Update and a Tour

No, my beloved thirteen followers and various hangers-on, I have not abandoned you. I have taken you with me to my new digs in Doodlehem (also known as Bethdoodle). In the interim, there were finals, physical therapy, more finals, more physical therapy, many many times my weight in books, and the reassessment of everything I owned, and just how damn much of it there was.

And then there was the whole Internet fiasco.

But I'm here, the internet's here, I'm pretty much entirely unpacked, and what's more I think I'm almost caught up on finding homes for things. Well, ok, maybe not that last one. But it's getting there. Give me a break, I've been here nineteen days and I'm not allowed to lift anything heavier than my own sense of irony. I am, however, newly allowed to run in tiny, tiny increments. As such, I had the best seven minutes of my life this afternoon, even though they weren't consecutive (that's what she said. Oh wait. Wrong post.)

Anyway. I'm home from my rehabilitative walk/jog scenario (during which I confess to studiously wearing gear from only the most hard-core races I've run, so I am not confused with an actual jogger) and a post-workout trip to the laundromat, where I discovered what a bargain "dollar-wash Wednesday" truly is, given that it's Thursday and the machines are now all jacked up to $1.75 per load. Highway robbery. In any case, many of my friends and relations--yes, including Alexander Beetle in the unlikely event that he actually visits this blog (if he does, hi dad, sorry about trash night)--have expressed interest in seeing the new digs.

Ok, so it goes like this. I was far too lazy to put on shoes and socks and go outside in the rain to take a picture of the exterior, and besides, that’s a little too creepy these days, considering Google Maps and all the things you can do with it. Not like I wouldn’t want you to stalk me, but you know what I mean.


There’s actually a little more room than it looks like, enough for a 2x4 rug and a door that leads nowhere (actually it leads to the downstairs apartment, but it’s painted shut and I’m pretty sure there’s a wall on the other side of it. Which is convenient, since I don’t have any desire to go walking into Brian’s bedroom.) There are a lot of those in my apartment,as well as doors that actually lead places, and places that don’t have doors.

As you walk up thestairs, behold my ability to put bookcases just about anywhere. This is a very important talent to possess when you are a PhD student in literature, as you may well imagine, both because the apartments you inhabit will be cozy and hobbitlike, and because the sheer number of volumes you amass will frighten even your librarian mother. (By the way, the official count was 38 boxes. You heard it here first.)

Now you come to the top of the stairs, where you notice there is some funky architecture and that, yes, they had to put a wall up in the middle of a lovely arch so that the kitchen wasn’t actually in the hallway. The dining room, however, remains in the hallway. That’s ok though, because the hallway is bigger than my NYU dorm room. This is good, as I have rather a lot of refinished kitchen storage cabinets, which will help alleviate the lack of actual kitchen cabinets (more on that shortly). Carefully not pictured here are a couple of piles of crap that have to go back to my parents’ attic because of same.

See what I mean? That’s all she wrote. Considering I haven’t used the dishwasher so far and don’t expect to, I’d rather have the extra cabinet space. Very sunny, though, which I love. What I do have, you’ll notice if you look carefully, is the second in a series of Doors to Nowhere. This isn’t an actual door, but a walled-in doorway. It turned out to be damn convenient and exactly the size of the bookcase that’s now sitting in it. Yes, I have a bookcase in my kitchen. Conveniently, it mostly has cookbooks on it. And my giant stockpot that doesn’t fit anywhere else, as well as my coffeemaker (ditto). Note stove conveniently hiding in alcove behind curve of hallway. Whoever converted this to apartments had some damn good luck in some places. This was one of them, since it seems that this is actually the width of that hallway, which presumably originally continued on to whatever happens on the back half of the second floor, also known as “someone else’s apartment.”

Say it with me now, “claw-foot bathtub.” The bathroom actually is as small as it looks, and thus this is as good as it’s going to get for pictures. Yes, I have a litterbox stuffed in there too. It’s truly awesome. And yet, it’s several orders of magnitude larger than any bathroom I ever had in New York, a town famous for putting claw-foot bathtubs in the kitchen in some neighbourhoods.

Anyway, behold it in all its bathtubby glory. The windowsill is a good six inches deep, too, which allows for storage of crucial items. Like books.

An interlude now about why I narrate tours through my bathroom; I started doing these (with hand-drawn maps and actual photographs) when I lived 3000 miles away from my parents in Spo-Vegas, and they wanted to see where it was I lived, as if it would somehow give them a clue what I was up to. Fortunately, most of the time it didn’t, but they enjoyed seeing the apartments anyway, since they didn’t get out there until I graduated, and so missed a couple of residences.

Ok. Meanwhile, back in Bethdoodle, meet the piles of crap in my living room, so situated because I don’t have an office yet. Hopefully that’s where that big pile in the bay window will end up. My dad just made the radiator table for me this week, so I would have someplace non-bumpy and cat-proof to put my tea in the mornings. Also, because, well, I have a lot of files full of crap, as you are about to see.


Told you. This room, in contrast to the bathroom, is not nearly as big as it looks from this angle. Or maybe it’s the four hundred bookcases flanking the doorway. In any case, what you also cannot see is the apartment’s one major flaw (I mean, other than not being rent-free or having laundry), which is that the desk is uphill from everything else. Like all old buildings, the floors in the apartment are a little less than level, and as I type this, my foot is hooked around the desk to keep me from rolling away from it towards the TV cabinet. The rug helps by catching me, but only sometimes. It’s fun, this acrobatic living room of mine. Also, pencils don’t stay put when you drop them. I try not to drop them.

Let us continue on our way. Back into the hallway, and—oh look. Another bookcase. What a surprise. Also, another Door to Nowhere. This one is actually a door to… stairs. That lead nowhere. Actually, they lead to a wall, the other side of which is a mystical land known as “Matt’s Third Floor Apartment.” I’ve not actually met Matt, I think he’s rather like Mr. Tumnus, or something. (Actually, what Matt is, is a PhD student. Which, come to think of it, isn't all that different from someone you might find in back of a wardrobe.)

Also visible here is an Actual Door to Somewhere, one of two in the apartment. There’s a reason they have doors. It’s not safe for you there. Like Gene Wilder in Young Frankenstein, whatever sound you hear, do not open that door! The closet is currently under organization, and as such is a complete death zone, since by “organization” of course, I really mean “quarantine.” I brought more hangers home yesterday and hope to slay the Evil Closet Beast sometime before the world ends on May 21. Don’t hold your breath. Oh, and after the rapture, can I have your stuff? Since I have that kick-ass closet, and all.


Chapter Six, the bedroom, wherein FireCat wishes she had done a better job of making her bed this morning. Truth is, I was planning on changing the sheets and doing laundry later, if the Verizon guy ever shows up. Not pictured here: more stuff. Also, Bookcase, The Final Frontier. The bookcase where old books with no home go to die. Also, children’s books I still read and anything I might be otherwise embarrassed to be caught with, such as my beloved Alex Bernier mysteries. Pictured here but entirely invisible: the two cats hiding under the bed, though one of them might be on the windowsill checking stuff out.

And now to recap, since we have run out of rooms and up against a wall (well, door):


Itz mah howse. I live here. You don’t. And aren’t we all so very, very happy about that?

Litmus Test

So there I am, barely 25, at the hospital. Waiting to see if they're going to admit me to the mental ward overnight. But I don't know that yet. All I know is it's damn near 4:30 AM and I need coffee. So I deposit 50 cents into the machine and press "coffee, regular." (As a side note, never ever order chicken soup from one of those things. It tastes like I imagine the Gowanus Canal must taste, though I've never tested this hypothesis.)

Rumblings from within. Vending machine crane-arm noises. Suspense: the little light goes on. It thinks. I wait.

Creamer squirts out of the nozzle onto the grate. Eight ounces of tepid coffee follows. The cup clatters down, useless, onto the mess. The door opens.

I'm blinking at it. This is not quite what I ordered. Well, it is, but not in the order I ordered it. So I dig out 50 more cents and try again.

Creamer squirts out of the nozzle. Eight ounces of coffee descend in a putrid, infuriating stream. The cup comes down on top of it. Empty.

Fuck.

I'm on the verge of tears. Instead, I kick the vending machine. Say some choice words my longshoreman grandfather taught me.

Resident comes by, all arrogance and flapping scrubs. Scrounges in his pocket, comes up with 50 cents, presses "coffee, regular" just as I open my mouth to say something by way of warning.

But then his cup comes down, creamer squirts into it, and eight ounces of beautiful, perfect, glorious coffee flow into the mix. The door opens. The resident retrieves his coffee, lifts it to me in a half-hearted "cheers" greeting, and flaps away down the hall, innocently slurping at the caffeinated ambrosia being denied to me.

I blink after him. What the hell?

I realise I have 50 cents left. I decide to go for it.

Coffee. Regular. Goddamn it.

The creamer squirts into the empty slot. Eight ounces of coffee blast into space. I consider trying to stick my tongue under the nozzle, but decide I would either get stuck and the resident would have to come extract me, or I'd definitely get sent to the mental ward.

Not to mention the goddamned empty cup would hit me in the head when it was done.

It Was a Dark and Stormy Night

No, really.

I told you there was more to the story. Here's some of it, to date (more here and here):

It was December 2007, and I’d just received word in the mail that my husband’s divorce from me was finalized. I don’t remember if that’s what prompted me to finally call Dr. Lauren's office after two months of waffling, but as luck would have it, my first appointment fell on the morning of the winter solstice. Lauren and I had been knitting friends for several months before I randomly mentioned that I needed to find a new chiropractor, and she looked up over the top of her needles and said, "I'm a chiropractor." Whoa. Really? Awesome.

Since my heart and consciousness were more or less encased in a block of ice two years thick, I have no idea what Lauren said that afternoon that convinced me I should stay for the solstice fire, but it must have been good because there I was. I remember clutching a piece of paper with my now-ex-husband’s name on it, muttering over and over, “I don’t think I can do this,” as Wendy unclenched my fingers one at a time and helped me drop it into the fire.

That spring I decided I wanted to go back to school (again) for my PhD, something I’d once promised myself not to do until my husband got the bachelor’s degree he’d always wanted. Lauren convinced me to take off my wedding rings. I stopped seeing my therapist of twelve years. I made a New Year’s resolution to look for joy wherever I might be able to find it.

In February 2009 I signed up for Reiki I as a birthday present to myself and followed up with Reiki II several months later. I also built up quite a collection of rejection letters from PhD programs during this time, and decided to start with a second master’s degree.

December 2010 I arrived at the solstice fire on my third “anniversary,” having just handed in the final paper needed to graduate from that program, at the end of an autumn that involved horrifying take-home exams, more PhD applications, the murder of a student I’d previously taught, a marathon finish time I never thought I’d achieve, and the recurrence and treatment of a back injury that is simultaneously teaching me to ask for help and re-forging what had been a rocky relationship with my mom since moving back to Three Feathers.

2011 has brought a string of very strange Mondays filled with all sorts of news. I've been accepted into a PhD program, fully funded (!), and just this afternoon learned that I will soon be signing a lease on the apartment of my dreams. Although I never for a moment dreamed it would be in Pennsylvania.

Oh, and I’ve also found true love—right in my own skin.

Revolution By Pizza

Tunisia. Egypt. Libya. Madison, Wisconsin. Revolution is in the air. You can smell it. It smells like victory. And tomato sauce.

Ian's on State in Madison, Wisconsin, made the New York Times today for its continued efforts to feed the gathered protesters outside the state house. The Times article really needs the following photograph added to it (really, photo editors? really?): the sign on which they are keeping track of where the donations are originating. People are phoning it in for pizza from all over the world. Including, yes, Egypt. And Ireland. And Romania. And Lithuania. And Uganda.

And, moments ago, Iran.

Yes, that Iran.

Victory never tasted so good. Or so cheesy.

The Road So Far

My cancer story and my running story are inextricably linked, and always have been. In 1998, a week after my 25th birthday, I found a lump in my neck that would—after ten weeks of inconclusive, increasingly invasive, and deeply annoying testing—ultimately be diagnosed as thyroid cancer. Thyroid cancer differs from many other cancers in that chemotherapy is not used; treatment consists of surgery to remove the gland (which, needless to say, does a number on your metabolism and your hormone balance) and in my case a big old hunk of surrounding muscle, and ablation with radioactive iodine, which leaves you radioactive enough for a couple of days afterwards that apparently a patient once set off the radiation detectors at the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel on his way home from the hospital (now that would be a story!)

My own narrative is, fortunately, somewhat less dramatic. My tumor was aggressive enough that I required two radiation treatments, six months apart—a procedure that both times left me bloated, exhausted, covered in very attractive sores, unable to gather enough saliva to spit, unable to eat, and even crankier than normal. So there I was, lying in bed feeling sorry for myself, a week after Christmas, unable to walk to the mailbox without needing a nap afterwards, when my phone rang. It was my sister in Chicago, telling me about a 5k fundraiser race that coincided with the first anniversary of my cancer surgery. She was flying home to run in it with our dad, and my mom had agreed to walk. She added in an innocent voice, “We’ve signed you up to run it with us….but you can walk if you want to.”

Did I mention she’s my older sister? Needless to say, I put on a pair of ancient sneakers and jogged to the mailbox and back. A whopping 0.6 miles. And, yes, promptly threw up. But eighteen weeks later I crossed the finish line of my first 5k ahead of both my sister and our parents. And thus endeth my life as a successful couch potato. Two years later, our oldest sister joined us as a walker of the same race, a mere two months after her own surgery for the same cancer.

On the fifth celebration of what we now call my “cancer-versary,” I was in Spokane, Washington, hauling my way up Doomsday Hill in their annual Bloomsday Run, a 12k race I’d wanted to do since my (decidedly non-running) days as a grad student in Spokane. And once again contemplating vomiting, if you must know. There's a reason they call it Doomsday Hill. I remained an on-again, off-again semi-runner until 2007, when something possessed me to sign up for the Marine Corps Marathon. Which something is sort of a whole separate, equally ridiculous story.

Anyway, since then I’ve run two other marathons (one in Spokane, and Marine Corps again last fall) as well as several half-marathons, and I just signed up for MCM 2011, despite spending the winter with a nagging back injury that has made running impossible. (Again, that's a whole 'nother post. Let's just say it involves a trip to the ER for being so bold as to attempt to put on my underwear, and a six-inch needle inserted into my spinal column last month.) The cancer’s been gone for fourteen years this April, and probably the best sign is that before typing that sentence I had to stop and count to make sure. It used to be the clock by which I counted everything. Now I count miles.

I Have Never Read A Single Word of Harry Potter

Furthermore, I never intend to. I am, however, eternally grateful to JK Rowling for addicting an entire generation of kids to the printed word. The weekend the last one came out, I had students who would have normally been out gangbanging waiting in line at the bookstore for their copy.

And then I couldn't give my planned lesson on Monday morning because they were all, "Yo, Miss, can we have free read time, like we used to do in high school? I gots to finish this chapter, man!"

Did I mention? I was their remedial reading teacher. I practically cried. YES. YES YOU MAY HAVE FREE READING TIME. Here. Take it all. Take my heart, you semi-literate thugs. And don't pretend you weren't crying at the end. I saw you wiping tears with your gang-colors bandana do-rag.

I Hate When Spell-Check Tries To Be Smart

I guess some people find the possibility of having to shovel snow a treat. Me, not so much.

Greetings!

Just a short note to inform you that our Saturday Breakfast, scheduled for this Saturday January 8th is canceled, due to the treat of inclement weather. Stay tuned for the rescheduled date.