One of the things I love so much about blogging is being able to check in whenever I want to know how many other people feel the same way about something. I mean, we’re no pure scientific sample here, but if I say, “Hey…when you drive a couple of hours away to an unfamiliar place, you pretty much assume you’re going to die on that trip, right?,” I can get a feeling for what the GENERAL percentages are—whether it’s one other person saying “Thank god, I thought I was the only one who makes sure her kids have fresh clothes for attending my funeral!!” while the rest say “…What are you talking about?,” or whether it’s the other way around. Plus, if nothing else, we’ve learned that any question that begins “Am I the only one who…?” can be answered “No,” so we no longer need to start questions that way.

What I’m wondering about today is what percentages of us feel what ways about Girls (Amazon link Netflix link). I have been watching the second season. I started watching the first season even though it didn’t look like my kind of thing at all, because I kept hearing about the show and seeing Lena Dunham on everything, and I wanted to know what was going on. And I just hated it right away. Which makes it hard to explain why I watched all the rest of the first season and am halfway through the second season.

Every time I watch an episode, I feel completely alienated and disconnected: I don’t understand the way the characters are behaving. I don’t understand the way they talk to each other. I don’t understand their fights or the horrible things they say. I don’t understand their romantic relationships or their sex lives. And then I panic, because I think that maybe this is the new way things are (just as my grandparents didn’t understand why people went around talking about such personal things all the time), and Elizabeth will TOTALLY relate, and SHE WILL HERSELF BE LIKE THOSE GIRLS, and then I will not be able to relate to HER. It makes me feel terrible. And the only two people I like on the whole show are Shoshanna and Ray; I find the others cringingly repellent. Plus, I hate how HBO is all, “We CAN show people naked and/or having sex, so we WILL! Just, like, ALL THE TIME!” I don’t know why I keep watching it, I really don’t.

Sometimes I watch the behind-the-episodes parts, and those just make it even more confusing. Lena Dunham will say something like, “We’ve all dated an Adam,” and meanwhile I’d been waiting to find out what serious problem Adam has because something is obviously seriously wrong and I don’t understand his personality at all. But he’s supposed to be an Obvious Type? Someone we’ve ALL dated?

And she says other things that soothe me because I think, “Oh, I see, she’s deliberately poking fun at this stage of life,” but then she says other things that make me realize she doesn’t yet understand the entire caricature: there are things she puts in there thinking they’re normal things, when actually they’re ALSO poking fun at that stage of life but she’s not old enough to notice them yet. It’s hard to poke fun at a stage you’re STILL IN. And it’s hard to know which parts are which, from a later stage.

Or she’ll say that her favorite kind of funny is when someone is coming across completely differently than the way they see themselves, and I think, “Oh, I see: it’s just that we have different senses of humor, because that makes me want to die of horrified empathy.”

So here is what I would like to know, I guess: if you’ve watched Girls (any of it), I’d want to know if you’re in the same age range as the characters, and how the show seems to you. For example, you might say, “I’m the same age range as those characters and that looks NOTHING like my life,” or you might say, “I’m in the same age range as those characters and that’s exactly how it is in my life,” or you might say, “I’m in a different age range but that’s how my life was at that age,” or you might say, “I’m in a different age range and I don’t identify with the show for this or any other stage of my life.” Or whatever your combination is. Actually I guess that’s basically all the combinations. Or, no, because you could also be, “I’m in the same age range, and that’s not like my life at all so I don’t IDENTIFY-identify, but I’m definitely familiar with that kind of life because I have friends like that.” Or of course there’s “I’ve never seen the show.” Well, and that’s not all of them; there are more.

Let’s see. The last time we talked, Henry had been sick all day Monday, and Elizabeth threw up at the bus stop on Tuesday morning. Since then we’ve added Edward starting to throw up right after school on Tuesday, and Paul coming right back home from work Wednesday morning. I just deleted a paragraph about Paul, because I’ve talked too many times already on the topic of Paul/illness/divorce. I’ve been dealing with barf since Sunday morning at 1:30, and it is now Thursday afternoon; it is not the right time to evaluate relationships and life choices.

********

Two people on my friends/family Facebook recently posted rather hostile lists (why do people post these lists?) from the point of view of clerks/nurses, scolding customers/patients for being awful. When I read those lists (why did I read those lists?), I ended up brooding/mulling over several things:

1. One item on the list had a clerk asking the customer to “look up” and understand that there was a REAL PERSON (i.e., the clerk) standing in front of her. Yes. Okay, that is true, and everyone should treat clerks nicely, and as a former clerk several times over I realize MANY customers are not doing so. But in such situations where one person is resenting another person, it’s a good idea to flip it around for resentment-justification verification: the clerk should think to herself, “And am _I_ seeing the customer as a Real Person, or am I seeing ‘A Long Line,’ or ‘Irritating Group of Customers Who Don’t See Me as an Individual’?” Maybe the clerk will answer, “YES, I am seeing her as a Real Person! I TRULY CARE about THIS PARTICULAR CUSTOMER’S human needs and wants, and I want HER SPECIFICALLY to see my humanness in return!” But this is a list addressed to “Customers” as a bulk unit, and the tone is unkind and triumphantly group-spanking, so it seems like the context already gives us the answer I’m expecting, which is “Er…..no. Ahem.”

This may sound like I’m advocating all of us holding hands and reaching out and seeing each other as Real People, but actually I think that’s too much intensity for the customer/clerk relationship. I’m only advocating the general practice of double-checking both sides of the equation before getting indignant—particularly if the indignation involves self-pity. See also: “No one noticed I disappeared from Twitter” and “No one remembered my birthday” and “No one ever invites me to things” (equation check: “Do _I_ notice when other people take Twitter breaks? and if so, do I tell them so, so they’d know I noticed, or do I worry I’d sound naggy/stalkery?” “Do _I_ remember their birthdays?” “Do _I_ invite other people to things?”). Sometimes the answer will be yes (in which case perhaps the individual might want to consider changing his or her own behavior/expectations in order to stop banging his or her head against this same wall), and sometimes it will be “Er…..no. Ahem.”

2. There is an extremely valuable and admirable trait that some people have and some people don’t, and it makes ALL THE DIFFERENCE in performance/happiness in certain careers. I don’t know what to call the trait, but it’s when someone can hear the same exact question a thousand times from a thousand different people and see it as one thousand people each asking it for the first time, rather than seeing it as one person asking the question a thousand times. If you’re asking someone a question, and that person sighs and acts like they have told you a THOUSAND times, you are encountering a person who lacks this trait and/or has finally hit the limit of that trait for this particular job/question.

3. It’s a group-bonding thing to group-mock the group of people a particular group has to deal with. So for example, it makes perfect sense to me for clerks to gripe about Customers, and for nurses to gripe about Patients: it’s a tension-reliever and also a bonding experience, and de-humanizing others with mockery can take some of the sting out of the hurt feelings they cause. The problem is that it gets out of hand extremely quickly, and soon one group is seeing the other group as an amorphous blob of irritating traits. The resentment builds, and soon a polite and reasonable customer gets treated the same as a rude customer, and a polite and reasonable patient gets treated the same as a jerky one. This sucks, and I wonder if there is a way to avoid it while still getting the benefits of group-bonding and tension relief. Perhaps by also talking about the good customers/patients, and aiming for approximately the same amount of time on that topic. It seems like that would have good tension-relieving properties as well, while also giving an increase in job satisfaction. Griping, yes—but BALANCED griping, to keep from turning into a churning perspectiveless cloud of surly resentment that has to deal with THESE ANIMALS all day long.

4. It seems as if the venting/bonding griping should be shared only with other members of the group. When shared in a general way on Facebook, here is how it hits: other members of the group will like/share/enjoy/bond; people who should be taking justified scolding from the attack won’t read it and/or won’t recognize themselves and/or won’t agree and/or won’t care; people who are already being good customers/patients will feel attacked, hurt, and unjustly accused, and will end up feeling hostile toward the attacking group (in this example, the clerks/nurses) for being so MEAN and UNFAIR, and will take that feeling into future clerk/nurse situations.

On Sunday I thought, “You know, maybe what I should do is work on a Certified Nursing Assistant degree. Maybe it’s something I can do one course at a time, and then I’d be all set once I was ready to go back to work. And maybe I’d be ready now, or soon.” I emailed a friend who’s a nurse, to ask if she knew if there was any difference between one CNA program and another.

Sunday night at 1:30, Henry came upstairs saying he’d thrown up. For the next 19 hours, until he fell asleep Monday night, I was reminded of the years with small babies in the house. That feeling of not knowing how to find a gap in reality for eating lunch. Needing to remind myself to use the bathroom. Making sure I have everything I need within reach before I sit down, because once I sit down I’m stuck down for awhile. Lots of pre-rinse laundry.

Some parts were enjoyable. Henry is a very active, loud child, so having him snuggly and quiet was a treat. Having time with just one child was nice. Feeling essential was nice. A sick day can be nice, too, the way it breaks up routine. Having him fall asleep clutching my finger just like a baby does was nice. That “time has no bearing on reality” feeling was interesting to revisit for a day.

But I didn’t enjoy the part where I couldn’t turn my attention to dinner, or even to re-braiding my coming-unbraided hair. I didn’t enjoy trying to do all these things on half a night’s sleep. It wasn’t particularly fun to spend so much time with another person’s bodily fluids. I was getting oppressed by having someone else ON me all the time. I started FEELING the circles under my eyes. I was reminded of how impossible it is to fully enjoy the baby stage, because it’s so EXHAUSTING and DRAINING and CONSUMING.

This morning Henry is better. He still looks ill, but he’s not throwing up anymore, and he’s eaten half a slice of peanut butter toast and a big glass of water. He and I were both looking forward to the day ahead: still a sick day, but with more TV and video games and less washing out barf buckets, and less of him crying because he’s so thirsty but will throw it right back up if he drinks anything.

And then at the bus stop, Elizabeth threw up. It was very good timing: she narrowly avoided a bus/classroom catastrophe, and it would have been difficult to go pick her up at school with another sick child along. This changes our day, however. And it means the end to my hope that Henry just had food poisoning and that none of the rest of us were going to get it. And it means the end to looking into the CNA for now: I’m not yet available to be a reliable employee. (Though still interested in CNA-related talk.)

Last night I dreamed I asked Paul if anything was wrong, and it turned into a dream conversation about our obvious impending divorce. To my appalled and heartbroken reaction, Dream Paul said, “Don’t worry, it’s not like we have to do it right this second. Think of us as being engaged to divorce.”

In what I’m sure is completely unrelated news, the discussion about paint color continues. All the cheery bright/kindergarten/bus yellows and moderate sunshiney/nursery yellows made me feel nothing but despair, so I suggested green:

(screen shot from behr.com)

“Ugh, that’s terrible,” Paul said. “That is the same color as my coat,” I said. “All these years you have hated my coat, and you NEVER SAID.” “I don’t hate your coat,” said Paul. “But the fact that you would suggest that color for the bathroom makes me reconsider everything you have ever said to me.” “Maybe back to the vintage aqua concept?,” I suggested.

(screen shot from behr.com)

“Yes,” said Paul. So…yay! We agree again! But then, all the vintage-aqua-type colors I tried seemed vaguely FAMILIAR somehow. And I realized all of them were shades of the blue I use on this blog. And I don’t think I want the blog in my bathroom, not that I don’t think of you all as sisters. I wouldn’t want my sister in the bathroom with me, either. Unless we were just doing our hair/make-up, that would be okay.

Now we are looking at shades of gold, which is the kind of yellow I wanted to begin with but Paul said it looked like we wanted yellow but chickened out. To which I say: “How long do you want this project to take?”

(screen shot from behr.com)

Traveling Sprinkler, by Nicholson Baker. I just finished this book, and I don’t know how to tell you about it. No, I do: it was like having a male relative, age 55, chat to you about everything he’s interested in, sometimes in such detail you wonder where he gets the self-assurance. But even though you are not particularly interested in those things (bassoons, Debussy, cigars, dance music, Quakers, drones), you find you need to sit by your computer while reading the book because you keep wanting to look things up. I listened to Debussy’s “The Sunken Cathedral.” I looked up bassoons and listened to them being played. I investigated what kind of liquor Tyrconnell is, and the next time I go to the liquor store I’m going to see how much it costs.

I would say I was kind of bored, reading it, and yet it made me interested in things—not just the things he describes, but things in general. It was pleasing to observe someone else being interested in things, even if I wasn’t interested in them myself. It made me want to be interested in things, too. And I really hoped his girlfriend would take him back.

I realized after reading the book that I’d read another by the author: The Fermata. It’s about a man who can stop time whenever he wants to. So what he does is, he uses this power to sneak into women’s houses, take their clothes off, and position their bodies and/or molest them. He considers this a loving, worshipful thing to do. I don’t remember much else about the book except that I was extremely annoyed and creeped out by it: I’d asked a male friend about his favorite books and he’d recommended this one, and I have written the end of this sentence half a dozen ways and how about if instead we just sit here for a minute and feel the hostile feelings welling up in our throats.

Anyway, that book was written twenty years before this one, when the author was more 35 than 55. I think 55 is working better for him, I’ll say THAT. Well, or working better for ME.

I dreamed last night that I was considering a new romance, and then in the dream I remembered that I hadn’t worried about sexually-transmitted diseases or birth control for quite some time and would need to go back to worrying about them right that second. It was a startling and educational dream, though disappointingly low on entertainment value.

I’m still thinking about the dream this morning—how I COULD get pregnant from an affair, and how I might not even REMEMBER that little fact until rather late in the game. I think I’d been thinking without realizing it that the reason I didn’t take the Pill anymore is that I was past being able to have children, rather than that Paul was past being able to have children.

It reminds me too of the sexually-transmitted-diseases part of my annual exam, when the doctor asks if I’m in a monogamous relationship. I don’t know how to answer that question in a way that doesn’t make it sound like I think my husband is cheating on me. But I also don’t want them to assume that an individual person can know for sure if her relationship is monogamous or not. Let’s be trusting in love but not in check-ups, Doctor.

I suppose the doctors are a bit trapped, since they could get a very bad reaction from any other assumption. My favorite obstetrician was the one who asked within the first few minutes if my husband was the father of the baby, but not everyone likes the idea that that question could even be asked. It can be difficult to see the difference between questions asked for moral reasons (“Are you a LOOSE WOMAN??” “Is your husband CHEATING ON YOU??”) and questions asked for medical reasons (“Could you have been exposed to sexually-transmitted diseases? could your spouse have been?” “Is your husband’s medical history applicable to this pregnancy?”).

And not every doctor asks these questions as if there’s a difference. I liked the obstetrician for asking the question, but even more I liked that he asked it as matter-of-factly as he’d asked for my date of birth—and as if the follow-up to an answer of “no, he’s not” would have been an equally matter-of-fact question about whether any of the father’s medical history was known. He didn’t care at all about my MORAL choices, he was only interested in their MEDICAL consequences.

Anyway. I never know how to answer. “I am in a relationship in which one of the rules is monogamy, yes.” “As far as I know, ha ha ha.” “Maybe this will be the day you find something that tells me I’m not! Wouldn’t that be weird?” “I’m monogamous, yes, but I can’t speak for my husband. Er, not that I think he’s having an affair. I mean, he could be! How would I know? What are the statistics now, amirite? Don’t skip that part of the exam just on MY say-so. But he hasn’t been acting suspiciously or anything.”

I have accidentally gotten into a funk. It started with McDonald’s discontinuing their Hot Mustard sauce, which is the only reason I eat there, and then they replied to my email on the topic by informing me that other customers preferred a different sauce and that they (McDonald’s) looked forward to serving me soon. Even though I’d just said I wouldn’t eat there anymore if there was no Hot Mustard sauce. They can look forward to serving those OTHER CUSTOMERS soon, I guess.

Then Paul and I tried to choose a paint color, and I realized that I hate not only all yellow paint colors but ALL paint colors.

Then I snapped at three children last night over things that were not at all snap-worthy, and after they went to bed I felt bad about it and thought, “I am making their lives hard.” Then I felt sorry for them in a way that was really more sorry for myself (imagining them as adults and how they’d remember me and how they’d describe me to others: “Well, I guess she did her best, but? Maybe she wasn’t really cut out to have children”), and then I felt even worse for turning pity for someone who’d actually been wronged into pity for someone who hadn’t. Then I resolved to DO SOMETHING about the snappishness rather than sitting there feeling bad about it afterward. Then I drew an analogy between that sort of resolution and the resolutions that come right after eating too much (resolutions which vanish as soon as hunger reappears), which led to anticipatory despair. I have done what I ought not to have done, and not done what I ought to have done, and there is much crabbiness in me.

This morning the coffee is backfiring and making me feel like I’m exhausted but can’t blink, and also irritable at being bothered while I’m trying to sleep. The day feels full of tasks I’ve done a million times before and still have to do millions of times before I’ll be done. And then I think, “Furthermore, according to those who have gone before, when I AM done I will MISS these tasks and feel sentimental about them.” This has already happened with the kindergarten drop-off process, which is a badly-organized, exasperating hassle and which I did for two years and which I couldn’t wait to be done with. Now I drive past as parents are dropping off their kindergartners and I think, “Aw.” EXACTLY AS IF I MISS IT. WHEN I KNOW FOR A FACT I CANNOT POSSIBLY MISS IT. I miss it the way a person might think, “Ug, I kind of wish I were home sick in bed, just reading and drinking cups of tea” until they actually ARE home sick in bed and thinking about how it’s impossible to remember how bad queasiness feels.

Paul and I are having a difference of creative opinion. We have agreed to paint the bathroom. We have agreed that we want yellow. We have agreed that we want a STRONG, BRIGHT, DELIBERATE yellow. This is where we part ways, at nearly-adjacent paint chips.

Paul looks at my paint chips, which are rich and deep and golden, and says, “Those are like, ‘We wanted yellow, but we chickened out.'” I look at his paint chips, which are like a crayon labeled Yellow, and say, “Those are like ‘kindergarten classroom.’ Those are ‘toy bin.’ I can already picture that color all scuffy from kindergartner shoes.” I hold up a yellow gumball insincerely and say “So, THIS is what you want?” “Yes,” says Paul sincerely.

“Remember when my mom chose a color she thought was Crayon Yellow, and on the walls it was acidic and eye-hurty and it ruined every photo taken in that room,” I remind. “*Shrug*,” says Paul. “If it has the name of a citrus fruit in it, I’m not using it—that means it’s too green/acidic,” I warn. “Okay,” says Paul, as if I will have it my own way, which is the wrong way. “I like the yellow on that box,” he says, pointing to a children’s shoe box in the paper recycling. I say that this proves my point about Kindergarten Yellow: the box contained children’s shoes, and is covered with faux kindergarten drawings. We color-match the box: the matching color is called Lemon Zest. It shares a paint category with colors that include the words “Olive” and “Grass.” TOO GREEN. I counter-offer a color called Macaw. Paul notes that another color in that category includes the word “Tangerine”: TOO ORANGE. (Also, he raises his eyebrows so I appreciate the presence of citrus fruit in my own chosen category.) Choosing a paint color is like loading a dishwasher.

We look at a card between his and mine. It does include a “Golden Green.” Also a “Pineapple.” We reminisce about a former co-worker of mine who insisted pineapple was a citrus fruit. “It’s not,” I say. “It’s not,” says Paul. “Acidic, yes,” I say; “Citrus, no,” finishes Paul. We have agreed on this before.

There is a color on this card called “Sun Ray,” which seems promising: earlier Paul asked where was the SUNSHINE yellow. “It’s a little ‘School Bus,'” I say. “It’s a little ‘School Bus,'” says Paul. One shade greener and we’re looking at “Bright Star” (the sun is a star!)—but it’s right next to Citrus; also colors containing the words “Leaves,” “Grass,” and “Moss.” TOO GREEN.

Two shades less green and we’re considering “Empire Yellow.” “Hm,” we both say. We click on the option to try it in a room, but the bathroom options look nothing like our bathroom. I mean, seriously:

(image from Behr.com)

There is a HUGE difference between using that color in a large room with acres of uninterrupted wall space and using it in a room with little snippets of wall showing here and there.

But that’s YELLOW, by god. That doesn’t say “We wanted yellow but we chickened out.” Does it say “School bus”? Maybe. WHAT’S WRONG WITH SCHOOL BUSES, we wonder? Plus, THIS is a school bus:

TOTALLY DIFFERENT.