Oh, hi, Mr. UPS man. Thanks for being too polite to mention my Mylanta Face

So let me say what I was thinking, since you didn't bring it up. Sorry you had to knock twice.  I was debating whether or not to get up and see who was at the door. What?  Oh, this? Well, see, I thought I had read somewhere that if your skin is irritated, milk of magnesia will help soothe it, and my face felt irritated because I was too enthusiastic with the exfoliating, so . . . yeah.  I think that's wrong, though, because it feels like it's eating my face, not soothing it. 

Hmm? Oh, yes, actually, I did think it would be a good idea to wipe it off before I'd opened the door so you wouldn't have to look at it.  Actually, I thought I had wiped it off, so you can imagine my embarrassment at discovering that I'd missed a patch.  Hahahahaha! *sigh*

Oh, no, I can't say that I'm surprised, exactly, because this kind of thing happens to me all the time. No no, not this exactly--yes, you would think I'd learn from it, wouldn't you--but this kind of thing.  That's why I'm only slightly embarrassed.  I don't think I can get really embarrassed anymore, at least not by stuff like that.

Yes, it probably is in part because I'm getting older, which I guess you can tell because the Mylanta doesn't hide the crows feet forming around my eyes, although I'm sure it distracts from them.  Haha! Ha!

So, uh, listen.  I still have a few more packages coming in the next week.  Why don't you just leave them on the front porch, and maybe we can just pretend this never happened.

Remembering Yuko

The other day, I came across our third grade year book.  RR and I pointed me out in one of the school group's group picture, but at first we didn't see her.  Her initial reaction was "Wait, where am I?" followed by an ". . . Oh." when we realized the she was in the picture, but her face was completely obscured by the leaves of a potted tree.  I don't have any comment to make about that except that if anyone was going to be obscured by a tree in a school picture, it would be RR, and that if anyone was going to get stuck behind a tree and not say anything because she doesn't want to make trouble, it would be RR.

But in the individual pictures of each class, there she is, next to me, unobscured.  Two places to the left of my picture is a picture of Yuko Maekawa, my first ever best friend (besides my sister RR, of course) and, for about the next fifteen years, the yardstick by which all future friends were measured.

I met Yuko on the first day of kindergarten.  It's been thirty years, so my memory is a bit hazy, but the way I remember it, I'd forgotten something--I think it was my nap mat, but I'm not sure--and my mom had to go back with me to pick it up.  I remember having left it at home, but what's more likely is that I just left it in the car.  I'm sure the reason that I left it behind because I was nervous--really nervous.  RR and I were going to be separated for the first time since we were newborns and I was discharged from the NICU a week before RR.  I was excited about school and the possibility of this grownup sounding "homework" that my brother was always worried about.  Yep, I was a nerd even then.  But I was extremely anxious about the newness of everything, and about not having RR with me.

As a side note, our school was a bit experimental and had no walls separating the classrooms, so for some time, RR and I would randomly stand up in the middle of class and wave to each other.

Anyway, my mom and I had to go back to get the item left behind, and as I was walking back up to the school with my mom, Yuko and her mom were also walking up to the school, at the same time, on the same path.  As we proceeded side-by-side, Yuko and I silently and openly checked each other out.  By the time we reached the school doors, I had basically imprinted on her like a baby duckling.  She had become familiar and a friendly, comforting face.

As it turned out, we were in the same class.  All the student desks were tables with two seats, and we were told to pick a seat at a desk.  (This was the first feeling of the terror I would experience in later science classes when the teacher would tell the students to pick a lab partner, and I'd worry that no one would want to pair with me. This never happened, but I never stopped being afraid of it.) I don't remember whether I sat down first and Yuko, much to my relief, joined me, or if Yuko sat first and indicated, much to my relief, that I should sit with her.  I do clearly remember the feeling of relief combined with the instant knowledge that I had a new friend.  That's how five-year-olds are: you spend about thirty seconds with someone, decide they're ok, and this is your new best friend.

But it wasn't just my relief at not being shunned and having nobody to sit with that made me like her--Yuko really was cool.  We got on like a house on fire.  Yuko was from Japan, and I had never met anyone from Japan before.  Her father worked for Sharp, which had offices in my hometown.  She spoke English well, or at least in my memory she did, so we had no communication issues.  She, RR, and I became fast friends. 

I credit her and my friendship with her for opening me up to new cultures and lifestyles at an impressionable young age and for RR's and my casual, unquestioning acceptance that although every family is a little different, it's no big deal.  (Well, that and that RR and I have a personally quirk in that if something new is presented to us, we usually just think "this is different from what I've experience before but it must be normal, I'll think no more about it.") I hadn't spent a lot of time with kids outside my neighborhood, but just from that exposure, I already knew that not all families were alike.  Even though our street was primarily white and of a similar economic status, each family was a little different.  Lisa, two houses down, didn't share her toys. She basically just invited you inside to show them to you and not let you play with them, whereas in our family, that was considered being a bad hostess.  Her dad subscribed to Playboy.  My dad did not.  Her family room had the heads of dead animals mounted on the walls, and ours, thankfully, did not.  Kim, across the street, lived with her parents and her grandparents, who smoked in the house and had raspy voices.  Her dad was a Shriner and listened to Neil Diamond, and for years I believed without thinking about it that those two interests had some kind of correlation. My dad was not a Shriner, and he did not listen to Neil Diamond.

So when I met Yuko, because we were so young but knew enough to know that rules and customs varied from house to house, RR and I just accepted in the way that children do that in some houses, you always take your shoes off at the door without being invited to do so.  In some families, they eat food that tastes and smells differently than what you eat at home.  In some families, the parents speak another interesting-sounding language and speak English with a noticeable accent, and they are very sweet to you, aren't loud and overly-familiar like some parents, and they offer you fruit all the time.  And in some households, the kids have much, much cooler school supplies than you do, including things you'd never seen before like pencil cases, mechanical pencils, retractable erasers, and this really neat brand called "Hello Kitty."  

I think because of our early friendship with Yuko, RR and I developed a habit of wanting to befriend other Asian kids.  It wasn't because we had a "thing" for Japanese or any other Asian culture. We didn't and don't think it was or is better than our own.  We think all cultures have unique, interesting, and wonderful aspects to them, and why wouldn't we want to learn about them?  And we like learning about other cultures from a sociological and anthropological standpoint.  And as far as people are concerned, we generally think some people are wonderful, some people are horrid, most people are somewhere in between, and where you grew up doesn't have any direct correlation to what category you fall into. 

But because Yuko was the first person of Asian ethnicity we had met, and because Yuko was one of the kindest, coolest, funniest kids we'd ever met, we generalized in a way that children (and, unfortunately, many adults) do: if person X is of group Y, and person X has character trait Z, then all people of group Y have character trait Z.  The paintings of clowns in my pediatrician's office were super creepy, therefore all clowns are super creepy.*  If Yuko is Asian, and she's super cool, then all Asians are super cool.  That the stereotyping we did was flattering to people of Asian ethnicities doesn't make our thinking any less wrong, but we were kids, and kids are stupid.**

*Actually, I still think this one is true.
**Whenever I say this quote from Home Alone, I always want to follow it up with the line, "You're afraid of the dark, too, Marv," but it's pretty hard to work that into a conversation or blog post.

Unfortunately, our thinking did make us predisposed to trusting that every Asian kid was kind and really cool.  Of course, as we grew up, we figured out that we were wrong about that, sometimes the hard way.

Although we know that not all Asian kids are like Yuko, our friendship with her helped create in us a mindset that other cultures are merely different, not inherently better or worse than ours, although every culture has some parts that are superior to ours and some parts that are, shall we say, unfortunate.  And it taught us that although we should be aware of and acknowledge our difference, you should focus on the ways that we, as humans, are the same rather than how we are different, or else miss out on some great relationships.  I will always be grateful to her for that. 

And of course this applies not just to people from other countries, but to anyone from another culture group.  For example, growing up, I'd always heard that "Yankees" were rude, and while some  are rude (just like in any culture group), for the most part, they just have a different idea of what it means to be rude.  So while they might be a little less circumspect in how they phrase things, they aren't actually rude.  Almost everyone I've ever met on trips to New York has been sincerely friendly.   So I learned that you shouldn't consider someone rude unless the person is being rude according to his or her native culture or has been in your culture long enough to know that what he or she is doing would be offensive to you. 

But even as RR and I learned to set aside stereotypes, one thing that never went away for us was that feeling we would get whenever visiting an Asian friend's house growing up.  The smell of the house just made us feel at home.  You know how certain smells just automatically evoke feelings that are tied to memories?  That's how it was for us.  Our friendship with Yuko was such a positive experience that our brains started associating certain smells with a warm, fuzzy feeling.  I really think that's part of the reason we have always had Asian friends, our whole life.***  Well, that and growing up, our Asian friends' parents were as strict as our parents, so my parents would let us hang out with them, plus we bonded over the experience.  Also, honestly, the kids with overly-permissive parents tended to be bratty to their parents, and that made us uncomfortable.  Things were much more comfortable over at our Asian friends' houses.  Well, and our one Mormon friend's house.

And by the way, I'm not saying that all Asian parents are strict.  Not knowing all Asian parents, I wouldn't know. I'm just saying that the parents of our Asian friends growing up were, like our parents, strict.

***Now that I've set up this theory, I have to admit that our friendship with our friend getting married this summer is the exception that tests this rule I've just made up.  Our friendship with her has nothing to do with any of these factors.  The truth is, she is basically the Korean RR.  They are too much alike to not be friends.  They met in grad school and had one of those instant friendship connections--you know, where you meet something and know you're going to like this person, and you feel like you've known them forever?  They then bonded over their mutual love of coffee and the fact that they were the only two people who did the work in their first class group project.  Coffee love + being in the trenches of a group project together=friendship for life.  And of course RR is my best friend, so anyone who is very much like her, I'm going to like.  Also, she actually is one of the kindest, coolest, funniest people I've ever met.  Plus, you know, she loves coffee.  Anyway, point is, maybe my hypothesis is false.

Yuko's father was transferred back to Japan after the third grade.  We kept in touch through letters for awhile, but I am the world's worst pen pal, so eventually we stopped writing.  But I never, ever stopped thinking about her and missing her.  I know we're both different people now, so even if she hadn't moved, and our family hadn't moved a few years later, I don't know that we'd still be friends.  But nothing can take away those warm feelings I have for her.

It's almost the one-year anniversary of the earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan and caused the nuclear disaster at Fukushima.  Once again, I find myself thinking of my old friend Yuko and hoping that she's alive and well. My thoughts and prayers are with the people of Japan as they continue to try to put their lives--and their country--back together. 

前川 優子, 会いたい

Skewered: Middle-Aged Men Tell Us Why They Are Experts About Women's Health

I don't think anyone has better demonstrated the ridiculousness of the farce that is the current flap about birth control here in the U.S.  As the FunnyOrDie.com page says, "100% of male experts agree: nobody knows more about women's issues like birth control than late-middle-aged men[,] and the Republican party is well aware."

Women's Health Experts Speak Out from Judd Nelson     

All Koreans do not look alike. Except to me, sometimes.

The other day I was talking to a coworker about the boy band Super Junior (long story, but it wasn't because I'm a fan), and I mentioned that I couldn't tell them apart because they all looked the same. And then after the words came out of my mouth, I realized how unintentionally racist that sounded, and I had to backtrack to explain what I meant, although I'm not entirely sure she doesn't now think I'm a closet bigot.  Let's face it, usually if you have to explain why what you said doesn't make you racist, no one is going to believe you aren't.

What I meant was, I can't tell members of boy bands apart.  Or girl bands, for that matter.  When I was a kid, New Kids On The Block was huge, and all my female friends had crushes on one member or another, but I had no idea who was who, and I didn't care. I didn't get the appeal.  Then when I was in college, there were boy bands everywhere, and I couldn't tell the bands apart, much less their members.  They are all generically pretty in a bland, unappealing (to me) kind of way.  They were like models in print ads: I could see that their features were supposed to be pretty but in a very generic, "could swap one for another and no one would know the difference" kind of way.  They were about as appealing to me as wallpaper.

But when I go to Korea, I'm a little worried about potentially offending some of my friend's family and friends by being unable to tell them apart, for reasons that have nothing to do with them looking like they belong in a boy band or with them being Korean.  It's more that I have a very hard time sometimes with recognizing people's faces.  I don't think I have prosopagnosia because I can totally tell my family members apart, for example. And generally I can recognize friends and coworkers.  But sometimes I can't recognize people that I have met on multiple occasions.  Once when I was home from college on Christmas break, I ran into an old classmate at the store. I'd gone to school with this guy for seven years, but suddenly when I was in the middle of my conversation with him, it was like I was seeing his features for the first time. I spent the rest of the time I chatted with him worried that I was in fact not talking to my old classmate and was babbling on to someone totally different, only I had no idea who. He clearly knew me, but I wasn't sure that he was who I thought he was.

I have that problem with other things, too.  Like, when I was younger, it was very hard for me to learn to tell time. The best way I can explain it is to say that when I'd look at a clock, I'd only see the whole image and could not break it down into its constituent parts. I could not tell you where the big hand and little hand where, because I didn't see them that way, I just saw this image. I'm not describing it very well, but it was very frustrating.  After a certain point, I learned to not look at the clock as a whole and just look first at the little hand, and then at the big hand.  And over time, I became faster at it. I can tell time now pretty easily, but I still do it slower than most people because I cannot just glance at the clock and know the time. I still have to say, "Ok, the little hand is at the three, and the big hand is at the four, so it's 3:20."  Even just the other day I had to deal with this when I had to sign in at the doctor's office.  The form asked you to write down what time you signed in, and for one very tense moment, I just couldn't figure out the time.  But fortunately no one was looking at me, so I could take a deep breath and take my time. 

I used to break into a sweat at the idea of meeting friends at, say, a restaurant.  Just like with the clock, when my friends became a part of a group (in this case, of restaurant patrons), they just blended in and became indistinguishable from everyone else there.  What if they were already seated at a table when I got there, and I couldn't find them because I couldn't recognize them? Un!Comfortable! And in fact this happened on more than one occasion.  Once they were even waving at me, and I still didn't see them at first.  And if you think high school friends won't make fun of you for that, then you were never in high school.  

After that I started arranging to meet my friends at one of our homes, or at a smaller venue like a coffee shop.  But eventually, I got comfortable with doing a version of my time-telling technique. I'd start at a table on one side of the room and look closely at each person at the table: "That's not my friend. And that's not my friend on right left. Next chair--that's not my friend," and so on, until I find the person I'm meeting.  Plus, I stopped caring so much about whether or not I seemed weird for not being able to spot someone, so I have less anxiety, which helps.  Because when I start worrying that I won't be able to distinguish someone in a crowd, I pretty much won't be able to.

But that only works if it's a face I'm very familiar with, and if I'm not anxious about recognizing the person. I'm a little worried that in Korea, when I'm meeting so many people I've never met before, I'll be overwhelmed. And then I'll feel anxious, which will make it hard for me to concentrate on recognizing, "oh, yeah, this is the guy I met at dinner last night." The added pressure of not embarrassing my friend by not being able to tell who is who among her friends and her extended family, I'll definitely have extra anxiety.  And combine that with me being bad at names, the potential for looking like an "all Asians look alike to me" kind of person is high.

To compensate for that, I'll have to concentrate on trying to distinguish features. "This guy has a scar on his eyebrow. That lady has a crooked tooth. That girl has a very unflattering bowl haircut.  That guy is -really- good looking."  Which means I'll be staring at people with a higher level of intensity than people normally find comfortable. Which means I'll be weird in a different, non-racist way.  But at least I won't look like a racist, which, for your average white American, is all I'm shooting for most days.  But I will look very strange.  But I'm planning on telling people that I'm originally from Canada, so don't worry America, I won't embarrass you.
 

Visiting Korea. Plan to have fun, shop, starve.

So, looks like RR and I are headed to the ROK this May, which is a bit unexpected. One of our closest friends is from there, and we'd been planning to go over in fall of 2013 on a trip with her.  We were going to visit her hometown and travel around with her and possibly her mom, who we are told is even pickier about restrooms than we are.  But our friend recently got herself engaged, and for various logistical reasons I don't fully understand having to do with her school schedule (she's getting her Ph.D.) and lucky dates, the wedding will be this May.  

I'm super super excited about the trip, although not so much about the plane ride.  I haaaatee flying. Considering that after about four hours, I'm about ready to run screaming to the emergency exit, I don't know how I'm going to handle fourteen hours.  At least it's a direct flight.  RR and I thought about making a stop in San Francisco or Japan, just to break up the trip, but we realized that there was a high probability that once we got off the plane at the stop, we'd be unwilling to get back on the plane again for the next leg.

I'm also less than enthusiastic about visiting without knowing more of the language.  I've been studying, but more at the pace of someone who expects to need it in a year and a half rather than in three short blink-and-it's-here months. I guess I could go practice at the coffee shop in a shopping center nearby that's filled with Korean shops.  The last time we were there with our friend, the woman behind the counter asked our friend if we spoke Korean, and she replied that we did.  I don't know what possessed her to say that, except that she is ridiculously sweet and encouraging, rather like a proud mom, and the fact that we can order coffee and ask where the restrooms are located means to her that we are practically fluent. So anyway, we went to that coffee shop often enough that they recognized us whenever we went in, and since the day of my friend's false adverstising, I've refused to go back out of abject terror that they will try to speak to me in Korean, and I won't know what they are saying, and it will be painfully obvious that I do not speak the language, and then they will feel bad for possibly embarrassing me, and I'll be embarrassed for putting them in that situation, and we'd all feel just terribly awkward, and it.would.be.awful.  So I haven't been back, even though they have good coffee.

I guess I could go in, ask where the restroom is, and then run out, but that would only further support the idea that I speak Korean while also making me look crazy. 

I'm also a little worried about finding food that I can safely eat.  RR and I have lots of food allergies, including garlic, onions, and sesame, and at least one of those three ingredients is in roughly 99.3% of Korean food.  That's only a slight exaggeration.  I love Korean food, and although I was relieved upon my diagnosis to find out why japchae made me feel so happy yet also pretty crappy, I was really unhappy to have all that yummy food taken away from me.  RR and I managed to convert a whole lotta recipes so that, although they don't taste exactly authentic, they are still pretty good.  But we won't be making our own food while we're over there, and we'll be surrounded by food that looks and smells fantastic but that we can't eat because we don't want to die overseas and leave our grandmother to think that she was correct to believe that we should never, ever travel more than 30 miles away from home.  You know, because nothing bad can happen to you if you live within driving distance of your parents' house.

Anyway, we're trying to figure out how much food we can realistically pack in our suitcases without looking like we might be running a food smuggling business.  We're also trying to find some places in Seoul that have food we can actually eat.  We're a bit hampered by the fact we don't know much Korean, and the slow process of translating the websites' content makes checking for ingredients a time-consuming task. I finally broke down and emailed the corporate headquarters of Dunkin' Donuts to ask about their rice flour donuts (and you know if I'm willing to eat chain store doughnuts that I'm desperate), but they have as yet not gotten back to me. 

I'm worried my only option will be to eat nothing but white rice while I'm there, and I don't even want to think about what that will do to my digestion.

The silver lining of course is that I might be able to lose those five pounds I kept complaining about for the last year.  Fasting isn't exactly how I'd planned to go about it, but it would be a nice souvenir, right?  

In which I talk about the contents of my sinuses

Warning: this is gross, ok?

So, sinus surgery. I did that.  A few days before New Year's Eve, I checked in to the hospital in the morning, and by evening I was back home, a little wobbly on my feet, but overall doing fine. 

They made me shower both the night before and the day of the surgery, which you know I was fine with, or rather, would have been fine with under normal circumstances.  Unfortunately, they told me that I was not allowed to put on any lotion after my shower.  This I did not care for. I apply moisturizer with a frequency that should entitle me to some sort of bulk discount.  So that part was tough.

I expected to have quite a bit of pain afterward, but it was pretty manageable with just Tylenol.  They gave me some anti-nausea medicine, which I didn't see the point of until a few days later, when the massive amount of drainage I had going on became a little much to take on my stomach.  Didn't like that.  Also didn't like the fact that I the inside of my face felt raw.  Also didn't like the fact that every time I got out of bed and moved around, no matter how little I moved or exerted myself, I had blood start running out of my nose into the handy mustache bandage taped under my nose. 

Also didn't like having to chew with my mouth open for several days due to the fact that absolutely no air could get into my body through my nose.  Pretty sure RR didn't care for that, either.  But she was very sweet about her self-imposed nursing duties.  She picked up my prescriptions, brought me food, helped me move around, forced me not to over-excert myself, tolerated my choice of television shows, and sua sponte checked my bandage.  I guess what's a twin sister for if not to check your bandage to see if it's full of fluids that ran out of your nose, right?

Finally after a week I was allowed to go back to using my neti pot and washed quite a bit of blood out of my sinuses. I cheated a bit and did it a day earlier than I was probably supposed to. It was gross.  It was goopy, to a degree that made me afraid I'd done some damage by using my neti too early. I made RR look at what came out in case it was maybe not just blood and mucus but maybe also a part of the foam they sprayed in my sinuses in lieu of packing gauze into my nose. RR--Dude, I'm so sorry.  Clearly, I owe you.

I'm still getting blood out of my sinuses, actually, but it doesn't worry me as much.  Yesterday, I went for my post-op appointment, and the doctor said everything looked pretty good.  Well, except for the part where she decided she needed to vacuum a bloody clot of . . . something out of my ethmoid sinus  Apparently, I had some blood (or something) that had solidified and wasn't going to come out, even with the neti.  Have you ever had anyone put a suction device into your sinuses? Let me tell ya, it hurts. A lot. I think whatever it was did not want to come out.  I thought she was going to turn my face inside out with that vacuum.

I mentioned to her that I'd been getting a lot of blood out with my neti pot, and she nodded, saying it made sense, explaining to me that "if you think about it, when you have the surgery, blood pools there in your sinuses and congeals there."  Congeals. She said it "congeals" there. I think she meant that to be reassuring.

"Wait,"  RR said, interrupting me as I was telling this to her, "she said 'congeals'? Not 'coagulates'? Like Jello?"  EXACTLY.  That's exactly what I thought when the doctor told me that. We're not twins for nothing.  "Yep," I told RR, "blood Jello." 

At least this cleared up a mystery for us.  Starting a few days after the surgery, I became afflicted with a persistent smell in my nose. It was not exactly revolting, but it was definitely unpleasant. No matter what I did, that was pretty much all I could smell, and I smelled it all the time.  A family consult resulted in a verdict that it was probably blood. And I think we were definitely right about that one. Must have been the blood pooling there.  And then congealing.

Last night I tried to tell RR that the idea of her eosinophils "degranulating" in her esophagus was way grosser than blood jello, but she stood firm in her position that nothing we could talk about that day would be more gross than blood jello.

I guess if I look at it objectively, she's right.

But at least I have a new descriptor I can use. For example, when I called RR today to tell her that I figured out why my face was hurting today, "because when I blew my nose, I got out a lot of blood jello." That's way easier than trying to describe its physical properties to her, which you know I would have.

I'm wondering if we should give it another name, like "cranberry sauce."

Hey, I TOLD you this was going to be gross. I would not lie to you about that. But I think it's probably best if we just end this post here.

At least we all like Starbucks, so we've got that going for us

Well, the holidays are over, and I’m happy they were so uneventful.  My immediate family spent several hours at my grandparents’ house before relocating to my parents’ house to spend a few more hours.  My grandfather wished that we had stayed longer, but although we didn’t tell him this, we had all had about as much as we could take of the central heating.  My grandfather, now that he is in his 80s, has succumbed to the elderly-person habit of cranking up the heat high enough to make his house suitable for incubating baby animals or growing tropical plants. He’s always been on the cold side—I can’t remember a time in my life when he didn’t wear a cardigan all the time, even in summer.  But lately, it’s worse. My grandmother has always liked the house cold, so we could count on her to keep the house temperature lower than, say, how hot my paternal grandfather liked to keep his house—a temperature that guaranteed limited visits because we could only stay for about half an hour before becoming too physically uncomfortable to stay longer.  It was oppressive.  Sitting across from my dad in the living room, I’d gauge when we needed to leave by how close he looked to passing out.  As soon he’d start looking wilty, I’d start making the departure talk.

We’d always been spared that at my maternal grandparents’ house thanks to my grandmother, but since she returned from the hospital, she’s a changed woman as far as her body temperature.  She was our last line of defense, and she’s been breached.  So far, it’s not “no, really, you’ll die after an hour” temperature, but it is “Are you sweating? I’m definitely sweating” hot. 

Gift giving didn’t take up too much time, as my family has mostly gone the gift card route due to a standoff over what kind of gifts we’ll buy and when they need to be purchased.  RR and I flat out declined to give a wish list this year because they never want to buy us what we really want and because we thought we should focus on family rather than presents.  My family is not so much on the “spirit of the season” bandwagon, though, so we got gift cards.  Don’t worry, we had our revenge.  I’m sure that my teenage cousins, parents, brother, and grandparents were all thrilled with the flock of chicks that RR and I purchased on their behalf from Heifer, International. 

I’m not normally a fan of making a charitable donation as a gift unless it was a request or if it’s for someone who you know will appreciate it.  As with all gifts, the key is knowing the recipient—the Kiva gift certificate I got as a gift one year from Hils is still one of my favorite gifts ever.  But most of my family is more on the materialistic side.  Wanting a physical present at Christmas doesn’t make you a terrible person, since that’s the expectation we’ve encouraged people to have, but I feel like with my religious family, it should be easier to counter.  I wouldn’t mind more gift-giving because I love giving presents, but my family takes what should be a fun activity—buying something to give to someone you love—and makes it on the same level of fun as doing your taxes or changing your tire in the rain. 

We’ve tried lists, but then my family members shop from their own lists before Christmas, so that you have to either expect to make another days-before-Christmas to the store for an exchange or wait and buy your gift at the last possible opportunity to make sure that they haven’t already bought what you want to get them.  When we try to buy them something not on the list, then with the exception of my dad, they are visibly unexcited about their gifts.  But actually getting them to tell you what they want at any time more than a week before Christmas takes an excessive amount of nagging.  And my brother often waits until mere days before Christmas before deciding that he (a) thinks us siblings should go in together on a gift for the parents and (b) should probably call us to see what we want to buy.  None of us are organized, so I wouldn’t fault him for the last-minute-ness, but about 95% of the time, RR and I wind up being the ones going to the store to buy the gifts, a chore we've come to loathe.  And I don’t know why he bothers anyway, because he always has a better idea of what they’d like than we do, and yet our parents always assume that we picked out the good gifts, so it’s not like he even gets credit for it.  Maybe if he bought his gifts on his own every year, he’d have a better gift-giving reputation. 

This year, my sister and I suggested a gift to my parents, and they seemed agreeable to it, but then, days before Christmas, we got the brother phone call, which ultimately resulted in the Day of Disappointment, as I have decided to call this year’s Christmas celebration. 

Him: What do you want to get them?
Me: We’re getting them a membership to the [local museum we all enjoy].
Him: Hmm. [Pause]  Mom said Dad wants a Shop Vac.
Me: Oh. So . . . you don’t want to do the membership?
Him: I don’t know. It just seems like they won’t use it that much.
Me: But they said . . . [banging my head against the wall] Ok, I’ll ask them again.

So I called my parents, and days before Christmas, they decide that yeah, they’re not sure they’d use the membership that much.  Mom: Your dad wants a Shop Vac?  Me, cracking under the weight of frustration: I’M NOT GOING TO THE MALL ON CHRISTMAS EVE! 

I may or may not have said this is a raised tone of voice, standing,with my parents, outside of the museum that my parents thought they would probably not visit very often, on our way into said museum.

Of course, I didn’t want to be a total killjoy, so I was willing to contribute to a Shop Vac, just not to brave mall craziness.  Would brother step up to the plate and take one for the team?

Me to my brother: They don’t want the membership.
Him: You want to do the Shop Vac?
Me: I’m not going to the mall on Christmas Eve.
Him: [pause] We can get them Starbucks gift cards.
Me, in my head: I KNEW IT.

Every year, RR and I try to get our family to focus more on doing activities together or starting a new tradition to celebrate Christmas rather than focusing on presents, and every year we get rebuffed.  I guess spending more time together is not something anyone besides RR and I looks forward to.  That’s all fine and good, but neither RR and I really want more stuff, so every year we tell our family that they can make a charitable donation in our name, or they can give us a gift from a list of practical items that we need to buy anyway, or they could, you know, not buy anything.  But they never want to do any of that.  They always want to buy us stuff, which we don’t want. 

One year my sister tried to talk my grandmother into making a contribution to buying diapers for orphans, and my grandmother shot it down immediately, saying “they’ll be plenty of time to buy diapers for you later.” This despite the fact that (1) the diapers weren’t for her, (2) she doesn’t want kids and plans to never have any, so there won’t be any reason to buy diapers for her later, and (3) this was the gift she actually wanted.  But my grandmother didn’t want to buy RR the gift she wanted.  She wanted to buy RR the gift she thought RR should want.  And that’s how my family operates.  You should want this e-reader, and therefore I will not buy you the gift certificate to the used book store that you’d actually like to have.

So this year, RR and I cracked and decided that if they would force gifts on us that we don’t want in the name of doing something nice for us, even though it’s the opposite of what we want, then turnabout is fair play.  Hence the Heifer, Int’l donations.

Have you bought anything from Heifer? It’s fun. We had a hard time choosing.  You can buy a flock of chicks, a flock of geese, a flock of ducks  . . . but as RR pointed out to me, there’s no flock of seagulls option. 

Anyway, the holidays are over, and hopefully we’ve all learned something.  I’ve learned that if I want gift buying for family to not raise my blood pressure, I have to pin them down early, whether they like it or not.  And hopefully they’ve learned that if they don’t cooperate, they’re going to be awfully disappointed on December 25th.  But I think what we’ve probably all really learned is that next year, we’re all getting Starbucks gift cards.

Some consequences of being scheduled for sinus surgery

One consequence of having a sinus surgery in the near future is that I have had to learn more than I want to about sinuses.  While I was consulting my new doctor the Internet, I came across a website discussing acute ethmoid sinusitis.  This website kept referring to something called the “middle meatus.”  So now I have finally found a term I find more unappealing than “bolus.” 

I do not want to hear the word “meatus” spoken.  I do not even want to hear it in my head.  I do not want to think about a part of the body being described as “the meatus.”  And somehow adding the word “middle” to it just makes it worse.  And yet I know I will find myself saying it, for example, to demand that the heat be turned off.  “Turn off the central heating! The meatus commands it!”  This will simultaneously amuse and disgust me. I'll laugh at my own comment, and then feel disappointed in myself.

A more positive consequence of having sinus surgery is that I won’t have to get any flak for my usual New Year’s Eve celebration of kicking back in my jammies and watching movies.  My surgery is just a few days before, and I may be puffy or have facial discoloration, and if they're going to put in splints or anything like that, they'll probably still be there.  Also, I may have to be sporting what they call a "mustache bandage," and there ain't no way I'm going out in public like that.  

As much as I like the idea of attending a glitzy New Year’s celebration, I don’t enjoy staying up that late or drinking champagne or mingling with strangers.  But I do enjoy being at home, watching movies, and wearing my pajamas.  People always seem a little disappointed when I tell them my plans, but since as a person I tend to be a little disappointing generally, I think they shouldn’t be surprised.  “Oh, you want to hear about my work as an attorney? Great. Let me tell you about this argument we had the other day about whether we should say that ‘the plaintiff’s claims should have been dismissed’ or ‘the plaintiff’s case should have been dismissed.’  I thought for a minute there it would come to blows.”

But this year, all I have to do is preface the discussion of my plans with the statement, “Well, I’ll still be recovering from surgery, so . . .” and then I’ll get nothing but sympathy and understanding.  Win!  My meatus and my mustachioed self can enjoy the evening in peace.

Nosebleed season is upon us

Ah, winter.  Although it hasn't started staying cold during the day yet, it has been cold at night and in the mornings.  I love this time of year because I can wear cute plaid skirts with fun tights, and boots, and cute jackets, and scarfs.  I love cold-weather clothes.  I love flannel pajamas.  I love cuddling into bed to read under a thick pile of blankets.  And of course, I love the holiday season.  It is, after all, the most wonderful time of the year. 

What I do not like about this time of year is the dry winter air and the even drier inside air.  My sinuses, alas, are pathetically wimpy.  The minute the central heating gets kicked on, the nosebleeds begin. 

I’ve had nosebleeds all my life.  When I was a kid, they could be really bad.  Once I reached my teens, they became a lot less severe and more infrequent.  Now, thanks to the wonders of saline nasal spray, I hardly ever get blood running out of my nose.  But I do, however, spend most of the winter with blood in my nose.  Sneezing? Blood in the tissue.  Using the neti pot? Blood clots in the sink.  It’s gross.  It’s annoying.  And the inside of my nose always feels raw and irritated.  That makes me irritable. 

It also makes everyone around me irritable because I insist that the heater be run as little as possible.  If I’m in the car, I hope you have heated seats, because that’s all the warmth you’re gonna get.  In my townhouse?  My poor sister freezes because I set the heater high enough to keep the pipes from freezing and not much above that.  At the office? My office has the thermostat that controls my office and the ones around me.  It’s mostly guys, so they haven't complained, but my friend in the office next door?  She freezes.  The other day she asked me, “Does it seem cold in here to you? I’m freezing?” I feigned ignorance.  “Not me, I’m hot,” I said.  I was hot, but only because I’d just sneezed several times in a row. I didn’t tell her that I’d spent the previous 5 minutes sitting on my hands because they were too cold for me to type. 

It’s only going to get worse at the end of the month because, like hundreds of thousands of people do every year, I’m having surgery on my sinuses to get rid of a chronic infection.  Is this surgery common the world over, or just here in the U.S.?  I don’t know if we have defective sinuses over here or just bad environmental factors that make us prone to infections, or if maybe it’s a design flaw in the human body generally.  But in any case, I’m having my problem taking care of.

Getting information from my ENT about this procedure has been like pulling teeth.  When the nurse called to tell me that a CT scan had shown that, yep, despite round after round of antibiotics, that infection was still hanging on, so the doc wanted me to have surgery, she didn’t ask if I wanted to talk to the doctor about it. She just asked, “When do you want to schedule it?”  I asked her, “Um, are there any, like, downsides, or anything?” (Ok, yes, I sounded like a teenager, but I was so taken aback at the “YouneedtohaveananteriorethmoidectomyandabilateralmaxillaryantrostomyWhendoyouwantoscheduleit?” that I couldn’t form a coherent thought.)  Her response?  “Um, not that I know of.”  

Dude, there are always downsides to any medical procedure.  I asked her if there was some place I could get some information and she told me I could google it.  I could google it.  That’s how I could find out about pros and cons of surgery.  But she warned me that of course there’s a lot of misinformation out there.  Yes, I know.  That’s why I asked someone at my doctor’s office about it instead of asking the Internet.  Fabulous.

Anyway, according to the Internet, you are at risk of nosebleeds for about a week or so after the surgery, and you need to keep your sinuses from drying out.  Considering that they are already in a constant state of dried-out-ness, I’m not sure how to accomplish this, but I’m pretty sure I’m now required to buy the Hello Kitty humidifier I’ve been eying for a few years.  It also means that everyone around me is about to get a little bit colder.  Sorry, RR.  Sorry, coworkers.  You’re just going to have to suffer for a bit.  The Internet said so.