Number 30

Well--I made it. 30 posts. And some of them were damn good, if I do say so. And, naturally, some of them were phone-ins.

But, I think this has accomplished what I had hoped it would--I remembered that I do have many things to say. Sometimes, they may be planned, and sometimes they won't be. There is value to both.

However, I am currently springing a migraine, and given the embarrassing number of times I have vomited thus far in November [for various reasons, and I consider >1 to be an embarrassing number...], I am going to take my ass to bed.

A Rest

"A change is better than a rest."

I read this some time ago, on another blog--and for a long time, it was my mantra. I waited--not so patiently--for a change. Any sort of change. Different classes, different apartment. Different type of degree. Anything that was a new pace or a new focus. Anything.

But now, I am thinking that there is no rest like...well, rest. I don't know how we do it--all, or any of us. How do we keep going, stay motivated? How do you prevent exhaustion or burnout? How do you stay engaged or involved? How do you continue to grow and not get static? Or how do you push forward, when you are bored or frustrated?

And what do you do when you are tired? Tired with no promise of rest? What do you do, when you've been going for years and years--it seems--without stopping? How do you get out of a cycle of exhaustion?

A rest, my friends. All I want is a fucking rest.

Currently Obsessed With...

Lima bean salad.

If my mom were to read that, I think she'd do a double-take. I love almost all vegetables, but I have led a lifelong crusade against lima beans and their dopplegangers, butter beans. I had seriously never met a lima bean I could tolerate.

Which is unfortunate, generally, because lima beans are one of the few vegetables Joey has always loved.

So, a few weeks ago, we were trying a pizza place downtown that I had read about. It's a nice little place, which focuses on small-plate appetizers and brick oven pizza. They also fulfilled another of our dining requirements, which was to find a place in town that serves a killer tiramisu.

One of the appetizers mentioned by name in the review I had read was a lima bean salad, so Joey wanted to get that. And it came in a bowl, cold and marinated in vinegar and lemon juice, mixed with the occasional small piece of celery.

And goddamn, if it wasn't three kinds of amazing. The kind of amazing where you think about it a few days later, and suddenly you are craving something that cravings aren't usually made of [since my cravings are usually composed of chocolate, pizza, and chocolate...].

So, we went again tonight, and it's just as amazing as I remembered. If not, honestly, more. Again, I can't stop thinking it--and I am vowing to recreate it in my kitchen.

I'll keep you updated, internets.

En Fuego

My favorite family Thanksgiving tradition is, without a doubt, our Friday bonfire. And it was so delightful, it almost completely wiped the memory of the $82 speeding ticket I got en route.

The First Thanksgiving

If you looked at the components from a distance, it wouldn't look like the best of days.

1. Today, the 26th, started early--1 AM, when I woke up and puked for the next two hours. In between runs to the bathroom, I laid at the foot of the bed, in the fetal position and tried to figure out what was wrong. I ruled out the two glasses of wine. I ruled out overeating [because, well, I hadn't--and because that is usually alleviated by one round of yakking]. I ruled out everything eaten after 3 PM, because Joey had eating the same. And settled on the Thai lunch I had eaten almost exactly 12 hours earlier.

Joey would wake up every half hour or so and reach over and rub my back. I watched countless episodes of the CBS Early Morning Show and finally went back to sleep.

2. My day was--to my distaste--overscheduled. This happens when you're in a serious relationship. Everyone wants you to eat with them, and you are just supposed to keep eating and eating. Lunch was scheduled, an hour away, at 12:30. Dinner scheduled in our hometown at 5. So, I went and ate a leisurely lunch, and found myself with dessert at 2:45. And knew I would pay for it later.

3. We didn't leave until around 3:30--good time to make it home. But we were riding in Jim's car, which has a radiator leak [apparently]. My dad had topped off the water at home and sent us with two jugs of water. And on the way home, the car started smelling hot and we realized my mom had been watching the oil gauge instead of the temperature gauge.

Seriously? We asked ourselves.

How is it that we know how to service our own cars and Mama doesn't?

4. By the time we'd gotten all the water in, it was established that I would be late to eat dinner at Joey's. So I sent them a text saying to go ahead and eat. And when I finally got there, I ate too. I was so. goddamn. full. Joey's mom looked up at me and said, "You look miserable." And I kind of felt miserable. I certainly hate this culture of "You have to eat everything you possibly can on one day to make everyone feel ok." I didn't even eat dessert--that is how miserably full I was.

But after dinner, Joey and I lounged back in recliners for about an hour, because we didn't want to spend the entire ride home full and sick-feeling.

He was originally supposed to drive home, but he felt full and sleepy, and he has to work tomorrow at 5 AM--so I took the wheel. And thankfully, he didn't fall asleep until about 80 miles from home, so I had plenty of time to be entertained.

I've been reminded this Thanksgiving that living together is learning how to compromise. It's learning how to suspend what you really want [to NOT have to drive home] for what someone else needs [to be in the passenger seat]. Or going to two different Thanksgiving lunches when you'd rather be together.

I used to be really selfish about these types of things. I'd pout or whine or complain when I didn't get my way, would say to myself "This means he doesn't respect me." But over the past three years, I've gotten much better. I am constantly reminded that love must be a two-way street. That sometimes, respect looks much more like helping each other out. Much less like getting my way.

So this is our First Thanksgiving together, the first year that we had to work around work schedules and lab schedules. The first year when Thanksgiving wasn't just five free days to lounge around and do nothing. The first Thanksgiving that we had to work together to make things happen, and were rewarded by a long and winding car trip home, where we held hands and sang Crocodile Rock.

The first Thanksgiving where we are completely us.

I Cannot Break Bread With You

Without a doubt, this is my favorite Thanksgiving video.

An Open Letter To Boys Who Are Friends With Girls

Dear boys--

You know I love you. Yes, all of you. I love you because you are crude and crass, because you love dick jokes and drinking beer [all of the things that I love]. I love you because you let me be "one of the guys" and because you let me shoot straight.

But there is something you need to know.

Each and every time you criticize a woman's body, you criticize my body. Let's face it, I'm not Victoria's Secret model. I have genuine curves. No matter what you call it--I am thick, voluptuous, plump, zaftig, fat. I am also smart and funny, vivacious and interesting.

But when you criticize a woman's body, you relegate me to that first list. When you call a woman who is smaller than me "fat," then you are calling me--to my face, no less--fat as well.

Seriously, can you not see me here? It's been so hard for me to maintain anything above a shitty self-esteem. But I've done it, because I know that I have those second list qualities. Because there is at least one boy who find me sexy--who loves my ass and my tits, everything between and above.

But when you say that you don't care how a woman acts or how smart she is, when you say you only care how "hot" it is, then you are working hard to damage me. You are telling me that it doesn't matter how hard I've worked to achieve my goals. That it will never matter how funny I am, or that I can wipe your ass with Guitar Hero. That as long as I have a pants size in the double digits, I don't count for anything.

And goddamn it, when you climb all over yourself to invite someone "hot" that I have openly expressed distaste for to our weekly evening events--then it means that you don't care about my opinions. So, also--thanks for that.

So, dearest boys--I love you. But think about the girls sitting to your left or right when you say these things. Seriously, I promise--we're listening. And your words are stabbing wounds into us, no matter how much you want to think they're not.

Home for the Holidaze

I hate to admit it, but I'm feeling underwhelmed about Thanksgiving. I'm not completely sure why--I think it's a bunch of smaller reasons cobbled into one big reason.

Like that I feel chronically exhausted, and I am worried that Thanksgiving Break will not be very break-ish. [which is at least partially my fault and I should really learn my lesson, don't you think?] I want to see my family [both sides] and I want to spend some time with Joey's family, and I want to do the things we did in Thanksgivings past.

But I think the problem is that this isn't like Thanksgivings past. It's the first year that Joey and I don't have classes and an "official" Thanksgiving break. Our break is simply whatever both of us can manage to take off. And that adds to the stress of it, the fact that it's not much of a break for him.

There is also always the looming heaviness of certain Thanksgivings in the past. This time of year carries the silent threat of mania and crazy--I don't know why, if it's just all the holiday mess matched with the inconsistent weather, if it's the general stress of this time of the school year. There's the pain, the sudden specific memories of moments that arise for the first time in months. Things that you haven't thought of in so long. And then suddenly, your muscles remember that you once took off a ring [that you'd kill to wear again] and placed it between you like a threat.

Or your text message goes off, and your breath shoots up inside you, your lungs remembering the panic of your beating heart, remembering how your brain shot off fireworks to trigger your manic smile.

And although you've vowed to never again wield a ring and the promise of love as a weapon, although it's now and not then and things are different and better and beautiful--you worry.

I worry that the holidays will never be perfect and bright ever again. That even the movement of our hands to grasp each other will not be able to 100% overcome the shadow. That I'll never sit down for Thanksgiving lunch, not ever again, without thinking--if only for 1 second--about the way things were.

That, I think, is it.

***

Which reminds me:

The problem of the accumulating detritus of quotidian memories had not yet begun to distress him, although it was tiresome to remember every day of one's life, every conversation, every bad dream, every cigarette. There were times when he hoped for forgetfulness as a condemned man hopes for mercy.
-Salman Rushdie, from Shalimar the Clown

There's a Tattoo of Your Name Across My Soul

[remember that one time I said 'no more weekend warrior-ing'? i lied. am attempting to decide if i at all am considering growing up. survey says no?

these are the nights you fight to remember, the ones that are all hazy memories between the booze and the windy night air. you pick through the images in your head and on your phone, like a detective you reconstruct your happiness and the tilt of your crooked smile.

you watch as your friend and your boyfriend, tongues set in determination between their teeth, carve out the hieroglyphics of your initials on the bar table with their keys.

in the end, you'll ask yourself if the fogginess of the memories makes these nights more or less real. and are there a finite number of these nights, counting down ominously in the shadows of your impending adulthood?

or do you care?

in any case, it's a shame that Rob didn't get in on any of those pictures...but don't worry. he's there, just behind the camera]

Craving

This is weird, but for the past few days, I've really wanted a cigarette. Not just any cigarette. A clove cigarette. In fact, I want to go downtown and sit on Rob's porch, and smoke a clove cigarette.

I don't know what it is, the stress or just something else. It's not any sort of typical "cigarette" craving, the kind we see on commercials or in movies. I don't smoke, really, very often. Almost never. In my life, I've smoked cigarettes maybe [maybe] three times.

But there's something about it that I can't figure out--I've been craving the stillness of it, the fact that for a few minutes everything stops. And the sweet taste at the end of the filter, the leftover Christmas taste that cloves leave in your mouth.

In any case, it doesn't matter. Because cloves are now banned in the US, and they are no longer sold in stores. I could buy them online, but they sell them in cartons. Which would last me until the end of time, at my rate.

But it's weird--I want one. I can't stop thinking about it. But unlike my other cravings, this one can't be satisfied by the taste. And it's frustrating.

When Trying To Be Helpful Goes Wrong

"I saw a snake the other day. It was a small snake, at the back of the complex. On a gray box near some bushes. I guess what I'm trying to say is, it wasn't close to me. But it looked like it might be a coral snake."

"You know how to tell the difference, right?"

"What?"

"Between a king snake and a coral snake?"

"No. I'm going to treat every snake like a coral snake, so it doesn't matter."

"No, you need to know. There's a mnemonic. You need to know it just in case."

"I don't need to know...I am just going to treat..."

"Red on black, friend of Jack......ermm....black on yellow, poisonous fellow. Wait, no. Red on black friend of Jack. Red on yellow, poisonous fellow. Yeah. That's it. I think...yeah, that's it."

"I'm just going to treat every snake like a coral snake."

But We Can't Talk About It Now

I'm pretty sure I've mentioned this before, but I have seasonal tastes in music. The music I listen to in the spring [Funeral by The Arcade Fire] isn't the same as the summer [Red of Tooth and Nail by Murder by Death] or the winter [April by Vast, DECEMBERUNDERGROUND by AFI]. It's not that I don't listen to those albums other times in the year [I do], but they stick out more at those times of year. I'm much more likely to grasp for them, to play them over and over in loops.

I can't really say what it is about them that makes them seasonal--it has a lot to do with the general gestalt of the sound, the instruments and the beat, the lyrics. But also, I think, I associate each album with the season in which they first came to me, the season that wound around me as I fell, deeply, in love with each individual song.

It's November, of course, but our weather here has been described as "schizophrenic." Alternately rainy and balmy with bright and cool. Mild. Probably best described as mild.

The last few days have been positively brilliant for rolling down the windows of my car and listening to my autumn music. Here, this season, there are three albums:

1. Fleet Foxes by Fleet Foxes

I "discovered" Fleet Foxes last autumn, at the beginning of the school year. It became the easy backdrop for the last few months of 2008--winding around me in the car or as I made dinner. The sound was immediately drawing, a mix of the indie sound I love and the CSNY sound of the music my parents raised me on. I'm just waiting for the day I can go see these guys live.

My favorite songs on the album are, well, all of them. But I particularly like:

White Winter Hymnal

Tiger Mountain Peasant Song [as covered here by "First Aid Kit"]

He Doesn't Know Why

2. Kid A by Radiohead

Yes, I know, everyone and his mother started listening to Radiohead years ago. But last autumn, they fell into my hands for the first time.

Idioteque

3. Transatlanticism by Death Cab for Cutie

Not the first songs I'd ever heard by Death Cab, but definitely my favorite. Autumn 2005 for 10/11 of the songs. A beautiful album, and almost perfect.

Lightness

Tiny Vessels

Then, in 2006--late in the year, when I was spinning and off. I discovered that one of the dangers of chronically pirating music is sometimes losing pieces of albums, that one single song that could bring everything home.

We Looked Like Giants

***

I think, honestly, that my autumn music is the most beautiful music in my cd case. It represents a depth and reflects the stark change that autumn can be. Music so deep and beautiful it hurts sometimes.

I know that the videos are jumbled--a mix of true videos, live performances and fan mixes. But I chose them for specific reasons--because they show the range of experiences these songs can reflect. And show a little bit of what they can mean to each person--even the people who wrote them.

Sometimes, in someone redoubling a song you've heard one hundred times, you find something new in it. And that can be just as enlightening as the first time you sat--in the car or in the dark--smiling or sobbing because of the way the song made you feel.

The Occasionally Unbearable Heaviness of Being

Three years ago, I wrote:

"There were razor blades stuck in between the shelves above her desk, and her blue veins had never shown so brightly against the white of her wrist."

Because there were razor blades in the shelves above my desk. Because there are razor blades in the shelves above my desk. They're all over the lab--stuck into crevices and sitting on ledges. A whole box of them in a drawer--individually wrapped in paper, shiny and sharp.

I use them, almost every day. I use them to cut packaging, to open up my sterilized filter pipette tips, to trim off clean lines of cortex from the kidneys of rats. Every day, I make a choice to pull one off the shelf, to use it, to put it back or throw it away into a sharps container. Every day, I have choice.

***

Every time I go to see him, the Android asks me if I have suicidal thoughts.

You'd think I would get used to it, people asking me if I want to kill myself. It's par for the course when you're in treatment for a mood disorder.

If asked if I ever thought about killing myself, I have to answer yes. But yes gets no relief--you have to elaborate. My first two years of medical treatment have taught me what they're looking for.

Plan. "What ways would you kill yourself?" Hanging, I might reply. Bridge jumping. Cutting.

Means. "Could you get the things that would allow you to kill yourself?" Ropes aren't that hard to find. I say. You can buy them anyway--the hardware store, Wal-Mart. Fuck, I could probably find one somewhere. And there are endless numbers of bridges here. And razors. There are razors stuck in the shelves of our lab.

***

I'm missing the third part. I'm missing the intent, the real desire.

But I haven't been to the Android lately. And when I do, I wonder what I'll say when he asks.

I wonder, every day--will I mention that one moment, when I was crossing the street on that bad bad week. I wonder if I'll tell him that a car almost came into the crosswalk, and for two seconds, I couldn't stop.

That instead of the normal "You better cut it out, asshole," that flashes in my head when someone goes too fast, I thought, please hit me.

I don't wish for death. I don't now, and I never really have. But I have wished for physical pain, for physical harm--I don't know why. I don't know if I expect it to give an outlet for the mental pain I sometimes have. Or if I expect it to make me slow down. Or if I expect it would be easier for people to relate, because people understand physical pain.

Or if it's just the memory of what a relief it can be, when you hurt inside and you accidentally slip a knife, and you are bleeding and sobbing, choking--but then, eventually it's over and you feel so much better.

***

I've never been a cutter. I've never physically harmed myself. But the idea is seductive, sometimes. You get the feeling, sometimes, that it's not as far from you as you think it is. That all it would take is a bad day, a bad week. Someone saying the wrong thing. And it's scary, because it would be so goddamned easy, to be inconsolable and to take the plunge, to sink that shiny blade into my upper arm or thigh, the fleshy skin of my hip.

***

I don't tell people these things. I don't talk about it. I don't want for people to think I'm some fleshy bag of emotions, liable to crack at the slightest affront. Even the people who are there to help, even the Android or the people who care for and love me. Even those who would want to be there, who would want to help.

So I delve into books, savor and search them. I pull out fragments of them, embed the words into my head. To pull out when I need them.

Some days, Donald Barthelme whispers in my ear:

"And they said, is death that which gives meaning to life?

And I said no, life is that which gives meaning to life."

And yes, yes--I know. The Android is my psychiatrist, not Donald Barthelme. And maybe one shouldn't always take existential advice on the meaning of things from writers.

But if it makes me stop in my tracks for three minutes. If it pushes me past razor blades, safely through a crosswalk and into the evening, then it can't be that bad.

And writers and literature may always be my solace. But it's something. Even on the worst days, it's something.

Mid-NaBloPoMo Writer's Block and Exhaustion

My last few days as a "mitochondriac" have made me seriously exhausted. I am not at all cut out for these long days and evenings.

It's been truly fantastic--I've gotten the opportunity to meet such fantastic scientists and I've been so impressed. Some of the speakers are people who I've cited in different papers. It's so weird, like meeting a favorite author or a politician.

Perhaps even more than that, though, I've enjoyed spending more time interacting and getting to know the other people in the department. Much more than ever before, I really feel like I'm a part of something, like I fit in.

So, yes--exhausted. But strangely fulfilled too.

Meet Me At The Bar

I am fully exhausted from a 14 hour day at a conference being hosted by my department. The meeting site is a forty-five minute drive from my house and--although, I am thankfully carpooling with our post-doc--it's a long drive. To be there at 7:30 AM, we had to leave at 6:45; we left at 9:10, getting me home at 10-ish. So, I'm tired.

But, here are ten of my favorite things about scientific conferences:

10. The unmitigated dorkiness that goes on. Today, I met someone else who loves the Nobel prizes as much as me--it was so exciting!

9. The chance to meet and speak with the "rock stars" of your field.

8. When someone who is presenting simply answers a question with, "Oh yes--we answered that question in 1977. You should read our papers!"

7. When two people have discovered the same things twice in the past two years. And as one walks back to his seat, the other simply yells: "We should speak more often!"

6. How much more palatable data--good, bad or otherwise--becomes when you have a beer in your hand.

5. The sudden insights you have into your own work, when you start writing ideas frantically in your notebook.

4. The pained look on a moderator's face when the presenter is 10 minutes over and people are squirming in their chairs with impatience.

3. Watching a seasoned presenter give a talk and answer questions--seriously, it's so goddamned beautiful.

2. When arguments break out in the questions portion of the last presentation of the night, when it's 10:00 PM and 97% of the people in the room just want to go home...

1. And when those arguments are resolved by the presenter's flourished wave of the hand as he yells, "Just meet me at the bar!"

Linguistics Minutes

One of my favorite quotes:

Emotions, in my experience, aren't covered by single words. I don't believe in "sadness," "joy," or "regret." Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feeling. I'd like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic train-car constructions like, say, "the happiness that attends disaster." Or: "the disappointments of sleeping with one's fantasy." I'd like to show how "intimations of mortality brought on by aging family members" connects with the "hatred of mirrors that begins in middle age." I'd like to have a word for "the sadness inspired by failing restaurants" as well as for "the excitement of getting a room with a minibar."
[Jeffrey Eugenides, from Middlesex ]

I think about this quote often, actually--when I feel any of the emotions Eugenides describes, yes, but also when I experience others that I think belong on the list.

Like, the amusement inherent in the arguments of two scientists at the same conference.

The clean smile you give to someone who truly understands you.

The exhaustion that comes from pretending you are something you are not.

The mortification that proceeds the realization you've been talking from your ass.

The frustration that arises when someone continues to ruin your speculative conversations with a smart phone and a data plan.

That feeling when you turn over in the night and someone places his hand on your side.

The first breath after 5 PM on a Friday.

The sudden sad knowledge that nothing will ever be this way again, that knowledge that comes at the end of things.

Because It's Only Fair...

Usually, when I'm done with the bucket of liquid nitrogen I use to snap freeze my tissue sections, I pour the excess into our cell culture freezer. It's a decent way to reduce waste and costs, because--

1) the excess I need to submerge the sections is used &

2) they don't have to pull more to put in cell culture

See, people! Green science.

However, when I come in on a Saturday--all bets are off. If I'm here on my weekend, then I sure as shit get to play like I want to. And since I have a partner in crime...

The Assault on Memory

My head is like Communist Russia--the words and pictures all shifting to fit my liking.

Sometimes, to stop the hurt, I pretend that we never happened. That we never clicked into place. I tell myself that I always knew that it was temporary. I tell myself that I was always pretending--that I knew they wouldn't be there for my wedding, to meet my new friends here, to hold my children.

I rearrange my memories--I take out all the smiles and the laughter. But I do a bad job--those memories that I try to trade out for others, they hold cached pieces of themselves.

By the time it ended, I had to concede that college was not the best four years of my life. Not even close. But it is seductive to pretend that there was nothing there. Seductive, but untrue.

I pretend that we didn't touch, that we weren't close. I pretend that we didn't know each other's ins and outs, that we didn't know how to frustrate each other or how to console each other.

The memories are dark...

and fuzzy...

and so fucking painful. If you pretend they aren't there, sometimes they're not as painful. Sometimes.

I think, though, that the scariest thing these memories bring is the fact that it could happen again. I do everything I can to ensure that it doesn't. And my friends (both new and old-ish)--we're on a slope, picking up speed. Every day, there's something new that falls into place. Whether it's a blog entry that provides a new insight, a spill of laughter that brings tears. Even if it's just me talking, him nodding until I discover something about myself in the mirror of his face. Or a note left on my computer when I've left the lab.

The scariest thing about the turnover of memories is worrying that I'll have to do it again, someday.

But I don't want to. I don't want to edit, or re-haul. I don't want to make things up. Most of all, I don't want to pretend that these moments don't happen.

They do:

They do:

They do:

Meta

"Oh, you didn't have to turn the living room lights off."

"Why?"

"I have to go write a blog."

"Well, now you don't have to," he says as he snuggles into me.

And well, internets--it's been a long day, and suddenly cold, and continually rainy. Surely you understand....

Me, Elsewhere

[But not where you'd expect...]

Almost exactly a year ago [seriously--11/14 of last year], I was contacted by a woman who was working with the authors of a book about blogs. She told me that they wanted to use a picture of mine in the book--and I was excited. But I didn't tell anyone, mostly because I was afraid it would fall through and nothing would come out of it.

But I gave permission, talked to the woman. I mentioned that the picture in question was very special to me, because it was the only picture of Joey and me taken in the in-between, the two and a half months between the night he broke our engagement and the day I hit my head on his bunk bed and he changed his facebook status to "In a Relationship."

She liked the picture, liked the story. A few months later, she told me that the authors had decided to add a blurb about some of the pictures. She asked if I would write one.

So I did.

And the book was made, my picture went into it, and the blurb was placed to accompany it.

And now, it's real. And is coming out soon. And I'm excited, proud to be part of something this beautiful.

And knowing that this phrase may show up in their data mining, I suppose I can say: it's true. I do, in fact, feel fine.

Edit:

If you're interested, here are some pages from the book:

I Long To Touch Your Genius Hands

In the kitchen, my hands become my mother's.

It sounds unusual, I know--but somewhere in there, they transform. I pull off the ring [my mother's mother's] on my right hand and reach, over the sink, to put it on the ledge. And there--if you squint--are my mother's rings too, on the ledge of the window in the kitchen of my childhood home.

They are most hers when I am preparing pans for baking--I remember the first time they transformed. I read the recipe, it told me to grease the pans for baking, to flour them. So, instinctively--without pausing--I pulled off one square of paper towel, swiped it into a stick of shortening and wound it around the edges of the metal pan. Then sprinkled in a palm full of flour and upended the pan, shaking and turning until everything was coated. Just like that--my hands, my mother's.

But when I'm sifting flour--something my mother never does--my hands are my grandmother's. My sifter isn't nearly as old as hers; it still have that new appliance sheen and I am young yet. But I tap the sides to break up the last clumps. My grandmother's hand, mine.

Pouring liquid from bottle to bottle, shaking it back and forth to dissolve chemicals--writing structures and equations, my hands are my father's. Not quite yet as bitten up by acids and bases [maybe I'm more careful, maybe I'm lucky, maybe I'm just young], but his.

And curled around pipettes, holding them still and being proud. Proud that I'm not shaking, that I never shake when I hold them. These are Ryan's hands--passed down when he took out his marker and wrote my name on pieces of lab tape, when he wrapped them around the plastic and handed them to me. The pieces of tape that outlasted him, the weirdest sweetest last will and testament. His hands, my hands, our pipettes.

Yes, most of the time, they are mine--writing, typing, driving. Drawing them up to the edge of Joey's face or clenching them into a fist and sending them into the ribs or sternum of whichever boy is vexing me. All night, in the morning--they are mine. But sometimes, sometimes. Sometimes, something else.

A floating spar to men that sink and rise and sink and rise and sink again

I saw this on a friend's blog, and I immediately had to do it--

The trick is this: I will tell you my favorite poem [which is, in fact, a lie--I will tell you my favorite six poems]. If so inspired, you may add your favorite poems in the comments, and I'll add them here.

Mine:

For John, Who Begs Me To Not Enquire Further by Anne Sexton

it may not always be so by e.e. cummings

Homage to My Hips by Lucille Clifton

It Was Raining in Deflt by Peter Gizzi

Sex Without Love by Sharon Olds

Love Is Not All by Edna St. Vincent Millay

On My Brief Stint as a Weekend Warrior

Bleary-eyed, this morning at lunch with Joe, I looked up and said, "I really don't think I can do this weekend warrior shit anymore."

Seriously, here's to you, frat boys and binge-drinking college students. God bless you, but it's a hard damn life. Unbelievably fun, it turns out, but liable to wear you the fuck out.

Maybe I'm just getting old, I think to myself, at the ripe old age of 24, as I finally extricate myself from my "sleeping" place on the couch and retreat to the kitchen table to write my grocery list. I can't sleep well on the couch because, well, a million reasons. Like: the metal in my back makes it uncomfortable, or because I've never been too good sleeping sitting up. Or because I can't stop thinking about aquaporins and research. Because I can never stop thinking about research.

Joe points out that I can't be a real weekend warrior, because weekend warrior's don't have weekend responsibilities. They don't have to go to the lab to make buffers or run PCR or do extractions--that is, they don't have to be functional on the weekend. I, on the other hand, do have weekend responsibilities: lab stuff, sure, but also cooking and cleaning, running errands. My apartment does not, as it turns out, organize itself. And if I don't get groceries, then two people don't eat. And so on.

I don't really have that much of a desire to be a weekend warrior, anyway--it just turns out that I have a lot of friends here now, in a lot of different circumstances. And for a lot of us, it just makes sense to do things on the weekend. But doing one thing often spins out of control, until I have planned myself to the hilt. Enter hung-over mexican food lunch at 11 AM. Enter Rocky Horror Picture show at midnight. Enter going and going and going until I collapse, exhausted, at the end of the day.

It makes for some incredibly fun weekends, filled out with tequila and laughter and sitting with my back up against the arm of the couch, turned sideways with my feet tucked in under me, bent forward and talking about something--politics, history, medicine--as the long hours wind by.

But next weekend, I think I'm just going to stay home. I may be boring, but at least I'll be rested.

They Push and Shove and Won't Bend To Your Will

So, this week in lab--not the best. The semi-boss had his bitchpants back on today and that was, well, something. I didn't cry--not even close--but it was still frustrating. He frustrates me. Frustrates me.

But then, this afternoon, I got to see a Nobel laureate speak. He was so entirely down to earth and said so many truly beautiful things.

Like how science brings together people of all nationalities, politics and belief systems.

How important it is, in science, to be lucky. We don't all get to be lucky all the time, of course. But we do almost all get to be lucky some time.

And that we should celebrate the victories in science, because they don't come that often. Because we struggle against hardships and strain so much for what sometimes seems so little. But the small victories--they count. And they should make us happy. And proud.

His was the type of talk that can fall across the "hokey" line so quickly in the hands of the wrong person. But watching him speak, I knew that what he was saying wasn't hokey, if only for one reason--that he believed every word of it.

At the end, he put up the Mandarin characters that mean "crisis." Two characters. One means "a time of disaster." Every day, he said, is a day of crisis in our careers. A day of disaster, a day to struggle. The other character, "a time of opportunity." There's a lot of that too, I know.

But goddamn, sometimes it's nice to be reminded.

But Then Again...

One of the best things about grad school is that it keeps me in close contact with people my age--and pits us against an antagonist. The result? Friends!

I was worried, honestly, about returning to the lab. Since I started there so long ago, all of my friends from the lab had graduated and gone on to other jobs. I knew almost noone there--and I was worried that I wouldn't make any friends. That my job would be miserable without people to laugh and talk smack with me.

I shouldn't have worried--quickly, I made new friends. Fast friends. Awesome friends. And it didn't stop with my lab--I made new friends in classes, and our Tuesday Night Trivia Team just keeps getting bigger.

Today, I was talking to Peter, who is the new tech in one of the labs that shares our work space. He was around a few summers ago, so I was familiar with him. He formally introduced himself soon after getting here, and we've talked for at least a few minutes each day. He had apparently heard some of us discussing our weekend plans, because he slipped in, "You know, I've never seen Rocky Horror Picture Show."

"Oh, neither have I!" I exclaimed. "We're going this weekend--you and your wife should totally come!"

He laughed and said he would have, but he's having family in town. I told him that it's a monthly event, and that we'll surely be going next month. And I think we'll be inviting him in the future to come to trivia.

I know it's scary to move to a new place, and it's scary to leave a situation with such good friends and to enter into a new one. But, the lab makes it so much easier--the close contact will either break you [which it has, with relations with some people] or draw you in.

Usually, thankfully, more of the latter.

Flux

Both the wonderful thing and the terrible thing about research is how mutable it is--not just month to month, but from day to day. For example, I had my week planned out on paper--which experiments would be on which days, what I was going to do.

Then, today, I went upstairs to get the data from a run I did yesterday and couldn't turn on the computer. Then, I realized that the laptop from the computer had been unplugged and the battery ran out halfway through my experiment. Which shut down the computer. Which shut down my experiment.

The thing is, it wasn't really anyone's fault. The instrument is in another lab, one that is getting increasingly cramped for space [and one which has to endure the incessant noise of a PCR instrument they rarely use...]. There is limited outlet space, so someone had unplugged the laptop to plug in another tool, before I went upstairs to use it. Then I came up, turned on the computer and started the run without noticing the plug--because it's never been unplugged before and I've never had any reason too.

But in losing this one experiment, I lost resources--plenty of mastermix, some template that is quickly running out. More than two hours of my time.

And it pushed my day back, pushed my week back--I went in expected to stay for 8 hours today and ended up staying 10. And still had to move back an experiment I'd originally planned for today. Possibly to Saturday.

So--this is research. Full of incredible rewards--beautiful runs of experiments that spit out data with perfect R-squared values, two hits on a drug screen with a similar structure and the promise of finding new molecules, closing up an open abdomen on a lab mouse without messing up. But full, as well, with endless frustrations--experiments that don't work, bosses who think you're going to slow, and a degree that depends on the number of results you get.

You'd have to be crazy to go into it, I guess. But, then again, crazy is kind of what I do.

If You Hear Him Coming, Won't You Sing For Me

[Part One Here]

Part Two:

The next day was actual Halloween, and I spent a decent amount of time preparing for my second costume. Which is probably one of my lamer costumes ever--but also one of my most fun.

Janet, my lab twin, has a questionable taste in television, trending to the Disney channel and various shows starring models. Since becoming inseparable in lab, we discussed several team costumes, and finally made a choice:

We decided to be Hannah Montana and her best friend Lilly/alterego Lola. Yes, many of our items of clothing are from the Miley Cyrus line at WalMart [and, in fact, my entire outfit--except the shoes--came from the junior section of WalMart].

Pretty spectacular, if I do say so myself--we debuted these costumes at our lab mate Nicole's Halloween party, and enjoyed an hour or so of sangria and food. And I discovered that spray-in hair dye is a bad bad idea, because--by the time I was ready for our next event--my hair was already matted into a hot pink mess...

Part Three:

The last part was the part I'd been waiting for the longest. For the past two years, our second test of the fall semester fell directly after Halloween, preventing me from going downtown and celebrating in style. This year, Charlie and Garrett knew they had the nights and next days off, and Joey, Rob and Adam were spending their first year here, so we all made plans to go downtown.

We assembled at Rob's house to pre-game--drank beer and rum and vodka, played Circle of Death until we were sufficiently tipsy to go out and walk miles of sidewalk. We suited up in our costumes--Rob was a Mormon missionary; Joey, a YouTube video; Adam, poseidon; Charlie, Token [from South Park]; Garrett, a banana king--and I reprised my internet spam costume, with pink [matted...] hair and tights left from my Lola costume.

We walked, literally, miles before we finally found a bar with a sufficiently short line to even attempt getting in--but getting there was enjoyable, all of us switching up walking partners. I would turn to see Charlie talking to Rob, Joey to Adam, but then would

watch as we slowly shifted spaces--back and forth, natural and laughing. There were tons of college kids out, most dressed in pretty impressive homemade costumes. We complimented and were complimented--laughed and were laughed at. We even found some people dressed in the same costumes as Rob, and they insisted that pictures be taken:

When we finally reached a bar with a short line, half of our party made it upstairs before I realized I didn't have my ID. Rendering me unable to get into any--ANY--bar. We had to call our friends who were already upstairs, and make them come back down. I felt so awful--I was worried I'd ruined everyone's Halloween! But all of the boys were extremely gracious [although Charlie had already bought me a beer, before he knew I couldn't make it up there--what an incredible boy!], and they didn't make me feel crappy about being negligent. Instead, we continued to wander around and finally decided to go to our favorite pizza place [which also serves beer--so not all was lost]. On our way, we watched a kid try to jump a VW bug [quite unsuccessfully, I would say, as he ended up cracking his knee on the windshield and hobbling away]. And Adam and I found this incredible graffiti mural of a very angry ocean, and decided it was perfect backdrop for his costume:

So we ate pizza and drank beer, and we watched the clock as it went from 1:30 to 1:45 to 1:59 and then to 1 again--celebrated [or bemoaned] the changing of the time, and went home.

But I think my favorite part of all of Halloween was the aftermath, after we got home with sore feet, the hair at the napes of our neck dripping with sweat. We all poured ourselves another drink, Joey and Rob went and smoked, and we sat around on the couch, sinking into each other and watching TV. Everything was still and it was much later than we should have been up. But we just kept going--kept watching, kept talking. Kept laughing, with pink hair and tired eyes, until eventually--one by one--we all retired. Until Charlie and I--hours after Joey had passed out--cut off the 4 AM TNT Law and Order, took our places on the couch and ottoman, and drifted off.

It was, genuinely, a perfect Halloween.

And In the Night, We'll Wish This Never Ends

Or Halloween in Three Parts--

Part One:

Good stories are supposed to start in the middle of things, but at the beginning is one fact--the last time I dressed up, earnestly, for Halloween, I was 17. Patched-up fairy wings and an old wrap-around tutu, both stolen from the Drama Club costume closet, worn with bare feet around school in the summer and finally, to a party. The last Halloween party I'd been to, also, 17. A good night, certainly--but what seems like a million years ago. A lifetime, certainly.

Joey couldn't go to the party--it was his friend's birthday--but several friends wanted me to go. So Charlie picked me up [because he had to be at work the next day and didn't want to drink heavily--and because I'd had a rough week and did want to drink heavily] and we went.

I was dressed as internet spam [Sharpie-coated white t-shirt and old jeans, scribblings of spam messages I found on the internet]--with messages about tits over my tits, messages about cock enhancement over my crotch, messages about weightloss supplements over my gigantic ass. Somewhere, floating in space, there's a singular picture of me from this night--smiling and gesturing, boldly, at my crotch.

Because most of the members of this house are, in fact, gay--and given 30 Rock's ever-timely weigh-in on the matter, I've called the event [in all fairness] Gay Halloween. And it was a blast. Charlie kept a drink in my hand [steering me, ever so friendly, toward a state he described as "party tipsy"], some of our good friends were there, and I got to meet some lovely new ones. The costumes were especially clever--including a small girl who told me her friend had dressed her as a "tiny geisha," a fellow MD/PhD student who was dressed as the Don't Ask Don't Tell policy ["So, I thought to myself, who's the biggest tranny who wears hooker boots to work?"], and a man dressed in a pair of dark trousers, a button-up shirt, a bike helmet and a backpack, an immediately identifiable Mormon missionary.

We put dry ice stolen from someone's lab in our drinks and danced in line for the bathroom and knew all the words to "Party in the USA." And at the end of the night, Charlie silently offered out his arm, escorted me down the steps and took me to Taco Bell. Could anyone ask for anything more?

Parts Two and Three tomorrow, because:

A) There are still 28 days left in November

B) Those parts include pictures and my computer is being an uncooperative ass.

C) This is going to be terribly long if I keep going.

In the meantime, I have a new post up at Real Mental--please go check it out!

NaBloPoMo: The Start

After my yearlong hiatus, I was very excited to be getting back into blogging. There had been days in the hiatus when I missed it so bad, when things hurt or when I was excited. Or when I simply had words and nowhere to put them. When something beautiful happened. When something ugly happened.

But, during the year, I also strengthened my memory-making capacities. With no digital crutch to relay them, I had to hold on to them, to take their details out one by one and etch them into the gyri of my brain.

And when I got back, some of the satisfaction in writing those stories, in transcribing those details--some of it had washed away. But I always wanted to get that feeling back, the rush that comes with finding the right words and knowing that they're here to pick over. And I've achieved it, here, since then--once or twice, at least.

But I want to get back to a habit of at least semi-daily posting, and I remembered how I trained myself into it the first time: NaBloPoMo. Before I had done it the first time, it was so easy to look at my day, my week, and say that nothing notable had happened. But NaBloPoMo helped [forced?] me to pick out the details in a mundane week, to set them here in their own orbit. So I thought it would help again.

I'm going to try to do it without posting videos and songs and links, and the like--if only because I have a place for those things now. But I may slip in the cooking post [it's a much bigger part of my life now], and I might try to put in pieces of things I've written in the past year [not much, honestly, but I want to get back into writing seriously, now that the first two years of this program are over]. May. Might.

In any case, I already have some post ideas in my head, and I will definitely be writing about my Halloween adventures tomorrow. This was my first "adult" Halloween, the first year I've been able to go downtown on Halloween since I moved here. It was (spoiler alert) incredible. But more about that then...