FeeFiFoto Blog

Actually I'm Feeling Much Better

What - you didn't know I was feeling crummy?

Neither did I.

I thought my lack of motivation sprung from the weather: that, since winter was long and cold and dark and claustrophobic and spring has been long and cold and wet and claustrophobic, I felt crummy, and I'd feel better once the weather cleared up.  But even when the weather cleared up (for a few days at least.  It's raining again) I still felt down and couldn't make myself do anything except nap or put things off until tomorrow.

You know how it is.  Bills come in.  Paper comes in.  Voicemails come in.  More bills.  More paper.  More and more and more paper, more messages, all of it demanding some kind of attention, at the very least a decision about whether to discard it.  The piles get taller and wider and I feel like Lucy in the chocolate factory but it's not funny and there's no chocolate.  The weather's bad.  My feet are cold and I want to snuggle on the couch with the dog instead of sorting through the stacks of paper (and I include emails in this category) all clamoring for attention.

All I could do was lie on the couch with the dog and push everything off until tomorrow or maybe next week.

It took me a while to figure out that I was feeling overwhelmed.  The overwhelmedness came on so gradually that I didn't notice any difference until the weather cleared for a few days and I wondered why I wasn't feeling any better.  I still didn't feel like walking Miss Puppy, making meals, returning phone calls or clearing off my desk.

Last week it dawned on me that something was out of order and I started trying to fix it.

The contractors I'd called in February finally called me back to say they could come on a rain day and fix all the little holes in the wall and ceiling, out of wack closet doors, orphan light switches and leaky plumbing.  While they were here they patched the chair leg that somebody ::coughcoughdogcough:: had chewed, replaced some light bulbs and reinstalled our basketball hoop.

The house looked better.  I felt better.

I forced myself to monitor voicemails, most of which were junk.

The dial tone stopped beepbeepbeeping whenever I picked up the phone.  I felt better.

I picked one piece of paper out of the pile and discarded it; apparently if you procrastinate long enough almost any piece of paper becomes irrelevant.  I picked up another piece of paper, dealt with it and discarded it.  I picked up one more piece of paper and shoved it to the bottom of the pile for later.

The pile diminished.  I felt better.

So, I'm feeling better. Every day I feel a little less overwhelmed.

Baby steps.

Wordless Wednesday: Unfortunate Juxtaposition

How Many Of These Books Have You Read?

Chaucerian Girl presented a meme in which I had to participate because I love the chance to show off.  (That's assuming that what I'm attempting to brag about here is truly bragworthy.  It might be pathetic.) 

Here's a list of books that presumably ought to be read by all who are or fancy themselves intellectuals.  Anything bolded is something I've read; anything italicized is something I tried to read.  At the bottom of the list I've added some essentials that were left off the list by what must have been unfortunate oversight.

_____________________________________

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

Anna Karenina

Crime and Punishment

Catch-22

One Hundred Years of Solitude

Wuthering Heights: I'm sorry, Emily Bronte and her characters' pretentious angst wearied me.  And, what in the blazes is"wuthering" anyway?

The Silmarillion

Life of Pi: a novel: Admittedly a gripping piece of fiction, but by the end the extravagant gruesomeness turned me off.

The Name of the Rose

Don Quixote: I think I might have read this as a younger person.  All I remember is that he dies in the end.  Doesn't he?

Moby Dick

Ulysses

Madame Bovary: This one was heartbreaking and absorbing, and the death scene at the end was viscerally disturbing.

The Odyssey

Pride and Prejudice: Over and over again, annotated, BBC, A&E, I don't care what version but please, no sequels.

Jane Eyre

The Tale of Two Cities: The best of times, the worst of times, a far far better thing; but watch out for that Madame DeFarge because she'll give you the Dickens.

The Brothers Karamazov: No, but I saw them in concert once.  They tried to juggle a carton of eggs.  It didn't end well.

Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies: I have enough reasons not to be able to fall asleep at night, thanks.

War and Peace

Vanity Fair: Becky Sharp is everything I could never be.

The Time Traveler’s Wife: Four years later and I'm still trying to figure out the timeline.

The Iliad

Emma: Rereading it right now, as a matter of fact.

The Blind Assassin

The Kite Runner: Annoying

Mrs. Dalloway

Great Expectations: That dusty, venomous white spider, Miss Havisham

American Gods

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Atlas Shrugged

Reading Lolita in Tehran: a memoir in books

Memoirs of a Geisha: Meh

Middlesex

Quicksilver

Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West: Okay, okay -- I get it: you've read all the Oz books, you know all the ins and outs of all major and minor characters.  Did you have to use up so much paper beating me over the head with your knowledge?

The Canterbury Tales: A looong time ago, probably not long after they were first written.

The Historian: a novel

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Love in the Time of Cholera

Brave New World

The Fountainhead

Foucault’s Pendulum

Middlemarch

Frankenstein: Much sadder than I'd anticipated it would be.

The Count of Monte Cristo

Dracula

A Clockwork Orange: Really, who could slog through this book?  It has a glossary, for heaven's sake!

Anansi Boys

The Once and Future King

The Grapes of Wrath: Many times, and always with an abundant supply of snackage at hand.

The Poisonwood Bible: a novel

1984

Angels & Demons

The Inferno (and Purgatory and Paradise): No, but I did read all of Paradise Lost, aloud.

The Satanic Verses

Sense and Sensibility

The Picture of Dorian Gray: Hellooo nightmares

Mansfield Park

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

To the Lighthouse

Tess of the D’Urbervilles

Oliver Twist

Gulliver’s Travels

Les Misérables: But I liked the play, and in fact the music is right now running through my head.

The Corrections

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Dune

The Prince

The Sound and the Fury

Angela’s Ashes: a memoir

The God of Small Things

A People’s History of the United States: 1492-present

Cryptonomicon

Neverwhere

A Confederacy of Dunces

A Short History of Nearly Everything: This.  Is an amazing book.  It's recently been reissued with photos and graphics, which makes it eminently browsable.  This book deserves a place on every nightstand in the country.

Dubliners

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Beloved: I don't care what Oprah said.  I made it all the way through this book and was like "huh?"

Slaughterhouse-five

The Scarlet Letter

Eats, Shoots & Leaves

The Mists of Avalon Oryx and Crake: a novel

Collapse: how societies choose to fail or succeed

Cloud Atlas

The Confusion

Lolita: Gave me the willies.

Persuasion

Northanger Abbey

The Catcher in the Rye

On the Road

The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Freakonomics: a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: an inquiry into values

The Aeneid

Watership Down

Gravity’s Rainbow

The Hobbit: I made it through the entire series and thought to myself: "why did I waste my time?"

In Cold Blood: a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences: This is an extraordinary book.  The first time I read it I had nightmares and couldn't touch it again for a very long time.  I reread it last summer and now I absolutely revere the book and its author.

White Teeth

Treasure Island

David Copperfield

The Three Musketeers

________________________________________

And mine:

The Phantom Tollbooth

To Kill a Mockingbird

Alice in Wonderland (annotated, if you can get it)

Candide

The Diary of Anne Frank

The Great Gatsby

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

How about you?

Wordless Wednesday: I Love This Theater Marquee

When they were showing "Water For Elephants" the marquee read: "It's In Tents!"

In case you were wondering, this month marks the 100th birthday of Vincent Price.

Outsmarting Our Kids While We Can

Heather Spohr writes about the challenges of keeping one step ahead of your toddler, when you and all significant others must not only spell certain key words ("C-O-O-K-I-E" anyone?  Or is "C-O-O-K-I" sufficient to get the point across?) but also must learn to do so in Spanish, Italian or Aramaic, and ultimately in sign language, semaphore or four-syllable euphemisms.  It just proves that, although we want our kids to be smarter than absolutely everybody, absolutely everybody doesn't necessarily include us, the parents.  And I say -- whatever it takes to outsmart them as long as we can get away with it is fine with me.

This story reminds me of one of my all time favorite Cupcake stories, which I believe she won't mind my relating here.

From the time she could grasp onto anything I let Cupcake try to swipe the credit card at the supermarket checkout, and I showed her which buttons to press.  As she became more proficient I added commentary: push the red one, now push the green one, now it says Kiss Your Mom, now it says Swipe The Card, now it says Hug Your Mom.  She'd earnestly follow every command and not one supermarket checker ever blew my cover, although her brother tried once but he was summarily suppressed.

Before the end of Junior Kindergarten, Cupcake was teaching herself to read.  One day she was helping me at a supermarket checkout, and I was giving instructions: press the red button; now it says Hug Your Mom; now press the green one; now it says Kiss Your Mom.  I could hear wheels spinning in her head as she stared at the computer screen and then she turned to me and said accusingly: "No it doesn't.  It says Please Wait."

Uh oh.

"Down at the bottom," I said, "Down at the bottom it says Kiss Your Mom."

And she said, accusingly: "No, it does not."

And I replied weakly: "Well it used to say Kiss Your Mom." And she said, again accusingly: "I don't believe you.  I think you lied to me." 

And I said: "Why would I lie to you?"  And she said, more accusingly than ever: "Because you love me and you want my kisses."

Caught red handed, I capitulated: "Well, can I have a kiss anyway?" 

And she said: "No, because you lied to me."

I still try it.  She still withholds kisses.

Haven't I paid my dues by now?

What's your favorite story of being caught red handed?

It's A Happy Day -- Kind Of

The day my divorce became final I attended court to testify that our agreement was mutual and acceptable.  I'd agreed to appear only if the other party's lawyer could guarantee that his client wouldn't show up; I couldn't stand the thought of abiding in the same ecosystem with him, much less being in the same room breathing the same air.  The opposing attorney was very accommodating; he loathed his client nearly as much as I did.

The transaction lasted less than an hour.  When it was over some lawyer in the courtroom waiting for his client's turn confided to me: "All these people said that the day they got married was the best day of their lives, and now they'll say that the day they got divorced is the best day of their lives."

I was desolate.  My marriage had been a disaster and I felt humiliated and despondent.  I didn't feel like rejoicing; I just wanted to hide.

I contemplated him sadly and replied: "This isn't the happiest day of my life."

Osama bin Laden has been located and eliminated.  Americans have been celebrating: climbing lamp posts in New York City, chanting "USA!" in Washington, posting jubilant messages on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

Setting aside the question of whether it's appropriate to celebrate the death of anyone (aside from your archetypal New Orleans flying cockroach), I notice that conspicuously absent from these celebrations are friends and family members of people killed on September 11 or in other terrorist attacks carried out by bin Laden.  As Peter Gadiel, president of 9/11 Families for a Secure America, said today:

Although I don't disapprove of the patriotism and happiness expressed around the nation in the past day, I can't say that I feel the desire to participate in the celebration. Bin Laden's death won't bring [my son] back.

The word "closure" is often used at a time like this, when talking about the loss of a family member, and I suppose that is the way for sympathetic people to show their concern. They are expressing their hope that the victims' families will somehow reach a condition where the pain is lessened by the passage of time.

For me, that pain is as strong as ever. There is never "closure."

Thank G-d I didn't lose anyone in any of these attacks, although I was devastated nonetheless.  Maybe that's why I feel immense relief that bin Laden is out of the picture, but no compulsion to celebrate.  I think this revelry is different from what marked the end of World War II; many of those revelers had a tangible reason to rejoice, as they knew their loved ones might soon be returning home.

Bin Laden's death isn't going to be the direct cause of bringing anyone home.  Nor will it bring back anyone killed as a result of his terrorism.

I guess that's why I really don't feel like celebrating.