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If you know your Bowie then you know that he rarely makes it through an interview without citing this song as being hugely influential to him in his youth. I’d never been able to track it down until just now, and having heard it I feel it humanizes him in quite a sweet way. His influence on me in my teen years cannot be overstated (ask to see both of my Bowie-related tattoos!) but I’ve only ever thought of him in obsessive, fantastical, impenetrable terms…never really as a man of flesh and blood, and certainly never as a melancholic little boy.

It is a bit obscene that it was Youtube that brought me this moment of epiphany…but then we are talking about the man who invented the electric blowjob, so perhaps it fits.

Yesterday I received a frantic voicemail from my mother explaining that my sister was ill and she needed some medical advice. I called back and was briefed on the situation, which had been going on for three days, and which began right after my sister returned from several weeks in India. I began querying my mother about specific symptoms and then decreed my orders: she needs IV hydration, and thus you must take her to the hospital, and if she complains tell her these directives are coming from the family nurse, so shut it and get in the car. Now, you don’t really have to be in the medical field to surmise that when you travel internationally and come back with your intestinal tract behaving like a fireman’s hose, you should probably go see a doctor. But for some reason that did not happen until I had officially been consulted, at which point my already slight sister had shriveled up like a tiny, exhausted prune.

This is something older nurses have often warned me about–after a while, your friends, family, and random people who find out you’re a nurse will start asking you questions about their poop or showing you their skin lesions or giving you the vaguest possible list of symptoms and demanding a diagnosis. On the one hand, it’s nice to be able to help. That’s what nurses do: we love to help! On the other hand, though, you become instantly responsible for this person’s well-being, because they are trusting you enough to seek your advice and they will generally do whatever it is you tell them to do. It’s a bit nerve-wracking.

In any event, my sister was admitted to the hospital last night and hooked up to an IV and tested for various things, and I think she’ll be just fine.

In the car today, I was enjoying the classic tune You’ve Really Got a Hold On Me by the Miracles.  Whenever I hear this song, I get a mental image of either Bert or the Count from Sesame Street clinging to trees and lightposts as a violent wind gusts down the street.  Today I decided this persistent association warranted a real investigation.  Some digging turned up this excellent clip, but nothing related to the video in my head.  I’m not sure if my memory simply superimposed two different Sesame Street bits onto each other, or if I’m just not googling hard enough…but this is going to bug me until I find conclusive proof one way or another.

Yesterday, while heading into the shared basement to do laundry, I locked myself out of the condo. I realized my blunder the moment I committed it, and grimaced silently. Since Jared was already on his way home, I figured I’d make the most of the next forty minutes. I entered our (unlocked!) storage unit in the basement, sat down on a plastic bin, and rifled through various semi-unpacked boxes. I found something I had been looking for for months, read an article in an outdated music magazine, perused the transcript of my 1989 bladder surgery, and laughed at some remnants of a party game called “The Paper Game” that some friends and I used to play quite often.

Then I came upon a photocopy of a former employer’s newsletter, and now we must back up several years to provide some context.

When I was eighteen, I began working at my first (and second to last) office job in Boston. The company had been established in 1895 as a sort of drafting supply and blueprints outfit, and had changed with the times as those technologies became obsolete. By the time I got there in aught-one, there were departments for digital imaging, large format printing, construction supplies, and survey equipment. I started as the receptionist and after a while switched to the inside sales department. I mainly sold paper, thus ensuring that by the time the original The Office series came to DVD in the US, I fully empathized with its characters. The current president was the nostalgic type, and he had a large archive of materials from the company’s one-hundred-plus year history which he loved to share with us youngins. One such item was the company’s first newsletter from June 1941, which opened hilariously with:

“Have you a transit that needs repairing? Or a microscope that is out of kilter? Or any scientific instrument that needs repairs?” It also cotained some great retro ads for tracing papers, and less explicably, a small section called Just For a Laugh which featured the following joke:

Judge: Guilty or not guilty?
Sambo: Not guilty, suh.
Judge: Have you ever been in jail?
Sambo: No, yo’ honah, ah nevah stole nuthin’ befo’.

After this trip down Shameful Memory Lane, I started to desire some fresh air, so I went outside and around to the front porch and sat by my impenetrable front door. Our building contains four separate units that share a common porch, and over the next twenty minutes I encountered the residents of each unit. First, one of the girls from Unit #1 returned home after a dog walk. By way of small talk I explained my situation, and she offered me the keys to her home, stating that she and Unit #2 had the same keys and that it was therefore worth a shot. I tried her key, but it didn’t work. She went inside. A short time later, the girl from Unit #2 came out. She too offered me her key and then told me she was heading out, but that I should go inside and watch sports with her husband if I was bored. Soon thereafter, the girl from Unit #3 came outside, and together we theorized that if Units 1 and 2 shared keys, then 3 and 4 might share a set as well. She gave me her key and it worked, and I entered my home at last. Roughly three minutes later, Jared came home, and I regaled him with Jim Crow era relics and tales of our friendly neighbors.

She: “So what does your husband do?”

Me: “He works with computers, software stuff.”

She: “Oh really? I thought he was a doctor.”

Me: “Heh! Nope, not him.”

She: “And you’re not from this country, right?”

Me: “Buh? I’ve always lived in Massachusetts.”

She: “Oh really? I thought you were from Europe. I forget who was telling me that, but I definitely thought you were from another country.”

(The vast majority of my co-workers, including this one, immigrated from Africa, Haiti, or Sri Lanka, which makes me one of the few American-born people there. I feel this detail adds an extra sumthin-sumthin to the story.)

Today, while eating a slice of pizza in a dimly lit room, I accidentally consumed between one and several slices of pepperoni. This was (to my knowledge) the first non-fish meat I have eaten in more than seven years. Surprisingly, the experience was not all that repulsive, though I do really wish I had accidentally eaten a more worthwhile meat, like bacon or pot roast. (When I was a kid I ate the shit out of some pot roast, and let me tell you, there is simply no vegetarian equivalent.)

In other food news, I recently mastered my fear of all things culinary and baked an apple pie. I baked a pie! By my own self! Mistakes were made, along with many messes and some minor flesh wounds, but it was an excellent learning experience, and the end result is legitimately delicious.

Finally, in beverage news, the Sikh society of Boston was at the neighborhood farmers’ market today handing out free drinks. This is something they do occasionally in the hot weather, and I for one am a huge fan. There’s no proselytizing or conversion efforts attached to the beverages. It actually seems like a group of people simply doing a nice thing, which is so unexpected that most non-Sikhs (myself included) initially react with suspicion. While at the farmers’ market, Jared and I turned down several free drinks, bought some bread from a vendor, and were walking down the street when we ran into a random guy in a turban who was carrying one soda can in each hand and offered them to us. We declined again, but later went back and got some bottled water in the name of community spirit.

I can’t say that this website for a vaginal reconstructive surgery practice is the most foul and reprehensible thing I’ve seen lately, because I watched a war documentary last night, but it’s definitely a close second. There’s probably a very small subset of women who benefit from this type of surgery from an actual medical standpoint, but obviously the majority of these procedures are cosmetic. The website recommends that women have their labia cut off to the tune of $5500 because “[s]ome women just want to look ‘prettier’ like the women they see in magazines or in films.”

As a human female raised in the modern Western culture, I do indeed want to look pretty, but I can say with certainty that the one part of my body I have never, ever compared to that of “women in magazines or films” is my vulva. I can also say with certainty that men don’t much care what that area looks like, nor would they know the difference between “normal” and “abnormal” labia even if they were staring right at a pair. (Peruse the before and after section and report back to me.) Furthermore, the abhorrent graphic design of the website, with its suspiciously textured pink swirls, indicates that this company lacks good style and aesthetics, which are traits I usually look for in my vaginal reconstructive surgeons.

A doctor performing a hysterectomy noticed that his patient happened to be ovulating, and caught it on film. I have to say, that’s not the way I used to picture it.

Side note: When I was a little girl, my mom told me that I had eggs inside of me, which lead me to fear that if I fell down I would break them.

Today, on opposite coasts of the United States and in very different contexts, my husband and I both employed the term “goon squad”.

Also, while perusing the course content of a degree requirement, I followed a link to an article written by none other than the guy who performed our wedding ceremony.

A treacherous heat has befallen us here in New England. We had a very mild winter and I knew we were in for a terrible bitch-slap; it has now arrived in the form of several days of 95 degree heat and significant humidity. To combat this swampy terror, Jared and I engineered a system of cooling technologies to keep the condo in a more or less livable state. Our home is less than 1000 square feet, yet it’s challenging to cool because of its shape and the placement of the wall-unit air conditioners. One AC is located near our bedroom, in the dining area off the galley kitchen. We run that AC and use an oscillating tower fan to suck the cool air through the kitchen into the living room or directly into the bedroom, depending on the time of day. We don’t tend to run the AC in the home’s largest room because birds have started nesting in the unit and it’s easier to just stay out of that room altogether. As far as I can tell, this is the most efficient way of keeping the house cool, but it’s still 82 degrees in the living room. That’s not hot enough to make a person actively uncomfortable, but it does induce a sort of slug-like apathy. I tried sitting in the backyard for a while today, but ended that farce after about ten minutes when my sweat started to soak through my tank top. The neighbors are out back right now, drinking beers and gallivanting around as if they’re not acutely miserable. I just don’t get it.

Were that I could drink a beer of my own, I would, but I am on semi-bladder-lockdown after being in a holding pattern of pain all week. Unfortunately this pain crescendoed last night while we were at the movies, and though I tried to deal with it for some time, I ultimately concluded it wasn’t worth it to keep sitting there on the verge of crying, and we left about forty minutes in. I returned home to my sweet, sweet lidocaine injector and eventually fell asleep feeling ashamed and rather depressed (pain just isn’t pain without a healthy dose of guilt!). It is evident that unless I stop being an idiot and really start restricting my diet of all the acidic and otherwise caustic things I love to eat and drink, I won’t be able to break out of this rut and will just feel worse and worse. Genuinely, the notion of having to give up coffee to avoid being in pain is much more frustrating than the pain itself.