inevitable death panic should be the name of my band

by

Never Have I Ever

For a few weeks or months maybe, I have noticed a change in my grief. I still think of my friend every day, but the thoughts are mainly happy and wistful. There is the occasional instance when I come across something I would have normally called or texted her about, and I can’t call or text her, and so there’s nowhere for that desire to go, which is a sad and unbalancing way to feel. But mainly I’ve been doing better. Less sharp stabbing pain, more dull, bearable ache. But I have been having jolts of anticipatory sadness in the past week or so, knowing that the milestone of One Year Since She Left Us was coming up. And today I am really not okay. I suppose this is all normal, and you’ve possibly endured it too, and I’m sorry. 

I dreamt about her last night. It was one of those dreams that feels long and endless, but of course it probably took only a few seconds. In the dream, my friend was alive and cheerful and planning all sorts of fun things to do, but I knew she was going to die before we got to do any of it. So instead of being able to enjoy the planning and the anticipation, all I could do was struggle not to cry, to try very very hard to preserve the illusion – for her – that everything was and would continue to be great. It was an awful, heartbreaking dream — not least because I was with! her! and yet I was ruining that precious time by being sad!

But of course this is how it is for all of us. We are all going to leave this plane of existence at one time or another. We will, and so will everyone we love. And we know that it will happen. And yet somehow we go on, making plans, and falling in love, and having babies, and getting crabby with one another and making poor decisions and wasting time and sleeping in and procrastinating and all the mundane, wonderful activities of a normal life, and pretending for our loved ones and ourselves that everything is fine without falling over sobbing from the absurdity of all of it. I do not know how. 

::EXTREME TONE CHANGE::

Which is all to say that I am craving uplift and distraction. I think I will watch some old episodes of Real Housewivesbecause that is soothing in its ridiculousness. Maybe I will take a nap. Sunshine and exercise are curative, or, if not exactly curative, at least healthful so I plan on walking to the neighborhood grocery store to check out the selection of mums, which I drive past every day and which seem lovely and cheerful and fall-ish. Perhaps, if the store looks un-crowded, I will even dash in and buy an avocado. 

What else can I do to distract myself? If you’re up for it, we could play a little game of Never Have I Ever.

Come on, it’s Friday, everything is awful. I’ll go first.

Never Have I Ever…

… gone more than a day without shaving my legs. And even that is RARE. A friend noticed the cooling weather with relish the other day, saying she was excited to stop painting her toes and shaving her legs. Do most people do that? Go all winter without shaving? It sounds very freeing, but itchy. I have been shaving my legs since sixth grade, if I remember right (I certainly remember being teased by other, more sophisticated girls for how hairy my legs were) (to be fair, they were very lush), and I haven’t stopped since. Once in a while, if I don’t take a shower that day, I won’t shave. But every single time I bathe, I shave my legs. Even if I went swimming at a spa or something, back in the Before Times, I would shave my legs afterward, with those horrible single-blade disposable razors you get at places like that. Even if I forget my razor at a hotel, I call down and get a free one so I can shave. Even when I was pregnant, I shaved my legs EVERY DAY. It’s just MUCH more comfortable to me, to have clean-shaven stems. I do not feel the same compulsion with my underarms. 

…eaten sushi. At least the raw fish kind. Listen, there are just some foods I KNOW I won’t like. Yes, yes, I know you are supposed to try new things ‘cuz they might taste good (TM Daniel Tiger), but I can TELL by the way the raw fish looks that it is going to be a texture I cannot abide. Plus, I have touched a lot of raw fish, so I KNOW it will be a texture I cannot abide. It is beautiful and many many people love it but it is NOT for me.

…lived by myself. I went straight from my parents’ house to college, where I shared a dorm all four years (three of those years, my roommate was the friend I am missing today). Then I went to graduate school and lived with my then-boyfriend. Then he and I moved together so he could attend medical school, then we got married, and have been living together ever since. I think the closest I ever came to living alone was the summer before senior year of college when I got a job in my husband’s hometown so we could be together… and “house sat” for a family who lived across the street from his childhood home. I slept on a mattress on the floor in one of the bedrooms and had to keep the house Show Ready for any interested buyers. There was zero furniture in the house, and it was enormous and had a scary basement. But that was three months AT MOST and I spent much of my non-working time at my husband’s house. 

…broken a bone. Well, caveat, I do think I may have broken a big toe at some point in my youth. But that was never proven and therefore doesn’t count. My husband has broken a couple of bones and it seems like I’m in the minority when it comes to leaving my thirties with all my original bones, intact. Maybe I just run in a fragile crowd, I don’t know. 

…seen my husband’s office. Okay, okay, this is kind of a cheat because he has three offices. (Down from five.) But I have only seen one of the current offices. That’s kind of weird to me, considering how much time I spent in my father’s medical office – and even in my mom’s law office – when I was a kid. I feel like I should be able to picture where he is when he’s at work. Not in a controlling way. I suppose the difference is that it’s not really HIS space; he shares it, since he rotates through, so he has no copies of his medical license and diplomas on the wall, no nameplate on his desk, no framed photos of me and Carla on bookshelves filled with not his books, no trout-themed paintings on all the exam room walls (TM my former ophthalmologist). But STILL! He goes to these places every week and it feels odd to me that I have yet to see them.

Okay. Your turn.  

by

Tuesday Randomosity: Pre-Trip Panic and Additional Fretful Absurdities Edition

I am skipping today’s Dinners This Week post. I mean, there’s no need to plan dinners when you’ll be eating dinner on an airplane, right? Let’s have some randomosity. Join me, won’t you?

First, let’s have some medicinal nachos:

Nachos 1

Chips. Top with cheese. Melt for 30 seconds in the microwave. Top with black beans and frozen corn. Microwave for another 20 seconds. Top with copious amounts of my favorite hot sauce. Add avocado, diced onion, and sour cream. Cilantro if you have it/don’t hate it. Tomatoes if you swing that way. Squeeze a wedge of lime over everything. Add copious amounts of sriracha for good measure. DEVOUR.

  • A lot of my fretting about Leaving My Bayyyyyybeeeeee has been channeled into Shoe Panic. As in, how am I going to walk around Europe for ten days without reducing my delicate feet to bloody shreds? So I have purchased and returned approximately 90,000 pairs of shoes in the past week. Nothing like leaving an important aspect of your planning to the very last minute!

 

  • These are the shoes I have ended up with: Skechers Go Walk Evolution Ultra sneakers (why do all athletic shoes have such ridiculous names?) and Vionic Minna ballet flats (in color “sand”) because I wanted to have walk-friendly shoes that were dressy enough for a nice-ish dinner.

 

  • Building on some of your great ideas for making the trip easier on Carla, I have bought her some books and other little fun surprises to open while we’re gone. There is a real dearth of fun, story-based children’s books about the very specific locations we are traveling to, which is DISAPPOINTING, but I did find this book about one of the cities on our itinerary:

Munich

  • You know that one of my big panics is Death By Airplane, right? So I have been desperately trying to get our life insurance upgraded just in case. Of course, the process takes waaaaayyyyy longer than I thought it would, so we just squeaked our medical exams in at the last minute and there is no way the underwriting will be complete before we leave. (I use these terms like I have any idea whatsoever how any of this works, which I do NOT.) HOWEVER. Did you know that you can get provisional coverage, based on the assumption that you will get approved? So that’s what we’re doing. We can pay a premium as though we’ve been approved, and then, when we come back home, ALIVE, we can pay any additional amount as needed. And if we perish while overseas, we’re covered. (I mean, as long as we are approved and have paid the correct amount; I’m assuming my parents could pay any difference after the fact.) Cool, right!?! Okay, maybe my calibration of “cool” has shifted in odd ways.

 

  • In other morbid planning, I tried to record myself singing to Carla. There are two songs I have been singing to her at bedtime all her life – one I made up while pregnant with her and the other is “Moon River” – and I have this desperate feeling that I MUST record myself singing them so she can listen to the songs (but will she?) to comfort her (but will they?) after my fiery death. But I can’t record myself! It’s so ridiculous! In every recording, I keep SWALLOWING in the middle of sentences. Like, “Mooooooon river, wider than a mile, I’m crossing [gulp] you in style someday…. [gulp] Dream maker, you heart [gulp] breaker….” It’s really distracting and annoying and I cannot NOT do it. I mean, have you ever tried to NOT SWALLOW when your body is telling you to swallow? And then try to SING while not swallowing? It’s absurd and obviously some sort of weird self-conscious reaction to recording myself. Do not suggest that I ask my husband to record me actually singing to Carla, because then I would die of embarrassment and also we are out of time. I am going to choose the least gulpy of the options and THAT’S JUST HOW CARLA WILL HAVE TO REMEMBER ME.

 

  • Abrupt subject change: Our Amazon Echo (Alexa) has begun telling me to enjoy my day. “Have a nice day,” she’ll say after I ask for the weather in the morning. “Have a good afternoon,” she’ll say sometimes after I’ve asked for the news briefing. It’s creepy but nice? And she only says it to me. She has never once used any sort of pleasantry with my husband. Also creepy? But it makes me feel vindicated in using “please” and “thank you” when making requests of her. My husband may not be on the good side of the AI after the uprising, but hopefully Alexa will put in a good word for me.

 

  • While I’m worrying about wholly unimportant things (recap: dying on my totally voluntary trip overseas; the state of my footwear for said trip; singing lullabies without swallowing; the inevitable AI uprising; will I have enough nachos to last until we leave for Europe?), let’s add in some panic about Carla’s birthday party. I think we have the venue down. And Carla has shifted from Tiger Theme to Seahorse Theme to Mommy, You Choose A Theme From These Five Cat-Related Categories Plus Foxes. So I am leaning toward Rainbow Leopard Theme, mainly because I have found the perfect party favor:

Rainbow Leopard

  • And the perfect cake to torture myself with making. (My husband heaved a great world-weary sigh when I told him about it and asked if I might consider just BUYING a cake.) (No.) (Does he know me?)

 

  • But I can’t find any great theme-appropriate invitations; some decent ones, but nothing I LOVE. And, WORSE, because I will panic about LITERALLY ANYTHING meaningless in the grand scheme of things, I cannot find any theme-appropriate paper plates and napkins. I can order them via Zazzle for around $60 for 40 to 50 plates-or-napkins, but can we all agree that spending $60 on 40 paper plates for a single party is excessive? I’m not saying it can’t be DONE; I wouldn’t judge anyone for spending $60 on 40 plates if that’s how they chose to spend their hard-earned money. But I think $1.70 cheetah-print paper plate — PAPER, not even hard plastic — is excessive and I really want to avoid it if at all possible.

 

  • So maybe foxes? I haven’t looked it up, but foxes could be a good alternative, right? It’s just that they are so Off Brand for my particular child, who wears leopard print probably three days a week (today she is wearing a faux fur cheetah print vest over a green dress and black leggings with faux leather patches; she has a very particular sense of style, this kid) and has leopard print boots and pretends to be a rotating cast of leopards/cheetahs/panthers on a daily basis. I am already exhausted by planning this party and I haven’t really even begun.

 

  • Please keep in mind that I KNOW that none of this is important, it’s a birthday party, not the Oscars or some other party that actually matters/has wide visibility, and really ALL parties pale in comparison to, like, climate change and gun control and matters of REAL IMPORT. I am not overlooking the absolute absurdity of wasting brainpower on this frivolity.

 

  • Frivolity continues: And what are we going to get Carla for her actual gift? She is fresh out of ideas, unless you count “more Barbies!” as an idea which I do not. The only things I can come up with are a) a new bike (although she has a perfectly good hand-me-down bike that will probably last her at least another year, in terms of being the right height, not to mention she staunchly refuses to let us remove the training wheels) and b) a doll, because she seems to finally be more interested in dolls than in stuffed animals. She has repeatedly asked for a basket for her bike, so she can collect things (acorns, pinecones, rocks) when she goes for bike rides… but I don’t think “needs a basket” is enough of a reason to buy a whole new bike… I don’t know. I am on the fence. What is the six-year-old set into these days?

 

  • I LOVED dolls as a child, and my mom got me a couple of Corelle (?) dolls that I cherished and played with for many years. (Oh wait, it turns out they are COROLLE dolls – Corelle is a type of dishware, it seems. My bad.) Is Corolle still a good way to go, doll-wise? American Girl dolls seem to be popular around here… although they are SO expensive I don’t think I am ready to travel down that road. I also used to love Cabbage Patch Dolls, are those still A Thing? (Ugh, I am cringing thinking about how the “preemie” Cabbage Patch Dolls were so coveted when I was a little girl. I guess March of Dimes used them to raise awareness about premature birth, but that went right over my head at the time. I can imagine it being a hurtful thing for lots of parents.) What is the current Doll Trend, is what I want to know? I thought, being a parent, this knowledge would sort of magically manifest in my brain but I WAS WRONG.

 

  • Speaking of brains: does your brain do that thing where, when overtired, it fixates on one word or phrase or song lyric to the exclusion of all other thoughts? Mine has been choosing “It’s raining tacos,” itself an agonizingly repetitive song, to replay ad nauseum in my head, at 2:30 am and beyond. Fun.  (No.)

 

  • My Inevitable Death Panic (which is both panic about my inevitable death and an inevitable panic about death) is manifesting in lots of cleaning, which is good, I suppose. But I have failed to take any Before photos, which makes it poor blog fodder. I just want you to know that I have done a LOT of work and gotten rid of a LOT of crap. I am kind of hoping my mom will open some drawers and marvel at how spare and tidy they are. “Maybe she died in a plane crash taking a totally unnecessary trip abroad, but, man, are her drawers neat and clean!” they’ll say at my funeral.

 

  • Let’s have one more photograph of medicinal nachos. These were yesterday’s, so I need to see if I have enough ingredients for another heaping dose before I make my way to The Land of Sausages and Schnitzel. DOCTOR’S ORDERS.

Nachos 2

Okay. Enough. What’s up with you, Internet? Lord knows we have enough Big Serious Issues at hand to ensure we never sleep again. But what utterly frivolous things are keeping you up at night?

By the way, my husband and I decided to limit ourselves to one phone while overseas, and it is his phone, so blog posting/reading is likely to be light/nonexistent while we’re gone. I promise photos of castles if when we return.