Salmonella
I think I picked up a case of Salmonella at focus groups I attended on Thursday. I haven’t been to a doctor, so this is all just my speculation, but I have all of the symptoms: nausea, diarrhea, (slight) fever, chills and muscle aches. And it started with the nausea about 8-10 hours after eating a bunch of coleslaw at the focus groups.
So why haven’t I been to a doctor? Well, to start with, all of the symptoms are pretty mild. And I know what the doctor would tell me: take Immodium and drink lots of fluids, and it’ll blow over in a few days. So I’m just doing that on my own.
It’s pretty much killed my appetite, so I’m not eating much. To make up for it, I’m trying to drink fluids that have some calories in them–a smoothie yesterday, a vitamin water today, that kind of thing.
I called the focus group facility to let them know, so that they could warn their supplier and keep it from happening again. I tried to make it very clear to them that this isn’t a big deal, to imply without saying it outright that I have no intention of suing them or causing them any other trouble. But I did think the supplier needed to be informed.
Personal | Comment (0)Christmas is Gone
I sent Christmas that e-mail. I shouldn’t have. I especially shouldn’t have sent it when I was still feeling the aftershocks of that anger episode I posted about the other day. It provoked an emotional reply from her, which provoked an emotional exchange of e-mails from both of us.
Upshot is, she doesn’t want to be friends anymore, or at least not until my anger is gone, which I believe is going to take a very long time.
It’s my own fault, I know. I shouldn’t have sent that e-mail. But I thought I was doing the right thing, and I still wish someone had done the same for me back when I was in the situation that her new boyfriend is in now.
I remember thinking earlier, when I was trying to reassure myself about her betrayal, that at least the worst was over, at least there was nothing more she could do to hurt me. I was wrong about that. Not that this hurts as much as her betrayal did, of course–not by a long shot. But it still hurts.
Perspective
I just got an e-mail from Wilder, for the first time in months. She’s hoping we can finally start building a friendship. She connected to me on Facebook, so she knows about Xena. She wrote a long e-mail talking a lot about where her head is right now–she was always good at that.
Anyway, that’s not the point. Here’s the point: I’ve been moping about Christmas’s betrayal again lately. But Wilder has a close friend who has a serious brain tumor, and from her recent e-mail, it sounds like her friend is dying. So I’m coping with the fact that a girlfriend cheated on me several years ago, and she’s coping with the fact that a close friend of hers is dying of cancer right now. And if her e-mail is an accurate reflection of her feelings, it sounds like she’s coping better than I am.
I need to get some freaking perspective. I also need to stop being such a wuss.
Personal | Comment (0)Yo-Yo Ma!
Yesterday was Xena’s birthday. To celebrate, I took her to dinner, and then to see Yo-Yo Ma performing with the Sony Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall. If you’ve never heard of the Sony Philharmonic before, that’s okay–neither had I. Turns out that it’s a full-blown concert orchestra made up of employees of Sony Japan. Which is pretty impressive, that Sony can put something like that together. They sounded good–maybe a little muddy by comparison to a truly professional orchestra, but incredible considering that none of them are professional musicians. Apparently, according to the program, they’re mostly engineers.
And Yo-Yo Ma himself was awesome, of course. I’d seen him in concert before, but that was years ago. Watching his left hand is just a delight: he makes stunningly difficult fingerings look effortless, as his hand just dances across the fingerboard. And he’s a very expressive player.
It was a really nice evening.
Personal | Comment (0)Episodes
I’ve talked previously in this blog about how I have my anger over Christmas’s betrayal mostly under control. The way I’ve been able to do that is by not thinking about it. But it’s not “just not thinking about it”–it’s an active process of concentration. What I have to do is spot the early thoughts, the ones that inevitably lead to me getting angry, and suppress them before they can go anywhere.
It works well, but it takes a certain amount of mental energy, and sometimes it breaks down when I miss one. When that happens, the thoughts snowball, each one leading to another thought that’s a little bit worse, until I’ve worked myself up into a horrible rage, just like the anger I used to feel in the months just after she told me. This tends to happen especially when I’m tired, or emotional for other reasons, or in a context of things that remind me of Christmas.
And Otherworld, of course, is a perfect trifecta. It’s exhausting and intensely emotional (in a good way, but still), and everything there is associated with Christmas for me. So it’s not too surprising that one of these episodes hit me on Sunday morning. And for a few hours, that horrible burning anger was back with me.
I tried very hard not to let it show, and I don’t think anybody noticed. If they noticed anything at all, it would only have been that I was less chatty than usual, and tried to sneak off to be alone when the opportunity arose (which was seldom).
I hate it when I get one of these episodes. I know that I do it to myself. I know that it’s not accomplishing anything. I know that I’m only hurting myself by doing it. But sometimes the negative thoughts snowball and there’s nothing I can do but wait for it to pass.
So that’s the one bad thing that happened in my time at Otherworld. But it didn’t spoil the weekend, which was still great fun.
Personal | Comment (0)Back from Otherworld
I’m back from Otherworld! I love it. It’s so imaginative, with wonderful stories, and incredibly talented people. I had a fabulous time, as always. Well, except for one thing that I’ll blog about tomorrow when I’m not so tired. But it didn’t ruin a great experience.
Personal | Comment (0)Moral Obligation?
Otherworld is this weekend, and Christmas’s new boyfriend is going to be there. Which makes something I’ve been vaguely wondering about suddenly look more real: Do I have a moral obligation to warn him about what she’s capable of?
Arguments in favor:
- I really wish someone had warned me. If someone had warned me, and I’d taken the warning seriously, then I would have broken up with her when she asked permission to cheat on me, and I’d be a much happier person today.
- I’m sure that she’ll tell him something, but I’m equally sure that she won’t tell him what I consider to be important parts of the story. She’ll probably tell him something similar to what she told me, which was to the effect of, “I’ve made some mistakes in the past, but that was a long time ago, and I’ve matured since then, and I would never do it again.” Of course, that wasn’t true when she said it to me, and I wish I’d known that.
- I’m the only one (other than her) in a position to do it.
- He has a right to know the whole truth as he’s deciding whether or not she’s trustworthy. As it is, it probably doesn’t even occur to him to wonder.
Arguments against:
- It’s possible that no warning is necessary, because she’s genuinely learned her lesson this time. I don’t think it’s very likely, but it’s possible.
- She may tell him (or, indeed, may have already told him) more of the truth than she told me.
- If I do warn him, he might very well write it off as me being jealous and trying to break up their relationship. (Which isn’t true, of course. My attitude is, “better him than me.” But it would be a reasonable thing for him to think.)
- I don’t know anything about his attitudes towards fidelity, or about their relationship–for all I know, they have an open relationship and they’re both sleeping around.
- Saying anything to him has a very good chance of screwing up my friendship with Christmas, and I value that friendship.
In the end, I think the “nays” have it, and it’s because of that last reason. It’s terribly selfish of me, I know, because I really do wish someone had warned me. But I don’t want to screw up our friendship.
To assuage my guilt, though, I think I’ll send her an e-mail at some point, urging her to tell him the things that I would want to know if I were in his shoes, things that I think she’s unlikely to spontaneously tell him. Something to the effect of:
- She told me straight out that she was going to be faithful to me, and betrayed me not long after telling me that.
- She hid her betrayal from me for a year and a half, and probably would have gone on hiding it from me if she hadn’t decided to break up with me.
- All this happened just a couple of years ago, so she can’t use the “I was young and foolish” excuse that she used on me. She knew damn well what she was doing, and did it anyway.
It’s not the same thing as warning him myself, because I have no way of knowing how much of that she’ll actually tell him, or how she’ll spin it. But I think it’s the best compromise for me.
But I do wish someone had warned me.