it’s not just for Wednesday’s anymore.
Can I tell you? I’m bored. Not bored in the sense of there’s nothing to do – oh my god there is TONS to do – but bored in that restless, I don’t want to do anything I have to do but there are no deadlines MAKING me do stuff kind of way. Yesterday I felt like I just wandered around the house, aimlessly, looking at the crap piled in every corner – the dirt so caked it doesn’t even blow around anymore when you move things out of place. God my house is dirty. I did vacuum though – but only the small area around where I spin because it turns out that while I don’t care about the piles of dust and hair that have been collecting in the corner of my bathroom behind the door for MONTHS on end, I do care about the pieces of fiber that cling to the carpet. Weird huh? G’s pretty funny because the other day I was in my bathroom taking a crap – because really that’s the only time I see the hair and dust collected in the corner behind the door – and I noticed that the pile was considerably smaller since the last time I crapped in there. (I like to think of it like a science experiment, honestly. The hair and dirt and dust – not the crap.) Georgie had cleaned up! He had been using my bathroom because the shower in his bathroom (yes, we have three bathrooms and two showers for two people. Deal with it.) was broken or something and he couldn’t stand the pile anymore! I think that is SO funny!
G is very good with household chores. He washes ALL the dishes, which is something I particularly loathe. And he does all the laundry, except I fold it, which honestly I don’t think is a fair trade, but he does hang up all my delicate clothes and makes sure not to dry them too long. He’s kind of obsessive (if you ask me) about taking out the garbage. All other household cleaning is left to me. Hence the pile of dust and dirt and hair in the bathroom. Oh and I wash all the sheets and make the bed and stuff. Usually he doesn’t comment about the caked on toothpaste stains around the sink in the bathroom or the fiber sticking to the carpet in all areas of the house or the piles of crap and yarn and work stuff under foot everywhere – but this little corner drove him crazy! I’m still laughing.
Did you see the poem I posted? I’m not feeling particularly bad about the infertility today – not sure why since I’ve been crying off and on about for months. I’m FINALLY, and when I say finally, I mean finally after a year or so of absolutely TORTURING myself, coming to terms with my grief about the whole thing. I finally realized that I’m ALLOWED to be sad about all of this, no matter how or why or where I am in the process. I walk around feeling like I’m going to burst into tears sometimes and I wasn’t letting myself understand why. I’d sit there and take stock – I’m not depressed. I wake up each day looking forward to friends and family and the things I need and want to do but yet I was overwhelmed by this physical need to cry – but no tears were coming. In the summer it completely freaked me out and sent me into a tailspin of anxiety and panic. This time, I understand. Jen was so good to me, in the car one day, I was telling her about it and she looked at me with this oh my god how silly can you be look and said, Cara. You’re grieving. It was like she gave me permission or something and I was good to go. I still feel like crying off and on but I’m not panicking about it – just living it.
So I’m feeling kind of cheap for choosing that poem since today I don’t really feel like I need your sympathy or anything. When I saw Juno‘s post this morning and thought hmmm, what poem would I choose, I immediately went to the anthology I put together when I taught my undergraduate creative writing class at NYU. It was the first class I ever taught and I was required to teach poetry and fiction. The poets in the program were required to do the same, so it was like equal opportunity screw up the freshman kind of a thing. I’m joking. I don’t know poetry – at all. I’m a fiction person through and through – I don’t read anything else, really. In the end, even though I was scared to death of the poetry, it was my favorite part of the class. Turns out undergrads are a hell of a lot better at writing rip out your heart angst poetry than they are at writing rip out your heart (literally) angst short stories. This morning, flipping through the poetry collection I put together for the class, I was struck by the poem by Ellen Bryant Voight basically because it so mimics my life now, but when I chose it for the class, I was years away from even TRYING to have a baby. Even, honestly, knowing if I wanted a baby at all. This premonition, if that’s what you could call it, was very interesting to me. I’m okay right now. Thought you should know.
I’m adding stuff, because, well, it’s my blog and I’m allowed.
I have two zits on my chin that rival Lincoln and Roosevelt on Rushmore. They’re large and deep and painful. And nothing to squeeze, which I love to do. Ouch. PMS sucks.
Have you been reading Bookslut and all the links they’ve had to the Oprah/Frey debacle? I’ve been known to watch Oprah every now and again (ask Rock Chick) and I’ve also been known to drive many miles out of my way to find the last remaining copy of a book WITHOUT the Oprah seal. I haven’t read Frey’s book (see above about reading fiction – although maybe now I’ll give it a shot), but I did see the show where Oprah ripped him and Nan Talese a new one. While it’s clear this guy made up A LOT of stuff, I see a HUGE distinction between Non-Fiction and Memoir. Non-Fiction is that book about how bees build hives and make honey and by reading it you KNOW you’re reading facts. Facts that you and the author and the publisher have all sort of contracted together in believing its veracity. Memoir, by definition, deals in MEMORY. The way an author REMEMBERS their life. I’ve never taken a psychiatry class (philosophy fucks you up longer and harder, just so you know) but I’ve been in therapy for years and it doesn’t take another Freud to know that memories are EXTREMELY selective and by virtue of the fact that they are remembered, are bound to be WRONG, as in not the exact truth of the moment as it happened. All you have to do is look at all the science on ey-witnesses to know that no one remembers anything right. Add to that the filter of our whole lives in which every action, thought, dream, relationship must be push through like a sausage make in order to get the LINKS that are our MEMORIES, well, then Oprah is off her rocker. You can’t expect the same facts that occur in the beehive book to occur in a book written by an avowed junkie. Please. Memoirists are writing the NARRATIVE of their lives. NARRATIVE=STORY. All story, to be successful, needs a clear-cut conflict, a protagonist and lots of drama on the way to resolving that conflict – for good or ill. I think Oprah’s call for truth is a bit misplaced. To me, it’s all, once again a case of semantics gone wrong.
I tried to spin a bit yesterday but it was a disaster so I stopped before I got really frustrated. Today I will try again. I tried to weave in some ends on short rows because after I laid out the front with the sleeves by the sides I was jazzed and I want it DONE! But there are so many ends right on top of each other and I wove some in, cut them, then realized you could see them from the front so I stopped before I got really frustrated. In the end, the only progress I made was that I’m about to turn a heel on a sock and I folded three loads of laundry.
Now that’s what I call taking back the blog.
L, C
I’ve adopted a technique for weaving in ends from the women who make (made) the S.W.A.K. kits. They recommend using a fairly sharp tapestry needle to split the strands of the purl bumps you weave through. They also advocate sewing the end through 3-4 bumps on the diagonal. Then you make a “fish hook” turn and do the same thing back towards the starting point, but only for 1-2 bumps. You can’t see the woven in ends and they are securely in place.
Welcome back! I’ve missed these sorts of posts. And I’m so glad that Jen was able to help you recognize your grief. Grief is a funny thing. It has this way of sneaking up on you and biting you in the ass, just when you least expect it. So, feel what you feel when you feel it. Most important, I guess, is just to let yourself FEEL.
Cara life is all about the small victories. So chalk one up for progress on a sock and for the three loads of laundry folded — that one deserves a point with a cherry on top!
Um, yeah, what was my final Oprah 12 Men tally? (I do know A-Coop made a return appearance the other day.) Big O felt “duped” by Frey? Pardon the fuck outta me, Oprah, but I think the word you’re really looking for is embarassed. Your producers were warned by staff at the time the book was initially chosen, so you and your staff need to twist in the wind in a bit, too. As I’m sure you will when this ex-addict falls off the wagon. As Jon Stewart said the other night, whatever will she do when she realizes Dr. Phil is full of shit?
I hate those kinds of zits. They’re the worst.
And I think the reason people feel “duped” by Frey (and therefore O & her publicists decided to say she does too) is because the supposed memoir wasn’t about how the author remembered it, but some memories and a bunch of stuff Frey knew he was making up as he wrote it. Absolutely, memory is extremely untrustworthy (drives me nuts when TV “procedurals” depend on eye-witness testimony). But my understanding is that Frey’s process was not “Well, this is what I remember happening,” but more “Well, this didn’t happen, but it sure makes a good story so I’ll put it in as if it did.”
Okay, I’ll stop co-opting your blog now. Good luck working through the funk. Or maybe just take a day or two to “enjoy” it. đ
Life is too short to fret about dust. Clean it up? It comes back. Ignore it and hopefully someone else will clear it up. If not, what have you lost?
Losing a baby is always hard, and I don`t belive that losing the hope of one is any less cause for grief.
I read Frey’s book “A Million Little Pieces.” He’s a good writer.
But I think where the distinction lies is not that his memory is selective (all the more that it would be due to extreme drug and alcohol abuse however), but the problem is in the deliberate changing of facts.
He said a girl killed herself by hanging rather than slitting her wrists. (That’s not selective memory. Granted, it’s a minor detail, but why the change?)
Frey said he spent three months in jail, when it was truly only hours. (That’s a more major detail. Again, why?)
There were other minor and major details that were characterized as one thing and not because he didn’t remember them correctly.
He says he had two root canals without any medication. The dental office says he had medication. Maybe Frey does remember it that way, but gosh. I would think that someone would remember details like that.
Frey himself admits that he wanted to see himself in a certain way and hold onto that image, but shouldn’t have maintained it as truthful throughout the book.
Which is another major gripe about it. In the book, what he emphasizes during his recovery to the greatest degree is the importance of truth. He’s seeking truth. It is ‘all important’ to him. When certain details that are not dependent just on memory are fabricated, then one has to question just how important is truth to him – as he says it is. And of course, many other details or events in the book are then put into question.
What Oprah was calling him on was that he was lying. Not just erring in his recall, but out-and-out lying.
You could see in the interview he struggled with saying he lied, but it seems rather obvious that he did. He said he was grateful that this allows him a chance to become a better person through all of this coming out now.
I’m not a big Oprah fan, but I got sucked into the hype about this book so I read it. It’s interesting writing and his story is still worth reading. I don’t doubt that he went through a lot of what he says he did. I’m sure much of it is true; I just don’t know what at this point.
I wouldn’t agree that it’s a memoir. I liked Oprah’s suggestion to put on the cover “Based on a true story”. That would seem to cover the misrepresentations.
You have many wise comments today. And here I told you to go eat and just do ‘it’, the weaving the cleaning…
Everyday is a process of dealing with our emotions, our lives, the reality of what is and what is not. You write as a way of dealing with all your emotions and isn’t it wonderful that a whole world of people can be there to tell you it’s OK, it’s right.
This is why I read your blog Cara. Some people say “I don’t wanna talk too much about my personal self and thoughts and *too-real* things in my life along with knitting content.” You do it and I love it.
And you can some how pull off telling about sitting on the toilet taking a crap and it isn’t weird. I really don’t think it would work so well for me. Rock on, girl. (((Hugs)))
Holy crap, Cara. I can so totally relate! Iâve been feeling the same way â busy, but bored, restless, wanting something but not sure what. And my house has been a pig sty. My husband does the laundry, also, and I guess the idea is that Iâm supposed to fold. But I donât. The thing is, we canât leave clothes around because Dot will eat holes in them. So for about a month, every time Jon did laundry, we dumped it into the spare bedroom along with the dirty laundry with the door shut tight. Every time you wanted a pair of underwear, you had to dig around the giant heap on the bed. And almost every day, one of the cats would get locked in there. It was crazy. We finally sorted it out, but it took a while. I have only one suggestion for house woes.
Get a cleaning lady.
Just once a month is all it takes and itâs not really that expensive. Not compared to the stress of a dirty house. Also, I find that we actually tidy up our piles of clutter before the cleaning lady comes so she doesnât have to (why do you think the laundry got folded). Yes, we clean for the cleaning lady. But then she has time to get the gunk out of the faucets and all that stuff that I donât want to do. And what clutter we do leave around is stacked a lot more neatly when she leaves. Last week, she found a dusty old cat bed that was stuffed behind some furniture. She vacuumed it up, put a toy mouse in it, and put it where the cats could get to it. Itâs so totally worth it.
As far as the infertility thing, I hear ya. Itâs such a weird sense of feeling betrayed by your body, and feeling somehow faulty, and the sense of loss of what might have been. âMight have beenâ is a lousy feeling sometimes. Theyâre hard emotions to pin down. But just keep on keepinâ on. Itâs your only choice, really, and that helps.
Damn, I have a lot more to say about dirty houses that I do about fertility issues. Weird.
Cara, I just received an email from my stepdaughter. She is reaching the end of her rope with fertility treatments and today’s message from her was heartbreaking. My next “stop”, after trying to compose some sort of response to her (as you know, there are no words at times) was your blog and, well, I got goosebumps. Thank you for being so candid. About everything.
Way to take that sh#t back! I totally hear you on the whole bored thing too. I have mad crap to do but no deadlines! It’s so freakin’ annoying. Even when I come back from vacation and try to coach myself into caring I still end up flat. I’m also sad I haven’t updated the ol’ blog in a while… I just get tense when I write – like what i need to say must be witty or interesting, when in the end I should just write whatever’s on my mind!
Thanks for being you.
I haven’t been reading your blog long, and I doubt you know me from Adam, but *hugs*
You’re just awesome. Really. As to the house cleaning stuff – I decided about a year ago that I’d so much rather pay someone twice a month than be pissed about cleaning the toilets. Now the hubbie and I are both happy – clean house and I don’t have to do it. Seriously, it’s the best money I’ve ever spent. Although it did take me awhile to get over the guilt of not being the perfect wife – working and cleaning and cooking – oh my. Yeah, I’m over it. I am what I am and I’m happier with the cleaning lady. I think the boredom thing might have something to do with the weather because I’m feelin’ it too. I have a whole bunch of crap to do and don’t want to do anything except knit and blog (although that might actually be kind of normal). Thanks for a great post and remember to be nice to yourself.
Hey toots…I know grief. And sometimes, when you have so much–it’s hard to let ourselves grieve. Infertility was not an issue for us but I have many friends who fought so hard to have children. You and G are a wicked cool couple dear. Hug him tight and an extra squeeze for you from me! Come visit Lawn Guyland!! I’ll show you my dirt piles.
Grief is such a funny thing. Just take it as it comes. Sometimes it will broadside you in the strangest ways. Loosing a baby or child is always hard. Loosing the hope of one is harder, partially because it is so real and yet so intangible — you don’t have the very real “event” to hold on to I went through a year or more of torture, probably more, it does get distant, but sometimes still I will be happily living my life and it will just broadside me. Afterwards I am amazed that I can still be so affected. Certain moments of my grief and realization are like frozen artifacts, a part of my personality that I generally ignore, but occasionally bump into. I have to be careful not to cut myself on their edges.
Dust is there, omnipresent. I prefer to think of it as a protective layer. Removing too many layers of dust is always a dangerous proposition.
I swear I read that Frey initially marketed that book as a novel and when there weren’t any takers, he shopped it around again but the second time as a memoir… I think there’s a difference.
Did you see Mary J. Blige on Oprah yesterday? I was wishin’ that SHE’D write a book! She does sing a mighty fine song, though. ; )
((((HUGS))) many many times over. Do you remember what you said that provoked my comment to you? It was about the longing. Longing followed by grief. But remember that the grief may just be followed by joy. Remember I’m here when you need me – then, now, always.
Oh yeah, forgot to mention that you took back the blog in a raw and beautifully crude way – nice one, chica! đ
I just found out that my cleaning lady lives in Union City. But she’s not the best. I’ll give you her number anyway if you want…(how’s that for a rousing endorsement?)