Dick Clark

It's important to sum up the year on December the 31st. Kind of close the door on it, if you will. Last year I wanted to slam the fucker. This year, not so much, more of a fond farewell. All in all it was a year of settling in after adjusting to major changes, taking on new challenges, and forging ahead all around. It was also a year with many new people in my life for the first time in a while. I mean, I was often meeting people before, but usually colleagues and spouses of colleagues of my ex-husband. Not really people you'd become close friends with but more like social-gathering-type acquaintances. This year it's been friends from martial arts, both new and old-but-now-closer, one or two from school, and even some new mom-friends now that the littler dude is competing in gymnastics as well.

Looking back on the year always makes me feel humble in the face of life's blessings. I don't know that gratitude has the proper range of feeling to describe how lucky I feel to be as free as I am. One main thing that I carry with me always is appreciation for the people, opportunities, and abilities in life. And I recognize that opportunities often come disguised as clusterfucks, and that sometimes you have to wade through a fairly wide river of shit to reach the side with the soap and towels. With any luck at all, the boys will see that it's almost always worth it to step in.

Zebra

In all the finals frenzy, I forgot to mention something that happened to me! I went to jiu jitsu class on Monday night, not a night I usually go but I needed to roll and get some intellectual stress out, plus it's fun and I was sick of sitting around. So we got lined up for class as usual to bow in, and my instructor called me up to him to give me a stripe on my belt! Totally unexpected, and he said some nice things about my training. Then of course I got thrown by him, and the other highest ranking guy. Tradition, I guess. For those of you who don't know, which would be everyone except for one person I can think of (hi!) getting a stripe is like a small portion of the achievement you need to advance to the next belt. And in BJJ belts take a long, long time to get--no quick moving through the ranks. Some say ten years to black belt. So my little piddly stripe felt like a pretty good deal all around. I will say I've been working my ass off with training, and it was very nice to have it recognized.

I'm going to have to change the name of my blog to "The Bragging Up Here". It seems like that's my main subject lately--tooting my own horn. Oh well.

Dream A Dream

Another installment of How Weird Are My Dreams?, even though I still recognize that hearing about other people's dreams is boring and pointless. But this one is just too wild not to share. Actually I'll just write about a small piece of the dream, because my dreams are mostly epic and very involved.

So I was about to start swimming the first leg of a triathlon, but it was indoor in a raised wooden pool. Where there were a bunch of little boys doing gymnastics, until the coach kicked them out for us to swim. Hopped up into the pool, which was not exactly water but more like billowy textiles, and started the swimming. The coach stood up on the edge of the pool and started showing us how to move our arms. "Do Vermeer arms!" she said, demonstrating. So I did Vermeer arms, which made me swim backwards but that seemed ok at the time.

I'm just never sure what to think when I wake up from something like that. Vermeer arms? What the hell would a 17th century Dutch painter have to do with my triathlon swimming in a wooden textiles-not-water pool? And why do the Vermeer arms make you go backwards? There's nothing I can do here but accept that my mind is filled with nooks and crannies that are more like reservoirs of insanity than innocent pockets of random. I do not feel like dream theory applies to me.

End Of Semester, Sylvester

WOOT! Semester is over and by all measures I rocked the house. My last exam was the A&P, which we had a week to do but of course I left it till the last minute. I mean, the limit to complete it was one hour but we had a whole week in which to execute that hour. At any rate, I got a 99.23 out of 100. I feel like that is all right. And in cultural diversity I got 98 out of 100 on the final, which means I got one wrong, which means I should have taken 13 minutes to do the exam instead of 12. Growth and development, 96/100. Biochem I don't know but the final grade is posted and I am pleased. I would say I phoned it in a little at times this semester but I'm trying to excuse myself for that because I am busier than Hillary Clinton.

So today I put in a little Christmas shopping, straightened up a bit, and mostly just chilled the fuck out. The boys and I have decided that we need a Christmas eve tradition, so we're going to a movie in a little bit, then making hot chocolate and going for a drive down Candy Cane Lane, a.k.a. the tackiest street on earth. There are some crazily Christmas-obsessed light hangers down on 92nd Street, and the whole city kind of looks upon it as a giant fossil fuel wasting nativity scene, whiskey tango style. There's one house with the biggest ass Santa in the history of all tackiness, and it's not inflatable so where do they store it in the off season? That's what I want to know. Where do you put that fat red fucker? He's only good for a month or so.

I will post soon the Airing of Grievances. Happy Festivus to all!

Buffer This

Four big fat exams down, one to go. Of course I have left it to the last minute--it's an online exam, which seems like it should be a walk in the park, right? It's not, so I'm studying for it right now. That's right, I am studying for an open book exam. I've found that even of you open the book, if you do not understand what is going on you're fucked and no amount of the Google will help you. Anyway, biochem was this morning--mixed feelings, it seemed ok, but one never knows if one just blew goats on the exam or not; and with the grand finale of A&P tonight I will be done.

I think I'm going to throw myself a party. A party with the theme of celebrating me. Actually it would be best if I'm the only one invited, that usually works out well. I could surprise myself.

Scholarly Update

I haven't been nearly as prolific with school related posts as I was last semester. Thanks be, you say. Suck it, I say back. But now in the midst of a fairly grueling final exam period, it's time for minute-by-minute accounts of the minutiae of my school days.

So far, I've had a lab final (A&P), and a cultural diversity final, plus a few major papers/projects. It's 16 credits for me this semester, so all kinds of shit piles up at the end. The lab final, well, I rocked it, and I'm interested to know who is the one person that scored higher than I did. Not so I could triangle choke him or her, just so I would know who he or she is. Really. Like a friendly rivalry kind of thing. Friendly.

Cultural diversity (in health care, of course) final was yesterday. It started at 7.30, fifty questions. I got out to my car at 7.42. It was not too hard. I will cry bitter tears if I got any wrong. Bitter, culturally diverse tears of tolerance and cultural knowledge according to the Campinha-Bacote model. One cool thing, though, was learning about voodoo. And hoodoo, there's a difference. And I know it, so when I get a voodoo/hoodoo patient I will know if they have a gris-gris under their pillow or if they are conjuring shit up. And I wouldn't be all, "Hey, stop that conjuring shit!" No, I'd be all, "Can you tell me more about your health and wellness beliefs? And can I get you some linguistically appropriate care? " One thing I definitely wouldn't do is freak out and throw the gris-gris out the window, except it would just hit the window and fall down anticlimactically, because I would be exhibiting cultural skillz and respecting the gris-gris even if it looked like sticks and pubes tied together with a chicken foot. So it's good that I had that class, I feel more prepared in life.

I have a final Monday, human growth and development which is a weird hybrid of physical development and psychosocial issues over the lifespan. It's actually been a useful class, even though I thought it would suck and be dumb. I will be glad to be done with it, though, because of two people in it that I just do not like. And I was being culturally aware when I said do not like, because it's more like loathe or even wish to annihilate, but just in my head not in practice, and I would still help them if something unfortunate happened like them falling down the stairs at the same time and making a coconut noise as their heads knocked together. I feel confident in saying that the entire class feels the same way. They are the annoying life-story and too-much-personal-info sharers, to the point that even the teacher has to physically anchor her eyeballs when they (girls not eyeballs) talk so they (eyeballs not girls) do not roll sarcastically up into her head. It's not ok to share information about your colon and your families' colons in a class of two hundred people. It's just not. Even I know that.

Then comes the big fat biochem final, which I really need to do well on because I want an A in this class. I will need to study, though, starting now, which is hard for me to do. It is at these times that I remember my college roommates, two in particular. One studied so promptly and efficiently that you could actually hear the syllabus sing, no wait, that was her, rocking it out to the Indigo Girls while she did higher math. And the other one just worked so hard, so consistently, and so patiently that it has actually been an example for many things in my life. I think it was the first time that I actually really saw and understood that small steady incremental pieces of constant hard work add up to success. It was inspiring, to say the least, though not at the time because I sucked at that age.

Then the A&P final, which I should do well on because I've consistently been a curve destroyer up to this point, except for in class attendance which I admit is not my strong point. I was only saved from total skippage by the fun quiz show remote control clicker things that the prof had us use to answer questions in lecture. That was cool.

In the next few days, my goals are:

Study consistently and not at the last minute
Do not yell at my kids
Do not say things to my older son like, "Grow some balls." Oh wait, that already happened. Shit.
Try to eat some fruits and veggies to be smarter
Achieve high achievements
Throw a really good graduation party for my sister

I think that's all for now.

Puddy Tat

I just realized that I never updated on the tattoo situation. I would hate to leave my reader or two hanging. My guy designed this incredible tattoo, and would place it starting on the right anterior superior iliac spine, over the stupid daisy, and it would wind up the right side to my ribs. The design is really cool. I'm holding off on it, though, because I want to make sure that it's not just an impulse tat, having done that once before and having the asinine daisy as a result. But I did get a different one, less dramatic. I got the Greek lettering for the root word of pankration, which is pan kratos. It means all powers or all strengths, and it runs vertically to the right of my spine from about bra strap level down to top of pants level. It's kind of funkified writing, and one extra benefit is that I have the letter pi on my back. Can't go wrong with the greatest irrational number of all time.

It hurt like a mother fucker. I passed some of the time imagining the waxing scene from the 40 yr old virgin. It inspired my cussing, which was colorful and very creative. I was pretty pleased with it all around.

Out Of The Mouths Of Babes

Over the years I've become a part of a large circle of friends and family. Dinner at someone's house usually means thirty to forty people, and yes, I've cooked for that number many, many times. Anyway, there's always a gaggle of kids around, playing and screaming, and my kids really enjoy these gatherings. Most of the kids are great but of course there are always one or two little assholes.

One family we know has three kids, a 12 year old boy, an 8 year old boy, and quite possibly the cutest little 4 year old girl in the world. This girl is one of those teeny tiny petite things (the opposite of my amazon children) with long light brown ringlets and big brown eyes. She's always dressed adorably, and has the eyelash thing down to a science.

Recently we were at someone's house with the masses, and my younger son came running up out of the basement to get me. "Nora's screaming at everybody and she won't stop! It's really bad!" he said. I got up and went down in no rush, feeling like there was only so much damage a teeny angel like that could do with her little voice. I reached the area where the kids were playing, and found her in the middle of a group of maybe 8 other kids, bright red with the intensity of feeling only a four year old can generate, screaming at the top of her very effective lungs,

"YOU MOTHERFUCKERS ARE NEVER EVER COMING TO MY HOUSE AGAIN!"

I diffused the situation with the finesse of a crack bomb squad, backed away, and went upstairs to the rest of the adults. The shock of it took a while to wear off. Later that night on the way home the kids told me that this little girl has the dirtiest mouth this side of the tracks, and her middle brother, too. I gave my standard speech about certain words not being appropriate for kids to use because they can upset people and it takes the experience of an adult to know when to drop the f-bomb, and they seemed fine with it.

And then the next day, my littler one woke up, sweaty and disheveled, got up, and announced that his goddamn ballsack was stuck to his leg again. Nice.

Enter The Dragon

When we were in Lithuania I noticed a country-wide enthusiasm for random knight performances, which was so great. For instance, in the sports stadium, they would actually interrupt the matches going on so that this group of four totally metal-clad individuals could come out into the ring and sword fight. And the fights had some sort of context, but only those individuals seemed to know what it was all about. Very, very weird. The weirdness was enhanced later on in the first day when we saw the crusaders in the lunch buffet, still fully metal-clad and animatedly talking about and working on further knight performances. It became alarming when I noticed that the most enthusiastic one was actually wearing Assless Chain Mail. Like assless chaps, but medieval style. 


Of course I nearly shot my dill-enhanced soup out of my nose when I noticed that and called it to the attention of my teammates. It was hard not to crack up every time ACM walked by to the buffet, which was often. The guy liked soup.


Then later on in the week we went to the capital, Vilnius. Right there in the town square in the middle of the day, random medieval knight fighting, again with an ACM wearer. We saw the knights throughout the city all that day as they wandered around, still completely metal-clad, browsing in shops and such. Then they'd reconvene in the square or on a corner for further random sword fighting. The crowds seemed to accept this as a  completely normal, everyday occurrence. Which says to me that Lithuanians are comfortable with assless chain mail.

Gumby

I don't talk about it often, if at all, but with winter approaching and time just taking its toll, I thought it might be useful to chronicle a bit of what life is like with a painful condition. I have Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, type III, which is a disease of collagen, the helpful stretchy support molecule in many of our body's tissues. My collagen is all kinds of fucked up, which means that my skin is pretty crappy at healing, my joints are incredibly flexible (like freak-of-nature flexible), and I'm often tired and have crampy gut problems. Doesn't sound too bad, right? That's kind of how I present it when it comes up (not often, but people do ask, especially when I'm wearing my silver ring splints). The reality of it, though, is that it affects almost every move I make, all day, every day. Here's a helpful quick video that explains it well. Read if you want, the video is just down a bit. She has some good info on living with EDS as well.

The downside to being able to do the splits at age 34 and kick people's heads with hardly any effort is that every single joint in my body is prone to dislocation, often with very little force. Some of the more fun ways I've dislocated things:

Picking up laundry from floor: shoulder
Kid jumping into my lap: rib, from sternum
Pushing seat belt buckle: finger
Fun shove from friend: shoulder
Picking up shampoo bottle: elbow (goddammit this one happens all the time)
Sleeping: shoulders, ankles, collarbone (that one sucks)
Standing there idly: hip
Kid holding my hand, not yanking: shoulder, wrist, fingers
Existing: thumbs
Walking around: toes

I could go on. One thing I don't always make clear to people, partly because this is just how I've always been and so I don't make too much note of it, is how many times a day this happens to me. I think if I tallied it and averaged it out, it would probably fall at around 10-20 dislocations per day. Most of the time they just resolve themselves. If you've ever dislocated something you'll know that it hurts like a motherfucker. So yes, something painful happens to me quite often, every day. No, I don't usually mention it. Yes, it usually goes away, the initial sharp pain, and yes, I am often sore afterwards for quite a while. As an extra bonus, this condition comes with general musculoskeletal pain, unrelated to dislocations. So even a good day, joint-wise, can be a very achy one.

Like I said, I've always been like this, but the last 5 years or so have been increasingly painful. It's getting harder for me to get out of bed, harder to deal with some everyday activities (driving comes to mind, it is not going well in the hand/wrist pain department), and harder to cope with days that are rainy, cold, and otherwise barometrically shitty. I'm very achy much of the time, and I find myself getting irritable on particularly bad days, as the pain wears me down. Sitting is hard on me, but standing can be worse, so keeping in motion is one way I cope, that is, until I need a nap. I always thought I was kind of lazy or something, because fatigue is part of this condition, but my physical therapist pointed out to me that since my muscles are constantly vigilant, doing the work that most people's natural joint limitations do on their own, it makes sense that I'm a little more tired than most people. That was helpful to know. I don't feel so bad about having to rest a little now and then.

Now, you may wonder how I make all of this work with sports, especially the sports I do, which involve intentional bodily harm (those are the really fun ones). The answer, like with many things in my life, is that I Just Do. I make it work because I want to, and I am among the more determined people to walk the earth. I am firmly convinced that my activity level has a lot to do with the fact that I am not using a cane or in a wheel chair like many people my age with this condition. I'm probably ten trillion times more vigilant than anyone else has to be in karate, like for instance most people throwing a punch don't have to consciously stop it before their shoulder comes out of its socket, and it's the times when I'm not paying such close attention that something goes wrong. In jiu jitsu, which uses joint locks, I tap out almost instantly if someone has a lock on me, before they can pull it, because it will dislocate. I actually think my level of coordination has been enhanced by the need to know exactly where all body parts are, at all times. I cannot afford even a small misstep, my toes will go out for pete's sake. And I won't be able to do these things forever--I see a lot of swimming in my future. So for now, it's balls to the wall while I can.

There's a lot more to this condition than I've written here, but I don't really feel like making a long list of what mostly sounds like complaints. Suffice it to say that there's not much in my life that remains unaffected by it. And I know that it will continue to progress. So we will see where I end up, and in the meantime I will pack in all the physical activities of a lifetime, and continue to work on kicking people's heads. I drink from the glass that is half full.