Feels good. Feels real good.
Category: Life (Page 8 of 8)
Can someone reassure me that this, whatever this is, will not kill me?
Since I don’t have the patience to wait for any qualified advice, against my better judgment, which is already somewhat questionable, I just went on WebMD to check my symptoms, which are mainly: 1) unidentifiable weird bite/sting thing on my hand, 2) slight pain emanating from said bite/sting thing.
The WebMD symptom checker questions alone scared the bejeezus out of me.
One of said terrifying questions: “Have you been bitten, stung, or had contact with a poisonous spider, scorpion, or puss caterpillar?” First of all, how would I know if I’ve been stung by a poisonous spider, scorpion, or puss caterpillar? Isn’t that WebMD’s job, to tell me if I have been stung by a poisonous spider, scorpion, or puss caterpillar? And also, PUSS CATERPILLAR?
Another probing question: “Do you have a blister, painful sore, or purple discoloration at the site of a bite or sting?” Well, yes – I mean, this thing looks pretty blistery, and it hurts. So I clicked on the “yes” button, which brought me to another series of questions, one of which was: “Have you had a blister, painful sore, or purple discoloration at the site of a bite or sting for 24 hours, but you do not have any other symptoms of illness?” I think so? Has it been 24 hours? I don’t know! Probably? I clicked “yes.” I was shocked by the results.
For once in my life, WebMD told me that I “may wait to see if the symptoms improve over the next 24 hours.”
Wait, what now? “Wait to see if the symptoms improve?” Does. Not. Compute.
LITERALLY every other time I’ve had even the tiniest twinge of illness or pain, WebMD has told me I’m dying. It has either flat out said, “You’re dying,” or it’s said something like, “You’re probably dying, but call an ambulance and rush to the emergency room just in case some talented doctor there can work magic and pull your quickly dwindling life from the jaws of death.”
Now that WebMD’s telling me I “may wait” to see how things develop, I don’t trust it. I don’t trust it one bit.
I should make it clear here that I know better than to go on Web MD, but I just have no self control. I have a long history of diagnosing myself with diseases that I don’t have (various types of cancer, immune disorders, tropical diseases, and psychiatric illnesses, to name a few), under the terribly off base and alarmist guidance of WebMD. The problem is, I’m a bit of a hypochondriac. And I’m always open to suggestion.
The worst part of my WebMD addiction is that on the rare occasions where I have actually been seriously ill, and WebMD should have been like, “Red alert, red alert, get thee to a healthcare provider,” it’s led me completely and totally astray. For example: remember that time I had typhoid fever? So, I was feeling horrible – sweating, shivering, no appetite, piercing headache, body aches, weakness, and joint pain. I felt like crap on a cracker, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t the flu, because, for one thing, I wasn’t coughing and, for another, the flu has never made me lose my appetite before (I’m a hearty one). So I went on WebMD to see what other terrible illness I could have been suffering from. I put in my symptoms and WebMD diagnosed me as suffering from – wait for it! – pregnancy.
I re-entered my symptoms, omitting certain things each time, rephrasing, tweaking, and every time the results popped up: pregnant, pregnant, pregnant. When I dragged myself into my nurse practitioner’s office the next day, white as a ghost, sweaty, and barely able to hold myself upright, I croaked, “I’m concerned that I may be pregnant.” She looked at me like I was insane in the membrane and then said, “Yeah, pregnancy doesn’t look like this.” (Unless you’re having Rosemary’s Baby, I guess). I was relieved. Because if being pregnant feels like being deathly ill with typhoid fever, I ain’t never having kids.
Anyway. I should know better than to trust WebMD but I’m addicted to it. Checking WebMD compulsively is in itself a sickness. I wonder if WebMD has that particular disorder in its catalog of horrors. I’m scared to find out. I don’t want to diagnose myself with anything else for today.
For my thirtieth birthday, Al bought me a genetic testing kit – you can send it away and find out what percentage of Neanderthal DNA you carry, for example, and you can also discover all the hideous genetic diseases you might unwittingly pass to your children. I know it’s not the most romantic gift, but I am super psyched about it. And although I haven’t sent in my saliva sample for testing yet, I know one malignant gene that I definitely carry and will in all likelihood pass on to my poor, unsuspecting offspring: the crime gene.
Don’t let the term “crime gene” alarm you: I’m not a criminal. I just enjoy watching TV shows about them.
I come by this predilection naturally, I’m afraid. My mother carries the crime gene, and so did her father. When I was growing up, I only remember my mother reading true crime books, thick paperbacks with titles like Bitter Harvest, The Stranger Beside Me, and Dead by Sunset. In the evenings, my mom would always tune into TV shows about criminals: America’s Most Wanted, 48 Hours Mystery, even COPS. When shows like Forensic Detectives and Cold Case Files started to crop up, these were added to the Early household’s TV repertoire.
Since I was raised by a true crime aficionado, watching shows about murder before bedtime always seemed pretty normal to me, although I do remember asking my dad one time to please not kill me and my mom, since I had seen a show in which the dad did just that. My dad, a bit taken aback, assured me that he wouldn’t kill us, but he couldn’t make any promises about our dog, Max, who was severely misbehaved. Fair enough.
Bad dog
As I got older, I never got into true crime books but I would watch the occasional crime show on TV, although I preferred Law & Order SVU to true crime. And, by the way, I don’t trust people who don’t love Law & Order SVU. Love me, love Benson and Stabler. The older I get, though, the more and more intrigued I become by true crime. And I think I’ve hit the true crime jackpot in Joburg.
Here in South Africa, there is, to my delight, 24-hour true crime programming. We get a channel called, simply, Crime, and also a channel called Discovery ID: Investigation Discovery, which, as far as I can tell, is 99% crime shows, and 1% shows about animals on an African game reserve. Here are the programs that I’ve watched on Discovery ID so far: Nightmare Next Door, Murder Shift, Who on Earth Did I Marry?, Forensic Detectives, On the Case With Paula Zahn, Disappeared, and True Crimes.
You’d think I’d have trouble sleeping after watching these shows about horrifying crimes – today I saw one about a lady whose husband decapitated her for the insurance money – but, no. I find these stories fascinating without feeling personally threatened by them. In fact, one of the hypotheses about why women enjoy the true crime genre more than men do, on average, is because women may pick up useful survival tactics from stories about murder and rape.
But although women are typically more likely to be carriers of the crime gene, men are also susceptible. And I’m starting to think this fascination with true crime might not be strictly genetic after all. In fact, it might be catching. To wit: for the last two nights, my husband has requested that we watch crime on TV. Uh oh. We’d better get Al tested, too.
As a writer, I feel that it’s part of my job to constantly read. Which is good, because I would do this anyway. Even during my law school and attorney days, after long days of reading dry-as-a-bone legal documents and cases, I’d come home and read fiction for hours. In fact, looking back over my twenty-five or so years of literacy, I can’t remember a single period where I wasn’t reading at least one book for pleasure. Simply put, I can’t imagine my life without good books.
In that spirit, and in the interest of keeping things spicy here on the blog, I am going to introduce the occasional book review. I can’t promise the reviews will be weekly or even monthly, but I’ll try to write about books that struck a chord with me.
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Over the past few months of intensive international travel (first to Asia and now to Africa) involving long hauls on planes, I’ve torn through quite a few excellent books, some of which I’ll probably discuss here eventually. But one of these books in particular struck just the right note of being inspiring, entertaining, and educational: My Life in France, by Julia Child and Alex Prud’homme.
My Life in France is Julia Child’s memoir, which she co-wrote with Prud’homme, her husband’s nephew. It covers the early years of her marriage, when she and her husband Paul were newlyweds living in post-World War II Paris, all the way through Julia’s immense success as a cookbook writer and TV personality, to Paul’s death in 1994.
Along the way, Julia and Paul lived in a number of places thanks to Paul’s job as an exhibits officer for the US State Department, including Marseilles, Norway, Germany, and Washington, DC. But it was Paris that stole their hearts. It’s clear from Julia’s writing about her time in Paris that the city, even in its bedraggled state after the war, was her soul’s true home. The city energized and inspired her. She loved the language, the people, the wine, and, most importantly, the food.
Julia started off as a novice in the kitchen and, inspired by the food in France, decided to teach herself to cook. She describes the initial process this way:
Surrounded by gorgeous food, wonderful restaurants, and a kitchen at home –and an appreciative audience in my husband – I began to cook more and more. In the late afternoon, I would wander along the quay from the Chambre des Députés to Notre Dame, poking my nose into shops and asking the merchants about everything. I’d bring home oysters and bottles of Montlouis-Perle de la Touraine, and would then repair to my third-floor cuisine, where I’d whistle over the stove and try my hand at ambitious recipes, such as veal with turnips in a special sauce.
Eventually, Julia went on to the Cordon Bleu to receive her formal training. She then began to collaborate with two Frenchwomen, Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle, on a cookbook designed to teach American home cooks how to make French food (which later became Mastering the Art of French Cooking, which sits on my own bookshelf today). The rest, as they say, is history, but it was great fun to read about how she made the transformation from home cook to famous chef, author, and television personality. Part of the secret to her success, as it turns out, was good old-fashioned obsessiveness and attention to detail. The lady did not give up until she was happy with the result, and it paid off.
What I loved most about this book – apart from its absolutely charming descriptions of day-to-day life in 1950s Paris and the mouthwatering dishes that Julia both created and consumed – was the picture it painted of Julia’s marriage to Paul. They had a true partnership. Paul encouraged Julia in her cooking, helping her to set up her kitchen at home and later to photograph her dishes for her cookbook manuscript. And Julia supported Paul in his career, which was often frustrating and demoralizing.
They also had a tremendous amount of fun together, traveling the French countryside, cooking, eating, and enjoying each other’s company. Julia describes traveling in Italy with her family, without Paul, and how different it felt from her trips with Paul:
Paul and I liked to travel at the same slow pace. He always knew so much about things, discovered hidden wonders, noticed ancient walls or indigenous smells, and I missed his warm presence. Once upon a time I had been content as a single woman, but now I couldn’t stand it! . . . When we returned to Paris on May 3, I fell into Paul’s arms and squeezed him tight.
Julia and Paul’s annual Valentine’s Day card from their time in Germany
Julia and Paul both worked hard but also greatly valued their time with friends and family. They hosted parties, organized weekend getaways, and attended dinners. They cultivated close relationships with a variety of people and were loyal, thoughtful friends. Perhaps my favorite paragraph in the entire book is the following, describing Julia and Paul’s decision to travel to France in 1963 to see friends, despite Julia’s incredibly busy TV and writing schedule:
“I just don’t know if we have the time for a trip to France right now,” I sighed. Paul nodded.
But then we looked at each other and repeated a favorite phrase from our diplomatic days: “Remember, ‘No one’s more important than people!’” In other words, friendship is the most important thing – not career or housework, or one’s fatigue – and it needs to be tended and nurtured. So we packed up our bags and off we went. And thank heaven we did!
I love that attitude, don’t you? Al and I also try to prioritize people over other things – life is so short and relationships are so precious – but this can be difficult to remember when career and chores and other stresses threaten to overwhelm.
This book felt particularly of the moment for me when I read it a few weeks ago. Like me, Julia accompanied her (supportive, loving) husband to a new place because of his job. She was not content to be a housewife and so she set out to do something productive and enjoyable with her time. For Julia, it was French cooking, and for me, it’s writing.
I wrote a bit here about how I’m trying to take a page out of Julia’s book and throw myself head first into my work, my marriage, and my new surroundings. So far, so good, although I feel confident in saying that Johannesburg in 2012 is a bit more of a challenge in the charm department than Paris in 1948. But even if Joburg isn’t my soul’s true home, it may just be the place that I start to make my dreams come true. And I’m so grateful to Julia Child for the inspiration.
I voted early this year and, to my delight and relief, missed most of the election week hubbub, except for the inescapable flood of Facebook posts from friends and acquaintances earnestly urging me to vote, or, even better, to vote for one candidate over another. Ugh. I mean, when will people learn that social media is not an appropriate way to influence voter behavior?
[Pause]
And now, for a lengthy blog post on my personal political leanings.
Just kidding. I would never do that to you.
The thing is, I really don’t like politics. I consider myself a political moderate, which makes political discussions of any stripe tiresome for me. I get annoyed with both conservatives and liberals. My conservative family thinks I’m a liberal and my liberal friends, I suspect, think I’m a conservative, or, if not an actual conservative, a closet conservative. I’m neither of these things, for the record. Honestly.
I’m patriotic, not partisan!
For me, talking politics is exhausting, boring, and unproductive, so I don’t do it. I hate the meaningless catchphrases and tropes that people rely on in political arguments. I hate the manipulation of facts and the filtering of truth to suit any given agenda. I hate every talking head on TV. I don’t get jazzed about individual candidates unless I know them personally, and even then, I only get so jazzed.
Nonetheless, I am a registered voter (independent, thank you very much) and I have voted in every federal election since I was eighteen. And to think, I used to be a Michigan voter! Ah, how I miss the days when my vote actually counted. It’s frustrating to think that I went from being a swing state voter (for my first election in 2000) to voting in California (2004 and 2008), and now DC (2012). Well, at least it feels good to vote, even if I might as well throw my ballot into a giant bonfire and cook s’mores over it for all the difference it’ll make. Mmm. S’mores.
Whether my vote made any difference or not, I woke up this morning to find that President Obama was reelected. It wasn’t until I saw it on the news that I consciously realized how much I cared about the outcome of this election and allowed myself to feel relief. But that was all I felt: relief. No jubilation, no exaltation, no dancing in the streets. Like Obama said, there’s a lot of work to be done. Duh.
Now that the election’s over, I’m most looking forward to the slowing up of the deluge of obnoxious Facebook and twitter posts, both celebratory and teeth-gnashing, that I’ve had to wade through today. These people and their political posts – the sheer nerve!
Anyway – If you’re looking for something fun and non-political to check out today, please enjoy this video of a Corgi jumping into a lake. I promise it’ll make you smile.
The Wizard of Loneliness was the title of a book I read in middle school. I remember literally nothing about the book other than the title. I even looked it up on Amazon and read the description and still didn’t remember anything about it. It obviously made a big impression on me. Nonetheless, the title popped into my head today because I’ve been thinking a lot about loneliness.
Being lonely when you’re actually alone somewhere is a heavy burden, and I’ve experienced it several times. I’ve brought it on myself, of course. Over the past eight years or so, I’ve had the habit of showing up places where I know absolutely no one – or close to absolutely no one – and staying a while. I did this in Cuba (2004), Argentina (2009), and Brazil (2005 and 2010). The times I’ve felt most acutely lonely in my life were these times, when I found myself in a foreign country with few friends and, even worse, few distractions.
I distinctly remember dreading Sundays in Brazil, both times that I lived there, because Sundays are family days, when Brazilians get together with their loved ones to eat long lunches, drink beer, and catch up. On Sundays, I’d take myself to the movies or go to the gym or sit in my apartment doing crossword puzzles, waiting for the day to be over.
When I went back to Brazil in 2010 for work, I wasn’t prepared for the riptide of loneliness that sucked me out to sea as soon as I got there. It was easier the first time I had moved by myself to Brazil, in 2005, because I had been truly alone – no boyfriend back home – and I was twenty-three. It must be said that meeting people tends to be easier when you’re single and twenty-three. But in 2010, I had left behind my then-boyfriend (now husband) and it hurt, almost physically, to know that he was still in Boston with our friends, while I was completely and utterly alone in a city of 20 million people.
It took me a long time to make good friends in Brazil, both times that I lived there. Making friends as an expat in Sao Paulo requires a Herculean effort. I forced myself to go to Meetups and Internations events and then forced myself to introduce myself to strangers, to walk up to clusters of people talking and ask if I could join. I set myself up on blind friend dates. I accepted every social invitation I received, even if it was for something I didn’t particularly want to do. Eventually, it paid off, and I made friends, some of whom I’m still close to. But man, it was hard.
Here in Johannesburg, things are different. I feel a small tug of loneliness during the day, as I begin to write, take my gym break, eat a solitary lunch, and return to my writing. Usually, by the time I wrap up my work for the day, there are several long hours before Al will return from work. Without friends to visit or talk to, those hours can drag by. But I’m not experiencing loneliness as a lodestone around my neck the way I have before. I know that, no matter what, on weekends, I have my husband to cook dinner with. I won’t ever have to go to the movies alone.
But while I relish the solitary lifestyle of the writer (I have always worked best when left alone), I also want to have the option to close my computer and go meet friends for drinks or dinner. It’s a big burden on Al to have to be my only companion in this country. Even though he is endlessly fascinating and wonderful and I love being with him, we both realize I’m going to be miserable if I spend the next eight months here without my own group of friends.
So, I’m starting the process again of reaching out, of joining Meetups, of contacting friends of friends. It’s hard. And slow. And difficult without a car and GPS. But it’ll happen. No Wizard of Loneliness in this house.
… To say that things are somewhat coming together over here.
We don’t have the stuff that we shipped from DC (but it’s being delivered Friday, supposedly).
I still don’t have a desk.
Our toilet leaks.
We only have one (rental) car and one set of housekeys between the two of us.
And last night I ruined a pot of soup because a plastic ladle melted into it and made the whole thing taste like cancer.
BUT! I have a South African phone number now! Hooray! I am no longer completely disconnected from the world.
Being me, I got confused with the exchange rate when I bought some pay-as-you-go minutes and ended up buying a package of – wait for it – 18 minutes, but still – better than nothing. After expending those 18 minutes (probably sometime tomorrow?) I’ll have to go back to the Vodacom shop across the street, where I’m quickly becoming a regular, and buy more. Honestly, those Vodacom people are going to be able to set their watches to me — I have been in there almost every morning since I got here and I’m now on a first-name basis with several of them (including one gentleman with the delightful moniker of Elvis). Whatever – I have a phone!
In other good news, I have a pot of homemade chicken noodle soup in the works (to be served with a generous helping of Salticrax) and I am keeping that ladle FAR away from it.
I woke up today, my thirtieth birthday, with a hangover from drinking too much Pinotage at a South African country estate near Pretoria. So I guess this is my life now.
It’s been kind of a whirlwind. I left DC on Wednesday afternoon and got into Johannesburg on Thursday evening. Al was waiting for me at the airport with a bouquet of red roses (a romantic, that one!) and we embarked on our first South African adventure together: driving back to our apartment in a rental car, with no GPS, on the left side of the road. Nothing like a few brushes with death to really make one feel at home in a new place, eh?
Our apartment is in an area called Craighall Park, which is home to a fancy mall and a fancy grocery store (Woolworths — go figure) but is also curiously abundant with sex shops. We live directly across the street from a charming little place called Sextopia.
Our apartment complex, however, is gated off, leafy, and quiet. When we entered the gates, there were four little kids playing with water guns in the driveway. They all eyed us shyly and the oldest one asked us, very properly, how we were doing. We were fine.
That first night, we ate dinner at a restaurant in the fancy mall. I was immediately impressed with the food and the wine here, both of which are delicious and cheap.
My second day in South Africa, Al and I ran essential errands, which included buying a hair dryer, stocking up on wine, and getting a “wireless stick” for my computer, and then we packed into our rental car again to drive north to Kievits Kroon, a country estate where Al’s company was holding a retreat. We had cocktails on the veranda of a manor house (built in the “Cape Dutch style,” I am told) looking out over lush green lawns. A cat purred around our ankles. It was lovely.
I spent the rest of last night stuffing myself with a variety of tasty local dishes, including ostrich medallions, and a *bit* too much Pinotage, which is the signature varietal of South Africa, so how could I not, right? When in Pretoria, I say.
Anyway. Today I woke up thirty years old and with a red wine headache. But you know? I feel pretty good about it. I’m in Africa on a Grand Adventure with my husband. Bring it, old age. I’m ready for you.