Mellow Drama

Angry for a Very Good Reason (FINALLY)

2009-05-30T16:37:00.001-07:00

Ramon and I had had - were having - a lovely afternoon up on the Broadway drag. I had a 2:30 haircut with Nicole (freakin' genius at making my untidy mess look like an intentional untidy mess) at Scream Barber, and we were wandering home after, stopping by our haunts. Bailey Coy books, Linda's for brunch, I turned the prayer wheel at Vajra and a brief visit to Urban Outfitters, but only to use the privy and to sneer at the gladiator sandals and the $20 hip flasks that say things like "Bitch" and "Horny". Ramon bought me flowers.

On the way out we stopped at Dick's for a chocolate shake and some fries - the line was about five deep as usual. As I waited for Ramon to pay I heard a voice behind me; a lady on the phone.

"Yeah, someone just 'small-changed' me, so I'm buying him a burger. I'm in line right now - talk to you later." This voiced in a loudish tone of complacent ennui. I looked over at her and saw a man beside her (I had seen him a couple of times that afternoon - a little shaggy, but tidily dressed and kind-looking, asking people here and there for money), looking sheepish. Many people were around.

She looked - well, it doesn't matter, save to say that she pretty much satisfied my prejudice about what a person who said things like that, and how they said it, would look like.

Hey, I feel put-upon sometimes, lots of times, when people ask me for money, and especially if they've got some kind of 'I'm different from the others, just in an unfortunate spot at the moment' spiel (some that I've heard from the same person, day after day - I know your Aunt in Tacoma didn't forget your return bus fare for the third day in a row, love). I don't like it that I get hit up more than once every day in this town, and I hardly ever cough up. I hate hearing the conversations that people have to have about The Homeless Problem or the 'get a job' mentality of the cats who feel like they need a reason not to give their hard-earned cash to someone just because they asked for it. I still seethe with rage at the memory of the dude who yelled at me when I told him no: "Well, what fuckin' GOOD are ya?!" The whole homeless/panhandler issue is a thorny nest of not fun thinky thoughts for me. Seeing things from many sides is a sonuvabitch sometimes, no?

This one cut me down, man. Hurt me right to the heart. I hated that woman - I was so mad I was tearing up on our way home. Who DOES that to someone? Some people like buying food for folks who ask them for money, cool. Not my way, of course - I give 'em money and they do what they like with it - but still better than giving people nothing at all or speeching them out about their naughty vagrant ways. But insisting on buying food and then shouting it all over creation - WHILE the poor sucker is with you, for the love of Pete - not nice. Not loving. Maybe not worth it, to that guy.

Sorry, no 'You see, Timmy' moment to cap this one off. I'm just angry, angry, angry. And hurt. And you know what hurt angry people do in this great age - yes.

Yes, we blog about it. Good stuff.

Lara Fabian - no joke

2009-04-01T08:48:00.000-07:00

Lara Fabian is a Canadian singer (Flemish/Sicilian by blood). I know very little more about her, except that she has a beautiful voice - she sounds a bit like Celine Dion* but beats her by a mile and a half. Now, you don't have to like the song or the singer, but watch this moment she has with her audience. It rates one tissue for the likes of me:

* Please note that I am NOT endorsing Celine Dion fanhood by any means. Not for me, anyway.

the M word

2009-03-09T11:20:00.000-07:00

my favorite dance song doesn't make me want to bounce around anymore - today it makes me want to weep. and weeping isn't an urge that needs encouraging today; it's a tide to hold back, moment by moment. i'm not a big fan of holding back.

now is the time for work, but i don't remember what's to be done. now is the time for a woman's work - shutting up, sitting on it, picking battles, waiting in silence for a better time. for him. i never was much good as a woman.

it's time for him to be encouraged, nurtured, made safe on a long, difficult and painfully new journey in his life. now is not the time for sulking, tantrums, interruptions or pleas for comfort or attention. i was never much of a safe harbor for anybody, really.

why is it always about me? i'll tell you why - because my voice is the only one I hear. even medicated, as i am, i still hear the banshee call of me hurt my feelings express myself get it all out screaming for attention clinging sobbing pouting pretending laughing weeping laughing weeping laughing weeping.

it's all about me because the banshee wail - for good and ill, but always loud - constantly screams and croons in my head. it's all about me because his voice is so soft. soft, yes. not always sweet and loving, but always soft and modulated. there are tones in the quiet, if i shut up long enough to hear them. tones of love, impatience, amusement, anger, hurt, disappointment. and after a weekend of pacing around each other - coming together to love, separating again for hurt, coming together to work it out, again, and separating because it devolved into pain. again. - there's nothing in the softness but silence. love, yes, always, but behind a film of...if I knew what the film was I'd use my ubiquitous words to try to push it aside.

push everything aside. see joy and love in his eyes instead of an anxious, tired affection. hear truth instead of shuttered facts held back to protect me. keep me in the dark. protect him. protect everybody. push aside the gunky film of relationshippy exhaustion so that he'll hear when i speak (and the gods grant that given the chance - oh for another chance - my speaking will be spare, simple, full to bursting with love). catch fire and respond when I have a thought. like before.

i want to help. remember that song, 'To Deserve You'? ...and if i could trade my voice for the silence i know that you need... i would do that. i would do that. i'd do a mermaid Ariel and give my voice up - the whole thing - just to help you. me shutting up would help you. me not thinking so fucking much would. me being a simpler woman altogether...ah, but you'll say then i wouldn't be me. like 'me' is what you need right now. i think it's clear that for a short while at least, you could use someone entirely different.

would that i could, my dearest heart. would that i could stop - just for a season - being so perfectly, steadfastly, inescapably, devoutly, helplessly, tragically, and entirely. me.

how i love you...

Shaking Off the Funk

2009-03-03T12:20:00.000-08:00

Ah, spring. Seattle's showing us the first peek up her skirt which is the start of spring. Eventually things will progress to the full-on, Marilyn-style skirt blowup - no grandma panties - that I like to call summer. But for now it's the odd robin (yay!), tiny green buds on trees (WOO-ha) and the almost-warmish air smells like the sea instead of just...cold air.

So, how's my mood? TOTAL SHIT. Yep - a dreadful miasma of sticky, gray, leaden FUNK has been following me around for days now, making me alternately barky or sullen, sensitive like you would not believe, and whining, whining, whining about it to anyone who'll listen. So, that would be Ramon. Poor man. We've gone back to nitpicky tiffs about nothing (last contentious topic: my hair), bandying logic, forgetting who said what, apologizing later, but even that doesn't bring us back to harmony with each other. Just...what is WRONG with me?

Just two blog entries ago it was, "oh, heavens, the meds have fixed me! Happy day! It's almost too easy!"

It was too easy. I'm not sure what's going on, but apart from the rages and/or hysterical grief taking over, which they're not, everything's the same. The rage was replaced by waspish irritability. The hysteria was replaced by either hollow-eyed (I know. I looked in the mirror), chin-trembling fear that I'm still sick - the meds aren't working - or sullen depression. I think the honeymoon's over, kids, and I've got more work to do than I thought. The pills make me not crazy. They don't make me into a nice or well-adjusted person. Drat upon drat.

I'll be OK. I always get low when winter loses its hold - define irony. I'm still in therapy, and Merrill is helping ever so much. I'm still more easygoing and accepting than before. The family stuff is getting better and better. My hair's looking fantastic lately. I would do well to remember that many things are going very well in my life and some of them are even thanks to me. Nevertheless, I'm not happy these last few weeks and can't seem to pull myself out of it. I either can't help it or I'm just enjoying the sulkies too much. But it's wearing thin, for me and Ramon, and thus I submit my list of things that I can do to cheer myself up:

1. Exercise. I quit the gym - hated the new yoga teacher - and went to look for tasty yoga delights in a studio near our flat. It didn't feel that good, the facility, so for now that's on hold. I'm ordering yoga DVDs to work on at home for the time being, and Ramon said he'd do it with me. We both wonder if the long hiatus helped bring my sadness on. I'm also getting out and running around a bit, and I felt great yesterday when I tried it for the first time. It's fun dodging around cranky lunch-breakers.

2. Get that darn flat sorted out. Honestly. I've heard that a clean, well-organized living space helps the brain and the mood, and the following things are killing that right off [NOTE: we don't live in squalor, and both of us are equally industrious or lazy as the mood takes us. But we're 50/50% on this, and we're both fairly indifferent to achieving victory in immaculate housekeeping]:

dishes - reminds me of our hygiene habits at Luzader House at college. The pile actually starts to smell after a while
floor - Ramon sweeps pretty often, but a good mopping? When did we last...hm
bathroom - OK, this is Seattle. The mold thing is not my fault
laundry - may this cup passeth from me
filing - ditto. I bloody well shuffle papers for a living at work
getting the gee-golly closets sorted out. Waahhh

3. Sex. Sex is good for the mood.

4. Dancing it out. Crank up some tasty, tasty musical chaos (Euro-synth-pop is especially good - I'm looking into Hasselhoff. Just kidding) and bounce around the flat for a bit. It does indeed help, though looking sexy is problematic when I have to keep hitching my lounging pants up my bum.

5. Preparing tasty, healthful meals. Well, THAT'S not happening until the backlog of dishes are either washed and put away or crushed to dust with a big, big mallet.

6. No more - and I can't stress this enough - NO MORE FRIED PORK SKINS. The ecstasy (Hey. Everybody has thrilling delights they're ashamed of, all RIGHT?) of munching is followed by the somatic agony of having ingested pure fried FAT - fat fried in fat - which is bound to get one down, as well as the waves of self-loathing that roll over me at having just eaten a snack that is both bad for me and filthy in the extreme.

7. Sunlight. Such a thing, dimly remembered, is now rising to the forefront of our minds here in the Northwest, and we would do well to soak it up instead of just complaining of how long we have to wait for it to GET here.

8. Music. I think I should get some of this screaming inside out on tape, so to speak, and maybe make a cool Euro-synth-pop song out of it. Someone could dance it out to it. Wouldn't that be rad? Geez, Cerise, we've got the gear, for the love of Kraftwerk...

OK, sweety-pantses, thanks for listening to the angsty whine of a maudlin 33-year-old. I'll let you know how this whole thing goes. And say a little prayer for the better half of me, won't you?

P.S. Part of the reason I can even talk about this is that I'm wearing my lucky fishnets today, and gosh DARN it, believe me when I say that nothing brightens a mood more than wearing a nice pair of fishnet stockings!

Schooling Prudence

2009-02-25T12:45:00.000-08:00

[READER ALERT: In this note I am going to poke fun at Billy Graham, god, and say bitch and piss. I will also express support for people who engage in polyamorous relationships. Consider yourself warned.]

I'm kind of an advice column junkie. I used to read SO many: Dear Prudence, Dear Abby, Dear Margo, Carolyn Hax, Dr. Joyce Brothers, and every so often I'd look in on Billy Graham's column, wrinkle my nose, and whisk back out again. Sorry, god.

I finally had to face my addiction and start thinning the herd a bit. Take back control of my life, one step at a time. The first step was easy - rate the columnists and make a decision as to who I'd keep on reading.

Dear Prudence: middle-aged, smart cookie, a little acerbic but never mean (ah, sad...)

Dear Abby: Up. Tight.

Dear Margo: hands down my favorite. She's a snappy old lady with a checkered past, kind heart and wicked sense of humor. She hates the people what done you wrong. I love her.

Carolyn Hax (a daily in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer): Meh. She kind of makes a big meal out of trying to be cute. Whatever...

Dr. Joyce Brothers: Great advice, good heart, but she does go ON, which makes her a bit boring.

Billy Graham: He ends every letter - EVERY SINGLE ONE - with "And you...have you made Jesus the Lord and Master of your life? You should get on that, because nothing's going to go right until you do [my paraphrase. I'm funnier than him]." Enough said.

OK, so, Prudence was one of the columnists that made the cut. Except, EXCEPT, she just let me down in a big way. I mean, she let an advisee down and that pissed me off. Here's the advisee's letter, her response, and the bitchfest I sent to Prudence as a result:

********

Dear Prudie:
I am a female involved in a four-year-long polyamorous relationship with a married couple. We are all happy and love one another very much. They have invited me to move into their home, and I would like to. The problem is that their two teenage children are beyond angry with the relationship. Even though they are not losing anything as a result of the relationship, they blame me for breaking the family apart and are very rude to me and their parents as a result. We don't want to break up to appease their children, who will be out of the house and on their own soon enough. But I can't imagine putting myself in the middle of such an uncomfortable living situation. Any suggestions for getting these teens to learn to accept me and the relationship?

—Three Is Not a Crowd

********

Dear Three,
Teenagers are just impossible these days. Mom and Dad go out and get a perfectly nice girlfriend to share, and the kids totally destroy the great erotic vibe you've all got going with their insolent remarks like, "Ewww, gross!" and "Why can't you be normal like other parents and just get a divorce or something?" They sound like complete downers who don't even understand the stimulating couplings and triplings that could take place when they have their friends sleep over (before the friends' parents hear about this, and all of you end up explaining polyamory to social services). It's too bad these rotten kids don't understand that their parents' need to fulfill their sexual appetites takes precedence over providing them a stable home. But since the teenagers are doing nothing but making life unpleasant for your happy threesome, my only suggestion for you is to find a couple who had the good judgment not to have children and leave this family alone.

—Prudie

********

Hello, Prudence. [this is rad - observe how I get all snippy and formal] I've read your column every week for some time now, and am generally impressed with your sense of fairness and obvious concern for those who contact you. I'm writing about one of your glaring exceptions.

On Thursday, Feb. 9, 2009, you posted a response to Three is Not a Crowd, who was asking you about how to deal with the angry teenage offspring of a couple with which she has a polyamorous relationship. She was looking to you for advice on how to handle the situation. Instead she got judged by you six ways from Sunday. You inferred throughout your response that she was the interloper into an established relationship and that the three of them were in it for nothing but sex, even though she said that they'd been together for four years and loved each other very much! Polyamory is real, Prudence, and it's as likely to be a love relationship as it is to be a sex relationship. Do you really think that the only romantic love that exists is the kind that's between two people and two people only?! For heaven's sake...she came to you for help and you treated her rather hatefully. With sarcasm and scorn. I'm really, really sad for her and disappointed at your mistreatment of a reader.

Cerise Deslauriers

Well of Rage!! [or, Bipolar Lite]

2008-11-21T10:10:00.000-08:00

Most of the people who know me know that I'm kind of an asshole sometimes. Or maybe just a son of a bitch. So, yeah, more than sometimes. Hear ye the story of The Well of Rage:

I was a frustrated, mouthy toddler. My first spanking was for spitting at my nanny in Burundi when I was about 3 or 4. In elementary school I vacillated between jubilant (to the point of off-putting) acting out, wiggly restlessness and smoldering resentment. I started fires (only little ones). I lied so much my parents had the preacher come over one night to talk with me. I stole. I backtalked so much that I wanted to slap me. Ditto my teenage years, except I was in boarding school for a lot of it and gave my dorm parents bucketloads of shit, instead of my parents. One dorm mom actually wept and asked if I was trying to ruin her life. I was angry, angry, angry, but more apt to lash out at authority figures than the classmates who angered me. I would go to the student center and fling myself around, laughing too loud, talking too much, and then escape, suddenly, to the rugby field to walk under the moon and cry for loneliness. I'm not telling any of this with pride, mind you, but sadness, both at the destruction I wrought and for the poor kid who, it turns out, was being pulled apart by emotions she couldn't control. All my life.

My adult life was similar, though I learned a few things in college about 1. keeping outbursts to a minimum, and 2. figuring out how to keep people from fucking with me. Not great lessons, I realize, but I was surviving. My friends liked me because I could always be counted on to tell the truth, no matter how harsh it was (poor things. I was hardly ever telling the truth, so much as finding weaknesses in people I didn't like and parading them around to make people laugh), I was funny (part of how to keep people from fucking with me), and you never knew what I'd do. Like the time I splooshed James' favorite cream-colored cable sweater with a full glass of grape juice. I hurt a lot of people in college. By the time MY time was up there, it was starting to come back to me from people who had figured out that my bark...etc.

Ramon helped a lot. He calmed me down. His total disregard for what people thought of him rubbed off on me. When I went from weeping my eyes raw to staring at the wall, scraping the back of my hand bloody with my fingernails (it was the only way to keep from screaming), he'd lay me on the couch in his dorm room, cover me with a blanket, and put on a movie. He gave me hope that someday I'd be OK, not an asshole, not a lugubrious, clingy, moody, melodramatic bitch.

He also took a lot. A lot. We've been together for 14 years, counting friendship and dating, and married (i.e. living together) for 10. All that time he has allied himself with a woman who is loving and devoted, yes, and very giving of her love and devotion. But also all the things listed above and prone to lashing out at the nearest body when irritated, confused, or proven wrong on some topic or another. For 13 years. He took it all in and only rarely fought back. Things started improving somewhat when I convinced him that standing up to me was the only way he and I would ever survive. I knew even then that I was not in control of my anger. I thought it had swelled to such proportions because of my childhood, those darn dorm parents and teachers (truly, for every angel there were two horrific ones), the church (still in the running for What Made Me Maddest of All). Kids that thought I was weird in school. Kids that messed with my little brother. Who knows what all. The usual list of grievances everyone has.

[note: I want to break in here and say that I had many good days in between "episodes". This all sounds very dire, but Ramon and I lived in sweetness and communion for much of our marriage, or it would surely have fallen apart before the 10-year mark. Ramon's wonderfully patient, but he's no masochist and he knows his own worth.]

I tried therapy. One cognitive therapist heard my Well of Rage theory and told me that it was a Well of Fear capped with anger. She proceeded to try to talk me out of it. That went well. I'm not pissing on cognitive therapy here, just her. She made me feel like shit - guilty for not trying hard enough to transcend myself. And oh, how I wanted to. To be free from the anger and torment and hate.

Friends of mine were diagnosed with this and that - mostly depression - and kindly, hesitantly asked me to see about it myself. I didn't think I was depressed. Doesn't that mean you're blue all the time, can't get out of bed, sleep too much, etc.? I wasn't any of those things. I was just kind of there - a bit blue - all the time with a couple of rage thingys a week and maybe one bout of inexplicable glee thrown in there for a bit of color.

I tried therapy again, this time with a wonderful, saintly woman (except she swears. I made damned sure on our first meeting) named Merrill. Merrill is compassionate, funny, earthy, giving, loving and smart as hell. She proceeded to untangle the knot of some family dynamics shit in a couple of sessions. I'm not kidding. She freed me from inappropriate emotional responses to typical family interactions (I'm being cryptic here. My parentals read this blog. Maybe I should curtail the cussing...). Then one time I was telling her the sad tale of how, in college, I loved singing - loveloveloved it, but could NOT make myself practice. Could not. No, not because I was lazy, I swear. She suggested I might be ADD and referred me to a psychiatric nurse practitioner (like psychiatrists, they can prescribe meds). I spent 1/2 hour with this new lady and she gave me her theory. She thought I was bipolar and prescribed lithium.

This was not good news. I thought ADD was glamorous and kind of tragic - plus it answered a lot of questions about my life. Bipolar disorder is...well, you know when you're having a conversation with someone about someone in THEIR life who's a crazy-ass butthead and making things miserable for everybody? And then they say, casually, "Oh, and they're bipolar and off their meds" and everybody goes, "Ohhhh" and shakes their heads? Like this person is still a crazy-ass butthead AND off the deep end to boot. And it's still OK to scorn them because THEY'RE off their MEDS! That's the first thing I thought of when she told me I was bipolar. Bipolar 2, by the way. Bipolar 1 is your basic depression-mania thing where you're either unable to get out of bed or you're shouting that you can fly and jumping over the rail at Macy's. Basically. BP 1 peeps, correct me if I'm wrong. BP 2 is like bipolar lite. I've got a low-grade depression on pretty much most of the time, punctuated with hypo-manic (i.e., less than properly manic) episodes of either total rage or more of that tasty inexplicable cheer. I never know which one will rear its head. But I'm highly functional; steady job, friends, marriage, my houseplants don't die (much), etc.

Fine. Bipolar 2. Fine fine fine. I still thought it was a shameful and unglamorous disorder, but there it was. It just explained way too much. I eased into the full dosage of lithium very slowly (I told the nurse practitioner, Donna, that if I gained even one pound, or if my sex drive went anywhere but up, I was out), and for a while didn't feel anything. Any change. Wait - I didn't feel anything!! I was a sedated zombie lab rat! I'd be one of those faceless losers who wore beige a lot and never laughed at jokes. Or, OR, a 300-pound slug with no emotions at all who camped in front of the TV watching her stories all day! Or both!! Wait, wait. I still talked and laughed a lot. I still missed Ramon all day and hugged him long when we got home. I still felt joy and anger and irritation. But the emotion would appear in me and then...just...go away again. Even the anger and irritation. It would flash red for a moment in the blackness of my brain (I always picture my brain's interior as black - like the night sky, or a chalkboard always ready for the writing) and then slide away again. Amazing. Sometimes it would escape even before I had a chance to express the emotion at all. My eyes stopped filling with tears every time I felt happiness or a connection to someone (it sounds cute, doesn't it? But it's really embarrassing and kind of a pain in the ass. I still do it, but less often). I was feeling everything I always feel, but I could control it! Let me repeat, especially to any of you who've felt the sting of my anger: I can control it. I can count to ten. I can change the subject. I can pick my battles. I CAN. [YES WE CAN! I'll blog about that later.] Mostly. I've still shot off some emails at work I had to apologize for. Ramon and I have gotten into about 3 or 4 fights since June, which is when I went on the medication. Instead of, you know, 2 or 3 episodes of screaming goodness per week. And there's been zero shouting. I've been like a starving person at a 100-course meal, tasting every emotion EVER and being able to feel it, sometimes really deeply, without being overwhelmed by it. I'll tell you, even feeling joy without control is hard on you, especially when you're around people.

That's about it, really. It hasn't been that long since I was diagnosed and treated. Do I like being one of the Mighty American Medicated? No. Not so much. We're kind of vilified in the media, aren't we? Am I still embarrassed about being bipolar? Nah. Why would I be? I'M bipolar, and I like me just fine. I liked me before I was treated. I've got people around me that I love who have it. Besides, I'm so overwhemed with relief almost all the time that it's hard to find time to be unhappy that I might be the crazy butthead that's ruining everyones' lives. No way. I'm becoming what I always wanted to be, more than anything: affable and good-natured. And still talkative, a bit fiery, opinionated, funny-ish and prone to laughter. I've apologized maybe a thousand times to Ramon for the hell I put him through and he just smiles seraphically - you can SEE him forgetting the past, I swear it - and says he enjoys saying what he wishes to say to me without fear, good man. I'm not so exhausted anymore, reining in my behavior, that I can't try new things and work toward a goal. Like with yoga and the whole fitness thing. Or maybe [claps hands to mouth] MUSIC.

I never knew the meaning of blessed until I started taking three capsules of mineral salts per night. I'm free. I'm fucking free. I'm FREE WITH THE FREE FREEDOM!!!

Thank you, sincerely, to all of you who have stayed by my side while I was still a prickly hoo-ha. I love you so. I'm so sorry.

Cerise

Frightened for Jeremy

2008-10-17T08:34:00.000-07:00

Shit. Shit, shit, shit. My old high school classmate Jeremy has been in an accident in Malawi and has been airlifted to a hospital in Johannesburg, South Africa. He has a wife (also in our class and the apple of my eye) and three kids. This is not good.

A few years ago another beloved classmate passed away climbing Mt. Rainier. By the time we all found out it was already done. He was gone.

I don't want to do this again - grieve another classmate (Ed. grieve FOR another classmate. I'm sure I GRIEVE them all the time). I know I'm jumping the gun here, since we only heard that he was in a serious accident and is in hospital. I'm obsessively checking Facebook and my email. Please, please, please, let him get through this and get well.

Who am I even praying to?

UPDATE: We got word that although he has some seriously hairy injuries (no skin left on his back, dreadful fracture of his shin that required many surgeries, etc.), he is healing rapidly - astounding his doctors, in fact - and will return home to Malawi in a matter of weeks, not months. When I found out he was alive and healing I sat down on the bed rather quickly and cried and cried. Thank...whoever. Thank you. Thank you.

Changes

2008-10-08T10:23:00.000-07:00

We're changing. Everything's changing, it seems. This summer kind of knocked us on our asses - mostly in kind of a good way - and the result seems to have been that both Ramon and I made biggish jumps ahead in a short time. It's also kept me from writing much, since I tend to be an oral processor (that just sounds ten kinds of wrong, but I'm leaving it in because I know you know what I mean) and I've been processing, via endless chatter, all this time and that left little energy to write. Pity Ramon. Pity the man.

1. In late spring, and I can't remember why, I started walking home all five work days instead of taking a bus. It's 3/4 mile and boasts varying degrees of uphill action (with some stairs as an added bonus). Combined with my walk down the hill in the morning, I was walking 1 1/2 miles a day five days a week. Without my knowledge or sanction (snort) I lost 25 pounds.

2. In early June I joined the gym across the street from my workplace and started taking yoga classes three times a week. I soaked the mat with sweat every class (literally. I'd press my hands down during a pose and bubbles would come out of the holes in the mat), my poses looked ALL wrong and I hurt all the time, either from exertion during or muscle soreness after. Then I started getting muscles here and there, getting more limber by painfully tiny increments, and enjoying myself. Kind of. The pain and sweat and exhaustion (and clumsiness) remain, so I've started taking Pilates classes the other 2 days a week for strength. In case all the complaining got you on the wrong track, I love doing this. It's like crack for a pudgy old lady like me.

3. In early June, as well, I was diagnosed with Bipolar 2 disorder, told I'd probably lived with it since Day 1, and medicated accordingly. You can bet your booties I'll write more on this one. This is the big one.

4. Ramon and I spent the last 10 days of June in England, visiting an old beloved friend (FISH!!), meeting her husband, and touring around her beautiful village. We also spent three days walking around London and plan to live there at some point for a goodish period of time. We grieved, grieved, grieved when we came home to Seattle. Grieved for missing Fish and Nick, the country around their home, and London. When I tried to play "England My Lionheart" by Kate Bush I cried all over the kitchen counter.

5. Ramon researched and purchased equipment to record music at home on our MacPro. Now we're sort of hovering around it and trying to find our muse (preferably the really big one with a baseball bat). I've got a huge learning curve with this stuff, but it's all in the name of Creative Output, so I must prevail.

6. Ramon began a painting class early this fall and has also found new inspiration in abstract art, so the flat is alive again with his work and beautifully cluttered with his paint tubes, brushes and he shanghaied my favorite vase for a rinse can. And I donated the last two white linen napkins that we received as wedding gifts (therefore 10 years old and much-stained) as premium paint rags. I hope our home's like this forever.

7. Our ten-year anniversary was in August, and we celebrated it our way: living room. Cats. Good food. Entertainment. Alcohol. Oh, and the England trip, unofficially.

Thus endeth the list, unless I've forgotten something. Add to all this a faint but pervasive miasma of workplace uncertainty - for both of us - and you've got a summer that felt...exquisitely weird. So far though the change has been so, so good, with some hitches along the way. Most days I try to keep inspiration alive and pray - a bit desperately - that I won't go back to the way I was before. I'm not sure I could bear it.

I've missed talking to you.

Love,
C

D Day

2008-06-06T12:32:00.000-07:00

Today marks the 64th anniversary of the Normandy landing. I don't have too much to say about it or WW II or anything - I just saw this picture and thought, "Poor, sweet boys."

Look how young they are...

Worthy of Samuel L.

2008-05-01T14:03:00.000-07:00

You know that scene in Pulp Fiction where Samuel L. Jackson's character kind of ruins Brad's life? I'm feeling that way lately, a bit. I want to point a (water) gun at my Portfolio Manager colleagues' heads and scream, "Say subprime again, MotherFUCKER!!"

It's the crap economy getting to me. I'm in the front seat of the roller coaster working here.

Glósóli

2008-04-03T15:22:00.000-07:00

The following video pretty much sums up all that I believe in and all that I care about. I wish I could tell you what I mean by that, but man, is it true. Sorry for the woo-woo...I'm going through an angsty, begging-the-Universe-to-Show-Me few days.

Thanks to Sigur Ros for blowing my mind and truly blessing the world. Thanks to Ben for hipping me to this video and for fixing things in such a way that I weep every time I watch it.

Cerise

Our Version of a Sweet Moment

2008-04-01T13:05:00.000-07:00

So, it was a housework-y night Monday night. I came straight home in a hailstorm that felt like Seattle wasn't really trying (I was right. The hail had stopped by the time I had locked the door behind me, peed*, divested myself of outer garment and wet umbrella, hugged Ramon hello and stepped to the window to look out) and straight away went to sort the laundry. Monday's a big night for laundry, somehow, in this apartment building, and it's a race to the downstairs room with great acoustics and 8 machines. I also made dinner, a real one, and did some dishes, which were still legion from Friday night's dinner party. We are a relaxed sort of people.

Anyway, I spent most of my evening in the kitchen pottering around. And it was good - wine makes pottering both challenging and a complete delight. Ramon was camped out in front of the Mac making sweet Gmail love to Harley and fiddling with mixes on Pandora. His first station was seeded by Steve Reich and I was subjected to a great deal of Phillip Glass as a result. Which was OK, since I amused myself at the sink by having a daydream about him. Glass, I mean: I'm in a stuffy concert hall during one of his works, and when one of his crashing, pulsing symphonic climaxes comes on, standing up with my friends and screaming like it's crazy-ass-guitar-solo time at a Queen concert. And an unfortunate old codger, when he asks an usher to quieten us, gets told in respectful tones that it's the composer's wish that rock-concert-type cheering during his symphonies is to be considered part of the composition and sanctioned at all costs. If he hasn't thought of that already, by the way, don't you think he should? He's build-to-a-climax boy. There should be cheering.

So Ramon got tired of the Reich/Glass-fest and seeded a new station with Curtis Mayfield, with whom I'm sadly unfamiliar. All of a sudden our home and extremely mellow brains were filled with the strains of psychedelic-funk-soul what-have-you (I'll write a blog sometime about how athletically I suck at classifying music. Ramon can co-write it and spend 3 paragraphs on how I still can't tell the diff between rap and hip-hop, however much I listen to both. It'll be GREAT.) and I can't remember when I've felt better.

Then Cruisin' by Smokey Robinson came on. Let me just say that this will NEVER be our song. Immediate disqualification due to the song's involvement with the movie Duets. Just like I'd never karaoke Bette Davis Eyes. Watching Gwyneth sway and clap her hands above her head and then, AND THEN, watching some blonde do THE SAME RENDITION at the Red Lion Inn Karaoke Night (back when we lived in Eugene, OR) several weeks later was quite enough for me, thank you. Still and all - Cruisin' is a romantic and very cool-sounding song. So I wiped dishwater off my hands, strode into the living room and announced that we HAD to dance to the song - there was some kind of law and the whole thing was out of my hands. I had even waited until the second chorus, because I knew by then that Ramon had had one verse and chorus to really get to FEELING it, you know? And he consented. Tore himself away from Harley's loving embrace and enfolded me instead.

Our slow-dancing history got off to a not-great start, by the way. Our first slow dance was at our wedding reception. I had, in a fit of complete assery, chosen "Night and Day" by Bette Midler. Ramon had never heard it, it meant nothing to either of us, but I HAD to choose a 'first song' and it was about how dissimilar the lovers are, so I thought it would be great. Well, I actually don't know what I was thinking. Oh, heaven and earth. Turn back time for me, for I never tried dancing to the effing song before putting it on the mix CD. It is impossible. Let me break it down for you: I collared Ramon and dragged him to the dance floor (which was and remained nearly deserted for the duration of the reception), all but put his hands on my body (he is a reluctant dancer) and began steering him around the floor. If you ever hear that song - and it's not setting foot on my blog, so just you put that from your mind - you'll understand our struggle. It's got a completely un-danceable beat. Too slow even for slow-dancing. We tried double-time. Too fast and jouncy. We tried dancing to the actual beat. Too slow. TOO SLOW! I was leading (out of huffy necessity, so I thought, since my new husband was not putting out much of an effort), he was also trying to lead, but we'd been raised to believe that dancing was a sin, so the whole thing devolved into us completely out of sync and guiltily trotting around the floor grieving The Lord and wishing fervently that we hadn't banned alcohol at our wedding. Yes, ours was a dry wedding. An ill-omened marriage if I ever saw one. But our family thinks even less of drinking than dancing, so...fortunately, when one serves no alcohol at the reception (not that many of the guests would have imbibed) it only lasts maybe 1 1/2 hours. Then you can get to the important part: for us, scooting to Burger King, settling into our hotel room by the airport, sipping the sparkling apple cider (our wedding night was also free of any inhibition-reducing substances. But then, we were young) Mom provided for us in a lovely basket, and trying to make a whirlpool in our little private swimming pool by racing around the perimeter. Naked, mais oui.

Needless to say. We have always sucked at dancing, and doing it slowly and together especially. However, over the years Ramon has relaxed a bit (mostly due to many more parties and the presence of drinks and people who drink at them) and found his goofy side on the dance floor. Which has increased his confidence and sense of style. He no longer resembles Eugene Levy's character in American Pie when dancing. I have also relaxed, which generally looks like letting Ramon do his thing without any sort of assistance and never making him witness me doing anything TOO embarrassing. And in this and many ways, I've learned to trust him.

So when we came together, leaning, as we have so many times before, on each other both for love's sake and for increased balance (did I mention that we were mellow?), I finally figured out what it meant to follow him. He drifted around our little space, turning this way and that, holding me like the girl I was, and I loosened way the hell up and...followed. If I tried to anticipate where he'd go I'd screw up. If I tried to stick to doing the two-step in place and in rhythm, likewise. But when I leaned more surely on him and turned my brain off and shut my mouth and let myself drift with him, following was effortless. Not perfect. But so fucking good.

A life lesson? Nah. We suck at those too.

* In that order. I pee first when I arrive from anywhere, no matter the condition of my personal hydration levels or how soon ago I went #1. I get home and pee, or there's big trouble of the pulling-an-inner-thigh-muscle-and/or-wetting-myself variety.

On Fi-yah

2008-03-06T15:44:00.000-08:00

Do you ever do that thing where you're eating something requiring hot sauce (read: nearly everything) and you're dribbling a bit on with every bite? Yeah? With me? Then, THEN, you dribble WAY TOO MUCH on the next bite? And you look at it in horror - you can't throw that bit away because this is The Best Chicken Taco Salad Wrap You've Ever Eaten. So you take a deep breath, whisper, "God, but this is gonna hurt so good" and just shove that mofo in and chew for your life. And, deep inside your twisted little mind, brothers and sisters, you wonder to yourself if this is what people who have never achieved orgasm do to get through their day.

You HAVE? OMG, that just happened to me!! We're, like, connected.

Disclaimer: OK, I was only using Cholula, yes. It's not THAT hot. But I have done this exact thing with WAY hotter sauces, so yes, I am nearly as badass as I wish I sounded just now.

Mama Cerise

2008-03-06T10:23:00.000-08:00

Here's your slightly squicky moment of the day. I heard this song by Annie Lennox, Mama, from The Avengers soundtrack. What, you may ask, was I doing listening to such a totally random album such as this? Blame Pandora, my dears.

I think this song is becoming my own song. You know those nerdy people who have 'a song'? Or, even worse, couples that have 'their song'? Well, Ramon and I can't claim the latter yet, thank god, but I think Mama's going to be my song for a while. The good? It speaks to a lot of things I think are true of me, and what I wish to be to my friends. The squicky? There's a lot in it, most of it, actually, that deals with how sexual and abundant the subject is, and how much the singer longs to lose themselves in her. So. Uh...I guess that's something that I want people to feel with me - that I'm sexual, very, abundant (there's not a diet in the world, my dears...) and joyful. Different. Unafraid, or at least unafraid enough to not cower away from being wholly and truly me.

This is more personal than I generally care to get, and I am sorry if this is seriously gross for you, but here's the song:

Mama - Annie Lennox

I was watching the woman that was walking down my street
Walking with grace, so beautifully, carefully
She's a big and pretty mother, big and pretty mother
Swinging her hand-bag back and forth so joyfully
She's drawing circles with her breasts in her jumper

Give me a big mother
Huge and loving one
I can crawl upon
And cling to

She's a large woman...
Warm and cuddly...
Wet lady...
Strong mother...

She's walking down the street in front of my window
Whistling funky tunes in the ears of my neighbours

Give me a big mother
One that will always want me
Hot, embracing mother
I can crawl upon
And cling to

Can't be safer, can't be more secure
Than with a breast in each palm
Than with a breast in each palm
That is the way that I was born
And that is the way that I want to die

Give me a big mother
Yes, a soft and wet one
That would caress me
In all those special places
Where's a strong mother
One that squeezes me
One that I can crawl upon

Yeah, so...a very weird image to paste onto a friend's familiar aura. But there it is. I've read somewhere that women spend their 20s getting taken care of, and in their 30s begin wishing to care for others. I was very pessimistic about my ability to ever get over myself enough to ever care for anyone besides my Ramon and my family (and that painfully imperfectly), but I'm watching myself get all Mama Bear lately, especially at parties where everyone's that combination of mellow and slightly crazed, where emotions are high and good-natured interventions are sometimes called for. I seem to find myself intervening. And I'm glad - obviously I'm still a good Gemini/performer personality: very ME oriented. I mean I'm never going to actually get OVER myself, but I'm so happy to have found friends that I'd put myself on the line for. And I hope that they feel magnificently loved. Even if it's loved by a slightly crazy, sexual, twisted, large-ish lady who never means to, but sometimes does, embarrass herself and/or anyone in her general vicinity.

It's nothing but love, darlings, and I feel it for you.

Cerise

P.S. I don't, nor have I ever, thought that people with 'songs' are nerds. Or, at least, they are, but I do too and I've always been a proud dork, so...get offended, 'song' people, or not, but I'm with you 100%.

P.P.S. I am not unaware of the bitter irony, while we're on the subject of me becoming more of a mother the older I get, that although I sometimes embrace a Mama Bear role and love and yearn to be around many children as well, I have never wanted to bear children of my own.

P.P.P.S. If you think you'll ever catch me in a jumper (the American or UK version), think again.

Hate the Day for Lovers, Love the Lover

2008-02-14T10:11:00.000-08:00

God, I hate V-Day. I just...the Love Industry seems to make single people feel like shit for having 'failed' so far in finding their partner for life (and I as their happily married friend feel bad that they're made to feel that way) and not-single people scurry around trying to "do something" for their loves whilst dealing with cloudy skies and post-Holidays exhaustion. And wondering if the "something" they've done is enough. If the money they've spent on flowers and whatnot is proof enough of their regard. I mean, serious potential spousal fray right there, right? What if the guy thinks he's being wonderful and buys carnations or something and the lady wigs because they're not roses?

[Aside: think it's time to be over the holidays? I don't disagree, but people around here still seem to still be recovering financially and psychologically from the whole thing, Yours Truly included. And I didn't even trouble myself to bake or send out cards.]

Anyway. The frantic marketing behind this day for lovers grates on my nerves like the industry behind Hallowe'en, Christmas and Easter combined can't, for some reason. I think that the biggest difference for me is that for the three big holidays, we're buying things for different reasons. Let's break it down:

[Disclaimer: I know there's Ramadan and Hanukkah and Kwanzaa and such and herald the day when they get as much or more attention, but I'm focusing on what are, for now, the three biggies in the Great American Holiday Marketing Machine. In my mind.]

Hallowe'en

Things bought: costumes, liquor, decorations
Purpose of purchases: partying, reveling in our dark side, love of the orange and black - all things I can get into.

Christmas

Things bought: decorations, gifts for others, baking/cooking supplies, greeting cards
Purpose of purchases (agnostic's viewpoint): bringing families (of one kind or another) together to eat and drink good things, give gifts, revel in the Spirit of the Holiday (generosity, love, forgiveness), love of red and green, sending love to loved ones far away. Fantastic.

Easter

Things bought: little frilly dresses/suits, lilies for our Mamas, chocolate, ham, eggs, egg dye, fakey green grass that you have to keep your household pets out of, etc.
Purpose of purchases (again, not going with the church thing so much here): celebrate Spring, fertility, the sight of well-dressed little ones scurrying through the garden with chocolate-stained mouths. Also awesome.

V-Day

Things bought: chocolate, diamonds, flowers, cards, lingerie, cuff links, dinner reservations
Purpose of purchases: romantic obligation, not being alone on such a day, the frail and desperate prospect of getting laid (yes, I know that the right answer here is: To Show Our Loved Ones Love, but I'm being bitter and jaded here. Work with me).

You see? V-Day is empirically and inherently evil and not-constructive for all concerned. It has been decided. Doff your red clothes and slink home in shame.

Fine. OK. I'll give myself ONE PARAGRAPH to not be horrid about this day. The truth is, I get a little icky in spite of myself on V-Day, missing Ramon while I'm at work, snuggling relentlessly with him when we get home, etc. But I also don't buy him a gift, generally, and I don't flip the dining room table over if he doesn't buy me something, either. And sex is entirely optional on this night (TMI? Just you wait...).

7 days ago marked our 10-year engagement anniversary, which means that we're six months away from our 10-year ANNIVERSARY anniversary. It also means that we've been one flesh for 10 years (I speak carnally, brothers and sisters. THERE'S your TMI - bathe in it). Those things are a big deal to me. Not chocolate (oh, I never thought those words would leave my lips) or roses or god-awful jewelry that's too shiny and makes you terrified to lose it.

Anyway, I don't know where I'm going with this, other than to say that although I HATE this day and what it does to people (I can't count how many fights R. and I have had on this day in the past because something Went Wrong), I love my Monchito more than my own life and want to say it here, again. And if you're reading this, chances are good that I love you too. And I wanted you to know.

Be well, my sweets, and eat all the chocolate you can stand today.

Cerise

32 Things I Love About Lisa

2008-01-08T13:00:00.000-08:00

One of my oldest (as in, I've known her for a very long time - she's not even touching the hem of Old's garment as far as her age is concerned) friends is soon to have a birthday. She's had a rotten few days, and a rotten few months before that due to a Very Bad Person giving her the worst kind of hell. She's far away and I can't go to her, give her a hug (and then find the VBP and tear their throat out with my teeth) and say Happy Birthday with cake, so here's the only offering I can give her. There are more than 32 things going right about her, but I'm limiting myself to this particular number, for no particular reason:

1. She and I weren't friends to begin with. We didn't like each other much at all.

2. She has lovely pale eyes.

3. Lisa is a philanthropist. A real one.

4. She has lived in countries I can barely spell.

5. She taught me not to call Sudan 'THE Sudan'.

6. She is open minded to a particular cherished vice of mine.

7. She's my highest-educated close friend. She almost has an eff-dah.

8. We clearly have many inside jokes.

9. She has a beautiful lilting, throaty singing voice and uses it without fear.

10. She and I can actually ask each other for things. This sort of friend is so very rare.

11. She and I accept things from each other without too much fussing and 'I don't know'-ing. This is even more rare. Are you listening, Lis?

12. She has caused me to break my self-imposed blog blackout. For that I thank you, my dear.

13. She knows the proper Latin names of plants and birds (especially birds) from many and varied regions of the world.

14. She has a special smile for me when I'm being an ass.

15. She is a brilliant, emotionally piercing writer. Someday she'll be spoken of by kings and society ladies. I've kept every scrap - soft AND hard copies - of writing she's ever vouchsafed to me.

16. She'd be able to tell me without pausing if I just used the word 'vouchsafed' correctly.

17. She runs. She's a runner.

18. She's not afraid to go play indoor soccer with a bunch of men.

19. She's not afraid to gloat when she runs said men into the ground due to her superior fitness.

20. Lisa has extraordinarily graceful hands.

21. She's quirky. I like quirky even better than I like nice. She's really nice, too, though.

22. She loves traveling on motorcycles. She buys them sometimes and names them things like "Markham".

23. She's a cat person.

24. She's more compassionate than almost anyone I know. Her brand of compassion means action - going somewhere and actually doing something, sometimes unspeakably hard somethings, to help those she loves best.

25. She's not afraid to laugh at me when I'm being an idiot. And manages to avoid making me feel like shit in so doing. I treasure this in a friend (no, really). So rare, so rare.

26. She is going to be a professor soon.

27. She speaks Khmer.

28. She taught me that it's pronounced "Khmaye", not "Khmairrr". You should see the faces of people when I'm talking about Pol Pot and the "Khmaye" Rouge. [snicker]

29. She thinks I'm smart. I think. Reasonably intelligent. Since she's brainy enough to write up dialogues between disparate tribes of people whose village names I can't even, as I said before, pronounce, I feel honored. OK, well, I don't know if she thinks I'm smart, but she gets in a temper when I call myself stupid, so...

30. When certain shitbags are behaving really, really badly and trying to blame Lisa for their pain, she (instead of, say, tearing them to bits with her mighty brain and quick mouth) joins in and asks me what she should do to make things better. For them. It's infuriating, as her friend, but endearing as well. As long as she STOPS IT RIGHT NOW.

31. Her idea of fun is trotting around in the wilderness looking for birdies.

32. She loves incredibly generously. She conducts herself with honor. She leaves people better than they were.

33. (one more!) We were completely different people when we went to school together so long ago. So different that we kind of couldn't stand each other for a good while. We've been in and out of contact since then and changed - both on our own and in how we relate to each other. We are very different. But she still calls me 'friend' and writes me long, luscious emails (even when she's angry, broke, avoiding everyone and at the end of her rope) to tide me over until we see each other again.

34. BONUS! I nearly killed both of us driving in snow once. We survived, but her opportunity to stop and take breathtaking pictures of Snoqualmie Pass snowed under didn't thanks to my negligence. She forgave me.

[raises pint] Here's to you, good friend. May your loving friends circle around you this week and may everyone else be tipped into the rubbish bin by a grouchy maid.

Texting Coversation With Ramon

2007-09-20T17:47:00.000-07:00

09-20-2007:

Ramon: Sorry i missed your call. Love you.

Cerise: Love you too honey. On my way home. Shit day. PMS!

Ramon:
P.arade of
M.uggles
S.treaking?

This is why you and I fit so well, Monchis. [blows kiss]

Cerise

The Devil and Cece Winans

2007-09-13T15:55:00.000-07:00

I was almost home the other night and was standing at the crosswalk waiting for my light. Traffic, as always, was pretty busy - at a standstill, actually - and you can always hear an amazingly wide assortment of music drifting from commuters' windows. You could do a whole study on the crazy shit people like to listen to to get a day's work off their minds. I heard some kicky music coming from the farthest-away car waiting at the crosswalk and as I started across the street I realized that I know that song! It was "Better Place" - the last track on Cece Winans' self-titled album from 2001.

[Sidebar: Cece is one of the Christian artists that I've never expunged from my listening library. True, you have to listen to unabashedly fundie lyrics, but the music's solid and she has got the chops. Other CCM artists that will never lose our love are, in no particular order: pre-Beyond-Belief Petra, Mastedon, Charlie Peacock, pre-(See Inside) Out of the Grey, Imperials, Wendy and Mary, 2nd Chapter of Acts, White Heart, King's X (they would probably object to being classified as CCM in the strongest terms and Matt's just going to kill me), pre-Go-bloody-West-Young-Man Michael W. Smith, etc. AND, when I really want to piss Ramon off, I put on David Meece's Odyssey album real loud and rock the fuck out.]

How random is it to be walking across the street in Seattle and hear Cece Winans, right? Since dancing in public is one of the sure signs that yet another Seattle-ite has gone over to the crazies (talking aloud to oneself and screaming at red-light-runners are others), I fought the urge to bop in the crosswalk, but I did lock eyes with the older gentleman in a PT Cruiser who was crankin' my girl. He was getting down - how could you not? The song's about how you're to keep your head up, 'cause god's going to come on down and take us all to that great smoothie spa in the sky - and when he saw me grinning at him he put his thumbs up and man-squealed "Yah!!"

This is when the whole thing gets...well, it's just typical of my interactions with the general and unsuspecting populace. I put up my horns and crowed, "Cece Winans, BABY!!" and walked the last 1/2 block to my apartment building with a bright smile on my face. But wait. Looking back, why did his smile falter just a bit as I turned away to finish crossing the street? Because, Dear Reader, to a man who loves Christian music and is so chuffed that he's headed for Paradise (soon, by the look of it) that he'll shout his joy at innocent passerby, the "rock on!" horns are actually...[ominous silence]...the sign of Satan! [Dun. Dun. Dunnnnnn.] I had completely forgotten.

It's subtle, but sometimes, friends, but the hand-signal for "rock on!" or "hook 'em horns!" is sometimes confused for the secret "I worship the Dark Lord (not Voldemort)" sign. Comme ça:

Rock on!

Hook 'Em Horns!

I worship the Devil

No, no, just kidding. I'm sure our President doesn't worship the great Satan. But think how alarming it must've been for this old guy when I flashed him the sign of Lucifer! He thinks to himself: "OK, she's clearly a Christian because she knows who I'm listening to, but she also indicates that she's a devil-worshiper. Wait. IS Cece a Christian artist? What if she's not? What if Cece worships the devil? What if ...[puts hands to mouth]...what if Cece IS the devil? It figures that the Devil's female...am I listening to The Devil or one of her minions?" Or maybe he thought I'm a UT alumna and he supports Texas A & M. We'll never know. But for him, either way, our cheery interaction didn't have a happy ending.

(sigh) Cerise strikes again. That song will never be the same for him.

[Did anybody notice that I posted this on the 13th? Oooh. Keep your eyes peeled for lightning bolts...]

Unwrinkled By Time

2007-09-07T12:05:00.000-07:00

Friends, Madeleine L'Engle, second official Blower of Cerise's Mind (here's the first), has died today.

Rest well, good friend, and I hope that what you find beyond death is even more wonderful than what your words concocted in my 10-year-old (and 32-year-old) head. Love to you.

Cerise

Bleary and Irritable

2007-09-06T08:39:00.000-07:00

Wow, that title really makes you want to read on, doesn't it? You're like, "Oh, yeah, a new post from Cerise - and the title indicates that it'll be one of her whiny, narcissistic posts with shit writing to boot! Reading ON, my friend."

Just kidding. So I woke up after apocalyptic dreams about an alien planet accidentally about to crash into ours, planes falling out of the sky, aliens milling around trying to communicate with us, orange/black sky with roiling end-of-days clouds, and people stuffing themselves on buses because there's a last thing they need to say to their loved ones. Cheerful. Oh, and somehow the planes/buses/spaceships crashing here and there are turning groups of humans into ravenous zombies. [note: perhaps Ramon's and my journey through season 7 of Buffy and the fact that I'm reading "Silence of the Lambs" right before bed are contributing factors...] So, yes, waking up after that and wandering semi-blindly around the apartment and bumping into undone housework (argh) has put me in a right lovely mood. Playing different angry hypothetical life scenarios in my head on the walk to work. I'm SO not telling you about any of those. I want people reading this to think I'm, you know, not crazy all the time.

What was I saying? Right...bleary and irritable. Focus, Cerise. Uh - hey. Hey. What...I'm feeling a lot better. What the hell? I wrote out one of the angry scenarios, read it and laughed, deleted it, and now I'm feeling kind of normal. I'm still not sharing it, though. Sorry...

Cerise

P.S. I stalked into work and turned on U2's War album (and thought about Ash, who will be so very pleased and will, I think, agree that there's a U2 album for every mood) straightaway. It's got the perfect balance of 'fuck this all' and youthful hope for better things. Feeling even better.

Driving Myself Insane

2007-09-04T13:12:00.000-07:00

[I'm am NOT going back and looking at the last time I wrote something. I am not. It must be so long ago and the fact that I've neglected this poor blog for however long it is is very, very upsetting and so...I'm not going to find out. Anyway, the last thing I really wrote is this, the following. I never finished it. Written in late July.]

Isn't it amazing how much we can wind ourselves up? Up until about an hour ago I was having one of the most unpleasant days I can remember. It started out badly; Ramon and I moaned ourselves out of bed, blindly reached for the french press to make coffee and then - sin of sins - tried to sort out our schedules for the next two days before ingesting sufficient amounts of caffeine. Here's what we had facing us:

8-ish to 5:30-ish - work

6:00 party at Ramon's work (where I will meet all his artistic, bohemian, funny and terribly intelligent new co-workers - no pressure)

After the party - possibly have a couple over for wine and cheese

5:00am Saturday - get up and drive to Federal Way for one of Elizabeth's triathlons (no preparation required - besides extensive yawning and eye-rubbing)

10:00am-ish - birthday/post-Tri breakfast with Elizabeth, Nathan, and Oz (still hadn't bought a gift for Elizabeth)

Rest of the weekend - free as birds, Ramon and I

So. This morning. Pre-coffee. Still with me? We had to 1. buy something to eat for the party (my mind instantly seizes up with dissatisfaction because I prefer to make something for parties), 2. buy food and drink (different from what we bought for the party, naturally) for having the couple - who I don't know - over, 3. buy Elizabeth's gift (she would be horrified to part of the must-buy lineup and would prefer that I just forget about it, being the sweet person she is, but on this point I will not compromise). All in a small, small space of time - we're both over 30 now and sleep is not negotiable.

Anyway. We were both in Organize mode, both trying to keep things as easy for the other as possible (definitely a plus more than a minus in both our choices for life partner, but the trait - especially both of us having it - does get in the way when we're trying to bloody DO something), and it ended poorly. We were both confused, frustrated and went into our respective Bad Places: me chattering angrily like a very large, very pompous squirrel, and Ramon shutting completely down and looking grieved. God...

For the rest of the morning I was talkative (in the angry way - so great for the workplace) and petulant and succeeded in having at least 3 interactions with people - people that I like and admire very much - that made me feel guilty, crazed, and very, very lonely.

Crazed isn't the even the word, friends. I knew that my unsatisfactory conversations with people were my doing. On my bad, bad days (Not flat tire days. I mean my crazy, angry days. Like today.) every request is a profound irritation. Every sentence uttered by the other is a flattening commentary on my own deficiencies. I get really, really twitchy. They don't happen too often, but when they do I sit at my desk - my comfy, lovely desk surrounded by work that satisfies me - and fume about how insane I am and how I can't seem to get a handle on myself.

Enter my angelic Mum. She called for no other reason than that she was driving to a church camping trip - alone, since Dad was in the woods cutting firewood for the congregation - and feeling sleepy. Dear Momlies. Just a little talk with her reminded me that I'm a good person who loves her mother. I wish I could explain how much better that made me feel. It gave me a little light at the end of my tunnel - knowing that this insane state of mind isn't really me. Or at least it's not me in my normal state.

[Back to the present. The work day ended and I've had a month's worth of not-crazy work days since. The party after was wonderful - Ramon's co-workers liked me and I liked them. I also liked my first-ever glass-of-Crown-Royal-with-an-ice-cube very much. I bought something beautiful for Elizabeth and she loved it. And buying the beautiful thing, on my lunch break that horrid day, calmed me down more than anything else had. Good old retail therapy, right?

Thanks for reading, if you're still here after my interminable hiatus. More stuff to come...]

Post-Breakfast Conversation, Sunday

2007-05-21T09:26:00.000-07:00

[Foreward: Ramon and I play one of those obnoxious marital we-are-SO-connected games where one person uses an obscure movie quote, yells "WHAT MOVIE?!?" and expects the other to guess. If the spouse is not successful, the challenger then continues to recite additional obscure quotes from the movie, getting more and more into the obvious quotes until the spouse successfully guesses. For example, an obscure quote from Ghostbusters II: "Let's see what happens when we take away the puppy." And an obvious one: "Boys, boys, you're scaring the straights, okay?" Get the game? Good. Great. You've now plumbed one of the funnier bits of our marriage. Welcome.]

Ramon and Cerise are sitting replete after a bacon and biscuits breakfast:

C: "Can I cook, or can't I? WHAT MOVIE?!?"

R: "Huh? That's a movie quote?"

C: "Yeah. You know! 'Can I cook, or can't I'. Come on!"

R: "Nope. Nothing. Give me another quote from the movie."

C: "I don't KNOW any other quotes from that movie. It's not that quote-able of a movie."

[pause]

C: "Oh, wait. KHAAAAAAAANNNNN!!!!!"

A Preoccupation With Cats and Bjork

2007-03-21T15:57:00.000-07:00

This hilarious video has many of the usual funny cat clips that YouTubers have seen, but set cleverly to Bjork's "It's Oh So Quiet".

Whiskery snuffles,
Cerise

100

2007-03-20T12:42:00.000-07:00

My friends over at Addison Road are all taking their turns at this, so I thought that I could get away with it, too, and call Narcissism an infectious disease that I couldn't escape:

1. My real name isn't Cerise.

2. I wear almost nothing but black, but am not even close to being categorize-able as Goth. I like colors a lot.

3. I adore my parents. My entire adult life is spent trying to make up for the fact that I was a total asshole from birth to about age...now. Just kidding. I got a little better around age 27 or so, and Mom's got an awesome case of amnesia about the whole thing.

4. (Stealing a bit from Michael) I can't decide if I'm an arrogant prick who gets around it by passing myself off as humble and self-deprecating, or if I've got the lowest self-esteem on the planet and compensate by being an arrogant prick lots of the time.

5. I tell people a lot of really personal stuff about me because I just do. I'm not that private about my personal information. It doesn't mean that I feel close to the person I'm addressing, and the people I like are the ones who get that.

6. I never want to be a mother. I like most kids a lot, I think I'd be OK as a Mom, and I know Ramon would be the best father ever. I still don't want children. I'm deathly afraid that my aversion to being a parent is a result of selfish cowardice. But that's still not a good enough reason to have kids.

7. The last time I peed myself on purpose was age 7 or so. I was playing outside and couldn't be arsed to interrupt my fun time.

8. My brother is my best friend.

9. I have about 5 best friends and they're all REALLY my best friend.

10. I've been peculiarly blessed with my in-laws. I love Ramon's parents almost as my own, and I gained 3 sisters and a brother from our marriages that I'd literally have a super-tough time living without now.

11. I generally don't tack "-in-law" on when speaking about my in-laws. People must think I have four parents, 2 brothers and 3 sisters. I love that.

12. Ramon has saved my life at least once that I know of.

13. In college I thought I had high blood pressure (I knew because I gave blood every 8 weeks and got my pressure taken every time). After college it fell to normal and has been normal ever since. It was just college that was wigging me out.

14. I give blood every 8 weeks and platelets (for free) every two. This dampens my enthusiasm for getting any more tattoos since I can't give blood for a year after.

15. My blood type is O negative; universal donor. This is why I donate blood so regularly.

16. I stopped gaining weight at about 225 pounds.

17. I hate diets, websites, support, charts, calorie-counting, blogs, statistics, advice and plans that have to do with losing weight. Hate them. I'd rather stay fat.

18. I have never doubted that I'll achieve and sustain a normal body weight in my lifetime. And I'll do it without compromising on any point in #17.

19. I have no sympathy for overweight people as a group. None. I'm not even very ashamed of that fact. I know too well the process of choosing that brought most of them to the same point I'm at, and I'm allergic to hearing them or me whining about it.

20. I live in perpetual fear of being thought of as a racist.

21. In my life I have been both a racist and a homophobe. These were both during and connected to my time as a Christian, and before my 20th birthday, though I'm not abdicating responsibility for my own mental choices at that time.

22. I got a lot happier when I left the church. Conversely, all the bottled-up questions, doubts, skepticism and sheer nonbelief that I kept under wraps as a Christian have now blossomed into a vitriolic hate of almost all things Christian that I'm slowly siphoning out of my psyche.

23. I don't hate god. I'm not angry at god, either. I never was.

24. I love living so much. I love this planet, this country, this city. I'm grateful for my chance to look at trees and stuff every day. I even like the weather here. I hope that if everything were taken away from me that I could still look at trees flowering in the spring and feel lucky.

25. My ability to sing is my most cherished gift and my greatest torment.

26. I vacillate between "I'm a lazy, apathetic bum and I'll never amount to anything" and "All things will come in time. I'm doing more than I realize."

27. Stealing from Michael again - I grew up believing that losing your virginity before marriage was just about the biggest sin any child could commit. In order of severity, it was above assault and battery, just below murder, tied with smoking.

28. Ramon's my rebound guy. He befriended me after my fiancé (unofficial engagement) dumped me.

29. I got dumped because I was depressed (college again) and losing my religion. I kind of deserved it, and it's one of the best things that ever happened to me.

30. I understand Baz Luhrmann's movies so much better when I watch them under the influence.

31. I think Ramon's way hotter with a beard.

32. I truthfully think my nephew Oz is the best-looking baby I've ever seen.

33. Ramon and I both have active and very real freebie lists that we continually and mutually update. We have an ongoing fight about who gets first dibs with Angelina Jolie.

34. Regarding #33 - Ramon would shake his head and deny that last bit, but it's still true.

35. I am an unconfirmed bisexual. Unconfirmed because my only sexual partner has been my husband.

36. I married way, way up in the looks and self-actualization department. I'm not kidding. Knowing Ramon for more than a decade has turned me into a calmer, steadier, funnier and nicer person. And I'm noticeably better groomed.

37. Ramon loved me even during my soccer grunge stage.

38. I only attended public school for Kindergarten and first grade. The rest of my schooling, including college, was in private Christian academies.

39. I got a great education.

40. I know the Bible pretty well and am still glad of it.

41. I think I'd be a great English Literature teacher. I'm just not sure I want to.

42. I lived in four different countries in Central and East Africa for a total of ten of my first 18 years of life.

43. My parents' missionary career ended with them getting hurt very badly by the Free Methodist Mission board. If the guy who was the primary author of that hurt stood in front of me today I think I could at least seriously consider killing him with a knife.

44. I think the African American community's general aversion to American police is pretty well founded.

45. I love comic books.

46. My favorite comic artists/graphic novelists are Keith Knight and Neil Gaiman.

47. I currently envy only one person on the planet. He shall never be named, but he is neither rich nor famous. You'll never guess who he is.

48. I was a vegetarian for 3.5 years. A year ago I gave it up because I really missed eating meat. I love being an ambivore but still think it's morally wrong for me to be so.

49. I'm opinionated and quick to judge, criticize and anger. It's one of the things I dislike most about myself. For that reason I rethink, really fast, nearly every opinion I form about everyone and everything. Which means I don't trust my instincts for good reason. I'm kind of mad about that one.

50. I wish to god I could think and act more compassionately first, not second.

51. Every day the fact that I am so much more (concerning my health and profession, chiefly) than what I have become nearly drives me mad. But I value my current way of life too much to effect an overhaul. I pray that fact changes, quickly.

52. I blame my parents for nothing concerning my current life and way of being. I believe my own choices brought me to where I am and that, good or bad, gives me joy.

53. I honestly think that people and the world are no worse off or more evil or destructive than they ever were before.

54. If I could adhere to any set of religious rules, I would probably be some sort of Buddhist.

55. I lie for social comfort and/or personal gain. No big stuff, but still.

56. If I tell you I love you, it's the truth, every time, and means more than I could ever say.

57. I'm trying to get comfortable with the fact that I'll always be talkative, loud, opinionated, mercurial and kind of a diva. I don't think I'll ever be able to change those things, I'm trying to believe that they can be good things and I'm coming closer and closer to not hating them about myself.

58. I don't mean 'demanding, self-aggrandizing and pushy' when I say diva. I mean 'thinks she's got to be performing almost every minute she's awake'. Get the diff? I might be a bit of those first things, but not much.

58. Oh yeah, and I think about myself WAY too much.

59. There's a blog that I wish would invite me to guest-author on. I've wished it for a long time and will never ask.

60. I've forgotten a lot of the grammatical rules. I should really bone up on those.

61. I used to speak French and Swahili almost fluently. I still dream in French a lot and hope to re-learn those languages.

62. Languages I'd like to learn: French, Spanish, Swahili, Mandarin, Japanese, Russian, Italian, German.

63. I've toured many countries and think that for the most part American tourists' bad rep in other places is well-deserved.

64. I miss Africa like I've lost a limb. I try not to talk about it very much.

65. My Dad and I have always been a lot alike.

66. The older I get, the more traits come out in my personality that remind me of my mom.

67. I really enjoy being so much like both of my parentals.

68. It pains me that my Dad wasn't loved enough as a child (in my opinion). The fact that he is the person he is in spite of that makes him some kind of miracle. I'll spend the rest of my life trying to love him enough to make up for what he didn't have before.

69. I'm pretty sure my Mom will be canonized after her death. If she isn't, she should be.

70. I'm starting to bore even my own self with this list.

71. I'll never believe that I was a good enough sister to Nathan.

72. I really, really liked the second boarding school I attended. I spent my Junior and Senior year of high school there and wish to heaven I'd gotten sent there in the first place.

73. I think Eugene, Oregon's feed-two-people-for-about-$20 cuisine far outstrips Seattle's.

74. I am a rabid fan of the following: Quentin Tarantino, Rick McPeak, Frank Miller, Trent Reznor, L.J. Arensen, Imogen Heap, Metallica (the black album got me through my senior year of HS without offing myself and others), Charlie Peacock, Aly Hawkins, Lisa Gerrard, Kate Bush and Wes Anderson. This list is actually much longer, obviously, but these are the people I'm currently digging on the most.

75. I dye my hair black because I think it looks better that way and because my mom's hair was that color in her youth. My real hair color is almost-black brown.

76. I will miss out on cool concerts, festivals and activities to avoid being in a crowd.

77. I used to think it was my right to spill to my girlfriends as many details as I liked about Ramon's and my physical life. I don't think that way any more.

78. I once asked for a Corona in a brewery, got yapped at by the waiter, cravenly apologized and embarrassed my dinner companions. I'd never been in one before and was new in Eugene, where I swear every other restaurant is a brewery.

79. I'm a beer weenie, in that I don't like anything dark or hoppy. However, I love love love microbrews (of the yellow and mild variety) and prefer them to all other beer, even Corona.

80. Our favorite brewery, the McMenamins chain, had two restaurants in Eugene and it pained us to leave them. We got to Seattle and found that their branch here, Six Arms, is literally one block away from our apartment building. I did the Snoopy dance and promptly went and consumed a pitcher of Ruby.

81. [nineteen...more...to go...] I've had a machine gun and a knife (more of a shiv, actually) pointed at me for real. Instead of giving up my awesome mountain bike to the Zairewa soldier who wanted it (and was pointing a machine gun at me to further his agenda), I rode away like hell and prayed he didn't have the balls to shoot at a missionary kid. It's not the stupidest thing I've ever done. The guy who pointed a shiv at me was a crazy dude in Bukavu who had undone his pants and was fixing to violate my honor (I'll never know if he'd have really gone through with it. Like I said, he was clearly crazy). This missionary auntie of mine caught him and screeched and he ran off. I got a pathetic blow to his shoulder in before he did so. Hey, I was only 13.

82. I also fought off another would-be stealer of my virtue with a metal folding chair (I was on my way home from church. We carried our own chairs there) and got rewarded with nothing worse than a slap on the face that made my head ring for hours. I ran straight to Dad's foreman, Msosi, and cried my head off.

83. I got a lot of attention in Africa (the wrong kind) because I was buxom from age 9 onward. It kept me in the house reading books instead of being outside in the land I still love best in the world. It's one of my most painful regrets.

84. My last spanking was when I was 12, for slamming my bedroom door in a temper and nearly breaking my brother's arm.

85. I really like drag queens and movies about them.

86. Some Favorite Movies of All Time (in no particular order): Stealing Beauty, The Royal Tenenbaums, Pulp Fiction, The Empire Strikes Back, Gosford Park, High Fidelity, Grosse Pointe Blank, all period films no matter how badly they've been done. Your basic nerd stuff, really.

87. I almost lost my life swerving to avoid killing a chipmunk sitting in the road, doing 70 in a Ford Festiva. This may be the stupidest thing I've ever done. I'd do it the same way again.

88. I'm very loyal, and become The Angry Friend who'll defend you to the death and probably embarrass the shit out of you in the process.

89. I love all reptiles, but bugs, spiders and especially praying mantises make me want to scream.

90. I once killed a bunch of baby praying mantises (manti?) with a magnifying glass - I think my karma's already coming to get me on that one.

91. I never intentionally kill anything any more. I don't even pick flowers.

92. When I was 11 I got sick with what my parents think was leukemia. They believe I was miraculously cured - I think it was some sort of weird-ass tropical disease that they couldn't diagnose and it just eventually passed. It was the worst pain I've ever felt in my life.

93. Someone I really loved died very suddenly of a weird, undiagnosed tropical disease.

94. I'm afraid that my life is too easy and too good - I keep fearing that What Happens to Everybody will happen to me and I'll lose something or someone that I can't afford to be without.

95. I'm less and less comfortable with my raging potty mouth. I'm considering curbing it gradually to coincide with my nephew Oz's development of speech and imitation skills. He's about 4 months old, so I've got some time.

96. I think Joss Whedon is some kind of minor deity. If he had never created Buffy, Angel and Firefly I'd get a lot more done.

97. I've wanted to meet and have been actively looking for my One True Love since I was about 5. I don't even believe in One True Love anymore, and am the better for it.

98. I knew Ramon was it almost as soon as I met him. He took a bit of work to bring around.

99. The hardest thing I've ever done is the continual work of letting him go (figuratively).

100. Did I already say that I love my life and I'm really really happy? Even when my life is bad it's good.

101. If you're reading this chances are that I really, really like you. There's possibly love involved.

Cerise

In No Particular Order

2007-03-14T10:16:00.000-07:00

1. This whole early Daylight Savings thing would probably go easier on us if we'd stop watching Buffy re-runs until the wee hours (her mum just died so it's understandable that we're terribly riveted and netflixing the subsequent disks as quickly as possible. Somebody buy me the set.) and waking up severely sleep-deprived.

2. I wish to god we'd watched the "About the Movie" featurette for "A Scanner Darkly" before we actually watched the movie. I still liked it very much, though. It just baked my noodle a bit.

3. Did I mention that I quit the Symphony Chorale? Yes - back in October, I think. It was a good decision that I've never regretted.

4. I also quit being a vegetarian. Back in January 2006, actually. I have no defense or even a very good reason. My karma's screwed. I don't want to think about it.

5. My poor mum just released her annual family newsletter and once again didn't have anything newsworthy to report about her daughter. It's all right for the other 3. Nathan's a doctor and that will provide fodder for years to come, Elizabeth brought forth the first grandchild for both sets of families, Ramon released his book, and I...nothing to report here, folks. Move along. Though it rankles a bit in theory, it's not nearly as upsetting as you might think...

6. We may use my March bonus in its entirety to get my cat Simone's butt operated on.

7. If my apartment building owners decide to turn our home into a condo I'm ending it all. I'll most likely do this with some sort of explosive device, so I can take my beloved apartment with me.

8. The trees are in full-on "we're not kidding around, this is no false spring, punks" bloom. It makes me very happy.

9. Ramon downloaded every Kate Bush album for me yesterday. He is the King of All.

10. I'm working on a WordPress website, so this blog will most likely move. That will benefit us all, because if I pay for a domain I will most likely write more. That's the idea.

Cerise