"Would you excuse me? I cut my foot before and my shoe is filling up with blood."*

   I had class at 8 a.m. this morning.

   I planned my school clothes the night before, so it was supposed to be easy: wake up, put on clothes, leave apartment and walk to class. I had intended to wear a pair of shoes (flats, mind you) that I know to be uncomfortable (from a terrible night spent waiting tables in them), so I packed a spare pair of comfies in my school bag.

   Thing is, I’m basically a moron before 11 a.m.
   Thing is, I'm basically a moron.

   I forgot sunscreen, I didn’t eat anything, and my coffee mug was dirty and I wasn’t sure I could take coffee to class anyway (nothing like getting reprimanded on your first day with a new professor).

   But Professor E was holding a hot cup of Starbucks throughout his lecture and between staring at it, rubbing my eyes, and sucking in my stomach every time I felt a huge, orchestral rumble come on, I felt very ill-prepared for my second day of graduate school. Ill-prepared, jealous, stupid, and my feet already hurt.

   After class, some of my new friends and I walked over to a local café for breakfast. Apparently, they’d all eaten because while they ordered coffee and toast or "just a latte," I had an omelet with a side of bacon and a side of black beans and about four cups of coffee.

   Then we went to class number two. By this time there was a decided hitch in my giddy-up because left foot was threatening to kick that shoe in the garbage (left foot is definitely the bigger/dominant foot). But we made it to the lecture, and I even made it to the bathroom during the lecture (to relieve myself from what had indeed been, upon close calculation during the lecture and while holding my pee, four cups of coffee)—a bathroom that is either three miles from the lecture hall or which there was an easier way to find that I don’t know about (probably the latter).

   After second class, I decided to be pro-active and get my student ID. Fast-forward to me standing in line for 40 minutes, one shoe off, playing Sudoku on my phone and praying that my left foot wouldn’t get all comfortable outside of the shoe and then refuse to go back in it.

  (Side note: in my student ID photo I look like a fucking hipposaurus.)

   So I started walking home, finding some lovely, shaded paths behind the main drags of campus, and attempting to take in the scenery and pretend that I didn’t feel the need to limp. I’d gone about a quarter mile before I realized that I’d been walking south instead of east, effectively making my trip a good half-mile longer than it had to be. I no longer pretended not to limp. I had to make a conscious effort not to crawl. Or take my damn shoes off all together. But hell, it was over 100 degrees, so I knew the sidewalk wasn’t going to do me any favors. At that point I didn’t even mind looking like a hillbilly, I just didn’t want my feet to suffer any worse pain than the current moment.

   I kept up a brave front. I used all my old acting skills and acted like I didn’t want to lay down on the ground and scream (yay, Theatre degree!). I saw some neat parts of campus and cool kids in groovy clothes and people with booths promoting their yachting clubs, crew clubs and weird Asian nerd frats. But I couldn’t enjoy a moment of it. It felt like my left pinky toe was being slowly sawed off my foot.

   Things went on like that for about a mile before I realized, “Holy shit. I have a spare pair of shoes in my bag!”

   I immediately sat down on a curb and took my shoes off. My left foot was bloody in several places and I had brand-new, bright-red blisters. (I’d pre-bandaged my toes, but that didn’t help either—the blood was dripping into my shoes.)

Blood spilling out of my unassuming flat. Ubiquitous Texan insects running for their lives.

   New shoes on, I felt moronic again. Who in god’s name intentionally packs a spare pair of comfy shoes and then completely forgets about them after walking for 3 miles in shoes full of bloody blisters?

   I’ll tell you who: the same gal who didn’t put sunscreen on her paper-white ass before spending multiple hours in the midday Texas sunshine. The same girl who eats string cheese for dinner because she doesn’t bother to plan or cook a meal…ever. The same girl who will probably die of a combination of skin cancer, malnutrition and gangrene in the next 3-to-6 months if she doesn’t get her act together.
   Maybe most importantly: the same gal who wears heinously painful shoes to school in the first place. Sigh out loud.

   I’m guessing that I won’t be able to move around much tomorrow. But look forward to butt-loads of future complaining.

*Romy and Michele's Highschool Reunion (David Mirkin, 1997).

"Not with that attitude, you won't."*

   Mother’s Day is a great holiday. Mothers have a really shitty job…okay that sounds mean, and I don’t want to start off on the wrong foot. They have a really hard job, we’ll say, and even if you’re adopted and your particular mom didn’t carry you around for 9 months and push you out the hard way, she’s busted her butt (if not her vaginal canal or abdominal wall or bladder or all three) trying to feed you and make sure you have semi-decent hygiene and some kind of ability to take care of yourself. Having been a childcare provider for a number of years I can assure you that you were a huge pain in the ass and your mother’s love was the only thing keeping you from dying in the streets and all you ever wanted to do was not eat your dinner and whine like a spoiled brat about every mundane thing you could possibly imagine. Maybe you were an easy child, but when people say their child is “easy” what they mean is “compared to other children, my kid is less suicide-inducing.” They love you, those moms. And they deserve a day (or 100 days) of attention and hugs and presents and trips to Europe.

   I didn’t get to see my mom today, but it should be said that she was and is a great mom.

   And so anyway. 

   My most vivid memory of Mother’s Day was when I was about 15 (one of my most asshole-ish periods). Like she always does, Mom spent the better part of the day preparing a feast for us and for our grandparents. She made all the food and cleaned the house and decorated the table and probably bought her own floral arrangements. We probably whined about sweeping or folding laundry and watched movies in the den while she roasted a lamb or some other ridiculously delicious and difficult meal.

   I remember it was a beautiful day and very sunny and my mom was making a point to fix Arnold Palmers, as she always did when Grandma Millie was coming over, because that was Grandma's favorite. And my mom was always very good to her mom. Moms!

   Grandma and Grandpa arrived for “dinner” around 2 in the afternoon along with my Aunt Mel, who most likely contributed to the eats as well. Everyone was gathered, Grandpa had a beer, and we were all about ready to sit down and eat.

   The tea was finished boiling on the stove and Mom had only to add it to the fresh batch of lemonade. She first dumped a pile of ice into the pitcher and then poured the tea on top. I mean, these Arnie Palmers weren't going to cool themselves. And, in a moment that I still can't quite see without everything going into slo-mo, the pitcher promptly exploded, dousing my mom in scalding tea and shooting shards of the glass pitcher into her leg and all over the room. 

Bloody Arnold Palmer horror.

   Despite the fact that she had a glass shard shoved into one of her perpetually bare feet (a hippie preference I’ve inherited from her) and was gushing jets of blood all over the floor, Mom remained remarkably calm. This was a bit of a miracle as the site or suggestion of blood makes her faint.

   I think she just sort of sat down on the floor in a state of bemused shock. (In retrospect, I think maybe she did faint. Hmmm...)

   Luckily Dad and Aunt Mel, both medical professionals, didn’t seem as completely frozen with ineptitude as the rest of us and managed to figure out that she would need stitches pretty soon and they wrapped her foot in a kitchen towel and drove her to the ER.

   I think they’d been gone for a full 5 minutes before my grandparents and my sisters and I moved at all. We’d all been put to the test and we’d all failed miserably. We were straight useless in a crisis, and apparently incapable of even reacting to the situation. So we stood in a line around the kitchen counter and stared at the pool of blood on the floor. Huh. Blood. 

Blood. Glass. Huh.

   Finally, slowly, while making small talk with our Grandma and Grandpa and keeping some sort of tabs on Penelope, Ouisa and I started cleaning the blood. I guess we decided it would be nice if, on Mother’s Day, my mom didn’t have to clean her own blood off the kitchen floor when she arrived home from the ER. Surprise! Happy Mother’s Day! Your gift is to spend a full day NOT cleaning your blood off the floor! You’re welcome! We even did the soap thing, the way Dad had taught us, so the floor wouldn't be sticky. It seemed doubly important since we'd all know that it was sticky because of blood. And that's just gross.

   They came back from the ER an hour or so later and we sat down to our meal. And I’m sure it was delicious. I think Grandma and I had even managed to make a second batch of Arnie Palmers without incident while they were out. But I learned a valuable lesson that day: don’t put boiling fluids into a glass container filled with ice.**

   Just kidding.

   I didn’t really learn anything.

   But doing something that was actually useful for my mom was a nice feeling. And I wish I could do it more often. But she hasn’t bled on the floor in a while. Kidding! (Not about the blood part...she really hasn't had a bloody accident. But about the doing nice things for her part. Ugh. Too much back-peddling here. Let's move on.)

   It’s important to do the things that help your Momma, is what I think you can take away from this, if you are greedy and feel that you need to take something away from this heart-warming post. My mom always wants me to fold laundry before her dinner parties and I never understood why: the guests don’t see the laundry! But over the years I’ve realized that the laundry is just one of the 47 other things she has to finish before she can go to sleep tonight, so doing it does help, even if no one can tell it’s been done. So I try to do that whenever I’m home. And empty the dishwasher. Take out the garbage. You know, stuff like that. Maybe it’s because now that I’m an adult and maybe ever so slightly less of a jackass, I appreciate the value of having clean clothes and a place to put my newly dirtied dishes. I’m grateful to my mom for having always done it for me.

   Along with a billion other things she's done for me. 

   Say thanks to your Mom and fold her laundry and clean up her blood. It's the least you can do. 

   And flowers are nice, too.

Happy Mother's Day, Maman!

*I'm not sure if my mom invented this quote, but it has long been her response to any statement of negativity. ("I won't get into that college." "Not with that attitude, you won't." "I will never find those shorts!" "Not with that attitude you won't.") I find myself using it all the time nowadays. My mom is the Queen of The Positive Attitude.

**To this day I'm afraid to add ice to anything hot. But I think it's more about a glass container + ice + boiling fluids. I think. But I always shield my face when making iced coffee from hot.

"I have only the courage for a perfect life."*

-->

   If you care what people think of you, writing can be really hard. This blog has been a good experience for me because I don’t really care what I write down here. It doesn’t really matter. No one has to read it and I’m not getting paid. Plus, if I cared a lot about what people thought of me, I wouldn’t have the ability to put anything on the Interwebs where any old person can read it.

   But in the course of writing Statement of Purpose essays for grad school applications in the last week or so, I’ve come upon a large, brick wall (Fortress! Skyscraper! Taj Mahal!) of fear and frustration that at this, yet another dramatic moment in my life, seems impossible to penetrate. You see the specific job of the people who will read these essays is to judge me. So what I say matters. I can’t be trite and clichéd, like I am every time I write my blog posts. I have to be original. And more than that, I have to sound intelligent. And even more-est than that I have to make them like me. And all of those things are becoming really difficult the more I think about them.

   For instance, leading with “All my life I have longed to communicate,” would be starting off on the wrong foot. It doesn’t make a lot of sense since everyone “longs” to communicate when they’re babies. That’s why we cry so damn much. And yet, this is pretty much all I’ve written so far. And since I immediately erased it, I don’t even have that. I have a really long, tedious outline that reads like a list of the shitty jobs I’ve had over the years, but somehow I don’t think that’s going to wow anybody. Though they might be wowed by the amount of time I spent unemployed. Now that is impressive.

   Have you ever heard that perhaps apocryphal story of the kid who was applying to college—I don’t know where, it was some posh Ivy League school--and the essay prompt was “Define Courage,” and he just sent in a piece of paper with “This is courage” scrawled on it? In my mind he scrawled it. And it was scrawled in blood. Probably he typed it unless he was some sort of murderous hillbilly. And lets face it: Ivy Leagues love a weirdo or a sob story. I think it does something for their demographics. Or it just makes them feel good. So he was probably a hillbilly. Here is a quick reproduction of what his essay probably looked like:

   Anyway, I’m starting to think that might be the way to go. Only I’m not quite as brave as he is so mine might look something more like this:

The question mark shows that I'm rethinking this whole idea.

   And then, as an afterthought, or to show that I was really unique, and that my heart was in the right place and I was trying really hard to wow them, I’d add on a reverse rainbow. It would prove that I was thinking outside the box and also that I'm pro-gay but I take it one step further. I'm so pro-gay I've got a reverse rainbow. I'm pro-EVERYTHING IMPORTANT.

   It’s hard to write things when you know people will read them. That’s why I think it’s easier to be a great writer if your parents, siblings and spouse are dead, that way they aren’t around to be horrified by the things you’ve said or the confessions you’ve made. It’s like an actor or actress going naked for a role: I don’t care if you’re nominated for an Oscar! Your father had to watch that! He doesn’t want to see your naked body!  (Of course, I suppose it would be monumentally worse if you did it for some direct-to-video piece of crap you got paid $500 to make.) The bravest writers are the ones who know that peoples’ feelings are going to be hurt or their sensibilities offended and they DO IT ANYWAY. But see, I’m not that kind of person. I’m a big, old weenie and I’m afraid that my life choices are going to make this essay the equivalent of confessing to a crime. (The crime of inherent laziness and the knack for incessant failure.)

   If only I were a gay, minority hillbilly with a small supply of blood lying around. That’s how you get into college. 

*Another quote from Louie. It's soooo good! And Louis C.K. won an Emmy last night for comedy writing, thereby reinforcing my belief that everything I like is right and wonderful.

"You know a woman is sentimental and so easy to upset. So make her feel like she's for real and she'll give you happiness. Strange as it seems, you know you can't treat a woman mean."*

   When I was 18, I had some really bad shit going on in my “nether regions” (that’s the poetic term for anything that happens in an embarrassing part of your anatomy below the waist). I didn’t know what it was and I spent a lot of time vacillating between diarrhea, nausea and constipation and occasionally passing out ever so briefly with mind-numbingly painful cramps.

   So the summer after my freshman year of college, armed to the teeth with my then Grade-A health coverage, I went on a journey of medical self-discovery.

   It began with an internist who suggested that I might have IBS (irritable bowel syndrome), the bowel equivalent of “dermatitis.” This is how doctors say, “There’s something wrong with your parts, but I don’t know what the fuck it is.”

   The thing with IBS is that it’s a disease of ruling out other things. The doctor ordered a bunch of tests to decide what was wrong with my guts and innards.

   I took a lactose intolerance test first off. I could have told them I wasn’t intolerant to lactose. Milk is pretty much my favorite non-booze drink, and if I had to pick one food to subsist on for the rest of my life, it would be cheese. Dairy can do no wrong in my eyes. But I showed up for the test because I love to feel sick and be the center of attention.

   So this test is the thing of where they feed you some god-awful concoction of candy-flavored lactose drink and then they draw blood from you every half hour for four hours. Being as I have shitty, slippery veins, the process left me looking like the world’s most committed heroin user just in time for my shift at the classy Mexican restaurant I worked at that summer that I’m pretty sure was, coincidentally, a front for drug dealers.

Look: here's someone pulling up in front of El Aguila to make a deal.

   Even before the results of my lactose test came back, I was at appointment number two: an ultrasound. It was weird and cold and let me tell you, if you’re ticklish an ultrasound is kind of a nightmare/really amazing and fun! I was relaxed with the technician—she was a nice, young woman and she made me feel better about my constant squirming and laughing by making pleasant conversation about nothing. I have to say that innocuous chatter was much easier at that point in my life because I had it all going on: a concrete goal (graduate from college), a job (albeit at a shitty restaurant), and the skin of an 18-year-old.

   The conversation was stilted whenever another technician or nurse would walk into the room, which was kind of a lot, but I didn’t mind too much. Until my technician said, “Uh oh.”

   I wasn’t immediately nervous. I had the comfort of knowing that I wasn’t pregnant and also I was 18 and never going to die.

   “There’s something showing up here, but I can’t see it too well. Would you mind if I did a vaginal ultrasound?”

   I gave her the uncertain go ahead and she changed wands as I took off my underpants. Shudder. And as she probed around down there, the technicians kept coming in and going out of the room, which was awkward, to say the least. But my gal found what she was looking for: a corpus ludeum. It was a benign cyst on my right ovary, and it was taking over the whole damn thing.

   So I was instructed to get a pap smear.

   A girl’s introduction into the world of gynecology is a truly momentous and shitty occasion in her life. Because once you go into the stirrups, you just have to keep going into them. Not because you want to, of course, but because they find ways of making you. You want birth control? Gotta come in every year. You want to not die of Chlamydia? Better get in here. You want this baby born with one head? I’m going to have to watch it through my magic machine. And I think it’s probably a good idea, health-wise, anyway, just to make sure there aren’t any unwanted developments down there or just so you can get the cobwebs knocked out once a year.

Now imagine the theme from Jaws in your head.

   I didn’t have a gynecologist, so my mom suggested hers: a quite brilliant and capable physician who had been her OB/GYN through her pregnancies with my sisters and even delivered Penelope. Hooray!

   Her name was Mary, and that’s all I’m going to say about that.

   I showed up at the appointment not knowing ANYTHING about what to expect. They made me pee in a cup and then they took me into one of the examining rooms. The nurse told me I wasn’t pregnant (Thanks!) and asked me a series of questions.

Her: When was your last period?

Me: I don’t know. A couple of weeks ago?

Her: What kind of birth control do you use?

Me: None.

Her: None? Not even condoms?

Me: I’m not sexually active.

Her: But you don’t even use condoms?

Me: Not really. (I was confused.) I’m not sexually active.

   At this point she sighed and shook her head, judging the shit out of me for not using condoms while I was studying for exams, rehearsing for plays or sleeping.

Her: Smoke?

Me: Yes.

Her: Drink?

Me: Yes.

   Maybe I shouldn’t have been so honest, but I’m the daughter of a physician, and he always told me to tell the doctors everything so they could do their job as well as possible. He also told me not to smoke but I can't always pay attention to every little thing now, can I?

Her: Alright. Here’s a robe. Take off everything and put this on with the opening in the back. The doctor will be in in a minute.

   I took off all my clothes and put on the robe. I didn’t know where or how to sit without my butt crack showing. I opted to sit on a chair on top of my clothes with the gown wrapped around behind me.

   Dr. Mary came in and introduced herself. She was middle-aged and succinct, cold even. She went to my chart.

Her: It says here you don’t use condoms.

Me: I’m not having sex.

Her: At least you’re not pregnant. Yet. You should really be protecting yourself.

   I felt like I was losing my mind. Could no one hear me say I wasn’t sexually active, or did they think I was a big, fat liar? Maybe I was having sex and I didn't know about it?

Her: You smoke and you drink?

Me: Yes.

Her: You’re eighteen.

Me: Yes.

Her: Nice friends you must have.

   I sat, burning and freezing at the same time. I was furious, but shy and too young to defend myself appropriately. This was years before I started picking fights with everyone from the landlord to the person driving behind me to all medical professionals I encountered.

   She got me up on the examining table and into the stirrups. She told me to scoot down farther (the words you hear at your first 15 pap smears before you finally just show up, take it all off, grab an US Weekly and get your crotch right off the end of the table before the doctor even comes in). She was relatively gentle with the speculum, but I only know that in retrospect. At the time it felt like she was driving a butcher knife into my vagina and then using hedge clippers to break off parts of my insides. But at least she didn’t hang out all day doing it and making conversation about her kid’s violin lessons or excellent chicken recipes while I sat wondering if I could just yank the thing out myself (that’s happened to me). Picture getting an internal exam from Edward Scissorhands.

"This speculum looks like the right size."

   She verified that I had a cyst and she decided that the best solution would be birth control pills. She said the hormones would regulate my ovaries better.

   Then she said, “And at least now you’ll be avoiding pregnancy, if not diseases.”

   I said, “I swear to you, I’m really not having sex.”

   But she was already walking out the door.

   She stopped before the door closed behind her and leaned in, “You should really stop smoking and drinking, too.”

   I would like to talk more shit about her and that appointment, but she died a couple of years ago, and it seems wrong. My mom said Dr. Mary was the kind of woman who hated it when people were careless about their health, because she had so many congenital health problems herself. But that doesn’t make up for it entirely, in my mind.

   I went to 7 other gynecologists before I found one I liked, and then she jumped ship and went to Kaiser Permanente, so I can’t see her anymore. It was like going through a break-up to lose Dr. Chang. But now I see her partner, and she’s going to have to do.

   In the meantime, I stockpile condoms and sit (alone) with them on the couch watching reruns of Magnum, P.I. (how fitting) or The X-Files. I'm avoiding pregnancy on a whole other level. It's important to be safe.

*From "Treat Her Like a Lady" by Cornelius Brothers and Sister Rose. I have a love/hate relationship with this song, but my goodness it's catchy!

"He's not the Messiah! He's a very naughty boy!"*

    I’ve been in Omaha for a few days and having a largely splendid/relaxing time.  Potentially too relaxing. There’s something about being at my parents’ house that allows me to fall asleep on just about any surface—a couch, my bed, the floor—and get better, more productive, harder sleep than I get anywhere else. I used to think it was some sort of random carbon monoxide leak in their house. But now I think it’s just because I’m not working when I’m here, I have no deadlines and there’s air conditioning. Whatever. It’s been great. Last night I went to bed at 7:30 p.m. and didn’t wake up until 8:30 the following morning. That’s kind of pathetic and sick; but it’s also kind of incredible. I’m like a teenager again! (Actually, sleeping in my room is much like being a teenager again, since my Pink Floyd, Janis Joplin and Tori Amos posters are still on the walls/ceilings. It’s a very strange yet comforting atmosphere. Even more so if I can manage to ignore the doll I have with the eyes that flip open. But I just turn her on her stomach most nights or put a pillow over her head. No big whoop.)

My writing spot: parents' backyard. Imagine cicadas chirping and warm wind. And usually I'm sitting in the chair. Perfect.

    Anywho, today I went to donate blood. I’m a really amazing, saint-like human being, so every 5 years or so I give blood. On the years in between I try not to litter and occasionally donate clothes to Out of the Closet. But every now and then, when and only when I’m in Omaha, I’ll hook the Red Cross up with some of my precious, precious whole blood.

    Today I showed up for my appointment and got right in. It turns out that I was the only person that had shown up for her appointment, so I felt pretty special (read: self-righteous). They put me through the whole rigmarole of asking about whether or not I’d slept with the entire US and Filipino armies or if I was a hooker or had spent five or more years in Eastern Europe (I wish) or in jail and then got me set up for the big donation.

    Enid, the woman taking my blood, asked me if I was related to a Rouse that was a school teacher. I told her she was probably thinking of my Uncle Jim. Somehow this led into a conversation about Catholicism. See, it turns out Enid was all set to be a nun, but then she opted out of taking her orders or whatever after she wrapped up her convent schooling, and she went to nursing school instead.

    I asked if she was raised Catholic. She said yes. She asked if I was raised Catholic. I said yes. But then it became clear that only one of us was still going to Mass. Guess which one?

    So as she’s giving me a very gentle hearted but determined lecture on going back to The Church and spending more time at Mass, she starts poking around for my pathetic, slippery vein.  (Disclaimer: my blood is really awesome, but my veins are weak and spindly, and almost impossible to get at. So usually when people tell me I’m going to feel a “slight stick” I brace myself for something MUCH worse. It’s okay. I can handle it. Once, after a lactose intolerance test, I showed up to my table-waiting job looking like I had a serious heroin problem.) So after she told me to get ready for the stick, she said, “Uh oh.” And then she kept saying it as I proceeded to feel about 14 separate jabs in my arm.

[Here’s a brief side note for all phlebotomists and LPNs and RNs, etc. of the world: don’t say “Uh oh,” while you’re sticking a needle into someone. It’s not soothing. It’s panic-inducing, torturous, and gut wrenching. If that person has a fear of needles, it’s absolute hell, I would imagine. Luckily, I don’t care too much.]

Ooh...look how arty this photo is!

Enid put the hurt on me. But don't fret, the top two are freckles, not track marks.

    So while she stabbed me in the arm and told me I’d probably end up getting a bruise (she was right!), she asked me why I’m no longer going to church. I explained that I didn’t really like the fact that the Catholic Church was/is extremely homophobic and doesn’t treat women that well and isn’t too keen on people that can’t keep up with their tithing rates and disallows the “right to choose.” She acted all appalled and asked me where I went to church, as though MY church were the problem, and not the Catholic Church at large. Fine. It was definitely just my church and not the Vatican, the Bible or the numerous Catholic textbooks I read throughout 13 YEARS of Catholic schooling that espoused these things. I just signed up at the wrong church. My bad.

    At that point, I was intentionally looking away from my arm and focusing on the latte in my left hand. So Enid starting telling me about her roommate, Barbara, that had just died from what sounded like a combination of the flu, cirrhosis and the Ebola virus. Things were getting kind of awkward. Luckily, I enjoy things that are awkward, so I delved into the fate of Barbara like it was the last thing standing between Enid and I getting to know each other a little bit and me giving Enid a taste of why, exactly, I am no longer a Catholic (a story which would’ve probably made me into a hateful, vicious little bitch à la Regan in The Exorcist and made her intentionally spill my blood out all over the floor until I died à la Annie in Misery).

    After she FINALLY took the needle out of my arm, a very brusque, scary nurse approached me and told me to raise my arm over my head while she went for an ice bag. I didn’t feel sick, like I have in the past, because my dad told me that feeling sick during a blood donation is psychological and not physical. I AM A MASTER OF OVERCOMING PSYCHOSOMATIC ILLNESS. But then nurse number two wrapped my arm in red tape while talking on her cell phone and got mad that I wasn’t holding my arm in the right place.

    Meanwhile, Enid helped her strap an ice bag on my arm and recommended that I start going to Church again. I don’t think she meant that was going to make my bruising go away.

    I felt like if this were a movie Enid had to watch she would think it was about Mormons. She’d say things to Barbara (before Barbara died) like, “We Catholics would never push our religion on people like that.”

    Then I thought, well, Barbara’s been Enid’s “roommate” for 13 years. Maybe they were more than roommates and maybe that’s why Enid left the nunnery.

    And then I felt kind of sad for Enid. Maybe she’s been a closeted lesbian for all her life, and she couldn’t hack it in the convent because she knew she was homosexual. But then why didn’t she leave the church? In either event, the woman she’d spent the last 13 years with had died. And I felt bad for her.

    Then I pictured Enid telling Barbara that the Catholics would never have acted that way while snuggling up to her little, frail body with a big bowl of popcorn and some Twizzlers. (Enid did say she had to get back to Weight Watchers, though.) And that made me feel like maybe Enid had been really happy with Barbara. Or not.

    Chances are, Enid’s just an uptight Catholic with a needle and a message. And, not to sound like a bitch, but I’m already vaccinated.

*Monty Python's Life of Brian (Terry Jones, 1979). Of all the "greatest stories ever told," this ranks among my favorites.