You Have Died of Dysentery

I happen to live quite close to the end of the Oregon Trail.

Yes, that Oregon Trail. Covered wagons, food rations, the gold rush, and that super awesome game we all know and love that was made in the 70s, but captured our hearts in the 80s and well into the 90s.

Today, we went and visited the quite lovely and very kid-friendly museum located approximately where the wagons came to a halt and the log cabins started going up.

Part of the exhibit was about all the indigenous populations that were totally driven out of the area (either physically displaced, or by disease), and I was glad to be learning about that on Black Friday instead of participating in some mass demonstration in consumerism.

I’ve been living here in Oregon now for almost exactly 6 years, and going back and re-learning about the Oregon Trail was particularly exiting for me because all the places and landmarks at the end of the trail are places I actually know and some on which I have actually set foot!

The Dalles! I know where that is! I see it on the weather map each day on the morning news! HISTORY HAPPENED THERE.

Everything is cooler when you can put it into context.

Anyhoo, I was so jazzed by the museum that I came home and found the old game on the interwebs and played it again for old times sake. Dude, it was such a fun blast from the past! I had forgotten so many intricacies of the game, like the shitty, plunky music you hear at each landmark you reach, or that you get to raft down the Columbia River at the end!

 

My husband didn’t stand a chance. Sorry, love.

I encourage you all to carve out some time in your day and some room in your hearts and play this game one more time.

Not for me, not for Oregon, but for yourself.

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No Spoilers, Please

I find that, as I get older, and especially once I became a mom, my tolerance for scary media has plummeted.

I’m more anxious, the world is a scarier place, and momma needs her some sleep.

And yet.

Enter Stranger Things, that one Netflix show all the kids are talking about. I’m only 4 episodes in, and already I’m scared out of my mind.

About a week ago, a light in our kitchen started flickering from time to time. That didn’t bother me until we started Stranger Thinging it. CHANGE IT. CHANGE IT YESTERDAY.

Oh , and thanks a lot for ruining Christmas lights for me. Jesus H Christ.

I’ll leave you with this haiku expressing my random thoughts on the matter:

Eighties nostalgia/

I can’t take the creepiness/

Quitter I am not.

 

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NaBloPoMo Day 5

 

My Radical 80s-themed 30th Birthday Picture Gallery

Behold.  I never miss an awesome opportunity to dress up and make a fool out of myself.  These are my mom’s white pumps, my own leg warmers and tights, mini skirt and plus-sized pink shirt bought at a thrift store about 5 hours before this picture, that ring-doodle that my shirt is tied up with is fucking authentic – dates back to about 1988.  And then those shades were the best find ever at the thrift store for $1 (which is like $.05 in 80s money).

I started the evening off right.  White and red – I am an equal opportunity drinker.  Except tequila. And gin.  And whiskey.  Well, I like wine at least.

Disco lights at the bowling alley.  After a while, I didn’t know what decade I was in.

I am so glad I kept my crimping iron.  I am also glad that it stopped smoking just enough for me to get these salon-quality results without the salon price.

EDIT: Holy shitsnacks, you guys, I just realized that this is my 100th post.  I am glad it was a happy and fun one!

Waking Up

I became aware of the horribly bright fluorescent lights as I regained consciousness. I saw my dad first – a blurry version of my dad. I looked past him to the clock on the wall. 9pm and change. Wait, could that be right? They took me in at 2-something…that’s way too long.

“Is that clock right?”
“Was it benign?”
“Can I still have babies?”

These were the three questions I remember asking immediately upon waking up. I also remember my dad giving me an affirmative answer to each one- which shouldn’t have made sense.

Before going in for surgery, I was told that if my tumor was benign, the procedure would take about an hour or 90 minutes. If they found cancer or if there were complications – longer. I had been out for over 7 hours.

Upon hearing the answers I wanted to hear, I started to take stock of how I physically felt. My body didn’t feel like my own. I felt broken. My midsection felt like it had been run over by a semi truck. A nurse suddenly appeared at my side and shoved a button in my hand. She told me to push the button when I felt pain. I pushed it right away and kept pushing it every time I remembered to, which felt like long intervals since I kept drifting in and out of consciousness. I was later told that I pushed that damn thing every 2 minutes or so. No amount of pushing that button could have taken the pain away.

I felt so numb. Blindingly so. After my parents left the room, my boyfriend at the time was allowed to stay. At one point I looked up at him and it looked like he was crying. I asked him if he was and I honestly don’t remember his answer. I just wanted to go back to sleep. I wanted to wake up once it was all over.

I pushed the button.

The next morning my surgeon came to see me. He told me that they found some borderline malignant tumors. Malignant. Plural. With an ‘s.’ This information barely registered. It had completely engulfed my left ovary but I got to keep my right one.

What?
Say again, please?
But my dad said…
…do I have to do radiation? Chemo?

No. Those treatments won’t work on your kind of tumors. Besides, we think we got them all, and now we just wait and see.

WAIT AND SEE?! My brain was screaming but my face stayed blank.
Apparently now my job was just to focus on getting better.

Let me get this straight. You rip me open, take out pieces of me, then run me over with a truck and tell me medicine won’t work for me, and now it’s my job to get better? I thought that was yours. You broke me. Now someone put me back together.

I pushed the button again and everything got blurry.

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That was exactly 10 years ago today. I just sat down to write and this just kinda came out, wasn’t really planned. It feels good to write about this, so bear with me because y’all might see more of these.

In other news, I turned 30 yesterday and I think I felt all the feelings. All of them. I got drunk on wine with friends and we went bowling. The best part- costumes were required. I brought back the 80s like it was my job. In preparation, I plugged in my crimping iron that I hadn’t used since the 90s, and it promptly began to smoke. Once the putrid smell of burning plastic subsided and got me sufficiently high, I used it on my hair and the results were hecka rad. I even unearthed my old slap bracelets and those plastic thingies one used to clip the bottom of one’s oversized shirt off to the side. Mini skirt, tights, leg warmers, oh my!

I suppose after all this I should post some pictures. Stay tuned, my little psychos.

Say yes to the OCD

I tend to obsess over things.

Indeed, I diagnosed myself with a minor case of OCD after obsessing and compulsing over the criteria in my Intro To Messed Up People textbook that was required reading in undergrad.

Wedding planning has proved to be no different.  In fact, it has proven to be worse.
As a result of looking through countless wedding venue websites, calling venue people to leave messages and asking questions in emails, visiting lots of venues in person and being told all their frickin rules and restrictions and through-the-roof prices, I now have new obsessions and compulsions to add to my list.

1.  When I enter a large space, I immediately size it up and start calculating how many round tables could fit in this space, seating 10 people each, and where the dance floor could be.

Doesn’t matter where I am: the conference room at work, a park on the way home, a wide aisle in the grocery store.

2.  When I watch a movie with a wedding in it, I find myself noticing details about the wedding I didn’t give a fondant about 6 months ago: the kind of chairs they have, how many people are seated at a table, the kind of fabric draped as decoration.  Yesterday I paused Wedding Crashers several times to drool at all the gorgeous tents and chairs.

If only my Hollywood dad were Christopher Walken.

3.  I’ve started to have the freaky everything-that-can-go-wrong-will dreams that make me feel the opposite of rested in the morning.  What’s the most maddening is that, in these dreams, I end up obsessing over weird things that I would never do in real life.

For instance, last night I dreamed that I was practicing my wedding dance moves in this big class of women who were all getting married at this same venue in the coming year.  Not only was this class a requirement for getting married at that venue, but the dance moves they wanted us to know were horrible 80s hip-hop moves.  No, kind sir, it is most definitely not hammer time.  And I was dressed in what I was going to get married in, which was these grey leggings under my wedding dress, and on my feet were these clunky, slip-on clogs that I couldn’t dance in, and ankle socks that matched the bridesmaids dresses.  I remember that I kept tugging on the leggings to keep them down, and on the socks so they’d stay up. *shudder*

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The good news, after all this searching and obsessing and our refusal to settle, Brian and I have found a wedding venue that WE LOVE and we have set a motherfucking date!

Brian flew us over the venue to get a bird’s eye view

Not only that, but we’ve also found a partial wedding coordinator which makes me feel sooo much better when I look forward to the next 10 months.

I can’t wait to get to what I call the fun stuff, which is mainly dress shopping and renting several chocolate fountains.  Not at the same time, though.