SuspendedAnimation

in the pink!

Pink Lady!
Tickle Me Pink!
Here's Pink In Your Eye!

So many fun and silly ways to introduce the subject of conjunctivitis. And no, it's not the Jellybean. It's me.

It was yesterday afternoon that I started noticing that I was viewing the world through a misty veil of snot. I had a look and there is was, in the right eye: unmistakeably, pink all over the eyeball and yes! a pink conjunctiva!

Let's all sing together, shall we?
Conjunctiva Junction, what's your function?
Keepin' your eyeball all safe and comfy!

Except right now it's not. And my eye is all swollen and porcine looking. My peepers are among my best features, ya know. We've already established the strength of The Towering Edifice That Is My Vanity, and I can assure you that this condition has felled it with a single mighty blow.

So I trotted off to the doctor to acquire my prescription for ophthalmic antibiotic drops, and decided to bring it to a certain megastore popular for their cheap, trendy homewares and the amusement occasioned by pretending that the name of the store ought to be pronounced à la français, because the one near me had a pharmacy, and I had some trendy homewares to purchase, or failing that, covers for the ThermoScan (no sharing of earwax chez moi!).

When I handed the script to the clerk, she furrowed her brow at it and typed into her little computer and furrowed and consulted with pharmacist and pharmacist furrowed and they shelf-checked and furrowed and consulted and shelf-checked and furrowed some more. Then the clerk came back to where I was waiting and announced: "It's out of stock. But we can have it for you in two days."

Two days?

I'd be interested in knowing: how many people want to wait two days before they start treating a bacterial infection?

Ooooh! Sign me up! I am just breathless with anticipation, wondering what color the discharge will be by then, and how many of my family members wake up with their eyes glued shut!

Now if you'll excuse me, the doctor instructed me to autoclave everything I might have touched within the past three days.

The flavor of insecurity

I know it's such a tired topos, the 'writing about the in-laws' thing. But please bear with me, because I'm going to lay down some fancy writer-type metaphor shit with it eventually, okay?

My guy's parents are good people, really. And I don't want to get dooced here, because irrespective of how I write this, I imagine feelings would be hurt if someone did just a bit too much creative Googling someday. But just in case they do, I am going to be guarded and say that they only drive me batshit loco to the degree that all inlaws of everyone, by dharmic decree, must.

If you don't know me you might think I blog about food more than enough; but if you do, you're probably surprised I don't do it more. That's a rather long-winded way of saying that I am obsessive about food, and about cooking. Which brings me back to my in-laws. One of their most puzzling and dismaying traits is this: They are extremely interested in food, and can talk at such great length about restaurants and meals and specifically what restaurant they chose in a place I will never visit, and precisely what they ordered and how was the service and how did it compare to another place I will never ever be and please please stop my ears are bleeding sell me into indentured servitude do what you will but I beg of you LET IT BE. I DON'T GIVE A RAT'S HEINER.

And they do seem to know, I will begrudgingly say, what is good. When they eat it at a restaurant.

But I can objectively say that my dear mother-in-law is a disgraceful cook. So why don't they seem to know that? Why is it that food in their home, that I am convinced would be regarded by them with much scorn if they were served it in a restaurant, receives sincere praise from my father-in-law when issued from the hands of his wife?

I have seriously considered the possibility that they have two sets of tongues--that they keep the nice one for special, when they dine out.

I've been brooding about this for a while. This year we had our first night Passover seder with my side of the family. One of the highlights of that traditional meal was the simple pleasure of the matzoh ball soup: a clear, concentrated and intensely flavored broth made by my uncle, and my mother's matzoh balls, impossibly both light and rich, and abundantly seasoned with pepper and ginger. Then, on the way back home, we stopped at my in-laws for a second night seder, and I listened (and blinked in noncommittal response) to my father-in-law praise his wife's soup as I sipped what resembled--to my palate--contact lens wetting solution, and ate what must have been wadded balls of Wonder® bread floating in it.

Are you still waiting for that metaphor thingie?

Here's the other thing I've been brooding about. I read some. I am, I'd say, overeducated in the reading-to-writing spectrum. And I notice myself, increasingly, making such very fine distinctions, within the privacy of my own skull, about just how good such-and-such writing is--who's just sublimely, insanely good; who's clever; who has something to say, though I may not be the one, exactly, who needs to be reading it, today. Or maybe, ever. And a thousand increments in between.

But just since *peeks look at archives column* March, I've joined the ranks, in some minuscule way, of those I read. In the world of print publishing, 'vanity publishing'--finding some obliging 'publisher' who, for cash up front, is be willing to put your miserable tome between covers so that you can be an 'author'--is a roundly scorned practice. But all I have to do is pony up my monthly small fee to TypePad, and I now put out my vanity publication whenever I have a free moment. That is one way of looking at blogging, though those with the bandwidth to back it up know that the analogy is very limited.

But, in any case, I find myself wondering: do I, too, taste my home-cooked blog with a different tongue than the one I use for everything else?

Poison

or, The Pink Princess of Darkness

We are currently oozing a squid ink of gloom and paranoia.

When IE crashed as I struggled to create something entertaining out of my suffering, I saw this as a clear omen that my efforts were misguided. Watching me slip on the banana peel of my current sitch won't rise above, say, Benny Hill in entertainment value.

May I take this moment, though, to hiss and fume about this movie?

Not about this movie in particular, which of course I have not seen, and which I would rather chew my own leg off than see.

No, what is literally at this moment setting my teeth on edge (we can talk about bruxism more generally in another post, on another day) is my rising horror at the entertainment value placed on narratives of children coming to grave harm. Oh what fun! When I have a moment of leisure, when I manage to break away from my weary labors and duties, what could revive my spirit more than the spectacle of a k*dnapped child?

Maybe someone could clue me in here. What in the crying f*ck is wrong with us as a culture that these topics are intended to be the fodder of amusement?

The flipside of the maudlin is hatred and aggression. For every Anne Geddes image of a baby in a bunnysuit, we have an instance of this culture's morbid fascination of children r*ped, abd*cted, m*rdered. This is not the usual blog material for me, but the fact is, I'm a fearful kind of person. It's all I can do to keep at bay my compulsive imagination of Bad Things. Whenever I am confronted with trailers or promos or yaddayadda in this 'theme' of 'entertainment,' I start wracking my brain for places to hide.

[asterisks sprinkled in liberally to prevent me from having to witness firsthand the horrible things that some people like to Google]

tune in next time for something more in the realm of Sweetness 'n' Light.

pragmatic??

Why is something like this called a "practical joke"?

My child is a Montessori veteran, so I'm thinking maybe it has something to do with Practical Life.