To Go or Not to Go

Dear friends, I have the opportunity to go on a 12-day choir tour to Germany, Austria, and the Czech Republic this January.  I was initially really excited; then reality set in.  If you have a little time to read through my thought process and then get back to me to let me know whether you think I should go (+) or not go (-), I'd appreciate the input!

+ Holy cow!  Germany, Austria, and the Czech Republic!  Castles, monasteries, cathedrals, singing beautiful music with a lovely, young choir!  Wow!  The last time I went was almost 10 years ago!

1. - And it was almost a total disaster.  I was at the lowest point in my health since my senior year of high school.  I was in constant pain, my asthma and allergies were rowdy, I wasn't getting more than a couple hours of sleep a night, and my immune system was a mess.  I was cold all the time, too exhausted to go exploring, and didn't really have anyone in the group that I was very close to.  It was miserable.  I ended up getting so sick I missed a performance and was too sick to even care.

2. + My health is much improved since then!  I don't get 6 sinus infections a year that last for a month!  My allergies and asthma don't lay me flat all the time!  I have meds to make sure I get at least 4 hours of sleep a night at least a couple times a week!  My pain is much more controlled, my thyroid is functioning again, and I am generally not nearly as miserable due to undiagnosed health problems!

3. - My health is improved because now that I have diagnoses and have gotten treatment, I have ways to deal with symptoms.  Most of these ways involve controlling things.  Controlling environmental allergies by staying indoors in filtered environments, controlling humidity, controlling what I sleep on, controlling my schedule to make sure there's enough time for rest and that I'm moving when I need to move, controlling my temperature, what and when I eat, how and where I exercise, what and when I drink, when I go to bed and wake up, and making good choices to not spike my progress.  I will have none of that control on this trip.  There is really no option to rest when I need to or control my schedule.  I will not be able to withdraw to get my parasympathetic nervous system working.  I could undo all the progress I've made in the past few years.  I could end up in pain all the time for months as a result.  I REALLY DON'T WANT (the very realistic) FEAR OF PAIN TO BE THE DECISION MAKER.  I also don't want some weird mid-life crisis "Pain won't control me" rebellion crap to be the decision maker either. 

4. + I would get to make beautiful music in beautiful places!

5. - Unless I got totally sick again!  How frustrating would that be!  To have the opportunity and not be able to enjoy it because of being sick.

6. + Seriously what are the chances I will ever even have this opportunity to make this kind of music in these kinds of places  ever again?!  I'm not getting younger, and there is no guarantee I won't be less able to go in the future.  Seize the day!

7. - I whacked my knee on a chair a few years ago and have had limited mobility ever since.  There are consequences for walking too much, not walking enough, walking for too long, using stairs, standing too long, sitting too long, walking on uneven ground, walking on slick or icy or frozen ground, losing my balance, slipping.  These things are all going to be required, and then I'll have to stand to sing concert-length performances.  (This has been a huge struggle, and it was only last year that I was able to actually do it.  I had to rest for months afterward to get my pain back under control, and the concert was somewhat torturous in terms of pain.)  Will I be miserable going to these beautiful places and not being able to explore them?  I'm a climb-all-the-staircases-in-the-castle and look-around-everywhere kind of person.  I can't do that anymore.  Will it feel frustrating and awful to only be able to look at the beauty I can't explore anymore?  If I have to sit on the sidelines in cafes on flat ground just looking at things I can't explore from a distance, will that by incredibly frustrating and leave me feeling lonely.  And what if some person feels like they need to keep me company and misses out (and annoys me while trying to pityingly keep me company when I just want to be alone with my misery)?

8. + I have the vacation time I would need for the first time ever.  And it's cheaper than going alone.  (I would spend this much money on the airfare and hotel alone.)

9. - I would likely still be going alone because I would have no close friends on the trip and would likely have to expend lots of my limited energy interacting politely with strangers waaay younger than me on the tour bus for long periods of time.  Or adults much wealthier than me with which I might have nothing more than a love of amateur music in common with.

10. + I can afford it.  Barely.  This is the first time in my adult life that I can say that.  Coincidence?

11. - I have the money.  But I also have appliances that are going to break and need replacing soon.  There are also lots of other things I could use the money on.

• more savings in case of medical or other emergencies
• contributions to my friends who are going to be medical missionaries in Africa
• larger gifts to charities doing great work to help the homeless, free slaves, support families of martyrs
• replace increasingly aggressive, leprous bathroom floor and get a soaker tub to continue to reduce my pain levels
• purchase a piece of beautiful art by Yudong Shen (https://www.facebook.com/MeiLinArtStudio), so I could add to the beauty in my home that I can enjoy every day (this thought makes me as delirious with joy as the thought of getting to sing in cathedrals and old churches)
• pay down student loan debt
• pay down car debt after I was rear-ended and had my car totaled earlier this year
• save up for Yellowstone trip with friends from college next summer (I'll have to pay for lodgings for myself that have AC/environmental filtering controls, so it'll be expensive)
• save up to take my sister to Japan to climb Mt. Fuji some day

and so much more!  There are always a number of choices about how to use money.  Huzzah.

So, those are some of my thoughts, and I have to make a decision soon.  If you have thoughts or advice or opinions about whether I should go or not go, please feel free to comment below or email/message me.  Thanks for your time and assistance and wisdom.  : D

Love,
TMIA

Home 12: The Linen Closet of Doom

When last we left my linen closet, things were grim.    "August 4, 2014 · Anyone have good suggestions on how to clean out a linen closet that reeks of something that is not a dead animal in the attic, mold, or mildew? The plumber suggested painting it. My sister suggested gallons of bleach, pounds of baking soda, a young priest, an old priest, a crucifix, and some holy water. Your suggestion?"

Many good suggestions poured in when I turned to Facebook for help with what my visiting sister had dubbed the stankwood (TM) closet.  I tried the bleach and baking soda to no real effect until I realized the wood of the shelves themselves had absorbed the stench and were a total loss.  I got help to move them to the garage, which then stank abominably and confirmed our suspicions.  There was more baking soda and bleach and then a lot of Killz possibly followed by more white paint.  (Extra thanks to the friend who ended up wearing the white paint.)

The finishing touch was some unfinished cedar shelves (finding them and getting them cut correctly was an adventure in itself that I won't bore you with).  I reasoned that I would rather shell out more than I could afford and get the occasional splinter and have my clothing, towels, and sheets smell of the gerbils / guinea pigs of my hazy, best friend's pet container's cedar-shaving memories than risk the return of stankwood (TM).

So far, so good.

As an additional bonus, cedar planking either doesn't smell as strongly as cedar shavings, or my sense of smell is worse from my allergies and the 7 times I've broken my nose since that time in my childhood.  (Translation: apologies to anyone if it smells more cedar-y than I am leading you to believe.)



Some of my favorite suggested remedies from when I consulted Facebook are below.

• Is the offending odor stuck in the floor, wall, etc? I've seen hazmat clean up on TV & they have rip things up to get rid of the stank.
• There is a product called Kilz that helps with smell. I will ask a painter friend of mine, and try to get more info. Good luck, and if all else fails, you could become the quirky lady who cures meats in her closet. Charcuterie couldn't smell worse than what you've described! smile emoticon
• your sister - wise beyond her yrs.: D
• THE POWER OF CHRIST COMPELS YOU!
• Save thousands on cedar lined cabinets and closets by storing some cedar shavings (pet or hardware store) to a cloth bag. Repels moths. Gel desiccant, the same packets found with new leather garments, keeps ambient moisture down to kill mold habitat. Activated charcoal works like baking soda because it is the most porous substance known, and traps odors (and all visible light). In a pinch, can be used to absorb toxins from some accidental poisonings. Just thought I'd share all that!

about Kate

If I were to try

to write a poem 

about Kate, it 

would contain 

the line, "I 

am a person 

with a habit 

of naming 

my inanimate 

objects."

Please don't be That Guy if you're going to sit near me

Ah, the beginning of the school year.  A time when new students come to campus and learn all sorts of things.  A time when I observe as said new students provide me with examples of things you should never say when you are a new student on campus at your first club meeting if you want to, you know, make friends. 

This year's gem happened when a new student kept getting shushed for talking during shows in the anime club.  It's understandable that he was miffed; they hadn't gone over the rules yet.  (I kept telling myself that; it helped.)  Then, when the admin council explained that one of our rules is to respect each other by not talking during shows, this new student said loudly, "Wow!  I've never been in a club before that had rules against having fun!  That's so weird that you have a rule against having fun!"

Yeah, so if you are new to a club, don't be That Guy who loudly criticizes the traditions and rules of the club the first day without even bothering to find out why they exist/are in place.  This is assuming that you are actually interested in making a good impression/generating goodwill/potentially making friends or even just staying invisible.  If that's not your agenda, well, go ahead, I guess.  Knock yourself out.  Just don't sit behind me.  Thanks.

Thinking about grandmothers

Dear B, I thought about you yesterday.  Somehow or other, I must have ended up thinking about grandmothers, and I remembered the relationships you had with both of yours.  I remembered that practice prom dress your grandmother was making from ugly floral cloth and the way you wore it to school when she died before she could finish the real one.  I remember you kept getting demerits because the skirt was too short, and I remember defending you to the history teacher when he started to get on your case about it.  (Did that happen?)  You kept wearing it to school and getting in trouble, and I just wanted to cry every time.  It made me glad that I merely loved my grandparents with the same grim duty with which they loved me.  I was sure that when they died, I would be nowhere near as devastated, and I wouldn't have to suffer the way you did.  I was glad.

I was glad that when my grandma did die, you were no longer close.  I would have been more of a wreck if you had been around.  I would have probably felt guilty, remembering that day the ensemble went caroling in the hospital where your grandmother was dying.  We went into her room and sang.  (I don't remember what we sang.  Do you?)  You couldn't sing, and you just stood behind me crying on my coat, and I tried to sing loud enough for both of us, but it was hard for me to sing around that lump in my throat caused by your affection for your grandmother.

At my grandma's funeral, I had a lump in my throat so big I couldn't even talk, but that's not why I didn't say the Hail Mary's with the family as my mother had requested.  Why would I mouth empty religious phrases I didn't believe in?  Who would it possibly comfort?  Not my mom, who didn't believe in it either, even though she was raised in it.  Not my grandma, who was dead.  Not my grandpa who was mostly blind and partly deaf and couldn't see or hear anything I did or did not do.  No one was comforted.  I just cried. 

Probably people thought I was crying because I was overcome by sadness at losing my beloved grandmother.  Unless they knew her, they might have thought that.  For some reason, that thought made me angry, and my tears seemed hotter with added degrees of rage and guilt.  That poor bitter woman; may I never be like her.  Oh, please, dear God, never.

Reading Miles Again: It's okay if you don't love Miles as much as I do (we can still be friends [probably])

I am introducing a friend to the Vorkosigan books, and he likes them well enough for a single read but doesn't love them like I do.  (He had to take a breather after reading a bunch over break.  He left off with "Labyrinth."  Was it an email or a text that he sent when he kind of couldn't believe what was happening?  I don't remember, but it made me laugh hard.)  I am using his reading as an excuse to re-read, and I am giddy and full of MilesQuotes.  My friend seems apologetic about not being as enamored with Miles as I am, but I really do understand.  How could he be?  They've only just met. 

He is in his mid-twenties and meeting the younger Miles.  I would think that wouldn't be the stuff of epic book crushes.  I've known Miles for years.  I met him when he was 17 and I was 12.  I watched him grow up.  I watched him while growing up.  I've read some of these books more than a dozen times.  The kind of relationship that creates is completely different from the one created by a one-time casual meeting between two young men. 

The act of reading the same stories as a different person is a powerful one.  Miles, Ender's Game, the Bible: these are the books I've read so many times that they have to have affected me. 

My favorite Miles stories now are not the same as they were when I was in high school.  Or college. Or graduate school.  Growing up with Miles shaped my world; not only did the way I saw the stories change as I aged, but the way I saw the world changed as I looked at it through Miles as I changed.  I might be getting a bit out of hand . . .

One of my friends once said after reading Miles for the first time, "You're a lot like Miles."  I don't think he ever explained, but I was too busy basking in the glow of what I perceived to be praise to really push.  Years later, I think I asked him, and he didn't remember why he said it.

I tell my new friend that I understand that he doesn't love Miles like I do.  I suspect that his opinions may change a little further on, but I don't know.  It's the darkness in Miles that makes him tired, and the darkness doesn't really go away, at least not until A Civil Campaign.  So for now, we'll wait and see. 

I wonder whether I can hold off jumping ahead and reading "Borders of Infinity" . . .  Willpower!

Let's have a poetry jam session even though none of us are poets

A former co-worker of mine who coaches high school debate was helping a student who wanted to perform poetry.  Being the extremely bright person he is, he did tons of research.  A few times we had lunch breaks together, and we talked poetry, everything from theory to history to terminology to interpretation.  He told me that he dug the old kind of poetry, the kind that was popular entertainment, education, art, and history all mixed up.

He decided he'd like to get a bunch of flexible, creative people together and have poetry nights at his place, so he did.  (That's pretty much the kind of person he is.  It's awesome.)

The first meeting was a blast.  We didn't really have any set agenda, but we ended up looking through reference books, reading some poetry, doing some free-writing exercises based on art/drawing classes he took, and passing around some poetry we all contributed a line to.  Also, we played one of the variations of chess that he made up.  (He loves game design, too.)  I lost.

I also found this incredible poem by that master poet, Anonymous.  I am kind of totally in love with it (please ignore the post-script), and I don't even garden.  It should be read aloud to someone else for best effect but only if you can do it without laughing.  Good luck.

There was high-brow and low-brow.  There was laughing.  There was silence and squirming and even some good ideas for essays and short stories.  Also, a great drawing of a stick figure throwing up and some dinosaurs.  It was a totally enjoyable evening, and I'm looking forward to the next one. 

Have you ever done something like that?  Or thought of doing something like that?

Why having your own stories to tell can be scary

It's Homecoming Weekend, so some writing program alumni got together at a local pub.  I hardly had a problem with the smell of alcohol (I can't actually smell anything right now because of my allergies); I didn't get anxious about being around it at all.  I talked and listened to stories about finished novels and teaching and creepy store clerks who use your first name after seeing your credit card and try to hook you up with eligible members of both genders without feeling like I was going to throw up.  Yay, me! 

When I got home, two young men dressed in suits were walking slowly through the parking lot, and I got a tad nervous.  I sped up, so I wouldn't cross their paths, and then so did they, which freaked me out completely, so I sped up more and did my special only-open-the-doors-enough-to-get-through-and-then-let-them-shut-and-lock move, hoping they were there to pick someone up and would have to wait to get in, giving me time to flee up to my apartment.

No such luck.  They sped up more but still had to reopen the door with their key cards.  I could tell they were suddenly in a worrisome hurry, and I started bracing for a confrontation. 

I should have taken the stairs, no matter how much my feet hurt, but I knew I didn't want a chase up a stairwell, so I waited for the elevator.  I don't know if he was drunk or high, but one of the guys got way to close to me and started mashing the single elevator button, apparently so addled he didn't realize the reason the button stopped glowing was because the elevator had arrived. 

I wondered if I should let them get on, pretend to tie my shoe, wait for the door to close, and sprint/limp up the stairs, hoping they weren't getting out on my floor.

Then a marvelous thing happened.  The other guy with Mr. Under-the-Influence (UtI) actually pulled Mr. UtI further away from me.  When the elevator opened, he sort of manhandled Mr. UtI into the elevator and effectively trapped him on the other side of the elevator until I got off and limped as quickly as possible to my apartment where I locked the door with great enthusiasm, trying not to remember the way Mr. UtI had been trying so hard to reach past his companion, so he could touch me.   

I never saw any of this directly because I was Not Making Eye Contact with all my might, but I was impressed by what I saw out of the corner of my eye.  It was like a sheepdog herding sheep.  Maybe the good guy was a post position basketball player?  Nah, too small.  Maybe a wrestler?  Anyway . . .

To the guy who shielded me from his drunk friend tonight: my thanks.  Seriously.  (Thanks also to God and whatever guardian angels may or may not exist and have to work overtime to keep my mom from freaking out.)

To the bartender who mocked my my sadness that his bar did not serve hot chocolate or root beer: just saying.