Rescuing Devil Cat Tuesday, Jan 18 2011

I get to my door the other evening after a particularly long and terrible evening with my friend group, put my card in the door, and notice a kitty cat at the bottom of the stairs to my porch.  At first, I ignore it, because this is probably a Campus Cat, and while its weird that its made it all the way to student side, whatever.  But then the cat starts to climb the stairs to approach me.  This is weirder, because Campus Cats NEVER get within 10 feet of people.  This cat walks right up to me me, sits down on my shoes, and purrs.  He’s grey, with black stripes, very chubby (unlike campus cats) and he has big green eyes.  “Hi kitty.” I say to him.  In response, he meows and then jumps up on my window ledge.  I scratch him a little and decide to continue about my evening, but when I go to open my door, kitty gets this look on his face that says “I’M SO COLD PLEASE DON’T GO INSIDE!  OR IF YOU DO TAKE ME WITH YOU.  WHERE AM I??”
Its at this point that I notice that kitty has a collar.  Kitty’s name is Toulouse and there is a phone number.

“Are you lost kitty?” I ask him, and he purrs at me.

So I continue to scratch him, and I call the number on his collar.  There is no address on it, and I don’t want him to sit outside all night where it is so cold.  I am expecting to be SUCH A GOOD CITIZEN, paying it forward for 2011.  I can’t wait for a little old cat lady to start sobbing at the fact that I’ve found her precious kitty, and I’ve decided I’ll even deliver him to her because he is so friendly.  The woman who picks up the phone does sound older, but it seems that I am getting into something bigger than I expected.

“Oh, I’m actually not in New Orleans right now; I’m in Colorado.”  “Yeah, my boyfriend is on his way to the house right now to make sure the kitty door is unlocked.”  “Could you just run Toulouse to my house?”

“Of course I can bring him home,” I tell her, because he has this look on his face that is making me almost like cats.  “Where do you live?”

“Well…” she says and there is a slight pause.  “I live on Magnolia street.  Do you know where that is?”

“No,” I tell her, because I’ve never heard of it.  “I’m on Tulane’s campus right now, on Willow street.  Any chance you can direct me?”

She says “Of COURSE.  Simply go down Willow to Calhoun (I know this), Go down Calhoun to Magnolia (I can handle this) and turn…  Well… turn…  rii-Left.  Turn left down Magnolia.  Then I’m down the street, there are 2 abandoned houses and then there’s a little cabin with a fence around it.  That one is mine.”

There’s this moment where I’m like, ‘are you serious?’ in my head, and then I realize how rude that would be.  So I ask her, “Um… and just so I know, what’s your house number?”

“I… its 72… 72…  I actually don’t remember.”

There’s another pause, and then I tell her…  “Well, I’ll see what I can do.”  and we say good-bye.

I stare at this kitty.  Toulouse.  He looks up at me and he purrs a little, and I decide that I am going to make it my mission to get kitty home.  Its cold, and kitty needs a warm place to sleep.  Since that place isn’t going to be my place, I’m going to be his hero.

But I’m not stupid.  The first thing I do is call Max.  Max has already gotten into his pjs for the night, so I’ve got to rouse him from his down stage, because I’ve decided he is looking up actual directions to Magnolia street and then he is coming with me.  He does so, and tells me that he’ll meet me on Willow.

Now there’s the the challenge of transporting kitty.  I don’t have anything leash like, and I know that cat’s aren’t followers.  So I look at kitty and I say to him “do you like being carried?”

He’s been letting me pet him with no problem, so I grab him and he immediately snuggles onto my chest.  Now mind you:  kitty is the size of a toddler.  Kitty weighs 25 or 30 pounds.  But he seems happy in my arms, and this doesn’t seem like its going to be a problem.

I lug tubby kitty to Willow, and a few minutes later I meet Max there.  This is when Max and I learn something very important about tubby kitty.  He doesn’t like cars.  At all.  Kitty immediately starts struggling in my arms, and let me remind you, TUBBY KITTY IS THE SIZE AND STRENGTH OF A TODDLER.  So I wrestle tubby kitty into submission with Max trying to figure out how to help me, but being just about as affective as someone trying to help with a struggling toddler.  I finally grab tubby kitty by the scruff of his neck, which calms him down a little bit.  With that, we start our trek down Willow.

As we trudge in the 22 degree weather, kitty starts making a noise.  It is an unearthly noise.  It is a low, guttural, strange noise.  I’ve never heard an animal make this noise.  He’s still not struggling, because I’m holding one arm around him and the other has the scruff of his neck pulled back, but he just keeps making this evil noise.  Max turns around to ask me what’s wrong with the cat, and I have no answer for him.

We make it to Magnolia, and we take the left.  Its a short street – its only one block on this side, and one block on the other side, which is why I’m unfamiliar with it.  We walk all the way down it, where it ends in a dead end, but we cannot find a cabin/cottage nestled near 2 empty houses.  I’m not sure what to do; I’ve got tubby devil kitty, a street of houses with no official destination, and did I mention its 22 degrees, and I’m in a sweat shirt?

Finally, I call the lady back.

“Hi, I’m on Magnolia, but I’m not sure which house is yours.  I’m standing at the end of the street.  I see a house with a fence like you said.  It has a blue truck outside.  Is that yours?”

“um…”

she proceeds to give me the same directions she gave me the first time I called.  I start describing houses to her, all the while Max is trying to distract tubby devil kitty because I don’t want to give him over (Max is notorious for dropping animals of all shapes, sizes, etc).  The woman does not seem to recognize any of her neighbors’ homes, so in a fit of desperation, I mention her boyfriend again.  “Didn’t you say your boyfriend was coming by to check the kitty door?”

“Oh yeah, he left already, but he said he said everything is open and ready for Toulouse.”

Fuck.

So finally, at the end of the street, Max and I come to a house with a light on, a gate that looks like its locked but it isn’t, has a vehicle parked outside, and doesn’t look like anyone is home.  I’m tempted to knock on a door or two, but the issue is if this woman can’t recognize her neighborhood, I don’t think her neighbors will know who she is.  I tell her “I think we’re here.” and she says “Oh, God bless you.” and then I just hang up.

Max and I take a moment to try to decide what to do, and finally, I open the fence and drop tubby devil kitty through the open door.  Kitty stops making the noise and looks at me for a moment, then starts to walk around the side of the house.  “We did it!” I shout at him, but then, kitty comes waltzing back around and walks right through the fence and back out into the neighborhood.

I have a moment of betrayal: like I’ve just RESCUED THIS KITTY and his thank you is to run away again.  We watch him, as he sort of wanders the area, and then he disappears.

“We’re leaving” I tell Max.  “We’re done.”

So I rescued a tubby devil kitty.  By rescue, I mean, didn’t bring him in to my dorm, which is for the best.

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Mount Chalupa Tuesday, Dec 21 2010

My little sister and I are very different.  But sometimes, we have very similar, very warped minds.

Below is her first multi-media, stop-animation masterpiece “Mount Chalupa Massacre.”  Please go to Youtube and rate, comment, and favorite it.  :)

 

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Christmas Cookies Sunday, Dec 19 2010

I’ve been in the kitchen since Thursday.  That is to say that we started our annual Christmas cookie baking marathon on Thursday and we have been at it ever since.  Mom and Brittany got two snow days while I was home this week (the roads are atrocious) so we’ve been busy little chefs.

This is not my favorite part of Christmas.  I mean, don’t get me wrong:  its a lot of fun to see my friends’ eyes light up when I tell them how many different types of cookies there are in the box when we deliver them, and a few of the varieties we make are so damn good and since we only have them once a year, its so nice to get them when the holidays roll around, but the marathon is daunting.

How many kinds of cookies do you make, Jessie?  Well, it depends on the year.

Our record is 41 vartieties.

This year, we’re doing 36.

Now, that’s not 36 dozen cookies.  That’s not 36 batches of cookies.  That’s 36 different kinds of cookies.  Each batch gets 3 to 6 dozen.  At a minimum, 1300 individual cookies roll out of our kitchen before the holidays are over.  Perspective?  We could give everyone in Shipman, IL, which is where my Grandma lived, 2 cookies.  Every single person in that town, including the babies, could have 2 cookies.

The tradition of OMG Christmas Cookies! has been going on for about as long as I can remember.  When I was little, it was a really good time of year: mom and Grandma would bustle around the kitchen for a few days, baking up a storm, and all of my favorite cookies would roll out.  Fudges and nuts and short bread candy canes and toffee and gooey butter cookies…. the list would just roll on.  Every year, mom would add a new cookie, and since there were SO MANY we would take shirt boxes from JC Penny or Famous Barr and we would fill them with a few of each variety: a sampler box of extreme proportions, if you will, and send it off to our friends and loved ones.

My issue with the tradition these days, is that none of us seem to enjoy doing it anymore.  Mom looks at the task as a giant chore, as opposed to a creative outlet for her baking ideas.  Gram had stopped helping years ago, in favor of making a few varieties of her own, and being done with it.  On top of everything else, our kitchen is not a nice place to spend multiple days, and when I say days, I mean I was in the kitchen at 9:30 this morning, and left the kitchen at about 9:00 this evening, breaking for laundry and for a 30 minute dinner.  Our kitchen has no insulation.  Even with the oven going, and a space heater running non-stop, that room is cold in Illinois Decembers.  The floor is 15 year old laminate which is falling apart.  After about an hour of standing on it, you want to cut your feet off at the ankle.  I don’t know why this happens, but even in good, supportive shoes, standing on this floor is worse than standing on concrete for 2 days.  The sink is broken in that it is perpetually clogged to the point that  it drains slowly and neither myself nor my mother can get it fixed.  We have a dish washer, but its broken: any time we try to use it, it either explodes water at us, melts things, or just spits the soap out on the door and says “what do you want me to do with this mess?”  This means we do a lot of dishes by hand.  One side of the sink filled with clean soapy water, and the other filling with dirty water, so that rinsing has to be done quickly and breaks have to be taken often.  Finally, the cabinets are all too tall.  I’m the only one who can reach things that we need, and its hard for me most of the time.

We have one more day of baking tomorrow.  we have to finish up sugar cookies, a sweet chex mix, chocolate dipped pretzels, and something that I can’t remember off the top of my head.  Below are a few pictures of the creations and the chaos, and while I love about 2/3rds of what we make, I’ll be very glad to be out of the kitchen and doing other things.

 

Thumb print Cookies Sans Jelly

Chocolate Crinkles, before and after

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Home Made Candy Canes (the peppermint makes them nommy!)

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Friends and Love Friday, Dec 10 2010

Its the holidays, so its the time of year when I’m supposed to be mushy and sentimental… and I’m really ok with that.

I have these moments, especially this time of year, where I realize that I have been blessed with the best group of friends a girl could ask for.  Things started off slow for me my freshmen year of college, where I had two really good friends and the rest were just pretty good acquaintances.  Somehow, though, as the years rolled on, I’ve ended up with the greatest hodgepodge of people I could ever imagine.

I’m so gushy about my friends tonight, that I don’t even know how to write about them without writing circles about them.  A good example of it is just how the proceedings of tonight went.  The friend group was going to Lola’s for dinner tonight, and I couldn’t accompany them due to a prior engagement.  And as the night progressed, it was chili outside, making me less than enthusiastic to get dressed and get over to the House on Sycamore (because I’ve pretty much been in bed all day with post finals stress disorder).  I sat on AIM with Stephanie for a good amount of time, and just listening to the ebb and flow of the House, even when I’m not there, makes me happy.

Stephanie M 9:42 pm
“I’ma shoot your fucking ass out of the fucking sky with this fucking thing and – oh, no, I’m just gonna get fucking burned by this fucking napalm”
anitasusana 9:42 pm
hahaha, I can hear it even with her inflection
Its like I’m in the living room
Stephanie M 9:42 pm
pretty much
anitasusana 9:43 pm
Seth probably repeated “Yeah, fucking napalm”
Stephanie M 9:43 pm
…..

yep

anitasusana 9:43 pm
:-D
Things I know
Stephanie M 9:43 pm
yeah

I’m very excited for tomorrow.  We are going Farmer’s Marketing, and we are also going to Celebration in the Oaks.  =)  I will have many adventures to recount.

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The Friday that was Different Saturday, Dec 4 2010

Yesterday, I posted a tweet to Twitter that said:  “Today’s Friday is going to be different. I can tell. :)”  I don’t actually know what I meant by it, except that I was bored and determined that I wasn’t going to be any longer.

The day started when I suddenly decided that it was time for the first of what I expect to be many stake-outs of Six Flags New Orleans.  Thirty seconds of back story: Six Flags New Orleans closed in 2005 for hurricane Katrina.  The park never reopened, and has been sitting, derelict and rusting, ever since.  I am obsessed with it, and have been for a while. I want to go in and explore, and also work on a photo project, but in order to do so, its going to take careful and intelligent planning, including stake outs of the area.

Sometime in the mid-morning, I told Max to get his work done and get himself ready: that we were going to the park.  While he wrote a paper, I worked on cover stories that we could use should we get pulled over for being suspicious during this stake out, how we should de-New Orleans-ify my car (its better to be lost tourists than it is to be Tulane kids poking around), and the goals we were hoping to accomplish.  “Don’t wear Tulane stuff” and “fuck, I’ll have to carry a purse,” were the gems of information that Max received from me.

Max came over at about 1:30, and we worked on getting our cover story and appearances in check.  We decided that we were going to be a couple from Chicago going to visit my parents in Florida.  We laughed as we got ourselves and my car ready.  Take off my fleur de lis necklace, hide our Tulane IDs, remove my Tulane parking permit and Mardi Gras beads, add my BHHS Tassle from 2007 back to my mirror…  Max laughed and said “geeze, do criminals think like this every day?”

We drove out to the Ninth Ward, which was my first time ever going without a guided group of people.  Its a very hit-and-miss area in terms of things like how safe one feels or how nice the area looks.  The entire drive over, with Max reading a book I’d thrust at him or glancing at the map in his lap, I could feel the excitement building within me.  This was insane, and I was incredibly ready for it.

For a few minutes, I was concerned we were lost, even with the straight forward directions.  We passed an equal and surprising number of motels and auto part stores, though it didn’t look like either were very populated.  Just when I was beginning to think we were going to need to turn around and try again, we saw the park looming in the distance.  My current Mecca!  There it was.

The drive down Michoud Dr. was surprisingly residential.  We kept the park in our sight, trying to determine places that we could eventually leave a car that would be a safe walking distance.  There are two entrances to the park, the one that families would go through and then a bus and RV entrance.  I didn’t expect the RV entrance, and when we came upon it, the first thing we noticed was the NOPD NO TRESPASSING sign on the fence that has recently been erected.  The second thing that Max noticed was that the fence had been cut and rolled back so that a person could easily waltz on through.

We couldn’t circle the park entirely because it is flanked by Lake Pontchartrain on two sides, so we drove in what essentially was an L shape around the area: past the regular entrance, turn left, past the RV entrance, down as far as we could go, U-turn and come back.  To my dismay, there are no businesses to park at within a 3 mile radius of the area.  The residential area that is surrounding is not one that we could ever blend in to.  It was interesting to drive through these neighborhoods, though, because for every 3 nice new houses, there are 3 gutted, derelict houses overgrown from 5 years of abandon.

The only thing we got out and inspected was an area that confused me greatly.  There was a drive with a derelict guard shack and what looked like concrete foundations of a parking lot or buildings or something.  We got out to inspect a green patch of concrete which turned out to be an old tennis court.  Near as Max and I could determine, there must have been a nice subdivision there at one point, but its obviously gone and not being rebuilt.

After returning from our adventure with enough information for me to begin the preliminary planning of this trip with which I’m obsessed, Max and I spent a few hours in front of the television before we went over to the House on Sycamore in order to celebrate Latke night.  Every year, our group does Latke night, where Ella buys things to make lots of Latkes and then we eat them to be happy.

While Ella was heating up a pan of oil in order fry the little potato goodness in, the pan got very hot very quickly.  One minute we were all spread out throughout the house, some of us chatting in the living room some of us sitting in the kitchen, the next minute, the pan of oil was ON FIRE!

There was about a second where Ella, Joey, and I (who were the only ones in the kitchen at the time, I think) went “UUUUUUUUHHHHHHH.”  The next second, Ella went for the baking soda, while the other two of us tried to remain calm.  After a few second’s search, Ella couldn’t find the baking soda… And we had no idea what to do.  I watched the fire grow from my vantage point in the back of the kitchen, hoping that the oil would burn out quickly, but before we knew the flames were growing too high too fast, and the kitchen was filling with black smoke.  I don’t know how it all happened in sequence, but I know that Ella went to grab the pan, that I some how ended up at the sink and in the way of the pan, and that when she picked it up and Joey went to open the kitchen door to get it outside I high tailed it for the living room, ready to get out of the house by one of the other exits; the fire was too much for us to handle.  I know that Max raced past me from the living room to stamp out something that was on fire, and that Manny ran into the kitchen as well to kick or push the pan out onto the concrete.  As soon as it was outside, I ran for the front door to open it up and let fresh air into the house, and started the search for Boudreaux.  Ella, who had a burn on her arm, ran for the bathroom, and Joey followed her a second later to make sure she was ok and wouldn’t need to go to the emergency room.

The damage was minimal, thank goodness.  Black soot on the ceiling, grease everywhere, a pan that may no longer be usable.  But nothing that wasn’t replaceable.  Ella has a burn on her arm that is big but not bad, and the house is perfectly fine.  It was a Hanukkah miracle.

It was a very different Friday. =)

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Taking a Break Tuesday, Nov 16 2010

My brain needs two minutes.  Just two minutes to relax and unwind.  I’m staring at the clock as we speak: its 1:35 am.

I think that I can be done with the first chapter of my thesis by 2:35 am.  If I push really hard.  I have not yet read Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, and I have no movie to base anything off of.  If there’s a pop quiz, I’m going to fail it.  I’m so exhausted.

I have slaved away for pages today.  I had originally been up to page 5, but deleted 3 of them because they literally made no sense and were nothing but copied sentences out of books with page numbers.  There is nothing worse than deleting 3 pages of work that you’re already despairing over.  Nothing.

Regardless, I am staring at page 6.5 right now.  I’m really tired.  But as it stands, I have no more time.  This paper needs to be e-mailed out before the sun comes up tomorrow, so that I can give my readers a few extra days to review it.  As it stands, I’m cutting it awfully close.

I never should have signed on to write a thesis.  Worst idea ever.

If I can remain conscious, I’ll write a post about Teach for America when the sun is up.

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TSA: Misunderstood Agency or Evil Conglomerate Thursday, Nov 11 2010

A friend of mine and I have recently been discussing concerns that we have about holiday travel this year; namely the new policy of using full body scanners at airports, and the opt out “groping pat-downs.”  Honestly, having not yet gone through it, I don’t know how I feel about the whole scenario.  I’d like to think that the TSA is professional enough to not make the body scanners a huge deal, but I’m usually laughed at by people when I say this (I’m too optimistic about these things).

Regardless, I’ve personally decided not to formulate an opinion until I go through the process.  I read reports as they come through, and I discuss whether or not being undressed in front of the TSA is a fair idea or not, but I don’t know one way or another.

Today, said friend sent me this radio report.  For those of you who don’t have 14 minutes to listen, the girl in question works for the radio station, and was trying to make her way home through the Fort Lauderdale (FLL) Airport.    In her report, she tells her coworkers that she was randomly screened to go through the airport’s new full body scanner.  She says that she was the only person  asked to do so (and her coworkers are quick to point out that this must be because she is a “smokin’ hot” girl), and that because she was uncomfortable with the situation, she refused to be scanned.  The TSA apparently called out  “OPT OUT!” and pulled her aside for the invasive pat down.  Again, feeling uncomfortable, the girl says that she refused the pat down (she claims that she’s had this procedure done before, that they twist a woman’s breasts, and that it hurts.  However, she later claims that she’s only read this in magazine articles, and has never actually experienced it…)  This is when the TSA pulled her aside for questioning.  She says that they wouldn’t let her grab her things, that they eventually handcuffed her to a chair, that one of the agents took her ticket and ripped it in front of her, and that she received no answers to the questions she asked.  She told her coworkers that she was yelled at by the TSA, that because they’d handcuffed her she couldn’t wipe away her panicked tears, and ended up being a blubbering mess in front of the people who had to walk around her and see her on display.  She also notes that no one else was asked to go through the full body scanner.

The situation sounds completely horrific.  It seemed like the screening process became a scare tactic to force passengers to comply with the TSA regulations.  And the end of her story was that she was eventually escorted from the airport, not allowed to fly that day.

I told my friend that I wanted to see the TSA footage, thinking to myself that it was crazy that things would be this extreme in a Democratic state like the US.  My friend was able to quickly find the TSA footage of the incident, and you can see it here.  The footage is official CCTV footage released from FFL, and the TSA claims that the girl in the video is the girl in question.  I personally have no proof that this is her or not.

Both videos are very long, so if you don’t have another half an hour to view them (there is no sound on them, though the quality is good for surveillance footage) the synopsis of what happened is very different.  We do see the girl deny the scanner.  She’s taken over to an alternate screening area and we see the TSA swarm on her when she refuses the pat down.  We see her sit down and cry a lot.  But that’s about where the similarities end in regards to her story.  We do not see the girl get handcuffed.  We never see her ticket torn, but we do see the TSA carrying it around.  While she does cry quite a bit, the TSA offers her paper towels to dry her eyes with.  She talks to a particular TSA agent for a long time, but its difficult to suss out how the conversation is going; it looks as if both of them are trying to get a point across, but it doesn’t look like there’s any yelling on either of their parts.  Meanwhile, the full body scanner is still full body scanning:  old men, black men, thin women, fat women.  It doesn’t appear that the scanner is going unused, and it doesn’t appear that there is a bias for “hot women.”

It seems that the situation is handled poorly on both sides.  For starters, the TSA, seeing that she is an opt out on both scenarios does not handle her situation with any state of grace.  She is indeed swarmed by officers, and then held for an unreasonably long amount of time.  My friend pointed out that if she really were a terrorist, that this is prime time to see the inner workings of the TSA – how do they handle these types of situations.  Do they have a protocol for people who want to opt out of both security checks?  Are there any officers on hand who can calmly answer nervous passengers’ questions?  On the other hand, based on the video footage, I can find only a slight hint of what the girl talks about in her radio report.  No handcuffs.  No ticket ripping.  No being left to blubber like a fool.

It seems like there’s a disconnect here.  I wonder if this girl got so frightened that she fabricated the situation in her mind while it was happening?  Or is this a lie to give the TSA as much bad publicity as possible?  On the other hand, did the TSA give us all the footage?  And what went on outside of the camera’s lens?  What is it that we’d hear if the footage had sound.

In a no-longer post-9/11 world (9/11 should never be forgotten, but we are no longer dealing with the direct after effects of the tragedy) what is the future of the TSA?  Full body scanners have not been well received by the public, as is to be expected, and in a place where people feel the need to tell fairly over-the-top stories about them (true or false), will they have a negative impact on air travel?  Furthermore, what is the “next step for safety?”  Will everyone eventually be forced to undress completely to get on to an airplane.

I think my biggest problem with the entire hullabaloo is two things.  1 being that, as my friend put it, there are MUCH more efficient ways to cause terror in our country.  A terrorist could easily poison a water supply and that’s all she wrote.  Second, the same thing can happen with a bus or train: its much easier to get onto a greyhound bus, and two buses flying into a skyscraper has a very similar potential for damage and death toll as a plane.  Yet I can get on a bus with next to no hassle.

Thoughts?

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A Note about a migraine Tuesday, Nov 9 2010

I woke up this morning with the makings of a migraine.  This is a great way to start what is going to be one of the longest days of my life…  I’m waiting to hear from Teach for America on whether or not I’ve been accepted and whether or not they want me for New Orleans (I can’t be more nervous if I try…).

I get asked with a surprising amount of frequency what migraines actually are.  People who don’t experience them know them as really bad headaches, but have no basis on when the ache crosses the line into something worse.

I’ve been having migraines since I was about 15 or 16 years old.  My mother is plagued with them, and has been since she was in her early 30′s, so I grew up knowing that whatever a migraine actually was, it must be a very bad bad thing.  Mom would curl up into the fetal position in dark rooms with an ice pack on her head, involuntary tears streaming out of her eyes; the slightest bump or ray of light would cause her to convulse miserably.  My sister and I learned how to play with our Barbies together in near silence as a result.

My first migraine happened while I was working at Karmak.  I’d been getting chronic headaches for a long time before that (I was always good for a bottle of Tylenol in high school) and I remember it starting as a headache that got bad very quickly.  I took an early lunch that day, because I’d skipped dinner then night before and hadn’t eaten breakfast, and just assumed that the headache was in direct correlation with a starving body.  I inhaled a sandwich from Subway, downed a few Tylenol, and laid in my car with a cold coke can on my temple until my hour was up.  When I went back in to work, staring at the computer screen (which was black with dark teal letters on it) was too bright – I couldn’t look for more than a few seconds without putting my head down.  My boss, being an angel, noticed this and sent me home to try to sleep it off.

It was the longest drive of my life.  Karmak was 30 miles away from my house, and most of it is winding road.  I made it into my house, grabbed an ice pack like my mom would, and desperately sought a dark place.  Our house does not get dark.  Every room has seven to nine foot tall windows that are always getting light.  We don’t have any black out curtains, either, just gauzy things for privacy but that allow natural light inward.  I finally decided to lay down on my parent’s bed, because while the room wasn’t dark, it was the coolest room in the house, and they have a giant king bed – I could sprawl out unlike anywhere else in the house.

Ice packs do not work for my migraines.  I put that thing to my temple, and about five minutes later threw it across the room.  I stumbled to the bathroom and downed 3 Excedrin migraine pills that I found in the closet, and grabbed my dad’s heating pad from under the bed.  It worked a little bit better (some days, my mom and I are exactly the same, and some days we are polar opposites), and I curled up on my face in the fetal position trying to block out light.  My dog, having heard me rustling around the house and being home much too early came up stairs to lie down with me, and when he fell asleep, his snoring was too loud for my brain.  I kicked him off the bed and locked him out, and a few minutes later, I threw up the sandwich I’d eaten a mere hour ago (I have been unable to swallow the Chicken Pizziola from Subway since…) and remember thinking that I was probably going to die from this nightmare: my head pounded so badly that I couldn’t fall asleep, I could lie in no position that would alleviate the pain, and I wasn’t even sure the pain killers I’d taken had remained in my stomach.  I was going to die like that, miserable, with my head exploding, the light coming in behind my shut-tight eyelids too bright, and my body racking in convulsion at the slightest noise.  I vaguely remember my mom coming home and asking me why I was home so early, what was wrong, and me only being able to spit out “migr…” before I felt sick again.

Today, my migraines vary.  I get ophthalmic ones from time to time which don’t hurt so badly, but cause me to be unable to  see.  Its like fireworks in front of my eyes, with a light twinge in my temples.  Sometimes, I get them as debilitating as the ones when I was younger, and other times, I think they’re just really bad headaches.  For the most part, I can medicate them with OTC pills, though taking Excedrin is a fiasco in and of itself.  This morning, feeling the migraine knocking on my head, I knew that I needed to take something; I couldn’t just go back to bed today to sleep it off.  However, Excedrin on an empty stomach is just as miserable as the migraine itself; I feel unsettled and weak all day long.  I had nothing to eat in my room, and not a lot of time to fret about it, so I went ahead and downed the pills anyway and rushed off to the LBC to try to get something in me to soak up the meds.  It didn’t work…  I’m still fighting off the acid.

I don’t know if I’ve adequately described a migraine here to people who don’t experience them…  But essentially, its more than a headache; its a lot like death.  But my head is ok today, and later on, I’ll know if my next two years are set, or if I have to start searching for another New Orleans job.  :/

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NaNoWriMo – I do it, get over it Tuesday, Nov 2 2010

I love November.  Its probably my busiest month, (well, I mean the month of Christmas is right up there) but so much goes on.  And, on top of everything, there’s National Novel Writing Month: NaNoWriMo.

I get a lot of questions about NaNo:  why I do it, what its all about, what the benefits are… all that good stuff.  That being said, I’ve decided to write a blog about it (and take up precious word count building time in doing so), so that everyone can be on the same page (and stop taking up word count building time!!! ;D)

1. NaNoWriMo?  What is it?

In short, its a call to writers in the month of November to stretch their fingers and their literary imaginations and pen a 50,000 word novel.  No editing, no rewrites, no stopping, no turning back.  Write a novel.  50,000 words, 30 days.

2.   50,000 words?  That’s more like a novella right?

You are an asshole.  Go write 50,000 words in 30 days and come back and tell me that you didn’t write a novel.

3.   How is it judged?

The only judging occurs when you upload your story into the word counter.  No one reads your story to tell if its the next great American novel.  This is all about words to page.

4.   If no one judges content, then what’s the point?

NaNoWrimo is about getting authors in the practice of writing every day.  The contemporary author will tell you that writing is a full time job; one that you’ve got to train yourself to do each and every day.  NaNo takes that training to an extreme: separates the wheat from the shaft.

5.   Will you publish?  When can I read your book?

On an overall level, some people do publish their NaNoWriMo’s.  A great example of that is author John Green and his book Paper Towns.  However, on a more personal level, you’ll probably never see one of my books published.  Between my overall lack of confidence followed by my need to refine my skill…  I’m just not ready to publish.  But who knows, maybe this will be the year?

6.   Are you a NaNoWriMo expert?

This is my third year participating.  I lost in ’08, and won in ’09.  No, I’m not an expert.

7.   This seems stupid.  Why are you doing it?

I love writing.  I love telling stories.  Someday, I hope to pen a good book or two.  Its a great exercise that I find a lot of pleasure and release in.  Some people will run marathons.  Other people paint.  I write novels.  Or at least, I try.

8.   50,000 words?  How diligent do you have to be for that?

That’s 1667 words a day.  You can follow my progress here.

That’s all for tonight.  I’m exhausted.  Questions in the comment section: I’ll happily answer them.

If you’re not doing NaNo, I love you, but please give me some space.  If you are doing NaNo, good luck to you! =)

 

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A Visit from my Gram Friday, Oct 29 2010

I’m a fairly vivid dreamer: my mom says that there’s enough “weird shit” roaming around in my head to keep me more than entertained.  I’m usually pretty good about holding on to what I’ve dreamed, too.  Its taught me a valuable lesson in life:  while you think your dreams are cool, retelling all of them to your friends isn’t always the most exciting for them.  =)

Last night, I dreamed about my grandma.

Right after her death, I was in such a state of shock, I didn’t dream for weeks.  Really, I didn’t sleep for weeks, either.  Regardless, I knew that the only tangible memories I had of her were in photos, home videos, and whatever was in my head; and the fact that my head was refusing to deliver was infuriating.

I’ve only dreamed of her one other time, though its a pretty spooky dream.  In it, we were standing in her kitchen, which looked the same as it had over Christmas, except out the kitchen window it was very obviously late summer or early fall.  She was at the stove in jeans, a white t-shirt, and a red and white striped apron (obviously she didn’t want this t-shirt to get dirty).  She was stirring a pot, and there was a cookie sheet with a long thin dough spread out over it.  The first thing she told me to do was “clean the raspberries,” which meant I had to run them under water and cut out bad spots.

While I worked quietly, my grandma ranted about my Great Uncle Charlie’s funeral visitation.  Uncle Charlie was my grandpa’s brother, and in real life, he’d died 3 days before this dream.  The visitation itself had been that day (as in it ended about 5 hours before I went to bed).  She was all upset about how my cousin Cody’s wife kept pulling her shirt up to show her (“Non-existent, I couldn’t even believe it, Jessie”) baby bump, how my dad’s shirt looked stupid and tucked funny all day, and how Aunt Bonnie had to be rushed off to the hospital.”  Dream!Me laughed and listened.  I didn’t realize that I was Dream!Me, but in my head, I knew I should just cherish this moment: this was a memory that Gram and I would love later.

Waking up was one of the most jarring moments of my life.

The spooky part comes in when I got on the phone to talk to my mom later that afternoon.  Mom and I hadn’t talked the day before, and so I asked if she’d heard anything about the visitation (knowing she hadn’t gone).  “Yeah, well, your Aunt Bonnie had to be taken to the hospital: apparently she fainted.  And your cousin’s wife was showing off her baby bump the whole time.  And your dad looked weird when he came home.”  My only response:  “… I know.”  “How?”  “Gram told me.”

She hadn’t visited me since, until last night.  And I’m ashamed and embarrassed to say that I didn’t hold on to it.  I’ve held on to a dream I had about a friend the other night (the friend was unimpressed that I’d bought a piano), but I couldn’t hold on to something me and my Gram did together. Good job, Jessica…

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