Blast from the past: Wife and the Baptists

Did I ever explain how Wife—who started our marriage as a Wiccan—ended up attending a Baptist church? I don't remember if I ever did, but it looks like I didn't. On the other hand, the other day I was looking through some of my old emails, and I found one of my old emails to Marie in which (among other things) I discussed about half of it. At the time I thought I should paste that into here, and then I realized I should go one step further and give you the whole story. Or as much of it as I can remember these many years later.

So this all started in … well, I think it was the early 2000's. Wife started getting terrible migraine headaches. Or rather, she'd always had migraine headaches from time to time, but they were getting worse and more frequent. So she went to her doctor, who ran some tests and finally took images of her head. When the images came back, he informed her that she was suffering from pseudotumor cerebri. This is a condition where some blockage in one of the vessels in her brain stopped the spinal fluid from draining out the way it should. So she was developing a pool of spinal fluid in her brain, that was acting like a brain tumor. It wasn't a real brain tumor, because it wasn't a growth of excess brain tissue. It was just a pool of spinal fluid. But it put pressure on the rest of the brain just like a brain tumor would have done. Hence the name "pseudotumor cerebri."

Great, so now Wife had a diagnosis. Heaven knows she collected diagnoses the way some people collect baseball cards, and now here was one more. So she asked her doctor what could be done about it? 

Her doctor suggested that she put her affairs in order.

Bad habits, 3

A couple days ago I got an idea for a post to write here, and it turns out I've already written it—or at any rate the first half of it. (You can find it here.) It was going to be about how I've gotten into a lot of bad habits lately. Self-destructive or suicidal habits, if I don't correct them. Habits that are guaranteed to shorten my lifespan. I'm too isolated from others. I don't exercise enough and I'm putting on weight again. My alcohol consumption is on its way up. (In 2021, I averaged 3.3 drinks per day; in 2022, 3.6; in 2023, 4.1; in 2024 to date, 5.2.) I do some volunteer work for the professional society that covers the profession I used to follow, but I feel grumpy and alienated about it. It's been months since I cleaned my apartment. And so on.

Why do I feel no push to do anything better?

Well, in a sense I do feel a little push. Otherwise I wouldn't feel bad about it and write you now. But it's not a strong enough push to overcome the lethargy that holds me in place.

Most immediately, I don't have anyone in my face, that I have to report to. I don't have anyone making me do anything. I'm sure Marie would be happy to offer to nag me if I asked her to, but I don't want to ask her to.

Besides, when I bang this drum too loudly there's another side of my brain that fights back. "Geez, what do you want, anyway? I already set myself a major life goal, and I hit it. Isn't that good enough? Can't I relax now?"

I think the answer is No, it's not really good enough. I think the answer is that, as long as I'm alive I should keep pushing forward.

But it sounds like a lot of work. 

          

Paying Alfred

I wrote you about getting a call from my old college buddy Alfred, who asked me for a couple thousand dollars. It took me a couple of days to come to a decision, but in the end I wrote him a check for $500. 

My analysis of his situation continues to be that there is a lot he isn't saying. As I explained in my last post, the story he gave doesn't work because the timing is wrong: he says he spent a bunch of money looking after his mother, but she died several years ago. What has he been doing since then, that has gotten him into a financial crunch NOW? The first time I asked this, I got an artful non-answer. When I pointed out that he hadn't answered—and also said, Fine, don't tell me, I don't need to know"—he added that yes, there was more to it: his tutoring business had fallen off during the pandemic. I did not bother to remind him that the pandemic was four years ago, so this explanation is as bad as the other. The timing is wrong. So one way or another, he is not telling the whole story. And if it is that important for him to hide parts of the story, those parts must be pretty ugly. I assume that it's probably something like drugs, gambling, or—at the absolute best—skull-cracking financial stupidity.

How did I make my decision? Partly I just sat and mulled. And partly I read Tarot for it. You recall that I started reading Tarot something like three years ago. What's more, even if you think that the cards really are random, there is an advantage for someone like me—who is often afflicted with indecision—to use an external tool like the Tarot to come to closure. Sometimes, after all, any decision is better than no decision. (For a more thorough account of the mechanisms by which divination works—including at least two mechanisms that even the most hardened skeptic would acknowledge—see this article from October 2016 by John Michael Greer.) I won't reproduce pictures for all the cards that I laid out, but I asked a number of questions and the answers seemed pretty consistent.

If you think that reading Tarot is dumb, feel free to skip the rest of this post. (Though there is a little more narrative towards the end.)

An odd phone call

I got a peculiar phone call yesterday morning. It was from a guy I knew in college—so, forty-some years ago. We were buddies then, but I've really had almost no communication with him since. Oh—one exception: when I went to my fortieth class reunion two years ago (as mentioned briefly in this post), he was active in planning the event so I communicated with him a fair bit in the run-up to the reunion. And we chatted several times at the reunion itself, catching up on the last forty years. Although … now that I think about it, he really didn't tell me much about his life, or his circumstances. But he was good at asking conversational questions.

I'm going to have to give this fellow a name, so let me call him Alfred, after the great Alfred E. Neuman. (There are … reasons … that this isn't a crazy name to choose.) Anyway, Alfred sent me a text message Friday asking for a call over the weekend. He said he wanted my advice urgently on something. So we set up a call for 10:00 am on Saturday. He was cordial and pleasant, asking after my news and then asking what other college alumni I'm still in touch with. I told him I talk to Marie and to Schmidt, and he asked about them. Then he asked about my professional work, and about my professional opinion about a topic that has been in the news a lot lately. By this time we had spent almost an hour in conversation, and it felt like we hadn't gotten to the point yet.

Then he asked me for money.

Why publish?

This post follows on from one I wrote two months ago, called "Why Write?"

I woke up at 3:30 this morning and toddled into the bathroom. While I was there, I put something together.

You all know that I've long had a fantasy of writing and publishing stuff. (See, for example, oh I don't know, maybe here and here—or, more recently, here and here.) You know that sometimes I have played with the idea of letting it all go and forgetting about it. (See, for example, here.) And you remember that more recently I have gotten external advice that says, No, you actually need to get your ass in gear and do it. (See especially here.) Not that I've made any progress, but it's the latest input I've gotten.

But why? In the long run, what does it matter? In my earlier post "Why Write?" I quoted one expert on self-publication that there are two reasons to publish: Money and Fame. But I don't really need the money (though of course it would be nice). And remember what Anne Roiphe says about fame:

That is the moment I began to despise the idea of fame. What does it do for the bearer of the laurel? Who cares if your name is in the paper? Who cares if you are mentioned as one of the top-ten cyclists, boxers, batters, painters, poets, artists, fly fishermen in the world? Who cares if your name is written in history books? …. Jack wanted to be Michelangelo painting on the ceiling, lying on his back on the scaffolding. Good old Michelangelo. Good for us who stare up at the hand of God reaching toward Adam. But actually Michelangelo doesn't know that crowds line up and pay good money to enter the room to see his masterpiece, and if he had known, would his breakfast have tasted any better, his loves been any stronger, his life any longer?

So why bother? Who needs it? And in particular, why does Kimberly's ogham say I have to get it done?

I think it's not because there's anything special about writing, nor about publication. It's not because there's necessarily anything special about achievement, per se. The problem is with me.

Jack and Jill have moved away

Jack and Jill moved out some time last week or the week before. I'm not quite sure when. Today the couple that used to be my downstairs neighbors (in this post, for example) started to move into their place.

Of course it's more complicated than that. The couple that I'm calling my "downstairs neighbors"—they need names, so how about if I call them Rick and Rory?—moved away a year or two ago, because they needed more space. When they moved out, Jack and Jill rented the apartment that Rick and Rory had just vacated, to use it as a "guest room" when one or the other set of in-laws visited. So actually it has been empty much of the time. 

Then a few months ago, Jack and Jill finally bought a house. Coincidentally, Rick and Rory were going to have to leave their new place for some reason that I don't remember. They posted on Facebook to ask if anyone knew of a place they could rent. Jill saw their post and called them to ask, "Hey, do you want our place? We bought a house, so we'll be moving out soon." And so it worked out.

There's more. You remember the apartment downstairs from me, that Jack and Jill rented as a "guest room"? They haven't relinquished that yet. See, they want to do a bunch of remodeling on their house, but the permitting process here takes forever. So they have moved into the new house without the remodeling done (so that Rick and Rory could move in); but when the permits are finally approved (maybe in a few months more) they plan to move out of the house and into the apartment while the remodeling and reconstruction is done. Then finally, when all the dust has settled (literally and figuratively), Jack and Jill will move back into their house and relinquish the apartment downstairs from me. When she described all this to me, Jill estimated that that transition might be a couple years in the future yet.

What will this mean for me? I don't know. Of course it means that the crazy parties Jack and Jill regularly throw will all have a different venue. But that won't really affect me because I haven't been going to them for a while. There was a while when I was sneaking out of them (such as here and here); and then, logically enough, Jack and Jill stopped inviting me. I don't resent that: it was the obvious thing for them to do, and I'm less uncomfortable as a result. I don't remember Rick and Rory socializing quite as ostentatiously when they were here before, but the have friends. And those friends did visit from time to time. I guess we'll see.

Of course, I've become such a hermit these days that it really doesn't matter how much or how often they entertain. It's not likely to affect me one way or the other. I'm coming to think this profound solitude is a bad thing, but I don't know what I want to do about it.

               

This ad really happened to us!

I saw this advertisement—for gun control, apparently—yesterday or the day before. Probably it was on Twitter, though I'm no longer sure. But it really happened at our house, when Son 1 and Son 2 were little.

Fortunately the dildo in question wasn't as … shapely … as the ones in the commercial. It was purely cylindrical, with no distinguishing features. Yes, it had batteries, but the boys assumed that it was "an automatic sword!" (I think they meant "electric," but no matter.) Anyway, they found it under Wife's side of the bed, and started jumping on our bed playing with it. Wife was out of the house somewhere; I think I was in the study paying bills. Anyway, I'm pretty sure that after a minute or so I shooed them out to play somewhere else on the grounds that jumping on the bed was against the rules. They dropped the "electric sword" and I put it back.

I forget whether I ever told Wife what happened.