life and times of this midwestern spitfire

airport brain dump

It’s the true things that hurt worse than lies or exaggerations.

It’s when you’re mad enough to tell the truth.

When you’re so upset that you choose not to spare someone’s feelings anymore. 

If they tell you how they feel, it’s not that you didn’t know that they felt that way deep down.

It’s that you always hoped against hope that wasn’t how they saw you.

Fighting, lashing out, is making the choice to turn away from the lie agreed upon and choosing instead to tell the truth, confirming everything the other person suspected/feared/knew. 

There are truths about ourselves that we know, but are too terrible to live with. So every active thought we have is an effort to deny these obvious things, just so we can keep living, stumbling roughly forward in our lives. Or perhaps more accurately, kicking violently to keep our heads above water.

Sometimes a fight is like a hand clasping around your ankle and violently pulling you under. And like that, you are drowning. 

Because when you live with depression long enough, you can begin to use the denial for good, instead of evil. You tell yourself you’re feeling better. You tell yourself it’s gone. You tell yourself that you’re getting more done. That today is better. But someone telling the truth can wipe all that away. And when the water hits your lungs, you realize that this was always where you were heading. Where you’ll always head. Where you belong. Because some of us were born to win, some born to lose, and some of us were born to drown. 

The depressed girl says…

…. movie about depression is a drama.

(Forgive the disjointed nature of the following. It’s 5 am. I just had to get it out.)

I nearly walked out of Silver Linings Playbook several times in the first 20 minutes. It was difficult to ascertain what exactly was upsetting me so much but when I did, it was like a thunderbolt: It wasn’t me. It was them. 

It’s no surprise at this point that I don’t care for people much. It’s additionally no surprise that I’ve struggled with near crippling depression for much of my life. God knows most people would probably just like me to shut up about all of it already. 

And then there are those that are here reading this.

My problem as I was sitting in SLP was that every time the audience felt uncomfortable or saw something out of the ordinary in the least, they laughed. Nervous tic? Laughter. Inappropriate social response? Laughter. Awkward family interaction? Laughter. The problem with this is that Silver Linings Playbook is a drama. It’s a fairly straightforward story about what it is to live and attempt to deal with mental illness. It’s like people tittering through One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Or that impulse to giggle at a funeral. 

I understand that portrayals of mental illness are uncomfortable. But the reason I know that is because I see it every day in the mirror. It wrecks me. And it’s not funny. No matter how uncomfortable you feel, no matter how you’re perceiving what you’re seeing, it’s not funny. 

Which isn’t to say there aren’t humorous occurrences in the film. Of course they are. Just like there are in life. But David O. Russell has a deft hand at portraying all of these people as they are. 

He also portrays the crazyhood ghetto with an insight I’ve not seen from Hollywood before. As the film progresses you start to realize that absolutely everyone in the film is insane, in desperate need of therapy or medication or both, yet the only people suffering from the stigma of being broken are those actively trying to improve themselves. This happens a lot in the world of mental illness. Once someone can hang a label on you, they can also foster a false sense of superiority, despite their burgeoning OCD or enabling tendencies.

There’s also something significant to be said about the fact that neither of the main characters illnesses were caused by the trauma they suffered in their personal lives, but rather were lifelong struggles. Things that they had dealt with, in some cases, long before they realized what they experienced had a name or diagnosis. 

The film was intensely familiar with the “fixes” that go along with addressing mental illness. The thought that endorphins and positive thinking is enough. The thought that medication and therapy and distraction and sex and love and whenever and whatever will be enough to free you from your mind. When the truth lies somewhere in-between. The cocktail to solving mental illness is nebulous and always an approximation. 

The ending is intensely problematic. The film is a drama that resolves with a romantic comedy ending. Because this is the bottom line: whatever happiness that Pat (Bradley Cooper) and Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence) have found in each other is bound to be short-lived. Not because they’re not supposed to be together, but rather because they’re both ill and life just isn’t that easy. I didn’t need the film to give them an unhappy ending, but if someone, anyone, had merely looked a bit wistful, concerned, that not everything would be as hunky-dory as the film implied. 

The performances are spot on. The script is insightful. But the film isn’t heartwarming. And it’s not an insult to those with mental illness. So I don’t completely understand either reaction to the film. I think those that love it blind themselves to the long-term struggles this couple will face. I think those that abhor it allow themselves to be blinded by the reactions of the mass populace, as though their laughter changes what’s happening on the screen. 

So I remain confused by the film. I suspect I could grow to love it. I think that Tiffany (despite her slamming body and beautiful face) is a character I relate to more than just about any I’ve ever seen portrayed in film. To be certain though, my next viewing will be alone in my home or, at the very least, in the company of like-minded individuals. 

Sitcom Thanksgiving

Or Myrtle Street In Downtown Boise Is One-Way And You Would Do Well To Remember It.

When a woman is nine months pregnant she holds a lot of sway. Basically, you do whatever she wants. So when Todd’s very pregnant sister informed us we were coming for Thanksgiving in Boise, due date be damned, we had little choice but to acquiesce. It was no hardship on our part. We love car trips and were more than happy to make the trip.

The plan then, since neither of us were eager to make a pregnant woman cook a full Thanksgiving meal for us was that Todd would make the turkey, she would make the potatoes and everything else would work itself out. In retrospect, I’m not sure what that was supposed to mean. I would soon find out.

So this morning when I woke up and checked Facebook and was surprised, if a little dismayed, to see my sister-in-law talking about her contractions and how they were 10 minutes apart. Ooooookay.

We head over to the house and drop Todd off. Things seem to be fine so I head to Whole Foods on the other side of town to get the rest of his ingredients and hopefully stave off the oncoming sitcom Thanksgiving. I don’t mind this in the slightest as pending labor seems like something I’d rather avoid and grocery shopping is a fine enough task. By the time I enter the store, texts are flying fast and furious because, unsurprisingly, the turkey is still frozen solid. Also, there really isn’t a plan for anything else to eat beyond turkey and potatoes. 

I continue wandering around the unfamiliar, overpriced store with a slightly dazed look on my face, still a little shell-shocked by how quickly the day is unraveling. I call my mom for a stuffing recipe and to hyperventilate a little before cornering an unwitting salesperson to help me mastermind my shopping list. Whole Foods is a fabulous store with wonderful people. They have many, many things that are very near what you want, but absolutely not what you need. It’s a complete mindfuck.

In addition now to my list, I’m scoping out turkey options. Because Whole Foods is fabulous they have a large selection of beautiful, unfrozen turkeys. For 100 bucks a pop. Ha! Good one, Whole Foods. Let me just grab my satchel full of leprechaun gold and plop down the money for one of those. A fool’s errand, I tell you. I decided to try my luck over at WinCo Foods.

I bundled my 50 dollar bag of groceries into my car and peeled out of the parking lot, anxious to proceed through the rest of this interminable day. I’d passed WinCo earlier, so I knew I just had to backtrack a block. What I didn’t realize is that the street I’d just pulled onto was 8 lanes of one way traffic. On which I was going the wrong way. Oops.

No big deal. I’ll just throw an ENORMOUS U-TURN in the middle of all this. Great. I don’t mean to say that it’s not my intention to die in a fiery crash taking many people with me, it just wasn’t my intention to die that way TODAY. 

Whatever. After that embarrassing endeavor I finally made it to WinCo to seek out the rest of my list. WinCo is the backwoods, redneck, cash only cousin, to Whole Foods. They seem completely different, but they’re exactly the same. WinCo too has many, many things similar to want you want and absolutely nothing you need. Unless you need rashers of bacon. Those they have multitudes of. Also, they appear to have a lot of meth heads. If that’s your thing.

I think despair really set in as I was wandering around what appeared to be the cavernous headquarters of Doomsday Preppers. I don’t frequent club stores, so I was unprepared for the pallets upon pallets of green beans, located conveniently next to a rough gross of Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup. I trudged through the store, searching aimlessly for pumpkin pie filling, finally asking a harried employee who shouted the answer at me before I was even halfway through the question. I would bitch about his attitude but I was the awful woman asking about pumpkin pie filling from a man forced to work on Thanksgiving Day and answer stupid questions about pumpkin pie filling.

On the bright side, a store overstuffed as this WinCo was had reasonably priced turkeys as far as the eye could see. On the down side, I lack sufficient vocabulary to describe just how frozen solid they were. Something about the Ice Age, maybe? Basically, if you hit someone with one of these turkeys you would be charged with assault with a deadly weapon. As we (evidently) already had a turkey at this level of frozen just waiting for us at the house, I neglected to pick up another. 

Eventually I gave up and left with my elaborate selection of canned goods. Back to Whole Foods, driving the correct way down the one-way street and leaving with an unfrozen, overpriced turkey and my tail between my legs, but not before an embarrassing incident involving a non-functioning debit card and forking over every last bit of cash I had. 

I trekked back across town and arrived at the house two hours after I’d left it previously. At this point, neither Todd and I had eaten and in the face of 6 hours of cooking, neither felt up to throwing together lunch. So back out I went, in search of sanity and sandwiches. What I found was a gas station (Good! I needed gas!) with a car wash (Awesome! I needed to wash the car!) and a McDonald’s (Okay! I needed food!). So I purchased gas, got the car washed and… McDonald’s was closed. Because you know what’s open on Thanksgiving Day? 

Nothing. Nothing is open on Thanksgiving Day.

Oh. Except grocery stores. Now there was a different WinCo near the house, but there’s no use going there, because I don’t think they have premade food and, of course, I’m still out of cash from earlier. So I drive the other way across town to an Albertson’s where I find basic sustenance and, thankfully, Coke. Sadly, just the soda, as at this point I could have used any and all alternatives. 

Back to the house. Eat. Todd’s brother arrives with his two dogs just in time for us to start prepping the turkey.

Thankfully, we were able to avoid the inevitable. Prepping the rest of the food was maddening. Being in an unfamiliar kitchen and forced to ask a contracting sister-in-law where things were, all the while being terrified that after cleaning up the massive amounts of post-cooking dishes, I’d also need to clean her broken water off the floor. Todd and I would snip at each other (AS IS OUR WONT) and she (being 23, pregnant with her second child, and married for two-ish years) would talk about how she and her husband never talk to each other that way. Ah, youth.

As we entered the final stretch, her contractions started worsening, we started cooking faster, everyone got burned and everyone got fed. 

My feet hurt. By morning we may have a new niece. I’ve seen all the grocery stores in the greater Boise area. And I didn’t even get any pie. 

Behind the scenes

When I was 18, I went to college and met this obnoxious guy who wouldn’t stop talking, but conveniently rescued me from my overbearing roommate. We were attached at the hip and had a rapport that inspired people to assume we were A. dating and/or B. lifelong friends. They were obviously wrong. But as some small consolation to them, we are now.

I was pretty broken back then, which is saying something considering how broken I still am today. He was always going to conquer the world and was determined to drag everyone along with him. The confidence we lacked in ourselves, he made up for tenfold. 

We’ve had a tumultuous relationship. Sometimes we still do. Before the 2008 election, I would have called myself a pit bull or a, well, not mama grizzly, that’s fucking stupid, but something ferocious and protective. Sure, I’ll probably chew his face off before our lives are over, but until then, I’ll defend him violently to all comers. 

So this week has been hard, as far as these things go. 

Somehow, borne partially of a comment outlining guidelines in basic civility, people have lost their shit. They follow him around the internet lobbing horrible statements at him while he calmly responds and tries to engage them on an intellectual level. Pointless.

What also has come out is that there’s an entire blog dedicated to how he’s the worst human being alive because he doesn’t like Community enough. No, I know. The blog also goes on to viciously and undeservedly attack any number of other television critics for simply doing their jobs. 

I’m trying to figure out if I’m being oversensitive, which is undoubtedly partially the case. After all, I used to be an acolyte of Fire Joe Morgan. Isn’t this blog ostensibly the same thing? Actually, no. It isn’t. FJM had a point of view: it spoke to the accuracy of sabermetrics and the active choice the establishment made to ignore it. Additionally, the people criticism was leveled at on FJM were largely established television personalities, not private citizens (some) working second jobs writing freelance reviews for extra scratch. This new blog is merely focused on how everyone who doesn’t agree with them is wrong and a lesser human being because of it. 

But that’s fine. Some people on the internet don’t like my husband and have dedicated a frightening amount of time to breaking apart his reviews line by line and saying why they find them stupid. What really bothers me about this situation is when the link is sent to Dan Harmon on Twitter and he fucking eggs them on. 

I should be okay with this. I mean, it’s just one embittered, alcoholic, deeply troubled, historically assholish man getting down with his kind. But I’m not okay with it. This man is a fucking deity on the internet, whether anyone likes it or not. He has sway. And his sway has encouraged people to continue denigrating my husband. And I’m not okay with that. I will never be okay with that.

Sure, you’re sad. Sure, you’ve had a bad run. But don’t take that out on someone who’s only ever loved and supported your show, even if that meant leveling difficult, constructive critiques against it. My husband is a big man with an open heart who only wants everyone and everything to be the very best versions of themselves. 

But that’s not me. I’d prefer it if broken, horrid people like you stopped inflicting their own darkness on other people, especially those still good enough to be affected by the spiteful words of dead-eyed, over-praised narcissists who are just running out the clock before drinking themselves to death. 

I’m not the good one. You’ve dealt with him. Now it’s me left. And I’m nowhere near as nice. 

I have been, unsurprisingly, verboten from speaking about this on Twitter or addressing the matter directly with the parties I so wish to throw down with. This post is only being allowed because it means I’m actually writing and being allowed to bitch is evidently a sufficient carrot to overcoming writing paralysis. 

This will probably be deleted before too long. I’m sure I broke some rules in how much I was supposed to say. It’s also worth mentioning that Todd is dealing relatively well with all of this. I’m the one that’s really struggling. Like a dog on too short of a leash, I guess. 

things I’d forgotten

Long after I was old enough to read by myself and, truth be told, closer to my teenage years, my mother started reading to me again. I couldn’t say why it started or whose idea it was, only that for a series of months I would sit next to her at the kitchen table or on the couch or lay next to her on her bed and listen as she read me books that she had never had the time to read aloud to me in my youth.

I would close my eyes and listen to voice as I soaked in the images and tried to absorb every second of our elusive time alone. We went back over classic chapter books long forgotten on our shelves, like Big Red or Call of the Wild or Christy, and all time classics like Winnie the Pooh and Peter Pan.

I don’t remember exactly when this took place, how old I was, or why it began. In truth, I can’t tell you exactly which books we read, which amuses me because this originally began as a spirited defense of Winnie the Pooh, a book we may never have shared in such a fashion.

What matters, I suppose, is the serenity I get thinking of that time. Of how my mother and I built a safeguard against the impending forces of puberty and time and trial and fear and hormones and the world and bolstered the walls with written words.

I have complaints about my childhood. Every childhood is imperfect. But this memory is different. Though the details are fuzzy and may be inaccurate, my emotions are clear. When I remember my mother, when I remember my childhood, when I remember love and literature and the way I started down the road to loving both, I will remember these moments. And they will be perfect.

Somedays I think about writing a screed about Justin Bieber.

Then I realize that would take a lot of effort.

So I go back to sleep.