whiskey in a teacup . com

Found today: Leonard Cohen lip-syncing to his own gorgeous “Hallelujah” in a cheesy stage show on some old German TV program.

Yesterday, at about six in the morning, I woke from a few hours of restless slumber and immediately reckoned: I need to vomit. That awful heat-wave feeling washed over me, and I stumbled out of bed, ripped off my accursed pj’s, and ran to the toilet, where I would remain on and off for the next six hours. I probably threw up between twenty and thirty times, until I was down to bile and the snot I swallowed after crying in frustration. Jared was still in Rochester, and though I tried to tough it out, I eventually admitted defeat and called my sister.

A short time later, she and her husband showed up with Pepto Bismol, a magazine, and a stuffed owl. They sat on the bathroom floor with me and fed the cat. When I was feeling stable, they left, and I threw up again. For the next few hours I rocked back and forth and moaned, my entire body aching, still feeling nauseas and getting progressively weaker and dehydrated. I alerted Julia, who came over after work with ginger ale and made me some veggie broth and egg noodles. When she left, I fell asleep, and a few hours later Jared came home.

Today I feel much better, albeit weak and stiff and in a moderate amount of pain. This is the second time this month that I’ve been violently ill and had to rely on others to take care of me. Gagging on vomit sucks, but you can’t beat the feeling that there are people who love you enough to sit with you smelling your puke-breath and trying to make you comfortable.

In a movie theatre not long ago, I was nestled in my seat waiting for some film or another to begin and watched a preview I hadn’t seen before. It was for a movie called “Eragon” and it featured Jeremy Irons, John Malkovich, and who I thought was Christopher Walken (but would later prove to be Robert Carlyle in a lot of makeup), and it was about a boy and his dragon. I didn’t catch what the exact plot was supposed to be, but I was intrigued. First of all: Jeremy Irons. Light of my life, fire of my loins, my sin, my soul…Jeremy Irons. Second of all: a dragon!

My computer-science-educated, techno-music-listening boyfriend frequently tries to claim that I’m the bigger nerd in our relationship, and he bases this mostly on the fact that when I was twelve or thirteen I was obsessed with a scrolling-text fantasy RPG called Gemstone. Yes, it’s true that I used to log on to my Prodigy account and spend hours in the catacombs, casting spells to heal other players who got wounded while hunting giant rats (my character was an empath). And it’s true that even though as an adult I might appear happy or pretty or confident, deep inside me beats the heart of an awkward, alienated pre-teen who was the bane of her class at school and who feels just as nerdy today as any gangly, bespectacled D&D player. It’s little wonder that I was entranced by the alternate reality that Gemstone offered, and I continue to mourn the death of the game.

However, not even my affinity for RPGs and Jeremy Irons’s hotness can fully explain the extent of my interest in Eragon. I just really wanted to see it. I kept suggesting to Jared and others that we “go see the dragon movie”, but I got no results, so tonight I let my geek flag fly and went to see it by myself. While I watched, I contemplated a few things.

1) Jeremy Irons is still really hot. I mean, yowza.

2) Dragons appeal to me (and, I suspect, to a lot of other people) not just because of their obvious fantasy appeal or their mystery or beauty, but because they seem to demonstrate the unique relationship between people and animals. In Eragon, the main character is a dragon rider and communicates telepathically with his dragon. This stirred up fond memories of the intense bonds I had with my childhood pets, especially the dog I lived with for eleven years. The love I’ve felt for my various furry friends throughout my life has bordered on the mystical or spiritual, and the community I’ve felt with them has been as vital and moving to me as almost any of my human relationships. I know that my now-deceased dog couldn’t fly me to safety, per se, but she did lay herself down either in my bed or outside my bedroom door every single night. I know we couldn’t read each other’s thoughts, but I dreamed of losing a dog the night before my mother called to say she was putting our girl down. Even my cat, who is decidedly more low-tech than a dog, will come and stand on my lap if I’m arguing with someone, and stare at my opponent in a show of solidarity. Hell, even my first hamster waited to die until the day after my birthday one year. From the fluffy pink dragon in The Never-Ending Story to the sleek armored one in Eragon, the creatures fill me with memories of friendship and comfort.

3) I have never flown in a plane, so any kind of flight is still very much outside my realm of experience. Depictions of flight, whether by aircraft or while clutching a dragon, still get me on some visceral level where fear and pleasure intertwine. If I ever do get on a plane, maybe I’ll just pretend it’s a dragon.

4) When you say “Eragon” out loud, it sounds a lot like “Erica”.

In summation, the movie wasn’t especially fabulous, but it was pretty good, and if you, like me, have found solace in pretending to have magical powers or in talking to your pet, then you might get into it like I did.

…with a new desktop background.  This one replaces my previous “autumn leaves” motif.

Anyhow.

I drove home from Rochester tonight by myself:  almost exactly four hundred miles in almost exactly six hours.  It’s not quite a record (legend has it that Jesse once made it in five and a half), but when you factor out the necessary refueling and peeing stops, I think it’s downright respectable.

If you want any insight into the crazy shit-show that nursing can be, between patients and their families and your co-workers and your management, check out this thread on a nursing forum that I frequent. It’s titled “what’s the silliest complaint someone has made about you?” and it’s downright brilliant.

I say this as someone who recently had a patient’s wife scream in my face that she was going to call the police to protect her husband from me and my aides because we were physically unable to be in his room every single minute of our shift. I say this as someone who was reported to the director of nursing at my facility (and subsequently threatened with disciplinary action) for only pitching in to do part of another nurse’s work for her, instead of all of it. You have no fucking idea, my friends.

Speaking of how that personality test totally sucked and did not properly categorize and label me, here’s a bit of dialogue from last night when I got pulled over (at midnight, on a mostly empty highway, so cut me a freaking break here):

Johnny Law: Do you know how fast you were going?

Self: About eighty.

Johnny Law: Right on the money.

[ten minutes elapse while we sit in our respective cars and he thinks about my punishment]

Johnny Law: So, why were you going eighty?

Self: I’m a nurse and I’m getting off work. It’s Chanukah and I’m trying to get home to my boyfriend and my menorah.

Johnny Law: You want to get there alive. You should know better.

Self: Eh.

Johnny Law: Well, since it’s the Christmas season, I won’t ticket you.

Self: Actually, it’s the Chanukah season.

Johnny Law: Uh. Happy holidays.

Self: Thanks!

Yeah, that’s right.

After snickering at TJIC’s results on this personality test, I had to try it myself. I don’t consider myself a pushover at all, but the description is pretty funny considering I’m a nurse. And, you know, a chick.

Pushover - ISFJ 26% Extraversion, 46% Intuition, 46% Thinking, 86% Judging

Hah. Nice one. How does it feel to know that you’re barely unique? Of all the personality types you could have had, you ended up with the most common in all of America. In a group of 100 Americans, 12.8 of them will be just like you.I bet you feel sorry for that one person missing 20% of his body. I bet you want to help him out, don’t you? Cause that’s what you like to do, isn’t it? Help people. You don’t want to save the world. You just want to help people out.Sound pretty good so far? Sorry, but you’re just plain pathetic. You let people walk all over you all the time, because everyone knows that you just can’t say “no.” When you get time, email me your contact details. It’s always good to know where I can find another helping hand. What the hell is your problem? GET A LIFE! Stop cleaning other people’s houses and go out and have a bit of fun every now and then. Sure, you feel responsible for doing what needs to be done, but sometimes it’s just not you who needs to do it. You’re dependable, predictable and practicaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa… Whoops, that was me falling asleep on the keyboard. You’re just not the most fun person. I wouldn’t worry too much about it. You can go hang out with your other 12.8 mates, helping out at the soup kitchen together. Woohoo! ***************** If you want to learn more about your personality type in a slightly less negative way, check out this. ***************** The other personality types are as follows… Loner - Introverted Sensing Feeling Perceiving Criminal - Introverted Sensing Thinking Perceiving Borefest - Introverted Sensing Thinking Judging Almost Perfect - Introverted iNtuitive Feeling Perceiving Freak - Introverted iNtuitive Feeling Judging Loser - Introverted iNtuitive Thinking Perceiving Crackpot - Introverted iNtuitive Thinking Judging Clown - Extraverted Sensing Feeling Perceiving Sap - Extraverted Sensing Feeling Judging Commander - Extraverted Sensing Thinking Perceiving Do Gooder - Extraverted Sensing Thinking Judging Scumbag - Extraverted iNtuitive Feeling Perceiving Busybody - Extraverted iNtuitive Feeling Judging Prick - Extraverted iNtuitive Thinking Perceiving Dictator - Extraverted iNtuitive Thinking Judging

Just when I thought I couldn’t love and admire Nabokov any more than I already did (or feel more ire for Freud and the moronic bigots who enjoy him), I found this on Wikiquote:

“Let the credulous and the vulgar continue to believe that all mental woes can be cured by a daily application of old Greek myths to their private parts.”

Chanukah is in full effect in the wiatc.com household, and we look forward to enjoying the upcoming third night. Yesterday I gave Becca and Will the 80’s edition of Trivial Pursuit, which I thought would be terribly easy for all of us (Becca and I having been born in ‘83, Will in ‘82, and Jared in ‘77), but it was actually rather fucking difficult. My few correct answers included “C. Everett Koop” and the song “Let’s Hear It For The Boy”. Will busted out an impressive performance in the sports and general knowledge sections. Becca essentially just sucked. Jared, however, was the real star of the night, having spent his extra six years of life watching shows like St. Elsewhere and Moonlighting and thus accumulating trivia about said shows that actual children of the 80’s lack.

It was a somber and reflective experience for us all, and a fitting second night of Chanukah.