No emotions.

This is rad. I am so overmedicated on so many different things that I feel nothing. I mean I can feel my fingers on the keyboard but I can't feel sad or upset or worried or anything else. I can't get angry. It's certainly new for a person who usually has so many emotions that I have been known, in the past, to have to export them in the form of high fructose corn syrup. I grade a packet of very bad thesis statements and have no emotions. I have long conversations with people whom, intellectually, I know I am unhappy with, and I have no emotions.

I have known one or two people in the past few years who I think lack the capacity to feel real emotions toward other people. I've always wondered what their lives are like. Is it like this -- static, nothing? Now I see how content they must be, how they must not realize when they are being cruel or inconsiderate, or more likely just not care. Of course I think I have always known that, even before this.

Tonight is the first night of my sleeping pills. They say I might get up in the night and do things I won't remember, like "make and eat food," "drive automobiles," and "have sex." Since there are no automobiles around here that I own, and "break into automobiles and take off at high speeds" was not on the list of things I might do, I think I'm pretty safe from that one. We'll see about the others. I'm padlocking all the ice cream and penises in the apartment, just in case. FYI, there aren't any (c.f. last night's total ice cream consumption. Guess I ate all the penises, too? -- since there don't seem to be any of those, either).

Tonight's plans involve giving myself my Humira shot and taking the sleeping pill, after maybe another two or three papers to grade. It should be nice to sleep. Last night I lay awake alternately reading and marveling at how little I cared about things, which was strangely pleasant; I think the allure would quickly wear off, however. It's interesting how long I've waited not to care about certain people, certain things, and now that it's here it's just as wonderful as I thought it would be.

me monster.

Early bird gets the worm, as well as other items.

By 5 p.m. today I had consumed probably 1500 calories, more than I'm supposed to have in a day. It started easylike, egg and bread. Eaaasy now. Then, maybe 90 minutes later, there was some tuna fish. Crackers. Water. God so thirsty. So much water. Gallons of water. Raisins. (I know. Raisins not allowed.) Applesauce. Crackers. Applesauce. When I went to pick up some new medications I also got a lot of orange tic-tacs (thanks, Abby, for the inspiration). Can't someone live on orange tic-tacs? Abby does, sort of. Maybe lemurs do. As everyone knows, what lemurs do is a very good indication of how we should live our lives.

Then the shit hit the fan. For dinner I ate a chicken breast and a pint of ice cream. You read that right. No babies 2009, and I ate a pint of ice cream for dinner. Plus chicken. Uh, mixed. Yeah, mixed in. I promise you I'm not pregnant. They tested me three times in the hospital. Can't trust you as far as they can throw you, apparently (which is significantly less far after that ice cream). Me Beowulf. Me monster.

So, two things happened:

1. I called my doctor and declared that I needed an amendment. I can't do this much prednisone so slowly. First of all because it's disintegrating my bones. I can't sleep. I'm eating like crazy. I'll kill myself with the Largeness this way. They'll have to grease down the CalTrain so I can get to work. ("There she blows, the chicken ice cream girl! Haaaalt the traaaain! Cleeear the biiike raaacks!") So we agreed I'd taper the medicine a bit more quickly, about a week ahead of schedule. It will still take me through May to come off of the drug completely, but the decline will be a bit steeper.

Imagine if you were a kid and you could call your doctor and say, "I can't do this." Imagine if you had that kind of agency. When I was nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, older, I filled my pockets, my desk drawers, my socks with drugs that I pretended to consume every morning. Eventually my mother found them and I knew I had ruined more than just my intestines. Imagine if I could have said something. I hate the way medicine treats kids, like they don't know what they need, like their bodies are not smart.

2. This was unrelated. I got an e-mail from the editor of one of the magazines where my stories is published. A big-time writer wrote to him to tell me that I'm "the real McCoy"! Apparently he was "blown away"! (To where? Where is he now? Where did he blow to? It could not have been far.) What could all that mean? I'm definitely not any kind of McCoy, least of all real. But this makes me feel excited. Or is that just the prednisone?

Right now The Other Crohn is playing with his band at a bar at the end of my block. I considered going there just to see what Healthy Crohns are doing these days, then remembered that he stood me up for dinner twice in a row in February and I just got out of the hospital and have no place in a bar. I imagine myself sitting in the back wearing dark sunglasses drinking water and trying not to be seen. Then if he saw me I would have to explain why I was there, wearing sunglasses, drinking water. Except even though there seems to be this inexplicable unfriendliness between us I have a feeling I would also not have to explain. I do not feel unfriendly. I feel friendly and I am happy for him and would like to see him rock.

Please tell me what other Healthy Crohns are doing right now. I would like to know. Go on, speak up.

on the reappearance of old medications and their effects

I haven't been on this much prednisone since I was a kid. I remember going to sleep at night after my first hospitalization and just thinking about breakfast. I couldn't fall asleep I was so hungry. I dreamt of every food I could think of, and when I woke up in the morning my stomach was a hole. I would try to get downstairs early so my parents couldn't see me dumping two packets of oatmeal instead of one into my bowl. ("Do we really need that much oatmeal? Isn't that more than we need?") No, it was not more than we needed. By ten a.m. at school I could have eaten fifty more bowls of oatmeal, at least. My body was tiny and my face was huge, blimpine. Then my body was blimpine, too. The kids at school called me Kara the Chipmunk and threw acorns at me. I secured my shorts at the waist with a safety pin. If they poked my stomach and asked me to say "Hoo hoo," I said it.

I am so hungry I can barely contain myself, but now that I'm older (approximately 19 years older -- weird) I know that just because I'm starving doesn't mean I can eat. Still I lay awake all night (impossible to sleep on 50 mg of prednisone per day) thinking about what I could possibly eat the next day, and when, and how. Carbohydrates particularly, because they are easy to digest. I am not very moody this time around; I think my body knows and loves the steroids and is happy to have them back. My face is getting big and sometimes I cry, but my face was big to begin with and sometimes I cried anyway. It will be like this only until the end of May, and that's not very long, considering that I'm going to live to be 100.



I'm back on very high doses of cipro, too -- the antibiotic I stopped over the summer because it was ruining my tendons. It's supposed to help clear up the abscess. And flagyl as well, in very high doses, although it burns going down and sometimes makes you throw up. It is one of those grainy pills that dissolves in your mouth. My legs don't hurt yet. It is the calm before the storm.

The humira shots are every week now, if the insurance will agree, and I have pain medication, too, except I refuse to take unless under duress. I know my friends like pain medication for recreation. Maybe it would be fun. But if you take pain medication when you're in pain, how do you know you won't be in more pain later and really need the pain medication? I feel like pain medication is for when you are desperate, when you are on the verge of something. Otherwise you're just crying wolf. I will take the medication when I am down on the floor and unable to come up. Then I will know I am using it correctly.

Magical Majkin is coming over to see me and I am hoping maybe we will make banana bread. I am grading. I am sitting here grading because that is my job, to grade. I am grading and trying to be calm about grading. I will not give myself any more ulcers. I will grade like the Buddha. I will think about banana bread and grow large just from the thoughts.

in which your correspondent makes the proverbial Peep

Oh, you thought I was going to, like, lay down and die. You thought I was done. There is no quitting here, Crohns, only adjusting. Live every week like it's Shark Week.

From Deep Sea News

This was one of the best weeks of my life (except for each annual Shark Week) and I want to tell you why.

Last night I was at Michelle and Nate's wedding. They're married now. I watched them walk around and talk to people afterward, and they looked as happy as I have ever seen them. It was an honor to be part of their wedding and part of their happiness, just as it's an honor to be their friend every day. Your friends and your family are all you have. Being there with them last night was a privilege I would have broken out of the hospital for. And because of them, and their help -- and the amazing help of Juan, The Bay, and several other very generous friends -- I didn't have to.

I'm still very sick and what comes next will be strange and difficult. But I want what comes next, whatever it is.

Below, a small photojournal of my time in the hospital. It's not complete and the pictures are not very good, because all I had was my phone.

Toward the beginning, after they'd started exploding veins but before they were done. Plus some hott knees. Bonus. You can also see the vomit bin. That got some action. Why don't they make them bigger? Never underestimate the power of Rock.

Inexplicable. Thanks, bland diets everywhere.

On the day before they left for Arizona to get married, Nate and Michelle came to the hospital and brought me some underwear. While there, they drew some dinosaurs on my whiteboard. One had braces. Okay.

This whole sharps container is full of needles they used to explode the veins. Sorry, Mother Earth. Pay you back.

Self-portrait with 1st IV, before the vein calcified. Pinstripes are the new black.

They brought me food even though I wasn't supposed to eat. There you see some apple juice, jello, and other things. In the background you can see the gallon of GoLightly Colonoscopy Prep they made me drink. I only managed a third of it but there was nothing in my intestine so I didn't get in trouble. Stuff makes you feel terrible. Dinos in background.

This is me today. Bad lighting, but you can get the idea just on this one arm. I rename this block Hematoma City.

your hospital correspondent, part 4

I been sprung, motherfuckers.

After six days, I convinced them I had to go home because I'm going to be the maid of honor in Michelle and Nate's wedding on Saturday, and my flight to Arizona is tomorrow. That's right! Hospital today, airplane tomorrow. I was released on, for lack of a more medical term, very stern parole. So out I went in my street clothes with my forty ulcers and my intestinal abcess and my severe colonic damage, and most importantly the help of superhero Juan and our family friend Jeanne. Where did we go, straight from the hospital? To find shoes for me to wear in Michelle and Nate's wedding. I still had gauze all over me. I don't want to embarrass them at the wedding, though. I best look right. I bought the first pair I saw.

I have about 60% use of my right arm where the IV went bad in the wrist and the vein has calcified. The left arm is bruises from the fingers up to the elbow, but stronger. Bruises on the stomach and upper leg from the blood thinners and the extra Humira shots, so I'm hoping no one tries to sit on my lap or head-butt me (you'd be suprised; I have energetic friends). I am eating primarily turkey sandwiches, plain with nothing on them, on white bread. I am on six different drugs, including narcotics for pain. In the shoe store people spoke to me like I was normal.

I guess I'm happy to be out. I'm thrilled Michelle and Nate are getting married. I'm more than honored to be a part of it. I can't wait to see their rad families and dogs and help with whatever I can. But I also know I might not have been ready to leave the hospital. And I know I'm not better and I'm not going to get better, not for a long time. I have to quit my job and find a new one. I have to fight my instinct to "seem okay" all the time. I understand that it's never been this serious before -- it's just that I envision myself explaining to complete strangers "I can't do that" or "I have to sit down" and I feel like everything I've worked for would dissolve in that instant.

That's not me. I'm Always Okay. I Don't Make a Peep. What about our rep, Crohns? What about doing everything they can do and more? I think the worst symptom of all is starting to realize that I can't. I'm not them. I'm not healthy people. I saw those pictures from my colonoscopy. Five months ago I was fine and now it looks like it's been through a rototiller. I've never seen so many ulcers in my life. Actually, have I ever seen an ulcer? Maybe on House, MD, but then I had Hugh Laurie to distract me. Abcesses are dangerous and can kill you if you don't treat them. I guess the idea is that we may be Always Okay, but our bodies aren't. I think it's going to be a hard project to internalize that fact.

your hospital correspondent, part 3

Getting wheeled through the hospital is truly an adventure. First of all it feels like you are going a thousand miles an hour, mostly because you have been basically motionless for all the time leading up to it. And secondly, the world is out there: On the ground floor, on the way to endoscopy, there is a cafe and people in street clothes are eating and drinking things. It's like a totally different ecosystem. You know those rides at Disney World where you get in and the room rocks around and on the big screen you careen around platelets and over bones and stuff, and it's called something like Journey Through the Human Body!? It's like that. We actually did pass a model of a platelet behind glass. I'm not making that up.

That was about where the fun ended, because when I got to endoscopy yesterday morning I almost immediately learned that my IV had gone bad. It was already 3 days old, but nothing was going through. They tried to push. I made a small sound. (I'm trying for our good rep, Crohns. I am.) Push. Small sound. They had to make a new one. Very small sound small sound small sound.

They put me to sleep (unique last words: "I don't think I'm falling asleep") and did the colonoscopy. I was only half-awake when my doctor came out to say things to Juan and me. I will spare you the details but what they found was very bad in there. And not in the way that finding the Finnish army in there would be bad.

I came back up to my room for about an hour where they started me drinking the prep stuff for the MRE that makes you throw up. I was still knocked out from the drugs from the colonoscopy so it was hard to drink, and my wrist vein, where my old IV had been, was starting to harden, so it was not elegantly (or completely) done. Soon another person came to wheel me on another Journey Through the Human Body! down to the MRE.

I don't remember much of the MRE because I was still so confused from the drugs from earlier. I remember that for once I liked being in that claustrophobic tube because maybe I could sleep. You have to hold your breath for ten seconds at a time, then breathe for two, then hold for ten, breathe for two, over and over. It's not enough time to catch your breath, particularly if you spent the previous night drinking solution that voids your guts, are still drugged, and have just imbibed more solution that makes you want to throw up. It occurred to me that if you died in there and stopped breathing they'd just be thrilled because they could take pictures uninterruptedly.

Well, here's the kicker. How will they treat all this? They'll ultimately do it by decreasing the amount of time between my shots, giving me twice as many. And in the meantime, they'll give me 40 grams of PREDNISONE as well as CIPRO in addition to another antibiotic and some other stuff. That's right: The bad-for-you stuff that I took for 17 years and had to do everything under the sun to finally stop taking. I'm going to load up on that stuff like never before.

I understand that I am very, very sick and that abcesses are dangerous. I do not want to lose my colon. But I also know that two months of that much prednisone will make me sick in other ways. You don't sleep on that stuff. You sweat your life out. Your bones disintegrate. You scream at people, you sob. Your face becomes huge and doughy. You're hungry all the time. People start to say things to you like, You look so healthy! and What a good eater you are! and pinch your cheeks and aren't you cute and you're just like the Pillsbury Doughboy! Will you say "hoo-hoo" for me? Will you? Go on, say Hoo-hoo! But you are not healthy. You are managing a symptom. You are creating new ones. You might think that people are only condescending to children but it isn't true.

I followed all the rules so I wouldn't have to go back on these drugs. Well, all the rules except for one: I worked like a maniac. You aren't supposed to work like a maniac. I like breaking that rule. It shows me that I'm healthy. At least that's what I thought it showed me.

your hospital correspondent, part 2

i "did" the prep for the colonoscopy. there is a gallon jug of shitstorm express acidwater they delivered here at 2 p.m., and in unusual not-live-by-letter-of-law fashion, only 1/3 of that is gone. i tried my best, but it's a gallon. they gave me a shot for anti-nausea that was apparently just for kicks ("thank you!" i said docilely -- i'm trying to get us back in good standing, crohns, after my rude display of unhappiness when they blew up my veins). i think the intestinal coast, so to speak, is pretty clear. i mean, i haven't eaten significantly in 3 weeks. still, i can't help but be terrified of not following directions perfectly. it's this thing i have.

surprise! fan favorite juan unexpectedly arrived from ohio tonight to help me. juan, being my mother, has spent more time in hospitals with me than anyone else. the bay has been an outstanding babysitter (rewind to last night with the bay holding bits of hair away while i violently vomited into what was essentially a coffee cup, then did it again) but it is nice to have juan here.

i want to say something about the bureaucracy in here but typing is too hard. soon. i bet any of you could write that paragraph for me ten times over based on your own hospital lives and times.

tomorrow: day 4! didn't god make, like, wildebeests on that day? needles in the wherever-they-want-to-explode, anesthesia up the line, and a tube up my ass by 9, hopefully. monday! cue cyndi lauper.

your hospital correspondent

first of all, please excuse my poor typing and my brevity. i only can type with one hand. i am in the hospital! see how hilarious and topsy-turvy life is? o-ho! it just makes me want to throw back my head and laugh like a delicate freaking bell.

my hall is crazy! one dude tried to escape! one went wack and threatened a nurse's life and they had to call psych. me? i'm boring. i won't even accept their vicodin. got to stay sharp, you know. they exploded seven of my veins on the first day trying to get the i.v. in. i was not your homey then. i did not represent us well. when they blew up all my veins i cried like my life depended on it. i screamed. it went on for like 90 minutes. three separate people tried the explodings. they are on the insides and outsides of my wrists and hands and in the middle of my forearms and the crooks of my arms and the sides. and i'm sorry, but look, i had to cry. in the morning they came back and did three more. on my chart they wrote i'm difficult because i cried when my veins blew up. i guess i was supposed to break into an upbeat musical selection. it's... beeee... ginning to look a lot like chrrrristmas! no, that would've been weird, too.

in an hour i start the prep for my colonoscopy. yeah, like the colonoscopy i had in october. it makes you shit and vomit -- you probably know. the c-scope is in the morning. they'll put me under. when i wake up they'll take me somewhere to prep for my mre. that's where you drink more stuff that makes you vomit. then they stick you in a very small hole (like a bad, claustrophobic rabbit!) and put some contrast in your i.v.

and then, they tell me, maybe, i can end this nonsense. that's good! because i have a wedding to be in in under a week (!) and a tonne of grading to do. i hear you don't need veins to grade.

daily excitement

Today I have made a lot of tea. Tea has become one of my favorite foods, because it is warm, it is liquid, and you can put sugar in it (=calories). I have a very friendly teapot. I don't think I'll ever go back to the other kind. It's glass, so you can see what's happening in there. Good god what is happening in there what is happening in your teapot. You should find out.

Yes, I watched a pot boil. Not like I have nothing else to do (the Sisyphusian grading, naturally, continues). But if you hunch very close to the pot boiling it is sort of warm over there. And you can see the skeins of warm snaking through the rest of the water. It looks sort of marbled, like fat. The range begins to rattle. This is getting extremely exciting. (You can see how much excitement I've had of late.) Small bubbles emerge.

What is most fantastic about watching a pot boil water is the promise of automatic fulfillment: that you know no matter what, if you stand there long enough, the water will get hot, produce bubbles, reach fulfillment, scream its lungs out, and so on. I like to turn the heat off before the pot begins to scream because I have always been the sort who wants to leave something to the imagination.

lucky.

Very early this morning, or sometime during the past few days when I wasn't leaving the Fort, something timely occurred. I found it as I was leaving the Fort this afternoon, at last.

In my mailbox were the galleys of "An Inpatient's Book of Days," my oldest story. It is the story I wrote about what it is really like in the hospital. It has been rejected thirty-eight times. Today I signed the contract, and it is going to be published in a couple of months in the summer prize issue of the Mississippi Review. The galleys are so beautiful with their typeface, and the title, and the perfect even kerning and the running head and feet. There are page numbers and wide margins. They look like a published thing. I sat down in the stoop and cried. It was partly because I was exhausted from coming down the stairs (such exercise!), en route to help; maybe because I haven't eaten or drank much in the past four days; because all I seem to do is sleep and throw up; but it was also because it was what I always knew it would feel like, even though other writers told me it would feel like nothing. "It's not a big deal," they told me, "getting your stories published, especially after the first one." But it felt better than when I had my first publication. It felt better than anything, better than cold saline through your line. I think I hadn't realized this was the one thing I really wanted -- to see this story, hospital-bound, anuses and blood and vomit and feces, in a magazine that someone would read besides us, the Crohns. It was the exact kind of moment that has historically made it difficult for me to get a date.

I wrote the first draft when I was nineteen years old. It was the first story I ever wrote. It has gone through about forty or fifty drafts since then. When I wrote it I seemed to think it was important that people understand the distance between sick and well, the enormous inevitable distance between yourself and someone healthy, even if they loved you, even if they were trying to help you, if they were touching you or even inside you. Even if they were trained to fix you.

One thing I have learned in the past eight years, even as I have been editing and changing and sending out and getting extremely worried over this terrifyingly difficult-to-place story, is that the distance is narrower than I thought. I have learned that help is not a power dynamic; that not-help is.

The idea was that sick people have their own ecosystem, unconnected to that of healthy people. It isn't true, of course; Darwin would be happy to tell you so. Nor is our emotional ecosystem separate; it can't be.

Despite these revelations, if you can call them that, the hospital hasn't changed in these years. It is still here, beeping and wiping and reeking of sterile alcohol and voices kept down. It is still here, but we're lucky to have it. I feel luckier now than I did then, although I was lucky then, too. To be sick in a closed system, no matter what your situation, is almost impossible. It's not the true story.

from the crohn's annals. (not a spelling mistake.)

So, I'm real sick. Like, can't-sit-up-by-self sick. Can't keep food or water down. Bad-situation sick.

But well enough to talk to you. Hi.

At this moment I am supposed to be lecturing to a group of twenty-eight college students about acknowledgment and response, and as you can see, I am not there. I can't tell you how disgusted this makes me. Nothing disgusts me more than someone who doesn't do their job. But I can't sit up by myself, you see. Makes lecturing (and commuting five hours on public transit) sort of hard.

Last night around 1 a.m. The Bay got off work and brought me some ginger ale. I didn't drink any of it, just went to sleep. This morning, however, as soon as my eyes opened, I thought: Grading. Lecture notes over e-mail to students. Freelance. Packet to submit to department to explain why I'm not a schmo. Grading. Grading. Grading.

This is exactly the mentality/lifestyle, according to the medical professionals, that got me so sick in the first place. Yesterday on the phone with Juan, becoming stupid and weepy, I declared that my deepest fear was that I truly could not handle what normal people handle, could not work as hard as other people.
"But you work harder than most other people," said Juan. "Let's say you tried working at a usual kind of job." Since Juan is also a teacher, and my mother, she can say crazy things like this.

Nevertheless, morning had broken and I wanted a shower. I was convinced I could do this alone. I pulled myself up against the wall and got out of bed. I hobbled into the bathroom. While the water was heating up, I tried something daring. I drank about an ounce of The Bay's ginger ale.

I haven't kept any food or liquids down since Saturday night, but I thought, Ginger ale! Soothes the stomach! Good for you! I don't know if you knew this, but ginger ale is just, like, high fructose corn syrup, water, and some carbonation. Totally not good for you.

Partway through the shower I realized I was going to pass out.
"Help!" I called. "Help! [Insert The Bay's real name here]!" (What, you thought his mother named him The Bay?)
But he didn't hear me. (I wasn't shouting very loudly.)
"Help!" I called. What a douche I am. I fell. I fell right on my elbow and there was a crack.
All of a sudden I realized I was going to vomit.
Things were not going well.

I got out of the shower, soap still in my hair, holding my elbow (it seems it's just been badly bruised, and what was cracked, bless its rented heart, was the tub -- me elbow be strong!), and started vomiting up the ounce of ginger ale into the toilet. I don't know if you've ever tried to vomit when you only have an ounce in your stomach, but all kinds of things come up. Blood, bile. Shampoo was dripping into the toilet bowl too. I was completely wet and it was freezing out there. This is when The Bay appeared in the doorway.

"Jesus," he said.
"Help," I said.

Somehow eventually the shower got finished and I got back into the bed. The Bay dressed me. I couldn't lift my head. I talked to the doctor.
"Help," I said.
We had had plans, plans that included an IV, and then it turned out there wasn't room for me.

The Bay went to the Walgreens and came back with orange Gatorade, yellow Gatorade, and a loaf of Sara Lee white bread with pictures of High School Musical on it. He sat on the side of the bed and ate the crusts off of three pieces of bread, like a rabbit.
"Why are you eating the crusts off?" I asked.
"They're heavy," he said. "Bad for you. I mean, I'm hungry. Actually, I don't know."
I managed some bread innards and about three ounces of Gatorade.
"Nature's nectar!" The Bay, who was missing an hour of work to feed me Gatorade, encouraged. Upon trying some himself he declared it horrible. Gatorade is horrible, no question.

Now I am lying in my bed but sitting up. I did throw up the bread and Gatorade, but I feel a little better. I think I will try to keep eating bread and Gatorade, and throwing it up. Maybe some of it is getting in. In the meantime, grading freelance grading grading grading. A tiger cannot change its stripes immediately, after all. In the meantime, perhaps I will acquire access to a needle and a bag of saline somewhere.

turtles on a beach.

The ideal life of the Crohn is supposed to be like a Bob Marley song. At its peak, it may approach Bobby McFerrin. An animated music video ought to spring freely from it -- something involving turtles with dreadlocks on a beach, waves lapping; turtles dancing, singing. It is supposed to be placid, stress-free, since stress can trigger a flare, or worse. Who and where are the Crohns who lead this Bobby McFerrin life? Are they babies? I am pretty sure they are babies.

Since I know I am supposed to do my best, I am grading mountains of papers while wearing a hat. A hat keeps the heat in your head; I've heard that. It's important because heat escapes through the head, especially when grading papers. I have also applied some large, gummy patches to the insides of mouth, where the infamous Crohn's Cyst has taken up residence. At first I was delighted to surmise that it might be an STD -- you know, something normal people get! -- but I went to the doctor and it isn't. Sadly, it isn't contagious or penis-oriented at all. It's just from Crohn's. When I asked how long it would take to go away (it had already been there for a month), I learned that "without treatment" it would take another month. So I have applied this gummy patch that tastes like menthol, like the cigarettes some of us (not me!) used to smoke during our sophomore year of college because they "enlivened while freshening the breath."

I moved from real food to Ensure yesterday after losing a lot of blood. But now I can't keep the Ensure down, either. I keep falling asleep on the papers, all of which have to be graded by tomorrow. I am staring at my freelance project, also due tomorrow. And the report of why my university should rehire me, which they already aren't going to, also due tomorrow. I made myself some tea and threw up the tea. Turtles on a beach turtles on a beach turtles on a beach. TURTLES ON A BEACH! TURTLES ON A BEACH! Something tells me I'm not getting the cadence right.

How are we supposed to be turtles on a beach when we live in the real world, when the real world is what we're trying to live in? There is this exercise I do with my students in fiction class to generate ideas. I have them write down all the people they can think of, people they know. People they know marginally and people they know very well. The exercise itself moves on; they choose some of the people, generate details, speech patterns, anecdote. I have a list like this too, with no notes on it. Just the people I know. Not for writing fiction. But I only write down the ones I like. I keep it in my underwear drawer, next to my bed. When I have sixty-six papers to grade and a freelance project to do and a three-hour lecture to write, all in eight hours, I take out the piece of paper and I stare at it.

There is always a reason not to crawl back in bed. There is always a reason to simultaneously keep trying to be a turtle on a beach, and to keep trying to live in the real world, even though it seems like these goals are perpetually at odds.

isn't the right thing to do, or the misappropriation of theme songs.

Just before I left for That City Where I Teach yesterday morning, A. suggested a theme song. It was supposed to be a theme song for her, but I considered appropriating it, as we are wont to appropriate each other's theme songs with relative freedom. It's been a while since I've had a theme song other than my usual one (Toto novices may wish to click here for some background information on why it's always important to "Hold the Line" (hint: love isn't always on time)), but to be truthful it's also been a while since a new or additional one seemed appropriate.

I always sang the chorus of this song to people with frantic annoyingness when they failed to agree with me. You can go your own way! (and then holding the same note) ...Motherfucker! It always seemed to make sense.



But yesterday I listened to it. Did anyone else know that this is a breakup song? I did not know that. You can GO YOUR OWN WAY. GO YOUR OWN W-A-A-Y. I am seriously always the slowest douche on the block.

Which makes it the perfect theme song for me right now.

Lately I feel like I've been breaking up with myself over and over again. I used to joke that I was my own boyfriend (making BYOB, Be Your Own Boyfriend, all the easier), and people would laugh. I think there are some people who are always their own boyfriend, no matter the situation, and I am one of these people. I feel this way a lot on the train. I feel this way when I am walking down the street with my hands holding the straps of my backpacks, especially when the backpack is heavy. I feel this way when I hear music coming out of a car on the street. I have some excellent friends and an even more excellent family. It's not like I'm lonely. But sometimes I can't help but shake the feeling that when I arrive somewhere, I am not just showing up but also bringing myself along, like I'm my own date. It goes without saying that everywhere I go, myself also, you know, comes along or whatever. Clingy boyfriend.

I think I've made about eighteen different resolutions in the past year, and all of them involved pressing some kind of RESET button and trying to get myself to straighten up, fly right. You should not have to press RESET that many times in such a short span. These are the breakups. I will work harder! Make better choices! Cut this or that behavior out completely! Feel this way or that way! Don't feel what you feel! Starting now! Go!

I wish I could say that the first moments of that slip back out of the resolution are always terrible and disappointing, but more often there is something comforting about them -- the story file open when I promised myself I'd do nothing but grade for twenty-four hours; the banned feeling slipping back in; the decisions that become difficult from being easy, and then easy again, and then difficult and back. Because much like when -- I hear -- one's actual, external boyfriend does something unpleasant but also characteristic, there is something about it that makes you glad it is still them you are knowing, and not just some them-shaped RESET trying to take their place.

But Fleetwood Mac seems so philosophical about it all, so resolved. Will I ever feel so blithe about the failings of my BYOB? Will I ever get to the point that I, Lindsey-like, will be able to just shrug and say "How can I ever change things that I feel?"?

Probably it would be a good idea to start accurately interpreting song lyrics first, and to stop adding held-note "motherfucker"s to the end of each line.

RIP duck & shitbrella

Hi. Hey. Over here. Yeah. That's me, the barely visible gurgling speck beneath the eight-hundred pages of freelance, twenty-eight student papers on video games, twenty-eight student essay journals, twenty-one student poetry journals, and unwritten three-hour lecture to be given... when? Oh, tomorrow. Hi! Welcome! Do come closer.

Today, despite this sizzling fiesta of work, I somehow decided to take a one-hour break to let Rudy cut my hair. Rudy's hair-cutting zone is sort of like an indoor jungle, loaded with painted wooden faces on the walls, beads, palm trees, and gold-rimmed photo frames. Josh was there, too, because he's on worker comp after having hurt his back on the job this week. Josh sat in the chair and watched my hair get cut while we talked about Oakland, where they are looking for a house, and Phoenix, where we will all imminently go for Michelle and Nate's wedding. I needed my hair cut because a) I'm going to be in that wedding, and b) I look like a bird of prey shat on my head and then made a sand castle out of what was produced. It was pouring down rain while I was walking there.

I lost my beloved umbrella, The Duck, on the BART last week on the way to work. Upon realizing my mistake (unprecedented!) I frantically called the BART police from my office phone while a student waited in the doorway, no doubt extremely amused. But: Silly me! The BART police are too busy shooting innocent people in the stations to help me find my lost duck. ("It's... umbrella shaped... it has a duck head...") I thought about what a full life The Duck had led, from its origins in Maryland to its end in Millbrae. (Millbrae! Good God, the injustice!) The Duck had gone to high school with me and had endured sad, wet trips on buses to and from tennis matches. It sat for some time in my parents' dark hallway closet filled with coats (whose coats? so many coats! who could they possibly belong to?). It even spent two months kept prisoner in the trunk of S.'s car last spring, where he forgot it week after week until I announced he wasn't welcome Fortside unless he finally had duck with him. That's how much I loved him. The duck, I mean.

So I was walking to Rudy's with the Backup Umbrella, a shit-colored thing I bought at Walgreens last year when David F. was visiting and we got caught in a downpour. We bought matching shit umbrellas then. Today the Backup Shitbrella, prompted by a small gust of wind and not bolstered by the presence of David F.'s Twin Shitbrella, delicately split in two. I stood there for a few minutes on the sidewalk getting soaked. It started to feel sort of good. Here I was, out on the sidewalk, getting soaked. It was afternoon. All the work was inside. The papers were inside. The manuscripts were inside. My lecture, yet unborn, was inside. I stood there until I realized I was going to be late for Rudy, and pneunomia hasn't gotten me out of anything good yet.

So I have this new dumb umbrella that I got on the way. It's purple, and it has hearts on it. Red hearts. It was the only one in the only store I could find selling umbrellas for less than the contents of my entire savings account.

In other words, I'm not sure things are getting any better.

The only bright spot in all this (Duck! May your new home be warm and superior!) is that my hair is shorter and last night I had the scariest and best work break ever. I was sitting here going blind, having copyedited for about nine hours straight, when I heard something banging against the door of my apartment. This is it! I thought. I'm going to die with unfinished freelance! Every copy editor's nightmare. Part of me was also thrilled to be able to die. That meant I wouldn't have to go to work this week.

Terrified, I ran to the door with the Shitbrella in hand for protection. I would poke out the eyes of the intruder, or maybe offer the Shitbrella as a congratulatory prize for gaining entrance. In, however, walked -- quite unexpectedly! -- the heroic Bay, released from his work obligations. I dropped the umbrella.
"You!" I said, thrilled.
"I sensed you needed me," he said.

So what I'm really saying is maybe things are getting better all the time.