The 8th Nerve

Steve is almost there… http://www.nanowrimo.org/. He is writing, really and truly writing, a novel and is almost 50,000 words along. I couldn’t be more proud of him. This website is a great idea- the toughest thing for many people when it comes to doing something creative is just getting started and to overcome the worry that what they are creating is not good enough. Maybe once I finish school I will give NaNoWriMo a shot too. I have never written anything more than a short story so it would be very interesting to try it.

I spent most of the weekend working on what turned out to be a 17 page assessment paper and my stats test. Fortunately the weather this weekend made it easy to stay inside- dark, rainy and very cold. Just when the work was really starting to get to me and I was starting to regress alarmingly, Steve and I met up with Derrick at the Ice House and then hung out at RiRa’s and it was a fun break from it all.

On an irrelevant note, it’s been a while since I took a quiz:

Morpheus

?? Which Of The Greek Gods Are You ??
brought to you by Quizilla

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Nov 30th 2003Uncategorized

We had a successful, relaxing Thanksgiving with Steve’s parents in Newport. I helped Billie with peeling and chopping vegetables while Steve and his Dad worked on building a steady cam in the basement. Then we all went for a run on the bike path overlooking Lake Memphremagog. An excellent meal followed, and after dinner our conversation led to Jim running to get CAT scans and x-rays of various people in the family. We spent time holding those up to the light and looking at them. In some families it might be pictures, but in this family we’re talking X-rays. I now know what cross sections of Steve’s neck looks like.

We had to bring Casper because he still needs eye drops. He was extremely cool about the car ride and being in a strange environment and we’re beginning to realize what a high maintenance cat Aschi is. Casper hung out in Steve’s old bedroom, which is one of my favorite rooms. It’s still full of books, his old writings and pictures. You can’t really know a person until you’ve met their family and you’ve seen place they grew up in. I love being able to have a sense of Steve’s life before I knew him. I think the sad truth is that the essence of a guy gets erased from his home environment when he gets married. The woman takes over, with more or less input from the guy, and sets up the home. Or in our case, the previous owner of our place leaves us a whole bunch of furniture and our place takes on the essence of a German bachelor with a hankering for leather.

We helped Steve’s parents work on their office and clear things out. After personally taking down each one of his Dad’s 11 degrees and certificates and wrapping them, I have quite a lot of respect for the profession. We made out like bandits on their office supplies, which Steve is busy setting up in his office upstairs. I spent the rest of the day working on my stats take-home test, which culminated in me throwing my pencil across the living room in frustration. Enough of that for today.

One weekend has ended, and now a second weekend is beginning. Hooray.

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Nov 28th 2003Uncategorized

My 100th entry. Woo hoo.

My father in law is on a mission. He is retiring soon and one of the ways he plans to spend his time is embarking on a mission to find a Krispy Kreme donut in Vermont. I’m surprised that Krispy Kreme has not yet tapped into the vast wealth they would make if they opened the only Krispy Kreme donut store in this state. I have only sampled Krispy Kreme donuts once or twice, in an airport somewhere. The donut was covered with frosting and filled with caramel and it was the most overly rich and fattening thing I had ever eaten. I had to throw it away half eaten, because it was drooling caramel all over me. I suppose I should try a different kind of Krispy Kreme donut before I dismiss the Krispy Kreme Kraze altogether. Meanwhile, I wish my father-in-law the best of luck.

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Nov 25th 2003Uncategorized

As the semester draws to a close you can be assured that you will see more procrastinatory entries from me.

I went for a run on this mild sunless November afternoon. I decided to try something new, since I don’t need to run a certain number of miles like I did when I was training. So I just ran wherever I felt like it, and went down little side roads I had never explored and just ran until I felt like running back home, which I did by cutting across the flattened yellow and brown fields.

As I ran, I thought about the experience of hurt. Hurt, and recovering from hurt, is a theme predominant in therapy as well as life. People have a great variety of defenses, normal and pathological, against hurt. Some can effectively cope with hurt and legitimately move on. Others carry hurt around with them forever. Some are unaware they are carrying it with them. Others are acutely aware. For them, the wound never seems to heal and the hurt surfaces again and again, the pain as fresh as if it happened yesterday.

What exactly is the difference between the hurt that goes away and the hurt that stays? Does it depend on the situation and who rendered, intentionally or unintentionally, the hurt? Or is it inherent in the personality or sensitivity of the person who is hurting? Or is it based on the vulnerabilities of the person, the origins tracing back to the forgotten annals of childhood? Probably, a complex mix of all three.

Ok. So what is the best way to effectively resolve hurt? In this case I’m going to focus on those who experience hurt deeply and struggle with it because it lingers for years. Clearly these people, myself included, are not very good at letting go, forgiving, or moving on. Whatever the situation warrants in order to recover from the hurt and let it drift away, we do not do, and instead we strap the hurts on our back and swim against the current with it. The hurt burdens, aches, and relentlessly recycles in the mind. It leaves us stuck, anxious, and angry. No matter what we do to get over it, it has the ability to come back, unbidden. It catches us in a moment of silence, or it creeps up behind us at our desk or in our car, or it overwhelms us when our mood is down.

Those of us, then, need help to get over the hurt. The best way, probably, is to approach the person who hurt you and talk to them about it. Unfortunately, not many people are able to listen, recognize or accept your hurt feelings and whatever role they might have played in it. Instead they become defensive, or act like you are overly sensitive, irrational, silly. They ignore it completely. They joke about it. They look at you coldly in the eye and say “Don’t do this.” And for my overly sensitive self, this makes the situation far worse and I am left thinking that there is something wrong with me. I am stripped of all dignity and my feelings are shoved back at me, unrecognized. Healing can come from geniune acceptance, recognition and respect of the other for me and for the situation. Even if you cannot understand my hurt, at least listen and accept, share my pain and still care about me.

Very few people can do that. So where to then? The other options are tougher, slower, lonelier. For some, journaling. For some, therapy. For some, medication. I am very fortunate and lucky though to have a husband and family who do listen (or put up with my over sensitivity) and to them I am very grateful.

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Nov 23rd 2003Uncategorized

1. List five things you’d like to accomplish by the end of the year.
1) My stats test.
2) My stats final.
3) My assessment write up.
4) My assessment paper.
5) My physiology paper.
6) My physiology final.

Somewhere in there, throw in cleaning and Christmas shopping.

2. List five people you’ve lost contact with that you’d like to hear from again.
Three people from the tween years, one from Wales, and one from my past life (:

3. List five things you’d like to learn how to do.
Downhill skiing, yoga, floor tiling, painting and meditation.

4. List five things you’d do if you won the lottery (no limit).
1) Pay off my student loans
2) Build a house (a uniquely designed log cabin in the woods and on a lake. Dirt roads, weeping willows and pines. Hot tub, fireplace, skylights, window seats, open spaces, cozy spaces, and a secret passageway)
3) Travel
4) Donate to a worthy cause
5) Buy a suit made of velcro, a wall made of velcro, and a trampoline.

5. List five things you do that help you relax.
Read, watch movie/TV, run, IM people, and heckle Steve.

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Nov 22nd 2003Uncategorized

My car was in need of gas last night. I stopped at a nearby gas station and set the pump on automatic (always great when they have that) and stood shivering and thoroughly bored in the cold night air as the tank filled. My wandering attention caught a warning sign posted on the island and because I was bored, I read it. There was your general no smoking, inhaling gas vapors causes mutation and cancer, etc, etc. Then the next line read “Discharge your static electricity.” They recommend that you touch something metallic before pumping gas, otherwise your static electricity could ignite the gas vapors and cause an explosion.

This was news to me. I’ve never ever heard of anyone going up in a fiery ball while pumping gas because they did not discharge their static electricity. In my ignorance, I was risking my life every time I approached a gas pump. Especially if I was wearing a wool sweater.

Steve took Casper to the vet today. He has pink eye (hence the squinting) and will need eye drops for a week. After that we might finally be able to tell what color his eyes are. Today Aschi tackled him in a bear hug and they rolled across the rug. She also cornered him and pinned him down with her arms. I never knew cats did such things.

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Nov 20th 2003Uncategorized

All you have to do is look at Casper, and he starts purring. He is also crazy. He runs around the place with the manic energy that one would think could only be drug induced. He really needs his own music. The music from Super Mario Brothers, World 1-1, would be effective, complete with jumping and brick-bopping sound effects.

When the cats are not chasing each other back and forth (with Aschi’s tags going tinkle-tinkle-tinkle and Casper’s little collar bell going ding-ding-ding) they put their noses together and smell each other’s breath. This looks a lot like a long kiss. They also spend time observing each other in the litterbox, which is a little perturbing. I think they should put a close up of Casper and Aschi cheek-to-cheek over a bowl of “Good Friends” cereal.

Keeping our place organized is a never ending battle that we’re always on the verge of losing. Neither of us are the type to neatly clean up and put away anything we do. The mound of shoes on the hallway floor is always growing, the mail pile on the counter could create a small forest if it could be re-delegated into its original form (which would be great if it could do that). We’re pretty good about sorting it right when it’s brought in and the junk mail goes in the recycle bin and bills into the purposeful bill-sorter. But it’s the mail that we know is important or relevant (like bank statements), which we need to keep but don’t need to open right now that sit around and pile up for days on end, forming secret alliances with mail order catalogues and spreading to any available countertop space.

Most of the time I don’t really notice the clutter and chaos, but on days when I’m stressed, when I’ve had a long day at work and papers and tests are looming in school, I become acutely sensitive to the clutter in our apartment. The environment reflects my state of mind and it’s more than I can stand. This past weekend I took a big clothes basket and went around throwing in it all the crap sitting around our place. Junk mail, recipes, water bottles, Easter and Halloween items, old pictures, Nerf football, magazines, cloth napkins, tests, papers and notes, a box of schtuff from my last job…

Now our place is looking pretty good, except for that basket and box sitting in the middle of the living room floor, a mini-mountain of crap. There are also several piles spread around the carpet, from Steve’s initial attempt at organizing it. We’ll get to it.. sometime.

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Nov 17th 2003Uncategorized

Got some big bad studded snow tires that sound like heavy rainfall on the concrete. All right, Old Man Winter, do your worst.

Steve and I went grocery shopping last night. Each time I come across a certain particular product at the grocery store, I feel more annoyed by it. This particular product is a cereal called “Good Friends” and it can only be found in the organic food aisle. Not only is the name and supposed organicness obnoxious, but the close up of two big overly wholesome faces smiling cheek-to-cheek over the cereal bowl is really annoying. What the hell kind of friends are they? Since when do you eat organic cereal first thing in the morning with a friend in your kitchen? When you are in a situation like that with a “friend”, it is under much more suspect and less wholesome circumstances than these cheeky people would ever be in.

Just thought I’d put that out there.

As I was driving through Middlebury tonight, I realized it was another location that embodied a historical intersection of my life. There are a handful of places like this and whenever I pass through one I experience so many disparate memories coming together in this one place. There something very affirming about it, as if there is more purpose in our lives than we may know or understand.

For example, Middlebury, Vermont. I first went to Middlebury with my Dad in the spring of ‘96 to interview with the admissions office at Middlebury College. Afterwards my Dad went back to the hotel and I drove around the town and the campus by myself, envisioning my life in college. I went up a hill and suddenly and unexpectedly I was on a dirt road and the scene was so breath taking I pulled over to the side of the road. I stopped across from a white farmhouse with a weeping willow tree out front and cows grazing out back. Evening was falling and the dark indigo sky paled down to the pink horizon. A bright full moon was rising above the purple mountains. Out from under the weeping willow, two pure white geese came walking, padding over the dirt road in webbed feet. And so, in that way I fell in love with Vermont.

I returned to Middlebury several more times without planning to- with friends from Silver Bay to eat at the Dog Team Tavern, a tournament at the college when I played tennis for Hamilton. And tonight, here I was, 25 and married and on my way to my first reassessment visit for a new job, driving through Middlebury.

I felt a jolt of pure joy. Life is good.

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Nov 12th 2003Uncategorized

I read in the paper at work that there will be a full lunar eclipse on Saturday night. I got all excited about it but then totally forgot about it. I was stunned into remembrance when we stepped out into the clear cold night and I looked up and the moon was a quiet dull red. A while later the shadow had completely passed over the face of the moon. If I hadn’t read about it in the paper I probably would have gone back inside and prepared for the end of the world. I can’t imagine how they must have reacted a thousand years ago when there was no daily paper to explain when and why a lunar eclipse was going to happen.

I ran a five miler today. The 30 degree air was shockingly cold but I felt warm by the first mile. In the distance I could see snow on Mt Mansfield. The run wasn’t bad but I could feel the effects of not running regularly since the marathon. I passed a single fluffy blue slipper, embroidered with a moon and star, lying by the side of the road. How some of these things end up by the side of the road is one of the more perplexing questions in life. Left over from an odd lunar eclipse ritual perhaps.

Speaking of perplexion, we went to see the Matrix Revolutions. This is a movie where you need to congregate into study groups afterwards to try to make sense of it. I felt disappointed with the ending and felt like something was missing. However, after some thinking I came up with a theory that makes me feel better about the whole thing. The special effects and stunts in the movie were phenomenal though.

Is tomorrow really Monday already?

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Nov 9th 2003Uncategorized

Casper, or “The Noodle” as he is known in certain circles, tossed his Friskies several times this morning, mostly on various parts of our living room carpet. Cats have an uncanny ability to “hork” on the carpet and to avoid easy to clean bare floors. There is only a 30 second or so window of opportunity when they begin to hint of what is about to come. The few times that I have actually been there when this happens, I seize the cat and run. I have been successful in getting them to the nearest litter box or linoleum just in the nick of time. However this is few and far in between as our cats tend to do this in the middle of the night or when we’re not around.

Ah, the perils of pet ownership.

I was in Borders yesterday and when I saw this
at the cash register. I could not resist buying it. How can you not?

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Nov 8th 2003Uncategorized