Bless us, O Divine Lady of Bottomless Martinis & Netflix Binges

First off, I must apologize for missing last week. I had the flu/cold/virus-from-hell/plague that was going around and it knocked me solidly on my ass. I'm still not 100% but at least I'm not propelling myself backward from the sheer force of my cough.

One of my favorite sites, The Toast, had a piece this week by Molly Priddy called My Secular Patron Saints. The author wrote about her Catholic upbringing and how it was at odds with her own beliefs:

"By middle school, I wasn’t looking to the Catholic communion of saints for life inspiration anymore. They didn’t apply to me, other than the women who died being obstinate. I learned that in order to survive, I had to find my own patron saints for inspiration. I had to build my own mythology, one in which my wants and dreams and desires were important, not just a lesson in sin or a second-class concern."

She kicked it off with Saint Idgie Threadgoode, Patron Saint of Tomboys.

I really liked this. I also was raised Catholic; like Ms. Priddy, it didn't stick for me, either. I questioned too much, not to mention bristled at the subservient role women play in the Catholic religion. But I've always loved the idea of patron saints. I love the idea of one figure whose special mission is to look out for those she was assigned. When I was confirmed, I took the saint's name of Brigid, mostly because she's one of the patron saints of Ireland (and dairy!) and it was the name my great-grandma had wanted my mom to name me. But as I read through Ms. Priddy's patron saints selection, I thought about coming up with a stable of my own patron saints, ladies who were "my own people, birds of my feather." And yes, it seemed necessary that they only be women. So here they are, in no particular order:

St. Bella Abzug

Our Lady of Hat-Wearing Feminists

St. Eloise

Patron Saint of the Exuberantly Misbehaved

St. Red Fraggle

Patron Saint of Gingers, natural and otherwise

St. Alice Roosevelt Longworth

Patron Saint of Ladies Who Could've Done the Job as Well as Or Better Than a Man If She'd Only Been Allowed

St. Rory Gilmore

Patron Saint of Voracious Readers

St. Liz Lemon

Our Lady of Night Cheese

Sts. Bailey and Lulu

Patron Saints of Blind Love

St. Amy Poehler

Patron Saint of Being Awesome 

(I mean, really, how do you encapsulate all that Amy Poehler is other than 'awesome'? Tied with St. Knope- Patron Saint of Lady Friends)

St. Grace O'Malley

Patron Saint of Female Pirates and their
Modern-Day Equivalent

Sts. Edina and Patsy

Our Ladies of Fabulousness, Sweetie Darling

St. Ramona

Patron Saint of Being True to Yourself

St. Lucille

Blessed Lady of Hospital Bars

St. Sally

Patron Saint of Fussy Eaters

St. Harper

Patron Saint of Writers Who Just Need Some Time Off to Write

St. Dorothy Parker

Patron Saint of Wit and the Stylish Comeback

St. Dorothy Zbornak

Our Lady of the Cutting Look

St. Joan Jett

Patron Saint of Bad-Assery

St. Eleanor 

Patron Saint of Doing the Thing That You Think You Cannot Do

St. RBG

Most Blessed Lady of Protecting Our Rights

Hamchuck coming yo

I mean, look at him. He's clearly a killer.

Last night, my puggle Ozzie, greeted me a little too enthusiastically when I came in and slashed my face with his razor-sharp little nails. He'd done it earlier to my leg and actually drew blood. He's not a vicious guy; it wasn't done with any malice or intent to hurt. He just got SO DAMN EXCITED that we were home that he tried to tear me in two. That's all.

So now I have this lovely red slash down my face (across my forehead too even though my bangs cover the marks- he got all the way up to my hairline) and my face is puffy and sore.

It could've been worse- when it happened, it hurt so much I was afraid he'd gouged my eye out. And I was really surprised I wasn't bleeding.

But I have walked around feeling like a James Bond villain all day.

   Hamchuck coming yo.  

I even changed my profile picture on Facebook to Omar from the Wire because his scar is similarly placed.

The worst part of it is having people look at you funny and wanting to explain to them what happened. You almost want to wear a sign that says, "My dog did this. For real. No, really. Really. I'm fine." It reminded me of when a black cat gave me two black eyes.

I used to be the fundraising director for our local animal shelter. One day I had a donor lunch, so I was dressed up a little more than usual. I went out to the front lobby before we opened to get our newspaper (to check the obits, one of those glamorous daily duties of a fundraiser they don't tell you about) and one of the cats who was roaming the lobby while their cages were cleaned darted through the open door down the hall. I went after him because this was the hall on the dog wing side, and although they were safely behind the glass walls of their "apartments," the dogs were already going apeshit over this little black cat strutting by them. I followed him under the stairs that led up to the offices. It was too dark to see, cluttered with stuff people had donated that we didn't have an immediate use for, and the cat wanted nothing to do with me. I finally gave up and decided to go get a kennel attendant to help me. So I stood up. And drove my forehead into the underside of the concrete staircase.

I hit it with such force that it threw me backward. I landed solidly on my ass and crushed a plastic hamster tunnel-thing that was being stored back there. It split the skin on the bridge of my nose and made me see stars. Feeling incredibly stupid, I went to the vet's office to find an ice pack and cleaned the blood up off my face. I was already starting to look like Frankenstein. But I had a donor coming to lunch and I was determined to soldier on.

But after our director watched me unpack the lunches from the delivery bag and meticulously put the apples in the fridge, then remove them, then put them in the cupboards, then take them out, then put them back in the bag, then take them out and put them in the fridge again, he said it was probably best if I went home and let him handle the lunch.

I drove myself home, which was maybe not such a great idea. I probably should've gotten checked out at urgent care or something. My pupils didn't look odd to me but the more I looked at them, the weirder they

seemed to me. I don't know if I was mildly concussed or just a little out of it. I called my husband and asked him to come check on me- I think I felt I needed a second opinion about getting medical attention. He was about to go into a staff meeting, he said, but he'd come by when it got out. Seeing how he didn't seem too concerned, I settled myself on the couch, plopped a bag of frozen corn niblets on my face and turned on the tv.

Yeah, well.  Dammit..

The only thing I knew about concussions was that you weren't supposed to fall asleep if you had one, or you wouldn't wake up. (This has been proven to be incorrect.) So I found a documentary on the History Channel to keep me awake until Brett got home to assess me. (I know- that's exactly the kind of thing that would put most people to sleep. But I'm not most people. So there.)

Unfortunately, about half an hour into the show (whose subject I sadly do not remember) a message appeared on the tv screen warning me that the channel was about to change to a program that had been scheduled to record. Crap, I thought. I hope it's something good. I knew it wasn't anything I'd done- I very rarely set anything to record. At the announced time, the channel changed.... to AMC, which was showing the film version of the Who's Tommy.

I didn't think I could change the channel, because I thought Brett had to record this for work. At the time, he was the marketing manager for a local theatre company and I knew they were selecting the shows for their upcoming season. I though they were considering doing Tommy and he needed to watch it to be able to share his opinion. So I sat there watching Tommy, in all of its mind-spinning, surreal, Ann-Margret-rolling-around-in-baked-beans-on-a-white-carpet effed-up-edness. While I might have been mildly concussed.

When Brett finally got home, he saw me with the beginnings of two brutal black eyes, the ridge of my nose bloodied and swollen until my face was a flat plain, with a bag of frozen corn resting on my cheekbones watching Ann-Margret flip out and perform interpretative go-go dance on tv. He looked aghast.

I looked so bad that I had to keep to home mostly. People who saw me thought I'd been in a car accident or beaten up. We went out for drinks one night just to get out of the house and the bartender, a friend of ours, openly gasped and stepped back when he saw me.  (The bruises got worse as they healed). It severely limited my casual wardrobe choices. It was NOT the time to wear my "This is What a Feminist Looks Like" t-shirt.

But everything healed, and life went back to normal. (Although I have a little dent in the bone on the bridge of my nose now.) And my face scratch too will eventually heal and go away.

At least this time I've been able to avoid being forced to watch anything with Ann-Margret. A viewing of Viva Las Vegas might just put me over the edge.

Skate and Destroy

The prophecy didn't say anything about this.

Seriously, when did Kim Kardashian become a gelfling? 

 

Damn. The internet beat me to it.

 

Presented without comment

Overheard at work today:

"That's no emergency! Boy stuck in a drainpipe- that's an emergency! This is no Baby Jessica!"

A Uniquely Portable Magic

“Books are a uniquely portable magic.”
― Stephen King

My friend Sheri invited me to hear Judy Blume speak down in PA where she lives with her husband and her sinfully adorable beagle, Olivia, who looks like a cross between my Minchy and Frances. It's not till June but I am so unspeakably excited.

Judy Blume was one of my favorite authors growing up and she holds a special, very dear place in my heart. The kids in her
books were so real- warts and all- and she wrote so honestly about them. It's easy to forget how revolutionary that was when she was first published.

Coming just before this was the news of Harper Lee publishing her second novel 50+ years after To Kill A Mockingbird. I must admit, I was worried that this was some cobbled-

together half-hearted sequel, a revisitation of characters who lived best in memory. I was quite pleased to learn that Go Set A Watchman, the new novel, is not such a thing at all. It's Lee's first version of To Kill A Mockingbird, written as an adult Scout returns home to Maycombe and Atticus. Her editor suggested she focus more on the past and on Scout as a child, and To Kill A Mockingbird was born. Go Set A Watchman was lost in a drawer somewhere until recently- Lee herself admits she thought the manuscript was lost forever. Doing some writing myself and seeing how my own story has changed and twisted and turned as I've gone along, I'm thinking this will be at least a fascinating look into how her story evolved. Like my friend Eric said, even if it's crap, it'll be better than most of what's out there now anyway.

I have a very special fondness for "Nelle." (Did you know she was named after a favorite aunt? Nelle, apparently, is for Ellen, but spelled backward.) I can't really think of Harper Lee as anyone but Nelle after seeing a wonderful documentary called "Hey Boo" celebrating the book's fiftieth anniversary. The documentary featured lots of interviews with Lee's sister Alice, who only refers to her as Nelle. (And has one of the most startling voices you'll ever hear.) Alice, bless her, was a

Alice on the left, Nelle Harper on the right

lawyer who still worked for the firm where their father had practiced until she was in her 100s. She also guarded her sister- and her sister's work- fiercely and some folks have been wondering if Alice's death last year is the reason we're seeing this new work.

I've always loved how independent Nelle is- how she's refused to fit in or be assimilated or be conventional. A friend of mine once criticized how reclusive she is- who says no to attention? Everybody wants attention, right? Why, she could be out making millions, getting guest spots on TV! I very much disagreed. I think Nelle is the example of how to do it right: give the world one absolutely perfect piece of art, then keep the rest of your life for yourself. I admire that way of thinking so much and I hope I get the chance to emulate it someday.

I also love the story of how Lee came to finally write what became To Kill A Mockingbird. She worked as a ticket agent for an airline in New York. For seven years, she wrote fiction whenever she could, mostly nights and weekends, but didn't publish anything. In 1956, she received the best Christmas gift ever. Her friends, Michael and Joy Brown, gave her a check for the amount of her salary for one year with a note that said, "You have one year off from your job to write whatever you please. Merry Christmas." She made good on that opportunity. (Click the link above to read Lee's essay about the gift. It's wonderful.)

So it's a pretty awesome time for readers. Which makes me very happy. Reading is one of my most favorite things to do, and my oldest pasttime.  I learned to read when I was about two and a half. It wasn't taught; for me it was as natural as learning to walk. My mother says I just picked up the TV Guide one night and started reading the listings to her. When she and my dad told my dad's beloved grandmother, Mimi, she was

skeptical. They gave me one of my books and I read it out loud to her. She wasn't falling for it. Little kids memorize their favorite books and then recite them, pretending they're reading, she said. My dad shrugged and handed me a newspaper. She was a believer when I started reading headlines about Nixon to her.

I have never been able to imagine a world without reading. I found it mind-boggling that it was something others had to learn, and that some had great difficulty with. It came so quickly and automatically to me, that it never occurred to me that a process might be involved. One of the reasons I love Scout in To Kill A Mockingbird so much is that she shares that singular experience: “Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.” I went to graduate school to study literacy primarily out of curiosity- I wanted to know how people learned how to read when it wasn't second-nature. (I wound up with masters' degrees in elementary education and reading education instead, but that's beside the point.) I still find the arguments over which methodology is best to teach reading quite pointless. Reading is such an individual thing- it seems fairly ridiculous to think there is only one prescribed way to acquire it.

I'm just about due for a library binge and I'm excited to think about the armfuls of books I'll toddle out
carrying. There is no better way to get through these dismal, gray, bitterly cold days than with a good thick book and a dog curled up on your lap. After all, like Groucho Marx said, "Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read."