Christmas is about giving and receiving crap.

It’s that time of year again. It’s officially December and everyone is bracing themselves for the holidays. My relatives have begun the month long process of holiday shopping for a large family, and part of that process is hassling everyone for gift ideas. Though I’m no longer a bright eyed kid, I’m still one of the youngest in my immediate family. So like I did when I was 10, I am expected to make a Christmas List.

Writing a list of my personal material desires should be easy. Lately being materialistic has provided a certain amount of comfort; where hearts and bodies fail, objects remain. Collecting, organizing, using, and admiring my possessions all create a life where the other kinds of living have become impossible.

But a Christmas list is the particular and peculiar task of asking for things from other people. Trusting them to choose the color and flavor and texture wisely. Guessing the amount of money they’re willing to spend on you and choosing a gift that’s in their price range. Preventing relatives from opposite sides of the family tree from buying you the same gift.

The easiest thing of all should be asking for things that you want. What do I want? To wiggle my way out from under this mountain of debt. To stop living from paycheck to paycheck. To establish enough financial stability to become self employed. To marry someone with great health insurance.

I’m no stranger to crafting a Christmas List around practical needs rather than superfluous desires. College taught me the art of asking for non-perishable food and appreciating your grandmother’s habit of buying you socks. But even then I knew how to add a few items to give the list some personality. Now I am so strictly set to my priorities that anything other than food and medication is bought at a lower quality for a paltry sum at thrift stores. Thrift store shopping is my one hobby, my one pleasurable activity, and even that serves the double purpose of acquiring household necessities.

I tried the usual trick of requesting gift certificates. Where from you ask? Pharmacies and grocery stores. If hospitals gave out gift certificates I’d ask for those. My one eureka moment came when I thought to ask for stamps and a memory foam pillow. And then I even managed to ask for a perfume which seduced me from the sample page of a Vogue magazine. But if anyone actually gives it to me, I’ll feel guilty they had to spend that kind of money in a recession. Even the memory foam pillow seems indulgent.

I put money on the list, like I always do. I’m aware it’s tacky, but I actually pray to god to win the lottery. If I’m going to have the gall to ask the divine presence in the universe to fatten my wallet, I might as well ask my relatives too.

The bottom line is, I have a lot of crap. I have enough crap. I don’t need more crap. Sure I’d like a scanner or a better camera but I’m low on rich relatives. Right now my Christmas list looks more like a grocery list. And believe me I’ve been trying. But as easy as it was to ask for stupid plastic crap when I was ten, is as hard as it is now. I have all the crap I want except all the crap I can’t have.

Christmas 2005:  All those gifts were for my sister and I.

That's life...

I earned five straight years of A's in college english courses and all I got was this lousy blog.

Excited over sucky things.

Today I read the Wikipedia entry for Ehler-Danlos Syndrome and got excited. I e-mailed my mom right away. She’d heard of it too, agreed the similarities were plentiful. She was as eager to hear the geneticist’s test results as I was. If I had it, then I probably inherited it from her.

They say that no news is good news, but they are pretty much wrong. People often cannot fathom why I seem eager to be told that I have Multiple Sclerosis or Parkinson’s disease. They’ve heard about the symptoms and they cringe at the possibility. Who’d want tremors and numbness? Who’d want to carry that label around for the rest of their life?

The thing is, I’m already sick. I’ve already got a grab bag of horrible symptoms like ordinary evil itchy welts, good ol' fashioned fecal incontinence, and hallucinations induced by migraines instead of recreational drugs. Now, I would like to know why.

For a while my doctors and I were pretty sure I had MS. Having Multiple Sclerosis would not have been the worst thing in the world. It’s rarely fatal, and it’s got more than one organization dedicated to improving the lives of its’ sufferers. My wonderfully sensitive and compassionate doctor consoled me when the test results came back negative. “I’m sorry, I know that you want answers.” She knew I didn’t want Multiple Sclerosis; I just wanted an effing explanation.

In the best of cases, a diagnosis can even mean a cure. And although I’ve long since given up on the idea of a magic pill or a miraculous therapy (pain killers and massage will have to do), I know that the details of successful treatment are better crafted by doctors who understand why your symptoms are happening. The ointment to treat one kind of rash makes another kind of rash worse. And sadly the diagnostic procedure in many cases is to give the patient the medication for the suspected illness, and if the patient improves, then the doctors assume their assumption is right. If that sounds iffy to you, imagine being the guinea pig given medicated cream for ringworm when you really have eczema. The itching was so awful I cried.

So now, I’m trying not to fall into the trap of self-diagnosis. Many “perfect fit” diagnoses have come and gone, and this particular disorder would be no cakewalk. Although Ehlers-Danlos is rarely fatal it can have potentially life threatening complications. It’s not as straightforward as their depression theory but not as terrifying as their multiple heart attacks theory.

But this disorder could explain why I was a contortionist for the circus in college. It could explain why my skin is so translucent that you can see delicate blue veins crisscrossing my chest. It could explain the fistful of skin that can be stretched off of my belly. And it could explain all the pain. And if I can’t have a cure, I would love an explanation.

I kind of miss getting crap faced.

Do you want to know why teen-agers are always the most sullen, awkward people at family gatherings? Because they’re too old to be intoxicated by the bright shiny lights and presents, and too young to get drunk. There’s this growing up moment when you realize it’s 11:00 am, and someone is passing out hot buttered rums.  They casually ask if you want one. Now, finally, you understand why this is fun for the adults. They had to stay up until four in the morning wrapping gifts (far more expensive than the ones their parents gave them), and the reward is getting kind of lit in the A.M.  You get kind of buzzed and eat all this great food.  Suddenly you are noticing how delightfully kitschy your overly opinionated uncle’s moustache is.  It’s Christmas and you actually have fun for the first time since you grew boobs and started worrying about being cool.

Yeah, I am from Wisconsin, and I have a lot of relatives. My family tree has so many roots and branches it looks like a bucket of fishing bait wearing a giant clown wig. (That is not be a metaphor for the quality of my genetics, I just couldn’t think of any other image with as many twisting, growing lines.)  Every year I have a minimum of 5 distinct Family Christmas Celebrations, one of which requires the use of a Days Inn Convention Center. The older women get drunk, talk loudly, and bask in the feast their working hands have wrought.

The first time I got drunk, I was sipping good whiskey around a bonfire in the unused field of a cemetery. Me and the other Academic Decathlon team members and a few yearbook staff. The nerdiest kids at East High felt as cool as a group of misfits out of a John Hughes film. Then there was college, and I became a connoisseur of heavy beers and fine silver tequilas. I got A’s in all my English courses, because really what do you think English majors do? We have long conversations and even longer parties. My early twenties was spent being brilliant, feeling brilliant.

And then I got sick, and a little bit older. I quit drinking.  I got a little boring.

Now, make no mistake: I understand alcoholism. One of the most painful experiences of my adult life involved a “break up” with my closest friend, whose alcoholism had made him a greater burden than a new puppy. New puppies are a lot of fun, but god they are exhausting. And I was the one cleaning up after the puppy, while everyone else just rubbed its ears. Yeah, clearly I’ve been there. But a lot of people aren’t alcoholics; they work hard and enjoy a good hot buttered rum before noon on Christmas.

And god, do I miss that. I had a few glasses of champagne on my Birthday, and I danced around for hours on a cloud. But for two days afterward my blood was replaced with lead. I was not the same invincible college student, taking shots of tequila with her dad after her grandfather’s funeral.

Alcohol isn’t necessary. Neither is whip cream on your pie, but it can be nice. It makes things feel special. And come on, for many responsible and healthy adults, it’s fun. It has transformed many otherwise uninteresting situations into the best of parties, the best of youth.

Now I eat ice cream and go to bed early. Lately I’ve been slowly walking across the bottom of the public pool of life. I can’t help but be nostalgic for times that were never simpler, but always lively. Maybe diving into the pool got me here, but it was a lot more fun than dipping my toe.

It's what all the best poets do, when they are young.

Boxes and Boxes and Boxes of Crap

I have been the worst kind of pack rat for as long as I can remember. It doesn’t take a crystal ball to clearly see my future as a crazy old cat lady surrounded by piles of old magazines and boxes of weird objects. Being an “imaginative” (see also: slightly insane) crafter has always been one of the primary reasons for hoarding. Magazines can’t be thrown away because they can be used for collages. Worn, stained t-shirts might be too gross for Goodwill but they make nice rags, and the unstained bits can always find their way into a quilt. Then there’s the more unusual odds and ends.

I tend to be a bit nomadic, which is at odds with my inability to part with material possessions. When packing my belongings, I begin months before the actual move. And inevitably, in the last week, I find myself staring down a strange conglomeration of totally random and seemingly useless objects. A bent fork, a piece of silver rope, a pile of dominoes. So I grab a cardboard box, label it miscellaneous, and transport it to my new domain.

Though moving rarely happens more than once a year, this process also happens on a smaller scale every single time I clean. Small piles of bits and baubles gather on the corner of a night stand, only to be dumped into some nearby decorative box.

Though my initial intention is to use that poker chip on a scrapbook page, or give this profane plastic pencil topper as a gag gift, usually it just doesn’t happen. The boxes themselves remain intact, and have become their own collection. After years squirreling these “boxes of miscellany” I read a feng shui article that said the first and most important way to achieve good chi flow is cleaning out the clutter. The last 9 months of my life definitely indicate some serious blockages in my chi arteries. Time to open the little treasure troves and admit they are really boxes of junk.

I have to confess I am averse. Sure there’s my usual issue of fearing change. But also there’s an artistic composition to some of these boxes. Take out the contents, lay them out, and there seems to be a story. Sometimes it might be a confusing story, like why is there a purple plastic lobster next to an old retainer, but still it does ignite the imagination.

So, as I am prone to do when unable to preserve something physically, I am photographing a small sampling of these “boxes of miscellany” so that at least some documentation remains. Stock piling digital images is a bit more reasonable. And I don’t think it’s as likely to clog my chi.

Introduction to Crap

The first time I used a dictionary, I was looking up the definition of “parrot”. It was grade school, and I was faced with the mysterious task of writing an essay, long before I knew what an essay was. Using a tidbit of Meriam-Webster wisdom as an introduction seemed genius. It was years later in college when I was taught this is considered the most horrid, trite way to begin a written work. More stale than month old white bread. More over-used than a town bicycle. But then again, I’ve always had a soft spot for that sort of crap.

Now when I decided to begin this blog the same way, I was sad to discover that all the internet dictionaries had for me was that crap is nonsense. Although that’s not a bad start, it’s a piss-poor summary. Immediately my mind was popping with witticisms. Sure, crap is one of those vague, catch-all words, but its versatility rivals that of the most overused colloquialisms and the most versatile cuss words. The crap we say, the crap we do. The crap we buy, the crap we believe. The crap on the bottom of our shoes, the crap we eat, the crap in our plumbing. The crap we crap, the crap we love. The crap I give, the crap I get. Crap is not just nonsense, crap is useless and plentiful. Crap is filthy and stinky as well as plastic and overpriced. We say “crap” when the situation is not serious enough to warrant “shit”. We feel like crap when crap happens to us.

This blog is about the crap in my life. I am a pack rat, compulsively collecting and surrounding myself with collections of crap. I am a poet, continuously spouting nonsensical crap that is meant to show off my vocabulary and make people confused or amused. I am a photographer, always searching for and manifesting crazy crap to capture, to frame, to display. And I am also a patient, one for whom the act of crapping has never been simple, and has often been uncomfortable, urgent, and irregular. Life is all about the crap in it. And my life is full of crap.