I'm heading out of town tomorrow. I'll be back East, in Philadelphia, on business, Wednesday through Friday. I booked an extra day (Saturday) and worked in some blocks of free time between meetings to spend time with my brothers and their families, but so far, only a cousin and a friend from here (who just moved there) have asked to spend time with me. My deal was that I would make it the first few thousand miles if they would close the gap and come the last 40.

If they blow me off, I guess I'll go to the art museum on Saturday. Not sure what I'll do Saturday night. Ah, dysfunctional families. I never feel so unloved and unwanted as I do in the presence of my disdainful family.

The Brainucopia is far from empty

It's possible that the Brainucopia has never been so copiously full of thoughts. Between having a new computer along with a Nook, I've been spending a lot of time reading. Reading, reading, reading. I've read a few books, as I posted recently, but I've been reading magazines, blogs, new sites, and lots of Twitter posts. Twitter is oddly addicting for me.

My new favorite blog is Jezebel. It's what I long wished this blog would be, but I"m not that clever, witty, informed, or angry. Great stuff over there.

Topics filling the Brainucopia:

• Women's reproductive rights and the massive assault from the social conservatives and hypocritical evangelical Christian machine. (Kudos to Gary Trudeau on addressing this so scathingly in the past week's Doonesbury strip.)
•  Women as human beings and the assault on that from Republicans, the social conservatives and the hypocritical evangelical Christian machine.
• Wishing that Rick Perry and Rick Santorum would just evaporate in their own Rapture for two. Hey, it's 2012. Maybe it can be just the end of their world. If I believed in god, I'd pray for them to be swooped off into the afterlife so they could take their sanctimonious, woman-demeaning crap somewhere else.
• Trying not to hyperventilate when I hear Rick Santorum say things like this: "When people read the Constitution and say, 'Oh, we get our rights from the Constitution,' that is wrong. The Constitution does not give us rights. It recognizes rights that are written on our heart because we are a creature of God. That's where we get our rights from." (This one kept me awake almost an entire night).
• The fact that there are people who fervently hope Santorum will become president of the United States. This gives me stomach knots.
• People blowing each other up all over the world. This is still a really hard one for me. I just want it to stop.
• Iran. Anything about Iran.
• Super PACs and how unfairly they're dragging us into a plutocracy.
• Shopping for a modest dress that isn't made of matte jersey and doesn't show any cleavage and has sleeves. Is this really so much to ask?

 I offset the intensity of NPR, The Economist, The Atlantic, The New York Times, Jezebel, Slate, NBC Nightly News, and The Daily Show (yes, TDS because at its heart, it's dead-on in identifying the bullshit of the political world) by checking in every day with the blog, "Crazy Days and Nights." Celebrity gossip hasn't been my thing for a really long time, but it works for me at the moment, even though I don't know who half of the celebrities are. This is kind of shocking to me, considering how much television I watch. Too much HGTV, not enough scripted dramas.

So many thoughts, so little power to influence the outcomes of the situations that trouble me so deeply.

Dressquest

Usually, my clothes shopping frustration is related to not being able to find pants that fit. I seem to be OK with pants for the moment, although I do resent having to hem anything I buy. Regular length are too long, but the petite (or short) length is always too short.

On my agenda lately: Dress shopping. I have very specific requirements: No matte jersey or other clingy fabric. Knee length. Not form-fitting or sheath-style. Must be machine washable. No cross-over style at the top because then I have to wear a camisole and I don't want another layer. No buttons all the way down the front. Preferably an empire waist. No cleavage showing. Most important of all, though...The dress must have sleeves. Real sleeves. They can be short sleeves, 3/4 sleeves, or long sleeves. No cap sleeves, no fluttery sleeves, no see-through or split sleeves.

I hate my upper arms. Even at my absolute fittest when I worked out every day and did weight training, my upper arms looked big and soft, belying the muscle tone in the biceps and triceps.Not only that, but I get cold easily. As difficult as it is to find a modest but cute dress--not too dressy, not too casual--finding an evening or cocktail dress with sleeves is nearly impossible--even in the dead of winter. Have sleeves suddenly become too expensive to produce?

My wedding dress had sleeves. Short sleeves. It was a long search. Long sleeves would have been OK, too, but I could only find dresses with illusion fabric for sleeves, which was as effective as no sleeves at all. It wasn't at all dowdy, but it had sleeves. I loved my dress.

What is it with fashion designers that has caused this wholesale rejection of sleeves? In a nation where more people are overweight than ever, I would expect that many women feel as I do.

I've noticed that the mini-sweater and the shrug are gaining popularity. You wear it over your sleeveless dress to make up for the fact that the dress doesn't cover your arms. I don't want a shrug. I don't want another layer. I want sleeves.

I want dresses I can dress up or dress down. Criteria: Fashionable, cute, modest neckline, easy to move in, easy to wash, not maxi, not spaghetti strapped, not dressy, not ready for the beach, comfortable, and with sleeves. Here are some dresses that work or almost work. These are from Mikarose, Jen Clothing, and Land's End. I bought the last two from Land's End. They were overpriced for the less-than-impressive quality and the fuchsia one makes me look like I have a bun in the oven, but they're the closest I could get to what I wanted. And no matte jersey in sight!

Statistically speaking

Looking at my blog statistics, the overwhelming predominant search that leads people to this blog is the combination of keywords, "shingles pain" and "marijuana." Well, I assume my experience with that is neither encouraging nor validating, since medical marijuana did absolutely nothing for my neuropathic pain.

Too bad, because as I'm currently getting through a flare, I would love to not have a forest fire burning on my back and along the side of my ribs.

Pot doesn't help me sleep, either, so that's a fairly useless drug all around in my case. My brain is weird, so very weird.

Oh, the second-most common search is an image search that lands people on my post called "Profusion," which was about lilacs. That one has me scratching my head.

Wide awake

It's almost 2:00 in the morning, and although I'd like to be sleeping right now, I'm not. My brain seems determined to overwhelm me with every unpleasant memory from my entire life, from childhood to middle age. I can't drift off, and I seem unable to turn off my brain.

People who fall asleep easily and stay asleep don't know how good they have it.

I would like to use this time productively, but I just became aware that my husband has programmed the thermostat to 58 degrees at night. Right now, sitting in front of the computer, I feel like I'm in an igloo. Frank, WTF? I can't sit here in the cold. I'll only be more miserable.

Books

In December I bought a Nook. The first week I had it, I entertained myself playing Angry Birds, Scrabble, Words with Friends, and doing crossword puzzles. Eventually, I bought some books and started reading.

I read all three books comprising The Hunger Games trilogy. I read them in the span of a week. That in and of itself is a review since I had all but given up on reading for quite some time. Actually, a few months ago, I read Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. Encouraged not only by the fact that I read Ishiguro's novel in a weekend, I decided it was time to forge ahead with my newly reborn attention span.


The Hunger Games kept me up late and found me reading on my lunch break. I don't actually take a proper lunch break, but for a week it was the highlight of my day.

Next, I delved into Wicked. Being a huge fan of The Wizard of Oz, particularly of Glinda, the Good Witch of the North, I felt it was my duty to read the book that so many people had asked me if I had read. Well, that, and I have tickets to see the show later this year and I wanted to read the book before seeing the theatrical interpretation.


Wicked was a long haul. It challenged me as a reader, but eventually, it drew me in and I came to be truly fond of Elphaba, the so-called Wicked Witch of the West. This book also helped me discover the dictionary function that is built into the reading tools of the Nook. I used it often, as Gregory Maguire seems to have a real need to show off his extensive knowledge of obscure English vocabulary. Note from my college journalism classes: Don't use a twenty-dollar word when a five-dollar word will do. It's distracting and pretentious. Fortunately, the overall story was able to overcome the burden of the vocabulary.

A couple of weeks ago, Barnes & Noble recommended that I buy Damned by Chuck Palahniuk. I hit the buy button on the Nook and started reading moments after the download completed. This book immediately took over my life and held onto it the entire time I was reading the story. Whereas The Hunger Games was an action thriller with a touch of social commentary, Damned was an extended social commentary packaged as young adult fiction. The New York Times called it, "a book full of tastelessly hilarious gallows humor about a teenage girl in hell." I had no idea that Hell could be so entertaining.

But it was more than entertaining. Damned kept me thinking about the story, the satire, the heartbreak, life as a misfit, and the points Palahniuk was trying to make about how we live our lives in these modern times. It is also laugh-out-loud funny and has imagery vivid enough to thoroughly gross you out. My take-away was that I'm definitely going to Hell, and I'm eager for a sequel to this book. Loved it.

The newest book on my Nook is called Free-Range Knitter: The Yarn Harlot Rides Again. So far, the title is the best thing about this book. I keep finding other things to do rather than read it. It takes a lot for a book to overcome my general lack of an attention span, and so far, Free-Range Knitter doesn't have it.


Once I find another engaging book, I'll take a break from blogging again. I think that's how this is going to work. The books distract me from the traffic jams of thoughts in my head, while the blog forces me to face them and tease them apart. That is an exhausting and often unpleasant exercise. Books are easier. Much easier.

 

Read "The Handmaid's Tale" Really.

The political and religious assault on American women is escalating. Following near-draconian measures against women's reproductive rights in other states such as Texas, Virginia has added a stupefying twist of degrading cruelty. A woman seeking an abortion will be forced to have an intravaginal ultrasound prior to terminating the pregnancy. I doubt these women will be "Allowed" to wear an iPod and a sleep mask through the procedure.

There is absolutely no medical necessity or reasoning for this. It's largely intended to humiliate the patient. You know--by having an object forced into her vagina against her will, like in a rape. Rape isn't about sex; it's about power, humiliation, and subjugation of the victim. Does the Republican Party (of men) who came up with this measure think that nobody sees through their punitive intentions?

I had an intravginal ultrasound a few years ago. It was very invasive, painful, and unpleasant--and I had a doctor and a tech who tried very hard to be gentle and comforting. Obviously, this wasn't in the cruel, Medieval state of Virginia.

I've read online comments (mostly from men) saying this ultrasound procedure is just no big deal. Obviously, they need to have a microphone-sized probed shoved up their asses a few times to really get an idea of what the procedure entails. It's intravaginal. That means the rather large probe (the one used on me was really big, anyway) is pushed up into the vagina as far as it can go. It hurts. A lot.

With the recent attempts at crippling women's access to birth control, Plan B contraception, and abortions, it appears that the evangelical Christian right is doing everything it possibly can to crush America's women under its heel until women learn some lesson--what? That we should be meek and quiet, never earn a salary comparable to a man's, or that we can't possibly be anything more than a hole that accepts penis and sperm and later ejects offspring?

These people are no different than any other radical extremist religious group that works tirelessly to make sure women live only to serve the whims and sexual desires of men. That's it.

We are heading down a road where the United States of America will be run by the Christian Taliban. Get your burqas ready, ladies. Our days as free persons are numbered. Before books are banned, though, do take a weekend to read Margaret Atwood's novel, "The Handmaid's Tale." It quite clearly describes what our future holds.

It's not great for me, either

I've been so irritable, indignant, confrontational, and downright bitchy the past few days, even I don't know how to take myself. The reason is simple: The shingles nerve in my back is terribly inflamed, and I just don't have the inner resources to manage that and be a nice person, too. It's like the tact and patience centers in my brain are being short-circuited by pain that I'm trying not to even talk about, let alone whine about.

It hurts, though, and it's making me into a judgmental, intolerant, humorless, snarky bitch.

Sorry, everyone.

They're just jealous others are having sex and they aren't

I'm really quite sick of the Catholic Council of Bishops trying to push social control on an entire population. Correction. I am sick of them demanding political influence specifically targeted at subjugating women.

Oh, they aren't alone and plenty of other religions push the same agenda, but I don't understand why these men think they have the right to force their political and religious agenda on the world's women.

What is the advantage of championing an agenda that fosters poverty while also overlooking the health concerns of half of the population?

The lonely place under the house

Here's the problem with the basement. No mater how hard I try to straighten up, declutter, and organize my parts of the basement, I don't seem to make any progress. In all fairness, I own a lot of teeny, tiny crafting supplies, and I hate to put them away. It's so tedious. Knitting would have been easier, but I have no aptitude for it (yarn, yes, aptitude, definitely not).

Today I spent hours trying to put together an area where I can craft and create. Heaven knows, writing hasn't been coming to me lately, so I need to do something productive. Yet, even after making a lot of progress on the project at hand, I still don't feel in a creative state of mind.

It's the basement. I get lonely down there. My mind wanders and I think dark, depressing thoughts. Did I mention I get lonely? There's some sort of heavy vibe downstairs that I can't adequately describe, nor can I escape it when I'm there. It's not a happy place, no matter how much I want it to be.

Is it the fault of the hideous knotty-pine paneling? The dark-brown-with-colorful-speckles flooring? The clutter? The Wii that reminds me I have no one to play with? The Pilates reformer and all of the fitness gear I feel uninspired to use? No, it's none of that.

I don't use the exercise equipment for the exact same reason I can't create when I'm down there: It's dark, depressing, and isolated.

Words in, no words out

Every day, I compose blog posts in my head, usually while I'm driving. By the time I get to work, the thoughts are in the ether. The return commute finds me too exhausted to sit and write. Write, write, write, May. Do it.

Instead, I've been reading. I also play a lot of Scrabble on the Nook. Among other things, I recently read all three books in the "Hunger Games" series in a week. I read "Wicked." I've been reading magazines--"The Atlantic" and "The Economist," mostly.

But I haven't been writing. Bear with me, I think it's all going to change soon.

New year, same me

It has been quiet around here. It has not been quiet in my head because the words are staying there, running through patterns and sentences, forming complicated thoughts that no one will hear because the thoughts remain unspoken.

There are two reasons for this. First, I am not a person that other people choose to talk to. I think about this a lot. Maybe I talk too much, or I talk about the wrong things, or I say the wrong things, or I don't seem sufficiently engaged in the conversation, or I ask too many questions or just the wrong questions. I can't really say why I live in mental and social isolation. If I knew, I would change it. For now I assume that I am not the person anyone seeks out for meaningful, worthwhile, or interesting exchanges.

The second reason the thoughts stay in my head is I believe it is futile to try to lay out the ideas. Nobody cares. Nobody is listening. What's the point? Eventually, everyone drifts away, and no matter how satisfying the time spent together was, eventually, the time comes when once again it's just me and the head full of thoughts.

I realize that self-esteem is not what I do best, but I think that in order to have good self-esteem, one needs to have more to work with than I do. I've been an unpopular dork my entire life because I lack the looks, social skills, and savvy required to be better than this. I'm not feeling sorry for myself. This is simply reality. Certainly, there are people who are exactly like me but who shrug their shoulders and act like it doesn't matter. I've tried that. It's an exhausting, sisyphean task with an outcome that never varies.

As the new year rolled in, I contemplated making resolutions. Lately, I limit all aspirations to no more than 15 minutes of commitment at one time. Anything more than that feels overwhelming. Anyone can stick to something for 15 minutes, right? In the end, I resolved not to aspire to anything in 2012. I'll feel too defeated if I don't succeed. I've had enough of that.

I wonder if there's ever an age when I won't care who likes me, what I weigh, or what I look like. Yesterday I was working my way through my current skin regimen of cleansers and peptides, serums and exfoliants, and I tried to imagine the youthful glow that would eventually result. Then I realized I wasn't trying to wash away the visible signs of aging so much as I was trying to scrub away the homeliness. Another sisyphean task I've been toiling at for over 40 years.

Lately the personal parts of my days have been spent doing routine activities: Folding socks, reading advice columns, watching TV (a lot of TV), playing Scrabble and Angry Birds on my Nook tablet, paying bills, cooking, running errands, and watching even more TV. Sometimes I read. Usually I don't read, though. I try not to put more thoughts into my head.

I think I have officially started to abandon any sustained efforts at self-improvement. There is simply no payoff.

To be clear: I'm not depressed. I realize it probably sounds like I am, but I'm not. Then again, I don't experience happiness, although I have put in a fair amount of attempts at choosing joy. I never found joy. Occasionally amusement, but certainly not joy. Not for lack of trying. Frankly, I'm tired of trying for any emotion. In 2012, I'd like my emotions to be more spontaneous and organic.

I'd also like to stop being so fucking invisible.