Sorrow and Anger

Well. It’s been a while. I had some stuff happen in my personal life that scared me off blogging for a bit (and I may at some point change my blog from public to private because of some of it), and after that I got really, really busy (more on that later). Some of the stuff I won’t get into here, some I will:

I met my friend eas through, of all things, a wedding planning website years & years ago. I attended her wedding and met her husband, and we’ve visited a few times over the years. She is a beautiful person who is wry, determined, practical, sensitive, and great to hang out with over margaritas. Her husband is a stand-up guy who is sweet, funny as hell, respectful and kind. Just about a month ago the worst thing that could happen, happened to them. Eas was 20 weeks pregnant and went into premature labor. Their son, Gabriel Ross, was born alive and died in their arms.

Many of our friends have written their support, and I have lagged behind. Every time I sit to try to write, my chest gets tight and tears start to well up in my eyes. I can’t write what is in my heart because it just seems so selfish and inappropriate. You see, this is how my little sister Emily died. All these years, all the childhood therapy and it just comes flooding back like it happened yesterday.

It wasn’t exactly the same, but I won’t go into too many details, for the sake of eas’ and my family’s privacy. Emily had hair. Hair! Thick, black hair, like mine. She looked like me. The picture of the sister I named but never got to meet is seared in my retinas. Her head was still conical from the birth. Some say it was a blessing – upon necropsy (they don’t call it autopsy on a stillbirth), they found that she had a hole in her heart that would have made her life difficult if not short. My parents told me we couldn’t have the remains, the hospital wouldn’t let us have them. Instead we planted a poplar tree in our back yard. The tree is still there, so tall and strong, like she never got to be.

And when I think of eas, this is all I can think of. So I waited to write. Got advice from a friend. Because this is her time of mourning, not mine. This is not about me. But it is something I have to get out of my system, something I need to talk about. I’ve been afraid of what to say to eas out of worry of imposing my feelings into the situation; I worry that my cautiousness has made me seem distant.

And I’m mad. As a sister, I’m sure that my pain does not compare to that of a mother losing her child. But I know the pain that I feel, and I’m mad that my friends have to feel the pain that my parents did. I’m mad that we as a species know so little about pregnancy and childbirth, and that we do so fucking little to expand our knowledge. I’m filled with rage at the completely inhuman way my friend was treated by the hospital staff when she was in the biggest crisis of her life, which was similar to the way my parents were treated. I’m mad that a quarter of a century later my parents still can’t bring themselves to talk about what happened in more than fragments, that I had to tell my little brother that he had not one, but two older sisters, that my mom could say nothing more but to confirm it. I’m mad that I still don’t tell people that I had two younger siblings, when they know only one is alive, because I don’t want to have to go into details. Only my husband knows everything about her life that I do. And I want to pour all this energy and love into eas, but I want to give her the space to mourn, too, without being burdened by my baggage. Because I love her and I want her to make it through this dark night and I know that she can because she is strong. So maybe I’ll just pray that Emily and Gabriel can find each other and play together and be at peace, wherever they are.

It's your breakfast, and it's happy to see you!

I tore the label off my peach and this is what it looked like afterward. Pretty cool, huh? (Well, a smiley face would have been cooler)

A Whole Mess of Book Blogging

I finally got caught up! Check out my reviews of:

Ahab's Wife

The Poisonwood Bible

Finding Angela Shelton

Three Cups of Tea

This Would Be Ironic, In Alanis Morisette's World

I will preface this by saying: I am 95% sure I'm fine.

I got hit by a car on the way home from work. Walking.

I was running late, and was walking across the street. There was a van stopped at the stoplight. I cut across the street behind the van, which randomly decided to back up. Instincts kicked in. I put out my left hand, slapped the van hard and used its momentum to push my body away from it. It wasn't moving fast and I was able to absorb the blow with my forearm and keep anything else from getting hit. I continued forward movement, when it suddenly dawned on me, "Hey! That car just HIT ME!" In disbelief I half turned to look at it, at which point I tripped on the curb, torqued my ankle and fell on my hip. I landed on mostly muscle and fat so I'm a bit sore there, but everything else seems fine. I'll stop by urgent care if anything hurts more than a bruise, which is what it feels like now.

But honestly, who manages to avoid being injured by being hit by a car, only to injure herself by tripping over a curb? FML

Why I Love Being Short

I'm short. 5'3", to be exact, although I was 5'2" from about 7th grade until midway through college. A lot of the time I get bogged down and grumpy about all the negative sides of being short - things I can't do, clothes I can't wear, shitty things people do and say (folks, my head is NOT an armrest, and I DO have plenty of reasons to live, tyvm), etc etc. Today I decided to think about the positives of my height:

• I always have an excuse to get someone else to change lightbulbs.
• I don't fall as far when I trip.
• My feet will never hang off the end of a bed.
• I can sleep as comfortably on most couches as if they were a bed (well..a lumpy bed. With cushions).
  
• My height wouldn't cause difficulties for me when traveling in prettymuch any foreign country (although my legs are still too long to sit comfortably in most airplanes - I think they are designed for toddlers).
• I generally don't have to look out for low-hanging branches when out and about.
• When we hug, my head rests comfortably on LB's chest and I can listen to his heart.
• I will never hit my head on a doorframe unless I am wildly uncoordinated.
• I can sit comfortably in most adult-sized chairs.
• I can sit and drive comfortably in most cars.
• At my height, I'm actually TALLER than the world average.
• I have a lower cancer and heart disease risk than my tall peers and am less likely to die in a car crash.
• I can experience and react to the world faster than tall people thanks to temporal binding.
  

A Really Good Grill

I am sitting here trying to figure out why I am so relaxed and happy today (I even got a "What the HELL is with you and your perky perkiness, who is this woman and what have you done with my wife?" from LB this morning.)

I mean, this weekend was not all that great. Thursday was a normal work day, then I came home to an evening of weeding and raking and bagging and other general yardwork. Friday I relaxed, played some WoW, and did some laundry. Saturday I worked at the store for 7 hours in sandals that gave me blisters. Sunday I worked at the store some more. I got little to no sleep and was tired as hell all weekend. Not a super fab relaxing weekend, right? Or was it?

Friday night LB and I grilled some of our signature Super Stinky Burgers* and hung out by our fire pit with beer. Saturday night LB took me out for a birthday dinner, then we came home and watched fireworks. Sunday, LB's best friend came over and we grilled some brats, then hung out with beer again, playing fetch with Freki and shooting the shit. Hell I was tired all weekend not primarily because of work, but because I had so much fun sitting out next to the grill that I stayed up way too late.

I realized today that even though I worked like a dog on most of my vacation, I still had a great weekend. Sitting down with your people, having a beer (or three), chatting over a hot grill with good food can really change the day from something stressful to something fun and relaxing.

So here's to a good grill, because really, it can make all the difference between a good weekend and a crappy one. Well, that and beer.

*Grill a burger as usual. Place thick slices of onion on top of burger when nearly cooked. Slather on some minced garlic and jalapeno. Top with cheese, preferably muenster and pepper jack. Remove from grill when cheese is melty. Toast bun. Enjoy with or without condiments. Later on and well into the next day pop breath mints like they're candy, in between multiple tooth brushings.

Work is da poop...and other obscure computer game references

My 28th birthday is coming up. It's the first time I feel a bit...sad about my birthday. I had a lot of goals, a lot of things I wanted to do before I turned 28 (most people pick like 30; I just roll a little different I guess). Some of them I've completed, but some of the bigger ones, I haven't, and those make me sad. I usually meet the goals I set out for myself, so not completing one is very disconcerting and demotivating to me. Also, I have to work on my birthday, and work is da poop.

Speaking of work, I have recently gotten some great results that really make my thesis project into a nice little (sexy!) story. The gene interaction I have found will really up the impact factor of my eventual paper, regardless of what I find next. I have a biological effect, backed by a known effector of the pathway, which is a very famous oncogene, and this interaction fits very well into a model of both normal brain development and medulloblastoma formation (which is what I am studying). There's more work to be done, of course, but I have a very solid foundation at this point which, in the context of thesis research (especially in my circumstances), is pretty fucking huge. So that's good. With hard work I think I can get out of here in 1.5 years maximum, 1 minimum, depending on if I'm lucky and all my experiments magically do not require troubleshooting :P