juushika

Devon's halfdays off through Hanukkah lead seamlessly to halfdays/full days off for the new year, so I'm just now emerging from 10 days of hanging out with my partner, watching TV and eating good food and playing The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening.

(Which I adored, btw. It's everything I want a modern remake to be: retro feel with quality of life improvements to alleviate the frustrations of older titles and a high-poly charming playmobil-style aesthetic. I never did finish A Link to the Past because the combat grew too frustrating; this is the answer to the parts of retro games that don't hold up. I'd probably put it third-ish on my favorite Zelda game list, following Breath of the Wild and Twilight Princess. It's not a holistic ranking, because The Wind Waker and Ocarina of the Time have much more substantial narratives, but they're just not as enjoyable to play.)

It was the perfect vacation. My sleep cycle runs around 3a-noon, so Devon was effectively around my entire day. Between on-call days and scheduled company holidays, the ten-day vacation took just three total days of PTO. We had so much free time together that his trips out to see friends and family didn't feel like they were eating into precious us-time. It was sustainable and effective, and assuming he stays at his job we'll probably do the same next year.

Opting not to interact with friends and family wasn't the grown-up or healthy choice, but I'm still having a hard time with people—harder now than a year ago. I'm not sadder, I'm tired—a thorough and extended tired. I have griefprocessing.exe running in the background, slowing the rest of the brain-computer; but my brain doesn't have the uhhhhh RAM, I guess, to run bigger programs like family.exe or activeprocessing.exe. My choices are, as always, easier unhealthy-ish choice vs. harder and actively damaging but more responsible choice, and as usual I went with the former.

I'm super behind on end-of-year media wrap-ups (writing my own, but also reading others's!), because I've been with Devon instead of my computer. But I'll get there.

These are, and I swear it's (almost definitely) true, the final crossposts. Hurrah! Hurray!


( Are the Fuddles nice people? )


( Talking Cats: The Musical with my family. )


( Interpersonal relationships, trauma, hurt comfort, and socio-political commentary in Cherryh )

My dad died on the 14th.


The day before (13th), his difficulty swallowing pills made it necessary to switch him to a liquid oral morphine, which meant doses every ~30 minutes; a significant strain on the people caring for him, and harder on him because it was difficult to maintain a constant, effective dose. The night of the 13th was rough. On the 14th, they added diazepam (Valium) as a sedative alongside the liquid morphine. By late morning, they decided it would be better to move him into hospice care, where medications could be delivered via port, making them more direct and reliable, providing better pain management.

We moved him at noon. Travel in that condition is inherently risky, and the transport was high adrenaline (tearful goodbyes in front of the house, my mum and I trailing the transport vehicle to the hospice, miscellaneous anxiety-venting overreactions), but he got there okay. While Mum and I were going through the check-in process, the doctor hurried us into his room because his oxygen saturation was poor and she thought his time could be coming soon. There was another round of semi-panic, of people coming who had planned to not come; Dad's brother Pete decided to fly in, knowing he might be too late.

Then began the hurry and wait. Family friends brought snack food and various things that had been forgotten in the rush; like this last month, it had a weirdly elevated social energy during an otherwise somber event. The hospice itself was lovely—greens and natural woods, an accessible kitchen, open 24 hours; distinctly not medical. It felt like a space for dying, but not in a negative sense. When my mental health issues were first coming on in full, back at my first college, I had a little breakdown, was pulled out of class, and went to the nurses's office where they had private resting rooms with garish plaid blankets. That space to rest turned what was objectively the beginning of an awful period of my life into a small oasis of comfort, and while it fixed nothing in the long run, I'm still grateful for it. The hospice had that same vibe, that "things are objectively Horrible; we acknowledge that horrible and work to soothe it" vibe.

Waiting for Dad to die explicitly couldn't be a negative thing—Dad hadn't been responsive for some time but that that social energy is contagious, and fearing death doesn't help the dying; but to wish it were faster felt insincere. The long stretches of killing time were deceptively calm, but my heart would race whenever his breathing changed. It was exhausting. It got easier after friends and extended family left in the afternoon. The evening was dark and slow, private and calm. Allie watched TV and napped, Mum had her phone and I think an audiobook, I did what I do best and read. Later on, Devon brought me my PJs and a teddy bear. "Liminal" gets tossed around a lot, but to sit vigil over the transition to death qualifies; that faux-peace and fearful anticipation and quiet exhaustion.

His breathing suffered throughout the evening. At around 8pm, just the four of us there, I noticed that the dying process was beginning; the occasional pauses were becoming the norm. It was unhurried but surprisingly lingering; I was expecting a final breath or final spasm but there were about four. He died at around 8:08, but we sat with him through the end, waiting it out, taking our time, and didn't call the nurse until 8:20.

Because I knew the most about death/death care, thanks almost entirely to the work of Caitlin Doughty, I found the funeral home and knew what services were available. We opted for a direct cremation in accordance with his wishes; Allie and Mum are scattering his ashes in multiple meaningful locations. I also knew that we could view the body; no one thought they would want to, but we offered it to Pete, who didn't arrive until after Dad died, and he wanted to—I volunteered to go with, and then Mum, and even Allie. The viewing was a good call. It reinforces the reality to see the body again, very dead and cold, and it gave Pete some closure.



Dad's death came with a profound sense of relief; it has been an awful month or so, and the final few days were even worse, and I'm grateful to see his suffering end. I've tried hard to ride that emotion, to make it my primary memory of his death so that I can avoid traumatic associations. Finally being able to step back from the overtaxing daily socialization has reinforced that, to an extent. But my relief is wearing off as the longterm implications begin to sink in. I feel like I've been coping well—better than I did with his diagnosis or treatment or dying process—but I suspect it belies a profound breakdown that I can barely see on the horizon. Or not—historically I don't grieve like most people, I'm very out of sight/out of mind. Discovering just how fucked up I am will be a fun surprise for everyone.

I have two major takeaways aside from "cancer sucks a lot," which are these: One, that death advocacy is invaluable. It's hard to do during the event, it's particularly hard to transfer to others during a death, so inform yourself early and often. But any work is more than none: just knowing what to expect from the cremation process made it possible to communicate our options to my family. I didn't do as much as I could have, but what I did still mattered.

Two, that the stigma around suicide is so harmful and pervasive as to make assisted suicide inaccessible. Even where it's legal, no one talks about it. Even I had internalized it, and I've been fighting to destigmatize suicide for 15 years. I have a lot of lingering regrets which I'm trying to forgive, but I can't forgive that I didn't research assisted suicide, that I used "respecting his wishes" as an excuse not to think about it. What he should have done, and what I should have known to encourage, was to begin the process immediately and then opt out if he changed his mind—because there's a waiting period and, by the time he realized he wanted it, it was too late. Research local laws, research suicide bags, get over social stigma and have awkward conversations. Make informed decisions possible. It's a lingering, awful death—which is a valid choice, but not the only one, and for fuck's sake it shouldn't be the default.

Still summer, but it's been cool enough—and we still have the A/C on—and I've been sufficiently unwell (depression/anxiety/undersleeping lowers my body temperate & make me sensitive to cold; a silver lining) that I can wear my hoodie come evenings. My shameful, half-destroyed hoodie, with holes chewed in it by the guinea pigs these years ago, with the wrist cuffs cut off, at least three sizes too large; and I love it. It's a comfort object and I need me some comfort objects rn.

Still summer, and wildfires today caused an air advisory; the sky is a dim orange, thick and heavy. I've been wondering how to anticipate the approach of autumn when global warming is simultaneously Objectively One of the Biggest Problems, Perhaps the Largest Problem, the problem to make my family's woes look small—except that I am too deep in my family's woes to even contemplate a global crisis.

Went to the bank with my mum to sort away unused college finances. I was simultaneously grateful that she was willing to help (because, as I told her, and she acknowledged, this is not something I could right now handle alone) and perpetually ashamed to be the 30-year-old co-banking with a parent. It was one hell of a trip for the poor teller, though: obliquely explaining why I couldn't handle it myself; explaining my dad's cancer during the minor rigmarole of figuring out which accounts to use; explaining my grandmother's death when my mother mentioned putting more money into another account. She—my mother—is aiming to have easily accessible monies in a number of accounts, so that the events immediately after his death are easier to manage. "We're not a really happy family right now!" I explained to the teller with that sort of panicked laughter that comes with exposing an emotion to a stranger. Bank employees are a strange bunch—almost all the ones I've worked with have been kind and patient; there must be something about volunteering to do dry fiscal paperwork that demands it. But it's like a switch flips when they start to shill a bank deal: "deposit this much of your dead mother's inheritance in order to earn $100-500 cash-back to spend on your husband's funeral!" and it just ... beggars belief. I could have sworn that we were all, three minutes ago, emotionally vulnerable and conscientious human beings.

My birthday was on the 18th (two days ago). Devon baked me a flourless chocolate torte—above and beyond my favorite desert except, perhaps, straight-up chocolate; it was quite a project (or, at least, a learning process), but also a labor of love, and if anything it came out not sweet enough, which is a nice problem to have if you have my taste buds. He gave me Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance, to complete my project to actually play the side-games before KHIII comes out. His parents gave me a Gund Chub Bear, who arrived today (almost a week ahead of schedule) and, y'all, he is floppy and wider than tall and just ridiculous; I love him. I went to see my family on Sunday the 19th, while my sister was in town. We had pancakes.

Sunday breakfast was my family's tradition throughout my childhood, and it's still a big part of how we come together. My dad makes french toast (with challah bread) and added waffles when we were older—and when I was much younger we used to make ebelskivers. But pancakes are the most traditional. His recipe comes (I believe) from the New York Times Cookbook—they're different than most pancakes, not thin, but not fluffy/cakey. They're particular. My sister and I can't eat anything else. Once, when he was traveling for work, my mum tried to make them on a Sunday—we couldn't get them to flip properly, it was a disaster. They became the pancakes only my dad could make.

My sister is learning to make them, or at least did most of the cooking this time. Learning to make because neither of us live at home now but we still sometimes want to eat pancakes; doing most of the cooking because my dad was recovering from a recent celiac plexus block and was too dizzy to stand through the whole thing. But it still felt like something happening because my dad will die—a skill to inherit before it's too late. It's so difficult to be there—every interaction is laden with a thousand thousand meanings. But avoiding visits is profoundly counterproductive. They were good pancakes.

I just spent a few days with my mother & father in Ashland, seeing three plays:

Henry V: Excessive, modern dance-y choreography; better minimalist set design than Henry IV 1 & 2; Daniel José Molina is, again, phenomenal as Henry—pulled off the comedy unexpectedly well—a full, human, complex portrayal; Rachel Crowl as understudy for Pistol was a delight—the depiction & fate of all of Henry's old gang was devastating (even Fallstaff's entirely off-stage death), but Crowl especially brought a physicality and dimension to a character I normally dislike. This was my favorite of the three, I cried a good handful of times, it is even better alongside recently reading the Henriad in our Shakespeare project.

Othello: Aggressively, unproductively over-blocked—this showed worst in Iago and while I understand the intent (to clarify the language & make the play more accessible) it should've been toned down; also wish there weren't 23049 loud & excitable schoolkids in the audience; perhaps too much comedy. But my real complaints aren't complaints per se; rather, they're that this play, especially in 2018, is miserable & exhausting & supremely unsatisfying. No one learns anything, there's no catharsis. The last third was hard to watch, most especially Desdemona's prolonged death scene.

An interview afterward with Chris Butler, who played Othello, helped provide some of the closure the play denies; I asked specifically about depicting racism/xenophobia alongside misogyny/violence against women, about finding a balance that doesn't allow one—and here I mean the misogyny—to overwhelm the other, to be more accessible and sympathetic, particularly to OSF's particular demographic of progressive but majority middle class white folks; his response was considered and conflicted: to make the play intentionally multicultural in order to explore Otherness a complex issue rather than something (if you'll excuse) black and white; to emphasize all forms of discrimination, to refuse to allow anything to be buried, to broadcast it all even when it involves discrimination within and between minority groups.

(My dad, who attended the interview with me, was struck by how my question brought the discussion to a standstill, to how thoughtful was Butler's reply. This is about 98.5% paternal affection, but tbh I appreciated that paternal affection. My dad doesn't care about Shakespeare, he attends the plays because my mother and I care about Shakespeare; his investment is in my investment.)

Destiny of Desire: inspired by & effectively a condensed telenovela, dense with mistaken identities and ridiculous plot developments and meta-commentary, and social commentary specifically about Latinx community/identity and its intersection with class. Absolutely a gimmick; but a fun, engaging one, ridiculously compelling and quite charming; the audience was enraptured. Not perfect! not in love with the queerbaiting in particular. And I couldn't imagine seeing something like this more than once a year; it's A Lot & not to my personal taste. But a fun, successful experiment, and I'm glad this was our end-note. (I <3 the "rewind" gimmick for particularly !!! moments.)


We stayed at an Airbnb—my first—and it was homey and clean; but the wifi was what I would forgivingly call "unreliable" & the pull-out bed I slept on was. bad. probably bad under any circumstances & for any body, but double plus ungood for my particular back. All these things are a lot for me to handle: seeing and internalizing three plays; two nights of increasingly bad sleep, and three days of back pain and sun exposure; being in close contact with my family while my dad is ill, in the same location we were when he got sick/right before his cancer diagnosis. All three of these things at once was too much.

My dad's done with the immediate chemo treatment; he's now on an experimental inhibitor through a trial out in Pennsylvania. He's dealing with fading chemo side-effects while acclimating to new medication side-effects, and hasn't yet had the appointments which will determine if the meds are working/not working/if we have no idea but keep taking them!—the waiting and doubt makes the side-effects worse. This continues to be the best possible version of events, but in a worst case scenario: it's still terminal. So it's just a lot to be around that. Small things develop bizarre repercussions and meanings. (On our usual tour of downtown he impulse-bought me a moleskine—and last year we saw the same one and none such thing occurred to him—and is it end-of-life impulsiveness? it's a red moleskine (I've always wanted one of the color ones), and when I fill my current one he will be dying, dead—will it always be on my shelf the bright red moleskine, the Dead Dad moleskine, wrapped in memories of a grief and crisis that I can't even begin to imagine? everything is this, is laden, is an omen; it's exhausting.) It's all exhausting.

Plays, body, family all at once was too much & today the gravity feels higher, I feel denser and slower, small things are an effort. I'm still glad I went—as always, the profound disinclination that I felt right before departure was counterbalanced by the good experiences that these visits always are; I'm grateful they've been inviting me, and I treasure these Ashland trips. But now I give myself a week to Be Potato & try to recover.

TW for cancer, death, emetophobia.

My father was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer a few weeks ago. It's created lesions on the liver, but hasn't spread to other forms of cancer and everything else (brain, lungs, bones) are clear. That makes treatment more accessible; he's undergoing chemotherapy now, and later will be on cancer growth blockers, which turns very little time into a projected ~15 months. Or, as my dad phrased it, he isn't going to die this year.

There's a lot of narratives I can build around this, tell about this—sometimes they help me process, but this has also felt too much like a story; like, I suppose, something that sounds like it should happen to someone else.

Some stories:

My mum blurting out "I'm tired of you telling me one of my family members has cancer" to my dad's GP. My sister was diagnosed with aggressive breast cancer in 2014, and while she's fully recovered now it took a lot of work and a lot of energy, for her most of all, but for my entire family. It contributed to a year-long depressive episode on my part. We had all just recovered; we're dealing now with my paternal grandfather's Alzheimer's, with my cousin's severe illness. We were owed a break.

Feeling the profound need to vomit when I heard the news, which was just a panic attack, but which stuck with me for two solid weeks. My father's first symptom was an upset stomach, but because he had a cancer-free CT scan just three months ago cancer was the last thing they tested for this time. Three months from nothing to terminal. All nausea I've ever had my entire life is immediately treatable by eating something (even if it's something that will eventually upset my stomach, eating/immediately after always feels better); eating made this feel worse, so it's absolutely psychosomatic, and it's hard to complain about psychosomatic, sympathetic, anxious stomach pain when cancer.

(Reliving every time I silently judged his upset-stomach-era diet, thinking "no wonder that unhealthy/greasy/dairy/whatever food is upsetting your stomach" when it was cancer, it was cancer; of course nothing was helping, and that petty instinct to judge and micromanage just feels so cruel in retrospect.)

When my parents started to tell their group of friends, there was a weekend of staggered social calls. One family friend would not stop harping on my dad's intrinsic, all-cancer-aside health, an admixture of "but if his baseline health is good, he should be easier to treat, right?" and "but he of all people, the most active and healthy of us, should be immune to this"—this insistence, insistence, insistence, that there should be some sort of logic and deserving to illness, that if people do the right things then they won't get sick and will get better, which is proving to be increasingly untrue.

The other visits were almost entirely gossip, small talk; life goes on—my parents installed a new closet storage system in the same weekend of brain scans and chest scans. So much of the gossip is about who knows what about the illness, where it would be awkward to mention "how awful about Dave" and have the listener reply "wait, what?" I don't know how to make life go on, everyone else's domestic busywork seems to me so futile—and, rationally, I know that's taken for granted, that it is, that we do it anyway; but I'm looking at a yawning gulf of a depressive episode that I don't know how to quantify. Will this make the breast cancer era look uncommitted? will this be like college? do I lose time, destroy my relationships, disappear? how can I be there for my family, how can I spend this last bit of time with my dad, and also fall apart?

We as a society are so paranoid about opioids, they come with such warning labels and cultural baggage, that my father had to be cajoled and badgered into taking enough meds to not be in pain from cancer. I see the microaggression of this every day in the spoonie community, but I literally cannot articulate how angry it made me that my father's instinct was to prioritize dosing schedules over pain.

(And "your cancer and you!" photocopied pamphlets from the GP that talk about decreasing cellphone use, which, fuck you.)

My father is the best of us; if there's one family member I could pick to live forever, it would be him. He's well-adjusted, affable, happy, chronically happy. When I first got sick from crazy, we had clashes because he couldn't comprehend that extent of unhappiness—he couldn't understand why I just, you know, couldn't stop. He still took care of me, when I became unable to care for myself. When my sister was diagnosed with cancer he taught himself to love us all in the moment, even sick, even in positions he couldn't comprehend. It's a capacity and capability, a choice to be willfully kind, that few people possess. He has shown that care to my mother for decades, in a way that reminds me of my relationship with Devon—the sort of relationship so sincere and unconditional that I would deem it unrealistic if I weren't a recipient. He is a very good man, the best of us, and I am so angry that when cancer, again—after his mother, after Cokie, after Allie, after Mamakitty, this entire gamut of "after a long and healthy life" and "totally recoverable" and "grandparent" and "rescue cat"—after all that, when it was cancer, again, it has to be terminal and had to be him.

I'm reading a lot and wasting time in an MMO, and dealing with separate and preexisting cat crises that I frankly don't have the energy for; as a small blessing I'm living in Corvallis now, so it's easy to visit home. I have a lot of narratives and feelings, and also a significant silence; everything else seems ridiculous. Who cares? there's cancer. I keep adding it to conversations: today I vacuumed, Gilly escaped and hid under the master bed, and my dad is going to die of cancer. I can't tell yet if it feels unreal or too real; if it's private family pain or if I need everyone to know that nothing matters, they don't matter, I don't matter: cancer. Cancer trumps everything, again. Again, but worse this time. I'm very tired.

CW for discussions of pet death.

Two days ago, I got an email from my father that they'd euthanized Jamie. She'd been having episodes when she'd lose her footing or fall, and panic when she was unable to get up. This occurred when my mother was home; Dad left work, and the two of them were able to calm and comfort her until she could get back up. But these episodes were reoccurring, and only likely to become more common, and they could happen when no one was there; and she'd had ongoing health issues, and the vet had just found a possibly-cancerous mass in her abdomen. So that afternoon they took her in to the vet. They didn't want her to ever be alone and in distress.

She bounced back after the episode and she loved the vet and was excited to be there, and they almost had second thoughts, but this is a long time coming—and even Mamakitty, when we took her in, as sick and exhausted as she was, perked up at the vet because it was a new and distracting environment: that momentary change didn't erase the ongoing problems, for either of them.

This was a long time coming, which is why it feels so hard to handle; or rather, not hard, but distant—James had a heath scare a few months back, and I feel like I said my goodbyes at that time, not preemptively so much as in preparation, and I have done my grieving; but of course I haven't grieved and now I can't seem to start. I'm sure it will sink in when I go home, but I'm not ready for that. This in-betweenness of knowing and not believing, of loss without feeling, is unwelcome but not new; I've experienced similar disconnects before (like when Madison died).

Here's what I do know: We got Jamie the year we got back from England—England is an important landmark in my family's history, Jamie was an era. We named her after Jamie Oliver, because we watched his show while we lived in England, and to preserve the family tradition of giving our dogs gender-swapped names. She was 15, and that's ancient in lab years. My mother told my father about what I'd said, when they made the decision: about valuing the time had, about working in her best interest. She was a ridiculously good dog, ever since she was a puppy; she never had a demon dog phase and we even had a ban on talking about her when when Odi was going through his because no one needed the comparison. When she was old and blind and halfway deaf all she wanted to do was lean against her people so that she knew they were there and loved. She was a leggy field lab & she didn't know how to swim because she had skin conditions as a pup and by the time she was introduced to water she was afraid of it. Every Christmas, she got her own stocking and got to unwrap her own gifts:

"Jamie the dog unwrapping her present" (Watch on YouTube)

She had the knee issues common in labs, and had surgery on both front legs when she was young; for a long time, she was afraid of both the vet and the location in the house where she threw out her first knee. For most of her life she didn't bark, she was an entirely silent dog; only in old age did she sometimes boof when a stranger passed the window. She used to stare out the gap in the blinds for an hour before my dad got home each evening—my mum was the pack leader but my dad was her best friend.

In my first year of college when my life began to fall apart, my mother made a surprise trip to Walla Walla and brought James; they waited in the quad for me to get out of class. I saw a dog across the way and thought, oh, a dog! dogs are great! and then the dog began to jump around because before I even recognized it was my dog, before I even saw my mother, Jamie recognized me across the distance and she was so happy to see me.

She was a sensitive, engaged member of the household, and would get super upset if people fought or talked about politics. She knew tons of commands, most of which we never taught her and were casual sentences, "Jamie, get out of the kitchen." She was our only black lab (the others were chocolate), her fur was rainbow-white in the sun, she liked ear-rubbing the best, she didn't like having her toenails trimmed but would let us do it anyway, and this was Jamie:



I don't believe that pets owe us love, but that it's something we owe them; it is our responsibility when we make them our responsibility, to provide unconditional care and support. But there is no love like the love of this dog, nothing so essential or complete.

As a Christmas gift (which I picked up belatedly, since I skipped Christmas) my parents got me tickets for their Ashland trip to see Hamlet, Twelfth Night, and The Wiz. I used to make at least one yearly Shakespeare trip with my family, and miss it fiercely; it was particularly painful to see these plays on their calendar, because they're personal favorites and because we saw them together once when the Shakepeare trip was to the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon. So when they told me I was invited, I actually broke out in tears.

Of course, as the actual trip approached I remembers to be consumed by anxiety, because I'm not good at a lot of uninterrupted public time, especially without Devon with me, so I didn't know how I'd fare in three days company with my parents. But not only did I survive, it was a lovely and storied journey. I'm not going to write about the plays in detail here (that will be in the next post); this is a recap of itinerary, weather, and food.

We left noonish on Tuesday, June 14. It's a ~3h drive. I requested no news coverage in the car, as this was two days after the Orlando shooting and I just could not deal; instead of a few uninterrupted hours of repetition and Islamophobia, my mum put on the Hamilton soundtrack. I was aware of Hamilton and had heard a song or two, but had never listened to the entire thing. It is such a productive, powerful way to spend that time.

We got a divided room at our favorite hotel, which meant one king bed and sofa bed, separated by privacy curtain. For both mental and physical reasons, I'm a troubled sleeper—but the accommodations plus the bedding and hotpad I travel with, and the hours we kept, worked beautifully; I was surprisingly comfortable there. We also kept a two meal/lunch and dinner schedule, which is what I prefer.

Hotel wifi was speedy and stable (!!!); I used VoIP to catch up with Devon every evening (because normal people have cell phones but my particular anxiety means I don't), and that worked beautifully.

Tuesday dinner was Standing Stone Brewing Company. I got nachos; greasy, sometimes chewy chips, which was unfortunate, but the rest was flavorful and had good texture. Huge serving portions. Mixed bag, but, like, upscale tasty nachos, I can't complain about that.

The ongoing problem with eating in Ashland wasn't finding vegetarian options, but finding vegetarian options that had at some point rubbed themselves against a form of protein. I eat significantly more protein than most people, so perhaps this only bothers me—but while vegetarian (and vegan, and gluten-free) options were often exhaustively labeled, the first two were "normal dish with meat removed." I forget how spoiled I am by meat alternatives in Portland and even Corvallis.

Tuesday evening was Hamlet, in the open-air Elizabethan. Rather than raising an American flag, they raised a pride flag to general cheering; it was striking against the gray sky of dusk, and a heartening public gesture. It sprinkled just enough to warrant rain jackets, and got cold enough to demand one more layer than I wore, but neither required modifications to the play. I would rather it be a little chilly than horrible and hot while I'm traveling, I thought! Oh, little did I know.

Wednesday and Thursday brunch was Morning Glory, which is twee (a bit like stepping into a Mary Engelbreit illustration) and crowded and overpriced, and doesn't accept substitutions which is hard for me as a vegetarian/picky eater. On Wednesday I had a fantastic open-faced egg sandwich, but on Thursday I tried an omelet which was overly full, too strongly flavored, and had an awful texture. Mixed bag.

Wednesday afternoon was Twelfth Night in the Angus Bowmer. Afterward, my father and I went to the Q&A with Ted Deasy, who played Malvolio—what a marvelous experience. The volunteer introduced him as one of their favorite actors in the company and said that, after this talk, he would be one of ours too; absolutely correct. He had active, informed insights to his role, the play (esp. how it handled gender), and acting, with some particularly thoughtful anecdotes about how playing two characters in a single season forces those roles to inform one another, often in unique ways. (The particular anecdote about an audience member from a previous Q&A like this one asking, "I saw you in X play and Y play this season; why do you perform both roles the same?" which prompted a season-long bout of self-doubt, do I play these roles the same? why? should I? that lead him to realize what similarities united the roles, and then to be increasingly aware of how the overlap was both strengthening and muddying his performance.) The occasional talk by an actor devolves into them advertising their independent projects, but most are equally as compelling as the plays—and this was one of those.

Wednesday dinner was Caldera. A tip: when possible, eat as early as possible and/or drive outside of downtown; no waiting for a table and less rush. The dishes weren't particularly strongly flavored, but were robust; and one appetizer was a baked avocado, which isn't even that different from a normal avocado except for being warm and with a somewhat deeper flavor, but was still somehow a revelation: I can love avocado even more than I already loved avocado. Desserts, by contrast, were bizarrely strong in flavor.

Wednesday evening was The Wiz in the Elizabethan. Learning from the night before, we had stocked up on extra layers and a blanket. This helped somewhat, but not an awful lot, because it rained. It rained almost torrentially until intermission, and then only sprinkled while growing increasingly cold, "I know I probably won't die of hypothermia in the two hours' traffic of our stage, but I'm a little worried" cold. About two thirds of the audience left, and we toughed it out in part because you don't go to Ashland to bail on a play and in part because the cast enthusiastically toughed it out, too. Half of them wore ponchos, I'm sure some choreography was modified, and the adlibbed responses to the weather were delightful. Certainly an experience! But, as we commiserated after the event, by the time they made it back to the Emerald City we were all three of us thinking, "click your heels, Dorothy, just click your fucking heels."

Anxiety is a strange monster. On one hand, it well prepares me for this sort of thing, because I know to bring my suitcase full of comfort objects and I know to always have a book to read so that I never have unwelcome idle time which is my surefire way to begin panicking (and there's a lot of downtime in car rides/waiting for tables/before plays and during intermission). On the other, it infallibly makes me assume things will be awful, while things are not infallibly awful. It turns out that, given a busy enough schedule that we are either completely occupied or crashing during all available downtime, even I can do things for three solid days without a nervous breakdown.

What is it about the holidays that inspires an intense heartsickness? Hanukkah is arguably more important to me than Christmas—it feels more intimate and profound—and yet I take some issue with how my family's come to handle it, growing lazier, we don't even make our own latka anymore; and whenever I go home, I realize how distant from my family I've become. My sister's been living there since her diagnosis, and she's always been more comfortable in that social setting. They're noisy and casual and gossip about people I don't know or care to; I go home to feel like an outsider, and to half-ass something important to me.

It makes me want to reclaim the holiday, to learn to make my own latka, to replace what's gone missing—but the very nature of the holiday season means I'm spoon-bereft. I put the average introvert to shame: I rarely socialize, but I rarely feel like I lack anything for it. Except now. This is the only time when I feel like I am actually missing something, that I'm denied something by my sheer inability to ~people~.

On Thanksgiving, Dee's immediate family came into town; they made stuffing and gravy the day before, then left on Thanksgiving itself to visit relatives. I was alone overnight, watching two dogs and four cats; I pulled out the couch and made a big nest of animals, and we watched TV and I ate stuffing and gravy. (Pics or it didn't happen.) It was perfect—enough socialization on either side, but the day itself was stress-devoid and I could actually enjoy my comfort foods.

And between the two, the quiet frustration of Hanukkah and the perfect day that was Thanksgiving, I'm tempted to spend Christmas at the house alone, watching the cats in quiet while Dee goes up to Seattle; but I worry that that tends to far towards not celebrating the holiday at all, and because I can't reclaim it and engaging with it as-is seems unpleasant I'll just ... let it pass me by, which is almost worse.

There are other, personal frustrations which are piggybacking on to this sense of heartsickness, homesickness, longing. I don't have a resolution for any of it.

Late but existant holiday gift list, for my future reference:

Given
Mother: A red-toned glass snail by Alcyon Lord; my mother has a few of this artist's pieces, some from me, but this is one of my favorites—and she liked it.
Father: Two Hanayama cast metal puzzles, also well received; because these are solid metal, they can't be bent or cheated—they look nice and are impressively difficult.
Sister: Bananagrams—in Italian! which she studied for a number of years and has a job translating from.
Devon: A Cougar 700m gaming mouse to replace his gaming mouse that died earlier this year and the pathetic wimpy one he'd been using in the interim.
Dee: Resident Evil Revoluations (Playstation port), since she's been (re)playing the series after getting RE6, and Dev played/I watched Revelations and rather liked it.

Received
Parents: A pair of socks, a bunch of chocolate*, a selection of hot sauces and olives, a Moleskine, and money for eventual clothes shopping.
Father/Grandfather, paternal: my great grandfather's Siddur (Jewish prayer book)
Grandmother, maternal: Money for the eventual clothing fund.
Sister: Two knit sweaters, one black and one white, and one black waist-length peacoat, all of which fit and look fantastic.
Devon, Hanukkah: a Windows cell phone to use as a PDA/mp3 player; I'm not putting my SIM card in it (phone calls, including spam, trigger panic attacks) but it's been fantastic as a calendar/mobile browser/music device; I'm surprised how much I love it.
Devon, Christmas: We're still figuring this out.
Devon's family: 3 pairs of socks, one of which I'll certainly wear to death; jellybeans again, sigh.
Dee: Chocolate, and a delicate copper necklace with a small heart and a teeny little spoon. This is the second time someone has given me a spoon as a gift (the other one wasn't wearable, though) and it is actually the most perfect thing.

* Chocolate haul: chocolate orange, Trader Joe's single origin palette, Vosages Black Salt Caramel Bar, Pasca 85% Dark Chocolate, the last of which is certainly the best. This list is not redundant nor overkill; right now I'm at a point where the only way I can remember and force myself to eat is because after the meal there will be chocolate—it's one of the only things I can still enjoy, and having a lot of it is lifesaving.