Theme Parties Rule!

Tomorrow, we are having our first annual FUCK FEBRUARY party. Everyone attending is bringing something yummy to eat and/or drink, no one is planning anything except to have a good time, and the whole theme of the party is... well, obvious by now.

As for Bear and myself, the death and/or sickness of close family members has highlighted this, the most fucked-up of months. My new tenants, who are invited, just had their car totalled while it was sitting, innocently parked, in front of the house. Our other friends have had similarly sad, irritating, or downright horrific experiences in this, the shittiest month of the year.

I have always said that February is the Tuesday of the year. Monday is cool because it has a great reason for sucking, being that it's the beginning of the work week.

Wednesday is cool because it's "hump day", and who doesn't like anything that has "hump" in it.

But Tuesday? It just sucks. It's pointless. Just like February. A black hole of despair that you hope will get better, but never does.

So, wherever you are tomorrow, dear blogiverse friends, raise a glass with me and scream

"FUCK FEBRUARY!!!!"

To Be, or Not To Be - That is the Question

To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune;
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing, end them: to die, to sleep
No more; and by a sleep, to say we end
The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to; 'Tis a consumation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die to sleep,
To sleep, perchance to dream; Aye, there's the rub,
For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil
Must give us pause. There's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life:
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of dispriz'd love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would these fardles bear
To grunt and sweat under a weary life --
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country, from whose bourn
No traveler returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have,
Than fly to others that we know not of.
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pitch and moment,
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action..

Under, over, around, through

As each person's life and personality are completely different, so, I believe, is each person's way of dealing with grief.

Since my father's death on Valentine's Day, I have been surprised by myself. I don't know if I expected furious upheaval, tearing of hair, or complete numbness, but I certainly did not expect this anticlimactic seeming-peace.

I am able to talk about my father to friends, family, and even complete strangers with no difficulty whatsoever. My eyes may get teary, or they may not. I have not had panic attacks. I have not even slept badly. I have not pounded my chest and screamed "WHY?" even once.

It's almost as if a light went on when he died. I said, "Oh, now I understand. It's like this." And what "this" means, as far as I can tell, is that I am part of the earth, and by way of the earth, the universe. My father is part of the earth, and so the universe. What form he takes is not actually important, nor is it in any way up to me. I was not consulted.

The one thing (aside from the complete support and love of my husband, family, and friends - of course) that I actually craved after my father's passing may seem very strange to anyone who is not me.

I craved Hamlet.

Not just any Hamlet, either. In specific came my craving, and that only for the Hamlet of Kenneth Branagh, which I by happy circumstance had most recently obtained in DVD format.



By some aligning of the stars, this particular movie-play, in all its fullness and completeness, was the salve to my brains, the comfort to my soul. In Hamlet's grief my grief played out, and his resounding soliloquies were harmony to the chords of mine own heart.



In his yearning to understand his father's death, and beyond that, the fate of mankind, I found a kindred feeling towards all who have ever lost one dear to them, and towards masters of the arts like Kenneth Branagh, who have made it their life's work to bring those stories and life lessons to us in the most rich and wonderful way possible.

As if the story, in all its entirety in the words of Shakespeare himself, is not enough to recommend this movie (and in my opinion, it is), there is the supporting cast, which includes Charlton Heston, Kate Winslet, Robin Williams, Rufus Sewell, Julie Christie, Billy Crystal, Dame Judi Dench, Sir Derek Jacobi, Jack Lemmon, Brian Blessed, Gerard Depardieu, and the list goes on...

1944-2008

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

***

My dad

At noon today I got a call saying that my dad was in the hospital, in serious condition. After calling Bear and anyone else I could think of, I left the office and headed out. Basically, the chemo he was taking to kill the multiple myeloma also killed off his white blood cells, and when he got a tooth infection, his body just didn't have anything to fight it off with.

And so he is laying there, on a ventilator, with tubes and wires and beeping machines everywhere. My sister and her husband hopped the first flight up from the south, where they now live, and actually made it to the hospital in time for the evening visiting hour.

It's one of the oddest things for me to deal with - the fact that some woman who is not my mother has say over what happens to my dad, even though my sister and I are blood related to him. I know my dad would not want to be kept alive on these machines, with people sitting around staring at him. But I feel so shut out of the loop. I'm not even the second in the chain of command - my dad's brother is. I am just trying to focus on how glad I am that my sister was able to get here in time to see him, and for him to see her, before the end.

I feel as if I have been awake for years. I will go to bed tonight knowing my cell phone will most likely wake me up with the news that Dad has moved on to the next world. Part of me wishes that call would never come, part of me wishes it already had.

The person I think I feel worst for is my mother. She spent more than 25 years of her life with my dad, and still loves him to this day, even though they divorced when I was 24. And she can't be at his bedside as he leaves, because he married someone else. It just doesn't seem right. It never really has seemed right.

When the hospital staff kicked us out of his room this afternoon to change his bed and do hospital stuff, we went down to the cafeteria to grab a snack. I had a bottle of Snapple tea, and when I opened it, I noticed words printed on the inside of the lid. They said "Mosquitoes are attracted to people who have just eaten bananas."

I sat there and realized that for the rest of my life, when I think of this day, I will remember that stupid sentence from the lid of a Snapple bottle.

Life is just ridiculous sometimes.

For those who LOVE to conquer new worlds...

Here is a February treasure hunt for those of you who are brave, fearless, have questing hearts, and can use Google Maps. There is a sports field in the center of an oval track in Hazleton, Pennsylvania, surrounded by the following streets:

• N. Fulton
• E. Holly
• N. Cedar

If you succeed in finding it, there your treasure will be found also. Especially if you zoom in on it nice and close.

So it is written. Any who succeed, post a comment and let me know.

Avast, me hearties!

In honor of the Satyr - uh, I mean St. Valentine...

In honor of the month of mad spending for guys who treat their girlfriends/wives like shit the rest of the year "love"... I have added a new blog to my blogroll - it's called EROSblog.

Fair warning, folks, we're talking verrrrrry naughty pictures, and (gasp!) alternative methods of gettin' yer groove on - but it's all in good fun. Mostly the author posts pictures and then makes really snarky comments about them. I got a good chuckle out of it, and as you all know, I don't mind getting a glimpse of naughty bits now and again. They also post some of the funniest conversations had by phone sex operators. If you're game, go visit Eros.

Happy Valentwining!

Don't thank me, ladies - just throw money

Huh? And HP

Went to the doctor today, with a list of symptoms that have been steadily getting worse over the past few months. Most notably a pain in my ears, inside my head. It's gotten so that any moderately loud electronic noise, whether from TV, radio, or cell phone, causes me physical pain. My balance has been off - I often have to take an extra step getting out of the shower or if I turn around quickly, to keep myself from falling. And on Monday I developed a strong neuralgia (pain in the nerves of the skin) all around my right eye, running right down the side of my face - so bad that it blurred the vision in my right eye.

He didn't make a diagnosis, but prescribed an appointment for me to get a brain MRI, to rule out something called an "accoustic neuroma" - a type of benign brain tumor that affects the inner ear and balance nerve. Hmm.

Then he ordered bloodwork done, so his assistant came in and proceeded to stab me twice in the left arm and once in the right before she was able to draw the necessary blood. There might be something to be said for hiring at least one vampire on staff - I have to remember to suggest it next time I speak to the doc.

Nothing like going to the doctor with a little ear pain and hearing the words "brain tumor" to get your week in gear but good. I have to call and make the appointment for my scan. I just hope the doctor says the magic words...

IT'S NOT A TOOOMAAAHHHH!

In other news, I have been listening to all the Harry Potter books on CD (again), and am currently wondering why people using the pensieve to explore other people's memories are able to walk away from the person whose memory it is, and listen in on or watch things that happened outside the rememberer's scope of attention.

For example, when Harry goes into the pensieve and sees Snape's memory of being near the lake where James Potter and Sirius and Lupin and Wormtail were faffing about, why is Harry able to leave Snape sitting in the shade of the bushes, poring over his test paperwork, and go over and listen in on James and Sirius' conversation? If the memory is Snape's, then the only thing Harry should be able to see or hear is what Snape was seeing or hearing, right? It doesn't make much sense otherwise.

And since humans are famous for having selective memory - ask six witnesses to any crime and you get six different answers - it is highly unlikely that Snape would have remembered (or even seen) James ruffling up his hair, or many of the other little tiny details that inform these forays into the pensieve.

I'm just saying.

Dumbledore uploading memories into his pensieve

Sometimes a good cry is exactly what I need

Came home from work before Bear got home. Washed the rest of the dishes from our SuperBowl party (some game, huh?), poured myself a glass of red wine, and sat down on the couch, exhausted from a particularly grueling day at the salt mines.

Flipped on the tube. Hit "favorites" button until I reached Turner Classic Movies. "The Glenn Miller Story", starring my all-time favorite actor, Jimmy Stewart, was just coming on. And June Alyson plays the perfect supporting wife. No one could have done it better. I settled back to soak in the Stewart and the tunes of my favorite time period of all time, and my favorite band of the time - Glenn Miller's Orchestra.

Jimmy Stewart as Glenn Miller

Suffice it to say that I forgot how sad this movie was. Hell, I was sobbing through the HAPPY parts. And then they started to play that song which has haunted me lo, these many years.... "Somewhere Over the Rainbow"... I totally forgot that song was in this movie! I cried some more. Don't know why, but now that I realize this song is haunting me, it makes me cry.

The real Glenn Miller

Bear came home and has been slaving over a hot stove, making sausage, peppers, and onions to put on toasted heros with melted mozzarella cheese for dinner. Even that is making me cry tonight.

I think I just needed a good cry, and there's nothing like Jimmy Stewart and Glenn Miller's music to give me that.

Man, I'm gonna tear me up some sausage and pepper heros tonight.

Miss you, J.S.

Why Girls Watch the Superbowl

It's an excuse to eat an entire bag of Doritos by yourself

The possibility of interviews with former members of the NY Giants who appreciate Angelina Jolie almost as much as we do

Tight ends

The titillating possibility of half-time show scandal

(OUCH!)

Did I mention tight ends?

The camaraderie and brotherly love that pervades the noble sport of American football

Grown men showing their abdomens emotions without shame

The hope that crazy end zone dances will come back

The hope that any footage of football players dancing for any reason may be broadcast

Oh, those awkward moments!

There's nothing quite as embarrassing as stopping to drop change into a blind man's cup and finding nothing in your change purse but a torn Trojan wrapper. Followed closely by the discomfort of having to choose between dropping a couple of pebbles in the cup and walking away quickly before he figures it out, or telling him the truth - "We're both fucked."

But that never happened to Marcheline. No, dear readers, what really happened was this:

Bear and I were in LinesAroundCountriesOnMaps bookstore, where I was following through on a holiday promise I had made which went something like this - "As God is mah weeyutness, Ah will nevah go hungry agayun!" No, sorry, that was Scarlett O'Hara.

What I actually said, while standing in our conspicuously undecorated, tree-less living room was, "When we get tenants in the downstairs apartment, I will take you to LinesIllegalImmigrantsCrossIllegally bookstore, and you can pick out anything you want and that will be my Yule present to you." Which, if you look at it while standing on your head, is kind of the same thing. Me and Scarlett - we're like this. (insert mental image of crossed fingers)

We had just done our preliminary peruse-and-grab foray, met back at the pre-determined meeting place (ie: the cafe) and had sunk into two comfy overstuffed chairs to gloat over our finds and weed out the undesirables. I glanced up and saw the cafe counter person handing over a coffee cup so overloaded with whipped cream that it was melting and dripping down the sides of the cup faster than the poor guy buying it could wipe it off. The guy turned, coffee in one hand, wad of damp napkins in the other, to talk to his girlfriend.

Suddenly, one of my synapses fired. I knew this guy - and his girlfriend! They had both waited tables with me at my most recent second-job. And by most recent, I mean I haven't even set foot in the place in over a year, but it was the last place I worked weekends. I went over to say hello, and we all squealed and hugged (it's a waitstaff thang), and I invited them back over to our little reading nook, where we sat down and began to chat.

This is the embarrassing part. I could remember the girl's name, but for the life of me I could not remember the guy's! And I couldn't very well turn to Bear and say, "Honey, I'd like you to meet Samantha and Fermnblfff". I had worked with this guy so often during my time at the restaurant, there really was no way I could tell him that I'd forgotten his name without looking like a complete turd. Since we were all gabbing away happily, I thought enough time had passed to have safely skipped over the whole introduction thingie anyway.

How wrong I was.

You see, Bear had thought that the guy was a coworker of mine from ANOTHER job... a job where my manager had sponsored our office to participate in the huge breast cancer walk in New York City's Central Park. Wait, I didn't mean to say huge breast... the walk - the walk is what is huge. Anyway. Bear starts talking to the couple about how great it was at the walk through Central Park, and they were both like... um.... WHAT?!?!?

And the whole time this was happening, I was silently hitting my brain with an imaginary sledgehammer, going through the alphabet (Alan? Adam? Ben? Brad? Bart? Corey? Chad? - SHIT!!!) willing myself to remember the guy's name, because now I had to jump in and save Bear by telling him no, no, these aren't friends from THAT job... they're, you know, friends from that OTHER job. Friends named Samantha and... um... yeah. (FUCK!) (ARSE!!)

Finally, about half an hour later, my other brain cell came to life and I remembered his name... at which point I did a patently horrible job of faking surprise (all it lacked was a dramatic self-inflicted smack on the forehead) and said, "Oh... did I forget to introduce you?"

Silly me.

Here's some (very funny) insanity to kick off the weekend...