Through a Glass, Darkly

Is it wrong for my view of someone to be colored by the things she has done in the past? To me, that’s a fact of life - things that happened in the past shape how we respond in the present. If someone has hurt me in the past, I’m going to be more cautious around her. If she has hurt me repeatedly and never acknowledged it, even after I tried to approach her about it, I’m probably going to think of her (at least in part) as someone hurtful and insensitive, because that’s how she has behaved to me.

Of course, things are more complicated than that, and I know I haven’t done everything right, but I don’t think I was primarily at fault, and I did try to work things out. And I don’t think I’m holding a grudge like I’ve been accused of doing. A grudge, to me, has a lot more bitterness than I currently feel. It’s slanted and you can’t see the person accurately, like a funhouse mirror. Their faults are exaggerated. I have done that in the past with this relationship, but I currently feel like I see things pretty clearly. I don’t think this person is the embodiment of evil, and I am perfectly willing to admit that she has grown and has some perfectly amiable qualities, but my primary interactions with her have been negative, so my primary view of her is that she’s not someone I would care to have a relationship with.

And so she accuses me of not taking into account the ways that she has changed. To that, I say, “Show, don’t tell. I gave you a fair chance to change. I believed in this relationship at one point, but I need to see that things are different.” But I don’t really say that. I don’t say anything. I don’t know what to say, especially since I don’t see that the fundamentals have changed, and the fundamentals rub me the wrong way.

I do still see things through that same lens of hurt, but I think I am finally starting to see with clear eyes.

The wind woke me up last night, and it kept me awake in fear that one of our rocking chairs was going to smash into one of the windows on the front of the house. I had finally woken up enough to realize that I needed to do something about it because I wasn’t going back to sleep without something changing when Mike walked into the room. Now, I knew that he was having trouble falling asleep, and I knew that he would probably go and watch a movie to help him fall asleep, but I didn’t realize he wasn’t there until I heard his feet shuffling. At first, though, I thought it was someone who had broken in. I’m not normally that paranoid, but the wind and ferocious rain combined with shuffling noises coming from the person I thought was in bed with me made me a little jumpy. Mike went down and turned the chairs over, but still I couldn’t sleep.

Tuesdays are usually my mornings off, but I had to go in an hour early today. I wanted to get up when Mike did, but I was so tired and the weather was so gray. I did manage to get out of bed at a reasonable time, but I didn’t get everything done that I had wanted. Everything I needed to do took much longer than I had expected: I tried on the three pairs of black pantyhose that I own to find that each had a big hole ripped in them. I pressed some pants to wear instead of the skirt. I didn’t like the pants with the shirt I planned to wear. I went back to the skirt, deciding to wear the pantyhose with boots after all, figuring that no one could see the big hole on my right foot. By the time I was finally dressed and ready to go, I didn’t have the kind of time I had been hoping for. Needless to say, the day was not shaping up quite like I expected.

But book club was this afternoon, and between the cookies and a great discussion of Snow Falling on Cedars, the afternoon has shaped up to be much better than the morning. I hope I can make it until 9pm.

I am not very good at letting people I admire have feet of clay. Maybe it comes from the high expectations I carry for myself, but I know I am too hard on others (as well as on myself). I say that I know that people will let me down, that I will let others down, but when it happens, I don’t handle it as well as I should.

Because of that, I spend too much time waiting for the next bad thing to happen. I set myself and my friends and family up for failure, because I am expecting all of us to let one another down, and I don’t know how to deal with the hurt.

Yesterday at church we talked about waiting, because it was the first Sunday in Advent. We talked about all the different kinds of waiting we do: in traffic, for a phone call to be returned, in a restaurant, and how to wait during the Advent season in more joyful anticipation of Christ’s birth. We talked about the ways we can prepare for Advent. We talked about remembering what it was like to look forward to something when we were small, when it was easier to look forward to things with excitement instead of dread.

For me, in thinking about Advent and waiting, I am trying to remember that the kind of waiting we do in Advent is something to look forward to, not something to be tolerated. And what does Advent mean for my tendency to expect the worst, to be unforgiving, not to allow myself or others to make mistakes? Today it seems to me that what I need to remember is that the miracle of the incarnation can help me there, too, and that I can wait in joyful anticipation for the day when I will finally learn to live outside the hurt that hinders me.

And because of the things we celebrate during this season, I can have hope that I won’t be stuck in this pattern forever.

MIKE: So, what are we having tomorrow?

KARI: Grandma’s making turkey, dressing, butterbeans, corn, and bread. Patricia’s bringing mashed potatoes, Nancy is making strawberry cake, I’m bringing green bean casserole and pumpkin pie, and mom’s bringing salad and maybe some other bread.

MIKE: Hee. Salad. Salad is easy, why didn’t we pick salad?

KARI: I don’t know. Maybe she’s bringing that yucky seven-layer salad. That’s not easy to make, I don’t think.

MIKE: I LOVE THAT SALAD.

KARI: But it has peas. It’s yucky.

MIKE: I don’t care about the peas. It’s so wonderful. Does your mom know you hate her salad?

KARI: Yes. I have been complaining about that salad for many years. She is well aware of my feelings. That’s why she brings it to large family gatherings instead of having it on birthdays.

MIKE: Is your grandma making sweet potato casserole? Like she did a few weeks ago?

KARI: I don’t think so.

MIKE: Is there going to be sweet potato casserole?

KARI: Actually, I’m not sure.

MIKE: WHO IS BRINGING SWEET POTATO CASSEROLE?

KARI: You get really worked up about holiday food.

MIKE: I can’t have Thanksgiving without sweet potato casserole.

KARI: Sure you can, I do it every year. Sweet potatoes are yucky.

MIKE: Woman, who is bringing sweet potato casserole?

KARI: Well, I’m not sure if anyone is.

MIKE: Your mom needs to can the seven-layer salad and bring sweet potato casserole.

KARI: I thought you loved that salad.

MIKE: . . .

KARI: I will go upstairs and check the email . . . Good news, Debbie is bringing that and a pistachio jello thing. I like how we plan Thanksgiving over email now. My family is so modern.

MIKE: Thanksgiving is saved!

KARI: You are very inflexible when it comes to holidays.

MIKE: Is this where I play the guilt trip card that we’re spending both holidays with your family and also it’s been . . . seven years since I saw my parents at Thanksgiving? Because I will. I deserve sweet potatoes.

KARI: I know you do.

MIKE: Your grandma’s sweet potatoes are really good.

KARI: I know they are.

MIKE: With the brown sugar stuff on top . . .

KARI: You do know this holiday is about being thankful and spending time with friends and family, not just the food, right?

MIKE: I am very thankful for sweet potatoes. And to Debbie for bringing them.

KARI: Be sure and tell her that tomorrow.

MIKE: If I do, do you think she’ll make some just for me next year?

KARI: *sigh*

I give in. Christmas trees at work, Christmas music on the radio when I wake up in the mornings, making plans for December, Christmas in all the stores - I was able to resist all of that, but Sunday afternoon I helped decorate the church for Advent, and I finally decided I could give in and get into the spirit. I had so much fun decorating the tree in the fellowship hall with my friends (after we finally figured out how that particular tree needed to be put together), hanging ornaments in the windows, putting greenery and other decorations on windowsills and on the baptistry doors . . . normally I do decorating with my family, so it was nice to decorate the church with some of my family there, too, and get to spend time with people whose names I know but normally don’t spend time with. This year’s theme is “Like a Child,” so a lot of the decorations were old toys and books, and it looked really nice. I love how our church celebrates the holiday, and I am especially excited this year because they got together an Advent devotional by having lots of different people from the church write a reflection based on a few verses and the song we are using as our theme. I really wanted to read what everyone had written, but I’m going to be good and just do one a day. I wrote something, and I’ll post mine when we get a little closer to Christmas, since my day was December 27. Mike wrote one, too, so I’ll make sure he posts his.

To celebrate my acceptance of the Christmas season, Mike put some Christmas music on my iPod, and I’ve been listening to Behold the Lamb. I listened to Christmas music (on my iPod) when I did the Thanksgiving shopping at Wal-Mart, even. So, yeah, I broke my own rule, but I’m still excited about Thanksgiving! Mike and I are even making our own turkey and mashed potatoes and green bean casserole on Friday because he loves leftovers! And that’s the day we’re going to put up our (new pre-lit) tree and our other decorations and maybe even bake Christmas cookies.

I am looking forward to a few days off, seeing Pride and Prejudice again, and making some headway on the Christmas shopping. Normally I don’t like to wish a week away, but this week hasn’t been great so far, so I don’t really mind getting to the vacation part of it.

A lot of the songs I have been listening to are songs that directly relate to last year’s Andrew Peterson concert (which we will not be attending this year). The one that I am loving the most right now is “Manger Throne” by Julie Miller. I listened to it a lot in Wal-Mart last night.

What kind of king would come so small
From glory to a humble stall
That dirty manger is my heart too
I’ll make it a royal throne for You

I used to say that one of my favorite things about Mike was that when we went to the movies, we went to the movies. We got there early for good seats, we bought popcorn and soda. He and I have never gone to the movies a whole lot, but when we did, for something big, we really enjoyed ourselves.

These days, though, our finances are not what they were and ticket prices have gone up, so when we go to the movies, it’s usually a matinee, and we usually don’t buy food. Instead, we have mastered the art of sneaking food into the movies. Of course it’s not hard, of course everyone does it, but it’s still extremely satisfying to eat a homemade sandwich in the movie theater, to pop open your soda just as the lights go down (so everybody hears it), or even, in Mike’s case, to open your hard lemonade. I first learned of the glory of sneaking in food back when I was in college. My family went to the movies very rarely, and we often brought things in, but I remember my dad being more of the, “I am carrying this food in and I don’t care who knows it” type. There was not a whole lot of sneaking. In college, though, I remember meeting my friends at the movie theater and then realizing that everyone had snuck in something different: homemade cookies, twizzlers, chex mix. A veritable feast.

For the past two movies, Mike and I have done a lot of planning, and have used our winter coats to our advantage, as well as my “sneaking food into the movie theater” purse. For Pride and Prejudice, Mike had pistachios and a bottle of water, while I had M&Ms and a Coke Zero. But we stepped it up for Harry Potter: a sandwich for each of us, water for him, Coke Zero for me, and various assorted candies. All of which was cheaper than one bottle of water would have cost at the theater. I’m beginning to think I’ll never go back to my old ways. hehe.

But over the years two questions of mine have evolved which make sense to me.

I ask the boy or girl how work is going: Are you functioning at a better level than usual? Do you find that you are getting more work done in less time? If you are, then I think that you can trust this love. If you find that you can’t work well, that you’re functioning under par, then I think something may be wrong.

A lovely example of this is Josephine: the spring she and Alan were engaged, when she was eighteen and a sophomore at Smith, they found out that they could not possibly be apart more than two weeks at a time; either Alan would go up to Northampton, or Josephine would come down to New York. She knew that she would be getting married ten days after the close of college. And her grades went steadily up.

The other question I ask my “children” is: what about your relations with the rest of the world? It’s all right in the very beginning for you to be the only two people in the world, but after that your ability to love should become greater and greater. If you find that you love lots more people than you ever did before, then I think that you can trust this love. If you find that you need to be exclusive, that you don’t like being around other people, then I think that something may be wrong.

This doesn’t mean that two people who love each other don’t need time alone. Two people in the first glory of new love must have great waves of time in which to discover each other. But there is a kind of exclusiveness in some loves, an kind of inturning, which augurs trouble to come. -Madeleine L’Engle, A Circle of Quiet

Madeleine says that when people come to her with relationship questions, she responds with these two questions of her own. I remember reading it for the first time, thinking how wise it was, and it has stayed with me. When I read it last week, I thought again about it, about how I have some regrets about some of our decisions, but that I think our instincts were right, that we knew we needed people, no matter how things worked out.

And I’ve been thinking lately about the choices that different people make, how I am sure I hurt people in the process of figuring out the balance of my relationship with Mike and my relationships with others, even though I tried my best to let my friends know that I needed them. And how I have been hurt when friends have chosen to drop me for a guy. Of course the balance between protecting a relationship and being overly insular is not always easy to determine. Sometimes I don’t mean to be so insular . . . I just forget to plan things. Mike is often better about keeping us in circulation than I am.

I think the first part is very wise, too - if a relationship is constantly a distraction, if it keeps you from being on task, it’s probably not the most healthy thing. When I read this book for the first time, just before I got married, I was proud to report that in the semester before our wedding, I got all A’s. hehe.

Anyway, that’s just a few thoughts on this chilly afternoon.

So, I’d heard that the recent success of Pride and Prejudice in the UK has meant that Andrew Davies (who adapted Pride and Prejudice for the 1995 miniseries) was commissioned to adapt Sense and Sensibility (into a miniseries, I believe), which made me very happy. But now there’s even bigger news! S&S is not our only new adaptation - there are also plans for new adaptations of Persuasion, Mansfield Park, and Northanger Abbey! Those three should be out in the UK next fall, while S&S is due there in 2007.

The bad news is that I’m going to want to buy DVDs of all of those. Rats.

I spend so much of my day focused on words: email, ordering books, reading, even blogging. And I am usually very aware of what I am feeling and why, usually able to articulate it to those closest to me. But lately I have felt that I am completely at a loss, especially in one situation in particular. The things that have been said to me, well, as Kathleen Kelly said, “My mind goes blank. Then… then I spend all night tossing and turning trying to figure out what I should have said.”

I recently rewatched You’ve Got Mail with commentary, and some of it was familiar, but some wasn’t. So I’m thinking I slept through part of the commentary when I watched it before. Anyway, obviously I had noticed that Kathleen finds her voice, especially in the cafe scene with Joe, but in some of the things they pointed out, I saw how that was more of a theme in the movie than I had realized. How the story is also about one woman learning to speak for herself and to decide what she wants. I’ve been thinking about that, because sometimes (as in the above situation), I let Mike speak for me. And I think there are times for that. But I wonder if I shouldn’t also be learning to speak for myself, even when it’s hard.

In regards to the above situation, thinking about speaking for myself seems really overwhelming. Sometimes I know what I want to say, but I never seem to know what I should say or when I should say it. This isn’t, after all, a bottom-dweller, but someone whose opinion matters to me, even if it shouldn’t matter quite as much as it does. There’s a temptation to go for the jugular, but there’s also a temptation to suck things up and be a people-pleaser. I, who always know what I want to say, can’t find the words to strike the balance between honesty and compassion.

I’ve been praying this poem a lot lately, so I’ll close with it:

I, who live by words, am wordless when
I try my words in prayer. All language turns
To silence. Prayer will take my words and then
Reveal their emptiness. The stilled voice learns
To hold its peace, to listen with the heart
To silence that is joy, is adoration.
The self is shattered, all words torn apart
In this strange patterned time of contemplation
That, in time, breaks time, breaks words, breaks me,
And then, in silence, leaves me healed and mended.
I leave, returned to language, for I see
Through words, even when all words are ended.
I, who live by words, am wordless when
I turn me to the Word to pray. Amen. -Madeleine L’Engle (who else?)

After hearing that Pride and Prejudice was only being released in 30 cities on November 11, I was incredibly disappointed. For some reason, I checked the list again and realized that Charlotte was one of the cities. Charlotte, hmmm? That seemed doable. So I sent Mike a convincing email (read: I begged) and he checked Fandango and, voila! Tickets. I didn’t really tell people we were going, in case it didn’t work out at the last minute. But it did, and we had a lovely time.

Am I embarassed that I drove two hours to see a movie that would be in my city on November 23? Well, kind of. But it was worth it. I really wanted to see it. I’m going to go see it again when it comes here, because I promised quite a few friends that I’d go see it with them. And honestly? I can’t wait to see it again.

Pride and Prejudice, as I have said many times, is my favorite book. The BBC miniseries is my favorite movie-type thing. I knew that this was going to be different, having to be much shorter. So I decided to go in and reserve judgement. About halfway through, I realized that I was sitting there with a big goofy grin on my face, and I thought, “This is different, but I am happy with it.”

So, what were the changes? They played a bit fast and loose with some of the manners and customs of the time. It’s hard to cite particulars, just a sense that things weren’t quite the same social dance that you got from the BBC miniseries: people showing up at houses in the middle of the night, young men and women being alone in places I wasn’t sure they would actually be. A few of the things they said were pretty obviously (at least to me) not Jane Austen, such as one from the trailer: “You have bewitched me body and soul.” hehe. Overall, there were some places where I thought it had a more Brontë feel (Heathcliff and Catherine on the moors) than an Austen feel, so it seemed more overtly romantic in that way. They also moved the time back a bit, to the late 1700s (around when Jane Austen wrote the first draft of the book) so that the costumes and hair would look different than the miniseries, which was probably a good decision. Pretty much any scene that could be outside was (and even some that couldn’t), which led to the first proposal being in a rainstorm instead of the Collins drawing room. That’s the kind of thing I don’t tend to nitpick, because they were using the dialogue, but if you are going in with a critical attitude, it’s probably going to bug.

I had heard that Keira Knightley was “too smiley” or “too giggly,” but I thought she did a great job. Matthew MacFayden is no Colin Firth, but over the course of the movie I thought he convinced me, and the two of them had some good chemistry. My favorite thing, though, was how they took some of the characters and had them say things straight from the text, but gave them a different interpretation than the miniseries. Mrs. Bennet was still blathering away, but there was a lot more love in her motivations. Mr. Bennet was less detached from his family. Mr. Collins (who is hysterical but slightly over the top in the miniseries) was more insecure and socially inept than obsequious. I never thought anything could make me feel sorry for him, but this interpretation did, and did it well. All of them said pretty much the same things they say in the miniseries and the book, but the characters were interpreted more charitably, which I enjoyed a lot. And that’s saying nothing of Jane and Lady Catherine and Bingley, all of whom were excellent.

My favorite added bit had to do with the Netherfield ball, when Mr. Bennet tells Mary to give the other young ladies a chance to exhibit. She then runs off in tears, and a few minutes later, we see him find her and give her a hug. That’s the kind of touch that I enjoyed: Mr. Bennet was allowed to be both sardonic and loving in regards to his family.

Overall, my take was that it was a very good movie and a pretty good adaptation (for taking two hours to do what could take much longer). It was different, but I didn’t get the same disrespect for the text feeling that I got with, say, the 90’s version of Mansfield Park (which was a good movie but a very bad adaptation). I felt they did care about the text and were trying to get the story onscreen, which meant some cuts had to be made. There was some cheese, yes, and I could tell they were trying to get teenagers by making it a little more swoony, but I give it a hearty recommendation.

(Oh, and once you’ve seen it, you’ll understand what I mean when I say that I told Mike he should call me “Mrs. Darcy” more.)

In case you hadn’t heard, Trey is back, but this week he’s kind of busy, so he asked me if I’d post something for him. I had an idea, but I wasn’t thrilled with it for his blog (though it will probably make an appearance here in the next few weeks), so I asked him for suggestions, and he mentioned something Thanksgiving-y. Which reminded me of a Thanksgiving story I’d been meaning to share. Enjoy.

I don’t normally dissect episodes of Gilmore Girls here, but I’m going to discuss some details from last night’s episode because it’s kind of on my mind today. Don’t read below if you are planning on seeing the episode and don’t want to be spoiled.

(more…)

Tonight I just feel like writing. The books I am reading make me want to write, to talk about how much I love them. Mike and I were talking about one of them this evening, and I realized, “I sound like myself! I am talking about the things I deeply believe!” Mike, of course, was familiar with the things I was saying, but it felt good to be saying them again. There are a lot of circumstances that have made me rather reticent about talking about some of my beliefs, so it feels like coming home.

So, what are the books I am reading? Let me explain: After I finished a book on Saturday, I kind of randomly (well, Mike finally reading A Wrinkle in Time may have had something to do with it) picked up A Ring of Endless Light (one of my Top Ten Favorites, so you can see I was doing some comfort reading to get over my surgery) and it was the best reading decision I’ve made in weeks. I haven’t been doing much rereading lately, because one of the perils of working in a library is that you’re always wanting to get to the next book on your list, and it had been too long since I thought about Vicky and Adam and Zachary. Too long since I let myself enter Madeleine’s world. Too long since I thought about “Indwelling”. And I realized that I’m going to have to break down and buy another copy, because mine has literally fallen apart. (See also: My copy of Many Waters.) It’s precious to me because it was a gift from my aunt, who introduced me to Madeleine as soon as she could, but mass-market paperbacks aren’t made to last as many rereadings as I’ve given them. So I’ve decided my new project is going to be updating my worn-out copies of Madeleine’s books, which may also mean updating some of the not-so-worn out copies so that they’ll all match. In the past few years, I’ve started realizing that I care more about my books than I used to, and that’s meant having to get new copies of some old worn-out favorites. (See also: To Kill a Mockingbird and The Beekeeper’s Apprentice.)

When I finished it last night, I picked up A Circle of Quiet, which I’ve been reading today on my breaks. The first time I read the Crosswicks journals was the summer I turned 21, the summer I was getting married. I remember reading the first three Crosswicks journals and the Genesis trilogy in the weeks before the wedding, finishing up in the last week or so. I read them sitting in the big chair that’s now downstairs in our house, taking in the words, cherishing the time. Madeleline has so many wise things to say about marriage . . . I know I couldn’t have spent my time any better. And then that Christmas, Mike gave me A Two-Part Invention, which is about her 40-year marriage. He could not have given me anything more perfect for our first married Christmas together. And I think that I read it then for the first time, and I’ve decided to work my way through the journals up to it again.

So, what’s the point of this? Nothing, really, I just love thinking about how, when I read A Ring of Endless Light, I am not only 26-year-old Kari needing something comforting. I’m also 18-year-old Kari reading it in her dorm room (probably needing something comforting) and 14-year-old Kari reading it in the summer sun and 20-year-old Kari reading it in the basement of the aunt who gave it to her to begin with. And when I read A Circle of Quiet, I’m also the Kari who read it five and a half years ago for the first time, who needed those words then and who also needs them now. The thing that is sad to me about people who never reread books is that books mean different things at different times, and if you don’t reread, you miss out on that. This was the best reading of A Ring of Endless Light that I’ve ever had. And I’ve read it a lot of times.

So this is to be a Madeleine autumn, then, it seems. I’ve already warned Mike, but I don’t think he really minds.

(The title of this post is a quote from A Circle of Quiet that I needed to hear today.)

When we got married, we had some help with the registry, but mostly we had no idea what we were doing. We registered for a lot of kitchen stuff, which is what we needed the most, and not much else. I’ve had recent conversations about wedding registries, and people are so much more scientific about it than I was, so exact. When I was starting off, it pretty much just felt like we were playing house. We got wonderful things, especially kitchen things that we still use every day, and we are so thankful for them, but we didn’t really understand what we needed to run a household.

Because of that, there are still (five years later) some gaping holes in my household, things like towels (I have some, but we really don’t have enough guest towels) and kitchen towels and placemats. Lots of my friends have placemats for every season! I never do that. I never even use placemats. Our good glass pitcher got broken, and it needs to be replaced. We still don’t have curtains. I wish we had more of our china. But I don’t like to spend money on myself, and I see purchases for the house as spending for myself, so I don’t make it a priority. But the lack of guest towels and curtains still makes me feel like I am playing house from time to time. Like I don’t know how to do the girl thing with the decorating and the cute stuff. Like I am embarassing myself without even knowing it.

I go back and forth as to whether this is a contentment issue for me. Sometimes it is: I am jealous of the new brides who know what they are doing, who know what they need to start off. Sometimes it’s not: I open my cabinet and look at my Fiestaware, and even though there are more hip dishes around, I love mine and I am happy with them. I wish I had thought to register for a nicer blender, but I have great knives. I wish I had more china, but . . . I’m only 26. There are plenty of years to get china. We have fun new red chairs and I made an ottoman out of scratch and we have so many things that it’s hard to imagine I could be discontent at all.

I think (I hope) maybe it’s not a contentment issue, at least most of the time. Maybe it’s just time for me to grow up and realize that, when I get some extra money, I need to focus on things like towels and pitchers and placemats. I need to make curtains a priority. That’s probably the only way I’ll ever feel like a genuine grownup.

So, that’s one of my goals over the next year. We made a lot of progress in the house over the summer, and we’ve got green grass now, so I want to focus on smaller things, like curtains and placemats. Things that aren’t necessary, but that a grownup would have.

Before my wisdom tooth surgery this week, a lot of people said, “Have you been storing up, because you are going to lose weight when you can’t eat!” I am here to tell you that that is just a myth. I spent one full day throwing up everything I ate (thank you, evil antibiotic) and I still weigh more than what I did on Monday morning. Now, perhaps that’s because I have been eating different kinds of things than usual (more pasta and potatoes) and not exercising like usual, but, seriously. I don’t want to obsess about weight, but when you are already feeling gross and disgusting because you are swollen and can barely open your mouth and have no feeling on your chin or lower lip, because you don’t feel like reading and barely have the attention span for a sitcom, the last thing you need is to feel bloaty as well. Especially with the holidays coming up. (By the way, November? Really?) This happened to me when I had mono, too - I threw up a ton of times and ended up gaining weight during mono. Who gains weight while they have mono?! Nobody but me.

Today is the first day I have felt even remotely human since getting my wisdom teeth out on Tuesday. This morning I was in more pain than I had been all week, but the painkillers have helped yet again, and I actually managed to put in my contacts. I might even put on a little makeup. If I’m feeling really crazy, I might fix my hair. But if I did that, Mike might not recognize me, so I don’t want to have too much change at once.

When I was in the recovery room, I kept coming in and out of consciousness, and I would think of things that would be good blog entries. I do that normally anyway, jotting down things so I’ll remember them. I wish I’d had a pen to jot down the things that seemed like good ideas in my drug-induced state, because they were probably insane. I bet they were awesome. Apparently, I asked my aunt three times how her book was. I have no idea if I said anything inappropriate to the doctor, but he did compliment my yellow shoes. They’re my lucky shoes, you see, so I wore them to the surgery hoping they would help me out. I think the verdict is still out on whether they worked or not.

I’ve watched a ton of Gilmore Girls, most of Pride and Prejudice, part of Millions, and slept through most of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. Mike brought me a smoothie and a milkshake, I’ve had lots of soup and my favorite comfort food (that I never eat anymore): macaroni and tomatoes. It hasn’t been that bad overall.

I’m going to go try to do a little bit of laundry and then maybe take another nap. But I wanted to reassure everyone that I’m alive and . . . if not kicking, then hobbling, at least.