something my former hands had longed for

I had a Heart Episode at the dentist's yesterday. I really want it to Mean Something, or to at least have had a life-passed-before-my-eyes etc, but mainly what I'm taking away is that I am pissed at myself for compounding it by panicking. Also grateful that I got to call Friar and be all WHOA about it and he didn't even tell me I totally didn't have a heart attack until we were both safely home. My resting heart temperature is like 60 now; that's amazing and good right. I mean I'm not worried about my heart. I am a drama queen and I am bringing the drama, here it is: drama. I didn't tell Squire about how the main thing that scared me was thinking that I wouldn't see him again, and how determination to get over that fear was important in terms of focused getting home action. My drama has changed since the days when I thought that 27 was a good time to die, so there's that.

I think not liking the oversell of bacon is the new bacon.

I think that it is awesome how ugly Edward James Olmos is. Yes I am late to the Battlestar Gallactica show, but at least I'm here now. It is nothing new to observe that in pretty much any given film the women are going to be prettier and younger, but I still had to rack my brains to think of any woman who is even close to Olmos's league. The only woman I can think of that comes close is Linda Hunt, and I think she can act circles around Olmos, and he is really good. So maybe I could now make a blanket statement about how all ugly people who go into acting are probably really amazing, and how great would it be to have a movie with all ugly people. Except I thought Michelle Pfeiffer did a great job in Frankie and Johnny so I just blew my own idea out of the water.

I think it is funny how parents raise the kids they can stand to have and then think that all that personality is just on the kids. Certainly I think people are born with a certain amount of stuff in place, but if your kid can't fall asleep without noise-canceling headphones, I think that's on you. I'm talking only about other parents: Squire is totes his own person.

I think that it is interesting how I process maybe one thought every year. This year so far the thought seems to be "You're kidding, right?" which is when people express a level of stupid so incomprehensible to me that I think the only possible explanation is that they're joking. So far there seems to be no way to verify it with most people that I don't know, or even people I know without being really insulting, so this is a mostly internal process.

The amount of my thinking that is occupied by the past is not to be underestimated.

Comments

[Madeleine]

But are you OK now?

For the past couple of years the thought I'm processing and not speaking is "Why do you think I give a flying f*** ?" But that's mostly in my low moments.

[tuckova]

Madeline - What are they telling you that makes you wonder that? I tend to care a great deal about minutiae, and am sometimes surprised that the people I'm talking to don't share my fascination... but I am capable of attending and modifying for the audience, I think. Is it the same people boring you, or an overturning flow?

[Madeleine]

No, no, not information sharing. I love that. It's the "this chore needs doing" from my family that most often provokes that reaction. And I should be clear that this has become one of my internal markers for depression -- when I start reacting like that, I know I'm feeling down.

Sorry to provoke self-doubt.

A woman sitting next to me on a train once told me about why sewage treatment plants are round (because they need constant stirring and the easiest way is a long arm mounted in the middle, same reason as crop circles, really). And she thought she was boring me, but clearly not, as I remember it many many years later.