Ted made a list, inspiring me to do the same.
1) That I was wrong about thinking I shouldn't move in with my boyfriend.
2) A warm bed filled with my kitties.
3) Art on every wall, everywhere.
4) The complicated relationship to your writing that being published creates.
5) Good reviews.
6) New York City's utter, unflappable, inspiring awesomeness.
7) Kip.
8) Kip's patience with my everything.
9) Friends who live very close by.
10) Parents who get it.
11) Central Air.
12) The Greenmarket community.
13) My editor & my agent. Because everyone said that Yield wasn't publishable except for them, and turns out, it was.
14) That I have a desk job where I can iChat with Cory and Robert and Jeff.
15) That Howie made enough of the best maple syrup in the world to keep me employed another year.
16) Complicated questions that people ask and struggle to answer well.
17) The DVR.
18) Antibiotics.
19) The MoMA, The Met Museum, The Whitney, The Guggenheim, etc.
20) Jokes.
21) The Theater Development Fund.
22) The incredible bounty of local food.
23) Poets.
24) Homosexuals.
25) Having friends in so many lines of work: dentists, psychotherapists, drummers, photographers, teachers, graphic designers, fashion thinkers, singers, DOT workers, performers, artists, writers, journalists, bartenders, farmers, waiters, chefs, lawyers, zine-makers, dancers, yoga teachers, real estate agents, puppeteers, activists, old folks home managers, playwrights, actors, film editors, sound technicians, and circus performers.
Showing posts with label medical adventures. Show all posts
Showing posts with label medical adventures. Show all posts
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Sunday, July 05, 2009
What Do You Want from Air Travel, or Miracles Do Happen
"It's raining, can you believe it?" my mother asked at about 5:45am this morning, when I had staggered out of my bedroom. Everything was still dark and quiet. The weather meant that my plane was about an hour late getting out of Chattanooga--the worst kind of late, the kind where you're all sitting on the plane, buckled and stowed, and yet the weather has you grounded--so no getting up, no moving around, no getting off and rethinking the whole idea. "Maybe we could just drive there," says the guy in the other row--ha ha, never heard that one before!!! Eventually, they re-routed us over Nashville (who would have known?) and we made it to Memphis, where I had missed my connecting flight to LaGuardia. (None of this part of the story is that interesting or original. I know.) However, there was a flight to JFK that was to depart about 25 minutes after I found myself at gate B1, and the nicest of the nice, "Ms. Anna B.," as her name tag said, was kind enough to put me on it. Hence, I'm on en-route as I write this long rambling post. A miracle!
The woman sitting in the seat next to me on the ground in Chattanooga was quite impatient, making huffing noises and glaring at the flight attendant, as if she had something to do with the rain, or something to do with NOT making it go away. I'm always amazed at these people. Because the pilot--whom you just have to trust, like surgeons or cab drivers or, you know, literary agents--is trying to make the best decisions possible. Because the alternative is, you know, death.
The 4th of July holiday has "become my Christmas," my mother also said. These days, it's the only time our whole family gathers together. With my brother and his family in Orlando, making their own Christmas traditions and rituals, and me having 11 years of being stranded in Birmingham, Cincinnati, Charlotte, Atlanta, Memphis, and even Philadelphia, I try to avoid flying in the snowy months as much as possible. But I like to come down and see everyone, eat bad food that gives everybody strange bowel movements, and watch my dad run in fear from a canon.
The older you get, the stranger your family becomes. Rather, the more you get to know them, and hence, their eccentricities float--dramatically, quietly, hilariously--to the surface. They were weird to being with, most likely. I began thinking a lot about this over the weekend in Tennessee, where the whole American suburbia thing started to make more sense to me--actually, not "make sense" as much as "reveal.". When I say "the whole American suburbia thing" I mean whatever Sam Mendes is always trying to work out in his movies. (See American Beauty or Revolutionary Road, or even, god help you, Away from You, or was it Away We Go, or something.)
Your neighbors grow up and become frail old people. They introduce themselves to you, forgetting that you are the tiny child that they once invited to eat popcorn and watch a movie. They forget that you are the tiny child that was disappointed to find out that the movie was "Around the World in 80 Days," and not something that had been released in the last two weeks--like maybe about Ninja Turtles--let alone his lifetime. It was not as fun as he had hoped, and perhaps as you had hoped, but he remembers it fondly--and I suppose that's the most important thing.
Also, things that happened to you when you were smaller, and that you will never ever forget even if you live to be 200 years old--like the handle bar of your brother's bike jamming up into the side of his mouth and taking off a layer of his gum, followed by your mother rushing out of the house with a bottle of cold water and making him drink and spit, drink and spit, the water rushing red out of his mouth, then pink, then red again and again, screaming--you may learn that your mother, for example, doesn't even remember it happening. "There were so many," she said, meaning injuries, meaning tiny, urgent emergencies.
My nephews are glorious little specimens of humanity. It's good that I do not have children. Children to me are simultaneously the most fascinating subject one could turn his attention to, and the most boring, repetitive robotic weirdos you could meet. Why do they do what they do? I guess, why do any of us? They are lovable little terrors and joyful little bunches of personality.
Miracles do happen! In the Memphis airport, and in your very own family. Okay, miracle may be the wrong word to use--particularly when all "Ms. Anna B" did was her job. But this plane is being battered around quite a bit by the wind outside it--and if you are reading this, then it means that I survived, and made it to my boyfriend's house in Brooklyn, which is pretty miraculous. The nephews, too, are pretty miraculous. If you want proof, here it is:
The woman sitting in the seat next to me on the ground in Chattanooga was quite impatient, making huffing noises and glaring at the flight attendant, as if she had something to do with the rain, or something to do with NOT making it go away. I'm always amazed at these people. Because the pilot--whom you just have to trust, like surgeons or cab drivers or, you know, literary agents--is trying to make the best decisions possible. Because the alternative is, you know, death.
The 4th of July holiday has "become my Christmas," my mother also said. These days, it's the only time our whole family gathers together. With my brother and his family in Orlando, making their own Christmas traditions and rituals, and me having 11 years of being stranded in Birmingham, Cincinnati, Charlotte, Atlanta, Memphis, and even Philadelphia, I try to avoid flying in the snowy months as much as possible. But I like to come down and see everyone, eat bad food that gives everybody strange bowel movements, and watch my dad run in fear from a canon.
The older you get, the stranger your family becomes. Rather, the more you get to know them, and hence, their eccentricities float--dramatically, quietly, hilariously--to the surface. They were weird to being with, most likely. I began thinking a lot about this over the weekend in Tennessee, where the whole American suburbia thing started to make more sense to me--actually, not "make sense" as much as "reveal.". When I say "the whole American suburbia thing" I mean whatever Sam Mendes is always trying to work out in his movies. (See American Beauty or Revolutionary Road, or even, god help you, Away from You, or was it Away We Go, or something.)
Your neighbors grow up and become frail old people. They introduce themselves to you, forgetting that you are the tiny child that they once invited to eat popcorn and watch a movie. They forget that you are the tiny child that was disappointed to find out that the movie was "Around the World in 80 Days," and not something that had been released in the last two weeks--like maybe about Ninja Turtles--let alone his lifetime. It was not as fun as he had hoped, and perhaps as you had hoped, but he remembers it fondly--and I suppose that's the most important thing.
Also, things that happened to you when you were smaller, and that you will never ever forget even if you live to be 200 years old--like the handle bar of your brother's bike jamming up into the side of his mouth and taking off a layer of his gum, followed by your mother rushing out of the house with a bottle of cold water and making him drink and spit, drink and spit, the water rushing red out of his mouth, then pink, then red again and again, screaming--you may learn that your mother, for example, doesn't even remember it happening. "There were so many," she said, meaning injuries, meaning tiny, urgent emergencies.
My nephews are glorious little specimens of humanity. It's good that I do not have children. Children to me are simultaneously the most fascinating subject one could turn his attention to, and the most boring, repetitive robotic weirdos you could meet. Why do they do what they do? I guess, why do any of us? They are lovable little terrors and joyful little bunches of personality.
Miracles do happen! In the Memphis airport, and in your very own family. Okay, miracle may be the wrong word to use--particularly when all "Ms. Anna B" did was her job. But this plane is being battered around quite a bit by the wind outside it--and if you are reading this, then it means that I survived, and made it to my boyfriend's house in Brooklyn, which is pretty miraculous. The nephews, too, are pretty miraculous. If you want proof, here it is:
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Thursday, October 09, 2008
Dispatch from the B61
I love the B61. I am riding it from Carroll Gardens to South Williamsburg. My day job--that would be the one where we teach kids critical thinking skills through interaction with visual art--is contemplating a location change. Rather, we are being forced to location-change due to rising rents. (New York City, I love you; Landlords, eat shit and die.) So, as a tester-outer, a kind of see-how-shitty-this-actually-would-be, Nick and I are meeting to look at the possible space on South 6th Street--a lovely 4th floor corner office--and ask probably tedious questions of the current tenant. "Does this sun get too hot by this window?" "What about the radiator?" "Is it loud when the subway goes past?"
As we saunter around the chunky lucite furniture and fabulous Eames conference room chairs--the office currently belongs to a set dresser/prop house--she answers all the questions politely, encouragingly, as if she herself were the agent getting the commission. "The light is warm, but in the winter you'll really love it." I even feel the need to ask about where the electrical outlets are, and she points, "All that is plugged in back there, you just can't see it." Somehow this makes me feel secure. About the trains going by on the Williamsburg Bridge--fifty feet from the window--she says, "You know, it's New York, the subway is just there and you get used to it." This made me think again of the bus. What would it be like, I thought, to only take the subway one or two times a week, which is a distinct possibility, should things go down this path.
If you take the bus, you move at a more appropriate speed--only walking, which is clearly not an option at this distance, provides a more natural pace. The bus allows time to notice the sort of things I like to notice, or can't help but notice: the textures of the trash heaped up by the corner, the kind of buttons on the cuffs of the lady standing by the curb.
I could also decide to become a person who bikes from here to there. But, you know, I have a lot of fear surrounding that. As you well could imagine. But I am not adamantly opposed to it. It's something I'm interested in it as an idea. (I say that a lot, whatever it means. I think it means "I am scared to death of this, but it is also intriguing." Other things that I am interested in as ideas: culinary school, moving to the beach in northeast Florida, touring with Ani Difranco for a year and writing a book about it.)
But, the bus is so civilized. The people who ride it often know each other from the same long, bumpy trips they take to and from home every day at the same time. They talk, they ask about each other's children. They ask about each other's doctor's appointments and weird skin anomolies--it's sort of like hell on earth, and a writer's fantasyland, all at once.
Not that bus riding needs a lengthy defense, but I offer this, as my closing argument: If you are standing outside the subway turnstile underground, and you don't have the fare you need, you could stand there for a half hour before you have enough money to get you where you are going. And then you'd have to find a Metrocard machine that works. Or you'd have to con someone into giving you a swipe from their card. But if you get on the bus, and discover that you are out of change--I've seen it happen a dozen times--everyone in the front half will dig through their pockets as if by command, and donate what they have. It's a small thing, but to me it feels like a miracle. It's a small act of forgiveness performed between strangers, in public.
Sorry there's no closure here. I don't know what the outcome is.
As we saunter around the chunky lucite furniture and fabulous Eames conference room chairs--the office currently belongs to a set dresser/prop house--she answers all the questions politely, encouragingly, as if she herself were the agent getting the commission. "The light is warm, but in the winter you'll really love it." I even feel the need to ask about where the electrical outlets are, and she points, "All that is plugged in back there, you just can't see it." Somehow this makes me feel secure. About the trains going by on the Williamsburg Bridge--fifty feet from the window--she says, "You know, it's New York, the subway is just there and you get used to it." This made me think again of the bus. What would it be like, I thought, to only take the subway one or two times a week, which is a distinct possibility, should things go down this path.
If you take the bus, you move at a more appropriate speed--only walking, which is clearly not an option at this distance, provides a more natural pace. The bus allows time to notice the sort of things I like to notice, or can't help but notice: the textures of the trash heaped up by the corner, the kind of buttons on the cuffs of the lady standing by the curb.
I could also decide to become a person who bikes from here to there. But, you know, I have a lot of fear surrounding that. As you well could imagine. But I am not adamantly opposed to it. It's something I'm interested in it as an idea. (I say that a lot, whatever it means. I think it means "I am scared to death of this, but it is also intriguing." Other things that I am interested in as ideas: culinary school, moving to the beach in northeast Florida, touring with Ani Difranco for a year and writing a book about it.)
But, the bus is so civilized. The people who ride it often know each other from the same long, bumpy trips they take to and from home every day at the same time. They talk, they ask about each other's children. They ask about each other's doctor's appointments and weird skin anomolies--it's sort of like hell on earth, and a writer's fantasyland, all at once.
Not that bus riding needs a lengthy defense, but I offer this, as my closing argument: If you are standing outside the subway turnstile underground, and you don't have the fare you need, you could stand there for a half hour before you have enough money to get you where you are going. And then you'd have to find a Metrocard machine that works. Or you'd have to con someone into giving you a swipe from their card. But if you get on the bus, and discover that you are out of change--I've seen it happen a dozen times--everyone in the front half will dig through their pockets as if by command, and donate what they have. It's a small thing, but to me it feels like a miracle. It's a small act of forgiveness performed between strangers, in public.
Sorry there's no closure here. I don't know what the outcome is.
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Sick with Circus
Circus AMOK played a show today in the gymnasium at Judson Memorial Church, which served as our rain location since Seward Park, where we should have been, was dealt a soft mist that seemed easy, but over time becomes a drenching cardboard disaster. I was, honestly, not looking forward to it at all. I've got some kind of head cold, going on 2.5 days, and the last thing I need to be doing is unpacking and repacking a truck full of circus stuff, and then of course, sweating through my clothes during the show, and running around being fabulous.
But I did it. It was a nice show. There were probably about 75 people in the audience--which is about 70 more than we thought might show up. Despite this being the circus's fifteenth season, and despite the fact that we perform for who knows how many people (1,000? 2,000? 5,000?) we still look around at each other before some of the shows and say "Do you think anyone will show up?"
I thought a lot about taking the show somewhere else, about touring. I wondered how the audiences might be different, how it could look more like theater to those other audiences, look more like a foreign spectacle. Because if you listen to our audiences, the way they scream and cheer, laugh and boo, all the right places--it really feels like the circus belongs to this city. If you took us out of that context, I'm not sure how it would come across.
I still think we should tour. Please, if you know someone with a few hundred thousand dollars laying around, or if you yourself have a few hundred thousand laying around, send it our way. We could use it wisely and well.
There is a moment in the show, just before the vaulting act, after a few "slower" acts--the animal bits, the wirewalking, the kind of acts that people really watch, and watch closely--where Jenny Romaine asks the audience if they are ready to see some of the something something (it changes every day, and I don't hear much of it anyway.) The point is, it ends with her asking the audience to scream their heads off like babies. And never fails--they do. It's easy to forget that they're out there sometimes. We are so focused on getting through the next costume change, the set change, the hurry-we-need-an-ice-pack-now.
So. Thank you for coming, for listening, for tossing money into the hat, for writing emails to unknown recipients about what our circus did to make your day better, for sitting your squirming, squealing children in the first row, for standing in the back and waving, for never failing to boo at the right moment. And for screaming your heads off like babies.
But I did it. It was a nice show. There were probably about 75 people in the audience--which is about 70 more than we thought might show up. Despite this being the circus's fifteenth season, and despite the fact that we perform for who knows how many people (1,000? 2,000? 5,000?) we still look around at each other before some of the shows and say "Do you think anyone will show up?"
I thought a lot about taking the show somewhere else, about touring. I wondered how the audiences might be different, how it could look more like theater to those other audiences, look more like a foreign spectacle. Because if you listen to our audiences, the way they scream and cheer, laugh and boo, all the right places--it really feels like the circus belongs to this city. If you took us out of that context, I'm not sure how it would come across.
I still think we should tour. Please, if you know someone with a few hundred thousand dollars laying around, or if you yourself have a few hundred thousand laying around, send it our way. We could use it wisely and well.
There is a moment in the show, just before the vaulting act, after a few "slower" acts--the animal bits, the wirewalking, the kind of acts that people really watch, and watch closely--where Jenny Romaine asks the audience if they are ready to see some of the something something (it changes every day, and I don't hear much of it anyway.) The point is, it ends with her asking the audience to scream their heads off like babies. And never fails--they do. It's easy to forget that they're out there sometimes. We are so focused on getting through the next costume change, the set change, the hurry-we-need-an-ice-pack-now.
So. Thank you for coming, for listening, for tossing money into the hat, for writing emails to unknown recipients about what our circus did to make your day better, for sitting your squirming, squealing children in the first row, for standing in the back and waving, for never failing to boo at the right moment. And for screaming your heads off like babies.
Thursday, July 10, 2008
A Lesson in Self-Talk
I recently learned a valuable lesson in how to talk to yourself. Rather, how not to talk to yourself. I turn 30 in September, which doesn't seem to alarm me as much as it alarms other people. (Why is it that at any mention of your age, people older than you--not everyone, but some of them--roll their eyes and attempt to make amends with the inevitable. "Thirty, already, wow, do you know how old that makes me?") Sorry, I got distracted. Age isn't the point of this post.
I was thinking about age because I like to think of myself as the kind of person who knowingly enters into whatever occasion, or phase of existence, or movie theater, or what have you. And I learned recently that, even now, even at thirty--which is old enough to know some things, and not old enough to know much--that I still don't do very well at talking to myself.
I'm good at freaking out. I'm the person you want to have around in a crisis--say, if you chop your fingers off, or the plane is maybe about to burst into flame, or the dog's ear medication dripped out onto your signed first edition of an early Didion novel. (True story, that last one.) Those "outer" crises I can handle. The smaller, internal things I have trouble with.
Take this, for example. I had two wisdom teeth extracted about three months ago. The dentist told me that it's not uncommon for tiny shards of tooth or bone, which are broken during the extraction process, to become embedded in the gums and, over time, work their way out naturally. "Sorry, I know it's painful," he said. It was indeed painful. A piece of bone about the size of a flea was enough to send the entire right side of my face into dull, painful tension, which worsened throughout the day. Don't get this, I kept telling everyone.
By the third day of pain, the night before the appointment to get this checked out, I had gone mad. I began considering that perhaps, since the tiny bit of bone was in such a strange place, nearly impossible to feel with your finger, and completely impossible to see in the mirror, I had convinced myself that the dentist would need to cut through the outside of my face to get to the jawbone inside. I really believed this was something I should worry about.
Then a friend called me this week and asked me to talk him down. He'd done something he regretted, and needed me to tell him it was okay. Or, perhaps more correctly, needed someone to tell him that what he'd done was indeed worth regretting. (It was.) Essentially he was dealing with a set of unknowns, and had inflated them to disastrous proportions. Here we are again, I kept thinking. Our inability to deal with the situation leads us to complicate and mountainize--is that a word?--something actually quite simple, particularly when the data is few, vague, or inexistent. We begin to doubt everything.
That's what I'm trying to get to here: how to talk to yourself in times of crisis. The thing is, I don't have any wisdom to impart. I don't know any techniques for curbing the insanity. I just had the opportunity to work myself up into a ridiculous lather only to learn that it was, well, ridiculous. I wrote a line once: "I don't know what I want, I only know what I don't want." I think it's true. I don't know how to fix it, I only know I don't want to do it again.
I was thinking about age because I like to think of myself as the kind of person who knowingly enters into whatever occasion, or phase of existence, or movie theater, or what have you. And I learned recently that, even now, even at thirty--which is old enough to know some things, and not old enough to know much--that I still don't do very well at talking to myself.
I'm good at freaking out. I'm the person you want to have around in a crisis--say, if you chop your fingers off, or the plane is maybe about to burst into flame, or the dog's ear medication dripped out onto your signed first edition of an early Didion novel. (True story, that last one.) Those "outer" crises I can handle. The smaller, internal things I have trouble with.
Take this, for example. I had two wisdom teeth extracted about three months ago. The dentist told me that it's not uncommon for tiny shards of tooth or bone, which are broken during the extraction process, to become embedded in the gums and, over time, work their way out naturally. "Sorry, I know it's painful," he said. It was indeed painful. A piece of bone about the size of a flea was enough to send the entire right side of my face into dull, painful tension, which worsened throughout the day. Don't get this, I kept telling everyone.
By the third day of pain, the night before the appointment to get this checked out, I had gone mad. I began considering that perhaps, since the tiny bit of bone was in such a strange place, nearly impossible to feel with your finger, and completely impossible to see in the mirror, I had convinced myself that the dentist would need to cut through the outside of my face to get to the jawbone inside. I really believed this was something I should worry about.
Then a friend called me this week and asked me to talk him down. He'd done something he regretted, and needed me to tell him it was okay. Or, perhaps more correctly, needed someone to tell him that what he'd done was indeed worth regretting. (It was.) Essentially he was dealing with a set of unknowns, and had inflated them to disastrous proportions. Here we are again, I kept thinking. Our inability to deal with the situation leads us to complicate and mountainize--is that a word?--something actually quite simple, particularly when the data is few, vague, or inexistent. We begin to doubt everything.
That's what I'm trying to get to here: how to talk to yourself in times of crisis. The thing is, I don't have any wisdom to impart. I don't know any techniques for curbing the insanity. I just had the opportunity to work myself up into a ridiculous lather only to learn that it was, well, ridiculous. I wrote a line once: "I don't know what I want, I only know what I don't want." I think it's true. I don't know how to fix it, I only know I don't want to do it again.
Tuesday, April 08, 2008
Extractions
Yesterday, I sat in the chair at the dentist office while he yanked two of my teeth out--numbers 1 and 32. I barely felt a thing, other than the initial shots to numb the area, and, of course, all the pulling and pushing that it took to get the teeth to release from my head.
It was far less traumatic than I had anticipated. I was sure that I would wake up in a coma--or, rather not wake up in a coma--or mangled, or left for dead, or something. I'm not really kidding, I do actually inflate things to this degree. I realize it's something I should work on.
Perhaps the most informative moment of the entire procedure was when the hygienist was hovering over me while the doctor stepped out to retrieve a "root tip extractor." I asked her: "How was that? Good? Bad?"
"That was just average," she said.
It was far less traumatic than I had anticipated. I was sure that I would wake up in a coma--or, rather not wake up in a coma--or mangled, or left for dead, or something. I'm not really kidding, I do actually inflate things to this degree. I realize it's something I should work on.
Perhaps the most informative moment of the entire procedure was when the hygienist was hovering over me while the doctor stepped out to retrieve a "root tip extractor." I asked her: "How was that? Good? Bad?"
"That was just average," she said.
Thursday, March 06, 2008
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
The Flu, Day 4
The flu sucks. You feel pitiful. You are tired, but can't sleep. You can't breathe. You stand up and have to lie back down. Horrible, horrible, don't get it.
The upside? I am eating whatever I want: ice cream, fried rice, rice pudding, Coca-Cola. And I am laying in bed with my laptop, watching movies: Alien vs. Predator, Michael Clayton, and Elizabeth: The Golden Age.
The upside? I am eating whatever I want: ice cream, fried rice, rice pudding, Coca-Cola. And I am laying in bed with my laptop, watching movies: Alien vs. Predator, Michael Clayton, and Elizabeth: The Golden Age.
Saturday, February 02, 2008
The Truth About Grade B
At the Greenmarket today, a woman asked me, as dozens of people do each day, if I had any Grade B maple syrup. She was planning to attempt the infamous Master Cleanse, in which you drink a cocktail made of water, lemon juice, maple syrup and cayenne for anywhere from three to ten (or even more) days. You eat nothing else. Most people combine this with "laxative tea," or some other such natural, or unnatural brew. The idea is to remove all the toxins from your body--whatever that means, if that is indeed possible.
At this point in the afternoon, I had only a single half-gallon of our Grade B syrup left. (It is quite popular these days, especially after having been recently featured in Style section of the New York Times.) A half-gallon wasn't enough. She wanted a whole gallon. "Sorry, this is the best I can do," I told her. She complained that she had intentions of starting the cleanse right away.
"You can use the other grades of syrup," I told her. "There really is no difference other than the taste." She made a face. "Grade B has more minerals," she said. "Actually," I tell her, "it doesn't. There is no nutritional difference, only taste and color." Then she had the nerve, the insane, foolish, ignorant nerve to proclaim that "Well, maybe in Western medicine it doesn't, but in ayurvedic medicine it does."
I'm fine with ignorance. People are constantly asking me, genuinely asking me, about the difference between the syrup grades. But ignorance plus stupidity really bothers me. At this point, I put the half gallon of syrup down, "Okay," I said. "This is what I have, and you're welcome to it." What else is there to do, or to say, when someone has made up their mind that you are wrong and whatever cockamamie stuff they read somewhere is ingrained in their brain to the point of no return?
So, for the record, I present:
The Truth About Grade B:
Maple syrup is graded by color and taste only, with the darker syrups having a more pronounced maple flavor than the lighter. One is not better than the other. Think of white wine versus red--both are suited to a person's particular tastes and uses, and neither is better or worse, just different. I like lighter syrups for breakfast things like french toast and waffles, and I prefer a darker syrup for salad dressings and baking. Some people like the opposite.
Take this, for example, from Squidoo, which is factually incorrect: "Grade B maple syrup goes through a special refinement process that keeps the vital nutrients in the syrup. Other grades of syrup don't have these vitamins and minerals." Similar false information is available all over the Internet. As any sugarmaker can tell you, the syrup-making process does not change from one grade to the next. In fact, there is absolutely no refining taking place when you make maple syrup. Step one: Tap the trees. Step two: Collect the sap. Step three: Boil the sap. Step four: Filter the syrup for solids. The only thing you're doing is taking water out of the tree sap via evaporation, and the filtering process is the same thing that happens when you use a coffee filter in the morning--it's not changing the composition of the liquid, but just removing any solid parts.
As a general rule, the darker syrups are made toward the end of the sugaring season, and the lighter syrups are made at the beginning. But maple syrup is an agricultural product, subject to the whims and wonders of nature. Thus, the general rules do not always hold. In 2007, for example, this "light to dark" rule was totally debunked, when the syrup ran back and forth from one grade to the other, finally ending in late April with Fancy grade, the lightest, which is normally made at the very beginning. (If we could double the amount of Grade B syrup we make each year and sell it at the Greenmarket for what you pay in the stores, don't you think we would?)
Lastly, I realize that I don't know anything about ayurvedic medicine--but I'm sure there are no sugar maples growing in India. And I'm sure that glucose, which is the major chemical compound in maple syrup, does what it does in western bodies the same way it does what it does in eastern ones.
So--master cleanse all you like. If you love it, great. If it makes you feel fabulous, great. But get the facts straight. A customer once told me, "I think it's really important to know exactly what's going into your body." I can't agree more.
At this point in the afternoon, I had only a single half-gallon of our Grade B syrup left. (It is quite popular these days, especially after having been recently featured in Style section of the New York Times.) A half-gallon wasn't enough. She wanted a whole gallon. "Sorry, this is the best I can do," I told her. She complained that she had intentions of starting the cleanse right away.
"You can use the other grades of syrup," I told her. "There really is no difference other than the taste." She made a face. "Grade B has more minerals," she said. "Actually," I tell her, "it doesn't. There is no nutritional difference, only taste and color." Then she had the nerve, the insane, foolish, ignorant nerve to proclaim that "Well, maybe in Western medicine it doesn't, but in ayurvedic medicine it does."
I'm fine with ignorance. People are constantly asking me, genuinely asking me, about the difference between the syrup grades. But ignorance plus stupidity really bothers me. At this point, I put the half gallon of syrup down, "Okay," I said. "This is what I have, and you're welcome to it." What else is there to do, or to say, when someone has made up their mind that you are wrong and whatever cockamamie stuff they read somewhere is ingrained in their brain to the point of no return?
So, for the record, I present:
The Truth About Grade B:
Maple syrup is graded by color and taste only, with the darker syrups having a more pronounced maple flavor than the lighter. One is not better than the other. Think of white wine versus red--both are suited to a person's particular tastes and uses, and neither is better or worse, just different. I like lighter syrups for breakfast things like french toast and waffles, and I prefer a darker syrup for salad dressings and baking. Some people like the opposite.
Take this, for example, from Squidoo, which is factually incorrect: "Grade B maple syrup goes through a special refinement process that keeps the vital nutrients in the syrup. Other grades of syrup don't have these vitamins and minerals." Similar false information is available all over the Internet. As any sugarmaker can tell you, the syrup-making process does not change from one grade to the next. In fact, there is absolutely no refining taking place when you make maple syrup. Step one: Tap the trees. Step two: Collect the sap. Step three: Boil the sap. Step four: Filter the syrup for solids. The only thing you're doing is taking water out of the tree sap via evaporation, and the filtering process is the same thing that happens when you use a coffee filter in the morning--it's not changing the composition of the liquid, but just removing any solid parts.
As a general rule, the darker syrups are made toward the end of the sugaring season, and the lighter syrups are made at the beginning. But maple syrup is an agricultural product, subject to the whims and wonders of nature. Thus, the general rules do not always hold. In 2007, for example, this "light to dark" rule was totally debunked, when the syrup ran back and forth from one grade to the other, finally ending in late April with Fancy grade, the lightest, which is normally made at the very beginning. (If we could double the amount of Grade B syrup we make each year and sell it at the Greenmarket for what you pay in the stores, don't you think we would?)
Lastly, I realize that I don't know anything about ayurvedic medicine--but I'm sure there are no sugar maples growing in India. And I'm sure that glucose, which is the major chemical compound in maple syrup, does what it does in western bodies the same way it does what it does in eastern ones.
So--master cleanse all you like. If you love it, great. If it makes you feel fabulous, great. But get the facts straight. A customer once told me, "I think it's really important to know exactly what's going into your body." I can't agree more.
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Ugh
Here's what happened today:
1) On my way to work, the V train got fucked up and went over the E line.
2) I went to visit a dear friend in the loony bin at St. Vincent's hospital. The forreal loony bin. He was not well, but is getting better.
3) On my way home there was a "temporary loss of power" on the entire Queens Blvd. corridor subway lines and I had to walk to the N train.
4) On my way to the N train, there was an ambulance parked on the corner. Into the back, they were loading a gurney on which laid a person completely covered by a sheet.
5) I went to the doctor, who told me I had shingles. Now I'm on three different pills.
**Update: The shingles are getting better. Thank god for pills. Still hurts like fucking hell, but, as the nurse told me, "The pain pills are working, though you may think they are not. That's how bad it hurts if you don't take them."
1) On my way to work, the V train got fucked up and went over the E line.
2) I went to visit a dear friend in the loony bin at St. Vincent's hospital. The forreal loony bin. He was not well, but is getting better.
3) On my way home there was a "temporary loss of power" on the entire Queens Blvd. corridor subway lines and I had to walk to the N train.
4) On my way to the N train, there was an ambulance parked on the corner. Into the back, they were loading a gurney on which laid a person completely covered by a sheet.
5) I went to the doctor, who told me I had shingles. Now I'm on three different pills.
**Update: The shingles are getting better. Thank god for pills. Still hurts like fucking hell, but, as the nurse told me, "The pain pills are working, though you may think they are not. That's how bad it hurts if you don't take them."
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Monday, February 12, 2007
Labels!
Thanks to the new Blogger, I have added labels to all the previous posts. It's the kind of thing that I'd like to do to my entire life: categorize, divide, make sense of the chaos. For example, if I happen to sit down at someone else's computer and start pouring through their iTunes, and it's not exactly the way it dammed should be, with blank spaces and inconsistent genres, I just about want to kill them. Or spend the next seven hours fixing everything. Track numbers and the correct album names, etc.
Posts can now carry a tag like "fabulousness," "greenmarket," "art-making," "movies," "joan," (as in Ms. Didion,) and a bunch of other stuff. Blogger tells me that I've labeled the majority of the posts with "writing," "NYC," and "fabulousness," which should give you some idea about what I do here most of the time. Strangely, "cats" and "sex" appear quite infrequently.
If you click on any of the tags you will be taken to a new page that shows only posts, and all posts, that relate to that tag. Got it?
Also -- the dentist this afternoon was fine. Success, if you want to call it that. So now this post also carries the labels, "medical adventures" and "ambiguous."
Posts can now carry a tag like "fabulousness," "greenmarket," "art-making," "movies," "joan," (as in Ms. Didion,) and a bunch of other stuff. Blogger tells me that I've labeled the majority of the posts with "writing," "NYC," and "fabulousness," which should give you some idea about what I do here most of the time. Strangely, "cats" and "sex" appear quite infrequently.
If you click on any of the tags you will be taken to a new page that shows only posts, and all posts, that relate to that tag. Got it?
Also -- the dentist this afternoon was fine. Success, if you want to call it that. So now this post also carries the labels, "medical adventures" and "ambiguous."
Friday, February 09, 2007
And One More Thing
Oh, I forgot to tell you this part of the dentist story.
When I asked him, "Is my tooth going to just fall out?" He said, "You can trust your roots." The roots of my teeth, he meant. But I thought it was good advice for most everyone.
Unless you know better.
When I asked him, "Is my tooth going to just fall out?" He said, "You can trust your roots." The roots of my teeth, he meant. But I thought it was good advice for most everyone.
Unless you know better.
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
Getting on Board
I visited the dentist today, the first time I have been since, well, let's just say it's been a while. As any of my ex-boyfriends, friends, parents, cohorts, and current boyfriend can tell you, my stubborn stalwartness is perhaps my most endearing charm. Right? Right? However, in this case, my decision to simply "go when it becomes a problem" has caused me more anxiety than need for an actual emergency dental intervention--and therefore I found myself staring for 21 minutes at x-rays of my teeth, and subsequently counting ceiling tiles this afternoon in midtown, while waiting on the doctor.
They look perfect, I thought. See, no worries. I'm speaking of my teeth here. How they appear exactly like a dental x-ray should look: black and white, cartoony. Needless to say, Dr. Dentist was able to see, upon closer inspection, some areas that needed his attention. (Strange how narrating your medical adventures can so easily, if given in to the slightest of temptations, become low-brow erotica.) So now I have to go back next week for the actual cleaning, and perhaps some resin composite. No big deal, right? Some pain, some boredom, heaps of anxiety and finally a clean bill of health.
The temptation to lie to the doctor is there--to say, oh I brush thoroughly three times a day, and floss more than only when I think about it, even though he's there staring down into your mouth. In some ways, it doesn't matter what you tell him--the evidence is clear. It's like people who clean before the maid comes. Or some twisted version of Stockholm Syndrome.
"We'll take care of it, knock that stuff out of there," says the doctor. "In no time we can get you on board." To have been as absent, as aloof and as hidden behind his glasses and face mask as he was, he was remarkably soothing. Or maybe this is what I projected onto him. (There's that Syndrome again. Maybe it's not coincidence that I was once Elizabeth Smart for Halloween.) As soon as it became clear that I wasn't going to ask any more strange questions, ("Should I eat normally?" I said. "Normally?" he asked back, as if I meant to smash my breakfast into a paste and spread it across my pores,) he shook my hand and proclaimed that it was "good to meet" me.
I'm not looking forward to the actual procedure--what crazy fuck does? But I'll go through with it--grumpy and obstinate and sure that they're wrong about everything. It's quite childish, really. But dammit, that's just the kind of guy I am.
PS - Special thanks to Kip for rushing to my side last Saturday when I was sure that I was moments away from dentures.
They look perfect, I thought. See, no worries. I'm speaking of my teeth here. How they appear exactly like a dental x-ray should look: black and white, cartoony. Needless to say, Dr. Dentist was able to see, upon closer inspection, some areas that needed his attention. (Strange how narrating your medical adventures can so easily, if given in to the slightest of temptations, become low-brow erotica.) So now I have to go back next week for the actual cleaning, and perhaps some resin composite. No big deal, right? Some pain, some boredom, heaps of anxiety and finally a clean bill of health.
The temptation to lie to the doctor is there--to say, oh I brush thoroughly three times a day, and floss more than only when I think about it, even though he's there staring down into your mouth. In some ways, it doesn't matter what you tell him--the evidence is clear. It's like people who clean before the maid comes. Or some twisted version of Stockholm Syndrome.
"We'll take care of it, knock that stuff out of there," says the doctor. "In no time we can get you on board." To have been as absent, as aloof and as hidden behind his glasses and face mask as he was, he was remarkably soothing. Or maybe this is what I projected onto him. (There's that Syndrome again. Maybe it's not coincidence that I was once Elizabeth Smart for Halloween.) As soon as it became clear that I wasn't going to ask any more strange questions, ("Should I eat normally?" I said. "Normally?" he asked back, as if I meant to smash my breakfast into a paste and spread it across my pores,) he shook my hand and proclaimed that it was "good to meet" me.
I'm not looking forward to the actual procedure--what crazy fuck does? But I'll go through with it--grumpy and obstinate and sure that they're wrong about everything. It's quite childish, really. But dammit, that's just the kind of guy I am.
PS - Special thanks to Kip for rushing to my side last Saturday when I was sure that I was moments away from dentures.
Wednesday, September 06, 2006
Sick Passenger
On the way home from Coney Island on Monday night, as the F Train curved around the tunnel between Church Avenue and Ft. Hamilton Parkway, I started to feel a little sick. No, not a little sick, but really sick. I had that feeling you get just before you throw up--that body awareness that says "You have about 30 seconds to get ready for what I'm about to do to you."
Then, moments later, as the train passed through the 7th Avenue station and out onto the above-ground station at 4th Avenue, I found myself being held up by Kip and Amy, slowly taking my own weight again, the train stopped, a policeman standing there, everyone staring.
I had passed out. Or fainted. Or something like that. Later, on the couch at Kip's house, with my toe raised and iced--I had slammed my fourth toe on my right foot into part of the ring curb during the 5pm Circus Amok show, while wearing this ridiculous goat mask which obscures basically all your vision, and we wondered if it might be broken--I realized that since breakfast, I'd hardly eaten anything.
Stranger, however, was that I have no memory of losing consciousness at all. In fact, in my mind, I was alert during the whole thing. I remember feeling nauseous, I remember telling Amy that I felt really sick, and then I remember thinking "Wow, this train is really shakey." What was really shakey, of course, was the three of them--Kip, Amy and a stranger--lifting me out of the seat and carrying me onto the platform. Even though there was a disconnect, my brain was still quite alert.
This makes me wonder about what happens when you die. No wonder people see a tunnel of white light, or hear voices around them. Thank goodness I was with friends, and thank goodness some stranger lept to the rescue.
I felt fine later that evening, and still today I'm okay. I'm sure it was the combination of the not eating and the strenuous task of doing two shows in the hot Coney Island sun. It's odd--when have you known me to skip a meal?
Then, moments later, as the train passed through the 7th Avenue station and out onto the above-ground station at 4th Avenue, I found myself being held up by Kip and Amy, slowly taking my own weight again, the train stopped, a policeman standing there, everyone staring.
I had passed out. Or fainted. Or something like that. Later, on the couch at Kip's house, with my toe raised and iced--I had slammed my fourth toe on my right foot into part of the ring curb during the 5pm Circus Amok show, while wearing this ridiculous goat mask which obscures basically all your vision, and we wondered if it might be broken--I realized that since breakfast, I'd hardly eaten anything.
Stranger, however, was that I have no memory of losing consciousness at all. In fact, in my mind, I was alert during the whole thing. I remember feeling nauseous, I remember telling Amy that I felt really sick, and then I remember thinking "Wow, this train is really shakey." What was really shakey, of course, was the three of them--Kip, Amy and a stranger--lifting me out of the seat and carrying me onto the platform. Even though there was a disconnect, my brain was still quite alert.
This makes me wonder about what happens when you die. No wonder people see a tunnel of white light, or hear voices around them. Thank goodness I was with friends, and thank goodness some stranger lept to the rescue.
I felt fine later that evening, and still today I'm okay. I'm sure it was the combination of the not eating and the strenuous task of doing two shows in the hot Coney Island sun. It's odd--when have you known me to skip a meal?
Thursday, August 03, 2006
Hot Hot Heat
This always happens in New York in August--the heat arrives, as if no one had expected it, as if we had forgotten what it was like this time of year. Con Edison fucks up some neighborhood--in this year's case, the north part of Astoria, where some customers were without electricity for eight days--and then makes apologies in the news and in the papers.
I splurged yesterday in taking a car service to Jennifer's house--not so bad, only $18 with New Enrico's, my car service of choice for the last 8 years--because I had to transport 5 pogo sticks to her loft, but also because, as I later saw on the light-up sign at the bank that flashes the time and temperature that it was 1:42pm, and 106 degrees. Nuff said.
I'm also battling a sinus something-or-other. Congestion, mostly. I'm not sure if it's allergies, actual sickness, or just my body revolting against the constant hot/cold of going from air conditioner to outside and back again over and over.
Tomorrow, Sam Champion says, we'll be in a better "pocket of air." It sounds so much like space travel.
PS - Don't rush out to see Miami Vice. It sucks.
I splurged yesterday in taking a car service to Jennifer's house--not so bad, only $18 with New Enrico's, my car service of choice for the last 8 years--because I had to transport 5 pogo sticks to her loft, but also because, as I later saw on the light-up sign at the bank that flashes the time and temperature that it was 1:42pm, and 106 degrees. Nuff said.
I'm also battling a sinus something-or-other. Congestion, mostly. I'm not sure if it's allergies, actual sickness, or just my body revolting against the constant hot/cold of going from air conditioner to outside and back again over and over.
Tomorrow, Sam Champion says, we'll be in a better "pocket of air." It sounds so much like space travel.
PS - Don't rush out to see Miami Vice. It sucks.
Sunday, February 12, 2006
The Flu
I returned from Florida on Tuesday with what I thought was a throat infection, which was confirmed by my doctor, but as the illness dragged on day after day I began to suspect that what I really had/have was The Flu. All I did for three days was sleep and feel like shit, and walk from room to room wondering what I might be able to do to pass the time. TV was too erratic, books took too much concentration, and even my Netflix was impossible -- two hours sitting in one place not asleep was not happening.
I am just today coming out of it, though still a lot of the residue is hanging on. The universe has also handed New York more than a foot of snow, which is still falling as I write this.
I suppose this week's lesson is about patience.
I am just today coming out of it, though still a lot of the residue is hanging on. The universe has also handed New York more than a foot of snow, which is still falling as I write this.
I suppose this week's lesson is about patience.
Wednesday, November 16, 2005
Reflexology
Mario surprised me yesterday with a trip to the reflexologist. It was a lovely experience on several levels, both from a purely physical perspective, but also in the kind of mind-numbing brainlessness that I could use some of lately.
For an hour (or however long you choose) you lay back in this comfy chair while one of the talented practitioners at Angel Feet pokes and massages and pulls on your feet, ankles and hands in the most wonderful way imaginable. They were playing music (strings, in our case,) and there was a noise machine which sounded like an ocean and the occasional babble of what might have been actual water, though I could not swear to it. I was mostly concerned with trying to relax.
An interesting thing happens when you really let your mind loose. You begin to hear some things, and not others--for a time I would focus on the waves and not even be conscious of the music, and other moments the opposite. All the things which are stressing me out were still in my head, only I seemed to have placed them in a kind of mental fish hatchery, an organized system with separations, and borders which allowed each one to seem manageable, decipherable, conquerable.
The woman who worked on my feet was gentle yet firm--sometimes vaguely painful in a good way--and at the end of the session she sat next to me for a few moments to discuss all the things that are wrong with my body. "Your left leg is much more open than your right," she said. I know this. Some people show stress in their neck and shoulders, some clench their jaws or grind their teeth. All mine tends to go into my right hamstring and calf. Call me original.
She held my foot up again, "And this part has a lot of stress, you are holding it here as well." I watched her finger trace the outside of my foot, from the base of the heel up to the center of the arch. "What part is that?" I asked. She sat straight up, and indicated the muscle which sits on top part of your butt, and then just above, her lower back on the right side.
This area has indeed been causing me a lot of hassle lately. (I attribute most of the pain to me carrying around Elizabeth Kostova's 650 page novel The Historian in my bag, which rests just there on my hip as I walk. Though, if I'm going to feel discomfort, to Elizabeth's credit, I can't think of a better cause. Perhaps hurting your forearm from lifting too many toast points spread with foie gras, but that's another story entirely.)
I sat in the chair a few minutes longer in silence, my feet wrapped in a warm towel, a chenille blanket thrown over me, in the dim light listening to the ocean, until Mario peeked his face around from his side of the screen. "Are you okay," he asked. I was.
For an hour (or however long you choose) you lay back in this comfy chair while one of the talented practitioners at Angel Feet pokes and massages and pulls on your feet, ankles and hands in the most wonderful way imaginable. They were playing music (strings, in our case,) and there was a noise machine which sounded like an ocean and the occasional babble of what might have been actual water, though I could not swear to it. I was mostly concerned with trying to relax.
An interesting thing happens when you really let your mind loose. You begin to hear some things, and not others--for a time I would focus on the waves and not even be conscious of the music, and other moments the opposite. All the things which are stressing me out were still in my head, only I seemed to have placed them in a kind of mental fish hatchery, an organized system with separations, and borders which allowed each one to seem manageable, decipherable, conquerable.
The woman who worked on my feet was gentle yet firm--sometimes vaguely painful in a good way--and at the end of the session she sat next to me for a few moments to discuss all the things that are wrong with my body. "Your left leg is much more open than your right," she said. I know this. Some people show stress in their neck and shoulders, some clench their jaws or grind their teeth. All mine tends to go into my right hamstring and calf. Call me original.
She held my foot up again, "And this part has a lot of stress, you are holding it here as well." I watched her finger trace the outside of my foot, from the base of the heel up to the center of the arch. "What part is that?" I asked. She sat straight up, and indicated the muscle which sits on top part of your butt, and then just above, her lower back on the right side.
This area has indeed been causing me a lot of hassle lately. (I attribute most of the pain to me carrying around Elizabeth Kostova's 650 page novel The Historian in my bag, which rests just there on my hip as I walk. Though, if I'm going to feel discomfort, to Elizabeth's credit, I can't think of a better cause. Perhaps hurting your forearm from lifting too many toast points spread with foie gras, but that's another story entirely.)
I sat in the chair a few minutes longer in silence, my feet wrapped in a warm towel, a chenille blanket thrown over me, in the dim light listening to the ocean, until Mario peeked his face around from his side of the screen. "Are you okay," he asked. I was.
Monday, November 14, 2005
Attack of the Bacteria, and the Subsequent Defending of the Body by Medicine
I woke up last Thursday with the eerie kind of "I feel like crap," feeling which I immediately recognized as something more than my usual morning stupor. I knew that I had to go to the doctor. I knew that there was something actually wrong with me, and that something needed medication. Bodies have a way of telling you what you need if you listen closely. Meg used to say that when you went grocery shopping you could hold whatever vegetable in front of your solar plexus, and if your body naturally leaned toward the food, then you were deficient in whatever vitamins or minerals that food would provide. This is, perhaps, my hokey, sounds-like-voodoo interpretation of what the actual technique involved, but I think I got the basic idea. I needed antibiotics for my throat. And I knew it.
I went up the road to the Rapid Medical Center, a vaguely-decorated office on Broadway in Astoria (where I have been twice before in the eight years that I've lived in this neighborhood) and filled out the paperwork -- after learning that they did not take my insurance -- while occasionally staring into the fish tank, which was empty of fish.
I was called back into room number 1 (though I did not see any other rooms along that hallway) where a nurse took my temperature, my blood pressure, and asked general health questions like "Are you allergic to any medications" and "Do you have any diarrhea?" Moments later, the doctor arrived.
He is a large Chinese man, with thick glasses and an equally thick accent. He proceeded to again ask me the same series of questions that the nurse asked, putting check marks beside what she had written, as if to clarify that my answers had not changed in the last two minutes. Then after listening to my breathing through the stethoscope and looking into my ears, nose and throat, he began sketching something on the paper. He turned the clipboard around to show me a rough drawing of a man, basically just a torso with a head, and then he circled the entire chest with a red pen. "See this," he said. And then he drew an arrow pointing to the throat. "This is what is wrong with you," he said.
My first thought was, of course, "Well, yes, I could have told you that." But I sat patiently while he scrawled the customary impossible-to-read prescription for antibiotics and a cough syrup with antihistimine. The entire experience only reconfirmed my instinct that -- in some cases -- we should be able to prescribe medication for ourselves. Or, for each other, as needed.
While layed-up I watched Kinsey, Born Into Brothels, the last few episodes of season four of Six Feet Under, and several hours of television. I also managed to see Shopgirl in the actual movie theater.
I went up the road to the Rapid Medical Center, a vaguely-decorated office on Broadway in Astoria (where I have been twice before in the eight years that I've lived in this neighborhood) and filled out the paperwork -- after learning that they did not take my insurance -- while occasionally staring into the fish tank, which was empty of fish.
I was called back into room number 1 (though I did not see any other rooms along that hallway) where a nurse took my temperature, my blood pressure, and asked general health questions like "Are you allergic to any medications" and "Do you have any diarrhea?" Moments later, the doctor arrived.
He is a large Chinese man, with thick glasses and an equally thick accent. He proceeded to again ask me the same series of questions that the nurse asked, putting check marks beside what she had written, as if to clarify that my answers had not changed in the last two minutes. Then after listening to my breathing through the stethoscope and looking into my ears, nose and throat, he began sketching something on the paper. He turned the clipboard around to show me a rough drawing of a man, basically just a torso with a head, and then he circled the entire chest with a red pen. "See this," he said. And then he drew an arrow pointing to the throat. "This is what is wrong with you," he said.
My first thought was, of course, "Well, yes, I could have told you that." But I sat patiently while he scrawled the customary impossible-to-read prescription for antibiotics and a cough syrup with antihistimine. The entire experience only reconfirmed my instinct that -- in some cases -- we should be able to prescribe medication for ourselves. Or, for each other, as needed.
While layed-up I watched Kinsey, Born Into Brothels, the last few episodes of season four of Six Feet Under, and several hours of television. I also managed to see Shopgirl in the actual movie theater.
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