Down by the water, down by the old main drag

Images of a weekend in Norfolk

Chrysler Museum

Huber Court where we didn't get to have our prom thanks to some "poor choices" from previous classes...

Spring is here! Ish.

I didn't grow up in this house but now that I've lived there, everywhere else seems so landlocked.

Now, Minky the Monkey Face:

And finally, doesn't everyone do laundry in a room next to a 10foot tall potted plant?

Updates.

Someone noticed my haircut at work!!! (ok, technically she just said it looked nice, but I know what she really meant was, it looks nice now that it's been trimmed.) Navel-gazing officially all for nothing.

In other news, while the chair is no longer solely penguin-baby territory, it still spends most of its time looking like this:

Thank goodness I find a daily dose of cuteness just as important as a comfy place to sit.


Hope all is well!

Is everything a metaphor?

Yes, if you're me.

I got my hair cut today. Woohoo. I am, to no one's surprise, weird about my hair. In general, I like it. I like that it's thick, and naturally a pretty color (at least in my opinion), and despite the anti-texture wars we fought in the 90's, I actually have learned to like the curl. It may not do the mythical perfect ringlet thing, but it has personality. And I like the fact that I can wear it curly or straight(ish) depending on my mood.

As a girl, your hair is such a THING. Unless you are very chill or completely un-self-conscious, your hair is a gigantic part of your self-image. It's probably cultural conditioning, you know, a sign of the oppression of females or some other argument that I could pull out of my ass while blindfolded thanks to 4 years of Bryn Mawr, but for whatever reason, it's so integral to how you see yourself. Going bald? Devastating--and not at all because you are superficial.

So it makes sense that how I feel about my hair is closely tied to my self-esteem. I forget to get my hair cut and after a bit it just gets shaggy. The layers grow out, the ends start to fray, and suddenly it is impossible to style to my satisfaction. I straighten it because I can't even stand how it looks curly, but even that just emphasizes the shag; it feels flat, and dull. When this is the case, all day I am distracted by the flyaways or the bumps, and I walk around with my chin lowered a bit, self-image thrown by the disheveled mess on top of my head. So I try to wait it out a week because I know I'm being ridiculous, but eventually I cave. I pay my $35 and head to my stylist, tell her I want an inch or two off, and watch her work her magic. Avoila, I am transformed! Magically, the curls re-bounce, my head seems to weigh about 5 pounds less, and I can look at a mirror without automatically going "grrr, stupid hair!"

(If you want to know what I feel my hair looks like at this stage, go to google images and type in "Gene Wilder Young Frankenstein.)

Today,as I mentioned, was haircut day. I was talking to my coworker before and I told her that it was so funny because I get so bothered about my hair when it needs a trim, but no one ever notices that I've gotten it cut. It just curls up and no one can tell that it is curling half an inch shorter or that my head is five pounds lighter or so on. I get sooo obsessive about it, but no one else can tell! This is metaphor number one: basically, that you can drive yourself crazy over things no one else cares about. The things we are self-conscious about are so rarely what other people notice.

Anyway, my coworker laughed and asked me what I wanted to do with it. I said I was just getting a trim. Wah wah. I realized that I have been getting the same haircut for almost a decade. Long, with long-layers. I haven't dyed it since college (a depressingly long time ago). I had the following convo with my stylist.

Me: "Hi."
Her: "Hey! We just doing a trim?"
Me (embarrassed a bit at my predictability): "Well, yeah. I don't know though, I'm kind of bored."
Her (sounding excited): "Oh, you want to lose some length?" (aka, please give me something entertaining to do!)
Me: "I don't think I can. I HAVE to pull my hair back, and when it's short I feel like a dandelion puff."
Her (face back into sad normal expression): "Oh, ok. So about an inch off then?"

So Metaphor Number Two: I get stuck in ruts more easily than trucks on a mud road.

It takes me a while to find a stylist. If you cut my hair wrong, I look like a mushroom. So I spend some time to find a person who can do my one style in a good way, and once I find them, I stick with them. I am the serial monogamist of hair.

Is that bad, I asked myself as she snip snip snipped. I mean, I believe in commitment. I'm too neurotic for anything but monogamy. And I know what I like, and what works for me, and I stick to it. Isn't that the secret to contentment???

On the other hand, if I hear myself say, "About an inch, with those layers around my face," one more time, I might have to scream. Not a good idea when someone is holding open scissors centimeters from my head.

And it's even more appropriate as a metaphor for my life. I've liked a lot of the places I've lived and the things I've done, but every time and place I start to get the feeling, "this is all so the same." I am a creature of habit, but the habits creep up on me, and crowd me in with their uniformity, and I start to get bored. Up to now, I've always made big changes. In college when I felt the boredom of Bryn Mawr, I didn't take a course at UPenn, I went to London. After two years of DC began to feel a little limiting, I didn't explore hobbies: I moved to Boston and changed careers. For someone who clings so closely to people, things, and routines, I am apparently very reliant on the "big change." We are all very lucky I didn't walk out of the hair salon with a platinum blonde mohawk.

Again, nothing necessarily wrong with that. But it's not the most sustainable action plan, especially at this point in my life where I think about wanting to settle down and have a family. A mohawk is no one's friend. And by relying on the big change, I end up leaving behind a lot of stuff that I do care about. Not something I take lightly.

So once again a simple daily routine becomes cause for deep navel-gazing and life-philosophy. I guess the answer is to learn how to make little changes. (either that or marry Rafael NAdal and spend my time touring the globe for tennis tournaments. Not a bad option). Learning how to adjust my life just enough to keep myself interested rather than relying on dramatic moves seems like a good hallmark of maturity, so I guess I will work on that.

Or maybe I'll just get some subtle highlights. :)

Random Thoughts.

--Dancing with the Stars last night was awesome!!!! Kirstie Alley was soo good! I hope I can move like that when I am 60 and shaped like a potato---and isn't she good proof that you can be shaped like a potato and gorgeous??

--My car is destroying itself piece by piece. I know it's narcissistic (and crazy) to think my car is falling apart to get away from me, but I kind of do, and it hurts my feelings.

--I don't have my glasses tonight, since they are being fitted with new lenses by the eye doctor. Not being able to see isn't bothering me quite as much as I thought it would. Maybe the world should always be just a bit fuzzy?

--In movies the heroine sitting strategically covered in the bathtub always takes a deep breath and dips her head entirely under the water and looks up, creating artistic, dramatic, symbolic point-of-view shots--think Black Swan. This is stupid. In real life, your bath water is filled with bubbles or soap and that lovely concept of "body filth", who wants to open your eyes when that can rush in? And in real life, water gets in your ears. Kind of ruins the artistry. All in all, not a good idea. Stop endorsing this, actresses/directors!

Finally, been in a Regina Spektor lyric kind of mood:

Fidelity:
i never loved nobody fully
always one foot on the ground
and by protecting my heart truly
i got lost in the sounds
i hear in my mind all of these voices
i hear in my mind all of these words
i hear in my mind all of this music
and it breaks my heart....
suppose i never ever met you
suppose we never fell in love
suppose i never ever let you kiss me so sweet and so so-o-o-o-oft
suppose i never ever saw you
suppose you'd never ever called
suppose i kept on singing love songs
just to break my own fall......
all my friends say that of course it's gonna get better
gonna get better
better (x7)

Eet:
It's like forgetting the words to your favorite song.
You can't believe it; you were always singing along.
It was so easy and the words so sweet.
You can't remember; you try to feel the beat.

Bee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-
Eet eet eet.
Ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-
Eet eet eet.

You spend half of your life trying to fall behind.
You're using your headphones to drown out your mind.
It was so easy and the words so sweet.
You can't remember; you try to move your feet.

Ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-
Eet eet eet.
Ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-
Eet eet eet.



Off to bed. Yes, at 8:45. So excited it's not funny!!!

xoxo

S*** Happens.

Today is March 20. Five years ago on this date, one of my best friends from high school killed herself.

Today, on March 20, across the world thousands of people are dead, dying, and/or dealing with the death of their worlds in Japan, Libya, and all of those places where what I would consider unimaginable is in fact commonplace.

Intellectually, the human condition is fascinating to me. The urge to survive is perhaps the most primal instinct we have, but we are creatures of emotional and psychological as well as biological drives. Everyone has a breaking point, a moment where we simply cannot take any more—any more sadness, any more struggle, any more adversity, any more pain. There are as many ways to deal with that breaking point as there are causes for it. Finding a higher plane within yourself so that your consciousness can rise above and allow you to carry on in a rational, fairly emotionally healthy life. On the opposite end, “shutting off” everything but the will to persevere and survive and simply keep going, one foot in front of the other, until a resolution of some sort appears or is made. Or the choice is made to stop going. To let that point break you.

How is one path the answer for one person, and another the answer for their neighbor? What makes one person with ostensibly the best-case scenario in terms of haves vs have-nots choose the last path I mentioned? And what makes a person with no home, health, or hope for the future able to keep going? Certainly there are tangible factors; religion, cultural experience and expectations, and mental health come to mind. But in the end, it is a mystery. I don’t care to explore it much, intellectually or emotionally. I believe that we can never truly know a person, or understand their perspective. At work we just did a quick online class about pain management. The feeling of pain, the class said, is something only the patient can know. As practitioners, we need to respect the patients’ experience of pain, even if they are smiling as they tell you they are in agony, because they, and only they, can be the experts on their pain. We cannot judge their pain, and as hard as it is, especially for me, we can’t ever judge people for what path they choose to take when their pain overwhelms them.

I hold no illusions that this blog is “going to change the world” or that the few people who read it want to hear my deepest metaphysical thoughts, so I won’t go on too long. I know I touch on some heavy things with my thoughts on work, but I tend to approach it through humor more than anything else. We need to laugh. But there are some things that aren’t funny. An earthquake and tsunami are not funny. Suicide is not funny. It hurts my heart to hear of all the suffering occurring every moment all over the globe. And I wish every day that my friend had not found her breaking point. I loved her, and I miss her. And without going too much into cheesiness, I can only hope for less pain for everyone out there, no matter how they define it.

Happier thoughts tomorrow, pinkie swear ☺.

Back in the Saddle

I haven’t written any this week because I’ve been stuck squarely in the “BLARGH.” Prep yourselves for the overshare: the BLARGH is the portion of my monthly hormonal cycle (probably not the portion you’re thinking, but anyway) where I feel pudgy, irrationally grumpy, and overly weepy. It lasts about a week and I spend it wandering around muttering bitterly, making and eating immense amounts of chocolate chip cookies (which is really an effective way to deal with the relentless “I’m so chubby!!!” feelings—NOT), and doing things like crying at a radio SPCA commercial (true story—all those little animals!!!). I know men bemoan the fact that they have to live with women when they’re hormonal, but let’s be honest, living IN the body that is hormonal is ten times more annoying. Men can just walk away. We’re trapped. If men had BLARGH weeks, the world would have ended a long time ago, with the men necessary for procreation ripping out their ovaries with frustration at the first sign of BLARGH and dying of blood loss. These are the kind of mental images I have when I’m in the BLARGH. And no one wants to read my musings when I’m so kooky and cynical.

But I’m feeling better. I can look at a cookie and say, “away, demon!” I don’t scream curses at clock when it’s not the time I want it to be. And I still have musings. So let’s go.

Something really moving happened yesterday. H, one of my former patients, came for a visit. H is a little lady in her eighties who had a massive stroke. She was at our facility almost a year ago, and was one of my first patients to be so impaired. I remember vividly going in for my eval, attempting to sit her on the side of the bed, and having her fall immediately to her left. I was like, “holy crap, now what?!?” Not only did H lose all motion in her left leg and arm, she was what we call a “pusher,” someone whose body loses its sense of midline and compensates by “pushing” itself forcefully to the weaker side. As you can imagine, this is a huge challenge to overcome—how do you ever find your balance when your brain and body FEEL balanced when in fact you are literally falling over? For me, it was a huge learning experience: I learned a lot about therapeutic priorities (work on sitting up before finger movement, you goof), transferring and body mechanics (how do you move a 160 pound woman who can’t help and will actually be pushing AGAINST you?), and neuro-recovery in general.

Even if her treatment hadn’t been so seminal in my development as a therapist, I would remember H. She could be wickedly funny. She called one of the nursing techs The Yankee and told jokes that managed to be both ladylike and very dirty. She was also extremely emotional; one day we had to delay her session because she had started writing her own obituary and upset herself to the point that she was hysterically crying. She had a “gentleman friend” (“we’re too old for him to be a boy”) named J who was amazingly devoted. He would come to see her every morning and be waiting for her in the dining room so that everyday when she came out for breakfast she’d see him and have a reason to smile. She stayed in the facility for almost 3 months, longer than normal because we kept seeing glimmers of hope in her progress and kept finding reasons to keep her and wait for recovery. Unfortunately, she never made the “jump” we all hope for, and left us to go to a skilled nursing facility.

And yesterday she came back to visit.

It was bittersweet, in some ways. She is still in the facility, with no hope of living independently. Her arm is still paralyzed, and has begun to get the characteristic flexor tone of severe strokes, with her muscles tightening so that her fingers are starting to curl into a fist. It is such a pang to the heart, seeing the arm we worked on so diligently every day for two months still hang so limply. There has been no miracle of motor return, and to add insult to injury, J has been struggling too. A hip replacement surgery led to medical complications that nearly killed him, and he had to move into her new nursing facility as well.

But on the other hand, it was amazing. She came specifically so that she and her physical therapist could stand her up and walk her down the hallway, with her therapist supporting her at the waist and H using a hemi walker with her right hand. Her walk is slow and halting, but considering it took her almost the whole two months to stand without support, so steady and wonderful. My friend/fellow therapist and I both may have teared up a bit at that (and no, it wasn’t the BLARGH acting). And she is still so funny. We showed her how nearly every one of the therapists has a picture of her with them on their section of the office wall, including me, and she said we needed to find some new pinup girls. She told us that she and J are actually ROOMMATES at the new facility, and she likes to tell her friends that she’s living in sin with him.

(My coworker: I think God gives you a pass on the sin when you’re 86.
Me: Honestly, though, how much “sin” can a person with hemiplegia and a person with a new hip replacement get into?)

Most importantly, she just looked LOVELY. Her hair had been recently styled and curled, and she had on this fabulous brown velour sweatsuit. This is a woman who I’d helped on and off a bedpan, and who I’d bodily hauled up and down on the side of the bed so we could say she was a one-person assist for ADLs and buy a little more time from the insurance. And she looked so put-together, pretty, and happy. It was heartening, and uplifting, that she was surviving, and actually thriving.

I was tempted to say that seeing her was a nice little summary of what revisiting the past so often feels like. That the joy and fondness, tinged by the pang of regret and sadness, is the perfect example of what “going back” always brings. But that’s cheesy. So I’ll just say it was nice to see her.

In times of BLARGH, it's helpful to do things like yoga to clear your mind and center yourself. Here, the penguin babies demonstrated "Curl Up on the One Thing on the Floor" and the "Upward Facing Cat" poses, two of my favorites.

The Chair.

Yesterday I posted a section that might have offended some of my friends. It's deleted, but if you did read it, I'm sorry if it hurt your feelings. I try so hard to never hurt people, but every so often my words get away from my sense of kindness, and it's damaged more than one of my relationships. I will try to be more thoughtful in the future :)

So. Today's news. I live alone. Ok, that's not the news, that's the setup. But anyway, I live alone. When I moved from Boston I donated or sold most of my limited furniture, so I arrived in my 900 sq foot apartment with a loveseat, an air mattress, detachable Target shelves, and piles and piles of clothes and books. Of course since then I've accumulated: I now own a dining room table, a real mattress, a dresser, and of course, bookshelves. Once I had most of these things, I invited my parents to come see how the place had "come together." They were appropriately proud for approximately two minutes, then my mom said, "Annie, you need a chair."

"Mom, I have the loveseat, and the dining room chairs."

"No, you need something else. You need a chair."

I employed the classic daughter-avoidance techniques, and she was suitably distracted, but every so often the subject would come up. "Have you gotten a chair yet?" After I used up all my excuses, I had to go with the truth. "No, Mom, I actually don't really want one." This was the source of much shock. The fact that I was only one person who rarely entertains? "Uh-huh." The fact that I actually liked the open floor space that made the room feel larger and allowed me to do pilates and yoga without catching my toes on furniture? "Mmm-hmm." I suspected the reasoning was falling on deaf ears, but I wasn't sure until I opened an envelope under the Christmas tree and found a small handwritten gift certificate: "Entitles the owner to receive 1 chair."

"Mom, you got me a chair?"

"Well, I know you like it, but trust me, your living room is just sad."

Uh-huh.

Obviously I am not such a brat that I turn down Christmas presents, especially ones that are so well-meant. And I know who is genetically responsible for my stubbornness, and when I've been out-stubborned. So I conceded her point, and in January we trekked to GreenFront Furniture (it's crazy, y'all, they have about 5 warehouses full of furniture!!!! I've never been so overwhelmed by housing goods, and I used to go to IKEA all the time!) and I picked out a chair. The baby-puke color wasn't my ideal, so we ordered one in a different color, which takes longer to deliver.

It arrived yesterday. It is green and big and it looks comfortable but I wouldn't actually know. I've sat in it once. Not because I am trying to out-stubborn my mother but because from the moment I came home from work yesterday, my chair has looked like this:

Or this:

Or even a few times like this:

See, clearly it is comfortable! Clearly it is the comfiest chair ever and I am the luckiest girl in the world to have a mother who would buy me such a comfy chair! And clearly I am being punished for my ingratitude because clearly this chair is not mine at all. It is theirs, and goshdarnit if they will let my foolish butt ever enjoy the comfiness. I swear they're tapping out:

"You ready?"
"Yep, head on out, I've got it covered."

And I can tell they're ready to fight for it:

So basically this lovely, comfortable chair has become a symbol of my ineptitude at standing my ground. First of all, it's here. Second of all, I can't sit in it. Hopefully they will eventually relent a bit, after all, we've shared a loveseat and a bed peacefully for quite a few months (yes, they sleep in my bed--I like spooning, even if I'm the big spoon and the small spoon is fuzzy!), so I imagine we'll come to an agreement at some point. I would like to move it eventually, since it's blocking the flow, but obviously that will have to wait--would you have the heart to disturb this?

What do people who don't have pets think about?

On My Way Through Stroke I Met a Cupcake, or, Why OT Matters.

Today was a day of bodily functions. I got covered in urine from doing a squat pivot transfer for my poor incontinent lady, and I spent the whole day worrying about poop.

One of my patients recovering from a CVA (stroke) is a lady who is being discharged tomorrow. She goes by the name Cupcake (obviously changed from her real name!) and she has done really well. We have cleared her to walk around the unit without supervision, and her affected right arm has gotten really nice return from the hemiparesis caused by her CVA. The one thing that has continually bothered her is the lack of feeling in that arm. Her brain can still send her hand sensory information (so that she can feel her fingers tingling) but it can’t read the sensory information her hand sends back (so that she can’t feel whether her hand is in cold or hot water). This is not the end of the world, but it is annoying as all get out. Think about it—not being able to tell exactly what your hand is doing unless you are looking at it? The really unfortunate part is that there is no magic cure for this; while we can do things to encourage recovery, either your feelings will come back or they won’t. So, we had talked about this, how it was affecting her life, and I’d offered compensatory strategies to try to make the situation less aggravating. She is a fiercely independent, self-sufficient woman, and had been working very hard to be able to take care of herself again despite her challenges.

This morning, one of the nurses came into our office and asked, “Who is giving Cupcake a shower today?” I told her that I was, as we try to help our patients get dressed their last day of therapy so we can give an accurate depiction of their functional levels on discharge. “Oh good,” she said. “Can you two practice having her wipe herself?”

This is not at all a random thing to ask an occupational therapist (OT). “Toileting,” as we call it, is an essential part of our therapy plan as it’s a key part of regaining your independence. The unique part was that I was being asked this about a patient I thought was already independent in this area. The nurse explained Cupcake’s family was concerned that Cupcake wasn’t able to clean herself after a bowel movement because of her decreased hand function and that this would be a huge problem when she went home. I told the nurse that I knew Cupcake found it challenging to clean herself because of her sensation issues but that there was no physical reason she couldn’t do it. I promised I would talk to her this morning.

Well, long story short, I didn’t get the chance to mention it during our session. Cupcake’s roommate was in the room with us and kept chatting to us the whole time. Between hearing the “handsomeness” of all the male employees debated and the stories from the book this lady planned to write (“once my hand works again”) about rehabilitation called “On My Way Through Stroke I Met a Cupcake,” Cupcake and I were thoroughly distracted and the issue of toileting never came up. Instead, I planned on asking her that afternoon, when we had another session and presumably a little more privacy.

Cut to an hour later when Cupcake’s discharge planner comes practically running into our office and pulls up a chair at my shoulder. “Ann, can you please help Cupcake learn to wipe herself?” she asks, clearly upset. “She’s so upset and embarrassed about it, and her family is so worried. They don’t feel emotionally able to help her with this, and as of right now they’re hiring someone to do it.”

“So they are going to have someone sitting around waiting for her to poop?” I asked in total disbelief.

The answer was yes. I explained to this discharge planner what I had explained to the nurse, that there was no reason Cupcake COULDN’T wipe herself, what I thought the problem was, and what the plan would be: I would review the compensatory strategies with Cupcake and practice them if need be. The discharge planner left, leaving me convinced that I was singlehandedly responsible for this family’s stress over the discharge and Cupcake’s mental anguish over her inability to toilet herself.

Finally I tracked Cupcake down and pulled her aside. Cupcake is a sweet woman (as her name suggests) but she is very private and proud; we have formed a good rapport, but she doesn’t really discuss her feelings or her issues with me voluntarily. I was frankly very nervous to bring up this topic with her, since she is definitely the type to take offense if you cross a boundary. So I tried to be respectful as I asked, “I just wanted to check with you—apparently you have some concerns about cleaning yourself?” I may have used a gesture to indicate what I meant. There can be no shame in toileting discussions.

She gave me a “you must be shrooming” look and said, perfectly calmly, “No, I’m good.”

“You are?” I asked. Or squeaked.

“Sure, girl,” she said. “I had some trouble before, but I figured out that if I use those wet wipes it’s a lot easier for me. It takes a while, but I can do it.”

“So you feel comfortable? You’re not planning on hiring anyone to help you?”

Again with the shrooming look. “No, we’re good.”

We talked about the issue a little bit more so I could cover my bases, but basically the gist was, she had been nervous, but now she felt comfortable, her family felt comfortable, and everything was fine. The stress I’d felt since 6:50 that morning when the nurse came in (there were more elements adding to the stress that I’ve not mentioned because of length, but trust me, there was stress) was eliminated the moment I actually talked to Cupcake—a lesson about procrastination, I guess. Cupcake was feeling good about going home, and the crisis was averted. And I was reminded again why occupational therapy is important.

How much do we take for granted? Especially when it comes to our bodies and the daily routines that depend on them working the way they always have? Think about what happens when you have a hard workout and the next day your quads hurt whenever you move—think how aggravating it is to try to move anyway, to try to sit and stand and walk when your legs curse you with every muscle flex. You can be the most appreciative, thankful person in the world, but do you really appreciate how much your hands do when you do things like go to the bathroom? And Cupcake? A woman who was born with a congenital deformity of her left arm but never applied for disability since it felt like a cop-out, a single mother who worked two jobs so that her infant son would know nothing came for free. One day something in her brain goes “pop” and her whole life—and fiercely independent worldview—is changed. She can’t use her one arm the way she wants, she can’t walk without help, and she can’t clean her buttocks after having a bowel movement, which to her was the most intolerable thing of all. It may seem silly, but try walking around knowing that you can’t keep your butt clean, and tell me that that kind of shit wouldn’t matter to you (pun intended.)

CVAs and other physical ailments affect everything about a person’s life. What I love about occupational therapy is the fact that we care about everything. Yes, we work on the obvious big things like recovering arm function and being able to stand again, but we are also the people who look at the little things (“I can’t tie my shoes”) and acknowledge them as equally important. We sit down with our patients and say, “Ok, what sucks right now, and how do we fix it?” We aren’t magicians, and we aren’t any more important than other medical professionals, but we are trained to care about what our patients care about and thus to fill the gaps that can be found in the recovery process.

It was nice to be reminded of that, and of why I feel good about what I do—most of the time anyway, you know, unless I’m covered in incontinence. And while I hope you never need an OT, I sincerely hope that someday you too can meet a Cupcake.

Nothing Falls Like...

I had a dream about London this morning. The kind of dream where you realize you’re dreaming but don’t want to wake up, so you fight to continue with both your subconscious and conscious until you reach the point you were hoping to find. In this dream, I was traveling in London with my parents, sister, brother-in-law, and their dog, Wally (and no, in real life Wally would never be meant for international travel). At one point in this dream, in the taxi on the way to the airport, my father asked me why I was sad, and I said, “London is the love of my life. I don’t know why, but it is. I love it, and it’s breaking my heart to leave again.”

And I woke up to the sound of rain falling, a noise I have always (happily) associated with my favorite city.

I studied abroad in London for five months my junior year in college. I attended classes at Kings’ College London on the Strand and lived off the Borough Tube Stop, southwest of the Globe Theatre. There’s been a lot of competition, but I still think those five months were the happiest of my life. My dream self wasn’t lying; London is the love of my life. I realize how weird that sounds, so I wanted to explore the idea.

I have always been an Anglophile. Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights are two of my absolutely favorite novels EVER, and I often find myself still clinging to English authors for my pleasure reading, like Zadie Smith, Sarah Waters, Michael Ondaatjie, Iris Murdoch, and so on. I can, given a few minutes to recall, diagram the geneaology of the British kings from Richard II to George I. My dream man has always been a cross between Ralph Fiennes and Colin Firth. All my life I had dreamed of going to London. I knew, somehow, that I would love it. And when I got the opportunity in college, I felt the oddest way: excited, thrilled, and, somehow, CERTAIN that this was going to be amazing.

It was. I mean, on my first full day there, I looked the wrong way, stepped into traffic, and was almost hit by a truck. Seriously. It was a matter of inches. But after that small little snafu, it was amazing. One of my favorite things to do is to put on a pair of headphones, pull up my music mood, and walk in a city. This sprung from my time in London. I’d walk from the Strand to my flat, or from Waterloo to Trafalger Square, or from Oxford Street to the Kings’ College Library, which was in an old church and is maybe the closest structure to my nerdy little booklover’s heaven that I’ve ever seen. I could go for miles, loving the feel of slipping through the crowds like a wily little fish leaping up stream, looking up every few steps to appreciate the lovely three-hundred-years-old stone building standing among the modern offices like it was nothing to be so beautiful and aged and still THERE despite the wars, and stopping every now again to gaze out on the River, with the undulating water and graceful bridges twining across it like branches across the sky, and snap a picture and think I had never seen a view that moved me more. I would spend hours in the 7 story Waterstones book seller, pick out my 2 for 3 special books, hand over a 2 pound coin, marveling again at the weight and color of it, at Starbucks (yes, I went to Starbucks, because back then it was the only coffee shop where patrons were not allowed to smoke), and head with my supplies to Green Park, and sit and read in those mercurial moments of sunshine. And if I had to go to the bathroom, I’d stop in the free National Gallery and spend a moment in the Impressionist wing. Even having to empty my relentless bladder could be part of the magic! I loved my classes, I was able to travel in Europe on the weekends with my friends, and every day I got to walk out into the world of London, with its bustle and flow and endless possibilities. Those five months were one of those rare times when all the factors worked out the way they were supposed to, where all the gears of the daily grind of life fell into place with a smooth little click, and I loved them.

So that is the reason I love London. But there are deeper things going on, things that make the experience and the city loom so large in my psyche that the sound of rain summons me to dream about them a good four years after I last set foot in the United Kingdom. For one thing, I have never been in a relationship where I was in love with him and he was in love with me. None of my relationships have ever gotten that far. I say I am in love with London, but not even I am hippy-dippy enough to suppose London was in love with me. I was allowed to go there, I was allowed to stay and explore and find my happiness, and in the story of my life, where the overwhelming romantic motif is of me wanting to be with people who haven’t wanted to be with me (or vice versa, although that’s much more rare), that was enough to earn my devotion—even though London didn’t have to do anything but to exist. Even more tellingly, I had fantasized about London for years. My fervent little stupid imagination had built up London, had made it be the place I should be for so many years, and raised my hopes so high, and London—and the experience of living there—lived up to my expectations. This dreaming has been a downfall in my romantic life, where as Dodie Smith writes in I Capture the Castle , I should never think of how something will happen because that will guarantee it will never happen at all. But London—being in London—was somewhere where what I thought would happen actually did. No surprise I hold it so dear in the heart my brain so often leads to disappointment.

I can admit that I romanticize the experience; I was only there five months, and clearly the honeymoon never had time to end. Obviously there were things that weren’t so “perfect.” It was expensive and crowded and polluted. Everyone is in a hurry, everyone is very absorbed in themselves and in what they are doing. You can’t buy good old regular chocolate chips in your average Tesco, and Chik-fil-As are nowhere to be seen. All of these are very serious flaws ☺ Even though I always flirt with the idea of moving back, I know I wouldn’t want to live there forever. I love the idea of babies with cute little English accents, but the idea of pushing my clean little infant though the loaded streets of Central London makes me shudder for her lungs. I know that I would get tired of paying so much, and rushing every time I stepped out the door, and I know that the time would come when I wanted to leave, even if just to go out to the suburbs. But I find it hard to believe I would ever stop loving London.

Being there felt right. Being me, exactly as I was, felt right when I was me in London, and that’s not an experience I have had too often. It sounds ridiculous, but when it comes to love, I am waiting for the time when I feel like I felt in London—when it feels right. I have thought I have felt that a few times, and every time it has come to nothing, so London is allowed to retain its title.

And I can’t wait to go back.

Disclaimer and Musings.

I didn't think until today how the title of this blog could be misconstrued. And if you're like, wth are you talking about, please ignore--don't worry about it! And if you know what I'm talking about, sorry to disappoint you if you were looking for porn. Maybe next blog?

Anyway, tonight's thoughts are some random musings on music I keep hearing on the radio.

--Bruno Mars. If he likes you "Just the Way You Are," why does he want you to catch a "Grenade" and blow yourself to bits? If my next relationship's success is dependent on my willingness to commit gruesome suicide in the name of my bf, I think I will stay single. And honestly, who throws a grenade? (yes, that was an Austin Powers shout-out. sue me.)

--Lady Gaga, "Born This Way." LOVE this message. HATE this song. If you're going to write an anthem for a generation, maybe make it less painful and repetitive? Also, for a woman who was proud to be born one way, she spends a lot of time altering herself and her appearance. Just saying.

--Kesha, "We R Who We R." Another graduate of the Jerry Giraffe school of spelling.

--Travie McCoy, "Billionaire." "I want to be a billionaire so freakin' bad." I think knowing proper grammar should be a prerequisite for being a billionaire. Adverbs are your friends. bad-LY. It's BAD-LY, people. It's like nails on a chalkboard.

--Katy Perry, "Firework." I actually like this song. It's on my Cardio mix AND my Dance Dance Revolution Mix. But the message is weird. You're a firework. So your life will be a loud explosion that scares small children and lasts about a second before disappearing into tiny pieces of ash. Um, yay?


I have lots of other songs I have plenty of snark for, but I'll stop for now. Since I'd like to end on a positive note, my latest thing is going through every song on my iTunes list so that they all have a little 1 next to them. OCD? Me? Never :)