is the word 'diary' better than the word 'blog'? probably not.
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Little things like that are strangely large.
Little things like that are strangely large.
I spent the last week in a fair amount of pain! Somehow I messed up my right hip in Los Angeles (sleeping on the floor? walking on the beach? standing at a rock show? who knows!), and spent the whole drive back laying across the back seat trying to find a position that was less painful. It was excrutiating, and then it kept radiating outward in shooting pains up and down my body. So, yeah, I turn 40, and the next thing you know I have hip pain and I�m making Marco stop at a grocery store so I can get some Ben Gay. HILARIOUS.
After a few days of Yoga and Pilates didn�t bring me back to normal, I took Jeff�s advice and got a massage from a friend of his, who is AMAZING and who also explained something to me about how the hip bones work and what I had probably done wrong. Anyway, it�s not all the way better, but I am in A LOT LESS PAIN now, and that is great. Pain is tiring.
So... I had many occasions to think through in a more personalized manner than usual how pain impacts a person�s thought process and demeanor with regard to the world. I had a lot of work to get done this week, and it�s hard to get work done when you can�t stop thinking about your corporeal burden. It delivers unto you a new relationship to your own body. That is philosophically interesting. And also ethically important in some way.
And also sometimes comic, if you can remind yourself to look at yourself from afar. All those easy things, like sitting on a chair, or bending over to get a book you dropped, or climbing a ladder, driving a car, suddenly these things are difficult, and everything seems absurd. My mom asked me to climb up onto a desk last night to fix a window blind, and I caught sight of myself gingerly, extra-carefully, easing myself up onto the desk as if I might break! Oy.
Yesterday I threw a bridal shower for my sister. The funny thing is that I�d never even been to a bridal shower before that one, so I couldn�t be sure if it was going the way a bridal shower is supposed to go. Apparently all was well. Natalie liked it, which is what matters most. I was glad to score the highest on the game where we had to guess Natalie�s answers to a series of questions. One of her friends put together a really funny Mad Libs version of what will happen on the wedding day and night. I made three cakes and brought 8 bottles of champagne, and only three of those (bottles of champagne) were consumed. (I forgot that many of her friends are pregnant or otherwise mom-tastic right now.) (I have no complaints about having leftover champagne. Caroleen and I drank some tonight.) She got some good gifts.
This was my favorite part: I walked into the kitchen about an hour into the party and asked Natalie and two of her friends whether this was a party where dessert got served at some appointed �dessert time,� or whether I could just put out the cakes and let people have at them whenever they wanted. Natalie looked at me and said, �let them eat cake!� and then immediately realized what she had said and looked crazily alarmed and then laughed a lot. Because it was funny. Let them eat cake!, she said.
Then I slept at my mom�s house in Benicia, and we watched a bunch of strange television shows, including �Trading Spaces: Matchmaker.� What!? Now Trading Spaces picks two people to remodel rooms in each other�s homes, and then sends them on a blind date afterward? That just seems crazy to me. I came up with a bunch of other spin-offs for Trading Spaces, and made my mom laugh a lot, but I can�t remember any of them right now, try as I might.
Today on the way to Vallejo to take my dad out for Father�s Day lunch, I stopped at Ace Hardware to get a key made and, while I waited, I noticed a display of small stuffed birds. One of them was a WOOD DUCK. And, when you press his back he makes his magical WOOD DUCK PEEPING NOISE. So I bought the shit out that wood duck and now he rests on the dashboard of the intrepid Chevy Tracker. Tiny things like that can make me very happy. Tiny things! Like when we are going to eat ice cream and Evany brings spoons out for everyone and she always brings me a small spoon because she knows I hate large spoons. It's not that the spoon is small, but that she remembers! Little things like that are strangely large.
Caroleen and I re-viewed the episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer called �Hush� the other day. It�s the episode wherein the whole town gets their voices stolen, so most of the hour proceeds in silence. It is so funny and expressive and sweet, as an episode/story, and manages to communicate so much, in silence. It also makes the age-old point: sometimes in order to get together with someone you like-like, you have to STOP TALKING. (Little things like that are strangely large.) I still can�t believe the WB let Joss Whedon do a mostly silent hour of television, but I�m glad they did. You should watch it again. Sure, the effects are goofy. But that�s not what matters!
12:49 a.m. - June 19, 2006
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