and a little too much nostalgic longing for years past, when I was important in a different way than I am today. This glass is for you, Paul Grant, wherever you are today. Thank you for writing something that stuck with me for 24 years.
Resume
I can’t take apart a perfectly good watch
and ever make it run again. In a box
in a bigger box, I have a jar
filled with leftover parts from the times I tried.
But I can come up with enough passings
of hands over soft skin to soothe small wars away,
Not only is it ominously 2:02 on 02-20-2020, but I’m writing to you from the very precipice of age. I turned a half-century-old recently. And it’s not like it snuck up on me, Snidely Whiplash style, and tied me to the railroad tracks as the locomotive of death chugged menacingly toward me.
I felt it coming in the creaking of my right knee. And in the chest x-ray that came back with “degeneration of lower vertebrae” and my doctor shrugging and saying “Meh, you’re 50.”
So, what is FIFTY like? I feel like I spend a lot of time measuring the expenditure of effort against the potential benefit, weighing the importance of results by the amount of work needed to get them. I’m trying to get as much bang for my buck out of anything I possibly can. Do I go to my friend’s dance party and have drinks and social? Well, given that it’s possible to have x amount of fun with y amount of preparation. As long as y isn’t going to take more than 15 minutes, it is worth doing, to get x amount out of it. I do algebra all the time!
At 50, I’ve learned how to prioritize and let myself off the hook. Does my house have to be spotless for $bestfriend visiting? As spotless as when the landlord is coming, or a new friend? Can I let $bestfriend see my house at this stage and not suffer internally? Is taking a nap more important than furiously cleaning? The answer is easy: if you can nap with a clear conscience, do that.
Fifty is ambitiously putting all the things on the calendar you want to do, and hoping like hell you can get to some of those, but realizing that you probably will miss 25-50% because of family/illness/exhaustion/don’t wanna — and being OK with setting those expectations.
It’s accepting the fact that your knees are a bad design for weathering time, and learning how to make choices for their longevity. I could take chances and try to ride that skateboard. Show that kid how to do it. But if I fall on my knee, I’m on crutches–best case scenario. OR I’ll need surgery and one-level living. So, there are body parts getting noticeably . . . worn. Being aware of this and starting to be at least cognizant of how you move about the world and make choices about what you do — that’s the wisdom of age.
Turning 50 as a person who has teeth is somewhat horrifying. Those years of blowing off flossing are now catching up. Even regular, twice-yearly cleanings lead to disappointed hygienists who tsk tsk you for not taking better care of your gums. It’s not enough to run the Sonicare over your teeth in the two days preceding your cleaning and make your hygienist happy. Now they actually want to involve the periodontist, do surgical things, re-do crowns. It’s getting expensive to maintain a mouth full of teeth.
So, what about mental health at 50? Because I’ve been through some shit, and I’ve learned the importance of therapy and sorting out my PTSD, learning how to go easier on myself and others through the work with a mental health professional, I’m actually in pretty good shape mentally/emotionally. If it doesn’t appear so because you learn from me or someone close to me that I am out of cope, or suffering in some way, it’s because I’ve chosen to begin sharing my journey, an experience of trusting others that’s still new to me.
I’m also more flexible in my thinking. I can allow myself to have multiple conflicting emotions simultaneously and still be OK! I can foresee complications in plans and thwart discomfort by being prepared. Like, what happens if Snidely Whiplash comes along and ties me to the railroad tracks! Always pack a knife in your purse! I mean, that’s a metaphor for emotional stuff. But still, you really should always pack a knife. I always have at least one knife on me at all times!
Being 50 means I care less about what people think of me. Last year I decided I was done investing so much care and time into having my hair long and brown, in an attempt to hold on to what I thought was beautiful about me. I stopped–after more than 20 years–dying my hair brown, and I let it go gray. Then in July, I just cut it all off, down to a pixie-like length. It’s fantastic.
I keep waiting to blame stuff on being 50. I’m ready to blurt out “Dude. I’m 50!” But it’s not working out so far. For instance, I can still outrun all 3 of my kids. It’s not that I’m faster. It’s that I last longer and am more stubborn. I’m better at knowing my boundaries, so instead of blaming my inability to do something on age, I instead choose not to do the thing!
Last, coming up on 50 means thinking about a list of things you want to get to, and that’s an experience that suggests there are more years behind you than ahead. It’s staring you straight in the face, that no one gets out of this thing called life, alive. So if you want to ride a motorcycle in the Pride Parade with Dykes on Bikes, you better get your license and start making that happen! You want to go on that experiential ride through slow winding roads, just for the journey? Buy the motorcycle!
Being a person on the other side of 50 means having a list of physical accomplishments you want to attempt. Walk more of the Appalachian Trail. Train for a multiple-day bike trip. Stop thinking of physical exercise as a race you have to win. If you want to do the triathlon, sign up for it! Train for it! And know you aren’t going to be competitive. You are in it to finish it. Kind of like… life? Right?
As this milestone year chugs along, I’ll post more about aging, and about being 50. But so far, using my somewhat morbid but — I hope — darkly humorous rating scale of grave stones, I’m rating “Turning 50” so far as a 3.5 out of 5 gravestones experience. Things could be better, and at the same time so much worse. I’m happy for the years I’ve been around, and as I creep toward the inevitability of death, I’m grateful for the time I’ve had.