Words I can’t say

In college, my best friend decided to do a senior research project on the science of spirituality. To accomplish this, she underwent training to become a Reiki healer.

I don’t even know how to describe Reiki any more, though at the time I could have faked an answer because of her. It’s like a meditative practice where the healer channels some sort of spiritual power to open chakras and your mind to higher spirituality. They use special symbols that are said to hold the power of the spirits to call them to you to heal your recipient. It’s like a spiritual mystical sect with secret incantations and meditations.

We heard through the hippy grapevine in our tiny college town that there was a Reiki Master working at a local natural foods store, and that she would do Reiki initiation. My friend contacted her and made an appointment to go to her house for the initiation rites and education. The Reiki Master gave my friend detailed directions to her very out there farmhouse, in a region we’d never been. Afraid to go alone, my friend asked if I could come along, and the Reiki Master said yes.

When we arrived on the appointment day, the Reiki Master didn’t know who we were or remember making the appointment. We had assumed we’d become Reiki initiates together, but at this point, the Reiki Master said, “It will be $100 each for the ceremony.” I said I didn’t have any money so I wouldn’t be participating. My friend hedged and said that was awfully expensive and didn’t think she could afford it. The spiritual world was suddenly very material when the Reiki Master wouldn’t even pretend to bargain. That was the cost or we left the farmhouse. My friend eventually ponied up, hoping her mom could deposit the money in her checking account in time.

The ceremony was beginning to sound like a fake psychic scam.

We spent hours at the house that day. My friend and the Reiki Master’s creepy boyfriend would go into the Master’s bedroom for a half hour or so at a time, off and on throughout the day. I could smell heady incense seeping out from under the door. I wondered if the initiation rite was just about smoking pot or something. I sat alone at the park bench style kitchen table, playing with bits of string and thinking about how weird this all was, thinking about things I’d like to say to these crazy people. Sometimes the Master’s twelve-year-old daughter sat with me, and I asked her questions about her school and hobbies. She was a nice girl.

During the Reiki breaks, the boyfriend said crazy things to me about spirituality and what certain signs and symbols mean in your life. Like if you stand in the window in your home it means this. Or if you pick up shiny things off the ground it means that. The Reiki Master yelled at her daughter and made her work like Cinderella, while praising her obviously deadbeat teenage son to the spiritual heavens.

I kept silent. Anything I wanted to say had the potential to start a fight or create bad feelings or make it harder for my friend to finish her senior research project on spirituality. I played with my bits of string and complimented the little girl on her dish cleaning and carrot chopping and sweeping skills, hoping to undo a lifetime of emotional abuse in my one afternoon.

At the end of the Reiki initiation ceremony, the Master decided it was time for us all to do chakra readings and spiritual cleansings together to close the day. She seemed relaxed and happy. Creepy boyfriend seemed smug and self-satisfied. My friend seemed anxious to go. I was practically clawing at the door. But when you’re a guest at someone’s home, whether they expected you or not, you’re obligated to comply to a chakra opening ceremony.

My turn. I laid on the bed with my feet toward the window. Creepy boyfriend was on my left, my friend was at my feet, channeling good energy in, and the Reiki Master moved around me. She used a crystal on a chain as a pendulum, holding it over each of my chakra points to determine the psychic state of my body’s soul. All of her readings on me seemed to satisfy her, except my throat chakra seemed very closed to her. She said that this indicated an unwillingness of me to speak the spiritual truth. I wanted to laugh in her face and say I had been holding in all day how much I thought they were all deluded and insane and evil parents to that poor little girl. I said, “I’ll work on it,” or something non-committal.

I thought that leaving her house, my friend and I exploding our frustrations at the surreal day all over each other, my throat chakra would re-open. I thought I’d speak the truth, my own personal anti-bull-shit bible spewing forth all over the tiny college town about how some self-proclaimed spiritual healers were less-enlightened than the most spiritually debased members of our society.

But if my throat chakra opened, it only blossomed temporarily, and closed again right away. Like a rarely-blooming daylily, My mouth would open for the truth, and then close again indefinitely, waiting for the next warm sunshine of fullness to spread my throat chakra petals.

I still suffer from the closed throat chakra. People who are daily in my life say horrible things to me about society, art, culture, politics. Things that lack understanding or uncorrupted thought or insight. Things a person with an open mind chakra shouldn’t think or speak through their open throat chakra.

And my throat blossom closes. I don’t speak my mind. Every time someone says to me—well, my throat chakra won’t let me repeat it—every time someone hurts my mind chakra with their words, I say to myself, “OK, next time, you’ll speak out. Next time, you’ll share your truth and help them open their closed mind chakras. Next time, you’ll defend your beliefs, your self, your thoughts.”

But that moment of expression never comes. The blossom in my throat remains tight as a daylily at night. Only in the presence of an open mind chakra connected to an open throat chakra can my mouth blossom and give my bible. In the interim, I remain silent.

My premiere event

This week presented a challenge in marathon time management. I’m afraid I didn’t cram it all in.

It was TV premiere week!

First up was Studio 60, which I didn’t even know I was looking forward to until last week. OK, so Amanda Peet’s sly smile grates on my nerves since she does it non-stop, and so Matthew Perry looks like he’s aged 20 years in the span of a couple, but heck, it was still an awesome cast. And Aaron Sorkin? Love him. I was a West Wing devotee (until if jumped the shark), and I missed the quirky, intelligent, hyper-fast-paced dialog. Bless him and his engaging script. The pilot lived up to everything I would have hoped, even though it’s already getting a few nay-sayers in the press. I hope Studio 60 makes it the full season. With this cast and the creators though, I don’t think NBC is going to pull out on this one any time too soon.

Next to bat was America’s Next Top Model Wednesday night. I missed it. I can’t believe I missed it. Last year Matthew was working evenings, so I was on dog walk responsibilities the whole season. I missed the first half hour of every episode and always felt confused. I caught up on a VH1 marathon last Sunday though. I never would have guessed, but by the end of the marathon, I was actually burned out on ANTM.

What I did instead on Wednesday night was actually of significantly higher importance than America’s Next Top Model, if you can believe it. Wednesday, Matthew and a group of other scooterists and I went to a Chicago motorcycle legal aid society meeting to talk about two-wheel parking regulations in the city. It was really helpful and gave us some great ideas on where to start as scooterists and how to cooperate with motorcyclists. Even though they were some pretty hardcore guys with nicknames like “Doc,” “Legs,” and “Cowboy,” they were very friendly and welcoming. We liked connecting with other riding enthusiasts on legal issues that we all need to work on to enact change.

Thursday. Oh Thursday. It proved to be a difficult TV day. My Name is Earl, The Office, Grey’s Anatomy, and then ER. Phew! ER has been totally over-the-top melodrama for years, but it was still a good episode. At least I cared about the ordeals the characters were experiencing, as opposed to how uninvolved I’ve felt with characters in the past. And oh, the Meredith-McDreamy saga continues. The whole part with the character named Omar and his wife dying, I didn’t get that. It was pretty tacked on it seemed.

And thus brings us to Friday. There’s a book out called something like “No One Cares What You Ate for Lunch and 100 Other Topics Not to Write on Your Blog.” I probably need to buy it. I’m sure no one really cares what I watched on TV this week, but you read it, right? Ha ha! Suckers! Just kidding, I love you.

And tonight is a party with actual people instead of TV characters. A cowboy themed party. And I don’t have a thing to wear! I’ll find a bandana and be a train robber.

Dangerous habits

"I am not addicted. I can quit anytime." I say that to myself every
day now. "I can close the book and go to bed." Or, "I can close the
book and quit eating lunch freakishly slowly."

It all started out years ago. After I ended my two year television
boycott (I really do mean a total refusal to be anywhere that a TV was
turned on), I eased back into programming slowly. I mostly watched BBC
or TLC or A&E. But gradually I found myself attracted to more and more
banal fare, resulting in my love for "America's Next Top Model" and
anything else equally preposterous. This has necessitated two
televisions in the small Wy household, one for sports, one for "Flavor
of Love." We come together for dinner over "American Chopper" and
"Biker Build-off," two programs we agree are equal parts entertaining,
mesmerizing, and mockingly hilarious.

The drift into popular media is now affecting the books I read.

"But Christine, you're the most arrogant culturally elitist reader I
know. Are you reading popular fiction?"

I am. It's true. I'm hooked on romance novels.

I know that this is a terrible surprise for Christine Wy fans, but,
believe me, it was a terrible surprise for me too.

My brilliant sister mailed me two books saying, "I swear, you'll love
these." I put off reading them for two reasons. First, they were very
thick and I'm too lazy to make that kind of time commitment. Second,
they had the distinctly yellowing high-acid paper on which impermanent
low brow writing is conveyed. I love and trust my sister, and I knew
if I read books that she recommended I would enjoy them a lot, but I
was suspicious.

Running out of patience for my lengthy hesitation, she finally called
and asked for the books back. This made me feel guilty, so I kept the
skinnier book and mailed back the thicker. It turned out to be a
mistake. I should have mailed back both. No, not really, but actually
I mailed back book one and kept book two, so I picked up book two with
the story in media res, as it were, and felt a little confused.

The confusion did not last long. I was in love with a book about a
rag-tag family trying to survive in the forests of upstate New York
around 1790. High adventure involving boats and kidnappings and snow
storms and stolen gold ensued. But then, wait, what was this? They're
kissing? And her cheeks are flushing with color? Oh my God! He's
reaching for the curve of her flesh!

I had meandered into a romance novel. And I loved it. And I'm hooked.
I devoured book two, and my sister immediately mailed me book one.
While waiting for books three and four to arrive, I am RE-READING book
one immediately after finishing it.

The collection of love letters from a Portuguese nun written in the
Middle Ages sits on my shelf and calls to me, "Christine, why have you
forsaken historical research and capital L Literature?" I want to read
the illicit love letters of a nun, but who could bear to leave the
cabin in upstate New York just as the school house is burned down and
there's a dramatic rescue that reunites the family? I can't. The
siren song of the beautiful simplicity and clarity of the romance
beckons me back to its pages. And it won't release me.

Therein lies the problem. I can grudgingly turn off the TV when my
hour of "America's Next Top Model" is up, but there's always hundreds
more pages in my romance that pour into one another so that even
chapter ends cannot stop me. I dread showering because I don't want to
put the book down. I won't cook dinner because I'd rather read. I
wake up and gladly take the train to work because it's an extra hour of
reading time, there and back. I get into bed and promise myself lights
out by 11, by 11:30, OK, 12:30 at the latest.

And then the real insult begins. I dream the characters. At night, in
my restless, troubled sleep, the characters take on new challenges and
surmount new insurmountable obstacles, and I wake shuddering, thinking,
"Please get out of my head! I don't want to dream you any more!" I
shake my head, I roll over on the pillow, I pet the cat where he sleeps
for a minute or two, but I slip back under the warm waters of the dream
of New York and Revolutionary veterans and bear fights and deer hunting.

The problem is, this really is a problem.

I can quit at any time. I never have to read another page. I can walk
away and not look back.

I hope.

“Oh, flight attendant, do you mind…?”

I lose a lot of things. I’d like to think that it’s not because of carelessness or clutter, but that it’s the result of distraction. When I’m juggling too many thoughts (What am I cooking for dinner? Do I have enough buttermilk for buttermilk pie? What bus am I getting on?), then something’s going to get dropped. Unfortunately I usually drop possessions.

The most mundane thing I’ve ever lost was an umbrella. It was one of those fancy wooden ones that I’ll never be able to afford again, and I left it in a movie theater. Oops. I think forgot to call them back, also, so the cool umbrella, the only umbrella I’ve ever loved, is vanished.

Then there’s the special category of things I’ve left on planes….

I also lost a wool hat from Nepal that had matching gloves. I love matching hat and glove sets. Functional and stylish! This set was a Christmas present from my mom so I loved it extra much. It was a chunky red weave with purple and yellow designs woven into it, and the hat had a great big pom-pom on top. On a flight home to Chicago from Kentucky, the wool hat made a dash for freedom and slipped out of my pocket. Devastating. What good are matchy-match wool gloves with no hat? I called and called and called the airline the airport, security department, check-in desk, janitorial services. That hat was gone. Sadness.

Next I left a book on a plane, again on my way home from Kentucky. This was not just any book though. This was a book about a young professional woman close to my age who quit her day job to become a stripper. Poof! She’s a stripper now. And fortunately for all of us, she wrote the whole thing down. Between stripping gigs of course. What made this book extra special was that it was on loan from the finacee of a relative of the book’s author! What are the odds? “Hey check this out. My fiance’s second cousin wrote a memoir about stripping.” I left it on the plane. Some teenager discovered that book on the next trip and got to read every creative euphemism for stripping known to man. Again I called and called to lost and found, but that book was long gone. Poof!

The most interesting thing I’ve ever left on a plane must have been quite a shock to the last attendant on duty for the evening. My mother cooked a big meal for my last evening in Kentucky, an out-door, Kentucky-style, cook-out, complete with bratwurst, hamburgers, and hotdogs. Now my mom knows how my husband loves to eat, and she knows we don’t grill too often, so she fixed him up a to-go bag. She made him bags of hamburgers and bags of brats and bags of dogs, and then she put it all in a boutique paper shopping bag with handles.

I left it on the plane.

I put the bag of meat under the seat in front of me so it wouldn’t get squished in the overhead bin. Unfortunately, I didn’t strategize this very well, and I put my carry-on backpack down on top of the meat. Ouch! I flew the trip, reading some other book or magazine I’d probably soon lose, and completely forgot my meaty cargo. When the plane landed in Chicago, I stood up, picked up my backpack, and walked off the plane. No meat.

I didn’t realize I had left a bag of meat on an airplane until I got back to our apartment. “Mom sent you a present, but I can’t find it.”

“What is it?”

“A bag of meat from the cook-out.”

“Oh, I love your mom’s bratwurst!”

“Oh God.”

“What is it?”

“I just remembered where the bag of meat is. I left it on the plane!”

Dear flight attendant, who works between Louisville and Chicago, I’m sorry you found a bag of meat under a seat a couple of years ago. I bet it was still warm too. We had just eaten its meaty cousins. I know you had to throw the meat away, but I hope it didn’t cause you too much stress. I hope it just gave you a good story to tell….

“What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever found on a plane?”

“Well one time I was cleaning up, and I found a bag of meat!”

How not to name your pets

Several years back in Chicago, I rode the bus to work every day. My bus stop had a sewer cap right in front of it, and every day I read the words on the cap because there was nothing else to look at. I’m quoting that sewer now, “Neenah Foundry, Wis.” I loved the word “Neenah.” I hadn’t ever been to Wisconsin yet, but that was a good name. A name I later found out actually came from the town of Neenah, for which the local foundry was named. Still a good name.

A few years later, a woman unknown to me was walking down Foster Avenue (a busy street, like Frankfort Avenue during rush hour back home). The woman was approached by a ferret. Really, a pet ferret danced up to her on the sidewalk. She looked at it and knew this was no wild animal and that it was someone’s tame pet, so she scooped it up and walked it into the nearby police station.

An officer at the police station said, “My daughter has a pet ferret, I’ll take it home.” The officer called her daughter at work and told her, “Someone turned in a loose ferret to the police station. I’m taking it home, and we can try to find a place for it.”

The daughter happened to be my employee. She hung up the phone and turned to me, “Do you want a ferret?”

I was anguished at the dilemma. Of course I wanted a ferret! But we already had such a zoo in our small apartment. There was Pikachu the chinchilla, Shiva the sugar glider, and Loki the cat, and they took a lot of our time for care and affection, but we loved our little menagerie like a family. We always joked we wanted to get tax status for a charitable organization because we were running a no-kill animal shelter.

I called Matthew. “Honey, I know it’s your turn to pick a pet and you wanted a ferret when I got Pikachu. My employee’s mom just had a loose ferret turned in at the police station, and they need to find it a home. I don’t think we can handle it though. We’ve got a zoo already.”

He said, “That’s OK honey. If you don’t think we can handle adding a ferret, then we won’t do it.”

“All right. I feel better. I just feel so bad that it needs a home and that you wanted one.”

“I know. It’ll be OK.”

After two days of not finding a home for the ferret, my employee asked me to ask my friends if anyone wanted a ferret. Another phone call was in order.

“Matthew. I really don’t think we have room for the ferret.”

“I know sweetie.”

“I want the ferret.”

“Really?”

“Yes. I really want the ferret.”

“Well OK then.”

The next day we bought a ferret cage with exercise tubes and researched the best ferret food and talked to our vet about ferret care, and that night we went to go get the ferret from the police officer’s house.

“What are you going to name it,” they asked.

And the pronouncement came: “Little Spike if it’s a boy for my favorite wrestler, and Neenah if it’s a girl.”

They laughed, “Our ferret’s name is Spike!” But he was huge, and this ferret was little, so it seemed “Little Spike” might be the right name.

The next day at the vet, the next pronouncement came: “It’s a girl!”

“Well then her name is Neenah.”

The perfect name for our little escaped ferret. From the streets she was rescued, and from the streets she was named.

Neenah was the perfect little frisky companion. She’d bear-hug our ankles and look into our eyes and make silly ferret faces, she’d play-attack our feet as if we didn’t tower over her, she’d steal my socks and my shoes and my unopened mail and make nests to burrow into under the couch. She was a busy little girl.

But Neenah passed away when we moved back to Kentucky. She lived to a ripe old undeterminable age, then she got tumors in her belly. Her surgery was successful, but she was never the same. She tired easily and didn’t like to play any more; she just burrowed and made nests all over the living room. We laid her to rest in my parent’s back yard with our family’s childhood pets, knowing we gave her the best life a foundling ferret could ever have.

Reminders of Neenah are sadly all around us. We find pictures of her at odd times when we’re cleaning our apartment. And every day there’s thousands of “Neenah Foundry” sewer caps looking up at me. I can hardly look at the ground without seeing “Neenah” somewhere to make me miss her. And amazingly, for a year Matthew worked at a place on Neenah Avenue. Every day he turned his car left down Neenah, a street we never thought of before since it was so far from our neighborhood. I cried when he took me to see his office. He couldn’t speak about.

It would be nice to say some platitude about “Neenah lives on in spirit” or something, but really we miss her terribly. My only advice is, don’t name pets after sewer caps.

Walkers and only

In my grade school, there was a custom that kids were released at the
end of the day in a particular order. The first group to be called by
the principal at the end of every day was "Walkers and only." Walkers
were people who walked home from school, of which there were quite a
large number. Onlies were only children with no siblings enrolled in
the school--an incredible rarity in our Catholic diocese.

Everyone was so jealous of the onlies. Who among us knew what it was
like to be an only? No hand-me-down clothes, no reused toys, no
fighting over desserts or seconds of macaroni and cheese, no competing
for your parents' attention. It sounded like a glorious, privileged
life from which we siblings were excluded.

I have no idea what came after "Walkers and Only," I was a walker.
They could have said "Everybody else," "Car riders," or "So long, suckers!" I don't know since I was with the group to be released first.

I'm not much of a walker any more. I regret it. Supposedly walking is
vital to the creative process of writing, and maybe that's why I
haven't been writing as much lately as I should. I look at my
beautiful blue Vespa, my wasp, and I think, "Why should I take the
train to work?" I look at my beautiful blue Schwinn and I ask myself,
"Why should I walk to the train?" There is no reason for me to walk
but to stimulate my writerly affectations.

Charles Dickens was said to roam the streets of London for inspiration.
Being out among the down-trodden and poor activated the story-telling
part of his imagination. And William Wordsworth? Don't get me started
on that walker. He prowled around the Lake District like his life
depended on it. That guy's daily constitutional ranged miles. There's
a great story about Samuel Taylor Coleridge and his wife going to visit
at Wordsworth's Dove Cottage. Coleridge's wife dropped a pot of
boiling water on his foot "accidentally" so that he couldn't go on the
big walk with Wordsworth but she could. He wrote a lamenting poem
while everyone was out walking, but I can't remember which one it is.

I hope not to be motivated by injury like Coleridge, but inspired by
the grit of the city like Dickens. "Walkers and Onlies are dismissed."
I'll re-mount my feet soon.

Some random things about me:

I don’t listen to my iPod enough.
My two favorite bands right now are Shocking Blue and T Rexx.
I’ve been reading memoirs all summer (2006).
I love riding my blue Vespa ET 4.
I love riding my blue vintage Schwinn Suburban with cocktail style pinstriping.
Blue is not my favorite color.
I don’t have a favorite color; I love them all.
I wish I could afford to do the classic 80’s preppy look all the time.
I buy whatever is on sale that fits.
I have a hard time remembering to buy food with coupons.
Generic sugar cereals taste just as good as name brand.
Generic healthy cereals taste like cardboard.
I don't like unusual or exciting flavors in my food.
I watch too much TV, especially bad TV like Flavor of Love and Girls Next Door.
I hate bad TV that thinks it’s good TV.
I like to swim, but I’m scared of the deep-end.
I don’t like wet locker rooms.
I like hats. A lot.
I don’t usually do the self-improvement I say I’ll do, like learn guitar so I can play Heart.
I have too many hobbies already.
My current favorite hobby is photography.
I enjoy blogging as a creative outlet.
I make endless lists and lose them.
I am a member of scooter clubs and chat groups.
I save boxes in case I need to mail something.
I love our postal system.
I love my cat and my dog.
I love my husband.
I hope we’re married forever.

Holy update

The dental crevasse is healing. It no longer feels lasered, just annoying. The toothal region is still sore however, but it's definitely on the path to recovery.

That's it from the mouth!

O holy night

I am not a particularly hale and hearty person. I actually try to minimize my medical complaints, until I realize that I’m saying to a friend over and over, “Actually, I can’t do that because…” “Actually I…” “Actually…” I get tired of the “Actual” saga and eventually spill my guts about the tiny things that aren’t quite right about me that add up to a sum that isn’t at all quite right.

One of the side-effects of medical disquietude is that I am a holy person. I am a person made of many holes. There’s the holes I put there myself, the body piercings that are in or out and their scars. There’s the sinus surgery that made holes inside my nose bigger (but didn’t straighten my septum, a surgery I opted not to do at the time, and a choice that I’ll always regret). And now, two new holes.

The first is a series of newly recurring holes. In my arms. I have been vaguely diagnosed with an undifferentiated arthritic condition in my knees. It’s not that terrible a thing really, just mildly annoying when the dog wants to go out *again* and I have to trek up and down the flights of stairs at our walk-up flat. But the kicker in the undifferentiated arthritis pants is that the medicine that has worked best for me so far is on an overt mission to destroy my liver. Go figure? Medical treatment, meet medical poison.

So the liver holes. No, the medicine doesn’t punch holes in my liver (yet). I’m constantly getting blood drawn to see how this month’s arthritis-medication-to-liver-enzyme-levels are stacking up. (I could go into lengthy discourse at this point about my ALT and AST levels and how it affects my overall health in precise detail, but that would be either rather dull or medical fetishist.)

The net result of the new hole series is that I want to grow new veins. The soothing phlebotomists at my doctor’s lab are all swell gals, but they need new places to make holes in me. My arms are very tired of the stick and draw. I always come to work with big white bandages in my elbows and then laugh about my liver tests. I look like a medical accident waiting to happen with holes in my arms covered in swaddling clothes. “I was once like you!”

Now the second new hole is one big hole. Or I assume that it is because I can’t see it, but it is obviously present in my life and feels rather gaping. It is a tooth hole. The past few weeks (that feel like millennia), I have been undergoing the Never-Ending Root Canal. One of my “Actually” medical ailments is that certain of my teeth are very unhappy fellows, bent on self-destruction. Many of my teeth are perfectly happy and content to continue on being teeth, but these special teeth, the nihilist teeth, just insist on going under the drill. This tooth, tooth number 2 in the dental chart, has decided to go full on root decay necessitating the endodentic procedure known as “root canal.” I don’t understand that name for the procedure yet, even after my research, but I’m sure if I remember to ask I’ll get a fabulous explanation. “Root canal” sounds like “Love Canal” or “Panama Canal,” something dangerous and politically divisive.

I have endured the Never-Ending Root Canal as gracefully as I can muster, but I have reached a state of mental decay over this last and (pray for me) final hole. I had laser gingivectomy. The decayed root of tooth number two was so bad that it tried to take my gingiva with it. I guess it succeeded, because before my dentist had barely finished saying “I’m psyching myself up for you; this is worse than I thought,” I was introduced to New Guy with Laser. Laser guy was totally nice. He assured me I wouldn’t feel a thing but that I would hear a popping sound. He said afterward my gums would feel like I had burned my mouth on hot pizza, or the area around the Never-Ending Root Canal tooth number two might be sore. But I shouldn’t feel pain.

Let me just interject that when a guy with a laser tells you you won’t feel pain, ask more questions. Warily.

So what laser guy did was remove the affected part of my gum and gingiva. Do you know where gingiva is? According to the chart on my mouthwash bottle, it’s way down there. So yeah, the removed gingiva has left me an interesting new hole. A new hole I struggle to keep my tongue out of, cause trust me, it wants to go there, and I don’t know how long I can stop it from spelunking.

What the new hole feels like is a jagged crevasse that opens up parallel to my tooth. Tiny tooth-men could have an X-treme adventure climbing the terrain on their trip to mount tongue. But the good thing that I keep reminding myself is that the crevasse is cauterized. I mean, isn’t that the surgical benefit of working with a laser? Faster healing time, instant cauterization? Sounds good to me at least.

But the new hole is like the others, much more painful than I’d expected. I fight an hourly losing battle against keeping snack particles from lodging in the crevasse, and it aches awfully bad for a pizza burn. If I got this burnt from pizza, I’d be off pizza for quite a while, resulting in “Actually, I’m not eating pizza now, I got a bad burn.” I think my new medical “Actual” will be, “Actually, I’m not on lasers right now. Maybe some other time?”

"Nose Matters" pilot episode

Chicago knows that it’s a city that stinks. I’m not exactly offended by its odor malfeasance, but it’s not a city that inspires olfactory confidence. There are some great smells to be sniffed in Chicago, but for every suburban Mars chocolate factory, there’s a Dave Matthew’s Band bus dumping untreated human waste on tour boats.

It’s particularly true in some of the regions near just about any branch of the Chicago River. Sure, sometimes it just has a healthy marine fishy smell, but then there’s the areas that smell like boat petrol near the tour boat landing docks. And then there’s the mystery factory smells further upstream: the leather tanning facility; the recycling center; that weird place on the North Branch where the water emits steam during winter. Yeck. Each have their own distinctively off odors.

But the downtown chocolate factory—ooh the cocoa joy it shares with my nose. And the tea and coffee roasting plant? Also divine. My favorite day is regular coffee roast day. Honestly, the flavored coffees smell too sweet when they’re at the stage of creation. The air starts to have a distinct burnt “Irish Crème” odor to it. The teas smell fresh and rejuvenating like a hippie ceremony that uses sage leaves to purify the air.

I think I should have a television show called “Nose Matters.” Public access, of course. People could call in and tell me what they smelled, where and what time of day. It could be brilliant. We could compare the morning’s slightly soapy smell outside the leather tanning plant to the evening’s more gore and chemical odor. We could talk about which parks have the best fragrant flower displays. Or what about that place on Grand Avenue where the big shopping mall must have an air vent that ejects errant smells from their perfume counter because it’s always perfectly scented at the corner of Grand and Wabash? “Nose Matters” could sniff out some seriously interesting smells.

I know I’m on to something here. There’s a local television station that has a “Best of Chicago” viewer write-in award series. They do themes like “Best tapas bar” or “Best adult novelty shop.” One of their awards—“Best smell in Chicago.” Brilliant. The downtown chocolate factory usually does very well in that contest. Now imagine if we got to vote on the best and worst smells every week? It would be a smellocracy.

There must be a way to harness the acumen of my sense of smell for good instead of letting my talent languish from fear of allergens. I believe the “Nose Matters” smellocracy is the spirit of my nasal future. Odor onward, scented soldiers.

My grandmother, rock-star of God

Going to church with my grandmother is like hanging out with a really old Catholic rock star. The priest leaves his dais to give her special blessings and deliver her communion wafer directly. He always says, “Peace be with you Kate.” People swim up the tide of departing parishioners at the end of service to give her their hugs and kisses and shake her hand. I get to bask in that reflected glory.

Every time I go home to Kentucky, I take my grandmother to church. It’s mildly sinful since part of me does it out of vanity, but really I just like making my grandmother happy. Escorting her from the handicapped parking spot to her seat in the front, holding her steady at the end of mass, I feel like the handler for a super-star. And she gets to smile glowingly at everyone, sharing the love of communion. Her Catholic beauty makes me feel equally perfect in her glow. But my grandmother really is a special person, and everyone in her church knows it and radiates it back to her. I get to be in the cloud of all that love.

I met someone equally special, someone who used common platitudes in the spirit they were intended, not to just advertise her own piety. There was some soot on my arm, and she said, “It’s OK, we’re all made of dirt. God said it, ‘dust to dust,’” and she wiped off my arm. I found the Chicago equivalent of my own Kentucky grandmother.

This new woman in my life went on to say, “This life is hard enough, don’t do anything that makes you miserable. Do what you love.” She said this in such earnestness and simple clearness that I firmly believed everything she said to me that afternoon. I didn’t think too much of her when I was first introduced, but as she spoke, I felt the power of her religious beauty and glowed from it. Here is another special woman, just like my grandmother.

But I wonder, why do adults in the U.S. only find spirituality in religion? Why must we listen to homilies and discuss the Bible to find a spiritual center in our grown-up lives? Remember in college when you discussed Camus and Sartre and felt so important and brilliant? Why don’t we do that now?

I can’t think of a single philosophical organization in Chicago that gathers weekly to be lectured and to discuss spiritual matters of a non-dogmatic nature. I’m sure there must be somewhere here in this big city, but where? I want to talk about existentialism and being the best person you can be at this moment and think about the great philosophers of the ages and what wisdom I can learn from them. Do I need to go back to college to do it? Do post-college adults just lose interest in things bigger than them when life’s daily necessities insist on being met?

I enjoy sitting beside my grandmother and hearing the priest explain Sunday’s gospel reading. I always find a message in the homily that I can use in my everyday life. But where do the irreligious find their glory? I’ve been searching for the answer to that for years without knowing it. Going back to Catholic mass is like going to a gilded, incensed home. I feel relaxed and welcome and immersed in community as we all speak the same prayers, sing the same songs, and drink from the same glass of wine. But most of the time, I feel like I’m shut outside.

Carry-on baggage

I would like to ask for a Sherpa for Christmas. There’s really only two times of the year you can make a big gift request. New Years’, not a gift holiday. Thanksgiving, food holiday. There’s really only Birthday and Christmas, and my birthday is already recently passed. So I need a Sherpa for Christmas.

The Sherpa are a lovely people living on Mt Everest, in Nepal. For generations they’ve been famous for carting white people’s stuff up the side of Everest. (Which is a terrible name because no one would go to that mountain to rest, ever--unless they were Sherpa, of course.) The Sherpa are renowned for their acclimation to the extreme altitude at which they live, which makes them more able to schlep for sea-level dwelling white folks as they conquer nature’s tallest heights. Tenzing Norgay was of course the first famous Sherpa. Supposedly his descendants still carry baggage for expeditioners. Or I could be conflating my National Geographic knowledge and making things up.

The point of that ramble is that Sherpas are a culture, a society, not a race or a trade. “Sherpa” is not the act of carrying. I remember this story from somewhere about a mountain expedition. White guy turns to descendant of Tenzing Norgay, “So, how long have you been a Sherpa?” The noble descendant doesn’t hesitate at all, “Why, all my life sir.” The white guy is amazed that this little dude has been carrying tents and freeze-dried protein and oxygen canisters since his birth. The joke’s on the white guy. The kid was born into Sherpa society, who just happen to be a group of prodigious carriers.

And so, I need a Sherpa for Christmas. This weekend my friend and I went to a private garden show. It was a big deal. They only open their 7 acre garden one day a year, and this was it. But cripes! I must have ten of twenty toy vintage cameras that I adore to shoot with. And wouldn’t this be a fun expedition for the Polaroid Land camera I’ve never used? All week I agonized over which cameras would make the trip with me. First I pulled out all the functional cameras and put them on the computer desk so I could look at them and Matthew would have no place to work. Then I had to get into qualifications by ease of use, rare film requirements, and portability. How many cameras could I carry at once?

I finally narrowed it down, omitting the Land camera, sadly. The final six turned out to be my dad’s SLR which still had some film in it, my digital shooter for all-purpose photography, my Holga (never leave home without a Holga), the ’65 Brownie Hawkeye that is broken in such a way that it takes beautiful pictures, my generic twin-lens reflex that I can’t think of the name that takes pictures with a surreal clarity considering its ancient technology, and the four lens toy called “Lomo.” The barest minimum I could come up with.

It did prove to be a hassle. I wore two cameras around my neck and had the Lomo in my pocket, but everything else had to be juggled around between the backpack. It challenged my carrying ability.

Now imagine the same trip with my own Sherpa. “Tenzing the Fourth, will you please hand me the Land camera?”

“But of course.”

“Thank you Tenzing the Fourth. Oh, and Tenzing the Fourth, will you please re-load the Holga. There’s 120 Portra film in that pocket. Make sure that you don’t accidentally repair the broken bit inside the Holga. That actually helps make the film look better. And here’s a little piece of cardboard to wedge the film cylinder in tight.”

“I see Mrs. Wy. Thank you.”

“Oh, thank you Tenzing the Fourth!”

How much better my life would be. Now imagine I’m walking to the train station from work. “Tenzing the Fourth?”

“Yes, Mrs. Wy?”

“I need my train pass and I’d like my iPod please.”

“Of course.”

“Thank you Tenzing the Fourth.”

Perfect! My Own Sherpa could be the best thing that’s ever happened to streamline my activities. But, there’s a major downside. Do the Sherpa people, once outside their region, still want to carry things for white people? I’d guess not, but I don’t know. Maybe you can take the Sherpa off Mt Everest, but you can’t take Mt Everest out of the Sherpa.

Future sounds

The cell phones that I have owned in the past have always had at least
one ring tone I found tolerable. There were the standard issue
corporate logo ring tones, the sound of a rotary phone ringing, the
sound of a pulse phone ringing, the one with the strange cheer and
birthday music. Each was acceptable in its own quirky polyphonic way.

But now we are in the new era of ubiquitous downloaded custom ring
tones. And my bland corporate can bores me.

At the big shindig family reunion this past weekend, my mom and I had
the same ring tone. Can you believe? Oh the confusion. We’d laugh and
say, “Is that your phone or mine?” But I was irked. Not that I mind
copying my mom, au contraire, but I minded that I couldn’t tell if I
was expecting to hear from my husband or my mom’s sister. I just
wanted to know the difference.

I was uninspired as to what to look for in a ring tone until my husband
and I watched “CSI: Miami” Tuesday night. During a pivotal
third-quarter hour death revelation scene, a familiar bit of opera
re-mixed with a Hindu influenced house beat punctuated the drama of the
scene. “That’s it!” I said to Matthew. “It’s from ‘The Magic Flute.’
It’s perfect for a new ring tone.” I jumped up and was off to the
computer to hit our vendor’s website and find the aria. I think
Matthew ignored my typically erratic behavior. I have no idea who
killed whom though. I am kind of curious.

Quick web search, Mozart wrote “The Magic Flute” (sorry I can’t spell
it in German). Quick search of the cell phone website, no “Magic
Flute.” Only three Mozart entries. Hm.

I downloaded “Minute Waltz” by Chopin because that was awfully cute as
a ring tone, but I still wasn’t satisfied. I went back to the website
and clicked on all the classical music entries in order to sample all
the different sounds. Most of them were very dour and only appropriate
for an angry spouse. Some were too light and seemed unhelpful for
getting the receiver’s attention.

But then a random click revealed it. “Lakme Flower Duet.” I don’t
even know what that means! “Flower Duet?” That’s not from “The Magic
Flute” at all! Oh well, it’s the right sounds no matter how mistaken I
was about the origin.

This afternoon I walked to the grocery store on my lunch break. As I
was on my way back to work, riding the elevator to Upper Michigan
Avenue street level, I heard the most beautiful music. Suddenly the
sound of delicate, warbling voices was surrounding me in the elevator.
I was overcome and looked around for a speaker, thinking, “My god,
that music is overwhelming me. It’s so beautiful. It’s like a duet.
It sounds just like the opera I downloaded…”

Yes, it was my own phone. I was awe struck by my little simple cell
phone. I laughed into the receiver, seeing it was my husband, and I
told him the story of the Magic Elevator Ride. He said, “You’re going
to do that every time you hear it ring until you get used to it.” He
is so right. And if it brings such beauty and wonderment into my
world, I don’t mind at all.

Induction ceremony

A friend of mine recently inducted me into adulthood. Particularly,
adult womanhood.

I showed her my shoes, “I’m wearing my trainers today.” This is
different because lately I wear nothing but prescription orthopedic
shoes.

“Oh, nice,” She said.

“Yeah, my feet are hurting though. I accidentally bought them the
wrong size.”

She made the “?” face.

“Well, I bought them in the morning you see.”

I know that sounds kind of irrelevant to shoe size maybe, but to
fitness buffs like my friend and to fitness hangers-on like me, we know
that your feet swell during the day, reaching maximum size some time in
the afternoon. Therefore, the shoes you buy in the morning won’t fit
by 3 pm. At the time of our conversation, it was 3:45 pm, CST, and I
was feeling the afternoon squeeze.

She nodded slowly and used her mock pedantic voice to say, “I see.”

“The shoe lady told me my foot was a wide now, but I said, ‘I have
always been a narrow. I will take a narrow.’”

At this new tidbit my friend exploded into stifled laughter--we were in
a software training seminar—and she was writhing around trying not to
fall off her chair or to laugh disruptively loud. But the hilarity was
too great for her to resist.

“You just acted like a typical woman! You just insisted you wear a
different size and got the wrong shoe!”

This was my moment of induction. As she continued with the belly
laughing, head bobbing, hair shaking enjoyment of my typicality, I got
very serious.

“Oh my god.” My eyes got big, and I put my hand to my mouth in stupor.
“I did just act like a typical woman.”

“Yeah! Ya did!” She sputtered her last chuckle.

I marveled at my own banality. And then laughed along with my friend
at how ridiculous it is to think of me as 1. adult, 2. adult woman, 3.
typical.

I got over the shock of becoming a typical woman, but it made me think
retrospectively. I remember my hometown newspaper running tons of
single panel cartoons about prissy women shoppers insisting to the male
shoe clerk that she has always been a 6 and a half and is still this day.

In addition, the Al Bundy character of “Married, with Children” sold
shoes for a living, and every customer I remember him interacting with
presented the identical scenario. A woman insists she must stuff her
giant middle-aged foot into the size she wore as a debutante. The joke
of these comic scenes is that the man knows better what the woman
really needs.

I remember the wrong shoe size gag in my hometown newspaper’s word
jumbles too. You have a cartoon, a riddle about the cartoon, and
jumble letters from which to make words that then yield the clues to
the riddle. I can do this, as a new inductee, I can create the
scenario. I’ve got a new riddle and cartoon already and waiting for an
illustrator:

Two male sales clerks wearing ties are standing to the right in the
background but are clearly visible and prominently dominating the
scene. In the foreground, a seated middle-aged woman is surrounded by
shoes and shoe boxes. She has a bouffant hair style and she’s wearing
a dress. Though she occupies the foreground, she is in the left and
bottom of the frame, in a diminutive corner of the cartoon, the men are
the primary focus. The customer is trying to force her larger foot
into a smaller shoe. The man on the right says the riddle to his chum,
“If that boat’s a size 6, then my dinghy’s a yacht!”

See? That was so easy, even a shoe-confused woman can make one up.

"Flores para los muertos?"

Sometimes I remember a pharmaceutical company with the name of a
beautiful flower as my grandmother's killer. As she dissolved
gradually into purple veins and sunken muscles, she cried out in pain
more often, held me in her lap less often, and took always more pills
from small, rectangular plastic bottles with graceful cursive writing.

At the time I didn't think the bottles were killing her. At the time I
thought they were unusual boxes of secret-content size and I looked
forward to her emptying another so that I could have it for my
treasures. It was the time before safety precautions, and they had
simple narrow necks with small screw-top metal caps. Perfect for
childhood collections.

My sister and I used the bottles with the beautiful cursive names for
the tiny plastic beads in delicious snow cone colors that you use to
bake faux stained glass sun catchers. I loved that the flower that
made me think of Easter, of spring, of delicate smells and pastel
colors was also the holder of the magic beads that created fragile art
at home. My sister and I were wild about making sun catchers, most of
which were Christmas themed. The warm smell of plastic baking in the
oven and tiny funnels and precise tweezers for perfect placement of
color flakes meant Christmas comfort to me. And the little metal screw
top bottles meant Granny to me.

Somehow on the path to adulthood, the mental image of the flower named
bottles and the Christmas arts and my grandmother's painful, slow
passing got mixed up in my mind. Somehow when I got older and I
understood cancer and in retrospect what all those moans and prayers
really meant, I looked at the bottles again for what they really were.
Typed, neat, pharmaceutical script read "Granny Wy." The flower
bottle didn't save her. The color chips didn't excite me anymore. But
still sometimes when I root through my parents' basement I find a
bottle that says "Granny Wy" and it is still filled with ultra sky blue
beads. It makes my heart hurt that now the flowers smell funereal, not
Easter, and the colors look tedious, not adventurous.

Tonight, I am taking a medicine from the same pharmaceutical company
with the childishly innocent cursive logo. The bottle is a sample from
my sleep doctor, for my insomnia, not cancer. But I push in the foil
stamped over and over "Flower, Flower, Flower," and I screw off the top
that isn't child proof, and I look at the rectangular container with
the fluted neck; I remember. I remember Easter and the smell of the
church filled with flowers and my grandmother asleep in her recliner
weary after another trip to the doctor. And I remember the red and the
blue and the amber beads and my sister's precision as we celebrated
Christmas by dropping one tiny chip after another into small metal slots.

As I push in the foil that says "Flower, Flower, Flower," and I draw up
the cotton, I think all these things, and I wonder if I will sleep
tonight. The sleep of "Flower, Flower, Flower."

Brain-body dilemma

I am deeply sorrowed for the throngs of Christine Wy fans patiently
waiting to hear what strange things I've been thinking or dreaming
lately. The idea journal I keep next to my bed is backlogged with
brilliant kernels waiting to pop. I have no lack of material. What I
have is a lack of schedule.

My sleep specialist has done something to me I have resisted for
years--a regular sleep schedule. It's torture. It's terrible. It's
horrible terrible torture. Really. In bed by 11 pm awake by 8 am. I
know that sounds innocuous, but, number one, my body/brain doesn't do
that. And number two, I really like to write at night.

Getting ready for bed is a reflective time for everyone. For me, it
starts with, "What are my plans for tomorrow?" Then I move on to "What
did I accomplish today?" This metamorphoses into, "What have I done
over the course of my life???" And this is when the certain firing of
old nuerons creates new connections and new ideas. My husband says
it's the connections I make that are interesting. I don't know if
that's the case, but it happens while I'm brushing my teeth. And this
is when my brain ignites my fingers and I want to type out my story.

You see? It's incompatible with the sleep doctor's charms. I'm trying
very hard to be a good patient and give my best efforts to his
treatment, but it's not good for blogging. I don't like to think of
myself as non-compliant, but if to prevent my fingers from exploding
from un-typed missives I must violate doctor's orders, then so be it.
But I promise to do my very best to be healthy and type-y.

Ever your pal,
Christine Wy

Dream entry #4

The other night I dreamed I was an undergraduate again at Western
Kentucky University. The Honor's Program was hosting one of their
campus coffee-house open-mic nights in the old faculty lounge log cabin
(note: nothing in that sentence is made up). Johnny Depp stopped by to
hang out while he was on tour promoting "Pirates of the Carribean: Dead
Man's Chest." He was sitting off to the side, drinking free coffee. I
walked up to him and said, "I loved the first 'Pirates of the Carribean.'"

He smiled, looked up at me through his eyelashes, and said "Really?" In
a very shy way.

"Oh yes, I love swashbuckling very much."

He acted awkward and surprised; I would swear this was the first time
anyone had ever told him they liked the movie, and I continued to
compliment him. I carried on explaining to him all the ways I loved "Pirates of the Carribean," and he was very sweet about it, but then he suddenly had to
leave.

Unfortunately, I hadn't gotten to the most important part of my
conversation, the real reason I wanted to speak to him.

"Wait! Will you be my pen pal? You don't have to write back if you
don't want to!"

Fruits of summer

I have always been afraid of people who don't like watermelon. They don't seem human, as if some alien race had accidentally left one of their emissaries behind on Earth and the whole species abhorred watermelon as some genetic flaw.

On the Fourth of July, this isn't the most obvious blog theme that comes to mind. I could write about how Chicago is like a war zone on
Independence Day as families and friends set off fireworks all over the city. I am surrounded on all sides of the noise of fireworks of the caliber used by small towns for municipal Independence celebrations, only these are being launched in the streets and alleys of all the neighborhoods of Chicago. It's a spectacular display.

Tonight I took the dog on an extra-long nighttime walk, a luxury she rarely gets, but only because I wanted to stay outside and watch the pyrotechnics. Walking along Logan Boulevard, amid all the cacophony and irritated car alarms and police sirens, I smelled watermelon. Maybe it was someone's cheap drug store perfume who had just walked by before me, or maybe out of sight behind one of the fences someone was concluding their Fourth of July picnic, but I distinctly smelled watermelon, and my mouth watered.

I love the mellow, delicate sweetness of watermelon. Its rough chewable texture and simultaneous porosity, its extreme juiciness and its delicate fragility, all signify its ultimate summer fruit perfection. I love the sweet heart of the melon so much that I cut or scoop out the interior to the ring of seeds to save for later. I eat from the seeds to the white rind first, appreciating the tangier flavor of the exterior meat. But the center of the melon, the most perfect part of the watermelon, is sweetness and chewiness sublime. It deserves to be savored separate and last from the rest.

Yet there are people, stymieing people, who don't like watermelon. I'm not sure I trust these people completely. My first best friend in high school liked no melons. I bothered her about it every summer and tried
to persuade her to eat watermelon or cantaloupe, even arguing that honey dew wasn't like the other melons and was so far superior. But nothing would budge her. When pressured she'd say something about a bad memory of a picnic with her estranged birth mother and a germaphobe aunt, but nothing about flavor or texture.

My second best friend in high school liked watermelon with salt. My aunt told me once the white of the melon was best. I think they're both off.

My husband. What a special case. He doesn't like watermelon, but how can I distrust my own husband? What redeems him is that he enjoys cantaloupe, but I still don't understand how a person can like one and not the other. It is like eating Gala apples but not Fuji--they are both apples. For years I couldn't remember that my husband didn't like watermelon, "Mmm, this watermelon is perfect, try some."

"I don't like watermelon."

"What? How can you not like watermelon?"

"I just don't. And I've told you a thousand times."

"I didn't know you didn't like watermelon."

"We've had this same conversation over and over. I don't like watermelon."

"Really? Oh. That's right. Well here's some cantaloupe but it's not as good."

There is a restaurant we used to go to often that serves plates of melon as a complimentary appetizer instead of bread. I used to eat the cantaloupe first as a favor to Matthew so that he could enjoy all the watermelon. Over and over I did this, and then I would be upset that he didn't eat the watermelon I saved for him. Finally I remembered--after years of marriage--to eat the watermelon and not the cantaloupe. But I still try to pressure him from time-to-time. "Are you sure you don't want some of this watermelon? It's perfect."

He can't be completely human. No one sane could resist its mellow twangy sweetness. But at least my magnanimity is never tested. At
least I never have to share.

Fingerprints

Verbal patterns feel so good in our mouths that we are compelled to repeat them, over and over. Our tongues relish pulling back and pursing our cheeks as we bring the sound forward to our lips and say “good to go.” Vocal fingerprints, unlike those on our hands, are utterly transferable and sharable and spread like bacteria from one mouth to another, until we are all so infected with a catch phrase that we don’t know we have it anymore.

A few years ago, I became “Queer Eye” inundated and started saying “Fabulous!” as a joke, rolling my eyes and flopping my hand to show how funny I was. But too many repetitions turned “Fabulous!” into an actual verbal pattern—I couldn’t stop saying it!

I’d say “Fabulous!” then say, “Oh god, I said it again, just fabulous. Oh no! In trying not to say ‘Fabulous!’ I said ‘fabulous!’ This is horrible. Fabulous. See?”

It was a terrible, confusing time for me. Matthew reassured me, saying, “You’re thinking about it too much. If you quit thinking about the word so much it will go away.”

But it wouldn’t. It sat there perched on the back of my tongue waiting to unroll at a moment’s notice. Like an angry, taunting jester, it was there, hanging in my mouth, jumping out when I didn’t want it, out of my control. After I said it, I’d scream at whomever I was with, “I didn’t mean to say ‘Fabulous!’ I’m trying not to say it anymore! You have to understand!” Pretty much everyone thought I was nuts, but it was “Fabulous!” that made me feel nuts. Always there in my mouth, waiting, watching, laughing at me.

And now, “good to go” is staring me in the face. It is a threat. It watches, taunting me, waiting to get into my mouth. “Everyone else is saying me Christine. Try it. ‘Good to go.’ It feels delicious.” It is my siren song. My viper in the Garden of Language Eden. It calls to me, and I flinch every time I read it or hear it. But I resist. “Fabulous!” taught me that I can be weak and succumb to the power of diction, but I also learned I can quit when I try. “Good to go” won’t break my enamel barrier, now that I’m on guard against verbal assault.

Why I *heart* bad media

When TV critics say “Terrible,” I say, “Which channel?” I really enjoy a great big bowl of whipped cream after a day at work: fattening, easy to swallow, no healthful benefits. I know it’s bad, but it’s a way to tune out my brain after thinking all day and laugh at the ridiculousness of popular media. I know that I’m not learning or growing or changing, I just want to unwind for a bit.

Matthew always says, “I don’t see how you watch this stuff.”

I say, “Look how ridiculous they are. We’re worried about getting our car repaired and if the dog needs surgery; they’re worried about which earrings go best with their shoes. Which is funnier?”

Critics said it was like a competition of middle-aged women to see who could wear the tiniest t-shirt. I couldn’t wait. I tuned into “Tuesday Night Book Club” hoping for “The Surreal Life” with books. I got “The Lifetime movie” with booze. I watched one episode. I was compelled to watch the whole hour because my heart ached for them so much. It was like watching a Discovery Channel program on surviving cancer—you can’t just change the station because you’re bored, you have to know how it ends.

I wanted to watch the second and final episode. My remote control hand itched and twitched with the desire to turn it back on and watch the slow motion train wreck continue to spew detritus. But I knew it was bad for me. I knew it wasn’t the bowl of whipped cream I craved and watching would only make me sad again. I resisted watching the final episode, but I’m glad the temptation is no longer there. I’m weak in the face of terrible media. And junk food.