The Heart of the Family

Last Friday was a very important day. It was the birthday of the strongest woman I've ever known. 

My grandmother has quite a normal life story. Grew up in the 40s in a poor household, married to one man, two kids, six grand daughters, four great grand boys. But the numbers don't say anything of the stubborn strength and patience that she pushed into everything she did. She taught me to read by getting me to sit with her while she read Calvin and Hobbes comics to me. She gave my my first novel and later, my first Shakespeare play. She had far too much patience with me, babied me when I was sick, and covered for me with my parents when I was out at punk rock shows when I was 15. 

She's had several different kinds of cancer, the latest of which (a brain tumor) will kill her one day. But that is what the doctors told us almost ten years ago. They also told us that she had less than a week to live. She saw another birthday today in pure defiance of what those doctors said. 

In our own way, every member of my family has been preparing to lose my grandmother for near a decade. These days Mimi doesn't have very many days where she is active or cognoscent of her surroundings. But the days she does, she smiles, and gives my mother or the nurses at the home a hard time. She is still Mimi sometimes. 

For my part I have been dealing with this the way I deal with every death I've seen in my relatively short life. I've been angry and told myself it won't happen. I've put the thoughts of losing my grandmother into a box in my head and locked it up tight. It's too painful, and in matters of loss I am very much a child. 

I've watched how these thoughts have taken their toll on my family. How they've broken hearts and caused fights. Mimi wouldn't want this, but none of us have really discussed it with her. The few times I've talked to her about her death she has remained hopeful and faithful to a fault. She believes she is bound for a better place and a long awaited reunion with my grandfather. I hope she's right, but without her faith to fall back on I've put that conversation in the box with everything else. 

I'm not in despair though. When I start to get angry or sad that I didn't get enough time with her or that my children won't know her like my nephews do, I pick up a book and I always read the first sentance to myself in her voice. 

I love you, Mimi. Happy birthday. 

It Hurts in a Bad Way

I've been in an abusive relationship for two and a half years. Not with a guy. With a TV show. ABC's once upon a time is well into it's 3rd year of mouth frothing lunacy and at this point, I can't stop. This show is what happens when you drug a toddler with too much cough syrup and then let him color a script with his crayons. It wasn't always this way. In the first season the characters actions and choices had genuine consequences and while there were several dud episodes, it was nothing I couldn't overlook.

Anything to do with this bitch was just terrible

Things started to go off the rails pretty fast in season two. They broke the curse that had been the whole point of the show and clearly had no idea where to go. They threw in so many plot hiccups (The evil queen has an EVILER MOTHER, Emma and Snow are trapped in fairytale land, the guy who played the evil king in the first season keeps glaring at people menacingly!) but they threw in something that made me stay anyway. They threw in an Irish pirate. It was like a cheesy fairy tale tinted version of Chocolat. I was helpless.

I'm caught in the tractor beam of his guyliner

And now it's a season later. And the plot gets worse every episode. And the kid who plays Henry makes me so angry that I have actually had fantasies about pushing him off the deck of the Titanic. He's 12. That makes me a sociopath, but by God he is just the most irritating preteen alive. 

His face just screams punch me repeatedly

But I watched the episode that aired two days ago, where nothing happened. And I'll watch the next episode, where I can just about promise you that nothing will happen. Except the characters will turn to each other and state their feelings in simple and poorly worded lines. Because it's my fault that it does this to me. I just have to learn to love it for who it is. 

This is What Meth Must Feel Like: One Woman's Attempt to Keep Up With a Caffeine Addicted Doctor

My father has the most acceptable addictions, he drinks coffee the way most people breathe air. So last week, on our first day of vacation, I attempted to keep up with him. This is my account.

11am. (Cups 1 & 2) After nearly nine hours of sleep, which is five hours more than I've logged in one go for the last week, my dad wakes me up and grunts at me that I should make coffee while he showers. I do so and slowly sip a cup while I'm getting ready to go. It is exactly the amount of caffeine I need to start my day. But my dad downs a cup and then as he fills his up again he fills mine. It's an instinctive move, he hates to see an empty coffee cup. I shrug off the voice in my head that says I don't need another cup and drink deep. We leave the room and walk towards the front desk of the resort.

12 noon (cup 3) Before we hit the front building of the complex we pass a Starbucks. My father automatically stops. He is singlehandedly keeping the Laramie location in business. He turns to me and asks what I want. I'm feeling the heart racing effect of the extra cup I had for breakfast so I ask for an iced tea. My fathers eyes betray his disappointment. It's the same look of disappointment I got when I told him I wanted to be a writer. I change my order to a latte and he grunts in approval. It occurs to me that this is going to happen several more times throughout the day. I mentally decide to turn this into a blog post and start taking notes.

We go into a meeting with the PR guy for the resort we are staying at. He is an older very conservative guy and he and my father talk mostly financial issues. I tune them out in favor of the 80s/90s radio station that plays in the background.  In my head I am Bonnie Tyler and I am holding out for a mother fucking hero. I am roughly pulled from my day dreams of big hair and nonsensical music videos by the PR guy asking me about my life in LA. He makes it clear he thinks LA is a land of godless heathens and I have to struggle not to lie and tell him I work as a bartender at a drag club that serves only sodomites and people with vaginas. My father is eying me suspiciously, probably because I am talking at about 800 words per minute. The meeting ends and we go to get lunch.

2:00pm (drink 4) We grab lunch at a little cafe on the resort property. I could feel my father try to steer us to the Starbucks again but I insisted it would be rude to carry one of their drinks into the restaurant. In the last hour the temperature has risen to at least 80 degrees and I am feeling it. I drink an iced tea as we eat and catch up. My father drinks tea as well. We decide that after lunch we should try to see the air museum in town that has the fully operational WWII planes. Dad says "as long as we can hit a Starbucks on the way" I smile and try not to think of the slight tremor that is forming in my hand. My notes are starting to look like I wrote them in middle school, or possible while drunk. The words are getting smaller and closer together.

4:00pm (drink 5) Starbucks As luck or Southern California zoning regulations would have it, there is a Starbucks less than three blocks from the museum. We stop and I let my father talk me into a "refresher" when I mention that I'm feeling dried out. "The great thing is, it has just as much kick as two shots of espresso" he tells me as he pays. I have already ordered a large. I sigh, knowing I will not be sleeping for the next year. The tremor in my hand had just started to die down, but I suspect this will make it come back much worse.

We get to the air museum to discover that it is closing in 20 minutes and the guy at the front desk looks affronted when we ask if it will really take longer than that to look at the planes. He swears it takes at least three hours to go through both the hangers of the museum and "fully appreciate the history we have here." He tells us they have a sandwich shop attached to one of the hangers in a tone that implies that we are god damn communists if we don't spend so much time there we have to stop to eat. My father thanks him and smiles (not with his eyes) and we leave. I take the short walk to the door to practice my impression of Natasha from Rocky and Bullwinkle. My father refuses to join in as Boris. He insists we should go to the mall we passed on our way to the air museum. The tremor in my hand is in fact back with a vengeance and I accidentally flash my high beams at two cars as I drive us to the mall.

7:00pm (drink 6) We spend an hour shopping, which is about my limit on a good day. Today has not been a good day. My attention span is that of goldfish on crack and what I find funny in the world has gone up in almost a perfect inverse of my fathers disappearing sense of humor. This only serves to make everything, from the child throwing up blue icee in the food court, to the way the cashier at the Vans store calls my father "pops", fucking hysterical. I have cried off all my eyeliner from laughing so hard. My notes from this period look like there were hastily scrawled by a third grader. I should have switched to crayon.

We stop for dinner. I'm starting to really ride the high. I want a coke, but ask for an iced tea, sensing instinctively that my father is weighing how much trouble he would really get into for slapping me upside the head now that I'm over 18. The waitress brings out what could charitably be called a bucket with iced tea in it. Under the table my legs are bouncing out morse code for "heart palpitation"

9:30pm (drink 7) After dinner my father insists that we should stop at Target. "It's so much nicer than the fucking Walmart we have." He isn't wrong. Right next to the entrance, in case anyone should feel fatigued while shopping, there is a Starbucks. My mind screams "NO" but the thought is replaced quickly as all my thoughts are. My mind is going fast enough that it occurs to me that I could probably solve world hunger if I could focus long enough to stay on a train of thought. I get a pumpkin latte. It's fucking fall, after all, and I think everything should be pumpkin flavored between October 1st and November 30th. My notes are no longer legible in any way, mostly because the writing has gotten so small and there are no spaces between words or punctuation. It is the writing Faulkner might have had if he had lived long enough to gain a ridilin habit. The whole world seems to be shaking slightly. I start to wonder if I am actually seeing sounds. While at target my father buys me an industrial sized coffee pot for the new place I just moved in to, but scoffs at my request for the pumpkin flavored coffee. My disappointment only lasts until I am distracted my the wide variety of gum at the checkout. 

10:45pm (drink 8) Back at the hotel room my father turns on the news and pulls two iced teas from the refrigerator. He hands me one and we settle in to the couch to listen to a story about a teenager who claims her school violated her first amendment rights by enforcing a dress code. My father asks why I am twitching spasmodically but I don't answer. As much focus as I can gather has gone into mentally decoding the last episode of season two of Sherlock. I will solve it I tell myself. I will know how he survived the fall if I just...

An hour later I am in bed. The lights in the room are off and I am staring at the ceiling. The dots make a pattern, I know it. In one spot they look like a map, but over there they look like blood splatter and wasn't the finale of Dexter just so disappointing but not as bad as the finale to Lost but at least those two got a finale. Supernatural just keeps marching on years after no one cared and I wonder what ever happened to the Care Bears. They've resurrected every other cartoon from my childhood and I wonder if they really run out of things if they could bring my old dog back, cuz I know Howie wasn't the brightest animal but I really miss him and the world is just so sad sometimes...

This never happens! And likely never will again

I know what you're probably not thinking: "Two posts in one day?" But then your eyes jumped down and you realized this one is short and kind of a cop out but I want it noted anyway. This is the text converstation I had with Bailey today.

Bailey: Found a note on the floor of the classroom today that says "It's hard to be glitzy. Sorry. Hope you understand"

Caitlin: You demand glitzy from you kids? Wow, way to be a hard-ass

Bailey: I found it on the floor. I want to know more about this friend spat. Who is demanding the glitzy? In what context? What is the reprocussions of being unable to handle it?

Caitlin: Maybe it's a gang thing... Has anyone gotten into snapping song-based fights in the hallways?

Bailey: Not yet, but I may have to instigate that.

Caitlin: Any students named Maria?

Bailey: No :(

Caitlin: In your Catholic school? How is that possible?

Bailey: I think one might have a sister named Maria but that makes him Tybalt, and I don't like that. Also, thank you. Nothing makes grading papers more enjoyable than a mashup of "when you're a jet" and "Maria" stuck in your head on repeat.


You're welcome B. You're welcome

There's a Difference Between Summer and Fall Music

For about two weeks at the end of September I got lost in Phospherescent's recent album Muchacho. It's an airy album. It reminds me a bit of the first Angel's and Airwaves album except it feels much more organic. Full of background organs that have no melody, but grind out notes more to provide mood. It's layered so deep that it will probably take me years to listen to it and catch everything that runs through the songs. The emotion compounds through the songs, especially Song for Zula where I can feel the lyrics running through my veins, becoming part of me for the minutes that it plays. This album is quintessential fall music for me.

Summer is all about style over substance in my musical experience. Summer is punk music and Warped Tour. Summer is blasting through a song too fast to be accurate and not caring if you get the melody right when you sing. It's too hot to think to deep about the sounds coming from the speakers as long as the songs are fast and the melody is catchy.

But fall is different. The free fall of summer leaves me flat on the floor and I want music thats soft and comforting so I can wrap myself up inside it and keep the demons at bay. I want to hear melodies that demand harmony. I want banjos and complex lyrics that I give up trying to understand because the story they hide is overshadowed by the emotion they give freely. It's a season for soul and folk and jazz. I want to challenge my mind and my soul.

That's the big part of the rant for now.

I'd also like to note that Johnny Flynn's new album is out. It's fucking brilliant and I'll have a full blown review of it up soon.

Also in things you should have in your life, Agents of SHIELD is on ABC every Tuesday night. It's geek-tastic and even though it's not what a lot of people were expecting I think it's a great way to explore the deeper parts of the universe that the Marvel comic movies have been working so hard to create. Also if it gets canceled because not enough people watch it, I swear to Joss I am moving to London where they will kill my characters but not my shows.