whiskey in a teacup . com

“From all the rest I single out you, having a message for you,
You are to die–let others tell you what they please, I cannot prevaricate,
I am exact and merciless, but I love you–there is no escape for you.

Softly I lay my right hand upon you, you just feel it,
I do not argue, I bend my head close and half envelop it,
I sit quietly by, I remain faithful,
I am more than nurse, more than parent or neighbor,
I absolve you from all except yourself, spiritual, bodily, that is
eternal, you yourself will surely escape,
The corpse you will leave will be but excrementitious.

The sun bursts through in unlooked-for directions,
Strong thoughts fill you and confidence, you smile,
You forget you are sick, as I forget you are sick,
You do not see the medicines, you do not mind the weeping friends,
I am with you,
I exclude others from you, there is nothing to be commiserated,
I do not commiserate, I congratulate you.”

Well, I’ve finally earned my degree, and shockingly enough, the degree has the word “science” in it!  This will be especially shocking to the folks who beat me at Trivial Pursuit earlier this week, during a game in which I answered only one question correctly…and the question was about the Miss America pageant.  In my defense, I was drunk.  In their defense, so were they.

Anyway, in several weeks I’ll take the state boards and begin a search for a new job in the one state where there’s a nursing overage instead of a shortage, and where my two and a half years of nursing experience under my current license will be invalidated by my new license!  Things are looking up.

A few weeks ago, Jared and I had the inspired idea to embark on an interstate trip, at rush hour, on the Friday of a holiday weekend.  Forty minutes later, while at a dead standstill on the highway (from which we could pretty much still see our house), we were frustrated and started to take it out on each other.  It wasn’t long before we were openly bitching and griping, and we both knew that we had about seven hours of driving ahead, which only intensified our mutual ire.  The argument was getting more heated, and the situation was looking grim until, mercifully, a song came on the radio.  It wasn’t just any song, but a song so stupid, so crude, and yet so downright cheerful that within moments our conflict dissolved into laughter and glee.  I defy anyone to continue fighting with their spouse while listening to this song.  Husband, this one goes out to you.  <3

This blog was temporarily poned (that’s how I spell it; haters to the left!) but is now mostly unponed.  Unfortunately, the text formatting in all my old posts is a bit screwy and is predicted to remain so.  It’s a small price to pay for upgrading to a new version of Wordpress that will hopefully free me from having to moderate up to a thousand spam comments a day!  Join me in thanking my husband for effecting this long-awaited change.

P.S. Meegan: Jared thought you were spam.

Jared on my pathological inability to look anything other than revolting in photos, said while looking at a series of shots he had just taken of me, with his face twisted in a distinct wince/grimace of horror:

“I don’t know what it is.  Ninety-nine percent of the time you’re like the cutest thing ever, and then someone takes a picture of you and it turns into a shitshow.”

I recently noticed that one of my co-workers is fond of the phrase “all up in my kool-aid”.  English is not her first language, so I thought she might be accidentally combining “all up in my business/grill/etc” (which is how she uses the phrase) with that Jonestown gem, “drinking the kool-aid”.  I thought it was sort of endearing and delightful.  On a whim, I googled the saying and it turns out it’s well-established and fairly widely used (perfectly cromulent, one might say).  So now the question is, how did this idiom come to be?  If you’re close enough to someone to be all up in their beverage, then you’re probably too close and/or over-involved to the point of rudeness…so it makes sense, but why kool-aid?  Is kool-aid just one of those ubiquitous drinks, such that you could also say “all up in my coca-cola”?  I’m not sure, but I’m intrigued.

During this entire election, I’ve been anywhere from surprised to baffled by the foaming-at-the-mouth hysteria that Obama has induced.   Yes, it’s important that in a few decades we’ve gone from being a segregated nation to one that has elected a half-black man to the highest post of our government.  But the election of Obama does not mean we are suddenly a less racist country than we were last week or last year.

What if Obama had lost this election?  People would cry racism, instead of admitting that some of his policies are flawed, and that McCain is in fact neither George W. Bush nor the devil incarnate.  But because Obama won, we’re not a racist nation, but an incredibly enlightened one, and this should give us some elevated sense of national pride.  Apparently.  At the risk of being completely misconstrued, I offer the fact that a subset of the population was thrilled when OJ was found not guilty, not because they didn’t think he was guilty but because of the notion that the system was giving a prominent black man a “fair” trial.  I find that taking one black man’s victory and pretending it’s a victory for every black person in the country is naive at best, and racist at worst.

On a different tack: Virtually everyone I know is not just pro-Obama, but vehemently so, and I don’t understand it.  I think at heart, Obama and McCain are both decent men. Either would have brought some great ideas to the table along with some laughable ones.  And in the end, the reason I voted for Obama is not because I think he shits rainbows or ejaculates the cure for the common cold, but because of a few specific areas where I preferred his philosophy to McCain’s.  I’m neither a Democrat nor a Republican, but in the northeast the attitude seems to be that if you’re a young and liberal-minded atheist who’s into personal freedoms and equality, then you must be a Democrat and you must have ruined your underwear the moment Obama took Ohio.  I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve heard that people cried while voting or cried while watching the election coverage.  It’s astounding to me how personal this election is to so many, and how radical an impact Obama is expected to make on this country and the world.  Am I missing something, or am I just not the type to be seduced by a cult of personality?

Like my cohorts, I’ve lived under the Bush administration since I was a teenager.  I’ve only been of age to vote in one other presidential election.   But it’s clearly not simple novelty that’s getting the youngins worked up, and it’s not simple cynicism that’s keeping me unimpressed.   Of course, I don’t think everyone should think the way I do or share my politics, and I don’t begrudge anyone their excitement that Obama won.  His appeal is simply a mystery to me, much like that of spectator sports and wine, and I have puzzled over this at length.  I would love to hear some thoughtful discourse from Obama fans about why they are so moved by his election, and on how they think the country will improve under his leadership.   Yes, we can what, exactly?

“Please note that the Connect CTY fire alarm call that went out this morning at approximately 3:45 a.m. was designed to provide a standard notification to the City’s emergency responders ONLY.  Through human error, the call was mistakenly sent to the entire city.”

Yeah it was.  There’s nothing like waking up in the middle of the night when your insomnia already woke you up a bunch of times and getting an automated message from the snow-and-miscellaneous-emergency hotline about a “multi-alarm fire” with no information about where the fire is.  No, really, THERE’S NOTHING LIKE IT.