Songs that save your life

Sometimes it is the smallest things. You're beaten, you're down, you're alone, you don't know where to go or what to do.

Then a door cracks open and out spills just a sliver of light and suddenly you can see and you just KNOW that you can reach over and jerk that sucker open and walk through that doorway, out of the darkness and into a new place, a place that is, at the very least, different from where you are.

I don't know why songs are so often the thing that pops the door open. Something in music connects right up to Control Central right down there in the middle without having to travel through the buzzing wiring in our brains. It just gets in there and does what it does and we end up laughing or sobbing or gasping or standing up and shaking parts that we didn't even know we could shake anymore.

So there I was a while ago, driving around. I lived with someone who hated me and who was perpetually unhappy, both about my existence and about everything else in general. I had felt FAIL for so long that I couldn't even imagine what WIN was anymore.

I was getting on the freeway, heading home, feeling like crap. And then "Jump" by Van Halen came on the classic rock station.



I KNOW. Can anything be more silly or ridiculous? It's not great music. It's not gonna be on anyone's top 100 list. But that day, in that place, it GOT me.

Even though I was hearing it on the radio, the thousand times I had seen the video rushed back to life in my head and I was driving along seeing that nutty video play in my head and singing and laughing.

"Might as well jump." Damn right.

Suddenly I knew to the marrow of my bones that I was going to be ok. No matter how much anyone tried to keep me down, I was going to get up, to jump, and the jump was NOT going to be off a building.

I was going to leap through life with goofy, goony joy, the same kind of crazy life force that caused Diamond Dave to put on that wack red net corset-y outfit and parade around the stage like a low-rent Mick Jagger with bigass hair, the same joy that kept Eddie smiling his little elf smile while wearing possibly the most unattractive yellow tiger-striped jacket ever made.

"Might as well jump." From then on, when I was getting looked down upon, I had that song in my head and Eddie's sweet smile in my heart. On the outside, I put on my best blasé face and went through the motions and did what I had to do so I could put my escape plan into motion. But inside, I knew who I was. I was someone who could always jump.

I'm so thankful for that song. It gave me something, you know? Tell me about a song that saved you.

Puzzling Evidence?

I went on a business trip and took the Red Stapler with me because I knew I would be meeting up with some bloggers and I thought it would be great to get some photos.

When I was unpacking upon my return, I found the stapler had suffered in transit:


The following Monday, we found that we were in danger of being laid off.

I started this blog and got the stapler when I first started that job.

Coincidence?

What. The. Heck

How could I leave that grim & depressing post up for so long? My apologies. My excuse is that I have been BUSY - I think I have done seven news articles in the past five days PLUS job hunting.

Ok, a bullet point post will have to do.

• I'm not going to say much but cross your fingers for my job hopes. There may be something good around the corner.
  
• Things with the folks are even MORE worrisome. I'm pondering next steps. I wish my siblings all lived in my town so we could sit down over coffee, because they are all smarter than me.
  
• I have done exactly nothing for Christmas so far.
  
• My ex-job supplied me with 2 months of career search services, which I very much appreciate. That is mighty decent of them. There is something to be said for working for a SuperMegaHuge Giant Corporation.
  
• Any advice on whether to buy Quark or InDesign if I want to do some design work again? I have Illustrator and PhotoShop. I worked in Quark 40 hours a week for, oh, a billion years, so I am more familiar. What are all the cool kids using?
  

Ok, off to do more reporting. Mo' money, baby.

Best Blog Challenge

The lovely Gwen Bell has issued a challenge about a challenge: write about something that challenged you this year and how you overcame it and why it was a good challenge.

Ok.
Ok.
Here I go.
No really.
I'm doing it any minute.
Hm.

I don't like to think about challenges. I just want them to go away tra la. I am lazy like that.

I don't know if I have overcome this one yet or not.

Ok, I haven't. It is my continuing challenge, one that I deal with every single day.

I am challenged by not having my parents' precipitous decline into old age taint my world view. The pain and suffering and helplessness they face every day as their bodies and minds wear our are almost more than I can bear at times.

Their existential crisis has become my existential crisis. What's it all about, Alfie?

I try to keep my eyes wide open. To be helpful and kind and to not minimize or ignore their suffering because I hate seeing it so much.

Sometimes I pass and on many days I fail. I forget that they aren't who they used to be.

I snap at them, I'm sarcastic, I'm impatient, I run out of there just to get away for a while.

The temptation is to put up a wall - not against them so much but against feeling what is happening to them and letting the full horror wash over me. Because it is horrifying, it is scary, it is painful.

It is only when I can gather my inner strength, my hidden Toltec warrior, and just be there that it is all ok. If I can just breathe through it, remember to be right there, right then - that's when I can feel all the feelings and let the power of love tie us together instead of let the misunderstandings, pains and fear tear us apart.

So. That's not the most cheerful challenge on earth, but there it is. There is no tidy ending, no Oprah-episode "Aha" moment. Just life. I hope that's enough.

Fun Poinsettia Facts

I know that you think this is a poinsettia:


But I live in The Poinsettia City, where we have poinsettias like this:


Close up, they look like this:


If you like the white kind, you can go over to my neighbor's house:



Random Poinsettia Facts:

• Those big pointy colorful things on poinsettias are not the flower. Those are bracts.


• The flower is that weird little thing in the middle. If you want a long-lasting poinsettia, pick one where there is no yellow pollen showing on the flower.


• Poinsettias are from the genus Euphorbia. There are some very weird-looking Euphorbias.


• This may be why the Poinsettia's botanic name is Euphoribia pulcherrima, pulcherrima having the same root as "pulchritude" or beauty.
  
• Many people think that Poinsettias are toxic, but you would probably have to eat a giant Poinsettia salad to make yourself sick. The sap of Euphorbias is known to be irritating to the skin, though, so wash thoroughly if you get the sap on yourself. And just to be safe, do not eat the leaves.


• The world's biggest grower and breeder of Poinsettias is Paul Ecke Ranch in Encinitas, California. They are responsible for all those cool curly, spotty and multicolored Poinsettias that come out each year.


• Poinsettias are one of the most difficult holiday plants to grow. They need to be tricked into blooming precisely at Christmastime, which means providing them with exactly the right day length. Growers cover the little plants with blackout cloth or give them extra light at night to make them think the nights are just the right length for them to set flowers.


• I was a horticulture major in college. Does it show?

Enjoy your holiday season. And buy some Poinsettias.

Your correspondent from The Poinsettia City,
Suebob

The list

My friends Spike, Lucky Spud and Doodle went to Vegas on an ill-fated trip and had so many bad things happen that they finally started a bulleted list, just so they could remember them all, lest they leave anything out of the tale of woe.

It is in this spirit of marinating in the badness that I bring you: My Week, The List of Horror

1. Mom got chest pains


2. Poor Swine Flu baby spewing germs all over ER waiting room


3. Blessedly short Swine Flu emergency waiting room wait


4. Followed by all-day in Swine Flu Emergency Room


5. Noisy, horrible, uncomfortable ER packed to capacity


6. Dad such a mess he didn't recognize a restaurant where he had eaten literally hundreds of times


7. No water or bedpan for mom for hours at a time


8. No food offered for mom from 7 am to 9 pm


9. Angioplasty


10. My last day at work cut to 2 hours squeezed in


11. Cleaning my cubicle


12. Saying goodbye to beloved co-workers in a rush


13. 3 day old dishes rotting at home


14. Not able to spend any time at home because landlord was sealing driveway and Goldie was trapped in hot car


15. Standing in hospital hallway for 90 minutes with 91-year-old dad and sis because no one knew where mom was


16. 3 nights on my folks' "block of cement" guest room bed


17. Return of sciatic pain in my legs due to #16


18. Saturday spent at medical labs, with Medicare nurse and doing a freelance job


19. Sunday morning flat tire


20. Tire store closed on Sunday

Ok, it wasn't ALL bad.

1. Mom made a good recovery. They caught it just in time.


2. My sis PK came far to rescue us when I was freaking out because the angioplasty fell on my last day at work and I needed to go clean out my cubicle and say goodbye. She really, really saved the day.


3. A nice hospital employee named Devin very kindly walked me and my lost dad around the hospital when we couldn't find mom, and his sweet gesture swept the rest of the staff's cluelessness and rudeness right away.


4. Mom promised to go back on her heart meds.


5. If nothing else, it kept me from thinking about my last week at work


6. I had an understanding manager who said "Of course family comes first" when I needed to take time off

Tell me about the FUN thing you did this week.

My most embarrassing life

My Most Embarrassing Moment by Suebob, Mrs. Flinger's Period 3 English*

*Explanation at bottom of post

Most embarrassing moments are usually just that: a moment, a brief time of realization and blushing, followed by the blissful softening of time's passing.

But what happens when your embarrassing moment happens and you don't even know about it until long after everyone else has heard about it, when, years later, the realization comes crashing down on you like an emotional pile of bricks?

That's what happened to me.

When I was in my junior year of high school, I awoke one day with terrible back pain. I was in ballet at the time, so I thought I had strained a muscle.

I iced, I used a heating pad, but nothing helped. My mom took me over to the chiropractor and I almost passed out from the pain.

I remember standing at the counter and having my vision disappear down to pinpoints and the noises around me get farther and farther away until someone grabbed me just as I collapsed.

Someone took my temperature and found I had a 104 degree fever. My doctor ordered me admitted to the hospital. Our family doctor at the time was this harsh skinny old guy with a thick German accent. I always suspected that he was a retired Nazi but I'm sure that is just speculation...mmmmaybe.

They put me on the pediatrics ward at the hospital. The doctor came to visit me there and took me into a broom closet and did my first, and by far the worst, pelvic exam of my life.

Between the pain and the fever and the broom closet and a strange man rooting around in my privates with the grace of a ham-handed plumber, I was a mess. During the exam, Dr. Mengele asked me "Are you sexually emancipated?"

This was 1977 and I had no idea what he was talking about. I assumed he was asking me if I was a feminist. After all, the debate over the Equal Rights Amendment was raging at the time. So I said yes.

After that, things get a little fuzzy. My fever went up even higher and I ended up spending six weeks on that peds ward, receiving massive doses of erythromycin for a staph infection that had settled in the bones of my lower spine. Except for developing a permanent hatred for runny food served on plastic plates, I recovered fully.

Fast forward 25 years. My sister Laura and I were talking about the time I had spent in the hospital. She said, laughing, "And that old German doctor told mom and dad you had gonorrhea."

"WHAT?" I yelled.

"You didn't know? He said he had asked you if you were having sex with a lot of people and, with your symptoms, he suspected gonorrhea."

"Doctor Mengele told mom and dad I was having sex with a lot of people and had gonorrhea?? That isn't what he asked me. He said 'sexually emancipated.' I thought he meant if I approved of women being firefighters and judges!"

So my most embarrassing moment lasted 25 years, the years when my parents thought I was a total slut.

**********
Explanation:
Mrs. Flinger has a new project: trying to help bloggers become better writers. Thank God. Somebody has to!

The idea is that we will do weekly writing assignments and give each other gentle and helpful criticism. Week one's topic: My Most Embarrassing Moment. Ok!