Six months to come alive again
When CJ and I married, it was like being Cinderella.
Before we married, I was living in a granny flat in which most of the appliances were broken (including the washing machine, oven and toilet), where there was a large area of fungus, and where the water was not safe to drink. It cost two-thirds of my income, and was my only real option of a place to live. I needed to live alone because my anxiety disorder didn’t let me live with anyone.
When CJ and I married*I had good company and massages permanently on tap, a nice house where everything worked, and I never had to decide whether to have meat or not based on the ebb and flow of my income. I also had the new brand-ability to plan my future with some degree of certainty, and for the first time I had a choice about whether or not to have children someday. Everything in every area got dramatically better on one day.
On the down side, if CJ dies I’ll lose everything. He has life insurance (I checked, believe me), but other than relative wealth I’d lose most of the goodness of my life.
The awareness of my dependence of CJ didn’t impair my ability to function and/or enjoy CJ – but it didn’t go away either. Which is why when I read this article – mainly about the five stages of grief, and how they’re overemphasised in modern counselling – it meant a lot to me.
The thing that really made me feel better is that, according to studies, most people are largely recovered from major life-changing grief in about. . . six months. They still miss whoever or whatever it was, but the human ability to revert to individual emotional averages is extremely effective.
As a writer, I’m constantly designing the other kind of grief – the rare kind that permanently damages the sufferer – because it makes interesting characters. It’s a huge relief to realise that the way I see grief is based on an entirely fictional world view.
If CJ dies, my life will never be the same – but the worst pain will be mostly done by six months. If I have to, I can survive that.
Morbid and optimistic is a lot better than just morbid.
*Evidently there is at least one person I can live with – and even share a room with.
#298: Vodka Rainbow
Shiny, shiny colours. I can’t resist them. Particularly when they’re as high in sugar as Snookie is high on. . . life.
So I had the idea of drinking a RAINBOW OF VODKA. Since my job is to be awesome, I then did it.
Here’s the rainbow I chose (based purely on colour):
I decided to explore my rainbow in as many sensory ways as possible.
First, sight. It’s a tough call, but I think the purple is the prettiest. Or at least, the most freakishly unnatural. I was struck by inspiration and mixed red and blue to see if I could make purple myself. It turned black. That didn’t bode well. . .
Second, smell. The red (raspberry) smells like raspberry lollies, but more artificial (yes, really). The passionfruit and pine lime smelled like juice. The blueberry smelled like the smell really was, most definitely, a number pasted to a vat of harmful chemicals. The surprise winner was purple (a flavour they call “Pom pom”, since it doesn’t resemble any fruit, even in passing), which smelled of flowers and vanilla. Strange but true.
Finally, taste. The raspberry and blueberry were so desperately chemical I wondered why I thought this was a good idea (probably I was, as always, using alcohol as a poor substitute for chocolate. It happens). The pom pom tasted surprisingly good – sharp and unidentifiable at first, but I swear it had a sweet vanilla aftertaste. The passionfruit was a complementary flavour with nothing to complement. And the winner was pine lime, which was the closest to juice out of all five. (The combined raspberry and blueberry tasted like it looked – a black day for chemicals and colour.)
CJ helped me out in continuing the experiment, but we didn’t discover anything else. The notion that five vodka cruisers at once was a bad plan doesn’t count as a discovery.
Still, the hope-laden memory of all the pretty colours in a row is one I’m happy to keep.
#297: Random Sauce
Here’s how you play:
1. Flip a coin. Heads – you go to the Asian food aisle of your local supermarket. Tails – you go to the Pasta and sauce aisle.
2. Close your eyes, take twelve steps forward (or the same number as your age in years), and grab an item off the shelf (bonus points if the supermarket is crowded).
3. If it’s some kind of sauce, you win. Buy the other ingredients and go home. If it’s not a sauce, go to the other aisle (Asian if you’re in Pasta; Pasta if you’re in Asian) and try again. Continue until you get sauce (or thrown out by security).
4. Cook and eat your new best friend.
5. Report back on success/failure/arrest.
My conclusion: Yummy, but not enough sauce (or, sidebar, any hint of vegies – my bad). Next time I’ll double the sauce. Also, a question for Mr Internet – is there a difference between pork tenderloin and stir-fry pork?
#296: Pirate’s Cove
No, I was not kidnapped by pirates*. I was given a board game for my birthday. I approached it with caution. My parents are board game tragics. so as a result the only board games I like are Settlers of Catan, Carcasonne, another I can’t remember – and now this.
It’s beautifully done in 3D:
What you see there is my friend engaged in a fierce dice battle in order to win fame points (the aim of the game). Other than the pretty pieces, and the opportunity to call innocent landlubbers scurvy dogs and/or wenches, the best part of the game is that you are very rarely left waiting for anyone. The “bank” is “Treasure Island”, located in the middle of the board, where everyone can reach it. The fights are fun to watch, and the treasure situation is so ever-changing that a good player is constantly adjusting their strategy.
Best of all, the game is designed so you are guaranteed a fateful fight in the final round – clever work by the designers.
*sadly, or fortunately? You decide.
S#89: Dinner and a movie
“Dinner and a movie” is basically my favourite date. For today’s awesomeness, I had to go by myself. Luckily, I’m a cheap date, and could take myself to the ANU Film Group to see “Fair Game”.
First, dinner. The Iron Chef in Mawson is as liberal as I am with sweetness and crispy oil. Also, they give you free honey sesame peanuts when you dine in.
I had boneless lemon chicken. It was a beautiful combination of crispy, sauce-laced skin and sweetly ordinary moist chicken. Much nom. On a Wednesday evening – the night before public service payday – it was fairly quiet, and the service was lightning fast (you can tell, because my peanuts are still there).
Happily sated, I went and saw an equally excellent movie. “Fair Game” (starring Naomi Watts and Sean Penn) is definitely an intellectual movie.
It’s about the CIA investigations into the possibility of nuclear weapons being produced in Iraq in the early 2000s. More importantly, it’s about how the overwhelming findings of the analysts (ie that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq) were ignored, and the USA government lied to its citizens and invaded a country that was no threat to their safety. It’s also about a CIA agent’s husband who wrote the truth (he’d been hired as an analyst himself, and had discovered that Iraq almost certainly had no uranium whatsoever) and threw it into the mainstream media. Finally, it’s about how the government then exposed his wife as a CIA agent, putting all her active projects in jeopardy including the innocent Iraqi scientists she had contacted in order to get the information that the government had ignored.
The story is incredibly compelling and the acting is top-notch. I recommend the film to anyone who doesn’t require movies to be silly. My one criticism is that the preview implied that most of the story was about the CIA agent Valerie Palmer’s personal life. Actually it was a more well-developed story of the entire conspiracy to invade Iraq (focusing on her personal investigations). Her personal life is vital, however, and was what made the movie great.
Conclusion: I’m okay company for a date, but I’d prefer eating and seeing movies with friends and/or CJ.
#295: Bubble Cat!
CJ and I, while attempting to play with Ana, inadvertently discovered a new and improved method for tormenting her.
Observe:
To be perfectly honest, we tried the older cat first. When a bubble popped against her paw, she freaked out and fled.
Fun for the whole family!
#294: Flex days
The public service in Australia (that is, government work) has a LOT of awesome things about it, but the best of all is FLEX. It means that as long as you do your seven and a half hours a day (or whatever – it varies in different departments) you can do extra work – an hour here, a few minutes there – and then take whole days off.
Which makes your wife happy.
Today (a SCHOOL DAY, gasp!) CJ and I went together to the second-hand bookshop that was closed yesterday, and we bought two books (which I would name and applaud, but I’m giving them to people for their upcoming birthdays). Also, we mooched about. Then after watching an episode of “Chuck” over lunch* we mooched some more.
*CJ made me lunch, which was very sweet. One tiny problem: the man is clearly addled from excessive mooching about. He interrupted my reading to ask what I wanted for lunch. I smiled, thanked him, and asked for peanut butter and jam.
He wandered off upstairs to do the deed. After putting jam on a slice of bread, he couldn’t remember what “the other thing” was. All he remembered was that it had something in common with his own peanut butter and honey sandwich.
And so it was that I had a jam and honey sandwich for lunch.
To which I say, “EW!”
Ambidextrous Unconscious?
A few nights ago I had a dream in which my wedding ring was on my right hand. I only noticed it was odd because when I woke up and later glanced at my right hand I was momentarily startled to see no ring there.
Does our unconscious flip us into a mirror image of ourselves in our dreams? What does this mean. . . for SCIENCE?
Felicity Banks 