Author: wrekehavoc

galveston, oh galveston

galveston, oh galveston

Posted on by wrekehavoc

when i was in college, i wrote an oral history of my grandmother’s life. (i have it somewhere and really ought to dig it up.) while musing online yesterday about antisemitism and such (you know — contemplating things like what i should teach my children to do if someone goes on a bigoted rant — about anyone, not just jews — like the woman in PT did yesterday), i came upon information about the galveston movement. it explains why my grandmother and her family emigrated to america through, of all places, galveston, tx. of course. because G-d forbid there be too many people emigrating to america to escape oppression. let’s spread them out so they’re less offensive, less noticeable.

they ultimately worked their way up the mississippi and ended right back up in new york city with the rest of their family. i remember my grandmother’s quote well: could you imagine? a jewish tailor in galveston, tx?

(no. i couldn’t, either. not at the turn of the 20th century, anyway.)

bashing

bashing

Posted on by wrekehavoc

so today, i’m at physical therapy, doing what i do best — sweating and being a complete and utter spaz. i’m on this pulley that i have to pull, attached, like a dog on a leash. i walk forward like the guys in genesis in i can’t dance only to hit the end of the line, and, like a dog that rushes it’s way to the end while chasing a squirrel, i get yanked back by pounds and pounds of weights. it’s pretty funny, actually, and i can’t wait til next week, when BC has to accompany me. oh, i’ll be hearing about this for years: mommy is so nutty! let’s have her committed.

but i do this every week in the hope that my knee will get stronger, that i’ll get stronger, that the world will resume some semblance of normalcy.

but will it ever, i wonder.

so i’m doing my thang. next to me is a woman who is working on another body part with one of the PTs, a really nice guy whose name i’ve forgotten. we’re all talking about new jersey, as his siblings live there and he’s off there for the weekend. i mention that i grew up there, and we start talking geography.

so this woman notes that she likes middletown, NJ. i mention it’s a nice place, that my mother taught there for a little while. i’m trying to understand what she’s saying — she has a thick accent, though it sounds like a mixture of asian and hispanic, and i can’t really hear everything clearly. but then, she starts going off on jews. v e r y c l e a r l y, thankyouverymuch. are you jewish? she asks the PT. he whips out two crosses he has around his neck. and then she goes off on how jews are all rich and-other-delightful-stereotypes-that-just-make-my-life-complete and which i won’t even write here.

COME AGAIN?

this was the point where i hit the end of the pulley, literally knocking the wind out of myself. they moved at that point. i stood there, dumbfounded. i’m still mad that i didn’t get to question her. politely.
there’s a part of me that has had such an incredibly shitty week that would just simply start screaming in a socially-unacceptable way. considering, though, that i have to continue at the PT for the unforseen future, though, i didn’t.

but that chick better hope i am not scheduled at the same time she is. she will get an earful.

why? why? why?

it seems to be increasingly socially acceptable to bash jews again. even segments of the liberal left (of which i always thought i was a part), some of whom are jewish, go after jews on the whole concept of middle east peace. it’s difficult to separate rational arguments from antisemitism, to be sure.

people seem to have forgotten how it all started: how many countries refused to let refugees from Nazi horror into their countries — sometimes in measured amounts, but plenty of times, outright refusal, america included. israel let them in. i’m not saying israel is even close to perfect — america certainly isn’t — but i’m beginning to get irritated about how it is becoming increasingly fashionable to bash people with broad brush strokes. as if we are one people who agree on everything in every way.

it’s about as effective as bashing all americans because of our president’s foreign policy. because believe me, it ain’t like we all agree with the Shrub.

grrrr…

taking the cupcakes

taking the cupcakes

Posted on by wrekehavoc

BC recently started life at our neighborhood school. soon thereafter, everyone received a note about school snacks. as the third graders have the latest lunch at school (lunch begins — wait for it — at 12:50), they are allowed to bring in an extra snack to eat mid-morning. the snack, however, is supposed to be a healthy snack — and apparently, if you send your child in with something like, oh, i dunno, HoHos, the HoHos will be taken (or put away) and your child will either be hungry or, if your child has a nice teacher like BC does, your child will probably get some graham crackers or animal crackers to tide her over.

ok, so i get the whole healthy snack thing. no one wants to have to teach sugar-hopped kids all day. after lunch is enough to have to deal with that. but wait — there’s more.

on birthdays, one is not supposed to bring in cupcakes. one is, instead, supposed to bring in something healthy if one is so inclined. one example i read was a popcorn ball. (aren’t those things put together with corn syrup? tell me how corn syrup is better than sugar!)

c’mon. it’s a freaking birthday! what on earth is problematic about a kid having a birthday with cupcakes? so now, i will probably bake muffins with chocolate chips in them and pretend they are cupcakes. i’m so stealthy and subversive, you know.

apparently, i’m not the only one irritated by this. 

i got sunshine in my stomach

i got sunshine in my stomach

Posted on by wrekehavoc

back in the mid-late 1970s, my oldest brother (known here as BTD, or my brother the doctor, as opposed to larry, the brother i call by name in here) used to DJ parties. when he and his friend lenny would go to a house, they had a little sheet of paper which noted bands they would not play. i believe they referred to them as head bands. we know plenty of them today as some of the monsters of progressive rock. one of the bands who made the proverbial list was genesis.

now, back then, genesis’ music wasn’t exactly party-friendly (although i can definitely dance along with things like i know what i like (in your wardrobe), unless, of course, your party involved a substance you smoked. that all changed in the early- to mid-1980s. i guess when peter gabriel left, phil collins started to push toward more commercial music. admittedly, i also enjoy stuff from the mid-1980s (save for anything solo post-phil collins’ 2nd solo album and certain songs that received monster airplay on MTV or due to use as a beer commercial bed), though genesis pretty much lost me by the end of that decade. instead, i delved deeper into older stuff (trick of the tail, especially songs like the gorgeous ripples — and yes, i know it’s a song about fairies and such — piss off, i can like songs about fairies!).

thus it is with people who like genesis. there is a camp that thrives, if not on peter gabriel era genesis, at least with the prog-rock era genesis. then, there is the modern era genesis fan, who discovered genesis via MTV, or, in the case of probably plenty of washingtonian fans, via Lite FM or perhaps via an elevator. sometimes, i am wildly embarrassed to attend shows in Washington. the fans, on the whole, have no sense of history and perhaps are there because their company has a certain number of seats to give away and they’ve snagged them. these are the people who left last night’s genesis show at the verizon center while the band was playing the carpet crawlers. these are the people who couldn’t handle virtuoso turns in blocks like in the cage / the cinema show / duke’s travels / afterglow and instead fled for the bathroom — and how on EARTH could anyone listen to that and not be moved? i actually cried, as i heard some of my favorite lines:

And I would search everywhere
Just to hear your call,
And walk upon stranger roads than this one
In a world I used to know before.
For now I’ve lost everything,
I give to you my soul.
The meaning of all that I believed before
Escapes me in this world of none,
I miss you more.

in short, these are probably the people who came to hear hold on my heart. yawn.

anyway, the band has grown older. but considering the technical challenges of some of the older stuff, i am willing to forgive a lot. for example, tony banks’ keyboards were sharp, and i don’t care. i would give my right whatever to hear tony banks play. or get a lesson from him. or have his out-of-wedlock love child. (maybe in that order.)

and phil. oh, phil. he of the tarzan soundtrack. he was in pretty fine form. he tried a bit more than roger daltrey did when we saw the who back in march. his drum duet with chester was jaw-dropping, and i loathe extended drum solos. but one tip, phil: you are no longer able to play the drums and sing simultaneously anymore. follow you, follow me, which was slower than normal to begin with, plodded erratically. it was painful to hear, though the washington crowd, ever discerning, didn’t seem to mind. phil, darling: let chester do that stuff. do what you do best: play to the crowd.

speaking of phil, there were moments during the evening when he resembled this. and then this. eek.

i rarely care about light shows, but i must say that the lighting was gorgeous. it’s hard to pick particular moments and describe appropriately, but this was a very creative display. the fireworks at the end, starting on the light screen and rising up to real fireworks, was incredibly fun. the show started nearly an hour late due to “power fluctuations” — so i’m glad they worked them out, especially for the lights.

i can’t comment on tonight, tonight, tonight or invisible touch. i hate them both. definitely bathroom time.

but in general, what a fun romp through the history of genesis. except for his face on certain montages, peter gabriel was definitely missed. but then again, he’s been missed for over 30 years. now THAT is a show i would pay through the nose for. and i was surprised that nothing from ABACAB ended up there. but last night’s show was definitely a great evening, in spite of technical problems, sound issues, and of course the issues that come with age. genesis gave as good as they got. and with their back catalog, they’ve got a lot to cover.

last night, when phil sang “it’s your show,” for those of us who adored genesis back in the day, well, it really was.

 

Continue reading “i got sunshine in my stomach”

oscopies, oscopies: who's got the oscopies?

oscopies, oscopies: who's got the oscopies?

Posted on by wrekehavoc

hope you enjoyed yesterday’s science projects 🙂

as far as yesterday’s oscopies are concerned: the prep was awful (per usual). i was frightened (per usual). the anesthesiologist couldn’t get me hooked up on my right side because my veins are apparently too tiny and uncooperative (not to mention i’m sure i was dehydrated), but he hooked me up just great on my left arm (though it’s in my wrist, so i now have a bandage around my wrist which, once again, makes me look like i tried to end it all by slitting my wrist). i never saw my doctor afterwards (apparently, he was knee deep in someone’s ass), though the little paper said that my colonoscopy was fine and that he removed a polyp from my stomach. i don’t know what to make of the polyp thing; it could be a big nothing. i just don’t know since this is all really a new body part thing for me. he also sent some stuff from my stomach out for study since there are certain bacteria that present that could be a precursor for stomach cancer, apparently. but i woke up beautifully and quickly (i metabolize very quickly) and ate a zillion graham crackers and cranberry juice. the nurses couldn’t have been nicer (although someone put me down originally for just a colonoscopy, not that AND an endoscopy) and they nearly forgot to get blood from me in the a.m.) but it’s done. for now.

and BS was a champ 🙂 he shuttled children all over the tri-state area AND dealt with a pretty tired wife. i looked at him last night and quoted from an old paul mccartney ditty that i love:

you gave me the answer to love eternally.

i love you, and you, you seem to like me.

okay. he probably does a bit more than like me in spite of the fact that i’m a major pain in the patoot 😉 so today, after many tears, i was able to get tickets for him (and me!) to see bruce springsteen. we’re sitting up with G-d, but who cares. we’re going. the damn things sold out in 4 minutes, and i was typing as fast as my little fingers could type. in the first minute, all i could get were nosebleeds. something’s just not right about that, as if all the good seats were already sold to someone somewhere.

but i’ve got too much to do to investigate that little annoyance. we’re going. i’m eating solid food. the kids are relatively happy. all’s right with the world.

this minute.

 

people on 'ludes should not drive

people on 'ludes should not drive

Posted on by wrekehavoc

…and people who are on a 24-hour liquid diet pre-general anesthesia should not go food shopping. which i did, ‘cos i’m the most super brilliant mom alive. i walked in for bananas and walked out with $100 worth of groceries, very little of which i can eat today except for:

  1. peach jello
  2. peach jello
  3. chicken soup (clear, nothing in it)
  4. coffee
  5. pineapple jello
  6. orange jello; and
  7. popsicles.

now, this regimen, sans the soup and coffee (in which i can’t put milk today, so why bother?), might seem like nirvana to BC. but the natural fact here is that i cannot eat anything red. no red popsicles. no red jello. no red nuthin’ (unless i want my gastroenterologist to die of fright thinking i’m hemorrhaging inside.) this, of course, causes a problem because red is my favorite flavor. (i’m pretty indiscriminate when it comes to red. i don’t really care if it means cherry, strawberry, raspberry, razzleberry… ha! caught you there. 😉

fortunately, it appears that my friends at jello have branched out a little and added peach and pineapple to their non-red jello repertoire. thank G-d, too, because the only way i’m having green or lemon jello is if someone makes them into shooters. you should know that i don’t really like jello all that much, but today, it is officially dubbed food of the gods!

on the bright side, my fingernails will grow strong.

now, because i am extra brilliant, i failed to consult the calendar back in may when i made this appointment. and guess what else is tonight? yup. Back to School Night. back to school night falls squarely in my domain; while BS is an involved and caring dad, i know probably leaps and bounds more about BC’s daily existence than he does. but i have a feeling that i will be feeling about as pleasant as old garbage tonight. so i will stay home with both kids (yay! fighting over the toilet with jools will be something to look forward to!) while BS goes through the hallowed halls of a school he has not yet entered. i think. (honey: make a right when you walk in the front door and just keep walking until the school ends. that’s her classroom.) it’s probably a good thing, i’m sure. he’ll meet BC’s teacher (who i see every morning when i’m dragged down the hall), see the locker she never uses, and enjoy the fact that there are no reports of girlfriend tearing the place down.

that, my friend, will not happen until the day jools enters school.

don’t worry. i’ll be sure to schedule something a little more lasting for that day. like a medically-induced coma.

professional patient

professional patient

Posted on by wrekehavoc

another day, another scan. i can safely say that if someone clever at washington radiology had a little too much to drink and perhaps a little more time on his hands, he could have fun piecing together various body parts of mine which have been scanned over the past year and a half, thanks to my illness. i suspect that one night, BS will wake up and see my body, bright in the darkness, beside him. i suppose it would be a way to earn extra money (come see the freaky-ass mom who glows in the dark!) and hell, it will make it easy for the cars to see me and my kids come halloween night!

last week’s scan of my abdomen showed i have either a little gallstone or a polyp. joy. my doctor isn’t convinced that something that small is causing my discomfort — he’s wondering if something else is causing me pain. (like i even want to find out.) today, i had to get a scan of my chest (no, not a mammogram — although that’s overdue for this year, too) to see whether those fun little nodules i have in my lungs stayed put, or whether they’ve decided to do something crazy (like form a third political party).

it was one of the radiology tech’s first day at work today, so i had to explain why i was getting today’s CT chest scan. how people with CVID often get infections and fun things show up on chest and sinus scans because of it. its the same reason, essentially, why i get to have my very first endoscopy later this week. (can you say higher incidence of stomach cancer?) boy, there’s nothing more fun than having a tube down your throat. oh, wait. there is. having an endoscopy AND a colonoscopy at the same time. now THAT’S got to be more fun than humans ought to be allowed to have.

i can’t wait for september to be over. i scheduled all my fun things — plus some more IVIG goodness next week — this month. next month, i want a new challenge. something really scary, not like this life-threatening illness crap.

i think i’ll take up skydiving, though photocopying my ass seems equally dangerous and more in order.

super why!

super why!

Posted on by wrekehavoc

please G-d, get the super why! theme song out of my head!

it all started when i heard about this great new pbs kids show called super why! a wonderful reading show. i looked it up at pbskids.org to find it was not on yet. of course, they had a first episode on line, so jools immediately hooked himself up to it. and he hasn’t stopped since.

now, we TIVO the show, in spite of WETA’s and TIVO’s disagreement over when the show is actually on. and i’l be darned if the theme isn’t catchy, in that overblown, love boat theme meets something groovy circa 1972. (i wonder if lenny kravitz might be behind the music somehow.)

if it helps jools start down the happy course of reading, well, i’ll get over myself r e a l l y fast.

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Cape Town, South Africa