Something Excellent Happened & I Will Say Something Positive About My Self

Something quite excellent happened, at work. And I was due. I have been soldiering forth, my head up, my mind finally calming down. Today I must have given twenty reading assessments. Holy shit it gets boring. But I teach a lotta kids who are way below 'grade level,' so it has been a righteous, if not thrilling task. That combined with recovering from my co-worker's true craziness (the really crazy people are rarely the ones who know they have mental health issues).

So, so, so, my boss, aka Lou Grant, who is such a bossy pain in the ass and also a good person, told me, finally, today, what the plan is. I will be teaching reading and writing to the kids at risk - about 1/3 of the kids - at the same times I taught them before. Lou had thought previously that I would teach reading only, and that had been a painful idea. Hence the soldier metaphor.

I will have lovely little groups of personable hilarious and adorable students (I know them), and the students who really drove me to wanna valium will stick with Opie, or Opie's evil twin, as it were. Mean girls, farewell! Attitude boys, seeya! Okay, it's true that some of the stronger students are okay, but the ones I am truly attached to come visit me anyway. And not all of the weaker students are hilarious, but a lot of them are. It's a combination of defense-mechanism and their smarts leaking out in other places apart from literacy. I am a very very very happy lady.

My vindictive little tidbit, too, is that Opie/Satan is also extra-fond of the students who will now be my charges. Not his. For all the mishegas (nuttiness) about my being bothersome, the fact is that I am experienced, and he is not. So in the end, or what is the end at this particular time, I am doing what I like to do best.

You know it may seem weird, but I do love teaching. Today in one of my classes, I joked about being "reluctant" to come in to the classroom - we were studying vocabulary - and Georgia said "Miss, that's not true! You are always smiling when you come in here!" I guess even when I was flipping out I managed to do my job. Actually, yes: even when I was flipping out, I managed to do my job.

Quiet As A Monk

Big Kid doesn't talk to me. It is not his way right now. Man of few words, stuck with a mother who's all 'how do you feel/how-do-I-feel.' So a solid piece of my home life is controlling my impulse to speak, inquire, opine, or chat in Big Kid's direction. It is a vow of almost-silence for me, but I break it to much. Hello, good-bye, and whazzup are okay, but I may not initiate substantive conversation, and over-excitement at his conversation initiation is also a communication-killer. Big Kid does not say these things to me, as that would not be his style, of course.

And when he is doing or saying something obnoxious, I hafta work terribly hard to swallow my sarcasm and these icky nasty remarks that pop out of my mouth before I realize how goddawful I sound. This is not a theory. Big Kid and I have talked about it. It is one of the rare instances in which being a bitch is not working for me. I pray to the Goddess of Chatty for wisdom. Perhaps I should switch to a Silence Goddess, but that seems so dull?

Tonight, I drove Big Kid to the movies. It was really far. We took his friend too. Friend had to look through all of the movie listings once we were on the way to a particular movie. Then he had to read off each movie and listen to my summary. I did pretty well. I thought maybe Big Kid was getting irritated at Friend, so I tried to sound relaxed about the fact that I was already driving toward the theater where the original movie choice was playing. And it was a million fucking miles away, and I am a saint, a Jewish mother saint. (I finally said it - it's a relief to come out with the truth.)

Friend alluded to paying for himself, but I assured him I would pay, even as I was getting nervous about how much that particular theater costs. Big Kids eat like swines. Pregnant swines. So it took me a few minutes to locate the theater, and I dropped off the Big Kids to go get tickets. The excellent movie we were supposed to go see was sold out. Big Kid looked bummed and mopey. Friend popped around chatting about which movie to see, sorta like a Pez dispenser, but without any offer of candy. He seemed to have missed the concept of all other movies having started half an hour earlier. There were no goddamn choices. I behaved, though, like a pious monk. That was a foreshadowing of the bad-as-crap movie we would end up seeing. (Monks featured, and they were not Tony Shalhoub. They were draped, colorless, and silent.)

We "chose" the monk-y British King flick with Peter O'Toole and Richard Burton. I was so preoccupied at that point that I forgot that they're both dead. It was a fucking sixties epic, except there was no fucking. It sucked. It was not Children of Men. It was not Clive Owen. It was the disturbing mashed-potato face of Richard Burton in a big religious dress and a crown to match. It was agony. I kept looking over at Big Kid - I had assumed I would sit in the back, but they were both like sit with us, whaddevvah - for some sort of sign that we were sharing the this-movie-sucks moment. But we weren't. Friend had actually studied the King Henry number something history and now had an interest. The very idea of an interest in conflicts in England hundreds of years ago is science fiction for me. I'm a world history dumbass, with the exception of a few "explorers" who claimed they discovered shit that was already here and belonged to someone else.

In the car on the way home (finally), friend said he really liked the movie. He asked me what I thought, and I told him I didn't like it. Thinking he needed to defend his opinion, he said "Well, I don't get out much." I thought that was hilarious, and I reassured Friend that everyone is entitled to his or her own taste. So perhaps Friend had simply been very anxious to go to just the right movie, or perhaps he was a tad nervous being out, hence the pre-movie ruminating about what to see.

After that, The Big Kids talked about science fiction authors, and plots, and books they had liked a lot. I hummed along, eyes on the road, very proud that I had seemed so patient, even during the half hour we had to wait for the monk movie to start. After Friend got out of the car, I did not ask if he is a good friend. I did not ask if he was more of a buddy or a confidante. I said absolutely nothing about feelings. Big Kid, however, said several sentences to me! I responded appropriately. I did not thank him for talking to me. I did not tell him how much I love him, or how mature he seems compared to Friend. I was so good. Now I will pray for a few more sentences in March.

Notes on Nurses & Other Pearls of Rage

It was the welbutrin what fucked me over. It's not even clear at this point whether I will continue to have bipolarish symptoms, or if that was a reaction to the medication. I thinka little bit o both. So beware side effects, even if you have been on a medication for a while.

The Nurse Practitioner, Nurse Sobedda, who was covering for Distracted Doctor, was remarkably attentive and also had excellent fashion sense. One of those great short haircuts, and a noticeably appropriate affect when she heard my story. Sobedda had chutzpah, too. She said something about being comfortable contradicting what Distracted had said, and having her own opinions. Well, sign me up!

Once she heard my story, she said she was sure that I had been through so much trauma that that was first thing to address. It was validating, and it also really sucked to hear the truth. Couldn't we pretend that 18 months is plenty of time to regain one's footing after the loss of a sibling? Oh, okay, the sudden loss? The violent loss. Ach.

It is all so Joseph Heller ala Catch-22. I would be crazy not to be crazy. And what is it to not be crazy? Is it marching along with life and looking like I'm okay? I can do that. Is it managing to be consistent, or keeping from being depressed? Ball & Chain said that I will need to accept Baby Brudda's death. We were on the phone, and I had one of my I-wanna-reach-out-and smack-you moments. I am not going to accept that someone killed my brother. I refuse, and I consider it an insult. I completely reject it. I need to 'face facts,' or whaddevvah, but one cannot make nice, emotionally or otherwise, when a young man is robbed of a huge portion of his life.

So I say fuck the stages of fucking grief. Fuck the bullshit about everyone experiencing the same thing, and to hell with the idea that someday I will accept my brother's murder. I keep going, and I do a lotta shit, and I hafta know what I know and proceed. But I don't accept violence; I don't accept cruelty. Death is as natural as birth, but not when a person deliberately kills another. That's a fucking crime against humanity.

Calmed Nerves, Friendship Requirements, and The Difference Between Late and Early

Mania Receding. Anyone who actually read the longest-fucking-blog-I-evvuh-wrote (that's you, Suzanne ): hey that's not a weird blog frown, it's a colon after end parens Thank You for tolerating the unbottling of feelings and thoughts that probably should have remained in an unwatered seed form, left to dry up and blow away. ("Oh, dry up," my former friend Shithead's mother useta say.) Shithead dropped me after twenty years of friendship because she said, basically, that I was too fucked up. That was very sweet, especially since we'd already drifted apart and I assumed we weren't hanging out anymore. But as a "good Christian" she said she had to be honest with me - in writing. What a Shithead. I had the nervous breakdown, got over it, and she lost what would have been the most entertaining moments of her life. Dumped by a friend, though - that's harsh.

I have about 577 unfair and biased litmus-tests for people who apply to be a good friend. Friend, fine. Good friend: fuck off. That's test number one. Can you take a joke? Have I known you for awhile? (Otherwise you may be a former beauty queen, or who knows what?) Have you been a beauty queen and now you realize it was ridiculous? Are you super-polite (deal-breaker - too much etiquette freaks me out, unless you're my mother). And on and on, of course. Do you believe everything happens for a reason? If yes, fuck off, unless you passed 576 other tests, and then I'll take it into consideration if you compliment me a lot. Okay, considering my state of reality, I cannot list the other 567ish other tests. A few days ago, the number would have been bigger, and I could have enumerated each requirement. Like I said, mania receding.

So I stopped taking Welbutrin and ta-da, I'm kinda sad and sleepy and the way any normal gal would be during the month in which her late Baby Brudda was born. Funny thing is, Baby Brudda was always late. I couldn't stay mad at him, though. He was the one person in the world I could not remain irate at, or with, or whaddevvah. Regarding the description of dead people as "late," it is absurd. Late for what? Late for lunch? They can go wherever the hell - or heaven they want. It's been proven, time and time again. Think of all of those walk-through-walls ghosts. Or maybe it means late like 'seeya later, in the after-life?' BB was early, folks. Early. By about sixty years. His bald spot had just started and he pouted when I inspected it. His band was mid-recording for their newest CD. He and Sweetheart were planning to start the fuck-for-a-baby program.

Well that's why I'm sad, that's why I am anxious, that is why, if you are able, you should listen to music you love and hang out in your pajamas and watch movies and eat a lot. Because that's what BB did, and he passed virtually all of the 577 tests. No one can pass all of them, because I cannot remember them all. I just know they're there.

How Does This Work?

Here I am, linking myself, or something, to Technorati, since apparently they sorta know me anyway. We'll see what happens.

Technorati Profile

Why Doesn't Life Imitate Television?

I love Grey's Anatomy. I love it like candy: it has everything good, even though somehow it seems like it's really trash. It's not the Hot Doctors - okay, they're an extra bit of syrup - and it's not the grit of surgery (oh please). It's the way everything folds over onto everything else, all narrated by Ellen Pompeo's soothing voice. It's as if doctors are excellent people. They're flawed, but just a teeny-tiny bit. And they care so much.

I was at my psycho-pharmacologist's office in December, telling him how utterly sad I'd been. I'd met Dr. Big Guy before, and he seemed an unusually bright fellow, and all up on new research and drug interactions. He 's the type of person who always socializes in couples - straight couples, of course - and manages to be a semi-involved dad. Not that I'd stereotyped him completely: I still wasn't sure whether he had played football or soccer. I'm thinking football now.

Back to the December visit. I was almost ten minutes late (usually he's about twenty), and on my way in, Big Guy told me that he had to leave at exactly five. Fine, twenty minutes was good. But then, then, he didn't make very good eye contact. He interrupted me a coupla times to tell me how I would finish my thought (he was wrong). And he answered his cell! Phone! To tell his wife that he would be on time! As my grandfather would have said, "Oy-a zuchen-ves-amiyir." Finally, when he flubbed something else, I said "you really are distracted today, aren't you?" He didn't answer. Hmmm.

But that's only because he is not starring in the above-mentioned Grey's Anatomy. George is really the best. He is so little-boy cute, so earnest and sincere. Of course Meredith is lovely, also, (Ellen Pompeo), and The Chief. Now I realize tomorrow night is the season finale so this is all rather predictable of me.

Still, if you are ever the mother of a teenager whose cousin gave him a laptop, and you are on school vacation, be sure to watch old episodes from years ago - to catch up on all you missed - while looking at old letters and lying in the sunny spot of your bed, watching the dog do the same on the floor (the sun bit, not the t.v. show). If you are truly wanting to have an excellent time, listen to Elf Power simultaneously, or intermittently. Elf Power? Next post, I suppose.

Rhoda and Opie: A Coupla Freaks

Here's the story, or the query, or the mystery, and if any one out there is able to decipher exactly what happened, or is willing to give advice, surely you are going to heaven, or whatever your version of it might be: a really good concert, a delicious dinner, or an amazing sexual experience?

How does one decipher the difference when you are in a bad situation with someone and they are a freak and you are a freak? You both behave badly, but your own perspective is shot. Do you blame the other person, especially since you have concrete evidence that he or she is thin-skinned, naive, and, well, young? After you know he's fudged a few stories at work to cover himself? Do you continue to trust someone after he's complained about you to an authority at work? In another context, that question would seem absurd to me, like "he punched me in the face - should I try to forgive him"? What if you know the other person has at least as much anxiety as you? What if you feel you are introducing the whole story with a clear bias, so that the reader is already won over to your side, without even realizing that lapses in judgment occurred? (Notice the cute illustration, to feign compensation for above-mentioned bias. ) Did I ever claim to be Jewish saint? (Maybe I did, but that's a rhetorical question.)



Don't get all hot and bothered over there - I made it sound worse than it is, and this is not someone I am currently talking with more than a professional hello. I don't know why I care, and I don't know if it's genuine caring, but I know I am beseiged with questions and hopes. Hope that I haven't messed with my job too much; hopes that something can be salvaged. How embarrassing. The connection between us was chipping off anyway, due to circumstances described below, and when I asked a colleague to check on said person, said person became enraged that I would "gossip" about him. So maybe that means he has not demeaned me to every human at work? Why am I not more angry? Anger is a huge part of my identity, with a specialty in self-righteous anger.


Let's take a more serious look. Say Rhoda - not Mary, of course! - is at her job. She's a beading teacher, creating beads to stroll through for all sorts of folks. And say Rhoda is having a hard time, like Joe's been kind of a jerk lately because he wants to leave the show, and even though Rhoda knows it's better that way - a happily married Rhoda was an oxymoron, really, and signaled the demise of something pure - and so Rhoda goes to work and everything seems good at work, despite personal woes. (Oh I know Rhoda had a spin-off, but that's besdie the point.) She is beading with a young, inexperienced guy - we'll call him Opie, although that's not exactly right - and he seems nervous a lot, but then they realize that they both love, well, beads, and the same hippie music, and he is almost as funny as she is. No, definitely as sensitive, and sort of funny. They yak about all sortsa stuff, including their respective assessments of their beading students, movies, books, 'the works.'

She neglects to notice as more than a nagging whisper that he is wildly disorganized, and she doesn't quite know what to do about joint projects that he doesn't seem to care about. When they actually have to teach something to a group of prospective beaders, it's great, and they are even using Bob Dylan-style beading. (Isn't it weird that Bob Dylan's name is Bob? Bob is such a mundane and fun name. He seems more like Caleb.)

Oh, anyway. So Rhoda's all like so middle-agey-bogged-down and she's having a lotta fun with this guy at work - he should be Ritchie, actually - and people at work are like, hmmm, big-personality Rhoda is maybe going overboard. Rhoda doesn't notice. Often, they leave at the same time because the mini-guy has signed on for extra duties that he hates, but he is unable to tell The Boss that he hates them , and Rhoda is stuck with extra work. She doesn't really mind, and she helps him some. They talk about it, but Rhoda tells him beaders help each other out, and Richie is new: after his first year, it will be easier. One night, The Big boss moves a deadline up, and they take all of their papers out to eat, and correct them together, alternating between serious work, serious chat, and very not-serious chat.


I am really truly getting to the point, but this is hard difficult painful and I need to not glass over either Rhoda's or Ritchie's freakiness.

One day Big Boss, not an unfair person, but idiosynchratic, at least, and not so far off from Lou Grant, or Ed Asner (there really wasn't a difference: he played himself, like Peter Falk aka Columbo), sits Rhoda down. So Lou says "Rhoda, I had to learn this. You hafta learn this. People are talking." Oops, I left out a part.

Flashback! (If you were hoping for logical sequence you wouldn't be reading this, anyway.) Big Boss, a week earlier, tells Rhoda that she - Rhoda - is going to specialize in a certain type of bead design, as many of the inner-city students are way below bead-level - and that she and Opie will not be together any more. Rhoda is taken aback, she cries even, later. Lou is tactless, telling her in the hallway, while beading students gossiped and compared styles all around her. What is going on? How did this happen so quickly? Why had Lou spoken to Ritchie that morning - to ask his opinion - yet not to Rhoda? It is all quite disturbing, yet still, Rhoda proceeds, in her quirky, nervous-energy way, to do her work.

Lou says - back to the hallway - he went to a conference yesterday, and after all, the two jobs were originally meant to be separate (that's true). Rhoda has to move her things out of the joint office, and she tells Opie - he reverts back at some point - that she has been evicted. Opie had honestly talked about wanting to work on his own because he needed to do well without an experienced beader always there, but he was torn. Rhoda told him to do what was best for him. He had informed Lou one morning that either would be fine; he told Lou later in the day that he wanted things to remain the same. Lou interrupted - "I'm splitting you up!" Maybe Opie had realized how much Rhoda is working on (cynical view). Maybe he remembered how well they had worked together (who knows). They had received a lot of praise about their work together. (Notice that was all past-tense/pre-split, and that it quickly became a moot point.)

Rhoda spends a week trying to connect with Opie - he is stand-offish. He has the flu or something and whenever she sees him he is blowing his nose. He teaches a creative lesson that she had planned without thanking her or mentioning it. The beaders all love the lesson. Rhoda is wildly jealous, working on what seems like far less interesting stuff. She pesters him for her things. Remember how Rhoda had asked a colleague how Opie was doing? by now the tension between them is clear. Rhoda googles "apology," although she is already pretty good at it, and manages a strong apology on a Friday morning. Unbeknownst to Rhoda, Opie had ratted her out the night before. Wow, you can really tell how obsessed I am with this whole issue, huh? It's starting to seem a little funny to me at this point.

Oh God, back to the story. Lou says, "Look, Rhoda. People are talking. You and Opie had an argument and you sent him a text message asking him to talk to you. You mentioned drinking. You gotta stay away from him." Rhoda is mortified, horrified, embarrassed, angry, and fearing for her job. She is a married woman, devoted to her kids and family. Somehow all sorts of feelings had leaked out. She had been out with a bunch of colleagues and invited Opie. He had shared the email out-of-context. He was so wrong, and such a freak, and such an asshole to 'tell on her,' without ever talking to her. He was the classic, fearful, afraid of-conflict guy. For Rhoda, the anniversary of something painful had just passed, and despite knowing how righteous she was, Rhoda sorta knew she'd been acting crazy, hounding Opie about little remnants of connections, like supplies she needed back, books, and information beaders share.

She and Opie had confided in each other. They were both wounded souls. They hung out in the same places. He gave her one of his CDs. But there was an undercurrent of something, and instead of letting it be, it just sort of flared up.

So the question is not what should Rhoda do, because she already did exactly what Lou prescribed, and he told her at the end of the week that she had done well at the new-fangled beading assignment. He had said to stay out of staff meetings while things cooled off. He had said beaders gossip. He had said that he had been in a similar situation once, and that he would teach Rhoda how to avoid it again. He told Rhoda not to speak to a soul about it; he told Rhoda that he knows everything that 'goes on' at the beading establishment. Yikes! Could that possibly be true?

She is working on trusting herself again. She is still obsessing, but not as much. Eating? Not really. Sleeping? A bit better. Watching movies, listening to loud music, writing, looking through papers, thinking about beading. Joe is suddenly very supportive. Maybe the show will stay on the air, after all. Or maybe she's a bit more of a Phyllis (Chloris Leachman - off the fucking wall, and almost as over-sexed as SueAnn Niven)?

But why would Rhoda still care about Opie, who basically betrayed her, and actually complained to Lou? Is she obsessed or compassionate? The original sentiment was some maternal-type concern about his lack of professional care-taking re beading requirements. She became a pseudo-stalker and it was all wrapped up in confusion and - as the DSM IV manual says - a loss of awareness that her behavior was out of the ordinary. Rhoda still wants to contact Opie! Why? Partly because she doesn't like to leave things unresolved - she hates it - but also because she misses the sudden, intense companionship, she misses another lost friend from a while back, Edward, and she misses her little brother, although Rhoda refuses to over-do this point.

I wrote a poem once called "I love too much." Omigod that's like that pop-psychology book. but it's not that I stay with people who are bad for me, it's that I see the details in people, I feel for them, and I love them as whole personalities.

Obviously Rhoda was so mortified that she didn't quite tell anyone, even here, the whole entire exact story. She tried to tell her great and excellent friend Gotcha, an older and wiser confidante. She told enough. There was nothing physical that went on between them, there was no lying to Joe; there was just so much intricacy to the friendship that it is still impossible to 'pin down.' Other folks validated the fact that Opie was something of a freak, but what am I, if not a freak?

Opie still has some of Rhoda's books and beads and other things, but she is leaving them in the old office until a light moment comes up. Rhoda fears that she will be removed from the team completely, and she is prepared to switch from the idea of a hiatus to a division. Rhoda adores the people on the rest of the team, all of whom are professional and kind adults. Rhoda is always going to have to manage mental health issues. She really, really wants to go back in time, in a lot of ways. Not like Aunt Bea, or anything, but definitely before the bad things happened, and before the really bad thing happened.

I've always thought it was absurd when people detailed their shit at work, because who really cares about other people's work shit? Nevertheless, I needed to air this one, and I need some sanity. The former may be happening already; the latter is going to take awhile. After all, Rhoda settled for what she could get, and I eat life up like I'm starving, despite the consequences.

I Have Been Crazy

Oh hello. Isn't it a funny situation when everything seems lovely, charmed even, and you go to work and you are perky happy good-looking, and then things start moving along a bit fast and you are oh-so-capable and then after all of the nausea, missed sleep and racing thoughts you find out, as you sort of already knew, that you are hypo-manic or manic or just too fucking fast. Oops, that was a question - right, so isn't it odd? When you are spinning but you don't quite know it? Like the way we useta play records on the wrong speed? Was that a question? Huh?

I have wanted to write many times but it has been hard to pin down, so to speak, exactly what I would be saying. The letters would be barely enough to communicate the hash of emotion and the words would be sluggish, with the slimy-dull trail that slugs leave behind. My brother's birthday was in the first week of February, and I remember the actual day very well - or more to the point, the actual moment when we heard that we had a baby brother. Now his birthday is a psychological squeeze, the paradox of his not-alive self. "I cannot fathom it," he once told me, in response to an awful experience I had had, and now those words are truly apt.

So rather than fathom, my clever gray cells have developed an altogether new situation that provides so much distraction from true feelings that I can pretend I have none (apart from nervous anxiety, of course). The clincher, the rub, as it were, may be that one of my anti-depressants is actually fucking me up. There is no way to really know at the moment so I am taking something on top of everything else to calm myself, and waiting to do it one-by-one. I am not going to change a whole buncha crap so that we can guess what happened.


I would like to state, for the record, or for posterity, or for my one dear reader and the dog, that anxiety is painful. It fucking hurts. It caused me to do things that showed less-than-perfect judgment. Other people may have less-than-perfect judgment anyway, but mine is usually excellent, despite my other flaws. Fortunately, no one in my personal life has the opportunity to judge me, nor would they. And that is the patched-together first attempt to write; and so I boldly, or simply, go on, externally functioning and internally visualizing the old 'Road-Runner' cartoons: surely there was a swish, after he went "beep, beep," that no one could truly see, and no one had taken the time to deliberately draw. Too fast to decipher - that was the message. Aha! A goal. Perhaps a swith from the old Warner Brothers to the calming and contemporary Miyazaki?