badgerbag

Saw Dr. Crustyov. Thanks for the zithromax 3-pack, asshole. Also for the information that I have a fever and swollen up nasal passages and a lot of mucus. I knew that. Also for explaining to me for 10 minutes how I should take my temperature every couple of hours “because it’s important to know” and “if my temp is even 98.7, that’s a fever and that’s IMPORTANT.” Important for what? Because according to him my temperature should at all times be exactly 98.6. I did not say “But… that is utter bullshit… 98.6 is an average!!!” Instead I was polite… and smiled…. and nodded… and merely repeated the simple outline of the problem as I see it. (Pain in right side of throat and right ear. Not a regular sore-throat-and-cold. Tonsils sometimes give me trouble, maybe this is related, maybe not. I did not mention the vertigo history though that was also my right ear.)

Thanks for telling me that my right ear and throat look completely normal and that I should not be obsessed with my tonsils and that my tonsils are totally normal for a woman my age and that I do not need my tonsils out. (I didn’t ask… ) “Maybe you had some problems with your tonsils when you were a child. But that doesn’t mean they are important now.” Gee thanks!

But most of all thanks for the pointless, non-followed-up-on, suggestion that I might have lupus because my face and neck are all red and rashy. Thanks for telling me it “doesn’t LOOK like rosacea”. Freakazoid asshole. Does so. Like I need to be any more paranoid. If you think there is some pointers to lupus then explain it or order some tests. I guess it’s fine that he is alert that I fit the profile… but whatever… i just have some acne and rosacea… what bullshit! “Something to keep in mind.” Thankssssss. I think this guy is senile.

“So, what do you do? You’re a writer? You must have quite an imagination then.”

Yes, I am a crazy lady. What of it?

Whatever, the important thing is I have some possibly pointless zithro which in theory might help to heal the thing that I, myself, can see on the right side of my throat, behind my tonsils… which your rheumy ancient eyes somehow missed… you know that oozing pustulent looking bleeding ulcerous thing in the back on the right side? Maybe if you had used a tongue depressor to actually look at the back of the throat? Not that it is important he see it… but I hate for a doctor to say that actualy I am not feeling pain at all and that everything is normal. Hello, I have not eaten solid food for 3 days and it hurts to talk – it is not like I’m making that up.

The pain keeps getting worse – it’s really brutal at this point and it’s all up in my ear. Mostly though, the right side of my throat has gone insane. The left side feels completely normal. Something’s wrong in there and it’s not having-a-cold-post-nasal-drip. 15 more minutes till I can call the doctor. For all the good that will do. I know it will be one of the horrid old crusty guys who will tell me to gargle with saltwater. Yesterday it became too painful to eat anything other than soup. I had some cookies this morning by dipping them in coffee and chewing a lot, but chewing hurts, i.e. moving my jaw.

Could it be one of the horrible tonsil problems gone all wrong and infected? I can only hose out the tops of my tonsils and their crypts. Underneath is a mystery, I suppose they are the catacombs not the crypts. More & more I consider getting my tonsils burned right the fuck off the face of the planet and certainly out of the back of my throat.

I don’t know why I feel it necessary to tell the internet any of that. Why?

Lovely breakfast… nice to bring Rook to a place I enjoy… visit to the Italian deli where I got a nice tin of olive oil, some anchovies, and a box full of fancy groceries to send to my mom and dad so they can have their own proustian moments. If only I could send them the ambiance of the deli with the dudes in paper hats and the gossip flying about international artichoke prices and The Game (what game? I’ll never know.) I bought Moomin some socks at one of the crowded stores on Mission; they all stock the same stuff and are all run by Chinese people. I wonder if they compete, or are all owned by related families or friends, or some kind of consortium? Surely they all get their stuff from the same import/export company.

BART is weary and dingy, loud and stressful compared to the glories of Caltrain, as always… but I still have a happy cityish feeling. Rook asked me what stop? and I answered him as if I knew. He didn’t catch me out! Then he realized when I brightened up at a corner at the 2nd st. sign. Huzzah, savor the uncertainty! We looked into the Cartoon Museum bookstore, then SFMOMA. Not for the first time, I thought of how much money and space churches suck up in our communities and how much nicer it would be if all those resources went instead into libraries and art spaces that would be beautiful community temples of doing stuff. And, you know, why not get your community at the bookstore/temple/cafe/laundromat? Screw churches.

Back on Valencia again… some photos, and then to the cafe… we talked about rpg stuff, thoughts on what we’d want a conference to be, and where – theory and games, mixed, maybe one programming track – maybe try to become another track at an existing con – we ate croissants and sank into the spell of our cosy computers – Then to the Buffalo X to see if they had some pants for Rook – they did – and after resolving that my book splurge meant no new boots, i… I found the perfect red boots for 20 bucks and bought them. I had my eye on some expensive fluevog boots. But these are great and I’d rather have the books! At some point it’s going to be cheaper for me to fly to buenos aires, buy them and ship them. Soon… soon I’ll have the 1906 edition of that cuban anthology where they didn’t leave out all the women poets! And didn’t just leave in 2 of them! And didn’t just put in one of their dumbest most sentimental-drivel poems! Anyway, I was going to go over my book-introduction rough draft with Rook, but then didn’t.

I’m thinking tonight (again) that the best thing I could do with this info is post it on the spanish & english wikipedias. An entry for each poet & a sample of their work. I could submit to Palabra Virtual, but I’d rather have control and I’d like to write mostly in English. I’ll try Spanish too, but then someone else will correct it when it’s awkward. Then, too, I can create my own genre entries and interfere in modernismo/vanguard stuff that’s out there already. The author bios are hard for me to write, but I can at least put a stub and hope for others to contribute.

We went and hung out with Chula for a little bit, just to say hi. She was sort of bubbly and glowing today even though in mid-novel-revision, perhaps end-of-week euphoria. Then we ran off to pick up Moomin. Foolishly, Rook accepted directions from me again though I told him I was “exploring”. My experiment succeeded and now I have another piece of the map clear in my mind! One cuts over on Church to Clipper, then up to Portola. woooo!

Moomin is a bit dreamy, odd, and listless; then hyper and whispery. I think he must have had some social difficulties in zoo camp, after all, from the way he’s been cagey about it and kind of perturbed.

I made dinner – antipasto and potstickers. Hey, it’s what was in the house. Laundry. Dishes. Blogging and photo-messing. Rook is typing up notes from our Polaris game from last week. Read Angry Black Bitch – and Twisty Faster – bathed Moomin – played “purple horned starfish horse yugioh wars” and then pretended to be Superman’s cats – tried to watch “Iron Monkey 2” but it sucked so hard we stopped in the middle – bath – messed about with my gross, gross, but now much cleaner, tonsils, and I will spare you the details – Read Seneca – and now perhaps another glass of merciful brandy and hot milk.

That’s the shorthand… useless to anyone but me… I just wanted to remember this day b/c it was so nice. The usual Deep Thoughts will go unwritten… others will replace them. Enough that I insulted the memory of some hapless SFAI prof and his ugly hand-ground pigments.

I’m worn down to a tiny pale echo of my usual self from all this activity!

I thought I got all that stuff out of my tonsils but this afternoon my throat started hurting again. Maybe getting sick? But NO. I got super aggressive with the poking around back there and hosing with the long-nozzled squirt thing. OH GROSS. I can’t believe this. The amount of tonsil stuff that came out….And it’s not like it just formed overnight since the last time. No it’s been IN THERE for fucking ever, apparently. No, I just can’t go on… It is beyond disgusting. But I’m not going to assume my throat is sore from “post nasal drip” ever again – or “low-level infection causing swollen glands” – oh, not. For all I know, it’s been causing the weird vertigo episodes too.

I swear to god I brush my teeth twice a day… and my tongue… and the gargling! But apparently that does not fix the evilness! I need tonsil spackle!!! I wish I could have them yanked out but everything I’ve read recommends against it and says that you need months of serious water-piking.

The horrible scratchy feeling is still going right up my nose and ears. And I only really fixed.. maybe… the right side. The left side still feels sort of weird.

I have ordered a water-pik and there will be daily, no, twice-daily tonsil-irrigation!!! And the world will rejoice!

What could be grosser? No, I should not ask, as an image sprang to mind of maggots living in the giant holes in my tonsils. THAT would be grosser.

Actually Kristeva is a good answer and refreshing antidote to the annoying sexual/artistic/poetic politics of Duchamp. I am now picturing D. peering through the knothole in secret, in his closet… and trying so hard to bust out of that closet of art by the “love gasoline” misting from the weird feminine thingie (passively, unconsciously: the “freedom of the captive” is what he called it) and the guy-things spooging out their concentrated bullethole projectiles across the barrier (the not-really-there gravity inferference on the female side) and the non-understandable words in an imaginary alphabet emanating from the cloudy and empty (again, unconscious, passive) dream-network of the “Bride” (rape victim) so that language is created by the feminine, but only because she doesn’t know what she’s doing so that agency or subjectivity or authority is irritatingly undermined, denied. Fate has nothing to do with her – it doesn’t interfere with what she does. (So the spooge-bullets don’t hit the womb-void-targets in the Bride’s dreamworld, and the Bride’s “language” is never understood by the Bachelors.) The bachelors don’t get a fair shake either, as if everything comes down to their spermatic odyssey and they can’t live without the “raw material” of the gasoline (while the Bride just seems to make it endlessly) Now on the other hand Kristeva …. playing playing playing (but somehow I’m still sticking on that mother-freud thing: it’s just a metaphor to me: maybe this is where J. Butler does it better and isn’t as suspect? And that’s why she is so worshipped? Now I’m curious to look.) And so ethical/revolutionary behavior becomes possible because of NOT doing what duchamp was doing and by incorporating (embodying) those things the other is not foreign, etc etc. Oh dear it all begins to seem like nonsense again. But for a few really lovely minutes I had an epiphany going.

Meanwhile — those horrible things came out of my tonsils again. I looked with a flashlight and there was more, which I hosed out with a sort of high-pressure water-squirting arrangement, actually with one of the very long pointy infant nose-washer bulbs. This worked great. It’s just like… there is a weird giant narrow hole in the right side of my tonsils and apparently junk collects in there so it all seems okay UNTIL THE HOLE FILLS UP and I can see it and know to try to get it out of there. Oh, so gross. I’m afraid I’m going to have to hose out the back of my throat every single day. (Yes, I can hear what you’re thinking.) Maybe that will work better than mere obsessive gargling, flashlighting, and sticking my finger down my throat in attempts to squeeze the stuff out of the hole. Die, tonsiloliths, die! The Ear-nose-throat Dr. recommended a water-pik (daily) but I never got one… maybe the squeeze bulb will work just as well.

Happy bustling building in the garden. We are making a cover for the sandbox.

I found the exact red salvias that hummingbirds like, on sale at the hardware store. and I put the pots where I’m going to plant them — already a hummingbird came to one and Moomin was excited. I felt studly, as I had just explained to him how they will make hummingbirds come and then nearly instantly it happened.

Rook is sawing the strips of wood and measuring things.

Soon I will venture into blicheando, otra vez…

The orange and blonde is not that bad if I pretend I did it on purpose, but it’s going away, away, away.

Chefily’s tonsils are disgustingly swollen up like horrible whitish sponges. She’s miserable….

***

Sometime later we ended up snapping at each other over how to best nail the pieces of wood together and it began to rain steadily. Moomin and Rook watched a movie with Chefily and her friend… I planted things in the rain and dyed my hair and gave Rook a blonde streak.

Cooking… Moomin falling deeply asleep (I forgot to say that he was awake a lot, scared of the dark, on their camping trip) and being cranky as hell.. which for him just kind of means withdrawal and saying he doesn’t want to do anything to the point where I start to think he is getting sick. I offered to draw with him … “no.” play…. “no.” !? He demanded ice cream for dinner. Does it mean he has a sore throat, or does he just figure that by acting pathetic and grumpy, he can bend the rules? I did not give him ice cream but he did have cinnamon toast and is now watching cartoons. So maybe it worked for him and we’re total suckers. If he wakes up sick, I’ll feel vile for suspecting him of underhanded manipulation. And my own allergies are weirdly out of control. I think his are too. There’s a lot of sneezing and nose-blowing in the Nuthouse tonight.

5 minutes after having a spasm of soul-searching agony over whether I’m kind of jerky for trying to do everything in life and maintain my sluttiness, what am I doing? Sending flirty propositions over email to cute, shy, smiley, nerdy, bookish girl I met at a poetry reading. Really now. It’s nice to be me. Like it or lump it.

Actually that might should be described as “sleazy propositions” not “flirty propositions”.

I am spending tomorrow morning working on Z.M. translation project … I can’t wait… I’m so excited! she says she has a publisher in sp@in and maybe another one in argent1na !!! Yow. Can I pull this off? I wish I’d finished it all months ago.

Rook is making me watch the very first buffy episode tonight. I’m liking it.

And my tonsils feel almost all the way better – I am eating normal food again.

Tomorrow I will take Moomin to the super-great wading pool in Polo Alto. We will wade amongst fountains and spouting water-bicycles and the tiny slide.

This afternoon we were on the swings, and he got on the swing himself (a major achievement – he is short) and pumped by himself, and we took turns saying random things about our swinging: “superhero flying! tree flying! leaf flying! leaf falling off the tree flying! moon flying around the earth flying! truck flying! horses flying! horses galloping flying! happy flying! happy birthday flying! cake flying! ice cream truck flying! chocolate flying! sword flying! spaceship flying! airplane flying! rockets flying up to the moon flying!” I love it when I can start babbling and he will take it up and babble back and forth with me. So much fun.

I have amazing powers, world!

and after this one buffy I will finish Time Regained…

***

no… it’s a 2 part episode. after these 2 buffys i will almost-finish Time Regained.

Badger: i’m kind of a jerkwad, i think…
…..
J: Not to say that you can’t be a jerkwad sometimes.

J: sometimes I think the biggest jerkwaddy thing you do is taking a certain amount of pride in being difficult

Badger: go on please
Badger: no, go on
Badger: explain
Badger: lord knows i need someone to tell me how i’m jerky in a way i can understand, who isn’t actually mad at me at the time
J: Well, it’s like you know that you are doing/being difficult about something, but on a certain level you think well dammit I’m right and everybody else is wrong, or at least it’s part of what makes me me so fuck em if they don’t like that part of me
J: I’ll be true to myself even if it hurts them
Badger: ack
Badger: yup
Badger: like it or lump it
Badger: “the rest of me is so great, you shd just put up with me”
J: I guess the thing is, and this probably relates to the whole narcissitic wounding and such
J: that you don’t yet seem to get that you can bend and still be at the core you
Badger: i AM bending [Instant defensiveness! bristle!]
J: Not all compromise is betrayal of yourself
Badger: i KNOW
Badger: no one seems to get it when i DO bend and i totally do
J: Well, maybe so, but maybe not always in the way that’s needed
Badger: well
Badger: I’m bending a lot but i do have a line [grrrrr! watch me get my back up!]
J: like you’ll do something that you think is very accomodating, but it’s not what the person needs/wants

[I burst into tears (real life action) and start whining (textually) ]

[much even more heinously detailed analysis deleted because I do have SOME sense of my own privacy and other people’s]

[J. says that I am expecting the very difficult or superhuman, and so must behave superhumanly]

Arrrrr! Everything J. said is so true and I can apply it to myself from nearly my very earliest memories of self-awareness. I mean I was like that when I was 7 years old. And being like that is very much my virtue and my flaw at the same time. If I weren’t, would I have been so obnoxious as a kid about declaring my atheism and weird politics everywhere? And my queerness? And my superpower of just saying whatever and being in people’s faces? And those things are massively important to me. And society needs people who are capable of it, doesn’t it? (my justification for nearly any obnoxious behavior on my part or anyone else’s, and okay, i realize maybe my justifications wear thin after a while.)

But it’s helpful to have J. point out the obvious to me, of how difficult it can be for other people to deal with me. (Actually, at the beginning of that conversation I had just said that everyone gets sick of my crap, that I’m intolerable long-term, and Rook is just dumber than most to put up with me, and then J. bitch-slapped me into shutting up, instead of as I hoped contradicting me and telling me that I’m all fantastic and stuff. Oh well. ha on me. )

So without being all whiny about it, I’ll just admit I’m a jerk. I am so, way, way, less of a jerk than I used to be. I actually try not to offend people. Lots of times. I try to be considerate. When Person Y recently was massively hurt by something I did, I tried to quit doing it and in fact did, and I wrassled my head around to respect their feelings on a deep and sincere level. Only because Rook and Person Z practically sat on me in a very alcoholics-anonymous-intervention way, and then I spent days doing nothing but thinking and writing about it.

But there you have my other superpower: I am willing to put enormous amounts of energy into thinking about how to change myself and try to improve and I will actually listen and try. And I also spend a huge amount of time thinking about what other people feel, and what they might feel, and what they think of me and how i can be nice to them. Doesn’t that count for a lot? some? a little?

I am not perfect… I get mad and defensive sometimes too… there is no space for that kind of thing, though…

If I hadn’t said “fuck ’em, i’ll be true to myself” so so so many times in the past, think where I would be now. no really just think about it. I can imagine many awful possibilities.

but again in my defence I’m SO not saying that at all and instead have said very different things. if people could look a little past my automatic pilot of “I’m not bending” and see the bit where I am bending.

I’ll sew myself up now. I have amazing recuperative powers. If I’d written this in my normal paper journal I wonder if it would have the same effect as it does when I blog things like this? Because despite the crypticness of it, it’s public and I think has a greater effect on me in some weird way. in a little notebook on my shelf my thoughts are almost as forgettable and easy to leave behind as they are if I don’t write them at all. Do we all forget dozens or hundreds of complex insights every day?

This morning I tried to look at my throat with a flashlight. Rook found a weird hugelooking spot on the back of my throat. and just now I had a chain-sneezing bout and coughed up the most disgusting thing ever – one of those tonsiloliths, right? but HUGE. Huge. huge. unbelievable. how long was that in my tonsils? ew.

I must have the nastiest breath ever… lord i hope not… as the thing smelled… well… it smelled a lot like, if you leave rice in the rice cooker by accident for a week and then open it and the rice has all fermented in there and gotten moldy. But worse than that. and it might very well have been some grains of rice stuck in there as it sort of looked like about 3 or 4 grains of rice dissolved into each other. I resolve to gargle a zilliion times a day. That was amazingly gross.

At least I’m not getting sick – I feel fine but with somewhat swollen glands and my ear on one side is all funky… but I bet it’s from the aftermath of THAT THING reaching critical mass.

Finally, we see that chain-sneezing is good for something after all.

No one’s ever going to want to kiss me again after reading this…. ew, ew, ew.

unexpectedly, my ears hurt. and my throat feels a little funny like something is stuck in my tonsils. yuck.

noooooo… I won’t be sick… I won’t get a cold… nope nope nope.