Tadpoles! Tadpoles is a winner!
short & sweet: friday links
“Letting Go” at Rookie Mag, by Sady Doyle. A wonderful piece on smoking. Or rather, quitting smoking. P.S. I recently quit, too. Yesterday I had two months without a cigarette. Yay!
“learned helplessness” re: drug cartel violence in Mexico. Pretty intense stuff.
Slap Chop, Virgin Islands style:
Astronauts: Drop your cocks, label your socks!
Inspiring: my favorite tweet, this week.
An infographic: Gay Rights in the U.S., State by State
More on mainstream media assery: Time cover sells out moms to sell magazines
And finally: the best hitchhiking story I’ve heard in a while.
Read Morepeople have asked me, “what happened to you, anyway?”
There’s no point in my hiding it for any particular reason. I’m coming up on a year’s sobriety. A year! I feel so full of thoughts and emotions I could write on and on. Sometimes I worry about writing it out, because readers might be bored. But you know what, I think some readers have been bored over the last year as I’ve gradually become less angry, anxious, depressed, angsty, sarcastic, mean, and primarily operating out of my head-space. Or at least I think some people have stopped reading. I don’t know for sure, I just kinda feel it. So, there’s that.
I can’t fully articulate the joy of living clean and sober. And you all know I’m fairly articulate. It’s just, hard to describe.
You know, it was a doctor who told me I needed to get help for my alcoholism. At first he didn’t say I’d need to stop drinking entirely or what I needed to do specifically, he just said I needed help. I remember thinking, okay. I was ready to hear more. I tell you this, but understand in that moment I was the Saddest Li’l Camper on the block. So he asked me if I’d ever tried to quit drinking. I told him yes, and told him about how long I’d managed to stop, then I said, “But my life didn’t improve, so…” I can’t remember what else I said. The truth is, I just gave back in to drinking, and continuing to manage how much I drank and when. It wasn’t wrecking my life like in the movies, and I couldn’t stop anyway, although I kept pretending I could.
He said, “Well think of it this way. Think if you were a heroin addict and were to stop using heroin. Would your life improve?” Now I’ve never so much seen heroin in real life but I knew enough to respond, “No.” He said, “You don’t get help so your life will improve. You get help because you have a disease, and it is your responsibility.”
You could print those two sentences on a bumper sticker and it would be like, “This Is How You Saved My Whole Entire Life, Good Sir”. I absolutely heard him in that moment. I needed no more Knowing. I was terrified, upset, felt tiny and horrible and shameful, but I knew I would take responsibility. Holy cow when I think how scary it was to contemplate living without something I couldn’t live without. Saint Pete was I freaked about admitting to having a highly stigmatized disease, not even a disease in many people’s eyes. Sometimes I forget what that was like. It was pretty bad. Scariest day of my life, HANDS DOWN.
Spoiler alert. Because ironically my life did end up improving (or maybe not “ironically”… what’s irony again?), and pretty fast, but I had no way of knowing this at the time, and no guarantee. (I still have no guarantees.) Still, with all the fear and confusion and shame (the Shame was the worst), by the end of that appointment (there was more, and I could tell you it all pretty much word-for-word if you ever want to hear it) I had accepted I would have to stop drinking. I had accepted that I would get help. It wouldn’t matter if OTHER people thought I had a problem (no one did, far as I knew), or if other people understood (many people haven’t), or if my life got better or worse (it got better, but I put work in every day!). I was committed. And scared. I’d grabbed a cobra by its tail and it was that split sickening second, a gut-deep knowledge of imminent danger.
Tonight a woman with something like twenty-five years sober told me, “You have sobriety beyond your age.” I’ve heard this kind of thing a fair bit. I also know what people mean, I think, when they say these sorts of things to me. I know, because I’ve seen what other people have gone through in sobriety. I know I was given something amazing. I’ve wanted to keep it if possible, so I’ve tried to help others. Every day I ask myself, what I can do for the person who is still sick. Every day I light incense and make an offering, and I say my prayers. And then I do what I’m supposed to, and that means asking for help when I need it. Sounds simple – it’s too bad so many don’t do it.
So anyway, since my wee anniversary is coming up, I’m going to make a mix CD and I’d like anyone who wants one to submit info to this form and in a little while I’ll grab a random group. No, I won’t use your data for anything else except to pick, randomly, maybe ten? people, and send them mix CDs. Because I’m happy and I want to send music your way.
That’s all.
Read Morea funeral, sketchy tire shops
I lie. The tire shop wasn’t sketchy. It was just a used tire shop, we’re bumped down from the days of Les Schwab and young handsome men running in slow motion out to the car.
I should say, our finances are, though. Sketchy. We’re scraping by to afford our little conference trip. And in the last couple days we’ve had to “emergency” surgery a cat, then “emergency” replace tires that were sprouting a crop of wire. I use the air dick quotes because, I guess it was all emergency stuff. If we didn’t surgery the cat she could have fallen gravely ill (and she was in pain), and if we didn’t fix the tires, we could have crashed on the road. So, damn, kind of non-negotiable expenses.
The kitty is fine. She’s all stitched up and hopped up on kitty drugs. I’m very grateful for her recovery. She is very dear to us.
Nels, a funeral for a bird. He voiced a lovely and earnest and powerful prayer before we buried her.
In other news: cute husband, who has helped create cute daughter. They are dressed as nerds today, for some theme. It works.
I also gave blood (of course) and my daughter held my hand through it all. Later, Nels rode on the back of the bike and held the basket with my embroidery supplies, for the class I taught. It was fun stitching, and showing people how to do some simple things. One student was an eight year old girl and that was about a thousand percent awesome.
It was good stuff.
Read More“I’m PERFECT for this.”
The kids wrote, produced, and filmed a new paranormal show. I think it’s pretty much awesome. It’s ALL THE MORE wonderful if you’ve seen some of the show formats the children borrow from.
Ralph edited. All music and sound effects are used with permission. A gem: our friend Ira wrote the credit music, which is kick-ASS!
And now… what will the three investigate next?
Read More“this movie is just ropes & asses!”
My mom and I exchanged Mother’s Day gifts yesterday, before she traveled south to take care of my grandfather for a month. I would have liked to have spent the day taking her out to lunch and such, but she had to get herself on the road.
I had a lovely day today. The first thing my son said to me this morning was, “Happy Mother’s Day”. As I did my computer-thing he called for me to give him some couch snuggles. So, that had to happen.
The rest of the day spun out beautifully. Fresh flowers, awesomeness, sunshine, good food, friends, hanging new curtains. The kids caught a frog then charged neighborhood kids five cents to look at it in its temporary habitat, a wagon filled with water and various floating frog-platform fauna.
Treatment center work. I was not able to bike as I seem to have injured my knee, and any biking hills are treacherous. I’m trying to be patient through this. The work, though, was good for me. And I hope, for others. Afterward a man took me aside and thanked me and said, “Good job.” Something or some things I had shared, resonated with him. He shared a little about his most recent DUI and some medication he was detoxing from. He’s off to another treatment center tomorrow – I will probably never see him again.
Home to the summer-warm house and dusk. Homemade dinner by husband, hot bath.
Soon: time for bed.
But now? Time for a silly-arsed B-movie.
I hope you all have a soft and loving bosom to rest upon, or that you find one soon.
happy mother’s day
This morning:
From a couple years ago, made by my brother and his then-roommates:
And then, of course, the classic.
this friday night / do it all again
FRIDAY LINKS! AW YEAH (if you’re new, please read my Comment Policy before posting)
The definitive response, or at least an incredibly good one, to the TIME magazine assery.
What the world eats, a week’s worth of groceries. h/t Jen G. who reminded me of this article.
From the archives: “Craft pr0n and how it’s killing America” at Underbellie. This two-year old post was recently brought to my attention as a few of my tweeps were diggin’ on it. By the way, only a few months ago I finally found the “affordable and well-made, probably used” dining room table I write about here.
Sea and Land by J. W. Buel, 1889. Do you even know how much this is my thing? Or how much I want this book, and to embroider plates from it? A LOT. My favorite was probably the Japanese spider crab, which turns out has recently been fascinating my brother as well. Oh, and it’s very real.
Obama blows it, big time:
And yes. I laughed so hard I cried.
Ashely Judd on her “puffy” face, at The Daily Beast. (Did I post this already? I don’t think so. Anyway. Here it is. She rocks!)
SCIENCE figures out what really causes ice cream headaches. In the comments, admit it if you’ve had one in the last half year even though you’re a grownup.
Literally the Best Thing Ever: Fictional Rich People of the 1980s at RookieMag.
Hey, I missed James Brown’s birthday! Here, have some dancing lessons. Just be careful on what life lessons you take from the man.
Girls Gone Wild: Female Sex Addiction and the Internet at The Fix.
Readers looking for titillation will instead find a thoughtful piece written by a sex addict (yes, that’s a real thing). I’m not a huge fan of The Fix being as its for-profit motives mean well, what you might think. But this was a good article.
“The greater your shame, the more you do the thing that gives you shame. You feel bad about yourself, you’re lonely, you feel low self-worth, you don’t have enough endorphins to make yourself feel good, so you go back to the addiction because it pleases you and punishes you at the same time.”
This awesome dad takes awesome pictures of his awesome daughters, plus with extra awesome.
“Talking About Independent Learning” at Natural Life Magazine: a schooled and non-schooled young adult discuss the differences in their learning environments. What a beautiful interview. “Maybe self confidence is something that doesn’t need to be built as much as it needs to be protected.” I’d say the same for critical/”free” thinking, compassion, and work ethic… you know, those things people are often saying need to be drilled into kids.
My favorite tweet of the week.
“I’m sorry the information is so scanty but I’ll send you up more as I get it. Blake out.” First, he is acting the hell out of this cut-rate scene in a Z-grade film. Second, his looks and mannerisms are uncannily that of my brother! Third – SCANTY. The information is SO SCANTY.
Speaking of my brother! A picture of him from 2005. Adorable.
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