All traces of Seth and Baxter are now gone from our house. Since Chloe didn’t want a new pair of rats, we’re going to throw out their cage and food and water dishes. I scrubbed the wall down where their cage sat, and the floor, and the leg of the dresser. They were pretty messy for two bright-white rats.
I’ve been thinking a lot about death lately. Today is the would-be 48th birthday of my first love. He died twelve years ago. September was the month my first daughter was diagnosed with cancer. It was also the month my nephew stopped having chemotherapy because he was diagnosed as terminal. It was the month I first got to visit my sister’s grave. One sad tragedy after another. All in the same year. I have always had a feeling September is going to get me. For the last four years, I was always so relieved when September ended because I felt I was going to survive another year. Silly huh?
I never did find my journal. I never got my stickers I ordered. I never got my medical insurance paperwork (I think I know why those last two didn’t come true). Sorry for the nonsense. Back to cleaning. I seem to have the energy to do that.
I’m having some pain tonight, so I’m calling it an early night tonight. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine in the morning.
Remember when Baxter got sick and died? Tonight, his cage mate, Seth, died. Less than twenty minutes ago. Chloe was with him when he took his last breath. She’s taking this pretty well, and he was her pet for nearly three years. She picked him out at the pet store. She asked me a funny question shortly after he died: “Momma? Did Seth die because you bothered Jess’ stuff online? Jess picked out Seth with me and paid for him.” It’s weird, I never thought of it that way. I told her it was a coincidence. I asked if she wanted to get another rat tomorrow, and she said no. Again, she’s taking this very well. I’m surprised.
Rest in peace and eternal playfulness together, Seth and Baxter. If you’re curious about where they got their names, they were named after this character played by Joris Jarksy.
I went to see my awful physician today. The evil one who wants me to have a form of gastric bypass that would be irreversible and dangerous. If I lose 15 lbs, I will be 100 lbs even, and that is not good. I look like a Holocaust survivor. I look as though I have anorexia, but I really have a very healthy appetite. I’m just losing weight at an incredible rate, and I don’t know why. This was not a reason for concern for my awful doctor, and he told me not to eat anything today that had calories in it. Um, sure. It was a concern for Doc Mick. He wants me to come in for blood work on Tuesday and what ever I do, eat! I know anyone else would claim they would kill to be at my weight, but I lost it all too quickly. I can pull up my shirt and count ribs. I have skin saggage that would put Roseanne Barr to shame. My entire abdomen looks like a shrunken balloon; wrinkled and deflated. But my primary care physician wants me to lose more weight.
I will admit: I was never a runway model. I will never be one. I don’t want to be one, and I never aspired to be one. I wanted to be healthy and happy, and able-bodied. Is that really too much to ask for?
Vox.com is closing at the end of the month. I’ve had a Vox account since 2006, acquired from Jess’ account. Somehow, he got a code from them many moons ago, and invited me after a few hours of me begging. Digging through that old account really depressed me. It had entries from when Jess died. When Chris died. Pictures of my first trip to the cemetery to visit my sister’s grave. When my labrador of ten years died from being hit by a car. Acceptance into BioMedicine. Cruel, mean comments from Roxanna. Reading through that stuff really made me cry. My past is not a good past, but it’s my past, nevertheless.
I got a free Typepad account out of this, but as soon as I pay for my old account, I may be using my account there again. Publicly, that is. It’s cheaper than a domain name, by about $2, and I’m all about the saving money these days.
Today your host has taken on a boyish look. Purely unintentional, of course.
I spent the few hours I had to myself running from store to store to make another love pack for a friend. I wasn’t even tempted to stop at the liquor store. Oh, and no, it wasn’t my husband’s empty threats that made that decision for me.
About five years ago, I had a serious drinking problem. On the evening Chloe was born, I staggered from the hospital bed, holding my fresh cesarean together, high on morphine, and went outside the San Francisco hospital, met up with my friend Robbie, and we split drinks of Jack Daniels and Coke. The Coke made the whiskey much more tolerant. I had never had whiskey before, but that night started a binge drinking that lasted for six months. I was in a horrible place, mentally, having been raped just twenty one days before the binging started, and no one believed me. Women who aren’t virgins can’t be raped. Men you have previously had consensual sex with cannot rape you. Pregnant women aren’t sexually desirable, so they cannot be raped. I fear that doctor is still practicing in the state of Louisiana.
Today, I had my first bottle of whiskey-Jack Daniels-since November of 2005. I drank it straight. I even bought a small bottle of Coke, poured the Coke out and filled the bottle with whiskey. Then just drank it. Straight whiskey. It made my liver recoil in horror. At this point, I didn’t care. I was in almost the same place I was in when I started drinking before: Something awful had happened to me, and I needed something to compensate. Ease the pain. I hadn’t been raped, not today, but something inside of me just told me it was a bad idea to go get Chloe from school. I don’t know why that was.
My insurance has been pushed back another week. They have been showing their ass since my dentist wrote a statement that I needed nearly $10,000 worth of work done on my teeth; whether he can save them or not. My insurance company is waiting to see if I pay for all of this out of my own pockets. They keep pushing the date back further and further. None of my kids have medical insurance because of this. In the long run, I felt like a failure. I felt like I have failed myself and my children. The sad part is they all look up to me so much. I am their hero. I am the one they all want to be like when they grow up. A morphine addicted, raging alcoholic? That’s a good role model there!
While I was out, I wandered to a bowling alley. Which was interesting because I’d never saw it before. I crashed inside, watching the bowlers, taking huge swigs from my coke bottle, making trips to the bathroom to refill it. No one questioned me. Until a woman made a gutter ball, and I commented, “Good thing that landed in the gutter! It was so slow it was going backwards!” She spun around with a silly grin on her face and offered me a ball. “Can you do better?” she asked. “I could do better drunk!” I replied, finished the last of the Jack Daniels in the bottle (I had guzzled the entire bottle of whiskey in about five to ten minutes), took the ball from her, swung it at the lanes, and some how it skipped over a few lanes, pushed another ball out of the way, and made a strike. Five lanes away. “How’s that for a good bowler?” I asked. The woman and the other people on her team actually cheered for me! I finished the game with them, scoring three strikes (once I figured out what lane we were supposed to be playing in), and on the way home, I fell asleep. I woke up in my own bed, wearing some weird saddle shoes that weren’t mine.
My husband had the day off, and he was pissed that I did not bring Chloe home. It was about 7pm, and the school called and told him no one had been there to pick her up.We’re going to have to talk, so I ave to sign off. Yep, before 11pm.
See everyone in the morning
Alcohol: the cause of and blissful solution to all of my problems. I hadn’t had whiskey in over 5 years. How I missed this!
Jamie aka: The being known as Wonder Girl, 30, mother of four, wife to one, she is a senior biomedicine student who is learning to fit in in the world around her. After nearly three decades on this planet, she still doesn't know where she belongs. Best friend of Matt, sarcastic, spoiled, apathetic, kutie brat, babe. Just your average woman, living in a not-so-average world, surviving by her incredible super power of being able to see right through you while
accomplishing more tasks than you ever thought imaginable. She is the being known as Wonder Girl and she is speaking, I believe. More? Aren't you brave!
