I dreamed a prequel episode to Downton Abbey.
No, really! Where the girls are younger, and Cora’s had a baby boy but it dies of smallpox, and we actually see for ourselves what Patrick Crawley gets up to on the Titanic. Now I want to see this episode, and I don’t think Fellowes will actually write it. Schade, schade, schade.
Michelle Dockery, Laura Carmichael and Jessica Brown-Findlay photographed by Jason Bell for Vogue UK, August 2011 (h/t suicideblonde@tumblr)
songs I long to cover . . .
9. Creep // Radiohead // Ever since I saw it done on “The Voice”, this has been on my to-do list. This is also partly because Sia did such an amazing job with “Paranoid Android”.
8. Jailhouse Fire // Laura Veirs // Doesn’t ask for much in the way of tricks, simple instrumentation–rock.
7. Blue Lips // Regina Spektor // Bonus? All I’d need is a pianist.
6. Sugar and Pie // Abigail Washburn // I could do a video in twenties gear!
5. Resist // Petula Clark // Sounds a little absurd a cappella; would be perfect with backing.
4. Trouble Is A Friend // Lenka // She sounds like I would if I had proper equipment.
3. Monument // Mirah // And she sounds like I do when I don’t.
2. Wake Up // The Ditty Bops // My heart in song.
1. Savannah Fare You Well // Jimmy Buffett // Yes, you read that right. I’d like to give it an Alison Krauss kind of twist.
. . . and songs I could never manage:
9. Dog Days are Over // Florence & The Machine // Mostly because I can’t get the hang of the beginning.
8. Rolling in the Deep // Adele // In theory, this song suits me. In practice, I am about as soulful as Ikea. No go.
7. The Story // Brandi Carlile // And I’m prone to oversinging as well…
6. Valerie // Amy Winehouse // Yeah, I know, someone else did it first. Fuck that. Amy owned this. Where’s my virtual candle…?
5. Taiyang Chulai // Abigail Washburn // Why do I not speak Chinese?! I’d have to learn this one by ear, and Chinese is too hard. I couldn’t do it justice.
4. Bulletproof // La Roux // The chorus bits bore me to tears, sorry. I think I’d doze off midway through them. The lyrics, meanwhile, are loads of fun.
3. Blindness // Metric // Why, oh why, do I not have that low grittiness like Emily Haines? So, so jealous.
2. Killer Queen // Queen // I just don’t know how I’d style it!
1. Mine // Taylor Swift // Taylor, oh, Taylor, you are so much more traditionally sweet than I am. I have a definite Manic Pixie Dream Girl vibe going. I just sound insipid on this one.
♥ Allan Stratton’s presence on Goodreads alerted me to the film LIFE, ABOVE ALL, an adaptation of his Chanda’s Secrets (which I loved).
♥ A fascinating paragraph from The Beheld on glamour, grammar, and where they intersect: “For gramarye, the root word of glamour, also gave birth to the word grammar. The route is fairly straightforward: Gramarye at one time simply meant learning, including learning of the occult, and it’s this variant that went on to be glamour. Grammar stayed magic-free and pertained to the rules of learning, eventually becoming particular to the rules of language. But the two are linked more than just etymologically: Both grammar and glamour function as a set of rules that help people articulate themselves and allow us to understand one another. I understand you are telling me of the future by the use of words like will and going to; I understand you are telling me about your vision of yourself with red lipstick and a wiggle dress.”
♥ Awesomeness from abroad: my cousin has Skype! My beloved Julia! And she wants to see my face and hear my voice and oh! I thought I’d lost her, too, over these going-on-eleven years, but I haven’t. Excuse me, verklempt.
♥ And another paragraph, by Donna Shute, with a lot of truth in it: “It was never enough, growing up, to be merely yourself, precious and unique, loved and lovable, unique, unrepeatable, irreducible. Nobody ever told you you were any of those things. The pressure was always on, and the external and internal compulsions to be Something, to be Great, to be Extraordinary, were both ubiquitous and unbearable. In our unceasing efforts to impress our parents, our friends, our enemies, to prove ourselves worthy of love, we got straight A’s, were valedictorians and salutatorians, graduated summa cum laude, danced through the hallways of academia with self-promoting narcissism masking the self-loathing lurking just beneath. We became great students, writers, actresses, singers, dancers, athletes. We lusted after elusive perfection, seeking with an insatiable and hellish desire to be the best, the brightest, the prettiest, the wittiest, the smartest, the sexiest — all embodied in being the Thinnest — whatever the cost. Eventually, we lost ourselves in the process, turning violently upon our own person, destroying our very selves in our desire to obliterate the imperfect bits.”
♥ 
Moonraker’s Bride by Madeleine Brent
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
So, the Big Appointment was today, and yes, Dr. Hay confirmed for me that the Western Blot was correct. I do not have Lyme. On the one hand, hey, no antibiotics! On the other hand, long climb back to health from the pits of CFS, and in retrospect, little wonder I relapsed when I did. I went on a drug (Remeron) that drove me into a nervous breakdown, both while I was taking it and during the withdrawal. During this time, I lost one dearly beloved family member; for those keeping track, yes, that makes two since July. I then went straight back into a full workload at school, which was stupid considering my body wasn’t even over the Remeron problem. Stress after stress after stress. Concentration and memory began to fail–I pushed. Hard. And collapsed.
Which is how it happened in 2008, too, minus the bereavement. And I had a good year or two between collapses.
The three biggest problems, as I see them now, have to do with
a) anxiety,
b) stamina, and
c) food. Which is likely related to stamina.
a) has turned out to require psychiatric help. Fine. I’ll go to a shrink for that, quite happily. I need non-behavioral techniques, I’m afraid. I’ve had ample opportunity to give the behavioral stuff a try and it hasn’t worked. I would like to look into hypnotism, provided I can be hypnotised in the first place. Anything to stop these panic attacks from keeping me in this house, out of my car. Immobile. No more of that.
b) Stamina! I hear graded exercise isn’t bad for that. Or at least that’s what I’m choosing to believe. It’s an excuse to join the nearest JCC or the nearest Y. I’ll get a family membership, so my mother can go with me. And how do I get out of that gym contract? [headscratch] I’ll have Dad look into it. I didn’t dislike the gym, but it didn’t provide what I needed. I want to do water classes, for example. I discovered, this summer at the lake, that I can still move quite well in shallow water; it also provides resistance, which gets me exercise, which made me crazy hungry that afternoon. Which means…
c) Food may not be as much of a problem! Though I must note here that Dr. Hay told me flat-out, “Try Marinol.” Ha, yeah, only being able to eat a full meal once a day apparently calls for the cannabinoids. She sees HIV patients with similar eating issues, I guess.
Here I must digress into the only really negative bit of the day: apparently my primary care nurse cannot differentiate between clinical anorexia (as in “symptom correlating to lack of appetite”) and anorexia nervosa (which I had. HAD. and now no longer do, or I wouldn’t be asking for freaking Marinol). Ugh. Of course the practice doesn’t deal in appetite stimulants. Of course none of them actually deal with patients presenting with true anorexia, where you can’t keep the weight on and can’t seem to eat enough to gain. I swear on everything sacred that I AM DONE WITH STARVING MYSELF. I loved my body when it got curvier and I love it when it’s slim and supple. I only care about my weight now because I’m tired of having multiple wardrobes based on what size I wear this quarter. I buy the clothes to fit me, but darlings, I really hate having to buy extra clothes that I can’t use.
So I took Dr. Hay at her word and called her back, since I had a problem.
Really, I can’t rave enough about Strong’s Infectious Diseases Clinic, especially the staff. I felt respected. Nobody thought I was nuts. Dr. Yaqub, the lucky, lucky fellow (as in woman with a fellowship) was warm and very caring; ditto her attending, the incomparable Dr. Hay, and I know she’s got a great rep in the ID community or I wouldn’t be so ready to trust her. These are the people I would be working with now, down another leg of the Trousers of Time. This is my favorite branch of medicine. I’m not going to diss them for, what, defying everything science tells them? I know how to blend allopathic medicine with CAM to get the best results for me. Doctors are not Lawful Evil. I promise. Not by default, anyway. You may know some mad scientists; that’s your problem. Also, wonderful interior design. I love the open layout and the glassed-in everything. It’s possible to get up and breathe in the waiting area. I guess if you’re putting a bunch of people with immune disorders in one place, duh, you want them to have elbow room, but the same was true of all the clinics on that floor. Someone smart designed that.
I have other hurdles to jump, but not tonight. Tonight, I breathe, and give great thanks that I’ve been told not to let anyone near me with a big fat spinal needle.
I decided today was as good a day as any to thank my friends for their support. Come to find I missed a death–of another girl’s grandfather, no less–and that made me tear up. (Which is not helping my sinuses any. Will I be able to breathe through my nose tonight?) With my mother here, while I’m sick in bed, it’s unreal; it’ll get real in a hurry when we see her off tomorrow. I don’t want her to go! But she’ll be home by the 14th! But it doesn’t bloody matter, because she makes things normal around here.
Two losses since July. I wait, superstitious, for the third. What’s next? Universe, be merciful, because I’m trying to stay alive myself.
My grandmother died sometime between February 2 and 3. We still don’t know the exact hour; therefore, I have no date to put in the front of my uncle’s Bible.
I got up yesterday. I got dressed. Because it was so damn dreary, I wanted color, so I fished out one of my summer dresses (blue with pink and red flowers), a light jacket/shirt thing (deep blue), and a nice pair of tights (yellow). I bought the dress in the first place because it reminded me of what Oma always wore, only hers were longer, of course. Then, because my hair was unbearably greasy and I needed to go out in public, I topped the whole thing off with a red silk kerchief.
Dad yelled for me. He told me he needed me downstairs, right away. “What’d I do now?” I asked him as I eased myself into a chair.
And then he told me.
I was the third person in the whole family to find out. My aunt called Dad, who told me. My mom was ten minutes from home, so we couldn’t very well call her; it’s winter in Western New York. Bad Things would have happened. So then I called my man, who became person number four, and yes, he’s been most supportive, if unable to get away. That’s fine. I don’t want to give him this cold.
Mum… wasn’t inconsolable. I wailed the house down and proceeded to sniffle into Addy’s fur the rest of the time. Mum just wept, then pulled herself together long enough to call her sister. Twice. And be practical. My mother is really very practical. She’s actually working tomorrow, because they’re a few people down in a small department, boss included. (Bigger boss, however, will hear, as she has got to make her arrangements. The funeral is overseas, after all.)
Don’t know whether it’s all the sickness or just grief, but I felt tired and achy. I went to sleep around midnight and woke around three. I really shouldn’t have put myself to bed at midnight. Everything hurts right now, down to my very soul, though the soul pain is pretty distant right now. Mostly I am exhausted, but I can’t sleep, and the thought of choking down a cup of sleepytime tea is met with rioting by my GI tract.
Thinking one will never see one’s grandmother again and knowing it are two very different things. Yes, yes, she went peacefully; I’ve always held firm that it’s the living who suffer most when a person dies. I resent very much that I can’t fly over for the funeral. The thing is that even if I could, I couldn’t stay long. I have that critical appointment on February 10. (Which my father will help with.) I’d only be underfoot. Better they settle things, and when I’m able, I make my own pilgrimage.
And I shall have to take an interest in the running of The House now. Not our house. The House. The one with all my memories in it. The one my aunt now occupies all alone, rattling ’round like a marble in a teapot. I think she’d be smart to rent the upstairs to another spinster, except that she would have to install an upstairs shower and a full downstairs kitchen. Keep the space for young cousins getting on their feet? All second cousins, of course; I am my grandmother’s sole direct descendant in this generation. Mainly I want The House to stay there until I can come back. I have to trust that my mother and aunt will prevail over their brother’s instinct to Sell It All and Make A Ruddy Fortune.
My whole uncle. Not my half one. Though my half one was better. My whole one hardly cares that I’m alive, let alone a quarter of his family now. I wonder whether he will care more or less after this? Well, he’ll learn, because when it comes to The House, I am not in a mood to be moved. My grandfather’s dead? Fine. My grandmother’s dead? Fine. But he will not tear down the last I have of them until I am damn good and ready for it to go, and since I may well be widowed at an ungodly young age, “good and ready” is looking like “not on your life, buddy”.
Must dash. That’s my aunt on the phone, apparently not cognisant of the time difference.
