Love/sick

Writing. I love it. But sometimes, what it reveals makes me a little bit sick to my stomach. So here's your warning if you're going to read this post: have some ginger ale ready if family drama makes you queasy.

Okay. So as I've been stumbling my way through this thesis, I've started to realize just how much Troubadour Dad was nothing more than a stranger to me in the first few years of my life. I didn't feel like I was missing anything per se -- I had no idea, you see, what a dad was supposed to be. I didn't expect him to read me bedtime stories or play dress-up with me or even really talk to me because I didn't need him to. I had Troubadour Mom for all that -- sweet, patient woman that she was (and still is), she would act out the stories of Cinderella, Snow White, and Alice in Wonderland with me every afternoon just because it made me happy. (I played the aforementioned Disney heroines and associated royals like the Queen of Hearts; she was the rest of the cast.)

So at that age, I used to look forward to the weeks when Troubadour Dad had to go out of town for conferences because it meant we didn't have to stop our play. Instead of having to make myself a quiet little girl once Troubadour Dad got home, I could continue being me (or whoever I wanted to pretend to be). Dinner was a fun, relaxed sort of thing instead of a tense one where anything I might say would be met all too frequently with a stern look and the words, "CT, that's not ladylike." (I agree, exclaiming "Off with your head!" probably wasn't an appropriate response to anyone for any reason, but didn't Troubadour Dad understand it was make-believe and not something I would utter in polite company, which we rarely ever had anyway? Mom seemed to trust my discretion.)

As I got older, I started looking forward to those free evenings even more, evenings without needing to listen for Troubadour Dad's car pulling into the garage. That was the signal to get the hell out of the kitchen, where Troubadour Mom and I would talk while she was prepping ingredients for dinner. If you stayed, there was a fairly high risk that the man on the other side of the door was in a bad mood from another overbooked day at the office, and when he came in, he tended to pick whatever (or whomever) was nearest to criticize, even if all you were doing was standing around. (If you were standing around, you either weren't studying when you were supposed to be or you weren't helping to get dinner on the table when you could have been.) It was a control thing, I think. In any case, I made myself scarce. We still do, my sisters and I, when we hear the garage door in the evening at our parents' house. Conversations end. Adult children scatter.

In those middle school years, on the nights when Troubadour Dad was away, my mother and I would make a point of talking, luxuriating in the chance to have uninterrupted conversation. As the oldest kid, I had a slightly later bedtime than my sisters, and in the hour after they had gone to sleep (sometimes more, if we conveniently forgot to look at the clock), my mother would tell me stories about her life before she met Troubadour Dad. These were often interwoven with small but unmistakably sad comments about Troubadour Dad, his idiosyncratic but tyrannical demands on her in their relationship from the beginning to the present. This is how, without realizing it at first, I gradually became my mother's confidante.

Once I became aware of my role, I was glad to be my mother's "person" in some ways -- I adored her, wanted to be like her when I grew up, was thrilled to be taken into her confidence. But because I loved her, I was also dismayed. If things in her marriage were as unpleasant as they seemed, why was she letting them continue without protest? Well, all right, not totally without protest, but protest that led nowhere, not even to the slightest change. It had gone on for years, she said, which was strangely no surprise to me: even in my earliest memories, I can recall expecting to hear my parents fighting after I had gone to bed. And they did. Many nights. Loud, explosive fights that, oddly enough, didn't scare me. No -- the only emotion I remember feeling is anger.

Somehow, I knew that my mother wasn't the one picking the fights, not at first anyway. She was almost always sweet-tempered with me (and whenever she scolded me, I knew I deserved it). Why, then, was Troubadour Dad thundering so horribly at her? I couldn't have explained what bullying was when I was two, but at that age, I understood it instinctively. And it pissed me off. So I did the only thing I could to save Troubadour Mom: I would make myself cry, and she'd come running. Score one for CT and Mom, zero for Troubadour Dad -- fighting effectively suspended. At least until the next night.

This worked until I hit the age when it was no longer okay to cry. By then, I had sisters for whom I had to be a proper role model, something Troubadour Dad made sure I understood on a regular basis. It was double, triple the incentive to keep my ass in line, if I didn't want to be held up as a bad example to them, so keeping my parents up at night with crying? Not okay, even if they were the ones making more noise to begin with.

It was those late-night chats with my mother, from middle school until I left for college, that convinced me that Troubadour Mom was unhappier than my father realized. At one point, she told me that one of the only things keeping her from leaving him when he was especially unkind was that she didn't want me and my sisters to have to deal with the fallout of a divorce. And he was a good provider, she said. She didn't know where she would go if she were to leave him.

I didn't know what to tell her.

Meanwhile, Troubadour Dad continued to be enormously critical of all of us, especially in front of his extended family, which we began to see more often as my cousins got old enough to marry. (Weddings became an excuse for post-nuptial, week-long family reunions.) Suffice it to say that those years -- the years when you're already obsessed with how other people see you, what other people think of you -- didn't leave me with much to feel good about outside of school either. I knew that in Western culture, it was considered wrong for my father to say the things he would say about me or let my relatives say about how I looked and acted, and Troubadour Mom, in our late-night chats, agreed many times over with me. So I started to speak up for myself, hoping she would back me up as she had when we were alone. Well, Troubadour Dad told me in no uncertain terms that I'd better be more respectful if I knew what was good for me. Anything else, he said, was unacceptable, which I took to mean that I was unacceptable.

Troubadour Mom said nothing.

My sisters, if they had their own issues with Troubadour Dad, smartly didn't try to buck the system at that time. I wasn't as wise. I rebelled and got punished, rebelled and got punished, over and over and over again. These were small rebellions, mind you: talking back, raising my voice, saying how much I hated Troubadour Dad to my American friends. My mother could see that I was hurting, would join me in saying how much she hated my father too whenever he wasn't around. But in the moments when her voice would have counted (in front of his extended family), something was preventing her from speaking. In a way, I pursued my little rebel acts to try to make her speak, to beg her to use her rank as my father's equal -- at least generationally -- on my behalf. She never did.

It took until last summer for me to understand what was holding her back. At my cousin's wedding in Newfoundland, when Troubadour Dad decided I needed a scolding in front of his relatives -- keep in mind that at that time, I was already older than he was when I was born -- I decided I had had enough. There was nothing more, is nothing more, for me to lose in front of his family. Forget talking back, I thought. How about just asking not to be treated like a child? But as I opened my mouth to say what I'd been suppressing for the better part of a few decades, my mother put her hand on my arm. "Please, CT," she whispered. "Do not embarrass me. He was wrong to scold you, but I have face to save here. They will think poorly of me."

And I shut up.

This, this is why my mother could not defend me before I was old enough to defend myself, why she allowed -- still allows -- my father to bully us both. She's still gagged by cultural norms she accepts as much as she abhors them. No amount of talk from me will change her position, so that's her own mess to figure out, if she even wants to. But I am no longer going to let her use that to gag me. I willingly gave up a piece of my childhood when I became her confidante. What I didn't know was that doing so would also mean losing her protection, that instead, she would -- dare I say it -- allow me to be harmed for the sake of protecting her.

Perhaps this sounds reductive, but I'm writing an entire thesis around the idea -- so let's call this blog post a sort of abstract. Don't worry; I'm sure there is much more I could say to make this fairer to my mother, and I intend to in the larger work. Indeed, as damning as the above account may be, I do see how terribly trapped my mother felt and still feels in her relationship with Troubadour Dad.

But we spoke Friday night, while my father was away at one of his conferences. And I told her how robbed I felt by the problems in her marriage that still prevent us from having the relationship I've wanted with her, one we do have when Troubadour Dad isn't around. "Uh huh," she said sweetly, as if I'd been telling her about the tulips coming up. And then she changed the subject.

I was too saddened to change it back.

Less-than-retail therapy

It's been a hard month. And not just because of the medical stuff and relationship adjustments.

You know when your thesis committee tells you to give them a draft of your work no later than the first week of December so they can get back to you before the craziness of the spring semester starts up? Well, that's what I did. Did they actually send me feedback?

Of course not.

My advisor has been in regular contact, thank goodness, but the rest of the folks who have to sign off on my work in order for me to graduate have been incommunicado. One of the committee members has a very good excuse -- major surgery. Another member also had minor surgery over break and came back to find that all three departments s/he works within were either getting eliminated or folded into some yet-to-be-created umbrella department, so s/he understandably has his/her hands full dealing with the administration. And s/he e-mailed me to let me know what was going on. But the last committee member? Not a single message. Yep, despite my numerous gentle inquiries, s/he didn't even bother to send a one-liner to say, "I'm too busy. Bug off."

I FINALLY received a note from that last professor yesterday, with brief, customary apologies, but still no feedback. Unfortunately, after a month of being e-snubbed*, I'm not really in the most charitable mood, given that I'm paying for this person's expertise. I know I'm just a lowly grad student, but that doesn't mean it's okay to ignore me for weeks on end. That's just rude.

Alas, I'm still powerless to make this process move any more quickly, and I know it's affecting my ability to write. I hate that I'm letting the situation do this to me. I've tried to keep going as usual with my work, but I had the sense that some weighty critiques would be coming any day now -- critiques with things I very much want to consider going forward -- and it kept me from feeling confident on the page whenever I would sit down at the keyboard. I need just to forget about what those critiques might say and delve back into the manuscript with more faith. Easier said than done when you're at the mercies of the committee for your degree.

I spent the weekend trying not to get sucked under by all this, and the product of that is a few small acquisitions from Craigslist and Ross. Am I satisfying my need for some instant gratification? Oh, yes. But at least it's all deeply discounted ...

First, a much-wanted console table via Craigslist for our back entryway, which leads to the garage. We've been using the little valet (pictured below) and various surfaces in the kitchen as the catch-all for keys, wallets, glasses, etc. Now all that can be relocated here:


The cost? The equivalent of drinks and a moderately priced dinner for two. Hey, I'm happy to cook at home if it means I get to eat on a clutter-free kitchen table!

Next, an extremely useful toiletry shelf from Ross for the first-floor bathroom. Until we found this, we were putting the extra toilet paper in a basket on the floor, and the soap dispenser was perched rather precariously on the sink.



Cost: A cheap dinner for two, no drinks.

Finally, a mirror. This was actually included in the price of the console table, along with a very cute lamp -- we decided it made better sense to put those items in our bedroom. We may change out the shade on the lamp some time in the future, so for now, meet my new dresser:



This table had its former incarnation in our apartment bedroom as four large moving boxes draped in a bed sheet. This is actually an upgrade: two wooden bar stools we couldn't find a place for after the move with some spare particle-board shelving from the kitchen sitting on top of them. I just threw a tablecloth and some other pretty fabric over the whole thing and propped the jewelry frame D gave me for last year's birthday against the wall. (Don't worry, I made sure the whole rig was safely weighted.) Add one mirror, and it's actually a very functional vanity.

So now I'm off to put some new sheets from Ross in the wash (ours were getting holes in them after years of laundering). Those were also deeply discounted -- the cost of nice drinks for two. I figure I've gone long enough without one of those to offset the expense here! The set is a pretty chocolate brown to go with the beautiful accent pillow slips Marketing Sis made us for Christmas:


DIY guru that she is, she picked the fabric herself! Here's a closer look at the patterns.



So there, January, is my answer to your interminable limbo. It doesn't fix the problems at hand, but it does make me feel better.

* Credit for this term goes to this article. I only wish (a) that I could figure out how to adapt the remedy described in order to make it work in the academic bureaucracy and (b) that I had the guts to employ said remedy.

On faith

It's still January, but our tulips are coming up. WTF?

I went out to mail something at the beginning of the week and right by the front door, there they were, these happy little green leaves poking their way up, fully confident that winter had ended. I hope they don't get disappointed by a sudden cold snap before spring really arrives. I know, it's not too far off -- everything greens up fairly early here. But there isn't exactly a way for these guys to retract or change course now that they've committed to putting themselves out there.

I kind of wish I could be that confident.

Monday, I went to my GI doctor for follow-up. I finally had that long-awaited blood draw last week, so the plan was for me to get my results from him and talk about the plan going forward after the developments from December.

Well, the results were so-so. One of the liver function tests actually came back with results in the normal range, which is great. The other one, however, was still outside of normal. It did come down, but not far enough. So we'll recheck those in three months.

This isn't what's making me feel a want for mettle, though.

Back in December, when Troubadour Dad decided to push for a consult from a specialist at Almost Dr. Sis's medical school, it wasn't just a "why don't you get a second opinion?" sort of conversation. Troubadour Dad is very opinionated, shall we say. My responses to his questions about what I'd had done so far in my workup were all met with some kind of editorial comment. "Those GI guys just like to do procedures," he said with a knowing nod when he found out I'd had the endoscopy. "That's all they're interested in."

"He did find some erosions in my stomach lining," I said meekly. "I mean, that's good that he caught those early --"

"Yeah, sure," Troubadour Dad said. "That's his way of justifying doing that procedure so you'll feel like it was worth it. That's where they make their money, you know."*

I didn't say anything more at that point. But the damage was done.

On Monday, my GI doctor said that the symptoms I'd been getting since December were still not indicative of something specific. "Basically, you're still an unknown," he said. "We can either let it hang for now, or if you're not totally, totally happy, my next step would be a colonoscopy."

Well, I can't say I want one of those, but before that conversation with Troubadour Dad, I wouldn't have questioned that treatment plan. Instead, I've got this little voice in my head now that keeps whispering my father's words over and over. Talk about crazy-making. Add to this my worries that my GI guy knows I've had my records sent to the other specialist -- and therefore has reason to believe I don't trust him -- and I start to wonder if he's suggesting we "let it hang" because he doesn't see a point in putting further effort into a diagnosis if someone else is going to do it.

Okay, that last idea was probably a bit nutty, but I do know that doctors aren't immune to their own egos. Troubadour Dad's a prime example of that. What intensifies that problem is the father-knows-best mentality he brings out whenever he doctors his own kids. This is why I don't talk about my health with him if I can avoid it. Unfortunately, I couldn't really give him any other explanation but the truth when I wasn't drinking over the holidays. He knows me too well to think I'd just stop because I felt like it.

Anyway, about confidence. I just want to feel that it's okay to trust whom I've chosen to trust while we're figuring out what in the world is wrong with me. It's no help at all to doubt those people. But that voice, my father's voice. It's dogged me since I was a child, has told me I'm not wise enough -- will never be wise enough -- to know what's best for me, in my health, my career, my life. Most days, I work pretty hard to ignore it. But during times like these, I just can't seem to shut it up.

* GI doctors, please don't take what Troubadour Dad says personally; he's not out to insult you alone. He's got plenty more to say about folks in other specialties that are also not his own.

Homework, the fun kind

Good (Enough) Woman assigned me something entertaining over at her place: seven things I haven't mentioned before on my blog. Just the thing that might get me out of a writing rut, GEW! So thanks, and here we go ...


1. I used to have curly hair because my mother thought I might look nice with a perm. Not long after my tenth birthday, she took me and my stick-straight Asian tresses to her hairdresser. I was nervous -- no one had ever cut my hair except Troubadour Mom (nor, for that matter, had anyone ever processed it). But I had visions. Oh, such visions -- of sleek, thick, raven-black waves rippling down my back like braids freshly undone at the end of a school day. Only the effect would be permanent! How, I ask you, could I have resisted?

I put myself in the hands of the hairdresser, let her wrap my scalp in curling rods and douse me in chemicals that smelled like rotten eggs. I remember her explaining to me that one solution would break the bonds in my hair while the other would re-fuse them so each strand would conform to the shape of the rods. Rods, braids; same idea, right? I trusted her completely.

After nearly three hours in the hairdresser's chair, I got my first look at the result. It was frizzy. Cloud-like. A wiry, raven-black mass that could hardly move, much less cascade. I went home and told my mother I liked it, even though as soon as I saw my little sisters' still-unsullied locks, I wanted to cry.


2. If you've ever permed your hair, you know how awful it is when the perm is half grown-out. Because I looked so bad during that in-between stage, I continued to get perms for the next thirteen years. I had to finish college before I got up the guts to let nature put my hair back the way it was supposed to be. It took almost two years.


3. Continuing the bad-hair theme: I have watched every episode of MacGyver ever filmed. Including the two made-for-TV movies that followed a few years after the series ended. While Richard Dean Anderson's mullet did little to inspire me to get out of the vicious perm cycle, watching the man escape from various tight spots did turn out to have educational value one summer when my sisters and I got trapped in an elevator with our grandfather, who started to panic and have chest pain. Remembering what MacGyver had demonstrated many times, I wedged my fingers into the crack at one end of the elevator's single door and rolled it open. (The car was already right at our floor, so there was no need to do anything really wild like climbing up the shaft, thank the gods.) Once Grandpa got some nitroglycerin in him, all was well again.


4. I age people. Not by getting them trapped in elevators -- I mean that, when I've got nothing to do in a public location (say, while waiting for the bus), I look at people, particularly children, and imagine what their faces will look like when they're older. I don't know how long I've been doing this, but I'm guessing it's been going on since I was a kid. I say this because when I was a sophomore in college, I recognized a girl whom I randomly bumped into at a start-up meeting for a creative writing group. I hadn't seen her or kept in touch with her since I moved away from our home state at the end of third grade, but I was 99.9 percent sure of her identity when I saw her from across the room -- something familiar about the shape of her slightly turned-up nose, the position of her eyes in relation to it, still squinty whenever she smiled. "Christina?" I said. "It's CT."

Her jaw dropped. "I totally didn't recognize you!" she said. "Wow, your hair's curly now ..."


5. I took my first bath last month. Wait, before you run away from any imagined stench, let me explain! On an ordinary day, I'm a shower girl -- have been since the day I could stand in the stall without slipping. (It was easier for my mother to get three girls clean using a removable shower head rather than bending over the edge of the tub to scrub us while kneeling.) On occasion, she would let my sisters and me play in the tub with about three inches of water in it, but definitely no filling it all the way. We lived very frugally.

So the house we bought last spring has an enormous soaking tub in the master bathroom. The weekend before D and I were to leave for all our holiday visits, I decided to treat myself to a proper luxury bath. I lit candles, put on soft music, ran the water till the tub was full. I added the bath salts we'd received as a favor from somebody's wedding and body wash for some bubbles. Sank in, melted. Bliss.


6. I do my best thinking in the shower. Sometimes this leads to fairly comical moments of near-indecency -- if I come up with an idea I'm afraid I'll forget (which is a strong possibility, the forgetting), I'll jump right out from under the spray to go write my thoughts down. Most of the time, I'll grab a towel, but I'm sure that many years ago, when my sisters and I were sharing a bathroom, I streaked past them at least once. You'd think I would have learned by now to put a piece of paper and something to write with by the sink, but sadly, I have yet to do that. And if you're wondering, no, baths aren't the same. In fact, they cause the opposite effect: total mind vacation.


7. I would not have reclaimed my girl-ness without my sisters. Even though they are younger than I am (or perhaps because of that), they were the ones who taught me, among other things, how to put on makeup, how to use a razor, how to treat myself to pretty underwear. These were things my parents didn't want to encourage, and they had good reasons (probably influenced to a degree by the disastrous perm but more likely born of the culture in which they grew up). By the time my sisters were old enough to handle eyeliner, though, the parents Troubadour had relaxed somewhat.

Thank goodness. My sisters were and continue to be the best teachers I've ever had.

Photo courtesy of Almost Dr. Sis

I'm passing this homework assignment along to these seven people (in no particular order), whose blogs I love reading:

• hypoglycemiagirl at hgg
• Medieval Woman at Purring Prophecy
• French Fancy at her blog of the same name
• Amanda at A Lady Scientist
• Mrs. Whatsit at I Love Science, Really
• Jade Park at Writing Under a Pseudonym
• Teresa at On Three Kids

No rush, though! And if I didn't name you, it's very likely that it's because you've already been tagged with this very recently and I didn't want to make you redo it. (I have a fairly small blog circle, but it does grow, even if it's a very gradual process ...)

On accumulation

We went skiing this weekend.

It was a much-needed getaway for me. We decided sort of at the last minute to meet up with two of D's friends from his office when we found out they had a trip planned -- they have similar slope preferences (intermediate level runs, groomed, with the occasional trail through the trees and powder). A quick stop at Hotwire revealed a place to stay the night at a very affordable price, so we made our reservations, attached the ski rack to the car, and took off at the crack of dawn Saturday.

Wearing my body out felt good for once. It's funny how exhaustion feels different when you're in control of its degree. I did wish I could take something for the muscle soreness (no anti-inflammatories allowed until after my next blood draw) but I knew what I was in for when I agreed to go. Overall, we had a really terrific time -- time to cut loose and feel light-hearted, even if our limbs felt impossibly heavy at the end of each day.

We didn't have a chance to take many pictures, but take a look at the ones we did get:


It was misting at the top of the mountain because of a heavy cloud sitting over the peak. Water droplets condensed out of the fog and froze to everything, including my hair, which I'd put in two braids to keep it out of the way. The shot above is from just before lunch on Saturday. An interesting effect, no?

And here's a shot at the end of the day.


Still interesting! But also a bit shocking. I had no idea all of that was there.

I think that's how these last few months felt to me yesterday -- small things building up and building up without my realizing they were doing so until I got a picture of it all. A picture of where D and I are. I try to deal with little issues between us as they come so they don't grow into bigger ones, but what about those that continue to haunt us, sticking to us? It seems many things have, and when that realization hit us yesterday, we didn't know how to handle it. We've fought because we've had to readjust to each other and, now we're fighting because that process is revealing those icy ghosts on our shoulders. But we're trying to crack them off.

We had an explosive Monday. I'm glad we had Saturday and Sunday before that to remind us it's not always like Monday was.

For the record

Twenty minutes of my life I will never get back. May the following phone conversation at least provide entertainment (or something else?) here.


Monday morning. Contemporary Troubadour dials the number of her future doctor's office at Almost Dr. Sis's medical school and places the phone to her ear. After three or four rings, someone answers.

Female Receptionist: [Laughing loudly at something] "Hello? ThisisFemaleReceptionisthowmayIhelpyou?"

Contemporary Troubadour: "Hi. This is Contemporary Troubadour; I called --"

F. Receptionist: "Hold on." Click.

A slight hiss is just audible from the phone, indicating that the connection is still intact. Many minutes later ...

F. Receptionist: "Hello?"

C. Troubadour: "Hi. This is Contemporary Troubadour; I called just under two weeks ago to set up an appointment with Dr. Specialist. You and I spoke about having my records sent to him for a consult --"

F. Receptionist: "What's your name?"

C. Troubadour: "Contemporary Troubadour."

F. Receptionist: "Mm hold on." [Sounds of typing.] "How do you spell that?"

C. Troubadour: "First name Contemporary, last name T-R-O-U-B-A-D-O-U-R."

F. Receptionist: "Hold on." [Several more minutes pass.] "I'm not finding you in the system. What was it you had faxed?"

C. Troubadour: "Well, there were records from my GI doctor and my endocrinol--"

F. Receptionist: "Who's the referring doctor?"

C. Troubadour: "Er -- I don't have one; my sister is a student at Medical University who contacted Dr. Senior Specialist to ask whom I should see, and he e-mailed her Dr. Specialist's name."

F. Receptionist: "Oh, okay, Dr. Senior Specialist ... and what was your name?"

C. Troubadour: "Contemporary Troubadour."

F. Receptionist: "Could you spell that?"

Contemporary Troubadour takes a deep breath and obliges. Glances at clock. Ten minutes have passed since she first dialed the doctor's office.

F. Receptionist: "Yeah, we don't have anything for you. Well, wait, there are some lab results from Seattle Business --"

C. Troubadour: "Yes! My husband faxed those from his office."

F. Receptionist: "Oh, well then we've just got those two sheets! They don't have any patient information on them."

C. Troubadour: "But -- I'm sorry, what now?"

F. Receptionist: "We haven't got anything. No date of birth or social security number; these are just lab results. But while I've got you on the phone, let me ask you --" [Ruffles papers.] "Okay, okay, who is this D. Troubadour on the cover sheet?"

C. Troubadour: "That's my husband."

F. Receptionist: "Oh, see we thought that was the patient. Now how do you spell your name so I can put it in the computer?"

C. Troubadour: "Contemporary. T-R-O-U-B-A-D-O-U-R."

F. Receptionist: "Mmkay, now how about your address?"

C. Troubadour: "1234 555th Way --"

F. Receptionist: "Hang on, 1234 555?"

C. Troubadour: "House number 1234. Then the street is called 555th Way."

F. Receptionist: "Way? Like W-A-Y?"

C. Troubadour: "Yes."

F. Receptionist: "And 555 with a T-H?"

C. Troubadour: "Mm hm."

F. Receptionist: "Okay, 1234 555th Way. Man, you must not get a lot of mail with that address."

C. Troubadour: "?!?"

F. Receptionist: "All right. Got it in the system. You'll be contacted shortly by someone now that you're there."

C. Troubadour: "Okay, but --"

F. Receptionist: "Have a nice day." Click.

Thirty seconds later, the phone rings.

F. Receptionist: "Hi, could I speak with Contemporary?"

C. Troubadour: "This is Contemporary."

F. Receptionist: "Hi, this is Female Receptionist; we just spoke a minute ago. Could you give me your date of birth and social?"


Aaaaaaand scene.

There's a first time for everything

And for my family this Christmas, it was Mario Kart -- our gift to Troubadour Dad. I looked at the video that Almost Dr. Sis shot while Troubadour Dad was racing Marketing Sis, and I'm not sure which is funnier: the driving or the spectators' reactions.

(Troubadour Mom is the loudest one in the audience telling the drivers to "Turn, turn, TURN!" at the end. I love her.)

Keep in mind that, because of his work hours and cultural conditioning, Troubadour Dad didn't really play with us when we were kids (aside from the occasional Monopoly game, during which he would clean us out so thoroughly that we weren't inclined to ask him to play again anytime soon). So introducing our dad to the Wii as a bonding tool has been kind of momentous.

While we were visiting, my sisters and I also pulled out some ancient home videos from our childhood. I used to be embarrassed to see myself on tape (unlike my sisters, I was not a cute kid when I knew the camera was rolling -- more like awkward). While I was being filmed, I was always afraid I'd be corrected or chastised, which happened enough to make me dread the camera's awful record-keeping power -- and fear the obligation to perform at all, wherever and whenever I might be judged, on video or otherwise. But instead of being openly fearful or shy, I'd try to cover up my discomfort with silly faces and voices, things that invited correction.

And so, the vicious cycle began, until I learned how to avoid situations that demanded performance. Well, no, that's actually not true. I enjoy teaching, which is a fairly performative job, if you want to engage your students. It's certain kinds of audiences I avoid, ones where I'm clearly at a hierarchical disadvantage. Perhaps this is why it is so hard to spend time with Troubadour Dad even now that I'm an adult. I can't really be myself around him because he is so judgmental in certain ways, and as much as I want to believe his judgment shouldn't matter, it still does to the little girl in me who just wants to be accepted.

Part of me still cringes a little when I see myself on those old videos, but it's because I can see now what I was really feeling. I think these last few months of thinking and writing about childhood have let me understand that. As I think about those tapes, I no longer hear the voice that tells me I should have acted differently -- just the voice of the child asking her parents, as best she could, to put the camera away.

Back!

As in flat on it, until the rest of today is over.

Oh no, you're thinking, this doesn't sound good. My apologies in advance. I hate, hate, hate to make the first post of 2010 a less than jolly one, but I didn't start this blog to create yet another place where I'd have to hide my real thoughts and feelings. I will throw in happy things at the end, so don't worry. Bumming in awaits! But if you're not up for (down with?) less than jolly, feel free to skip right to the photos. The happy starts there.

So. I feel moderately guilty that I've spent most of the afternoon in a travel-induced daze while D had to go straight to work from the airport, but I'm accepting my pathetic lack of vigor for now because I'm in a weird place. Limbo, I suppose, but it's a different limbo than the one I was in before the holidays.

Before we left town in December, I was doing my best not to get too worried about my not-so-great liver enzyme test results. There were presents to pack and people to look forward to seeing. And there was nothing to be done regarding the liver stuff until my seven weeks sans alcohol were up (more on that later). I did have some GI symptoms in the few days before we headed for D's parents' place, but I chalked it up to stress. (It's been known as early on as high school to cause me such problems.)

But the symptoms didn't go away. And they got more and more severe until on the morning of Christmas Eve, D and I decided I'd better give my GI doctor a call. One of his partners got back to me right away, advising me to double the dose of Pancrecarb I'd been taking before meals and call back after the weekend with an update on how it was working out. Simple enough -- and effective. By the end of the day, I was feeling tons better. I can't emphasize how nice it is to be able to eat without worrying how sick it might make me feel 30 minutes later.

I knew, though, that the previous ten days of ramped-up symptoms signified that things with my pancreas were getting worse. And once Troubadour Dad got news of the liver enzyme issues on top of the GI distress, he decided that something "wasn't right," particularly for someone my age, and suggested it was time to get a consult from a doctor at a more academic institution, i.e., a specialist with access to the most current research.

As it happens, Almost Dr. Sis has doctor-professors who are just those kinds of specialists. She very kindly contacted a senior doctor in the GI department to ask whom I should see, given my history, and he sent back a recommendation right away. So during the remainder of the week at my parents' house, I faxed off requests to all my doctors here in Seattle to get the pertinent parts of my medical records forwarded to said chosen specialist. The plan is to try to schedule a trip for me to get checked out by him in February. We're guessing it'll be a two-week visit, but we'll know better once this doctor has had the chance to review everything in my chart.

So, limbo. It's eating at me more than before -- probably because the whole flying-across-the-country-to-see-an-expert thing makes everything feel way more serious. Not sure what to do about that, so here I am, writing.

In the meantime, I have one more blood draw scheduled with my GI person here to look at those liver enzymes. I was a good girl and didn't even have a drink on New Year's Eve, even though Troubadour Dad was serving this:


But I was mildly naughty (from a blood sugar standpoint) and joined in the Spanish tradition of eating twelve grapes at midnight for good luck in the new year. One of Troubadour Dad's colleagues, who hails from Madrid, introduced us to the ritual that evening. Fun and hopeful! And excellent with really good cheeses afterward ...

Overall, my time with family was all right too. I have tons of photos to go through from the visit, which I might look at tomorrow when I need a break from thesis work (yep, it's time to get back to that before the semester starts up in two weeks). For now, here are a few shots of Troubadour Mom's bathroom residents. Proof that plants really can thrive by the tub!




I'm also thrilled to report that the rose we received back in October survived our absence marvelously. I wasn't sure it would, but these watering globes, which D picked up from Home Depot, actually worked. I'll take it as a good omen.

On that note, here's to a happy 2010, everyone. May it bring good things, surprising or otherwise, to you and the people you love.

The home stretch

Busy times at D's parents' place! We've finished almost all of our wrapping, but holiday activities have been ramping up with the arrival of more and more family members.

Things are quite different here this year -- D's brother, the next oldest in the line of four boys, got engaged in August and bought a house with his fiancée. So we've been given his old bedroom for our stay, which is much more private than the previous part of the house we'd been using before (the sleeper sofa in the basement, right next to the pool table and storage closets, both of which get tons of traffic).

I'm very grateful, to say the least. I'm uncomfortable admitting that I need space from people sometimes, but it's something I can't ignore -- I tried doing that last Christmas and ended up feeling horribly resentful toward everyone, even D, through the endless stream of activities I felt I couldn't escape. So this year, it's been a particular relief to have a little haven where I can get an hour of quiet time. It's made these last few days so much more enjoyable.

We've done almost one jigsaw puzzle per night with the whole family, played board games, shared cooking duties, planned the annual gingerbread construction project, gone caroling, and talked ourselves hoarse. And I've liked being part of it. Tonight, we're off to D's brother's house for dinner and then maybe some cookie decorating.

Hope you're all having good holidays. I'll post more once we're on our way to our next destination.

Tea and sympathy

That's what I sent D off to his office with this morning. We think he's coming down with something head-coldish, just in time for a very long set of flights, and we don't want it to turn into a repeat of our 2008 holiday -- a week of fever, sore throat, and achy muscles that started right after we finally made it to my parents' place. We went through such a travel fiasco to get there last year that I didn't even bother to mention that part of the experience when I was blogging the trip. But yes, we are laying in a stock of sugar-free Cold-EEZE and Ricola just in case.

So now I'm crossing my fingers that this goes away. Not just because I want D to feel better, but also because he's a very wounded-animal sort of patient. There's no comforting him until whatever he has is gone, and as much as I don't want to be annoyed by his sulking, after a few days of it, I'm not the most patient nurse either ...

Somehow, I don't think this is the answer

(Very tempting, though.)

I don't know what it is, but I'm just tired. Maybe I'm coming off end-of-semester deadline adrenaline and my brain has forgotten how to function without it. Or I'm running it ragged on pre-holiday stress and it's too amped up to respond to adrenaline anymore. Either way, I'm not making any progress on this recommendation I've been asked to write for a former student, and that student deserves so much better than I can produce right now. So I'm setting the paperwork aside until I don't feel like I have a haggis between my ears instead of the gray matter that's supposed to be there.

Without work, I feel a little lost. There are books I could read, movies I could watch, people I could call or e-mail, but somehow, none of these things feels right. Why is taking time for myself so hard? Or put another way, why is doing something I enjoy not enjoyable enough to make me want to do it?

I think it really is something about the holidays. Even when I'm not thinking about them, they're having their way with my subconscious, dulling my pleasure receptors, willing me to shut down. Every bit of me wants these visits with family (D's and mine) to go well, certainly better than they did last year (that's another story I might get into later, but it really requires its own post, or series of them). So D and I have been coming up with ways to help that happen. On our end, at least -- no promises about what other individuals choose to do. I think waiting to be on our way so I don't have to wonder how all that will shake out anymore is draining me.

Not quite two days left. I wish it were Thursday.

The things we do for love

So I'm stuck on the couch with a kitty in my arms. Doesn't sound too bad, right? It's not. Except the kitty is hell-bent on gagging up her antibiotics, and the only way to prevent it is to wrap her up burrito-style in a blanket and hold her upright until the urge to urp passes. With Simone, it takes about an hour.

Simone came to us with an upper respiratory infection (we asked for a foster who needed a place to recuperate -- it's a big help to the shelter since they only have so much isolation room to prevent the spread of germs). This is her second round of antibiotics, and we're hoping it works this time. It probably didn't help that we hadn't figured out how to help Simone keep her meds in her tummy for the first week's course, but she's definitely more adept at rejecting them than our last foster was.

While I've been sitting here, I've been thinking about these last few months since my return from Little U. on the Prairie. As much as life has vastly improved for me and D now that we're no longer doing the long-distance marriage thing, it's been an adjustment for both of us. I don't mean the little habits we each have that we have to accommodate now that we share the same physical space all the time. Those are pretty easy, and even welcome. I'm talking about the aftermath itself of having been put through the two-year emotional wringer of living in separate places, resenting the situation, and having to suppress a lot of those unhappy feelings in order to keep the marriage intact.

Bad things happen when you stuff your feelings into a dark hole and hope they never surface again.

Both of us did that to varying degrees, and sometimes the feelings leach out in the most unexpected ways. They lead to misunderstandings, arguments, confusion about why our emotions are suddenly running so high.

Lately, we've been trying to unpack all that, acknowledge how wounded we each felt, how we still bristle when our wounds get unintentionally poked. It's helping, I think, but slow. Both of us are different people because of the last two years. But because we weren't there to see the effects of that painful time on the other person, because we couldn't show those effects to each other for fear of making things too unbearable, we react to each other now as if the other person is still someone s/he used to be. When the differences become evident, it's sometimes saddening, disappointing. Or encouraging and relieving. You never know what you'll find out next. I guess that's what makes it scary but also compels us to keep pushing on. We can't not do this.

I just wish it could be a less exhausting process.

On safari

Thank the powers that be for the internet. Because of it, I'm essentially done with Christmas shopping and do not have to fight the crowds at the mall. And almost everything we've ordered is being directly shipped to Illinois and Texas (where we'll be celebrating the holidays with D's parents and my parents, respectively). Less to schlep, less to lose, less to have broken by those oh-so-gentle baggage handling machines when we fly out on the 17th. Yes.

Because we weren't under any crushing pressure to buy gifts, D and I actually did venture to the mall on Saturday. No, we're not crazy. We just have a little holiday tradition of our own, to preserve something meaningful for us in all the insanity: our annual ornament safari.

Each year, we pick out one special item to add to our small collection. For 2008, it was this fish (or one nearly identical to it in green instead of blue -- the one pictured was a gift to D's parents). We're hoping that someday, when we have little Troubadours to share these with, we can tell them a story about the ornaments, where each came from, why we chose each one.

This year's pick is the blown-glass bauble in the center of the bowl we keep on the coffee table (see above). Our tree is so small (six feet tall, not quite a yard at its widest) that there isn't room on it for everything we have, so we put the extras here. It spreads the sparkle around without much effort. We're all about no-fuss decorating.

In other news, my advisor wrote back to me, and all is well on that front. She is totally on board with my ideas about the direction of the manuscript and why that direction has had to shift. She's also excited about my initial structural suggestions (I'd put out a few in response to hers). So it sounds like I can finish this semester without quite as much worry about the next stages of the writing process.

My last submission deadline before winter break is this Friday, so I'm off to get busy on that. But before I go, I just want to say thank you to everyone who's been stopping by and saying hi here. You guys have been terrifically supportive, and it makes a huge difference. And your blogs rock.

La, la, la, la, not listening ...

The end of the semester is coming quickly, which means I have to send my 40-odd pages of rough draft to my thesis committee so I can get feedback before everyone disappears for the holidays. I was cool with that until earlier this week, when my advisor mentioned the one word I've been trying not to think about since my prospectus meeting in May ...

Structure.

My advisor is absolutely right in poking me about this bugaboo of mine. But I've been dreading it, knowing it was coming. If you've been following along, you know that my committee essentially told me to scrap the outline I'd come up with and just play with my writing, see what comes out, return to my intuition. So I did exactly that. I wrote in scenes, threw my heart into the emotional side of the words rather than worry about technical finesse. The result is that I have lots of solid vignettes on the page in raw form. But now, I have to find a way to string them together, to pin them to some kind of larger narrative arc. And I am horrible at that.

I wrote a long letter back to my advisor with my initial thoughts on what form that arc might take, based on the prospectus I'd submitted at the end of the spring, but I was fairly candid about how I wasn't sure it was the right way to go anymore. The reason: the family drama that occurred between then and now.

Yeeeeeeeeees, writing about family is messy on its own, but it gets even messier when your relationships with certain members of your family change significantly. So, basically, I'm not the same person I was when I wrote the prospectus, and the narrative arc I established then no longer helps me tell a true story from my current point of view, attitude, etc. Sigh. I'm glad that I've started the process of thinking out loud about this puzzle and that I've explained where I'm coming from to my advisor, but I really hope she writes back soon. I'm more than mildly worried that now she thinks I'm a total spaz.

And now, back to doing this*

Not totally, but for the time being.

I got a call back from the GI doctor's office a week ago, following up on the abnormal liver enzyme stuff. The good news is that nothing requiring immediate, invasive intervention is necessary. The bad news is that there is no short-term way to address the problem. Basically, for the next seven weeks, I get to abstain from alcohol and all anti-inflammatory meds, see what my enzyme levels look like in mid-January, and then reassess the situation. Which means I get to do the craziness of holiday season without the two things I was kind of counting on to help me get through it: good wine to calm my frazzled nerves and painkillers to put the kibosh on tension headaches (family get-togethers involving Troubadour Dad will do those things to a person). Oh, joy!

Oh, help.

I am going to get through this just fine, I assure you, but it may not be pretty. However it goes, I'll try to make it entertaining here. What's a stressful holiday without finding some way to laugh at it?

I will also be indulging myself in very good coffee flavorings for the duration of this no-alcohol thing. Torani, I'm looking at you and all your tasty sugar-free syrups.

* Photo courtesy of Marketing Sis

A cozy weekend

I wish my sisters and I lived nearer to one another. We had such a wonderful time over Thanksgiving just catching up on sister-news, getting giddy on sister-humor, and sharing sister-time. Did I ever mention that my sisters and I are close? We are. And that's why it's so hard being on opposite coasts.

Almost Dr. Sis arrived on Tuesday with her boyfriend (such a sweet guy!). I picked them up at the airport and got them settled in our newly crown-molded guest room with bonus new light fixture (we replaced the old one right before they arrived as it was missing a cover for the light bulbs -- kind of ugly). Marketing Sis got in the following evening.

We had already done much chatting over e-mail to determine what we wanted on the menu (besides the 20-pound turkey we got from Safeway). In the end, we made farro with goat cheese and butternut squash, roasted herbed potatoes and pearl onions, cranberry sauce spiked with rum, D's great-grandmother's cornbread, and stuffing. It was epic. I am pleased to say the turkey was juicy and flavorful thanks to the amazing broth-and-butter seasoning method Almost Dr. Sis recommended from a cooking demonstration she got to see. We also spatchcocked our bird to shorten the roasting time. Even so, it took three hours to reach the proper temperature since it was so huge, but it was worth the wait. Here's a look at the feast in its final stages from stove to table (thanks to Marketing Sis for the photos):





Now all our visitors are gone, and I'm feeling a little sad about that, but overall, I'm still enjoying the memory of a really lovely gathering. I think Troubadour Dad is hoping we don't turn this into a regular thing (sisters-only for Turkey Day), so it will probably be a whole-family event next year. But we are definitely going to pick a holiday to do on our own at least once yearly. It was too much fun not to make it a tradition.

Work calls -- I've been away from the thesis over the holiday and my advisor wants another installment by the end of the weekend. I'd much rather be doing what Simone seems to love (see below), but that'll have to wait. More news shortly ...

Distraction successful!

This girl is keeping us quite busy. Updates on her and Thanksgiving visitors and such very soon, but I just wanted to post a shot of our new foster. Meet Simone. She's a lovebug.

If I pretend I'm not listening, it will all go away

Not the best approach to every problem, but at the moment, it's the only one I have, going into this weekend.

I had some blood tests a month ago that came back abnormal -- liver enzymes elevated. Mind you, these were done right after our housewarming, which was a wine- and beer-soaked event. Instead of my usual one glass of white, I had more like two and a half. You can laugh; I know I'm a lightweight. A little goes a long way. Or so I told myself.

My doctor instructed me to abstain from any alcoholic beverages for two weeks and have the test repeated. So last week, I went in for another blood draw. Yesterday evening, the doctor's office left a message for me that my results came back abnormal again and that I should follow up with my GI specialist, to whom the data would be faxed.

Aaaaaaaaaaaargh.

Unfortunately, my GI person is out of town and won't be back till Tuesday, so he won't be able to review the test results till then. Which means I'm now going to try to forget about this little bit of news since there's nothing to be done about it for the next 72 hours.

Good Things I Can Distract Myself With:

• The issue with my lady parts that showed up on the CT scan is a non-issue. Yaaaay.
• Almost Dr. Sis, her boyfriend, and Marketing Sis are arriving on Tuesday and Wednesday for Thanksgiving.
• We got our foster kitty (pictured above) adopted this week.
• We're picking up a new kitty to lavish with affection tomorrow morning.
  

There, that ought to do it.

Making do

That's sort of the way we've been approaching the crown molding project this week, namely from a lack of fancy equipment. And despite some hitches, we've made good progress.

What we were missing was an (expensive) electric table saw. Instead, we had the kind of saw that you use arm power to run and a guide (see photo) you can mount on your workbench to keep your cuts straight. Only we had no workbench -- just a lightweight table with a particle-board surface. It was left behind in our laundry room by the previous owners of our house, and we had no use for it, so we figured, why not?

It's really hard to saw anything if your entire workbench jiggles.

Enter the Two-Person Weighted Sawing System. One person sits on the table while the other person saws. Easy solution!

Well, not quite.

In the photo, you see D positioning a piece of molding on the guide, which is screwed down to the table. Note that the molding has to be cut at a 45-degree angle through its cross-section (or so I'm told), which requires it to be held at the tilt pictured. There is no way to secure the molding with the clamp that came with this guide unless the molding is lying flat (as in, parallel to the table surface). So in order to accomplish the proper cut, one person has to hold the molding firmly while the other person applies the saw. Hmmm.

In the end, we revised the TPWSS slightly -- D sawed while sitting on the jury-rigged workbench and I became a human vise for the molding. I do not recommend this approach unless the person sitting on the workbench is heavy enough to make jiggle practically nonexistent. Otherwise, your thumbs will hurt A LOT.

So last night, we finished cutting the last piece for the guest bedroom. This weekend, we're going to get everything mounted. We had originally planned to make do with a hammer and nails. Fortunately, one of D's colleagues owns a nail gun, which we are definitely going to borrow!

Don't spill the beans ...

... because that's exactly what's in these brownies.

I got the recipe from this blog a long time ago but hadn't had the chance to give it a try. So last week, D and I pulled out the baking pans (which sadly don't get a lot of use around here unless they're holding meat-based dishes) and went to work.

The result was delicious! Moist, melt-into-fudgy-heaven delicious. With minimal impact on my blood sugar readings. And I say was because there are no more brownies left. Which means it's time to make another batch.

We've actually been testing several recipes over the last few weeks to include in a cookbook we're planning to give D's mother for Christmas. She always asks us what she should make for us when we visit, but because we've got these pesky dietary restrictions, it's not always easy to come up with a request she has a recipe for. Since this year has given us plenty of experience in creating new recipes and modifying old ones so that we can still eat real food (and have it taste good), it seemed like a good idea to pass our hard-won knowledge on.

In other news, the primer is up in the pink bedroom, all except for a thin stripe we left unpainted just below the ceiling. Because now it's time to put in the crown molding! Nope, we've never installed it before, and I have no woodworking skills whatsoever, but I can take direction pretty well. So as long as D tells me what he needs me to do, I'm there. Well, okay, me and a stepstool.

It's prime time

Yep, the next stage of painting chez Troubadour is about to start, which is very exciting. But before we can pick proper colors for the two bedrooms we're going to tackle, we have to cover up the stuff that's already there. And it's not going away without a fight.

To whoever thought it would be a selling point to paint one of the bedrooms Wal-Mart blue and the other Pepto-Bismol pink: it's not at all charming. Here's what each room looks like with a patch of primer (two coats):



The gray-tinted stuff seems to be quite effective on the blue, but the white is hardly affecting the pink (can you even see where it is?). D's added another coat of white this evening; hopefully that will be enough. Tomorrow, we'll test out some color samples.

To Almost Dr. Sis and Marketing Sis, who will be staying here over Thanksgiving: we promise the guest room will be dry before you arrive in two weeks. But you might have to leave the painter's tape in place -- we're not expecting to get to the actual top-coat color until after Turkey Day, given how slowly this is going ...

When all else fails, try the bathroom

I mean it; it works. See?


We received this Tiffany rose as a housewarming gift from a very dear set of friends, and we'd had it on an end table in the living room where it could get light from the long row of windows there. But it refused to thrive -- by its second week at our place, it was dropping leaves faster than I've been losing my hair (and THAT, if you know me, is kind of alarming). No worries, I'm not going bald, just adjusting to some recent prescription changes. But we were definitely a bit panicked about the fate of our little plant (which did not help with the hair loss).

So I did what my mother has done for years: I put the rose in our bathroom.

There's something about the extra warmth and moisture from our daily showers that seems to help. My mother has reared orchids and other notoriously finicky flowers with great success in her bathroom. Now I see why. Check out those new leaves!

Hopefully our plant will make it through the winter without further trouble and we'll be able to get it established outdoors at the beginning of the growing season next year. For now, I'm enjoying this little bit of life by the edge of the tub.

Are you bummed in yet?

That's what D asked me a few nights after I got my response from my advisor about a thesis extension. (He was hoping I was no longer bummed out that she'd turned my request down. Yes, this is why I love him.)

Unfortunately, I guess I am still kind of bummed out. Basically, the way my advisor's reply went was, "I think it's going to be hard to get your committee together then, and everyone reserves that time for their own writing, and I'm trying to finish a book. So the best I can give you is an extra month; you can defend during finals week. That's assuming everyone else is okay with that time."

Sigh.

I could almost hear the frazzled notes rising in her voice. I understand her reasons for saying no, but muscling in the parts about how the rest of the group would feel about the situation (on an entirely speculative basis) seemed like it was done defensively. A simple "No, I have a book deadline to meet," would have felt less to me like she thought I was being a pain in the butt. I get it, really I do.

So now I feel like I've been a pest when all I'm trying to do is give this project the room it needs to grow. And I'm so bad at brushing this kind of thing off. Being made to feel like a nuisance is so much worse than a form-letter rejection.

But I do have that extra month, if the rest of the committee can make it work. Here's hoping the next three e-mails I have to write don't get the same kind of response.

On a different note -- as promised, instructions on how to make compound eyes! Any questions, just post them in the comments and I'll try my best to help.

Compound Eyes

Materials:

Two hollow styrofoam hemispheres
Shimmery fabric (preferably without sequins)
Superglue (this is the kind we used)
Stapler and staples
Scissors
Wide elastic headband or headwrap
Needle and thread
Chalk or other fabric-marking implement

1. Place fabric wrong side up on flat surface. Then place one hemisphere round side down on fabric.

2. Wrap hemisphere in fabric and mark the width of fabric required to cover hemisphere across its widest part. Add an extra 4 inches to this number.

3. Mark two squares on the fabric with sides measuring the length calculated at the end of step 2. Cut out carefully.

4. Place fabric square wrong side up. Place first hemisphere, round side down, on square. Here's where it gets interesting: imagine that your hemisphere is a compass. Make sure the square's edges are matched to the north, south, east, and west points on the compass (i.e., make sure the square's corners aren't in those positions).

5. Fold the north edge of the square at its midpoint around the northernmost point on the hemisphere. Glue the fabric at this point only (i.e., do not glue the entire edge of the square, as the fabric will overlap and get bulky). Reinforce with staples.

6. Fold the south edge of the square at its midpoint around the southernmost point on the hemisphere. Glue and staple in place as in step 5, making sure fabric is tautly wrapped around styrofoam. Repeat with remaining two edges of square. Allow to dry.

7. Repeat steps 5-6 on second hemisphere with remaining fabric square.

8. Now you're ready to fold in the corners of the squares. Take the northwest corner of a square and fold around northwesternmost point on the hemisphere. Glue the fabric at this point only. Reinforce with staples.

9. Fold the southeast corner of the square around southeasternmost point on the hemisphere. Glue and staple in place as in step 8, making sure fabric is tautly wrapped around styrofoam. Repeat with remaining two corners of square. Allow to dry.

10. Repeat steps 8-9 on second hemisphere.

11. Here's where it gets tricky: you are now going to cut the fabric to accommodate the curvature of the hemispheres. To do this, turn each hemisphere round side up. You should be able to see where the fabric is not pulled taut over the dome. Choose one of these areas to begin cutting.

12. Snip fabric from underside of the hemisphere toward the top of the dome. You should now have two flaps of fabric. Make sure each can be pulled taut around the edge of the hemisphere without causing the fabric over the dome to buckle. You may have to cut further to adjust the flaps accordingly.

13. Pull one flap taut and glue and staple in place. Then pull the other flap taut, overlapping the first flap as necessary, and glue and staple in place.

14. Repeat steps 12-13 with all remaining areas where fabric is not pulled taut over the dome. Allow to dry.

15. Place hemispheres round side down. Trim any excess fabric in the hollow of each one. Glue all fabric that is not secure along underside edges of hemispheres. Allow to dry.

16. Have the person who will wear the compound eyes put on the elastic headband. Position one hemisphere over each ear and mark where the top edge of each hemisphere touches the headband. This is where you must baste the hemispheres to the headband.

17. Have your model remove the headband. Stitch each eye to the headband, as indicated, by picking up a little bit of the fabric from the hemisphere and a little bit of the headband fabric with each stitch. Reinforce as necessary (I sewed a double row to make sure the eyes wouldn't come off).

And that's it! Sorry I don't have pictures of my compound eyes in progress -- that would have made writing these directions a bit easier. But I'll leave you with a picture of the model for my costume:

And the reveal

We had nearly 200 trick-or-treaters last night.

I kid you not! Between 6:30 and 7 p.m., which seemed to be peak time, there was a veritable parade of small children up and down our front walk. At one point, I think D opened the door to a group of ten -- and that's if you don't count the parents who were there as well.

D had a lot of fun scaring the people who came to our place. Whenever the doorbell would ring, he would open the door very quickly and shout a gleeful "AH HA!" This was highly entertaining for the parents and somewhat startling for the kids. Most, after they recovered, got a good kick out of it. But the two-year-olds remained a bit nonplussed, and one younger kid was so thrown off that he said "Merry Christmas" instead of "Trick or treat"! D now claims that he frightened the poor guy into another holiday ...

Oh, what fun D's going to be when he has kids of his own.

Our pumpkins were a hit too. In fact, half the time when D threw the front door open, the trick-or-treaters weren't actually standing directly in front of him -- they were peering into the library window to get a closer look at what we'd carved.

So now, the part you've been waiting for: the costumes we wore to the Halloween party.

Here's D in his bald cap. He was Hitman from the game of the same name. The bar code is actually from a UPS return shipping label -- already adhesive!



And here I am, as a dragonfly.


Props to Good (Enough) Woman for guessing that I was a fly -- she couldn't have gotten closer without knowing the exact shape of the wings. The sparkly hemispheres were my eyes, which I stitched to the headwrap.

We also used binder clips to attach an iridescent scarf to the back of my halter top (see below) to mimic the colors you might see on a dragonfly. Yep, we're all about minimal sewing.


So there you go! I will post directions on how to make compound eyes soon. Also some news on what my advisor had to say. It wasn't exactly what I'd hoped for, but it wasn't a total no either ...