The Bodily Integrity Report

I allowed my elbow cut under the shower spray for the first time in nearly two weeks this morning. I was keeping it dry in the interest of preserving the wound closure strips, which seemed to be helping my blood to stay inside my arm where I prefer to keep it. But the internet said that wound closure strips can come off after 12-14 days, and that it's best to let them come off on their own. I generally do as the internet instructs me, so I let the whole business under the water today.

Everything went according to plan. My cut got a thorough cleaning and the wound closure strips peeled painlessly off. The scab held. I even had a good time freaking Josh out. When I got out of the shower, the scab was all waterlogged and white, and it strongly resembled pus. He was on a conference call at the time, so I silently shoved it under his nose and let him think that I was infected. I showed it to him again after I had cleaned it up and given it a chance to dry, and he agreed that it looked very healthy indeed.

We spent the afternoon at Suzanne's wedding, and I had undergarment trauma. One of the bones in the left side of my bustier dug into my waist for about 6 hours straight. I was afraid that it was digging into one of my recently healed bicycle wounds, but it was actually a few inches north of the scar.

The Multidisciplinary Association for Psychadelic Studies

I don't really have much to say on the subject of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychadelic Studies, but it was such a great name that I had to make a title out of it. As best I can make out, it is an organization that works on getting pot legalized. Their website said something cryptic and fairly sketchy about studying other psychadelic substances, but I didn't look too far into it. It sounded to me as though it were completely possible that they sit around dropping acid all day, then write about their hallucinations, and call it "research." I found out about it in the first place because I was looking on idealist.org to see if there were any promising job listings there. I was tempted to apply to the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychadelic Studies (it's so much fun to say!), but then what would happen if I somehow ended up working there? I could never apply for a respectable job again.

You know, you might say that it's not logical to avoid applying out of a fear of actually working there, but I have no self control. I can't even start down a road like that, because I'm not good at hitting the brake. I'd end up working there and not even know how the fuck it happened. Really.

The Kate Moss Irony

Does anyone else find it weird that Kate Moss has based her whole career on looking like she's hungover, but yet it's apparently unacceptable for her to actually stick her nose in the powder? It's a robust irony there.

All I noticed, looking at those pictures of her, is that she looked really good snorting cocaine. She looked a lot better snorting cocaine than many people look on their best days. I guess that this is why she can make $9 million a year without ever saying a word.

I didn't think that it was such a surprise to see a model using cocaine anyway. How else would she stay so thin? According to the internet, Kate Moss and I are the same height but I outweigh her by 20 pounds. And I look thin. I'd need chemical assistance too if I wanted to weigh 105 pounds. I'd probably also be bitchy as all get out, because I start to get angry after about an hour of hunger.

I'm just impressed that Kate Moss can still be so beautiful given her many years of the party life. I guess it proves that you can do all of the good things in the world that you want for yourself, but there's no substitute for genetics.

The Slow But Steady March of Kitty Curiousity

The animal contingent was left alone to amuse itself this weekend while Josh and I recreated in Acadia. We came home to find many small, polished stones scattered all throughout the downstairs of our house. In another life, these stones decorated the base of a zenlike candle arrangement that sits in the center of our dining table. I call it a dining table, but it really ends up being more of a mail-and-other-shit-we-don't-feel-like-dealing-with-right-now collection surface. The stones are now kitty toys. They have been co-opted, requisitioned by the armies of kitty boredom, and we will never see them again.

I wouldn't mind if they played with the stones only while we are out, but the 5am game of stone soccer that little Angostura Binders played today is not an acceptable use of anyone's time. Josh said that when she finally came back into the bedroom, she was exhausted and fell over into sleep, apparently spent from a long predawn morning of making loud noises by batting small stones all over the floor downstairs. When I call her a little shit, it's with a loving undertone. I swear.

Delayed Onset Bruising

Most of my bicycle fall wounds are healed now, with skin so new that it still itches. The deep cut on my elbow is still there, still held shut with wound closure strips, and had a bit of a stink to it yesterday when I last changed the bandage. Stink is a sign of infection, so I've been vigilant since then. I think that the problem was that I'd left the bandage on longer than is recommended and it got funky. I've been smelling my elbow all day and it seems better.

A surprising thing about this elbow smell is that I didn't expect it to be so difficult to get my nose near my elbow. At the start of all of this, I thought to myself that I should smell the wound, because I'd read on the internet that a bad smell is a sign of infection. I wanted to be alert to possible infection, so it seemed like a good plan to involve another of my senses in the detective work. I lifted my elbow up to my face and tried to take a whiff, but it was harder than I'd anticipated. I have to stretch my neck and use my unwounded arm to push my elbow back under my nose. I guess I was expecting to be able to do it without any extra effort.

The real trouble now is soreness and bruising. My left hand hurts across the base of my palm and up into my thumb and pointer finger. And my elbow bone is so painful that I can't rest any weight on it at all. I keep forgetting and trying to use my elbow for things, and it keeps twingeing and reminding me not to do that. I had been avoiding yoga because I didn't want to reopen the cut, but now I'm avoiding yoga because I don't want to have to support my weight on that arm.

At least I'm no longer smelling strongly of Neosporin like I was before my road rash healed.

Acadian Rhythms

Josh and I went to visit my parents in Maine this weekend, where they had rented a small house on the outskirts of Acadia National Park. I spent a lot of time in that area as a kid, but I hadn't managed to return for many years. I kept wanting to, and kept going to other places instead.

It was so strange to recognize bits of trail that I hadn't hiked in 10 years. I wasn't sure that I'd recognize anything, and certainly, the towns have changed enough that I really didn't remember much. But the trails were the same! And I was so happy to see them again that I wished we'd had more time.

It's interesting; there was a time (not so long ago) when I was thankful for the chattering in my head and for the fact that no one else could share my thoughts unless I let them. In those days, my imagination was a powerhouse that I loved and cultivated. Lately it's become a dull nag that I try to drown out and ignore. It's become a source of self doubt and uncertainty, whereas it used to be a wellspring of joy and strength for me.

During my weekend in Acadia, and seeing all of the things that used to ignite my childhood thoughts, I realized the sad transformation that has happened to my mind since then. It made me wonder if the whole thing is just a normal occurrence on the road to adulthood, and also if some people never do recover from it and therefore become bitter.

I thought about the granite surface of the trails, the short and twisted pine trees that dot the sides of the taller mountains, and the ramp leading down from the road in Bar Harbor into Frenchman's Bay. I was obsessed with that ramp when I was little, because it was a paved road that went right down into the sea. I used to think about the sea floor shrouded in dim mystery and populated by cold-loving creatures, and how inhospitable the sea is to land life (but yet gave birth to us all), and how you could roll a boat down from the streets of Maine and sail it anywhere else in the world (so vast is the ocean), and wonder if explorers and pirates had ever thought the same things as I. My parents and I would walk past that ramp on the way to dinner and I would be reticent throughout the meal, my head alight with thoughts about that ramp and the rocky sea floor that you could just make out if you stared hard at the base of it.

Remembering all of those things this weekend was like a wind gusting through my mind and clearing away a lot of old dust. I came away from it all thinking that maybe parenthood isn't so much about protecting your offspring from every conceivable danger, but rather about giving them the inner strength to renew themselves and prevail.

I didn't panic on the plane during either of our flights. I took the time to calm my rising discomfort when I felt it first ignite, and actually, it was easy to put down. I enjoyed the feeling of control.

Stigmata of the Polarsirkelsertifikat

I was upstairs just now and noticed that a blood-colored liquid is slowly dripping down the wall from both lower corners of Josh's framed certificate proving that he visited the Arctic Circle on some Norweigian boat, or something. When I examined the back of it, I saw that there are two little pads to cushion the wall from the corners of the frame, and that for some reason, they are slowly liquifying and running down the wall. The lord works in mysterious ways, so I've heard.

A Grievous Wounding

I fell off my bike yesterday after I drove into a hole whose extent I failed to fully appreciate from afar. The left side of my body paid the bloody price. The current injury count is as follows.
Bruises: 6
Minor Scrapes/Abrasions: 9
Gashes: 1
Body areas affected: shin, knee, thigh, hip, side, shoulder, back, armpit, elbow, forearm, wrist, hand.
Broken Bones: 0

I continue to find more bruises as the day wears on. One of them has come up beneath an abrasion, and I won't be surprised if all of the abrasions eventually reveal bruises. The gash is one of the more interesting injuries, and I'll be very thankful if it manages to heal and not get infected. It looked like it could've used a stitch or two, and certainly like medical attention was warranted, but I didn't do either of those things. Josh put on some wound closure strips, which are holding beautifully (kudos to my BOY!), so I hope that my body will know what to do from here. Please, white blood cells and clotting agents, help.

I managed to hold on for long enough after steering into the hole so that the fall was moderately controlled. By "controlled," I mean that I kept my head out of harm's way and didn't fall into the road or collide with nearby stationary objects.

After the fall, I decided to get right back on my bike so as to have a chance of getting home before adrenaline wore off and pain set in, but I was so stunned from the fall that I rode for several feet with the front wheel turned 180 degrees around from the way it should have been. I only noticed that something was wrong when I looked down at the handlebars and saw that the bar ends were pointing toward me and that I couldn't reach the brakes comfortably.

My bike seems to have emerged mostly unscathed. Because I fell on the left side, the chain and gears weren't affected. I had to clean a few leaves out of the wheels and chain, but that was nothing.

Josh proved his love for me by putting his engineering skills to use so that I could extricate myself from my shirt without dragging it over my wounded skin, cheerleading as I eased my wounds under the shower spray, irrigating stubborn filth out of my elbow, listening to some whining and worrying about gangrene, and dressing all of my wounds. The scar on my elbow will remain a testament to his careful and hygienic application of wound closure strips.

The License Plate Game

On a recent trip to Bailey's Crossroads and Pentagon City, Josh and I played the license plate game. Because of the vagaries of my attention span when I was a kid, I never managed to really play the license plate game, even though we spent hours and hours in the car every vacation-time. I'd play for 5 minutes, do something else, play for 5 minutes, forget about it, and resume again two days later. This recent time with Josh was the first time that I really concentrated on playing the game for a whole trip, so that was exciting (see how your life goals change when you don't have a job?).

We saw 17 states represented: Maryland, Virginia, DC, Florida, Connecticut, Alaska, Georgia, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Michigan, North Carolina, Massachusetts, West Virginia, Ohio, and Iowa.

When I saw Alaska, Connecticut, and Florida all in a row, I couldn't resist playing the game. Since then, I've been noticing a good variety of license plates on a regular basis. I think that because this is our nation's capital, we have a reason for people to be here from all 50 states, and apparently, a lot of them like to drive long distances... especially the Alaska people.

888-858-KISS MY ASS

Since becoming a fully nonproductive member of society, I've had the opportunity to learn exactly how many telemarketing calls we receive every day, and it's been a bit of a surprise. Normally they are for Josh, because as the societally productive member of our household, people want to sell shit to him over the phone. One of the benefits of unemployment and complete financial stagnation, that I've found, is that at least people stop trying to sell shit to you over the phone.

Many of the recent calls have been from Comcast, trying to get us to upgrade our cable subscription (which we have no incentive to do, because they're giving it to us already and haven't figured it out yet). They ask for Josh and then I tell them that he isn't here because someone has to go to work to pay for our TV bill, and then they ask if there is a Mrs. Josh, and I say no. This isn't strictly true, but it's also not strictly a lie. The funny thing is that some of the telemarketers actually sound embarrassed, like maybe they think that I desperately want to be Mrs. Josh but that Josh just won't pop the question. Lately I've been taking an aggrieved tone when they ask, to encourage the assumption that I'm a frustrated girlfriend.

I was surprised the first time a Comcast telemarketer sounded embarrassed about asking for Mrs. Josh, but then I remembered an awkward moment that I had once while working as an intern for a member of Parliament in London. I was conducting a phone poll, which was counterproductive in the first place because I'd get out six words of my introduction and the Britisher on the other end would want to know what a Yank was doing working for Parliament. The main good thing to come out of that experience was that I learned that I do have a point where I get tired of discussing myself. Some of those people were supportively interested, the way people often are about students, but some of them had ill-concealed suspicions about my pay and taxes. Those people never did manage to let go of the wrong end of the stick either; once I told them that I was a student and working for college credit as opposed to pay, they stopped thinking of me as a free-loading foreigner and started thinking of me as an idiot.

At any rate, one time I called a number and asked for "Mrs. Bieber" as instructed, and the man on the other end dolefully informed me that, "I'm sorry to tell you, but she's dead. I'm her husband; can I help you?" I was mortified and quickly got off the phone. The whole Comcast/Mrs. Josh thing reminded me of this incident and so I decided to try to exploit their tendency to get embarrassed in the hope that they would retreat faster.

Lately I've noticed a shift in the telemarketing wind. Instead of Comcast, which at least restricts itself to a few calls per week, we've been getting bombarded by Chase Bank, which desperately wants to sell us credit card protection. We went through a Chase-intensive period several months ago during which I fantasized regularly about reaching through the phone and seriously beating the person on the other end. The thing with the Chase phone calls is that they are snotty and perfectly willing to call 6 times a day. The "nice" thing is that they call at regular times, so I can learn when to screen calls. Today I *69'ed the Chase number and learned that it is 888-858-9823. I googled the number and found a long series of rants about Chase and how much different people are convinced that Chase sucks monkey ass. There's no telling these people to leave you alone; they don't obey.

We don't have caller ID, so I'm forced to begin any Chase phone call that I mistakenly intercept with politeness, which I think puts me at a disadvantage. If I knew in advance that it was Chase, I could start off from a position of obnoxiousness or insanity, which I think would be better. Instead of a simple and benign "hello," I could answer the phone as I might if I were working at a phone sex hotline, or else with maddened screams (it would be best if I had a colicky baby for this, but I don't hate Chase enough to produce one), or else with sounds loud enough to wound the eardrums of the person on the other end, or else with the most offensive anti-religion rhetoric I can think of, or maybe by describing a disgusting sickness. I think what would freak me out the most is someone who is quietly but incontrovertibly crazy, like someone who talks in a subdued but inexorable tone of voice about how they like to slowly crush babies and small animals to death by piling rocks atop their soft bodies.

Hey, they're calling me. That means that they're asking for however I feel like answering the phone. There's no law that says I have to open up with "hello." I'm happy to politely ask them a few times not to call again, but after that, you know, I start to feel like I might as well amuse myself.