Tragic Sandwich

Tag: Ramble Ramble

  • It Could–Would–Have Been So Much Worse

    Another writing prompt from Ginger at Ramble Ramble: Tell us a story from ninth grade.

    Okay.

    Just before ninth grade, my family moved from Maryland to Texas. As far as I was concerned, it was two years too late. All my life, I’ve had a Five Year Move Clock in my head, and I always felt like we stayed places too long.

    So while some kids might have found this to be a horrible time to move, I was ready. Sure, I was going to miss the friends I’d grown up with. But I was more than ready for new sights and sounds and people.

    Texas provided plenty of all of those. For a girl from the outskirts of D.C., it took some getting used to. Fortunately, I had some help.

    First, there was the library. I didn’t know many people for the first semester, so I went to the school library a lot. And by “a lot,” I mean three times a day. I’d go before school and check out a book to read between classes. I’d return it at lunch and get another book, which I’d read between classes. And I’d go back at the end of the day to return that book.

    (I am a very fast reader.)

    Second, and more importantly, there were Beth and Kelly. Those are not their real names, because on this blog, no one has a real name. Unless I tell a story about a celebrity. I’m not sure if I’ve done that. But if I do, I’ll probably use the celebrity’s name.

    Beth and Kelly were friends from middle school. They, like me, had decided to join Pep Squad. I don’t know their rationales, but I joined Pep Squad because my mother thought it would be a great way for me to know people on the first day of school, and I thought it would be a great way to get out of P.E.

    Pep Squad had a week of summer training for new members, and when I arrived, I knew no one. But Beth and Kelly took me under their wing (wings?) and made me part of their group. While we didn’t do all of the drills together, we did meet for lunch every day and exchange stories. Kelly invited me to her birthday party (where I discovered MTV). They welcomed me into their existing circle of friends. We had classes together. They gave me people to stand with at the bus stop at the end of the day.

    And while each of them later moved and changed schools, and we lost touch, I know that they made my freshman year of school bearable. They made it possible for me to decipher a new community and find my way.

    Later, I found out why all of this happened. It turned out that, before camp started, they decided that they were going to find someone who looked like she had no friends, and be her friend.

    They picked me.

    They were 13 years old, and they decided to make someone an insider instead of an outsider. They chose to be inclusive instead of exclusive.

    We hear a lot about bullying. Maybe there would be less of it–and maybe it would be easier to endure–if we tried to get our children to think more like Beth and Kelly.

    It’s not that I had no problems in high school. Of course I did. We all did. But those problems were made easier because I had a place in that school. And Beth and Kelly helped me find it, by making a conscious choice. At age 13.

    Three Friends

    Photo by Xiaozhuli, via Flickr. Creative Commons.

  • Solo Travel: A Weekend of One’s Own

    Sick = short on posts. Fortunately, Ginger of Ramble Ramble has another prompt: Do you/have you traveled solo? What do you like about it? What don’t you like? What makes it so different from traveling with other people?

    I’ve traveled a lot–I’ve been to 49 of the 50 states, and every continent except South America and Antarctica. But nearly all of that travel has been with family or friends.

    When I moved to New Jersey, I thought I’d travel a lot. Airlines (at least at that point) offered great last-minute weekend fares to Europe–and I’d be so close to JFK!

    But then the California-based Mr. Sandwich and I started our long-distance relationship, and that meant that if my flights weren’t taking me to San Antonio to visit my parents and brother, they were taking me to Los Angeles to visit him.

    Before that, though, I did manage to plan and go on one weekend getaway.

    Thanks to the wonders of the Internet, I was able to find an affordable work-in-progress B&B right on the Hudson River, in a town called Rhinecliff. (Rhinecliff is just a couple of miles from the–at least locally–much better-known town of Rhinebeck. Neither of them is pictured here.)

    Hudson River view

    The drive up is aptly identified as scenic, and I took my time driving along the back roads (not even Route 9, but 9-D).

    Based on a brief stop that I never repeated, the town of Cold Harbor (also not pictured here) may be my dream spot. If it isn’t, keep it to yourself.

    At this juncture, I can’t tell you much about either Rhinecliff or Rhinebeck, but I did visit a number of historic houses: Franklin D. Roosevelt’s childhood home of Springwood, where he is buried; the Vanderbilt House, which is so rigidly symmetrical that it is ugly; and Val-Kill, Eleanor Roosevelt’s retreat where I apparently took no pictures.

    Springwood manor
    Springwood: a lovely place to grow up and be buried
    Vanderbilt House in Hyde Park
    Sure, the Vanderbilt House looks innocuous enough from this angle, but it actually gave me the creeps in person.
    Gardens at Vanderbilt House
    But the gardens were very nice.

    I also spent one day with one of the co-authors of a textbook I was editing; when she learned that I was going to be in the area, she insisted that I drive over and join her. She was prickly on paper, but I really had a great time with her and a couple of her friends who were also visiting.

    My main memories of the weekend are that I got to explore an area that I might otherwise not have (it was a little far for a day trip, particularly with that many sites), that I was able to choose what I did and to set my own pace, and that it was a little lonely, particularly in the evenings.

    And in spite of the loneliness, I wish I’d done more of that while I was in that part of the country, because there are places I meant to explore but never got anywhere near (Finger Lakes, Montauk, the Adirondacks).

    So I guess I’ll have to go back someday and discover them with Mr. Sandwich and Baguette.

  • What Doesn’t Kill You

    Ginger of Ramble, Ramble has more writing prompts this week. I couldn’t choose, and they seem to go together, so here you are:

    Prompt 1: What are your sick day must haves? Do you want certain foods, shows, clothes, drinks? What makes you feel better when you feel crummy?

    Couch, pillows, TV, fleece blankets, PJs, Wicket. Basically, all the soft things.

    I don't know about you, but I feel better just looking at her.
    I don’t know about you, but I feel better just looking at her.

    Prompt 2: What’s the sickest you’ve ever been?

    Nearly every story about the sickest I’ve ever been includes vomit. Lots of vomit. So I think we should skip those stories, and I think you will agree.

    The obvious exceptions are the time I had pneumonia (at an out-of-town conference! that required plane travel!) and the time I had swine flu. Ah, swine flu. Good times.

    One Friday in late February 2009,* I had a D&C for my second miscarriage, which (like miscarriages 1, 3, and 4) did not happen without some help. On Sunday, I was supposed to get together with a couple of friends to watch the Oscars. Because of my surgery, they kindly came to my house and brought all the food.

    We snarked the Red Carpet so viciously that at one point Mr. Sandwich had to come inside to see what we were shrieking about (one of the hosts had done something so unfortunate to her face that she was trying not to appear on camera, but since she was the host, she kind of had to). The ceremony began. The snarking continued.

    After a couple of hours, I started to feel under the weather. I thought, “What I really want to do is go lie down, but if I do that, my friends will feel that they have to leave. And I’m totally fine with them staying, I just need to lie down.”

    But since I didn’t want them to go, I stayed put in the recliner.

    After another hour, I thought, “What is this? I’m so sore and achy. Wait. Is this the flu? It’s been a while, but I think this is what the flu feels like.”

    By the time the show was over and everybody went home, I felt as if the inside of my skin was being sanded. This is not a good feeling.

    The next day I had a follow-up appointment with my OB-GYN; from his office, we went to our primary care doctor. As the morning progressed, Mr. Sandwich started to feel achy.

    The primary care physician prescribed antivirals for both of us, and we headed off to the drug store.

    Which could only fill one prescription of antivirals.

    Back home, we swathed the couch in microfleece throws (because the perfectly fine upholstery was too rough for feverish skin) and settled in.

    Oh, and while this was going on? I was borderline hemorraghing from the D&C. (You do not want to know.)

    Both the flu and the bleeding went on for most of the week. We spent much of it on the couch, looking sadly at each other and saying, “I’m really sorry I can’t take care of you, but I feel so sick.” And the other one would say, “Please don’t worry about it, because I feel that sick, too.”

    We also learned that, even with the blinds closed, the afternoon sun cast so much glare on our TV screen that we couldn’t really see it. And since TV was the only form of distraction we could manage (books are so heavy), we kind of needed to see it.

    Mr. Sandwich draped the windows in more microfleece throws. Fortunately, we have a lot of them.

    And those antivirals? We felt no different at all for taking them. They didn’t seem to help in the slightest. The fever, aches, chills, and clamminess persisted in spite of the drugs. (We still got the second prescription, and we each took all of them that we were supposed to. In case you were wondering.)

    But on the other hand, we didn’t die. So there’s that. Because people do die of swine flu.

    And after we were well, we replaced the window coverings with wooden blinds.

    So I guess you could say that we were so sick, we redecorated.

    See those blinds behind Wicket? Those blinds.
    See those blinds behind Wicket? Those blinds.

    *Sources say that the first reported U.S. cases were in late March. But given the severity of our symptoms and the speed of their onset, we are pretty sure that we ran into it at the hospital, before doctors knew about the outbreak.

  • These Are a Few of My Favorite Foods

    This week’s prompt from Ginger at Ramble Ramble? Make us all hungry–what are your top 10 favorite foods (individual foods, or full meals, your choice)?

    Well, I do love food. So here goes.

    1) Steak. I don’t eat it often, but I do like it. My all-time favorite was the dry-aged New York Strip at the Chicago Chop House. But I’m certainly not going to turn down Fogo de Chao’s fraldinha or prime rib at Lawry’s. Or Ruth’s Chris. Or Morton’s. Mind you, I’ll need a gift card to go to any of these places. Oh, and while we’re on the subject–medium rare.

    2) Ice cream. I’d meet my poorly identified weight and fitness goals more quickly if I stopped eating ice cream.

    3) Potatoes. I love them so much, I once–no joke–gave them up for Lent.

    4) Mu shu pork. This is one of my key comfort foods. I don’t need the pancakes.

    5) Pancakes. Although I love them beyond mu shu. I’m still working on my perfect recipe, but that’s okay, because it means I get to eat pancakes.

    6) Chocolate-chip cookies. I make the recipe on the back of the Nestle package, with some slight variations. I could eat these all day, which is why I rarely make them.

    7) Corn. Corn on the cob. Corn in soup. Corn pudding. Creamed corn. Fritos. Pass the corn.

    8) Tomato sandwiches.

    corn and tomatoes from garden

    9) Clam chowder. I like the thin milky, buttery kind, not the thicker kind, although I’m certainly not going to turn that down if you offer it to me.

    10) Vanilla cupcakes with vanilla frosting. I also like lemon. And coconut.

  • Apparently I Lack Imagination

    It’s been weeks since I posted. I have photos from our vacation earlier this month. (Didn’t know we went on vacation? Quite possibly that’s because I haven’t posted in weeks.) Well, technically Mr. Sandwich has the photos. I haven’t managed to transfer them from his computer to mine.

    And there have been things I’ve wanted to blog about, but I can’t remember them. Maybe that’s because Baguette has been going through a growth spurt, which means that none of us has been sleeping.

    So I need a writing prompt. Ginger from Ramble Ramble to the rescue!

    She’s been providing a pair of writing prompts for several weeks. And usually I look at them and think, “Oh, I could blog about that.” And then I don’t. But this week’s prompts both appeal to me.

    Prompt 1: In another life, what career/job would you have, and why?

    Prompt 2: Give us your top 10 favorite movies of all time.

    Today I’ll do #1, because, well, it’s the first one.

    When I was a kid, I had a lot of ideas about what I wanted to be when I grew up:

    • archaeologist
    • lawyer
    • neurosurgeon (mostly I just said that to get people off my back about career plans)
    • nurse
    • mom
    • brick layer

    The easy answer is that I’d be a writer, and a successful one (hey, it’s my alternate reality I’m imagining). I’d have taken the path I saw for myself in high school, pursued journalism, written some nonfiction under my own name, and written some fiction under a pseudonym. Or I’d have turned to magazines rather than newspapers, and I’d be a freelance writer with the aforementioned nonfiction and fiction.

    But I really didn’t like the person I was when I was a reporter–even a high school reporter–and I have discovered that I don’t really like freelancing. I’m not geared to work for myself; I prefer to work for a company or organization of one sort or another. I like the steady paychecks. I like not having to build a client base or die. I like the health benefits (Seriously, I once had the following internal monologue upon seeing a picture of the mountains in eastern Kazakhstan: I would love to be able to backpack there. I wonder if I could get to that level of backpacking. But I’d wind up with a sinus infection. Where would I get antibiotics? I’m really not Backpacking-in-Kazakhstan Girl.)

    So I’d probably be an editor, quite possibly in magazines. Considering how much I have always loved reading them, I’m not sure why I didn’t pursue this as a career path. After I got my master’s degree, I applied for a kazillion jobs (college admissions counselor, CIA analyst) in a bazillion fields (education, government, publishing, historical research) all around the world (rural Virginia, Philadelphia, the United Arab Emirates). I don’t think a single one of those jobs was at a magazine.

    In this life, I spent 13 years as an in-house and freelance (see? I even tried it) editor. My current job is not editorial, but I’m still asked to do a lot of editing.

    Yes, I know I’m out of control with the parentheses on this post, and my use of italics is erratic at best here, but this is the way my brain is working today. Bear with me.

    So I guess in whatever life I’d have, I’d have something akin to this career.

    Oh, hey, the mom part turned out to be true, too. Nice.

  • Whoops. My bad. Go here.