Ben: The Blog Edition

Bipolar disorder update

2011-03-03T09:07:00.000-06:00

I haven't posted to my blog in over two years, so I have a lot I could talk about. What's on my mind right now is my bipolar disorder and how much it sucks.

I'm either going into another depressive cycle or my new medication is causing me to be tired and down and lack energy. Either way it's bad news, because even if I'm not becoming depressed, if I have to go off of the medication, I will probably become depressed.

I also am having racing thoughts, which is a manic symptom that seems to always go along with my depression for some inexplicable reason. Probably because it is triggered by the medications I take for depression.

The drug that I think is causing the depressive symptoms is an anticholinergic that I'm taking to control the side effects of an atypical antipsychotic that I'm taking. If I have to stop taking the anticholinergic, I'll have to stop taking the atypical antipsychotic, which would be the fourth drug in that class that I had to stop taking because of side effects. I also can't take lithium or any antidepressants because of side effects, so I may be down to just trying anticonvulsants. I'm on one anticonvulsant now, and I already know that it isn't strong enough on its own to battle my depression, so maybe I should try being on two of them.

Sorry for all the technical terms and wordiness, but I'm really frustrated with all this. I see my psychiatrist tomorrow, so maybe she can come up with some new ideas for medications I should try.

The election; also, who is America?

2008-11-09T06:39:00.003-06:00

Well, several victories and several defeats. Obama won, which is a victory for all the world (even those who don't know it yet), T. Walton won the sheriff's race here in Harvey County, and some great projects were funded by taxes and bonds in Lawrence and Wichita. But Proposition 8 was passed in California, and some even worse propositions were passed in other states, including a ban on adoptions by gay couples in Arkansas (but not gay individuals), which surprised me much more than it should have. The only good news is that there is a very real state law issue that can overturn Proposition 8, so our hope doesn't lie only in the Supreme Court, which will remain anti-gay until a conservative justice kicks the bucket. (It can't even be overturned by the rationale in the Amendment 2 case, if I understand it correctly.)

But with all the celebration and the talk of getting the country back, I'm wondering who is America. When Bush lost the popular vote in 2000, and the disputed Electoral College results were so close, I heard a lot of people talking about the will of the people being thwarted. And I understand that the winner should win, but the argument always seemed to imply that America had spoken, and nobody important wanted Bush to win. And when Obama gets 52 or 53 percent of the popular vote, it's a mandate, but when Bush gets 51 percent of the vote, it's some kind of fluke, since everybody knows we all wanted Kerry to win.

Despite how strongly I disagree with those who supported McCain, I can't bring myself to think of them as unworthy voters, the way some folks seem to. But maybe I'm wrong. A friend of mine mentioned yesterday something about how the celebrations when Obama won were nothing like what would have happened if McCain won. There would have been no tears of joy from McCain supporters, only tears of sadness and anger from Obama supporters. Why do Obama supporters show so much emotion -- such irrepressible joy, when McCain supporters would probably have just gone to bed and then gotten up the next morning and taunted Obama supporters with smugness?

Who is America? Is it the people who danced in the streets Tuesday night? Or is it the people who now say the country is going to be ruined by Obama and Congress? I used to think it was both, but now I'm beginning to think it's the former.

An analogy: Who was America in the 1770s? Was it the minority who wanted a new country, or was it the majority who wanted to leave well enough alone? Historical perspective shows us that it was the minority. But what was the difference? Is it that the minority won? Is it that they wanted change for the better while the majority wanted to keep the old ways? Was it simply because they were right?

Another analogy: Isaac Asimov came up with an elegant argument against those creationists and other pseudoscientists who claim that science has been wrong in the past and mistakes in science have been generally accepted before being disproven. His argument is that science improves, and there are degrees of wrong. In other words, "the earth is a sphere" is wrong, but it isn't nearly as wrong as previous ideas, such as "the earth is flat." Both are wrong, but they are wrong to different degrees (and the latter isn't as wrong as you'd think -- you can measure a mile of earth and barely find any curve at all -- it's basically flat). And then scientists started saying that the earth is an oblate spheroid, which is much less wrong than either of the earlier propositions, but is still not quite right.

So the founding fathers, while sexist and racist, were less wrong than those who believed in freedom only for royalty. And maybe McCain supporters are like creationists -- they're crying out that Obama's policies are wrong, and perhaps they aren't perfect, but at least they are progressing, whereas the McCain supporters want to regress to a time when we were even less enlightened than we are today. (Okay, now I realize that that analogy isn't very good.)

Back to the first analogy. Does Obama speak for America because he got a majority of the vote? If so, did Bush speak for America in 2004 because he got the majority of the vote, and were the founding fathers not American because they were in the minority?

Or does Obama speak for America because he's right? If so, who are we to say he's right?

Or is it that he wants to progress while McCain wants to keep the old ways? Is it more American to want to grow and improve all the time? That may be my favorite argument in favor of Obama supporters (and Gore and Kerry supporters) speaking for the country -- they fit the basic principle that America is about looking forward and always improving.

Or is it only possible to know from a historical perspective? The founding fathers won -- America is sovereign. Marshall won -- the Supreme Court is supreme. Lincoln won -- the Union is still together, and slavery is no more. FDR won -- despite some regression, America today looks more like his America than it does America prior to him. It's too soon to tell, but it's starting to look like perhaps Reagan lost. And it's way too soon to tell (especially after 8 years of Bush), but it looks like Clinton won. If Obama's vision for America is in place 50 years from now, he will have defined America at this moment.

But I won't be around then. What's important to me right now is knowing whether I should feel okay thinking that the opinions of the millions who voted for Clinton, Gore, Kerry, and Obama are more important than those who voted for G.H.W. Bush, Dole, G.W. Bush, and McCain. It sounds pretty arrogant when put that way, but I think it's implied by a lot of people when they talk about the last few elections. And I'm starting to believe it myself.

By the way, for those of you who have known the evolution of my political views over the past few years, it's safe to say that I am now a Democrat and what Americans who call themselves "conservative" call "liberal" (that word is so hard to define, but the definition that Rush Limbaugh invented for it seems to have stuck in America, even though no one in the rest of the world recognizes it). That doesn't mean that the World's Smallest Political Quiz would say that I'm a leftist, or that I can stand Michael Moore, or even that I don't wince at a few of the things that Obama says, but I've come to agree with Democrat Party platforms and policies much more than I did even several months ago.

A couple of other things: The polls were right. There was no racial Bradley effect. I predicted a 364-174 Obama win, based on the polls, and the polls were right everywhere except Missouri and Indiana, which swapped their 11 electoral votes. The final total looks like it will be 365-173, barring a surprise in Missouri, but that doesn't mean the polls were wrong in that 365th vote -- the few polls in Nebraska's District 2 showed Obama ahead there, but I ignored those when I made my prediction.

And one other thing, from America's Finest News Source: Black Man Given Nation's Worst Job and Nation Finally Shitty Enough to Make Social Progress.

As you may have guessed, this post rambles because I was using it to think through these issues. Given some time for reflection, I may end up rejecting what I've said here. But who knows. The mind of Ben works in mysterious ways.

Pollster electoral college map

2008-10-06T21:24:00.001-05:00

Election predictions

2008-10-03T08:20:00.002-05:00

My predictions with 4½ weeks to go:

Electoral College
Obama 374
McCain 174

Popular vote
Obama 53%
McCain 44%
Other 3%

You heard it here first.

Putin rearing his head

2008-10-03T08:14:00.003-05:00

Sarah Palin talked about Putin rearing his head in the airspace over Alaska. She was right: recently, U.S. spy satellites took this picture of Alaska.

Presidential race

2008-09-25T06:46:00.002-05:00

A letter to the editor from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram:

How racism works

What if John McCain were a former president of the Harvard Law Review? What if Barack Obama finished fifth from the bottom of his graduating class? What if McCain were still married to the first woman he said “I do” to? What if Obama were the candidate who left his first wife after she no longer measured up to his standards?

What if Michelle Obama were a wife who not only became addicted to pain killers, but acquired them illegally through her charitable organization? What if Cindy McCain graduated from Harvard? What if Obama were a member of the Keating 5? What if McCain were a charismatic, eloquent speaker?

If these questions reflected reality, do you really believe the election numbers would be as close as they are?

This is what racism does. It covers up, rationalizes and minimizes positive qualities in one candidate and emphasizes negative qualities in another when there is a color difference.

— Kelvin LaFond, Fort Worth

The Bechdel Rule

2008-09-09T12:22:00.002-05:00

Twenty-five years ago, in the comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For, Alison Bechdel came up with a simple, insightful test for misogyny in film:

She called it "the rule," and credited it to her friend Liz Wallace. Lately, it has resurfaced in a big way, and it has been called "Bechdel's Rule" or "the Bechdel Test," although Bechdel recently told NPR that she thought it should be called "Ripley's Rule," after Sigorney Weaver's character in Alien, the movie mentioned in the original strip.

Fans of the rule have expanded it a bit, to include written fiction and to prevent certain categories of sexism from falling through the cracks:

Are there two or more female characters
who talk to each other
about something other than men, marriage, or babies?

A quick Google search brings up lots of interesting commentary on the rule, and I highly recommend reading some of it. Like this: "Why film schools teach screenwriters not to pass the Bechdel test."

Unfortunately, I don't have the kind of memory that will allow me to apply this to movies and books I've seen in the past. But I will certainly be on the lookout for it in the future.

Palin for President!

2008-09-08T16:23:00.000-05:00

Excellent!

2008-09-03T11:27:00.002-05:00

If you're coming here to see an excellent blog, today is the day you will not be disappointed, if you'll just click here.

America tomorrow

2008-08-21T09:45:00.004-05:00

Based on the words of Martin Niemöller.

When the government came for the Communists,
     I did not speak out;
     I was not a Communist.

When they came for the gay community,
     I did not speak out;
     I was not gay.

When they came for the Muslims,
     I did not speak out;
     I was not a Muslim.

When they came for me,
     there was no one left
     to speak out.

Ben update, part three: Conklin Cars

2008-08-18T17:19:00.004-05:00

After I quit the After School Program, I went to work in sales at Conklin Cars. I lasted several weeks. I think I sold nine cars before being fired for being terrible at it. Now I'm looking for a job again.

My favorite car I sold was this one.

President Hillary Clinton

2008-08-08T07:06:00.005-05:00

I know next to nothing about politics, and I don't want to learn. I know that makes me an irresponsible citizen, but the problem is that there are no major voices in politics who share my views. I agree with Republicans on a few things, and I agree with Democrats on a few things. But I agree even less with those in the middle. So many of the average "moderate" Americans seem to hold the worst beliefs of both sides -- they seem to wish we lived in a dictatorship. (And don't think I'm a libertarian, either -- those people are as crazy as each of the above.)

Disclaimers aside, I heard some very interesting news yesterday. There is apparently a very strong movement within the Democratic Party to nominate Clinton instead of Obama. I don't understand how it all works, but the people saying it said it's a distinct possibility, given how the balloting system works at the convention.

That got me thinking -- what about a Clinton-Obama ticket with Clinton at the top? That's something everyone was talking about several months ago, but not lately. Wouldn't that almost guarantee 16 years of a Democrat in the White House? And as much as I disagree with Democrats, they are exactly what we need right now: They are currently the party for civil rights, peace, conservation, and liberty.

Unless I'm sorely mistaken about who they are, Clinton and Obama would help secure peace around the world while improving our position internationally. They would ensure proper criminal procedures in any case the U.S. is involved with (imagine basic human rights for "enemy combatants"). They would appoint judges who would uphold the rights of gay Americans as equal citizens. They would stop the official discrimination against gay military personnel. They would reduce carbon emissions while protecting our national parks.

(And if you doubt my contention that moderate Americans are bad, think of how many of them would not support the above: a big chunk of moderate Americans are homophobic, support war, don't care how we treat "bad guys," and doubt anthropomorphic climate change. But maybe I'm just pessimistic.)

I doubt Obama would be as good as Clinton at all of that right now. But he would be excellent at it after 8 years as vice-president.

Now if only the Republicans could win the legislature -- since I have so much disagreement with each party, I'm also a fan of gridlock. But the Democrats are going to have huge majorities in Congress -- perhaps even filibuster-proof. But I know enough about how Americans vote to know that, if a Democrat is in the White House, the 2010 congressional election will be a landslide for Republicans.

Anyway, that's far more than I meant to say about politics, so now we're back to your regularly-scheduled blog.

Ben update, part two: Wu

2008-08-04T18:30:00.000-05:00

Wu has had a rough few months. We competed at the convention I mentioned in my previous post. I fully expected us to finish fourth or fifth out of seventeen quartets, but then two of the best quartets couldn’t make it. So I thought we would finish second or third out of fifteen.

We were going to be the final quartet to sing in the first round. Each quartet sings two songs in the first round on Friday night, then the top ten from the first round sing two more on Saturday night, and the final ranking for the top ten quartets is determined by their total score for the two rounds.

Since we were the final quartet, we watched the first few quartets before leaving to warmup. A few of them were really terrible, and I felt sorry for them and for the audience.

When we sang, I thought we did extremely well. The other guys weren’t so sure, and when we returned to our seats, our friends didn’t want to say how they thought we did. I was pumped up, though, and I fully expected us to take second place.

They don’t release the scores of the top ten after the first round -- they just announce them in random order (on Saturday night, they perform in the random order they were announced in). It’s a nerve-racking experience if you aren’t one of the first five or six announced. I wasn’t really worried, even when they had announced nine of the quartets, because I was sure we were head and shoulders above the competition.

Then our name wasn’t called. My first reaction was that either there had been a mistake, or we had broken some contest rule and been penalized or disqualified. I ran down to the Contest Administrator to get our score sheet. We were fourteenth place. I thought we must have been severely penalized for something.

Penalties are usually assessed in only one category -- the Music category if you break a technical music-theory related rule or Presentation if you do something unbecoming of a family show or have an extra person on stage or something (I don’t think there are any Singing penalties, unless you do something so bad in the Music category that the Singing judge can’t judge it by normal barbershop standards -- like playing an instrument or singing music that isn’t barbershop at all). So you can tell if you’ve been assessed a penalty by looking at your scores and seeing whether one category is far below the others (the categories have so much overlap that the scores are usually very similar).

But they were even across the board -- we averaged in the mid-60s (on a 100-point scale). At our previous competition, we had averaged in the mid-70s. A drop like that is almost impossible to understand -- with our scores the previous year, we would have been second or third, and we thought we had improved. Instead, almost every quartet, including some that sounded terrible, leapfrogged us. If you look across all the quartets that competed in the whole country, instead of just the fifteen who competed that weekend in Iowa, we went from 70th out of 225 last year to 142nd out of 219 this year.

So we were disappointed. And then we had our evaluation sessions with some of the judges. They were different judges than the year before, so they didn’t know our potential. They didn’t tell us what had changed. They just told us a few little things that would have improved our score slightly -- might have made us 10th or 11th place instead of 14th.

Worst of all, when we got a DVD of the performance later that night and watched it, I still couldn’t tell what was wrong. We sounded good to me, and we looked okay. I started to think that maybe I had lost my ability to hear what we should sound like. I got very upset and thought that I might never be able to sing again -- if I had gone from being a good singer who was very critical of himself and others to a mediocre singer who thought he was doing pretty good in less than a year, then my musical ear must have deteriorated very quickly, and would soon be so bad that I wouldn’t be able to hear well enough to sing at all.

After I went home, I pulled out my piano books. It had been a few years since I had studied piano seriously, and I thought some simple sonatinas or some of the easier Bach might bring my ear around.

Then I found my recording of Wu from the previous year’s contest. One of the two songs we sang this year we also sang last year. So I listened to the two recordings, and it was immediately clear what was wrong. Last year, we sounded like an ensemble -- four guys making one sound, while this year, we just sounded like four guys singing the same song at the same time. We had no barbershop sound at all. It’s very difficult to describe in words, but if you heard the two recordings, you’d know what I mean.

One week after contest, we had a big show that we were getting paid a lot of money for. If we had tried to change anything, we would have done even worse, so they basically got the same level of sound that we gave at contest. It was a little better, because we could hear ourselves better and the audience response was great and we knew that we needed to try to sing together better than we had the week before. Also, we got to sing some of our non-contestable music, and some of it has some pretty fun elements that our contest music doesn’t have. And we had some pretty good jokes, and they went over pretty well. So the audience and the people who hired us thought they got their money’s worth, even though I thought they didn’t.

After the show, I really wanted to either switch parts with Matt or Chuck, or quit singing with Wu. I was convinced that I couldn’t sing lead anymore and needed to switch to baritone or tenor. Matt talked me out of it.

Matt and I talk about barbershop almost every day. He calls me several times a week to talk about barbershop, and I call him sometimes, too. We started thinking about what we would do if we were trying to help a quartet like Wu -- if we were barbershop quartet coaches. The first thing I would do would be to have the quartet learn a few very easy, very barbershoppy songs. That way, the group could learn how to develop a very strong barbershop sound that they could then apply to their harder songs.

I also realized that I would tell a quartet like us that all of their problems could be solved by relaxing the voices and singing as naturally as possible. Strangely enough, when four guys try to sound like each other, they have less of an ensemble sound than if each tries to sound just like himself. Since I have kind of a thin, harsh voice, the other guys have to pinch their voices to sound like me.

And we like learning new music, so Matt and I found a bunch of easy songs that are also entertaining that we could try learning.

The first time we rehearsed this easy music at Nick’s house, we had many moments of a world-class barbershop sound. It was extremely inconsistent, but while we had been lacking an ensemble ring on almost every chord before, we started getting that ring regularly. And I started noticing that each time one of us would push our voice a little too much, the rest of us would start to sound bad. It was very strange -- if I pushed my voice, Matt would go out of tune. If Matt pushed his voice, Chuck would go out of tune. When we each sang with a completely free voice, we locked up each chord like crazy.

But then we had a performance at the WSU art museum that didn’t sound nearly as good as our rehearsals. But, instead of getting discouraged, I just stepped back and thought of what I would say if I were a quartet coach. I would say that we sounded much better than we did at contest, and that we needed to keep practicing sounding great, and that we shouldn’t expect every performance (or perhaps any performance) to be as easy as singing in Nick’s living room. And we hadn’t really practiced that music in several weeks! We’ve been having fun singing only new music! So we haven’t had much chance yet to apply the things we’ve learned to our new repertoire.

And then we were not able to have a rehearsal for a few weeks, because Nick was on his honeymoon, and Chuck was in Africa. But now we are back to rehearsing, and we are focusing on music for our next contest (in Cedar Rapids in October), and it sounds great! It is really hard to believe we have come so far in just a few weeks.

And here is a little video from the art museum performance:

Ben update, part one: leaving St. James

2008-07-01T09:00:00.001-05:00

I apologize for neglecting this blog for the past several months. Here’s an overview of the past several months:

I had two part-time jobs from August through December -- half of the time, I was the Communications Manager for St. James Episcopal Church in Wichita, and the other half of the time, I was the Music Director of the St. James After School Program (I used the same office for both). Ten days before the end of December, I was told that the church couldn’t afford to pay me anymore, so I was terminated as of December 31.

So my salary and hours were cut in half. I should have found another part-time job right away, but I’m quite slow and lazy about that sort of thing. By the time I started seriously looking for a job, things looked bad at the After School Program. I was told several times that I was going to be fired because I wasn’t doing my job (I did fine as the Music Director, but they also wanted me to write grants, which I didn’t really do). So I started considering a full-time job, but I wanted to finish out the school year, if they would let me, because I didn’t want to let the kids down.

At the same time, Erin and I were running out of money -- I really needed to be working full-time, preferably before the end of the school year. And then, I was told that I would be let go after the school year ended because the program had run out of money. Unlike the church, which gave me ten days’ notice, the program gave me about six weeks’ notice. So I started seriously looking for a job.

I decided to apply for a job as a car salesman at Conklin Cars in Newton. I was given an interview and hired, but my starting date was unknown, because they had to hire enough people to make a sales training course worth their while. This was about five weeks before the end of the school year, so I hoped I could make it to the end.

After a couple of weeks, I figured I’d be safe, because they’d probably give me two weeks to put in notice. But then, on a Thursday, I got a call from Conklin -- I was to report to work Monday at 9 a.m. I would have said goodbye to the kids on Thursday and Friday, and the program director and I could have discussed whether it would be better to quit the program early (we had already considered doing that so we could save some money and pay her a little longer so she could work to raise enough funds for the next year). But the kids were out of school that Thursday and Friday, and the program director didn’t come in to work. And I’m a coward.

At the time, I was in the St. James Choir. I was in it last year, but then I didn’t rejoin in the fall for two reasons: I didn’t want to have to be at the church 6 days a week, and I didn’t want to go to any church services period. But then one of the greatest choral directors I’ve ever known became the director of the St. James Choir, and I had to join. I love him so much that I also joined his community ensemble at the same time, so I got to see him at least three times a week from January through April.

So I didn’t tell anyone at St. James that I was planning to leave. The choir really needed me that Sunday -- in fact, they were singing a piece that they had specifically put off for a week because I had to miss a week of church for a barbershop convention. So I went to church on Sunday, then, once everyone had left the building, I started to pack up my office.

I had a ton of shit in there. It took me a few hours to put it all in my car, and it barely fit. Once my office was empty, I walked through that beautiful building one last time. Then I took my name off of the mailbox in the office, and off of the slot where we kept our hymnals and choir music. I went up to my office and deleted all my personal files off of the computer. Then I e-mailed the program director. Then I e-mailed the choir director and organist. Then I went to the church’s e-mail system (I used to be the computer guy for the church, too) and deleted my e-mail address, since I wouldn’t be able to get my e-mail.

That’s right, I told my supervisor that I was quitting by e-mail, from an e-mail address that she couldn’t respond to because I deleted it right after I sent the e-mail.

Then I left my church keys on the deacon’s desk and left.

I never heard from the program director. I did hear from the choir director, who told me to be sure to feel welcome at the choir party that was to take place that week. I didn’t want to see any of them again -- I was too ashamed, and I’m too much of a coward -- and I was lucky enough to have an excuse: my quartet had a performance scheduled at the same time as the party. I could have come to part of the party, but I didn’t tell him that.

He later contacted me again to ask whether I could come to the final three Sunday mornings of the choir season. Even if I had to skip Wednesday night rehearsals for work, he wanted me for the services. I told him I couldn’t, and that was that.

I’ve been back to the church only once since then -- a couple of weeks ago, I got a call from the organist, reminding me that he had a music book of mine. We decided that I could get it by coming to the church on a Wednesday night when the church would be open and he would leave it sitting on the piano for me. I went and picked it up and didn’t run into anyone. I saw that they had made a lot of progress on the construction, and I wanted to look at that and look at my office and the After School Program office to see if there were any clues as to what had happened to the program (I’ve never heard), but I was too afraid that I would run into Mother Kate, so I just left.

I saw some people from the church at a movie theater last week, but luckily they didn’t see me.

Political blog post

2008-06-04T23:11:00.003-05:00

Hearing people talk about politics gets old really fast, so I'll keep this brief: I want Kathleen Sebelius to be the next Vice President.

Jack Sheldon

2008-05-22T11:16:00.000-05:00

The Atheist Apocalypse

2008-03-17T12:32:00.001-05:00

According to Subnormality by Winston Rowntree.

Sparkle!

2008-03-12T13:45:00.001-05:00

The Best of the Best

2008-03-10T18:14:00.001-05:00

Every quartet here today
would hesitate to say
the greatest song that they had sung together;
Would it be “Sweet Adeline,”
or “Calling Caroline,”
or “Love That's True Through Fair or Stormy Weather?”

But does it matter ’bout the song,
whether it be weak or strong,
and must we strive to sing with such perfection?
Is not the most important part
that it come straight from the heart,
and be sung with understanding and affection?

So let us sing our songs together,
and make that sound divine;
Let’s keep the memories golden
for the sake of auld lang syne.

I wonder what has happened
to that old quartet of mine;
I hope and pray we’ll meet again,
somewhere, someday, sometime,
If only to remind them
how dear they are to me,
and just how much I miss the touch
of four-part harmony.

I wonder if they still recall
the tears that filled our eyes
The night the crowd applauded
when we won our first big prize.

All that I possess I would forsake,
if just once more I could partake--
Singing one more song, just one more time,
with that old quartet of mine.

And if someday we ever meet again,
I will smile and stand in line
Just to sing one song, just one more time,
with that old quartet of mine.

The Mysterious Ticking Noise

2008-02-20T12:06:00.001-06:00

Cosby, Sills, Cash, and Jung

2008-02-12T11:01:00.001-06:00

Not Quite What I Was Planning

2008-02-07T15:03:00.000-06:00

Six-Word Memoir book preview from SMITHmag on Vimeo.

Weight loss

2008-01-23T08:32:00.000-06:00

A few weeks ago, I set some ridiculous weight-loss goals for myself, and I even started a blog to chart my progress. I’ve already put those goals completely out of reach in the past couple of weeks (partially due to Charlie’s illness, partially due to some other problems, and partially due to eating way too much on a few out-of-town trips).

So I considered setting some more reasonable goals for myself, like losing five pounds a month until I got down to a normal weight (that would take about a year and a half), but then I realized that such goals are completely arbitrary. I might lose ten pounds in a month of moderate eating and exercise, or I might lose one pound in a month doing the same thing. The actual amount I lose or gain is somewhat beyond my control.

Also, such goals can cause other problems -- if I were to lose six or seven pounds in the first three weeks of a month, I might let things go in the final week of the month. Or if I were to lose two pounds in the first three wees of a month, I might starve myself in the final week. Neither of those are healthy scenarios.

So I’ve finally decided to do the smart thing and set behavioral goals for myself. I will start with the following two goals:

1. Eat between 2000 and 2500 calories per day, six days a week.
2. Do at least 75 minutes of Tae-Bo a week.

Based on what I’ve read and on my personal experience, this will help me to lose weight gradually and improve my cardiovascular health. I’m hoping that having a “free day” each week will make it easier to keep my calories down on the remaining days, and I’m hoping I won’t completely pig out on that day.

I may change the number of calories or the frequency of “free days,” but I think this is a good place to start.

I’ve already been doing about 75 minutes of Tae-Bo a week for the past couple of weeks. I’m going to try to increase that soon. I’d like to work my way up to three hours a week or so. And, of course, I’ll probably change to some other exercise program at some point, once I get tired of Tae-Bo.

I’m hoping that this plan will have me losing about five pounds a month, but it may be a bit more than that. If I can stay on it for the whole year, I will probably lose at least fifty pounds this year, which would be great.

But weight is just a number. More importantly, it will help my mental and physical health, which have been poor lately. I have trouble singing because I have trouble breathing slowly for that long, and I have a lot of pain in my body, especially my feet and joints. And, of course, it will help my mental stability.

I’m hoping that the Tae-Bo will help my singing right away! My quartet is singing at a barbershop competition in April, and it would be great if I could sound good at the ends of those long phrases by then.

There are some other things I will do to improve my health and singing, but I’ll put those in separate posts.

Heath Ledger, 1979-2008

2008-01-22T16:25:00.000-06:00

Heath Ledger died from an overdose of sleeping pills today.

Charlie dog (199? - 2008)

2008-01-18T11:28:00.000-06:00

We had Charlie dog put down today.

In the beginning...

2008-01-13T12:00:00.001-06:00

Forgiveness is overrated

2008-01-11T07:47:00.000-06:00

Magus

2007-12-28T08:15:00.000-06:00

Dan Fogelberg

2007-12-16T22:53:00.002-06:00

Dan Fogelberg died today.

The leader of the band is tired
And his eyes are growing old,
But his blood runs through my instrument,
And his song is in my soul.
My life has been a poor attempt
To imitate the man.
I’m just a living legacy
To the leader of the band.

Ann Hampton Callaway

2007-12-16T22:28:00.000-06:00

I was listening to the radio the other day when a song came on that blew me away. It was “Don’t Save Your Kisses” by Ann Hampton Callaway:

What’s happened to the state of romance
Now that both sweethearts wear the pants?
You both come home tired and uninspired
From a crazy eight-hour day.

Come Friday there’s a hope and a prayer
You’ll still like the one who’s standing there.
But, if you take my advice, life could be nice;
There’s fun to see each day of the week.

Don’t save your kisses like fine china;
Use ’em everyday.
Don’t save your huggin’ like you save the good silver;
It might get tarnished that way.
And keep those hugs comin’ all the time;
Don’t you save ’em up like you would save a dime.
Don’t save your kisses; they’ll be past their prime;
Use ’em everyday.

I hate to see divorce on the rise.
Who’s stealin’ twinkles from our eyes?
The world is a thief--that’s my belief--
And it’s time to take romance back.

The Robin Hoods of love in each town--
Ride your horses, spread the gospel roun’.
Each arrow from Cupid’s bow helps ’em to know
The simple fact to keep love intact:

Don’t save your kisses like fine china;
Use ’em everyday.
Don’t save your huggin’ like you save the good silver;
It might get tarnished that way.
And keep those hugs comin’ all the time;
Don’t you save ’em up like you would save a dime.
Don’t save your kisses; they’ll be past their prime;
Use ’em everyday.

Yeah, keep those hugs comin’ all the time;
Don’t you save ’em up like you would save a dime.
Don’t save your kisses; they’ll be past their prime
Use ’em everyday--
That’s right--
Use ’em everyday--
Pucker up!
Don’t save your kisses;
Use ’em every single day!

Ricky Gervais is hilarious

2007-12-10T21:56:00.001-06:00

“Vagina Power” is the greatest TV show ever

2007-12-10T21:47:00.000-06:00

Cute Animal Quiz

2007-12-08T13:48:00.001-06:00

You are a groundhog!

You are a cuddly-looking and timid mammal who eats mostly grass, seeds, and other vegetation. You rarely stray far from your burrow and you run in the face of danger, but you defend your home fiercely from predators. You even have your own holiday!

You were almost a: Lamb or a Pony
You are least like a: Mouse or a Squirrel Take the Cute Animal Quiz

Miscellanea

2007-12-03T21:58:00.000-06:00

Sometimes an apology can be an insult.

The other day, my friend Matt was talking about his new diet. He calls it “halvsies” (or would that be “halvesies?”), because he’s only eating half as much as he wants to eat. (The other day someone gave each of us in the quartet a dozen cookies, and he said he would normally eat the whole bag, so he just ate a half-dozen.)

Anyway, he was talking to Nick about the diet, and he said, “I’m just doing it to stop gaining weight. If I don’t stop gaining, I’ll get huge. Like 240 or 250.” Then he suddenly turned to me and said, “Sorry Ben.”

The only time I’ve ever seen Fox News is when I’m getting my car worked on. It seems like all the car places that have TVs in the waiting area have it turned to Fox News all the time.

Today I got a new tire and an oil change at a shop near where I work. The last time I was at this shop (the last time I needed a new tire), they had Fox News on the whole time I was there.

This time they had “The 700 Club” on. I tried to read magazines and the newspaper, but I couldn’t concentrate. All I could hear was Pat Robertson praying and pseudonews and other unspeakable horrors. They went on and on about how we should fight it when municipalities require pets to be microchipped, because it could cause cancer. And, oh yeah, soon the one world government will require every human being to have all of their financial information in a microchip in their arm or forehead, just like it was prophesied in Revelation. Robertson said it was inevitable, but that he just hoped it would happen after he died.

The show went on for a full hour.

Then I got to see “The Price Is Right” with Drew Carey. He is not nearly as good as Bob Barker. He’s way too low-key. One contestant, a kid from USC, kept calling Carey “Bob.” I never saw the kid get off of Contestants’ Row. He just kept bidding on things by saying something like, “Fourteen hundred, Bob.” Carey didn’t correct him, he just giggled each time the kid said it.

III

As I was finally leaving the shop, I was sitting at a red light, waiting to turn left. I got a green arrow, so I started to go, but someone who was stopped at the light coming the other way started going, even though he must have still had a red light. It was a man with a white beard, probably in his late 50s, driving a big pickup. I honked at him, and I figured he would either stop and look apologetic for the mistake, or drive right on and flip me off.

He did drive right on, but he didn’t flip me off. Instead, he did the last thing I ever would have expected. As he drove by my car, he stuck his tongue out at me.

New week

2007-12-03T06:45:00.000-06:00

This past week, I gained about a pound a day. I accomplished this by eating at fast food places and gas stations several times a day. (This also wasted a lot of money.)

Charlie dog has colitis again. The poor guy is passing a lot of blood and mucous, and he doesn’t want to eat. We gave him an antibiotic for it a couple of weeks ago, which cleared it up for a while, but now it is back.

Both dogs are filthy and have long toenails. Charlie needs a haircut, and they both need baths.

My car has problems. We got a new radiator put in and new headlights (the old ones broke when I tried to change the bulbs). Now it’s idling really fast and not running well. I think the guy who put in the radiator accidentally screwed up the engine. So we’re taking it back to him to fix that. And the passenger side mirror is broken. And it’s been about 8,000 miles since the last oil change.

I have been having trouble working efficiently and getting things done at work.

My wife and I are not getting along. That’s probably also my fault. What am I saying? It’s certainly my fault.

I haven’t been commenting on any of my friends’ blogs lately.

I haven’t brushed my teeth in weeks. I shave a couple of times a week, and I shower three or four times a week.

Rick James once said, in explanation for some of his actions, “Cocaine is a hell of a drug.” Well, some of my problems can be partially explained with, “Bipolar disorder is a hell of a disease.”

It’s a new week. I set an alarm and got up this morning at 6:00 a.m. I showered and shaved and brushed my teeth (my gums are in such bad shape that they bled just from a little brushing).

Here are some of my goals for this week:

1. Comment on the blogs.
2. Get up at the same time every morning.
3. Shower, shave, and brush my teeth every morning.
4. Brush my teeth at night.
5. Eat a healthful breakfast every morning.
6. Make a healthful lunch for myself every morning and take it to work.
7. Eat supper at home when possible, and at Subway when not possible.
8. Not buy any food or drink at convenience stores.
9. Interact more with my wife.
10. Clean the home office.
11. Clean the downstairs spare bedroom.
12. Do chores around the house.
13. Go to work earlier.
14. Not use the internet at work.
15. Leave work on time and not work on my days off.
16. Clean my work office.
17. Practice music for work.
18. Work on the work website.
19. Set up my boss’s blog.
20. Get my tire fixed this morning.
21. Get my oil changed this week.
22. Get my car worked on (for the engine idle problem) on Wednesday.
23. Get the side mirror fixed (Thursday?).
24. Practice quartet music.
25. Work on the quartet website.
26. Ask my psychiatrist for a medication increase (tomorrow morning).

I think Erin will call the veterinarian and take the dogs to the groomer (if not, then I’ll do those things) this week. There are also a couple of other things I need to do soon (like work on the garage door and the back door to the house). But these things are a good start.

National Blog Posting Month

2007-11-30T10:23:00.001-06:00

Today is the last day of National Blog Posting Month. It is also the day my barbershop quartet gets to sing in a theatrical production.

Should I wear this to work?

Beautiful

2007-11-29T08:51:00.000-06:00

Sometimes we just need a few thousand friends. This may not be the best singing you’ll ever hear, but it’s the most beautiful rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” I’ve ever heard.

The art of advertising

2007-11-28T23:22:00.001-06:00

1921

1930s
1946

1952

1953

1961

1970

1953

Hypomania

2007-11-27T22:14:00.000-06:00

The greatest thing about bipolar disorder is a thing called hypomania. This is a state of heightened creativity, energy, and goal-directed activity. When in a hypomanic state, a person needs much less sleep and is able to get a tremendous amount of things done. Hypomania usually lasts for several weeks or months, and it is usually followed by depression.

Hypomania does have its downsides. Because it is a symptom of a mental disorder, the definition of it is quite negative:

Irritability
Rapid talking
Grandiosity
Flight of ideas
Easy distractibility
Psychomotor agitation
Ignoring likely negative consequences of pleasurable activities
Blunted affect

It’s been a few years since the last time I had a full-blown hypomanic episode. The first symptom I usually notice is a decreased need for sleep. There were times in college when I was only sleeping three or four hours a night for several months, and I would get up very early in the morning even when I had nothing to do all day. (There was a semester when I got up every morning at 3:30 a.m.) During those periods, I wrote a lot of music -- some of which I can’t believe I ever wrote (like my arrangement of “Silent Night” that the KU Orchestra and Choirs performed).

I also became very goal-oriented, and I would develop a strict, written daily schedule. I was just looking through some old computer files, and I found this daily schedule from April 2001:

MWF

6:00
go to Robinson
shower
eat breakfast
make lunch

7:30
go to Murphy Hall
ear training
practice piano 30
practice trumpet 30
warm up voice 15

9:15
go to class

11:20
go to Murphy
practice piano
eat lunch
go to class
go to work

3:30
go home
ear training
chores and errands
eat supper

5:30
go to Murphy
practice trumpet 30
practice voice 45
homework

TR

6:00
shower
eat breakfast
make lunch

7:00 go to Murphy Hall
ear training
practice piano 60
practice trumpet 30
warm up voice 15

9:15
go to class

12:20
go to Murphy
go to class
go to work

3:30
go home
ear training
chores and errands
eat supper

5:30
go to Murphy
practice voice 45
practice trumpet 30
homework

Saturday

6:00
shower
eat breakfast

7:00
go to Murphy Hall
ear training
practice piano 60
practice trumpet 60
warm up voice 15
practice voice 45

10:30
go home
chores and errands
eat lunch
ear training
homework
eat supper
do laundry
prepare TPR

Sunday

6:00
shower
eat breakfast

7:00
go to Murphy Hall
ear training
practice piano 60
practice trumpet 30
warm up voice 15

9:45
go to TPR

1:00
go home
eat lunch
ear training
chores and errands

3:00
go to Murphy
practice trumpet 30
practice voice 45

5:30
go home
eat supper
homework

Sounds like fun, doesn’t it? And I’m sure I actually followed it, because I have a few slightly different versions of it that I came up with over a period of several weeks.

That was an interesting semester. I had to do a ton of reading. I only needed to take Shakespeare and one other English class to get my degree, but I wanted to take a full load, so I ended up taking four English classes: Shakespeare, Contemporary Authors: Dave Barry and Garrison Keillor, The Modern American Novel, and The Early American Novel. I was also in two choirs (Vocal Jazz Ensemble and Collegium Musicum).

I had two jobs. I worked for Loren (the blind piano technician) for about 10 hours a week (1:30 to 3:30 Monday through Friday), and I worked at The Princeton Review, teaching an LSAT course, on the weekends.

I must not have spent much time on the internet back then. I did find an earlier daily schedule that included time each day to e-mail people, so I must have stopped e-mailing people around this time.

Going through old computer files is interesting. I found some really old stuff from back when I was a conservative Christian that is very interesting. Like college essays on family values, YHWH, and Christian morality. Repulsive stuff.

But it might be interesting to post my “Golf Parable.” I was a very weird guy when I wrote that.

Choreography

2007-11-25T13:04:00.000-06:00

Click here to see my barbershop quartet dance.

To do in the next few weeks

2007-11-24T23:26:00.000-06:00

1. write piano parts for “Jolly Old St. Nicholas” (base it on “Canon in D”) and “Deck the Halls”
2. memorize songs for the Boar’s Head Festival
3. grease garage door track
4. fix back door
5. cancel therapist appointment
6. get dentist appointment
7. get oil change
8. get tires rotated
9. get new prescription
10. get new psychiatrist
11. be nice to Chuck
12. pick up a few things around the house
13. renew website
14. renew web hosting
15. buy Christmas presents
16. stop looking back
17. quit eating so damn much
18. write some blog posts that include pictures

Time flies

2007-11-23T22:14:00.001-06:00

In late November 2005, I was an attorney.

In late November 2006, I was a college student again.

In late November 2007, I teach music and do office work at a church (getting paid almost as much as I was as an attorney).

In late November 2005, I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. One of my primary symptoms was suicidal thoughts.

In late November 2006, I was on several prescriptions and had an incompetent psychiatrist who changed my prescriptions every three weeks and who put me on a prescription that made me go absolutely nuts. I was still suicidal sometimes, but it was becoming less frequent.

In late November 2007, I’m almost completely stable and on one prescription that I’ve been on for five months. And I’ve had almost no suicidal thoughts in the past nine months.

In late November 2005, I was gaining weight rapidly.

In late November 2006, I was gaining weight slowly.

In late November 2007, I am gaining weight rapidly. But I weigh about the same as I did in late November 2006, because I lost a bunch of weight in the spring and summer of 2007.

In late November 2005, I was leaving work more than an hour early each Thursday to drive for two hours to a barbershop quartet rehearsal that lasted 3.5 hours, then driving home (a little over 2 hours) just in time to sleep for 5 hours before getting up to put on a suit and go appear in a courtroom that was about an hour and a half from my house.

In late November 2006, my new quartet that rehearsed only 20 minutes from my house and 15 minutes from my school was rehearsing for about an hour each week until our tenor wanted to go home.

In late November 2007, I’m with the same quartet, but with a new tenor, so we rehearse for about three hours a week.

In late November 2005, I was the lead section leader of a barbershop chorus and the director wanted me to be the assistant director.

In late November 2006, I quit that chorus because the incompetent director hated me and treated me like shit and no one came to my defense. I also no longer needed to be in that group because I was the primary director of another barbershop chorus.

In late November 2007, I have not been a member of any barbershop chorus for several months.

In late November 2005, we had $31,377.04 on our credit cards.

In late November 2006, we had $47.350.69 on our credit cards.

In late November 2007, we have $0.00 on our credit cards.

In late November 2005, Charlie weighed 20.3 pounds.

In late November 2006, Charlie weighed 18.9 pounds.

In late November 2007, Charlie weighs 15.0 pounds.

In late November 2005, I was in my Chevy Lumina Euro for over 10 hours a week.

In late November 2006, I was in my Lexus ES300 sedan (the Lumina had blown a head gasket) for about 7 hours a week.

In late November 2007, I am in my Dodge Intrepid sedan (I couldn’t afford to replace the Lexus’s transmission when it quit) for about 5 hours a week. I don’t think this car will last another year, so I’ll have a different car next year. If I’m lucky enough to get what I want, it will probably either be a five-year-old Subaru Outback or a five-year-old Dodge Dakota.

In late November 2005, we got a new computer.

In late November 2006, we joined Netflix.

In late November 2007, we got digital cable.

In late November 2005, I hadn’t heard of blogs.

In late November 2006, I had a blog which I had completely deleted before, and I have completely deleted since. I was a member of a group blog that had recently finished a group-written novella, I was a member of a group blog that I wasn’t fully participating in, and I was a member of a brand-new group blog.

In late November 2007, I am posting to my blog every day. I am designing a blog for my boss, I have recently quit a group blog (the one I wasn’t fully participating in a year ago), and I regularly post on another group blog (the one that was brand-new a year ago). And I read the blogs of a few friends every day.

In late November 2005, things were looking up, but I hit rock bottom a few months later.

In late November 2006, things were looking up, but I hit rock bottom a few months later.

In late November 2007, things are looking up.

The joys of knee-brace shopping

2007-11-22T07:45:00.000-06:00

I’m apparently too fat to have knee problems. I found this out when I bought the biggest knee brace I could find, and it wouldn’t fit my leg. I guess I’ll have to special-order a brace.

Don’t fat people have more leg problems than skinny people? I’m sure somebody out there with knee problems has bigger legs than I have. Don’t they?

A little poetry

2007-11-21T23:46:00.000-06:00

Many years ago, a girl who was in love with me bought a used book of poetry for me in a Paris bookstore. It is Elizabethan and Jacobean Poets: Marlow to Marvell, edited by W.H. Auden and Norman Holmes Pearson. It’s a Viking Portable Library paperback. My copy was printed in the U.S. in November 1964, so I’m not sure how it found its way to Shakespeare and Company at Kilometer Zero.

There’s some really great poetry in there. When I was leafing through it just now, this gem caught my eye:

“No Platonique Love”
William Cartwright (1611-1643)

Tell me no more of Minds embracing Minds,
     And hearts exchang’d for hearts;
That Spirits Spirits meet, as Winds do winds,
     And mix their subt’lest parts;
That two unbodi’d Essences may kiss,
And then like Angels, twist and feel one Bliss.

I was that silly thing that once was wrought
     To Practise this thin Love;
I climb’d from Sex to Soul, from Soul to Thought;
     But thinking there to move,
Headlong I rowl’d from Thought to Soul, and then
From Soul I lighted at the Sex agen.

As some strict down-look’d Men pretend to fast,
     Who yet in Closets Eat;
So Lovers who profess they Spirits taste,
     Feed yet on grosser meat;
I know they boast they Soules to Soules Convey,
Howe’r they meet, the Body is the Way.

Come, I will undeceive thee, they that tread
     Those vain Aëriall waies,
Are like young Heyrs and Alchymists misled
     To waste their Wealth and Daies,
For searching thus to be for ever Rich,
They only find a Med’cine for the Itch.

Spam

2007-11-20T12:47:00.001-06:00

When I first got my Gmail account, I never got any spam. That has changed recently. I received 40 spam messages in the past two days. And every single one of them has to do with my penis. (Click the picture if you want to see some of the subject lines.)

My two favorite barbershop arrangements

2007-11-19T08:13:00.000-06:00

Slang

2007-11-18T18:37:00.000-06:00

The kids at the after school program don’t like the way I talk. Whenever any of the kids say my name to ask me something (“Hey, Mr. Ben!”), I respond just the way I do when anyone says my name: “Yo!” The kids hate that. They say things like, “Seriously, Mr. Ben, ‘yo’ is not cool. That’s like ’90s slang!” So I try to explain to them that I still talk the way I did in high school in the mid-1990s, when “yo” was a common word.

They also hate it when I say, “What up, dude?”

Little girl

2007-11-17T11:44:00.000-06:00

The newest, littlest, youngest child in the after school program was very quiet when she first joined a few weeks ago. She just smiled all the time. She never shows any teeth, but she just smiles and smiles. It makes my face ache just to see it. But now she talks a lot. And she loves to lie (cutely) about little things. She dresses very well (especially considering that all of our kids come from poor families), and she wears a different pair of beautiful shoes every day. So I give her a hard time about it.

Last Wednesday, I said something about how she has different shoes on each day, and she said, “No, I don’t. I only have one pair of shoes.” Then on Thursday she was, of course, wearing something totally different (beautiful knee-high boots), so I said, “Look at you! Wearing different shoes every day!” And she said, “No I don’t. I have only one pair of shoes! I wore these yesterday!”

Then she was kicking my seat in the van. I told her to stop, and she said, “I wasn’t kicking your seat!”

Then she was complaining about her finger hurting. Her mom had cut the nail too short on her pinky finger. So I took a look at it, and I was shocked at how tiny her hands are. I said, “Look how small your hands are!” and she responded by making a tiny fist around my pinky finger. Her hands are by far the smallest of any of the kids. Some of the eleven year olds have hands that are three or four times the size of hers.

I think she really likes being tiny and cute.

An older girl in the program who is very cute and small and bossy says that the littlest one is “the prettiest girl in the school.” When she hears that, she just smiles.

Kids singing

2007-11-16T22:08:00.000-06:00

This week, I’ve taught the after school program kids three songs: “Christmas Time Is Here,” “Jingle-Bell Rock,” and “Feliz Navidad.” The kids hate the first one, and love the last two.

On Tuesday, they had trouble being serious when I tried to teach them “Christmas Time Is Here” (by the way, it is my favorite Christmas song). They complained about it being too slow, and some of them sang it in funny voices, or laughed, or talked throughout the song. So Thursday I told them that we would sing the song until we could get all the way through it with everyone singing nicely and seriously. I hate to make good music into a punishment, but it worked. They all sang it nicely the very first time, and then we moved on to the other two songs.

The kids were so excited by the other two songs that they were unable to sit or stand still. They crowded around me at the piano and screamed the lyrics at the tops of their little lungs. (It hurt my ears and gave me a headache, but that’s just occupational hazard.) I had to stop a few times to get them to settle down to the point where it resembled music. I said things like, “I really like it when you sing loud, but you need to sing a little softer so it will sound a little better,” and “I want you to sing loud, but try to sing the right notes, too.”

They loved the songs so much that they sang them in the van on the way back to the school!

By the way, in case you don’t recognize them, the pictures are of Vince Guaraldi (who wrote “Christmas Time is Here” for “A Charlie Brown Christmas”) and José Feliciano (who wrote “Feliz Navidad”).

Skin color

2007-11-15T22:53:00.000-06:00

I’ve noticed that the kids in the after school program never say anything about race or skin color, even if it’s the obvious thing to say. Today one of the girls was telling us who two people were in a photograph (not the photograph above). One was black and the other was white. If I were telling someone who they were, I’d probably say, “The black woman is Jane Doe and the white woman is Joan Smith.” (If for some reason I were afraid of sounding racist, I might say who was on the left and who was on the right.) I have always thought describing people by skin color was natural. But this girl described the women by shirt color.

I wouldn’t have thought much of it, but this isn’t the first time one of the kids has done that. I’ve seen them point out people before, and when I got the person they were pointing out confused with a person of another race who was standing nearby, they didn’t say what I thought they would say (“No, the black woman”), they described the clothes (“No, the one with the blue shirt on”).

Now I’m wondering whether they were taught this, or whether using skin color to describe someone isn’t as natural as I thought. It seems like the most obvious way to distinguish between two people of the same sex who have different skin colors, but maybe I’m wrong.

I remember being aware of skin color at a very young age. When I was five years old, I had a friend who was black, and I wondered whether he was white inside like a Dairy Queen chocolate-dipped vanilla ice cream cone (which was my favorite dessert at the time).

By the way, two of our students are black, two are mixed race (white/black), and the other nine are white (Hispanic). The girl who didn’t point out the skin color of the two women in the photograph is Hispanic and a fifth-grader. (But I think she looks Asian.) One of the other kids I remember not pointing out skin color to distinguish people is black and a third-grader.

Maybe I’ll ask my boss about it. She’s black, but I think she looks Native American. She asked me yesterday whether I think her accent is “more like I’m from the South, or like I’m from the ghetto.” I told her that I thought the Alabama influence was stronger than the black cultural influence on her speech, but that both were clearly present.

She and I have had a lot of interesting discussions about race. She seems to like certain racial stereotypes (for example, she was shocked that one of the black students listened to hard rock, because, as she said, “black people don’t listen to that kind of music”). But she never wants the kids to hear us talking about race. So if she wants to tell me something about “white people” when the kids might overhear, she says “w people.”

So maybe she isn’t the best person to ask about whether these kids really don’t see skin color.

Secretaries

2007-11-14T22:30:00.000-06:00

Just after I got my current job, our super-competent secretary left. She tried to teach the new person how to do the job, but the new person wasn’t interested in learning.

The new person, who insisted on being called by her initials or her full first and middle names, has a doctorate. She doesn’t seem like the type that would go to graduate school, and she used to be a Baptist preacher (before she was kicked out for getting a divorce), so I’m guessing she had one of those wonderful D.Div. or D.Min. degrees (she didn’t seem quite sharp enough for a Th.D., which, by the way, does not always stand for Doctor of Thinkology).

Anyway, she was not the best secretary. She had a note on her phone telling her what to say when she answered it (it said, “Good morning (afternoon), St. James”). Her first few weeks on the job, she cried more than once per week when the computer or the copier frustrated her. There were several little things about her job that I had to figure out how to do and then teach her several times. Whenever I asked her whether she remembered something we had talked about, she always had the same response: “I’ve slept since then.” One time she told me that she couldn’t edit any of the text on our weekly newsletter because it was too small on her computer screen (I’m wondering whether she thought I had some kind of superhuman vision that allowed me to put the newsletter together with it zoomed all the way out). When I pointed out things she had neglected to do, she never did them. Several times I got on her computer after she left and did some of her work for her.

And she used Comic Sans for her e-mails.

She was just a temporary employee, until a permanent replacement could be hired. But my boss made the mistake of telling her last week that she wouldn’t be the permanent administrative assistant. When she asked why, my boss told her, “You aren’t cut out for detail work.” She immediately found a new job and gave her two-week notice. But she was so upset by being informed of her incompetence that she couldn’t work when she came in this week. So my boss said, “Why don’t you just go home, and we’ll pay you for the next two weeks.”

We had a long discussion about this at yesterday’s staff meeting. I claimed that we couldn’t survive without a secretary (partly because I know a lot of the secretarial work will fall to me if we don’t have someone). My boss has someone in mind for the permanent replacement, but that person has a full-time job now, so that person wouldn’t be able to start working right away. I left yesterday’s staff meeting with a sense of dread.

But this morning, a familiar face greeted me in the office. It was a woman I had seen at a child abuse training course (a course designed to teach you how to recognize child abuse, not how to abuse children). She already worked part-time with children at St. James. And she needed more hours. And she has computer and office training. So now we have a secretary again.

Unlike our last secretary, who spent a lot of work time ordering boots off of eBay, this woman sat right down and got shit done on her very first day. I showed her how to do a few things, and I set up her e-mail, and I replaced the terrible mouse on her computer, and I impressed upon her the fact that I want everything we do to look great, but that she should feel free to ignore me whenever I’m being too anal retentive about things like fonts and layout (and she had the perfect response: “sometimes that’s a good thing [being anal retentive]”).

She had a couple of silly missteps (she didn’t know that her typing woes were caused by the “Insert” key and she saved an important document in an inaccessible temp folder), but she’s light-years ahead of Dr. Baptist.

And now I’m tired and I want to go to bed (especially since I’ve developed a nasty cold), and this post is too long and boring anyway, so I’ll end it now. Good night!

Barbershop

2007-11-13T13:42:00.000-06:00

My quartet had a very good rehearsal last night. We sang (the first two are warm-ups I wrote):

Vee-vah
Mood Good Ugh
The Twelve Days of Christmas
Carol of the Bells
The Star-Spangled Banner
Hey, Look Me Over
I’m a Train
The Original Dixieland One-Step
Operator

We also sightread a piece and sang a couple of tags. I was a little hoarse afterwards, which confused me because I had been singing with good technique (and that usually means I can sing for 8 or 10 hours a day). But I woke up with a sore throat, so now I know it’s actually a cold that made me get hoarse, not oversinging.

We have performances on November 30 and December 1 and later in December (the 16th? the 19th? I have it written down somewhere), and we’re planning to sing for the kids I teach on November 29.

Here are a few pictures of us:

Everybody say “ah.”

Everybody say “ooh.”

But don’t hurt yourself.

Is this supposed to be confusion, or surprise?

Let’s see those teeth!

How big was it, Mr. Evil Eyebrows?

And for the big finish, even Chuck will look at the audience. Not Matt, though. He’s still attempting to tune the last note.

Weight of the Sky

2007-11-12T20:37:00.000-06:00

Not me, I think I’m going to stick around;
I’ve just got to find out how this movie ends.
And as I stumble through the mystery of this life,
I’m going to keep on trying to find a friend.

Novel update

2007-11-11T22:09:00.000-06:00

A long time ago, I promised to update y’all on my novel. Well, I finished it by the end of August, but it was much shorter than 50,000 words (27,874, according to Microsoft Word), and it is embarrassingly bad. Especially the dialogue. And the sex scenes. And the dialogue during the sex scenes.

I was thinking about sharing some of it here, but I just skimmed over the first half of it, and there really isn’t a single paragraph that isn’t embarrassingly terrible. And, more importantly, the characters are all based on people I know, and some of the things they say and do are secret things that I have heard (or guessed) that some of you have said and done, so there’s no way I can share any of it!

The characters were based on me, my family, my friends, my barbershop quartet, the last two barbershop choruses I was in, my former co-workers from SRS (including you, Yolanda), and a guy I like.

Suffice it to say that Robert hooks up with Deedee, Julie hooks up with Amy, Emily hooks up with Neal, and Robert hooks up with George. But I’m not going to say which of those characters are based on which people! (I will say that one of them is you, Charvat!)

But I can’t let any of you read any of it, because it would reveal some things about me that I can’t let any of you know. Such as that I am the worst fiction writer who has ever lived.

Okay, I’ll share the very beginning:

     If Robert Monroe had known what kind of a summer he was going to have, he would have moved far away from Bedford. The summer started out well enough, with his new job and lots of gigs for his barbershop quartet and things working out well with his marriage. But soon his life began to come apart at the seams.

And the ending:

     “By the way, Randy gave me a note today,” said George.
     “Really?”
     “Yeah. It said that he didn’t put my name in his official report. And he didn’t tell my supervisor. So I guess I’m not going to be fired.”
     “That’s great news!” said Robert.
     “Yes. Now we just have to find you a new job.”
     Robert didn’t say anything. For the first time in weeks, he felt like everything was going to be all right.

I am not to be held responsible if reading that made you vomit. And those were by far the best parts.

English

2007-11-10T14:23:00.001-06:00

I have a degree in English. I know, I know, it’s obvious from my super-duper writing. It was the perfect choice of major for me, because I loved taking literature classes and I found writing very difficult and I wanted to learn how to read and write well. Studying literature helped me tremendously in law school, where the English, History, and Philosophy majors found the reading and writing assignments easy, and the Political Science and Business majors had a rough time of it. Reading literature is remarkably similar to reading poorly-written case law and legislation.

One of my many fond memories of undergraduate English is of my British Literature II class (Burns to the present). It was probably the most difficult English class I took.

One of the requirements of the class, which took up most of the class time, was that each student had to recite 6 lines of poetry from memory of each poet we studied. The first one I learned was the last stanza of “To a Mouse,” which I attempted to recite in a Scots accent:

Still thou art blest compared wi’ me!
The present only toucheth thee:
But och! I backward cast my e’e
                    On prospects drear!
An’ forward though I canna see,
                    I guess an’ fear!

I don’t remember what lines I memorized from any of the other poets. I do remember that my favorite poets we studied in the class were Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, both World War I poets. I wrote a paper on Owen’s influence on Sassoon (kind of a strange topic, since most folks only think of Sassoon’s influence on Owen).

My favorite Sassoon is “Suicide in the Trenches”:

I knew a simple soldier boy
Who grinned at life in empty joy,
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
And whistled early with the lark.

In winter trenches, cowed and glum,
With crumps and lice and lack of rum,
He put a bullet through his brain.
No one spoke of him again.

               *               *               *               *

You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when solder lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you’ll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go.

And my favorite Owen is “Dulce et Decorum Est”:

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime . . .
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

Christmas music

2007-11-09T15:24:00.000-06:00

This week I started teaching some Christmas music to the kids. I think we are going to do the following songs:

Deck the Halls
Santa Claus is Coming to Town
Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer
Christmas Time Is Here
Feliz Navidad
Jingle-Bell Rock
It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

In addition, I’m going to try to teach them to play hand chimes on “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” and the Westminster quarters (the performance will start at 5 p.m., and I want them to start it by playing the top of the hour Westminster tune and five hour chimes). I’m also thinking about having them play some rhythms on buckets on some of the songs (maybe just “Feliz Navidad,” or maybe not at all).

We only have fourteen 30-minute rehearsals between now and the performance, so we may not get to do all of this.

Greek

2007-11-08T23:03:00.000-06:00

It’s hard to believe that I took four semesters of Ancient Greek back when I thought I wanted to be a theologian when I grew up. But to look through some of my old Greek texts and see the pitiful scribblings in the margins, I know I must have translated Greek at some point in my life.

I loved my Greek instructors. My first semester, I had The Pam, a beautiful person who told us on the first day that she would love to talk to us in the hallways, but “if I have to rush off, it isn’t that I don’t want to talk to you, it’s that I have a slight physical handicap and my legs are screaming in pain.” She wore handmade dresses every day, with hose and tennis shoes. Everything she did or said was impossibly cute.

My small section instructor that semester was Sue, who had short, straight, fiery red hair. She was very short, with unbelievably short arms and a gigantic head (imagine a caricature based on my description and you’ll be approaching what she really looked like).

My second semester, I had Anne. She was working on her dissertation that semester. She changed her last name midway through the semester when she and her husband figured out that putting half of each of their names together made up another fairly common name. She also was pregnant, which I didn’t notice until she was showing quite obviously (it was hard to tell because she always wore stiff, shapeless shirts that she didn’t tuck in). And one day when she caught us talking about her pregnancy, she said, “I would have felt stupid just bringing it up in class. But I did wonder whether you all would just think I was getting really fat.” She had an odd machine-gun way of talking in rapid bursts, punctuated by exaggerated hand movements. I got very good at imitating her, which my classmates found amusing as we agonized our way to Cs and Ds on her tests.

My third semester, I had Valk. She was the most difficult professor I ever had. We would have an assignment to read ten or twenty lines of Greek poetry in a couple of days, and it would take several hours. Then we would get to class and she would read it in her mystical, hypnotizing, whispery chant, with her wild white hair and fierce eyes, and then she would call on someone to spend the rest of the class period attempting to translate. There were very few Greek classes offered at KU, so we had undergraduates in their second and third years of Greek as well as graduate students. Those of us in our second year barely made it out alive.

My fourth semester, I had Shaw, who is without a doubt the most absent-minded person I’ve ever met. In a class of about eight people, he never learned a single one of our names, even though he called roll every day. He told us over and over again how Greek was really hard, and I think he gave everyone an A (that was the only Greek class I got an A in). He forgot his glasses frequently, as well as his books and notes, which was a real problem since we met in the art museum, which is quite a distance from the building where his office was. Sometimes he would show up really, really late. That semester, we translated a few dozen lines of Homer.

I really enjoyed each of my Greek instructors. My favorite was The Pam (so-called because in Greek the definite article is attached to proper names, so that’s what her Greek friends always called her). She once told us a story about calling Cretans “cretins,” because they “liked to prey on poor, unsuspecting red-haired girls.” She hastened to add, “...even though the etymology is totally unrelated.”

She had a very musical way of reading Greek. I can still hear (and mimic) the first Greek I ever heard her speak: “Ho Dikaiopolis Athenaios estin.” (Dikaiopolis is an Athenian.) Like everything she said, it sounded wistful, like it was really too bad that Dikaiopolis was an Athenian.

That class moved quickly. We had a test over the Greek alphabet on the third day of class, and then we had a very difficult exam every Friday for the rest of the first two semesters.

And after all that, the only Greek I remember off the top of my head is, “Ho Dikaiopolis Athenaios estin.”

Doctors

2007-11-07T22:14:00.000-06:00

I don’t have a general practice doctor. I have an optometrist, who gives me my glasses and contacts and checks on my retinal tear; a psychiatrist, who gives me my magic pills; and a sleep specialist, who gave me my CPAP machine that my previous psychiatrist thought would help my bipolar disorder. I’ve also visited some non-doctor health specialists in the past couple of years: a couple of therapists, a nurse practitioner, and a few phlebotomists.

But the last time I saw a general practice doctor was about six years ago. I went to Watkins Student Death Center (or whatever it’s called) at KU because I was having trouble breathing. After a checkup and an x-ray, the doctor correctly guessed that I had such severe acid reflux that it was irritating my trachea, causing me to feel like I had breathed in a fish bone. I also found out that I had high blood pressure (my sleep doctor told me recently that my blood pressure is very good--apparently the CPAP machine brought it way down). She gave me some prescription ranitidine (the active ingredient in Zantac) and sent me on my way. Once I found out that the store-brand ranitidine was cheaper, I quit going back for prescriptions.

The only other time I went to a general practice doctor in Lawrence was the time that my foot hurt so much that I could hardly walk. It turned out that I had an irritated toe joint (I think they called it an inflamed metatarsal), which usually only happens when people wear high heels. It apparently happened to me because my three sets of shoe inserts were incompatible with one another (for the last few years I’ve only used two sets).

I’ve now been back in my hometown for three years, and I haven’t been to a general practice doctor the whole time. In fact, the last time I saw a general practice doctor here was when I saw Dr. Stevens for the last time--when he gave me the prescription for Paxil that almost ruined my life. (It triggered a mixed episode that ended with me on juvenile probation for a felony conviction.) That incident turned me off of doctors to this day, and kept me from getting help for my mental condition for ten years.

Lately I’ve had a couple of pretty bad ingrown toenails, but I haven’t gotten any treatment for them because I hate doctors so much. They are getting better after a few months of pain.

But now I’m thinking it might be time for me to go to the doctor. The primary reason is chronic pain. I’ve had foot pain, especially in my left foot, since I was 14 years old. This is due to my flat feet and weak foot muscles, which I’ve never seen a doctor about (I did see a sports trainer about it back when I was a runner). I’ve had knee pain, mostly in my left knee, since I was about 18, when I think I partially tore my left ACL. And I think I broke my left pinky toe several times in the 1990s, and it has hurt ever since. And I bruised my left heel a year ago so severely that it hasn’t stopped hurting yet. And I broke my tailbone when I was a teenager, and it hurt for several years and even now acts up occasionally.

Of course, I’ve never seen a doctor about any of those problems. And I had gotten used to foot and knee pain, but recently it has gotten quite a bit more severe and it is accompanied by stiff and sore leg muscles. Now I hobble around, especially in the mornings and evenings, quite pitifully. This wouldn’t be something to complain about if I were in my 60s or even in my 50s, but at 28 I don’t think I should be having so much trouble just trying to walk from one room to the next. And while I’m sure exercise would reduce the pain, it hurts so much to move that I can’t imagine exercising.

But that’s not the only pain I’ve been feeling. I have chest pain fairly often. I have no idea what it is. I suppose it could be heartburn, since I have such bad acid reflux, but it doesn’t feel like that. It is often accompanied by a heart arrhythmia which I have never seen a doctor about. (Well, that isn’t completely true--I did once have a doctor check my heart when I was about 13 years old because of its strange way of either being very fast or very slow with no in between--resting it would be about 52 and exercising it would be well over 200, and it would stay that fast for a long time after exercising until it would suddenly get very slow again. I was put on a heart monitor for 24 hours, but that was with the infamous Dr. Stevens, who decided that I was just fine, and I haven’t gone back to a doctor about my strange heart rhythms ever since.)

One of the things that has always been strange about my heart is that it doesn’t always keep a steady pulse. Erin noticed this early in our relationship, the first time she rested her head on my chest. It would beat a few times quickly, then pause, then beat slowly for a while, and sometimes just seemingly randomly. Other times it would beat more regularly, but quite slowly for a sedentary person. (Since I’ve gained so much weight, my resting rate is much higher than it used to be--last I checked, it was in the 70s.)

But those aren’t the things that bug me about my heart. What bugs me is when it suddenly and for no apparent reason starts beating extremely fast (like 240 or more) for a few minutes, during which time my left arm hurts and my left hand gets numb and I get tunnel vision and I get anxious. The beats are extremely weak--so weak that it’s hard to feel any pulse at all. And it doesn’t gradually slow down--at some point between 30 seconds and 7 minues later, it will pause for quite a long time (sometimes a few seconds), then give a giant beat (the longer the pause, the bigger the beat), then start beating normally again.

This strange heart behavior seems to be triggered by direct pressure on the heart. It most often happens if I happen to inhale and bend down and to the left at the same time. (I actually asked my sleep doctor whether I was crazy for thinking this, and he said it was quite possible that the arrhythmia was caused by direct physical pressure on the heart.) In the many years it has been occurring, I’ve had it as infrequently as once or twice a year, and as frequently as once or twice a week for several weeks in a row.

The last few times it has happened, my chest has hurt in exactly the same way that my chest has started hurting occasionally without any arrhythmia. Which makes me wonder whether something might really be wrong with my heart. (I’ve read some things about arrhythmias that lead me to believe that my arrhythmia is not uncommon nor life-threatening, but the fact that my chest hurts sometimes when my heart is beating normally seems to me a bad sign.)

And that isn’t the only thing. Lately I’ve had occasional breathing pain where it hurts to breathe moderately deeply. When this happens, I can avoid the pain by breathing very shallowly, but that seems like a bad symptom. And, even more recently, I’ve begun to feel smothered sometimes, like I can’t get enough oxygen no matter how quickly I breathe.

And my whole body hurts sometimes. Not just my heart or my lungs or my legs or my feet, but also my back and my arms and my skin, and let’s not forget my head (I’ve been getting frequent headaches).

But I’m not sure whether these are symptoms of a problem or just hypochondria. I have a tendency to whine about pain that other people just bear. But ain’t I a bit young to be so achy all over all the time?

Of course, all of this could be due to bipolar disorder. Physical pain can be a symptom of depression, which I have been experiencing (mildly) for several weeks.

I hate doctors. (Especially Dr. Stevens.) But I’m almost ready to go ask one what on God’s green hell is wrong with me. In the meantime, I wonder how much ibuprofen is too much to use every day.

If you’ve read this far, I’m sorry that this post is so long and boring. I hope you enjoyed the pictures.

Imaginary Ben

2007-11-06T21:50:00.000-06:00

According to my peculiar aristocratic title, I don’t really exist.

My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is:
His Excellency Benjamin the Imaginary of Withering by the Wold

You can get your own peculiar aristocratic title here.

Charlie dog update

2007-11-05T12:36:00.000-06:00

The tumor is benign. The vet wants to look at it again in three or four months. It takes up half the width of his ear canal, so if it gets any bigger we will need to have it removed.

The rich food is still making him sick. The vet said if he still has diarrhea later this week, we will have to try a different kind of food.

Music teaching update

2007-11-04T15:37:00.000-06:00

We used the hand chimes again Thursday. It went fairly well. I taught them to play the Westminster quarters. The only problem was that a few of them couldn’t follow the simple direction not to play unless I told them to. I keep threatening to take away their playing privileges if they don’t cooperate, but I haven’t done it yet. Cain, Teona, Amalia, and Brian can’t seem to help it, so next time I will make them sit out if they screw around. That’s difficult to do, though, because I kind of need all of them in order to make the music! I guess I’ll have to come up with some music that can be done with or without everyone.

Charlie

2007-11-03T19:22:00.000-05:00

Charlie dog may not be long for this world. I took him and Maggie to the vet the other day for some shots and a routine checkup. They weighed him. The vet said he was 15.7 pounds. I said, “That can’t be right. He weighs a lot more than that.”

The vet looked at Charlie’s chart and saw that he had weighed 19.6 pounds a year ago. “Let’s put Charlie on another scale,” he said. We went out to the lobby and weighed Charlie on the big scale. “It’s right,” said the vet.

Then the vet checked his teeth. (The vet pulled ten of Charlie’s teeth less than a year ago.) He said that Charlie’s teeth looked terrible and needed cleaned again right away so no more of them would have to be pulled.

Then the vet checked in Charlie’s ears. This is usually the worst part of the exam, because Charlie has had chronic ear infections his whole life. This time, the vet said Charlie had a big tumor in his right ear. It wasn’t there last year.

The vet told me that he could run all sorts of tests to figure out why Charlie was losing weight, but that it was very likely that we wouldn’t find out anything. He also said we should get Charlie’s teeth cleaned and a biopsy done on his tumor, and since they both require anesthetic, he wanted to do both at the same time. But he wasn’t sure Charlie was well enough for surgery--he needed to check Charlie’s blood and urine to be sure.

So the vet took a blood sample. He took one look at the blood and said that he couldn’t test it because it was too fatty. He said that Charlie must have either eaten that morning or he had a condition that causes blood to be fatty (and thus no tests could work). Because they had done successful tests before, he said it was probably the former, and I should bring Charlie back in for blood tests after not letting him eat for several hours. Then they took a urine sample. Then they showed me the tumor by means of an ear camera hooked to a television. Then we went home.

The next day, I brought Charlie in for a blood sample. The vet techs had a lot of trouble getting any blood out of him. Once they finally did, they said they also needed a urine sample because the urine from the day before had a lot of blood in it. After they took the sample, Charlie and I sat in the examination room for a long time.

The vet finally came in and said Charlie’s blood and urine looked pretty good. There was no blood in the urine this time. The vet said the best news was that there was no way Charlie could have diabetes (which would have been a possible explanation for the weight loss). The only problem was that the urine wasn’t fully concentrated, which could mean that his kidneys were failing, but it could also be due to him drinking a lot of water in the 12 hours before the test. The vet said he’d like to test the urine one more time before surgery, but that Charlie couldn’t drink for 12 hours before the test. The vet gave me a cup to collect the sample myself. He said to get whatever I could, because he could do the test with as little as two drops.

Right before I left, the vet cautioned me that if Charlie begged for water in the 12 hours before we were going to collect the sample, that we had to give it to him, because it was a sign that his kidneys might be bad, and they could be damaged by not letting him drink.

The vet also said that even if Charlie had some kidney problems, they could still do surgery if they put him on an IV.

The next day, I took away his water at 10 p.m. He woke me up at 4 a.m., begging for water. I gave it to him. I never took the urine sample.

I took Charlie to the vet the next week for the surgery. The surgery went fine, and he came out of the anesthetic just fine. The vet gave us some prescription dog food for kidney disease. It is very tasty and higher calorie, so we hope he can gain weight on it.

The food has made him sick, though. We have tried to ease him into it by mixing it with his old food, and he still has gotten diarrhea from it, probably partly because it is richer and partly because we have fed him too much of it. Now he is starting to develop an aversion to it, and he doesn’t want to eat anything at all. And he is so bony. His hips and spine stick out.

And we are waiting for the biopsy results. If it is a malignant tumor, we will need to go to a specialist to have it removed (the vet said he could do it, but he would much rather have a specialist do it in case it proved difficult once he got started).

I get the feeling that Charlie may leave us soon. I cry every time I pet his skinny body now. He is having more and more trouble getting up the stairs, probably because his leg muscles are wasting away.

But he doesn’t seem to be in any pain, and his personality hasn’t changed. He’s still Charlie. And that’s all I ask right now.

NaBloPoMo

2007-11-02T07:00:00.000-05:00

The little graphic in the top right corner of my blog this month means that I plan to post each day in November. Wish me luck!

I already have a few posts saved up for days when I don’t have anything else to say. I may have to post some of them soon, though, because they are timely.

So stay tuned for much more about the kids, other stuff at my work, excerpts from my “novel,” news about my barbershop quartet, my peculiar aristocratic title, my changing political views (unless I don’t feel like sharing, which is a distinct possibility), and plenty of other stuff!

Teaching music

2007-11-01T15:48:00.000-05:00

I’ve been a teacher now for three months. The first six weeks, we learned several songs, and then we sang them on a little concert. It was very difficult to teach the songs, partly because I don’t have an accompanist (which means that I was trying to play the piano and sing and teach all at the same time) and partly because I have absolutely no control over the kids. But we did okay, and the kids were very proud of themselves, and I was proud of them.

Since that performance, we haven’t been singing. Our next performance is a long ways off, and it will consist mostly of Christmas music that they already know, so we’ve taken this time to creatively explore music.

Once a week for the past three weeks, I’ve had the kids listen to two recordings and tell me what sounds similar and what sounds different about the two songs. The first week, we listened to Stan Kenton’s recording of “Peanut Vendor” and Santana’s “Jingo.” The second week, we listened to James Brown’s “I Got You (I Feel Good)” and Bobby McFerrin’s version of the same song. The third week, we listened to Cream’s “The Sunshine of Your Love” and the Jimi Hendrix Experience’s version of the Bob Dylan song “All Along the Watchtower.”

For whatever reason, the kids like listening to music less and less each week. They don’t seem to have the attention span for it (they get excited about the music for the first thirty seconds, then they are bored). They especially don’t like discussing the music (see picture). But maybe it’s the choice of songs--their favorite so far has been James Brown. One of the kids (the one staring at the camera) even jumped up on a table when I played James Brown a second time. (I told you I have a problem with discipline!) But I don’t think I’ll be doing any more critical listening with them.

I’ve also been having them use five-gallon buckets as hand drums. Some of them enjoy this, but some of them say it hurts their hands, some of them say it is too difficult, and some of them say it is too loud. I will continue to teach them using the buckets, but I’ll try to make it easier and more structured. I’ll also try to make it quieter and less painful by telling them not to hit the buckets so damn hard!

And I’ve been having them play hand chimes. These are like hand bells, only more sturdy (which is great for these particular kids). I’m going to have them chime a Christmas song or two on their next concert. And I’m thinking about having them chime the hour at the beginning of the concert (it’ll start at 5:00 p.m.), using the Westminster chime tune. I’m planning to teach them the Westminster chimes a little over an hour from now.

So far, they love the hand chimes. But I wouldn’t be surprised if they start hating those, too. Maybe the problem is that I care too much about how the kids feel. Are they supposed to enjoy music? I really want each of them to enjoy everything we do--I want them all to love music like I do. Is that too much to ask? Perhaps I need more experience as a teacher before I can inspire that kind of love in children.

But I’ll definitely keep trying, and I’ll keep you all posted.

Celebrity sighting

2007-10-27T11:25:00.000-05:00

Guess who I saw the other day.

He has an enormous head in real life.

Guess who

2007-10-10T07:47:00.000-05:00

Guess who stopped by my workplace the other day. I’ll give you a hint.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t there at the time.

Movies

2007-10-05T08:10:00.000-05:00

I recently saw the movie Mulholland Drive, and I don’t get it. I mean, I understand the movie (I read an article that explained most of the stuff I couldn’t figure out for myself). What I can’t figure out is why anyone liked it. My friends gave it very high ratings on Film Affinity, and my movie soulmates gave it an average of a seven.

Maybe it has something to do with David Lynch. I’ve seen only one other movie of his, The Straight Story, and I didn’t get that one, either. Again, my friends and movie soulmates gave it very high ratings, and I got no enjoyment out of it whatsoever.

I just don’t understand what other people see in these films. And it isn’t as though my taste is that terrible -- my favorite movies (the ones I’ve rated a 10 on Film Affinity) are:

Brokeback Mountain
Raising Arizona
Amélie
Pulp Fiction
O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Godfather: Part II
Napoleon Dynamite
Lovely & Amazing
Little Miss Sunshine
Million Dollar Baby

Is that such a strange list? I mean, the lowest-rated movie on there, according to Film Affinity, is Napoleon Dynamite, but my friends have all given it very high ratings.

But I still feel terribly out of my element when watching movies. I’m in a movie discussion blog, and I feel like a moron whenever I express my opinion on there. Other people are talking about themes and camera shots and cinematography and other things I’m totally oblivious to, and I don’t even know any of the character’s names.

I need to start hanging out with stupid people so I can feel normal. That’s one nice thing about being a teacher: 9-year-olds think I’m smart.

Novel update

2007-08-19T21:32:00.000-05:00

Well, I’ve finally gotten to the halfway point in my novel (25,000 words). The only problem is that we’re quite a bit more than halfway through the month. So my second half will have to go faster than the first half did. That should be pretty easy, though, because I didn’t hardly write anything last week, since it was my first week of work.

I may actually be able to write at work. I don’t know this for sure, but I have a suspicion that I’ll have some free time there. If not, then I’ll have to do my writing mostly in the evenings (even though I don’t have to be at work till 11 a.m., I’m going to have some chores and errands that are going to take up my mornings over the next few days).

By the way, not that this has anything to do with my novel, but I just thought I’d share this interesting tidbit with you: My therapist asked me this week if I might be gay. She’s not the first person who has let me know that they wondered that about me. I don’t know what it is that other people think makes a person seem gay, but apparently I have some trait(s) that make people wonder.

She actually asked where I fall on the spectrum from heterosexual to homosexual. I basically just told her that I’m not gay. I love numbers, though, so I should have said that I feel like I’m 95% heterosexual. Or is it 90%? Maybe it’s somewhere in between. Oh, who the hell knows. You probably can’t assign a number to something like that. But I really like to assign numbers to things.

Speaking of which, my exact word count right now is 25,317. I’ve got a lot of catching up to do.

My job

2007-08-16T14:14:00.000-05:00

I now have a full-time job. Well, two part-time jobs that go together. The first is working in a church office, and the second is as music director for an after school program for poor elementary school students.

We have 13 kids in the program, and every day we will feed them a snack and have activities for about 90 minutes. Three days a week, we will spend about 30 minutes on music, which will be my primary responsibility. But I also will be involved with all aspects of the program, such as preparing snacks, driving the van, and applying for grants.

I don’t know what all my responsibilities will be in the church office. I think I will just have to do whatever the Rector wants done. I’ve already been given the task of redesigning all the church’s brochures (and creating some new ones). Because I have no graphic design experience, that will be difficult. I will also be partially responsible for the weekly church newsletter and the service bulletins.

I have been warned by many people that the Rector will overwork me, and that I will need to be sure and speak up when necessary. I kind of doubt this will happen, though, because it seems so far like my job has very few responsibilities.

Last year, I was a volunteer for the after school program and I sang in the choir here. I have decided not to be a member of the church choir this year. I just don’t think I want to spend six days a week in this building.

It feels strange to have a full-time job again, after so many months (I think about sixteen) of not working. And I have that nasty voice in the back of my head saying that people with bipolar disorder can’t keep a job. But I’m optimistic. This job will be very rewarding for me, and I have faith in my therapist and my psychiatrist.

I’ll have to get used to the hours, since I prefer a job that starts earlier in the morning (I’ll probably get to work around 11 a.m. most days). But I’m sure I’ll fall into a routine soon.

My biggest immediate fear is that I have no idea what music I’m going to teach the kids in their first week, or even on the first day! And the first day is Monday!

First quarter

2007-08-05T13:55:00.000-05:00

I’m already a quarter of the way through writing my 50,000-word novel. I started on August 2, and I already have 12,664 words. Most of those words are crap, and I’m pretty sure its going to get crappier, but at least I’ve got the word count up.

My biggest problem now is that I have several things that I want to have happen toward the end of the book, but not a lot of stuff to take up time in the middle. So I’ve been having the characters go over the same type of stuff several times, stalling till I get to the exciting ending.

I have some job prospects, and I will probably be working full-time starting at some point this month. So it’s good that I’m starting quickly, while I still have lots of extra time.

And I’ll be sure to keep updating my blog with the word count periodically.

August will be the month

2007-08-02T16:55:00.000-05:00

I just read the book No Plot? No Problem! by Chris Baty. He calls it “a low-stress, high velocity guide to writing a novel in 30 days.” Well, there are thirty days left in August, so I guess I’ll make this the month I write my novel.

To make it easy, I’ll base all the characters on people I know, and base the protagonist on me.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Baty approach, he stresses pushing out as much crap as you can as quickly as you can and not editing a word for those 30 days. Don’t even think twice about a word before typing it, or you’ll never reach your goal.

Somehow I doubt I’ll get a bestseller out of this approach, but I will get something I’ve always wanted: a novel of my own.

I’ll keep you all posted on my progress. I’ve already done character sketches of the thirteen most important characters, and I’ve written (and rewritten -- sorry, I know that’s against the rules!) the first 23-word sentence.

So here is my novel so far: “If Robert Monroe had known what kind of a summer he was going to have, he would have moved far away from Bedford.”

Over the next month, I hope to take Robert through an amazing summer. I already know some of the things he’s going to do, but most of it is still a mystery even to me.

A new man

2007-07-29T17:02:00.000-05:00

My therapist told me this week that my problems over the last year have made me “a more substantial person.” I didn’t believe her at first, but she showed me the evidence. The most compelling evidence is that I now understand what love is. A year ago, I thought I knew what love was. But I didn’t. Erin has shown me over the past year what love really is, and now that I know, I’m capable of loving her back. Truly loving her.

My relationships with my friends and family will never be the same now that I understand love. And I don’t think I’ll take people for granted ever again.

My therapist is the most amazing person I know. Last week I wanted to whine and moan and cry about my anxiety and bipolar disorder, but after she quieted me down, she taught me this very important lesson about myself. And knowing that this change has occurred will only make it stronger and permanent.

And now that I see light at the end of the tunnel of my anxiety and bipolar disorder, I can see a whole new life unlike anything I experienced before. I would never have known how to appreciate it fully were it not for my therapist.

Job search update

2007-07-26T11:22:00.000-05:00

I have applied to ten places. Eight law firms, one CPA firm, and one governmental agency. Two of the law firms have written me letters saying they aren’t hiring right now, and one has set up an interview with me for next Tuesday. That one was the only law firm that I knew was hiring – a friend of mine works there and let me know about their opening. The other seven law firms were just firms I thought I would like to work for in case they were hiring.

The CPA firm is hiring. They are looking for a tax research attorney. I haven’t heard back from them, though. I think I would like being a tax research attorney — it seems like a job that would come with less stress than many other attorney jobs. And it might be an eight to five job, while many law firm jobs average a sixty-hour week.

The governmental agency is also hiring. It is the same job I used to do, only in a different county. I have a feeling I will be offered this job, because I doubt any other applicant will have 17 months of experience in the exact same job. They are taking applications until next Monday, then they will look over them and figure out whom to call in for interviews.

So now I’m wondering what will happen if I am offered a job at the law firm before I get a chance to interview at the governmental agency. I don’t know how long they would be willing to give me to make a decision. Of course, it’s always possible that neither the law firm nor the government agency will want me, but if both of them want me, I’m going to have a hard decision to make. A lot of it will depend on the hours and the pay. The law firm position may be part time, but some law firms might consider forty hours a week to be part time. Or it may be full time, and that would probably mean fifty or sixty-hour weeks. And I have no idea what they would pay. I know the government job would be forty hours per week and forty thousand dollars per year. So I’ll have to see how the law firm position stacks up with that.

There are a lot of other things going on in my life right now, but they are mostly negative. I’ll just gloss over them by saying that Erin and I are trying to take care of our financial problems (getting a job would be a huge step in the right direction), and that I trust my psychiatrist that this latest medication change will take care of some issues I’ve been dealing with.

Erin has been so great lately. My not having a job, among other things, has made life more difficult for her. But she has been strong and supportive throughout. I don’t know what I’d do without her.

Job search

2007-07-16T10:16:00.000-05:00

I’ve said a lot of negative things on this blog lately about my life and my health. But now I’ve decided not to do that anymore. I can talk with my friends individually about my problems, so my blog doesn’t have to be a drag to read.

The latest big, positive thing to happen in my life is that I have applied to eight firms for an attorney position. Two are looking for attorneys, and the other six are just places where I think I might fit well.

I haven’t heard back from any of them yet, but I’ll keep you all updated on how it’s going.

Grant us peace, part two

2007-06-27T14:55:00.000-05:00

Two months ago today, I sang the oratorio Dona Nobis Pacem by Ralph Vaughan Williams as a member of the university choirs and orchestra. Today I received a recording of the performance in the mail. The power of this piece of music is incredible. When we performed it, it moved me to a new understanding of peace, one that I will never lose. It also taught me about life, a lesson I was doomed to forget many times over in the past two months.

But now that I have listened to the piece again, I have recaptured the understanding of peace, life, war, and death that I first had at the performance. I remember ending the concert with “Goodwill toward men!” I remember the analogy between a country on the brink of war and the Passover. I remember Walt Whitman’s Reconciliation:

Word over all, beautiful as the sky,
Beautiful that war and all its deeds of carnage must in time be utterly lost,
That the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly, softly, wash again and ever again this soiled world;
For my enemy is dead, a man divine as myself is dead,
I look where he lies white-faced and still in the coffin—I draw near,
Bend down and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin.

I remember it all. If you want to know what else I remember, please read part one.

What was it?

2007-06-26T13:56:00.000-05:00

I had thought that the severe anxiety I’ve suffered for the past several days might have been triggered by meditation. Now I’m beginning to think it might have been triggered by my medication roulette.

One of my medications was causing severe drowsiness, so I quit taking it. Another started doing the same when the dose was increased, so I decreased the dose. The onset of the severe anxiety coincided with the decreasing of the dose. Now my doctor has told me to increase the dose of that medication again to get rid of the anxiety, so I’m starting to think that decreasing it might have been the cause of the anxiety.

So now I’m in a limbo -- the increase of medication is causing some drowsiness, but the anxiety isn’t gone yet (side effects of this drug are immediate, while the positive effects take a few days to kick in). So I now have the worst of both worlds. Well, not the absolute worst -- I’ve had worse anxiety and worse drowsiness, but both at the same time is kind of hard to take.

And it’s my anniversary. I’m freaking out and drugged up and Erin will be gone for most of the evening at meetings. And I think I’m going to start work today or tomorrow, but I still haven’t gotten that call yet (and waiting for an important phone call doesn’t help severe anxiety!). And once I get the job, I have two doctor appointments and two barbershop performances this week that I’ll need off for. Ack!

Thank you again for your support, everyone. I will emerge from this terrible time a stronger person, I’m sure. I just wish I didn’t have to go through all this.

No more?!

2007-06-23T06:55:00.000-05:00

I meditated for the past five days, and they were some of the worst days of my life. Last night I went to bed at 7:30 p.m., just so I could escape the misery of consciousness. On Monday, the first day of the meditating, I weighed 270 pounds. This morning I only weighed 264. I’ve been too tied up in knots to eat this week.

Of course, I don’t know whether it was meditation, bipolar disorder, medication, finances, getting a job, or a combination of some or all of these that caused my week to go the way it did. But I have a sneaking suspicion that my meditation breakthroughs on Thursday and Friday (I felt like I reached new levels of consciousness) may have exacerbated my condition (those were by far the worst two days).

Now I’m trying to figure out whether it is even possible for meditation and relaxing to make anxiety worse, and I think I’ve figured out a mechanism -- I’ll use depression as an analogy: When I’ve been depressed for long periods of time (several months), it is terrible, but not always very difficult to fight through. When I have emotional lability (wildly varying moods from day to day, or even within a day), it is much harder to take. When I wake up not knowing whether I’ll feel depressed, manic, both, or normal, I don’t know how to think or act. The depression feels worse -- it even feels deeper -- when it comes and goes than when it is unrelenting.

I wonder whether the same might be true of anxiety. During meditation, and immediately afterwards, I have felt really relaxed, without anxiety. An hour or so later a crushing anxiety overwhelms me. Perhaps the meditation is causing quick cycles of anxiety that are harder to deal with than a sustained bout of it.

So I will not meditate today. And if I have a better day today, I will not meditate tomorrow. I still think meditation holds something for me, but I think it won’t work for me until I find a little bit more balance in my mind and life first. In other words, I’m too anxious to be able to handle being relaxed.

As long as I can still type, I’ll let you all know how it goes. Thank you so much for your support and love.

Oh, one more thing -- I’m sure, after reading the book Peace of Mind (mentioned earlier this week), that my subconscious mind is working against me. I’ve fully convinced myself that I’m ill, and that my illness is a big part of what defines me. I need to reverse that and get my mind back on my side. I need to convince myself that I am totally well, and get my subconscious mind to work at making me well. This book talks about how a terminal diagnosis can kill a person. And I’ve heard about that phenomenon before, not just in this book. I need to stop thinking that my case of bipolar disorder is hopeless. Plenty of people with this disease lead a perfectly normal life, some even without medication. They obviously have their mind on their side, and I obviously don’t. I know there’s more to it than that -- I know that I will always need medication and good lifestyle choices and support from those around me, but even those things won’t be enough to help me live a normal life if I am convinced that my identity is that of an ill person.

But the book teaches how to retrain the subconscious mind through meditation, and I’m a little scared of meditation right now. I may have to try to retrain my subconscious intellectually, which is harder to do.

Wish me luck. And if you believe in God and believe that he has healing power, please pray for me.

Medication roulette

2007-06-21T13:47:00.000-05:00

Be sure you read the title of this post correctly -- there’s only one letter different between meditation and medication. Each of those subjects is rather important to me right now.

I recently went to a new psychiatrist, because I thought my previous psychiatrist was a moron. Every time I saw him he would tell me he had no idea what to do with me next, even though he’s only tried a few different medications with me. And I did a little research and found out that some psychiatrists believe some of the medications he had me on might make my condition worse.

So I went to my new psychiatrist, and she basically said that it didn’t sound like I had been receiving good treatment for my condition. So she kept me on the one medication I was still taking (I had taken myself off of three of the medications my old doctor had me on) and added a new one. My therapist is very excited and thinks things will be looking up for me with this new doctor and new medication approach.

But I already have a problem. To make a long story short, the medication that I am still taking that was prescribed by my old doctor is making me drowsy to the point that I can’t function. He had basically told me to take less if that happened, so now I guess I’ll take less. But it may not have enough effect now to keep me stable until I get to the full dose of the new medication (the new medication can have fatal side effects if you start with a full dose, so it takes a month or two to work up to the full dose).

And I can’t allow myself to be sleepy or unstable, because I just got a job at Dillons as a produce clerk and I’ll be working irregular hours (no third shift, thank goodness), so I need to be at my best all the time. So I’m hoping that reducing the old medication will take care of the sleepiness and meditation will take care of the instability.

And I’ve already had some interesting breakthroughs in my meditation that I’ll write about another time.

Wish me luck, please!

Meditation, day three

2007-06-20T22:51:00.000-05:00

I have been meditating for the past three days with mixed results. So I picked up a book on meditation from the public library called Peace of Mind: How you can Learn to Meditate and Use the Power of Your Mind. It was written by a veterinarian named Dr. Ian Gawler who claims to have overcome terminal cancer through meditation. It is an extremely detailed analysis of many different techniques to achieve various levels of meditation. I’ve already read more than half of the book, and I’m quite impressed. I used a couple of his techniques this evening with some success, and I plan to continue using his techniques in the coming days and weeks. I’ll be sure to report on how it goes.

Meditation, day one

2007-06-18T16:36:00.000-05:00

White light and black smoke

I am going to start meditating. My primary reason for starting this now is to reduce anxiety and other symptoms of bipolar disorder. It should also help me to concentrate more easily, which has always been difficult for me, and make me happier and more content. Eventually I hope it will make me a better person, more able to love and to put love into action.

Today I have enjoyed scanning several books and internet articles about Buddhism and meditation, especially How To Meditate. I have been working on the most basic breathing meditation. Here is my favorite part so far:

As we breathe out we imagine that we are breathing away all disturbing thoughts and distractions in the form of black smoke that vanishes in space. As we breathe in we imagine that we are breathing in all the blessings and inspiration of the holy beings in the form of white light that enters our body and absorbs into our heart.

I know that learning meditation will be complex and will take a lifetime, but I also know that this simple concept of white light and black smoke breathing will take me far.

In an effort to get into shape and lose weight, I have been trying to exercise every morning and evening for the past couple of weeks. Now I think I will instead start meditating in the mornings. Meditation every morning will probably do more for my body, and will definitely do more for my mind, than riding an exercise bike.

I will let you all know how I progress.

Job search

2007-06-13T13:31:00.000-05:00

Several weeks ago, before I had taken my spring finals, I applied for a job at Wal*mart. They offered me $6.45 per hour to unload trucks for the summer. I told them I wanted to look around for a better job first. So I applied for a job working for the city, where I could make $7 per hour for manual labor. But then I found out that one of my dad’s employers was looking for people to sell cell phones and services, and that they paid a lot better and I would be working in a clean, cool store rather than hot trucks or outside.

So I turned down the city job and called the cell phone guy. He told me to bring in a resumé, which I did the next day. And then I waited. And I called. And it took me two weeks to get ahold of him again. Finally, he said I should come in for an interview. I came in to interview, and he said “I won’t leave you hanging.” After a few days, I called him. And I called him again and again. Finally, he called me back yesterday, more than four weeks after giving him my resumé, and told me that he doesn’t have a job for me.

In the meantime, I’ve decided to discontinue my education and go back to work permanently. And I’ve applied for a job with the Federal court system, doing clerical work. It isn’t an attorney job, but it pays well and has great benefits, and I think it would have much less stress than an attorney position. And I have reactivated my attorney license, which will go into effect July 1st, just in case I do end up getting a job as an attorney.

So now I don’t know what to do. Should I keep applying for $7 per hour jobs in the meantime? Should I go to work for Wal*mart? Should I at least wait to hear from the Federal court before applying for attorney positions? (By the way, I’m planning to apply to law firms whether or not they are advertising an open position.)

In the meantime, I’m going nuts with nothing to do. I have a doctor appointment next week to get my medication straightened out, which may help me to cope with the stress of the job search (and of a job when I get one). The worst part is that this reminds me of last summer, when I was more depressed than I ever had been before, and I was trying to start a business and I was just hopeless. I don’t feel nearly that bad now, but it reminds me of it, and that just makes me feel sick.

Well, when I try to look on the bright side of things, I do feel better. Our financial difficulties will be on their way to being resolved once I get a full-time job. I’m fairly stable right now, even though my medication situation is dicey. And Erin is as steady and helpful as ever. I have friends and family and dogs who love me.

Oh, by the way, my barbershop quartet might be breaking up.

America’s secret weapon

2007-06-05T10:13:00.000-05:00

In 1994, the U.S. military considered a proposal to build a bomb that would make enemy soldiers sexually irresistible to each other, just a few months after the Weekly World News “reported” that Al Qaeda was developing such a weapon. This “gay bomb” proposal came just a year after Colin Powell’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy was implemented. Some gay leaders saw the policy as a step in the right direction (which it may have been, but it’s a tragedy that the next step still hasn’t occurred), but the “gay bomb” proposal is proof that the military was still in the Dark Ages regarding homosexuality.

First of all, it shows a stunning ignorance of human sexuality to think that strong aphrodisiacs even exist, let alone that an airborne chemical could cause heterosexual men to be attracted to one another. Second, it proves that the military believed that homosexuality was a huge threat to morale and group cohesion, if they thought the weapon would actually hurt the enemy. If they really believed homosexuality was that dangerous, it’s no wonder they wanted (and still want) people to keep completely quiet about it.

The ignorance in this country boggles the mind. If Vermont secedes, maybe we should all move there.

Who am I?

2007-06-04T11:11:00.000-05:00

Over the past year, I have defined myself in two ways. One, as a former attorney but future teacher. Two, as a person with bipolar disorder.

The first is no longer. Soon I will be an attorney again, and I may never be a teacher. I took a lot of pride in my change of professions, and I loved working with kids over the past year. All the kids I worked with (from 3rd graders through 12th graders) seemed drawn to me. They all liked me, and they listened to me, and they respected me. Now I’m going to go back out into the world of adults where it will be much harder for me to earn respect and gain friendships. I’m not good with adults.

The second is an extremely negative way of viewing myself. I blame all of my problems on bipolar disorder, and even when things are going well, I see my life and myself in a very bad light. I blame my weight problem on bipolar disorder. I blame my marriage problems on bipolar disorder. I blame my poor treatment of my friends on bipolar disorder. I blame my sadness and hopelessness on bipolar disorder. I blame my anxiety attacks on bipolar disorder. I look at positive experiences as distractions between all the negatives that come from bipolar disorder. I hold myself in contempt for all the bad that I go through and that I put others through.

I’m beginning to think that if I’m ever going to stop bipolar disorder from running my life, I’m going to have to forge a personality apart from it. But I’m not sure that’s the best idea, because introspection usually depresses me. I can’t decide whether it would be better to just try to be myself and not try to define myself in terms of anything, or whether I should try to figure out who I am and act accordingly.

There is a lot of good in my life, something I have been neglecting to dwell on lately. I direct a barbershop chorus and I sing in a barbershop quartet. The men in those groups love me and admire me and respect me. I know this because they have told me so. I’m married to the most wonderful woman in the world, who is patient and loving and supporting no matter what I do or what happens to us. I have a small group of friends whom I love very much and who care for me, warts and all. I am in a book club and a movie club, and I have finally started to enjoy movies (I used to hate all movies). I have two wonderful dogs. My wife and I own a nice house and two cars that run well and some nice furniture. We have a plan to get ourselves out of debt. I have a great education that I can be proud of and I can use. I have wonderful memories of working and living and going to school in six different cities in this wonderful state. And I’m sure I will soon have a high-paying job where I get to use my intelligence and training to help people.

But it’s hard to focus on these things when I gain a pound every week, never brush my teeth, shower only twice a week, have trouble sleeping, have no motivation to do anything, have crushing anxiety, can’t concentrate, push friends and family away, have pain throughout my body, don’t do any chores, spend my days watching TV and surfing the internet, and hate myself. But letting these things define me is letting the bipolar disorder win and take over my life.

But who am I? What positive traits do I have? Are there any? I have a good heart -- I intend well, but what good are intentions if I don’t treat people well? I’m afraid that I’m one of those people who are nicer to strangers than to friends. I treat my best friend terribly, and as a result we aren’t nearly as close as we used to be. I treat my wife terribly, and she won’t take it forever. Not to mention that they deserve all the best I can give them, not this abuse.

So I’m at a loss. How do I get away from letting bipolar disorder define me? And just who am I? And should I even try to answer that question, or would it be better to leave myself undefined?

The great experiment

2007-05-22T22:06:00.000-05:00

The great experiment has failed.

Nine months ago, I decided to go back to school for my fourth college degree, a Bachelor of Music Education. I wanted to be a teacher, and none of my other degrees qualified me for that kind of work.

I still want more than anything to be a music teacher, but I have three semesters left. And staggeringly large amounts of debt. Erin and I can no longer afford to have me not working full-time.

So I am going to reactivate my law license and look for a job as an attorney. After telling a thousand people that I quit the profession because I hated it, I am going back. Luckily, I have been overstating my objections to being an attorney. There were specific problems with the legal job I had (incompetent secretary, antagonistic judges, impossible workload, and other things) that I will try to avoid when getting a job this time.

So now I have to send out my resumé. And I dread the questions: Why did you quit? What have you been doing since you quit?

I have my answers: “My job at SRS was not good. First of all, I had an incompetent secretary. When you work for the state, it is very difficult to get good support, because the pay for the position is extremely low. I had a secretary who not only had no legal experience or training, she hadn’t even been a secretary before! Second, it was a litigation position, and I do not want to be a litigator. I am good at litigation, but it disagrees with me. It is extremely stressful for me, and I’d just prefer to have a non-litigation position, although I’d be able to do litigation if it were necessary occassionally. And third, I was practicing in counties where some of the judges hated SRS, and they tried to make my job impossible. They refused to file some of my cases, even though I followed all procedures to the letter, and one judge even threatened to report me to the disciplinary administrator when I had done nothing but file a case he didn’t want to try. But most importantly, I quit because I decided I would like to be a small business owner. I tried to start a business, but it didn’t work out. So I went back to school to become a teacher. But after a year of school, I’ve decided that I should go back to being an attorney. I should have done it after my business idea failed. But I’m not sorry I went to school for another year — I learned a lot of things that I’ll be able to use as an attorney, like how to explain things simply (in school you have to explain things to children) and how to plan ahead (teachers have to do lesson plans).”

So there it is. Not too many red flags for a prospective employer, are there?

Now I need to get a menial job to tide us over until I get a full-time attorney position. I’ve been offered a job at Wal*mart, but I’m holding out for a position at a cell phone store here in town.

But I really want to be a teacher.

My lucky day

2007-05-18T22:31:00.000-05:00

Or how to become a millionaire

I am not making any of this up.

I just received a letter from St. Matthew’s Churches of Tulsa, Oklahoma. The front of the envelope says, “God’s Holy Spirit instructed us to loan you this to start turning things around for you. So, here it is. Use it and be blessed.” The back of the envelope has this prayer on it:

Dear God,

With our Bibles opened to St. Mattthew 18:19, we humbly and sincerely pray on bended knees for You to anoint this letter with Your precious and holy power to meet the most pressing needs that someone is facing as they open this church letter of prayer.

Heavenly Father, we pray that this one who needs this divine help will write their needs on page two of this letter and will place this blessed, biblical, Acts 19:11,12, Handkerchief and this sealed Bible prophecy under their side of their bed as they sleep tonight.

Let Thy power from heaven descend upon this home tonight and tomorrow night, after this one has mailed their most pressing needs back to this 56-year-old church ministry. We pray that they will break open this sealed prophecy after sunset tomorrow. Amen

The first thing in the envelope is a letter from St. Matthew’s telling me that they have given me a handkerchief and I should write my name and my most pressing problem in the center of the handkerchief, open my Bible to Acts 19:11, 12, lay the handkerchief on the scripture, and place it under my side of the bed. The next morning, I am supposed to mail this Bible handkerchief back to St. Matthew’s post office box in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I’m also supposed to fill out a survey about what problems I need prayer for, and send that with my handkerchief. And then, after sunset on the day I send back the handkerchief, I can break open the sealed prophecy that is included with the letter and read it. If I don’t send back the handkerchief, I’m supposed to destroy the prophecy without breaking the seal, to avoid smiting.

Also included in the envelope is a page with testimonials about all the money that appeared at people’s doorsteps after sending back the handkerchief. This page also has a full color drawing of Paul the Apostle holding a handkerchief and leaning over a sick person, while lots of bearded men and a couple of women look on.

The prophecy, which Jesus wrote in all caps in Times New Roman font tells me that good stuff is going to start happening since I sent back the handkerchief to a 56-year-old church.

They also gave a convenient return envelope with no postage necessary for the sending back of the handkerchief.

Then there is the handkerchief itself.

It appears to be 8.5 by 11 inches and made of paper. It has the same design on both sides, and there is plenty of room to write my name and my needs on it.

So I looked up some information about St. Matthew’s church on the internet, and I found out how to become a millionaire!

I am still not making any of this up.

First, get a computer program that will sort nine-digit zip codes by income level. Each nine-digit zip code only has a few people in it. Then send a request to millions of people from the poorest zip codes, asking them to do something ridiculous like write their name on a piece of paper (be sure to call it a holy handkerchief). Once you find out which ones take the bait, beg them for money and promise to pray for them if they send it to you. Depending on the person (and what zip code they come from) ask for between $19 per request and $709. Send one million letters out per month.

Hire a company in Tulsa, Oklahoma to open each prayer request, take out the money, then incinerate the request. Hire a law firm in Tulsa, Oklahoma to take care of all of the legal hassles (such as trying to prove that you should have non-profit status -- that court battle took 20 years to win).

Buy a church in Dallas, Texas, that has been around since 1951 so you can claim to have been in the ministry since then, even though you started your company in 1978.

When the money rolls in to Tulsa, buy a mansion in California and populate the grounds with exotic cars.

It worked for James Ewing of St. Matthew’s Churches.

The best quote from the St. Matthew’s Churches’ website: “However, the published sermons and sacred literature sent free of charge by Saint Matthew’s Churches crosses the paths of atheists; communists; drug dealers; criminals; the lunatic fringes of society; those who hate the United States, God and Christianity and those who hate us because we are gospel missionaries. They accuse all churches which mail sermons of mail scams and mail fraud.”

Indeed.

Minor tragedy

2007-05-16T18:38:00.000-05:00

“Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die.” -- Mel Brooks

Yesterday’s tragedy was my car getting stuck in the mud. Today’s tragedy was accidentally running over a stump with the mower, ruining its blade. Today’s tragedy cost ten times less money, time, and panic, but it still upset me terribly. I wonder what tomorrow will bring.

Mud

2007-05-15T20:26:00.001-05:00

I like to drive on dirt roads. I don’t know why, but I’ve always liked to do it. Ten years ago, when I had a 45-minute commute each way to school every day, I would sometimes come home on county roads instead of the highway. And I’ve been doing it every once in a while ever since, including a handful of times over the past few weeks.

But I’m never going to do it again.

This is where my car is right now. This afternoon I was driving home on a county road when I lost control of the car because it was muddy and ended up in this ditch. No amount of driving forward and backward was going to get me out of this ditch. So I called a tow truck. And I waited.

After about 15 minutes, I saw a truck. But it wasn’t coming any nearer. So I stood in the middle of the road for five minutes waiting for the truck to come to me (it was about a quarter of a mile away). Finally my phone rang. The truck driver had decided that he would get his truck stuck if he tried to get my car unstuck. So I walked down the road to the tow truck. The driver told me that he had gotten his tow truck stuck on this same road recently and it had cost them $800 to get a bigger tow truck to come and get it unstuck. So he wasn’t about to try that again.

He drove me to my house (for $47) and gave me the name of a towing company in another city that had trucks that could drive in mud. So I called them. They said they would send out a truck in about three hours. By this time I was feeling pretty frustrated and crazy, so I plopped down in from of the TV to wait until they called me back. (By the way, have I mentioned that I hate TV? I only did it because I was too upset to think clearly enough to do anything other than just sit let the TV eat up my afternoon and evening.)

After three and a half hours, I called them back to see how long it would be. They said it was too late. They run a 24-hour towing service, but they don’t like to work in the mud after dark. (By the way, it’s been more than an hour since I last talked to them, and it’s still light out.) So they asked whether it would be okay to get it in the morning. I finally said okay, because I have no other options.

So now I’m trying to calm down enough to get some things accomplished this evening. I should walk the dogs, pay some bills, and type up a resumé (I’ll be applying for a job once I get my car back tomorrow).

And I will probably never drive on a dirt road again.

Grant us peace

2007-04-27T23:07:00.000-05:00

In 1936, Ralph Vaughan Williams, known to his contemporaries as an old-fashioned composer, did something entirely new. He wrote a sacred oratorio with texts from the Latin Mass, an English translation of the Mass, the Bible, three Walt Whitman poems, and a House of Commons speech. Tensions were beginning to mount in Europe, and Vaughan Williams could tell that the war to end all wars was not going to live up to that reputation. Dona Nobis Pacem was his cry for peace.

The first movement, “Agnus Dei,” is a prayer to Jesus for peace. The second movement, “Beat! Beat! Drums!” is a Walt Whitman poem about how war interrupts all life. It doesn’t matter what you are doing, war will stop everything. The third movement, “Reconciliation,” is a Walt Whitman poem about the meaninglessness of the concept of “enemy.” In it, a man kisses the corpse of his fallen enemy, “a man divine as myself,” as he realizes that the world, soiled by war, will be washed over and over again by Death and Night. The fourth movement, “Dirge for Two Veterans,” is a Walt Whitman poem about a father and son who are killed in battle and buried together. It is by far the most moving part of the piece. The orchestra swells and the percussion becomes deafening as the chorus sings about the funeral procession: “I hear the great drums pounding/And the small drums steady whirring/And every blow of the great convulsive drums/Strikes me through and through.”

The final movement, which is untitled, begins with a quote from a speech John Bright gave in the House of Commons when he opposed entering the Crimean War. He hearkens back to the Passover, and says that the Angel of Death will not pass England if they enter the war. Most of the rest of the final movement is passages from the Bible about war and about God’s deliverance, interspersed with the plea, “Grant us peace.” Vaughan Williams is crying out for the deliverance promised in the Bible, deliverance from the war he sees coming to the world.

I sang this piece with the University Symphony Orchestra and Choirs earlier tonight. It was more personally meaningful to me than any musical experience I’ve had, at least since I sang Arvo Pärt’s Credo in May 2000 with (a different) University Symphony Orchestra and Choirs. I can’t describe how cathartic it can be to bellow “goodwill toward men” at the top of my voice along with an orchestra and one hundred other singers.

We also sang Lux Aeterna by Morten Lauridsen. Lauridsen is one of the greatest living choral composers, and this piece, the title of which means “eternal light,” was first performed by a choir and chamber orchestra at his mother’s funeral. It is a beautiful and moving celebration of a life well-lived.

I have only had a handful of experiences as life-changing as the performance tonight. I wish I were a poet so I could put into words what happened to me tonight. Suffice it to say I have a renewed interest in life and all that it means. I only wish I could capture this in such a way that I would be able to return to it over and over again when I need to be brought back to life.

I must get a recording of tonight’s performance.

Here is the complete text of Vaughan Williams’s Dona Nobis Pacem:

I. Agnus Dei

Agnus Dei qui tollis peccata mundi (Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world)
Dona nobis pacem. (Grant us peace.)

II. Beat! Beat! Drums!

Beat! Beat! drums!—blow! bugles! blow!
Through the windows—through the doors—burst like a ruthless force,
Into the solemn church, and scatter the congregation,
Into the school where the scholar is studying;
Leave not the bridegroom quiet—no happiness must he have now with his bride,
Nor the peaceful farmer any peace, ploughing his field, or gathering in his grain,
So fierce you whirr and pound you drums—so shrill you bugles blow.

Beat! Beat! drums!—blow! bugles! blow!
Over the traffic of cities—over the rumble of wheels in the streets;
Are beds prepared for the sleepers at night in the houses? No sleepers must sleep in those beds,
No bargainers’ bargains by day—would they continue?
Would the talkers be talking? would the singer attempt to sing?
Then rattle quicker, heavier drums—you bugles wilder blow.

Beat! Beat! drums!—blow! bugles! blow!
Make no parley—stop for no expostulation,
Mind not the timid—mind not the weeper or prayer,
Mind not the old man beseeching the young man,
Let not the child’s voice be heard, nor the mother’s entreaties,
Make even the trestles to shake the dead where they lie awaiting the hearses,
So strong you thump O terrible drums—so loud you bugles blow.

III. Reconciliation

Word over all, beautiful as the sky,
Beautiful that war and all its deeds of carnage must in time be utterly lost,
That the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly, softly, wash again and ever again this soiled world;
For my enemy is dead, a man divine as myself is dead,
I look where he lies white-faced and still in the coffin—I draw near,
Bend down and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin.

IV. Dirge for Two Veterans

The last sunbeam
Lightly falls from the finished Sabbath,
On the pavement here, and there beyond it is looking
Down a new-made double grave.

Lo, the moon ascending,
Up from the east the silvery round moon,
Beautiful over the house-tops, ghastly, phantom moon,
Immense and silent moon.

I see a sad procession,
And I hear the sound of coming full-keyed bugles,
All the channels of the city streets they’re flooding
As with voices and with tears.

I hear the great drums pounding,
And the small drums steady whirring,
And every blow of the great convulsive drums
Strikes me through and through.

For the son is brought with the father,
In the foremost ranks of the fierce assault they fell,
Two veterans, son and father, dropped together,
And the double grave awaits them.

Now nearer blow the bugles,
And the drums strike more convulsive,
And the daylight o’er the pavement quite has faded,
And the strong dead-march enwraps me.

In the eastern sky up-buoying,
The sorrowful vast phantom moves illumined,
’Tis some mother’s large transparent face,
In heaven brighter growing

O strong dead-march you please me!
O moon immense with your silvery face you sooth me!
O my soldiers twain! O my veterans passing to burial!
What I have I also give you.

The moon gives you light,
And the bugles and the drums give you music,
And my heart, O my soldiers, my veterans,
My heart gives you love.

V.

The Angel of Death has been abroad throughout the land; you may almost hear the beating of his wings. There is no one as of old...to sprinkle with blood the lintel and the two side-posts of our doors, that he may spare and pass on.

Dona nobis pacem.

We looked for peace, but no good came; and for a time of health, and behold trouble!
The snorting of his horses was heard from Dan; the whole land trembled at the sound of the neighing of his strong ones; for they are come, and have devoured the land...and those that dwell therein....
The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved....
Is there no balm in Gilead? is there no physician there? Why then is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered?

O man greatly beloved, fear not, peace be unto thee, be strong, yea be strong.

The glory of this latter house shall be greater than of the former...and in this place will I give peace.

Nation shall not lift up a sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.
And none shall make them afraid, neither shall the sword go through their land.
Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other.
Truth shall spring out of the earth, and righteousness shall look down from heaven.
Open to me the gates of righteousness, I will go into them.
Let all the nations be gathered together, and let the people be assembled; and let them hear, and say, it is the truth.
And it shall come, that I will gather all nations and tongues.
And they shall come and see my glory. And I will set a sign among them, and they shall declare my glory among the nations.
For as the new heavens and the new earth, which I will make, shall remain before me, so shall your seed and your name remain for ever.

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace, good-will toward men.

Dona nobis pacem.

Hair news

2007-04-11T15:28:00.000-05:00

My best friend tells me that I’m too obsessed with my hair. So I apologize if this post is interesting to no one except me.

I have red hair. I’ve always felt that red hair is an important part of who I am -- it’s something nice that not many people have. And since I’ve gained so much weight, I haven’t felt good about how I look, but I’m still proud of my red hair. Erin loves my hair.

My hair has a lot of brown in it. When I was five years old, my hair was orange-red; now it’s almost brown. I call it “russet.” But it gets less russet and more brown every year. A friend of mine, Twila, who has known me since last October recently told me that she doesn’t think my hair is red at all. That made me feel bad. If my hair turned grey or white, I wouldn’t mind -- I think that would be distinguished. I’ve always seen grey hair as a symbol of life experience or even wisdom. But for it to turn brown, and for me to look like so many other doughy brown-haired guys is just too much for me to take.

So I colored my hair. No, seriously, I colored it. I colored it with a hair color called “lightest auburn.” And now my hair looks just like it did ten years ago. It’s a subtle difference, but one that I’m very happy with. I can see myself coloring it with this every few months till it turns grey, then I’ll probably stop and let it be grey.

I know that colored red hair isn’t as special as natural red hair, but it makes me feel better about myself. It’s nice to have control of something that seems so small, yet makes a big difference in how I feel about myself. I feel a little bad that I’m coloring my hair, but the good feelings at how it looks outweigh the bad.

And don’t ask for a picture, because a picture probably wouldn’t show the difference. I’ve had only one person notice without my telling them. This is primarily for me -- I feel much better when I look in the mirror now.

And it’s for Twila -- we’ll see if she notices when I see her later today!

Gabapentin

2007-04-05T10:06:00.000-05:00

Well, I’ve found my new miracle drug. The last time I saw my psychiatrist, he told me he was frustrated with my case and didn’t know what to do next. Apparently my condition is “treatment-resistant.”

So finally he decided to reduce the dose of my anti-psychotic (even though I don’t have any psychotic symptoms, I was on an anti-psychotic because that type of drug often helps with bipolar disorder) and put me on an anti-seizure medication (even though I don’t have seizures) called Gabapentin (also known as neurontin). As usual, Erin and I went to the internet just as soon as I got the prescription, in order to read more about the drug.

The first thing I read about Gabapentin, which is not approved for use in bipolar disorder, is that it used to be regularly prescribed off-label for bipolar disorder, but then some studies came out that said it had no effect on bipolar disorder. So I immediately wondered whether my doctor had not seen the latest news on Gabapentin. Then I learned that the company that makes Gabapentin was fined hundreds of thousands of dollars for illegally marketing the drug, by telling doctors that it could work with bipolar disorder (it’s not illegal for the doctor to prescribe it for a condition it isn’t approved for, but it is illegal for the drug company to market it off-label).

After a little more searching, I found a newer study that showed that Gabapentin might work in conjunction with other drugs (the earlier studies had patients use it by itself). So I decided that the proof would be in my condition.

When I started taking Gabapentin, my condition immediately improved. That was three weeks ago today. I have been completely stable for three weeks now. But that isn’t enough evidence; my last few medication changes have worked for three or four weeks, then they wore off.

So I posted to a bipolar forum on the internet, asking if anyone had any personal experience with Gabapentin. I figured regardless what the studies say, if it helps anyone there’s at least a tiny chance that it will continue to help me.

I got several responses from people who have used the drug for a short time. It helped some and not others. Some people had really bad things to say about the drug. Other people were very positive. One person who was positive has used it for eight years. But that isn’t even the best testimonial. One person said that he has had bipolar disorder for at least 35 years. For the first five, he was hospitalized six times for his disorder. Then he went on lithium for 15 years. Things went well for those 15 years, but for some reason he had to stop taking lithium. So his doctor put him on Gabapentin. He has now been stable on Gabapentin for 15 years. Fifteen years ago, almost no one used Gabapentin for bipolar disorder (its only approved uses are for seizures and for nerve pain from shingles). But this guy, who had such a bad condition that he had to be hospitalized six times in five years, has been stable on Gabapentin for fifteen years! He is on a slightly higher dose than I am.

I’m taking his story as evidence that this may finally be the right drug for me, and I may finally overcome the problems I’m having.

By the way, I’ve had no suicidal thoughts since I’ve been on Gabapentin. Not at all. A three-week span is a really long time for me not to be suicidal, so I’ll take that as more evidence that this drug will do the trick.

Wish me luck!

Weight

2007-03-31T09:13:00.000-05:00

Ever since I quit my job one year ago, I’ve been writing down my weight every morning, and keeping track of my weekly average weight on my computer. I averaged three-quarters of a pound per week of weight gain from April 2006 through February 2007. But over the past four weeks, I’ve lost 4.5 pounds. If I keep up this rate of weight loss, I’ll be back down to where I was a year ago in 28 more weeks, and back down to where I was 2.5 years ago about 15 months from now.

A lot of things have gone into my weight gain. My bipolar disorder, the medication for it, and my busy schedule have made it easy to gain weight. But the bottom line is that overeating, eating fast food every day, and not exercising have done it. I’ve done a little better on those three things this past month (plus I had a medication change that apparently affected my weight), so now I plan to continue eating less, eating more healthful foods, and exercising. And I’m hoping that not eating fast food will save money, also, since Erin and I are flat broke. We shall see what happens!

Anita

2007-03-30T20:11:00.000-05:00

I have the greatest therapist in the world. Anita is the sweetest, smartest, and most understanding therapist imaginable. She remembers everything about me (even when I came back after not seeing her for almost a year), and she has uncanny insight about me. A year ago, I told her I was going to become a home inspector. She was disappointed that I wasn’t going into music. Then I came back a few weeks ago, and she was thrilled to find out that I had given up on home inspection in favor of music education.

She never ceases to surprise me with her take on things. Yesterday I told her that I am disappointed with my inability to accomplish anything. She helped me to see that getting straight A’s in school full-time, volunteering six hours a week working with elementary school kids, directing a barbershop chorus, singing in a barbershop quartet, and getting paid to sing in a church choir is accomplishing things.

She has instructed me to start making a schedule for myself. If I can get up at the same time every morning and take a walk and shower and shave and brush my teeth (things that I have neglected in my illness), my days will go much better. I know she’s right, but it’s hard. So she told me she would see me again in only two weeks, and that I have to bring my daily schedule. She knows that I need a bit of a firm hand in this.

I’ve been wondering for some time whether I will work well with kids. But I trust Anita’s insight, and she is convinced that I am perfectly suited to be a teacher.

And did I mention that Anita now has a Yorkshire Terrier puppy named Versace (Sachie for short) in her office? Yeah, Anita’s the best.

On hopelessness

2007-03-12T10:05:00.000-05:00

I have been told that people who do not have suicidal thoughts do not understand how other people can have them. I have also been told that no one knows why the rate of suicide among people with bipolar disorder is several hundred times higher than that of the general population. I don’t know about anyone else, but I know for me suicidal thoughts are a result of hopelessness.

Bipolar disorder can sometimes make life unbearable. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the disorder, it is when a person has episodes of mania and depression. Episodes of mania generally last a few weeks to a few months, and episodes of depression usually last six to twelve months.

Depression is a fairly easy concept for most people to grasp, but mania is not. In a nutshell, mania is when you feel too good for your own good. A manic episode is characterized by egotism, aggression, recklessness, abnormally elevated mood, impatience, and boundless optimism. Manic episodes make a person feel indestructable.

Bipolar disorder can also lead to what is called a mixed episode. A mixed episode is when a person experiences depression and mania simultaneously. Once when I was in a mixed episode (I was depressed and an anti-depressant triggered simultaneous mania), I tried to break into an ATM. When police came, I led them on a high-speed chase. That incident is a good illustration of mania. Especially when you consider that I was a goody-two-shoes teenager at the time. Nothing could have been more out of character for me than to break the law, except maybe for running from the police, and I did both.

Although depression is an easy concept to grasp, it can’t be fully understood by people who have never experienced it. It causes a person to feel like their dog just died, but for no reason at all. When good things happen, they don’t make you feel better. When bad things happen, they make you feel worse. And you barely have the motivation or energy to get up in the morning, brush your teeth, shower, or shave. It’s even harder to clean house, pay bills, do homework, or enjoy hobbies. Unexplained physical pain often accompanies depression. It’s easier sometimes to call in sick than to leave the house. Friends want to interact when you just want to be left alone. Your significant other becomes your enemy because she wants to touch you. And you become your own worst enemy when things get so bad that you just want to die, and you become willing to kill yourself to escape.

Suicide is actually not very common during the worst of a depressive episode because depressed people lack the motivation and energy required to kill themselves. That may be one reason suicide is so common in people who have bipolar disorder -- the cycles of depression, mania, mixed episodes, and normality give a person both the suicidal thoughts (during a depression) and the ability to follow through (during one of the other periods).

For some people, bipolar disorder can be rapid-cycling. This means that alternations between mania, depression, and normality occur more frequently than every few months. In some people, very wide ranges of mood can occur on a daily or even hourly basis. This happens with me for two reasons. One is that I have very rapid-cycling bipolar disorder, and the other is that I tend to overreact to situations. This is not universal among people with bipolar disorder, but it isn’t uncommon, either. In other words, I react to bad news with a miniature depressive episode that can be very serious but may only last a few hours. And I can react to something good by becoming somewhat manic for a few hours. This is different than normal ups and downs, and it’s more serious than simple overreacting, because it makes me suicidal when down and aggressive and out-of-touch when up.

Another reason bipolar people are suicidal is that life for us can be difficult. After a period of instability or depression or mania, life seems impossible to deal with. The work and bills and weight that can pile up during an episode have to be taken care of in the brief periods of normality, if there are any. This also helps explain why the divorce rate for marriages with at least one bipolar spouse is over ninety percent. The rollercoaster is hard to ride, especially when one symptom is that your spouse withdraws when he or she needs you the most.

Just about the only effective treatment for bipolar disorder is medication. And medication is far from perfect. The side effects and lack of efficacy cause a majority of people with bipolar disorder to disobey doctor’s orders and quit taking medication. And suddenly stopping medication almost always triggers a severe episode.

I have one other trait which makes me particularly susceptible to suicidal thoughts. This one is apparently not that common among people with bipolar disorder, because all of my doctors and therapists have acted like it is unique to me. I always tend toward fatalism. When things are bad, even for only an hour, I feel like they will be that way forever. And when things are great, I feel the same way. I find it hard to understand that things will get better (or worse) again later. I find it hard to prepare for good and bad days, because I think that things will always be the way they are right now. I find it hard to tell the doctor when things are bad because I feel fine sitting in his office.

So when things get bad, as they often do, I feel like my life will always be unbearable, like it will always be torture. And I look for a way to escape. That’s why I’m suicidal.

I have a chart where I mark at the beginning of the day how many hours I slept. I mark at the end of the day how much medication I took, what my highest and lowest points were (on a scale of negative three to positive three), and whether I had any serious suicidal thoughts. At my lowest depression, I would mark about four days per week. Lately I’ve had several weeks with no marks, and several weeks with two or three marks. The problem is that any one of those days could be the last. I have been very lucky so far. Several things help me to avoid those thoughts, especially the support I have received from Erin and my friends. But they always come back; I don’t know how to avoid them completely. All I can do is continue to do the best I can, and hope my luck holds out.

I’m sorry that this post is so negative, but I wanted to try to help all of you understand what I go through. Thank you for being my friends.

My favorite time of year

2007-03-02T16:23:00.000-06:00

I just ate these. You know what that makes me? A purple Peeps eater!

Oops

2007-03-01T15:51:00.000-06:00

Has your life ever gotten so hectic that you just shut down, unable to accomplish anything, let alone the tons of stuff you had to do? Imagine teetering at this ultra-hectic brink of sanity, not for minutes or hours, but for days. That’s the best description I can give for how I’m feeling right now.

My doctor adjusted my medication last week. A few days after the change, my head began spinning so fast I felt like it would explode. I found it impossible to think clearly, and my judgment was severely impaired. I started driving agressively, I found people and situations insufferably boring, and I couldn’t seem to focus on a task long enough to accomplish anything. So I set up an emergency appointment with my doctor, who said that one of my medications was probably causing it and that I should stop taking it immediately and replace it with something that probably wouldn’t cause the same problem.

This sounds familiar to me because I went through the same thing ten years ago. That time I ended up in jail because of what my poor judgment led to. The medication I was on then is in the same class of drugs as this medication. Too bad my doctor didn’t realize how likely it was to happen again.

At that emergency appointment yesterday, my doctor said that I should be feeling back to normal in about four days. (If he was right about which medication caused the problem.) So I am currently feeling almost as bad as I was then. I’m desparately looking for ways to fill the time between now and Sunday. I can’t seem to do anything constructive, and I can’t seem to enjoy anything that isn’t constructive. Sleep doesn’t work -- one of my symptoms is insomnia. So I’ve been suffering through classes at school, trying in vain to do homework, surfing the internet for hours, eating pistachios, and drinking tons of diet pop.

Writing this blog post seems like a good idea, but my judgment is still impaired. Maybe I’ll delete this in a few days when I’m back to normal.

So if you interact with me between now and Sunday, I’m sorry for anything bad I say or do. I’m trying my best to be normal or at least to be nice, but I doubt I’ll succeed. Wish me luck.

Oh, by the way, I got a new cell phone yesterday. It’s really nice!

A confession

2007-02-27T13:46:00.000-06:00

I have started to like country music.

A few weeks ago, after I rediscovered my love for alternative country singer Lyle Lovett, I started wondering whether the country music on the radio was as worthless as I remembered. So I started listening to a couple of local country stations. And I have to admit that I like it.

Years ago, when I listened to pop music, I used to say that I liked all kinds of music except country. After I stopped liking pop music, whenever I heard people say they liked all music except rap (and then they would usually make some snide comment about rap not really counting as music), I would say that rap was music, and that I liked all music except pop and country. Then later, after I discovered how great Johnny Cash and some other classic country singers were, I modified that to saying I didn’t like modern country or pop music, and that they sounded alike to me.

But now that I’ve actually spent some time listening to country music, I’ve found a lot to distinguish it from pop music. The first thing is that they talk about God a lot. That turns me off, but country songs about God aren’t so common that I can’t just switch stations and usually escape it. The next thing I noticed are all of the heartwarming songs about family. This I love. I find it refreshing and touching to hear Rodney Adkins sing:

He said, I’ve been watching you, dad, ain’t that cool?
I’m your buckaroo, I want to be like you.
And eat all my food and grow as tall as you are.

Another thing I’m beginning to love about country music is how they sing the way people really talk. Many of them pronounce their “uh” and “er” vowels, rather than bastardizing them. And they use words like “ain’t.” They prefer nonstandard versions of adverbs, as in the current number one song, George Strait’s “It Just Comes Natural.”

And they don’t pretend to be something more than they are. For example, “A Little Bit of Life” by hottie Craig Morgan is a simple list of the daily doings of a country guy:

I breathe in, I breathe out,
Yes, sleeping all night with the windows down,
Up in the morning, stirring around,
Drink a pot of coffee and I head off to town,
Work work work, all day long,
Crank it up, back it up, bring it on home,
Supper on the table and I eat me a bite,
Then we snuggle on the porch by the pale moonlight.

Now, I’m not a sucker for just anything. For example, I can’t stand the cheap tearjerker “Alyssa Lies” by Jason Michael Carroll, which is about a guy whose daughter is friends with a girl who dies from being abused. And I don’t like Keith Urban’s stupid hit “Stupid Boy,” which is about a guy who broke someone’s heart:

She laid her heart and soul right in your hands
and you stole her every dream and you crushed her plans,
She never even knew she had a choice
and that’s what happens when the only voice
she hears is telling her she can’t,
Stupid boy, stupid boy.

Someone might want to let Mr. Urban know that some women are people nowadays.

But on the whole, this has been an eye-opening time for me. I have expanded my horizons and found that country music has a place in my life and a couple of presets on my car stereo.

A definition

2007-02-25T22:16:00.000-06:00

Optimism is looking at my medication and thinking, “Maybe this week it will work.”

Gotta love it

2007-02-24T09:54:00.000-06:00

I love Lyle Lovett. I first heard him on David Letterman’s show back in 1994, singing a song from his album I Love Everybody, and I was immediately drawn to his music, his singing, and his look. And I felt sorry for him because everyone made fun of him and said he wasn’t good-looking enough for his then-wife Julia Roberts. As a high-school boy who felt he wasn’t good-looking enough ever to have a girlfriend, and who thought he could sing well, and who loved everybody, I felt a kinship with Mr. Lovett.

I recently saw Lyle Lovett on a rerun of Austin City Limits singing songs from his 2003 album My Baby Don’t Tolerate, and it struck me that I had never owned an album of his. So I went to the iTunes store and purchased that album. I've been listening to it in my car, and I absolutely love it.

One of the first things I noticed was how much more country he sounds on the album than he did on the Letterman show or Austin City Limits. I knew he was a country singer, but I had always thought he was not very strongly in the modern country genre. I also noticed that, like many country songwriters, he loves to sing about roads and highways. The first song starts: “Interstate 610, Highway 45.” A song named “Wallisville Road” mentions Highway 9. “The Truck Song” mentions a highway and a dirt road. But for someone so concerned with roads, he has some bad driving advice: In one song, he says, “My lane’s the right one when I’m in England,” and in another song, he claims “Green means stop, honey, red means go.” [Correction: I got these lyrics off of the internet. When listening to the album, that line appears to be something like “My lane’s the right one, we're not in England.”]

I’m also struck by the way he sometimes stuffs too many syllables into a line. For example, in the blues song “My Baby Don’t Tolerate,” in a break where each line should probably have no more than six or seven syllables (for example, another songwriter might say something like, “My baby done left me”), he uses twenty-nine syllables for the first line, twenty-four syllables for the second line, three for the third, four for the fourth, and nine for the fifth:

Now a small and more ordinary man might not appreciate the guidance of a good woman who truly loves him,
He might drift in despair after the ignorant dumb doings of his dirty daily existence,
That’s not me,
No, yes siree,
I'm proof that true love will set you free.

Each of the first two lines last too long, but the instruments just keep playing and he gets behind, catching up on the third line. I like that.

And he has a way with words that is unique and can be beautiful. In a song about loss, he has the line, “Another day is lowered in the ground.” And one of my favorite lines from the album is when he describes a woman’s displeasure with him by saying, “When I puckered up, you know, she puckered down.”

Then there is the thing I can’t describe. His voice. His voice is exquisite, and it perfectly matches his songs. I can’t tell you what it sounds like -- you’ll just have to hear it for yourself.

His album The Road to Ensenada won the Grammy award for Best Country Album in 1996, and many people think it is his best album. I was going to purchase that one, but iTunes doesn’t have the title track for some reason. So I guess I’ll get that album the old-fashioned way and buy it from Amazon.com.

What not to wear

2007-02-13T10:12:00.000-06:00

In my recent post on fashion, I noted that I had purchased a white polo with dark blue and light blue stripes on it. I failed to mention that the stripes are HORIZONTAL. I have since been informed by Erin that, had I been paying more attention to “What Not to Wear,” I would have known that Stacy and Clinton would not approve of the horizontal stipes, which have a widening effect on appearance. (One of you copy editors should tell me whether that should have been effect or affect.)

Another problem with the shirt is that it is white. So far I’ve spilled something on it each time I’ve worn it. Yesterday morning, I spilled coffee on it, and last night I spilled some Cajun substance on it at Red Bean’s Bayou Grill (yes, there is an apostrophe in the name of the restaurant). Part of the problem is that I’m messy, part of the problem is that it’s white, and part of the problem is my ever expanding gut: the stuff that used to fall in my lap is now falling on the upper shelf of my tummy.

I have a freakishly long torso (I’m almost six feet tall and my inseam is only 28.5"), so I don’t think I would look good in vertical stripes either, since they create a lengthening effect. So I need to have no stripes on my shirt, and vertical stripes on my pants. By the way, speaking of pants, I have to roll up my new jeans (see earlier post for a picture of a model wearing them without being rolled up) because, like most men’s jeans, they don’t come shorter than a 30" inseam. By the way, for anyone keeping score at home, Erin is 5' 7" and has an inseam of 34". My shirts have to be at least eight inches longer than hers. So if we have kids with her legs and my torso, they’ll be at least 6' 4". If they get my legs and her torso, they’ll be about 5' 2". Maybe we’ll have one of each.

The world’s best coffee

2007-02-06T13:59:00.000-06:00

I hate marketing. I love honesty and simplicity and good English too much to enjoy most advertising. But sometimes someone gets it just right.

The best coffee I’ve ever tasted is Stewarts Private Blend. Their slogan is: It’s Really Good. That’s everything a shopper needs to know about Stewarts in three words.

If you’ve never had any, you owe it to yourself to try some. It isn’t widely available, so I buy it at stewarts.com. If you come to my house, I’ll serve you some made from whole beans in our twelve-cup percolator with built-in grinder.

The flavor is so strong (not bitter, just full) that they recommend you make it half strength. I prefer almost full strength (lately I’ve been making it five-sixths strength), but it’s so good I sometimes have trouble drinking it that strong (I enjoy it too much).

It’s really good!