05.21.25: By this time tomorrow I should be completely caught up on laundry, for what feels like the first time in months but has probably been more like five weeks. I’m also inching closer to declaring victory in the kitchen and upstairs bathrooms, which will be followed by deep cleaning the bedrooms. Since my ‘on’ periods lasted longer than usual today, I decided to go all-in on chores; the sweating began immediately and drove me nuts, but tweaking my activities to avoid sitting, stooping and squatting helped minimize plunges in blood pressure. This Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman chapter of my life could be worse (see: Diary of a Mad Housewife), and at least there’s no Fernwood Flasher. But lately I’ve fantasized more than usual about the spartanly appointed brick loft that was my original dream home in my teens and early twenties — and ruefully laughed at the thought of having to scale scaffolding to dust high ceilings and clean vast windows.
Family stuff came up tonight but I’ll try to prioritize a longer post tomorrow.
05.20.25: Here’s a huge shocker: the post I worked on today isn’t ready for primetime. It’s nothing interesting, anyway, unless you imagine it as a parody of Autumn Sonata (a joke that only works if you don’t know my mother), but I’d hoped to publish a standalone post tonight. You can fill in the blanks on the rest of the day: last night was another sleep disaster, with the usual ramifications; my left limbs were troublingly, and sometimes comically, slow and shaky; and I had ice cream for dinner since it was practically guaranteed not to get stuck in my chest. Bright spots included Muriel, whose movement has steadily improved over the last 10 days, and encouraging signs of progress (there will eventually be photos) as I continue chipping away at reorganization projects.
Of particular interest to Cranky readers, I was able to trade some old movies for a neat TV movie box set called Televised Terror: Volume One. It’s out-of-print at the time of this writing and I don’t think it’s worth paying much for a secondhand copy — all three of its films are free to watch elsewhere — but if you have a Blu-ray player and can find it cheap, it’s a neat novelty item and hopefully attracted enough interest to merit a second installment. Once I’ve had time to properly check it out, I’ll write more about that and other TV movie box sets released in limited edition runs. The film selections tend to be underwhelming but isn’t something better than nothing when it comes to preserving television history?
OK, it’s time to sign off but I’ll try to do better tomorrow. I’m not quite trapped on the struggle bus, as Crankenstein would call it (she’s a frequent passenger herself), but the simplest things have required a strange amount of effort even by YOPD standards over the past few weeks. At the same time, it’s easy to over-assign blame to Parkinson’s. It’s a permanent fixture of my life now, and one I’d already lived with for years without knowing it was there. Yes, there are still some things I’m struggling to accept and adapt to, but that’s normal and it’s not what is making me miserable. It’s home stuff that is unsustainable, like the division of household labor and striking differences between what Crankenstein and I truly value the most and want the rest of our lives to be. It doesn’t mean we’re about to go our separate ways, but it’s well past time to make some major changes together and individually and see what happens.
05.19.25: There were frequent power outages tonight as damage from Friday’s storm/tree havoc was repaired, so I busied myself with offline pursuits and didn’t write much of anything. I’m not sure that I would’ve had anything funny to say anyway since the swallowing issues that cause discomfort in my upper chest have bothered me a lot today; my 10 pm extended-release levodopa (a small oval pill, nothing that should cause such agitation) is painfully lodged there right now and it’s hard not to feel a tad grumpy about my doctors’ inability to do anything about it.* In happier pill news, I kept the intersections between our schedules straight today and managed not to overmedicate Muriel, though she would’ve greedily welcomed an illicit Greenies pocket.
* When I’m in a more jovial mood there’s a Liam Neeson movie I need to write about. It’s called Cold Pursuit, it’s free on Prime, and I watched it with Muriel late on Friday night with help from a couple of our smaller power stations. What got me was the synopsis: “A snowplow driver’s quiet family life is upended after his son’s murder. He begins a vengeful hunt for the drug lord he holds responsible for the killing.” Later I noticed that Neeson was subsequently cast as an ice road trucker in a film called The Ice Road. If he’s not yet played a vengeful Zamboni driver in a direct-to-streaming thriller, I hope that’s in the works as the third part of an informal trilogy.
05.18.25: I’m checking in from Muriel’s bed as our lazy Sunday concludes; she’s preparing for sleep by vigorously scratching and licking herself. In a few minutes I’ll bid her goodnight and prepare for sleep myself by washing my face, brushing my teeth, and sending myself a reminder about Muriel’s medication schedule, just in case I’m as groggy tomorrow as I was today. She’s currently taking pills at 6 am, 2 pm and 10 pm, and I take carbidopa/levodopa around 6 am, 10 am, 2 pm, 6 pm, and 10 pm; while running on fumes at 10 am, I screwed up and tossed her a pill pocket she shouldn’t have gotten until two o’clock.
Fortunately, there was no need to induce vomiting; none of her medications are harsh and she’s big enough, and dosed conservatively enough, that the worst that could’ve happened was a little extra sleepiness. She was none the worse for wear and remained annoyingly alert, growling at every street noise and eagerly demanding games of tug of war over her squeak toys, either unaware that I’m a moron or unbothered by it. I’m well aware of it, though, and bothered enough for the both of us; it was an error that reminded me of my maternal grandma and the diabetic cat whose insulin schedule she kept botching as her memory sputtered.
I’ll take pains to make sure it doesn’t happen again, and we’re set to resume her regular schedule within the next few days, anyway — a routine that all three of us could follow in our sleep. It will stick in my craw nonetheless.
When I wasn’t accidentally overdosing my dog, I fiddled a bit more with my backpack organization, did a bunch of laundry and dishes, watched Carlos Alcaraz win the Italian Open, and enjoyed carryout pizza with Crankenstein. We didn’t watch “The Battle of the Five Armies” today after last night’s “Smaug” screening, but the threat looms overhead.
05.16.25: It’s time to dust off the ol’ Les Nessman “Oh, the humanity!” (as opposed to the one about the Hindenburg disaster), because we were visited by a nasty weather event today that collapsed a few buildings, tore up some houses, and took down a bunch of enormous trees. I’m fine, Crankenstein’s fine, but ‘Niles’ — though physically unscathed — isn’t doing so well. The power’s out and the roads aren’t passable, but we got off easy compared to others because as best I can tell so far, we sustained no (or minimal) property damage. I’m grateful that Crankenstein, who couldn’t get home, had a go-bag in her trunk; and relieved that we girded our loins late last year and bought the necessary tools, generator, and solar gizmos to make ourselves a little more self-sufficient in situations like these. I’ll be back once my face has relaxed enough that I can write something besides strings of curse words; stress is chewing right through my levodopa.
05.15.25: Mysterious things were afoot today that will continue through tomorrow (all will be revealed in due time), and it sopped up whatever attention wasn’t demanded by Muriel. Her vet referral has been processed and is now in the hands of a scheduler; we were told to expect a wait of between two and four weeks, and if she continues to seem normal to us we’re going to ask Dr. Chuck if it’s worth rechecking her labs before subjecting her to additional testing. She’s moving easier now and sleeping less during the day than when her pain was worse, which makes me very pleased. The big test will be what happens next week once her medication is reduced.
There’s a trivial story I wanted to tell tonight about a text I received from my mom earlier (mercifully, it had nothing to do with my siblings) and the childhood memories it conjured, but there’s not enough time to do that while also investigating a mystery noise that’s driving Crankenstein berserk.* This is the second night in a week that it’s happened and it’s very loud in the house even though it’s coming from outside. I think it’s coming from the direction of the shul and this might be a prime opportunity to wander around in a headlamp — Crankenstein knows how much I hate to pass those up.
* This was an unusually entertaining day in Rome, another topic that was on tonight’s agenda. Paolini, Gauff, and even Ruud got in on the act. I fear jinxing Gauff by saying anything about her prospects at Roland-Garros, but with the season’s Swiatek’s been having and the return of Sabalenka’s yips, this might be as good an opportunity as she’ll get.
05.14.25: Sleep never came last night, not even a wink of it. As the morning’s earliest light filtered through our stained glass windows, I apprehensively wondered if this might mark the start of a permanent shift: some PWPs gradually lose the ability to catch any overnight zzz and make up for it where they can during the day. There were times in my life when I wouldn’t have minded that (or the social withdrawal it entails), but now I’m locked in what sometimes feels like a constant struggle not to disappear. If I put much more distance between myself and the rest of the world, I’m not sure I’ll find my way back.
Around 8 am, I finally dozed for 60 to 90 minutes, later nodding off during part of the first set of Aryna Sabalenka’s quarterfinal loss to Qinwen Zheng in Rome. It’ll be a couple weeks before the next round of Botox, which should make it easier to get comfortable, but my doctor’s on leave and I’m not sure what to expect of her substitute. There are pesky PD things that are bothering me now that won’t be discussed until August — the sweating, the facial dystonia, feeling like my forehead’s always tacky, continued trouble with low blood pressure, etc. — and Crankenstein hesitantly asked tonight whether I’m consciously choosing to frequently frown.*
The answer was ‘no,’ my brain does that on its own, and the answer to her second question — whether I’m aware of it — was yes, painfully so. It’s gotten to the point that I’d rather decline social invitations than sit around looking (and moving) like a weirdo, lest people stare or feel bad for me or pity Crankenstein. I’ll eventually make peace with it and I’m sure my discomfort’s temporarily heightened due to complicated feelings about my new SSDI status. Maybe I’ll expand on that in next month’s annual PD update over at Cranky, but there’s a Gerald McRaney review or two to finish first.
* My forehead was previously normal or dry. It was in 2021 that it started to look different and I wondered if I was heading for early menopause. Trying new facial cleansers and moisturizers and regularly dabbing my skin with delicate cloths changed nothing. It took a couple years, and a few trips to the MDS, to connect the dots and realize it was due to a common dermatological feature of Parkinson’s. Weirder still was suddenly piecing together (on quite a delay) that Parkinson’s had gone to work on my scalp a decade prior, something I’d forgotten about by the time the MDS asked since I’d long since adopted a specialty shampoo regimen that keeps things normal.
05.13.25: I’ve looked high and low and still can’t find where today went. A small portion of it disappeared into a black hole of stupidity last mentioned here near the end of April, when I asked “How do you validate something that doesn’t exist?” Some of it was spent slipping pills to Muriel, who’s regaining a bit of rambunctiousness even through the sleepy haze of muscle relaxers and gabapentin. (Her ultrasound referral is still pending so there’s nothing new to share, other than my immense gratitude that she’s secure in her identity as a dog and will never use words like “invalidation,” “gaslighting” or “erasure.”) The rest of it’s a mystery best left to Robert Stack.
05.12.25: If something’s wrong with Muriel’s liver, I’m going to perform a one-woman recreation of my favorite Righteous Gemstones scene; such would be my level of angry hysteria. With an unexpected call from her veterinarian this afternoon, we appear to have entered one of those Talking Heads “let the water hold me down” holding patterns that I’ve mentioned here before. Usually a vet tech sends us an email within a week of her annual checkup that says “Tests all came back fine!”, and I figured it would be another couple days before we heard from them. But we were also waiting on a dental cleaning quote, so when I recognized an incoming call’s number as the vet’s office I answered and prepared to wince at the cost.
Instead, I was confused: Dr. Chuck, the veterinarian herself (name changed to protect the innocent), was on the line and asked if I had a minute to discuss Muriel’s blood work. She was concerned about findings that were unusual in a dog of her age — elevated liver values and elevated calcium — and said it would require an ultrasound referral at the minimum and preferably an internal medicine consult. There were a couple ways we could proceed and I selected the most expedient: a referral to a specialty clinic that offers both services.
The vet kept reiterating how unpredictable these results were, but I didn’t ask for the numbers; Googling it might only make us nervous and we’ll learn more soon enough.* I jotted notes to share with Crankenstein, direct quotes like “Calcium is only slightly elevated, which I don’t like, but that can be transient. It’s usually secondary to something else, and sometimes normal when rechecked.” Dr. Chuck’s primary concerns were getting a look at Muriel’s liver and gallbladder to make sure they’re fine, the liver for obvious reasons and the gallbladder because untreated accumulation of bile duct sludge can eventually lead to acute illness and even death.
Privately, I wondered whether this could be related to her prescription allergy medication or the excessive snacks Crankenstein tosses to Muriel to get her off the couch. But her weight is optimal and she’s (outwardly) healthy as a horse, aside from her ailing back.** If we’re lucky, this will be a fluke or a wild goose chase; I’ve heard of a dog or two whose elevated liver labs weren’t explained by additional testing and nothing ever came of it. I’d like a little less medical excitement, though, for us and everyone in our orbit.
* Her kidneys, electrolytes, blood sugar, thyroid, and CBC were fine, and she was negative for tick exposure and heartworms. There were two liver panels the vet could’ve ordered and she went with the age-appropriate one since Muriel’s exam was unremarkable other than her lower spine; now she regrets not ordering the panel that included GGT, which looks at the gallbladder.
** As far as Muriel’s back goes, steroid treatment is off the table for now and so is her dental cleaning. (She’s steroid-free currently but that would’ve been Plan B if the vet’s latest plan failed.) She’s been given her NSAID too sparingly for Dr. Chuck to think that’s the problem; we’ve had the same bottle for over a year and it’s still pretty full.
05.11.25: Sleeplessness and too many uncomfortable overnight stints on the dog bed caught up with me with this weekend, beginning with an unscheduled nap last night during Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot, viewing that Crankenstein sheepishly requested after its recent shout-outs here. Today I slept quite late — it was almost noon by the time I shuffled downstairs — but it was fitful because of strange dreams and repeated intrusions by Crankenstein, whose unsubtle attempts to wake me up (so I could relieve her of Muriel duty) eventually prompted a vivid dream in which we had a huge argument.
We saw neither of our mothers today but sent them gifts and told them we love them. We also received a gift of our own, thoughtfully sent by Mother-in-Law on Muriel’s behalf. I’ll admit that in the interest of keeping my motor symptoms as even as possible, I’ve deliberately maintained more of a distance from Mother’s Day family drama than my mom would prefer. But it wasn’t without warning or explanation: I was blunt with her a couple weeks ago about why I don’t want to get dragged into her issues with Youngest Sister, and picked up no signals in response that she understood.
I’ll explain more about that in a future post (Crankenstein was more taken aback by the non-reaction than I was), and suspect I’ll be a lot more awake and productive tomorrow. Happy Mother’s Day to any moms in our midst.
05.09.25: Muriel gained new admirers today after meeting the latest veterinary clinic hires, including a front desk worker who assured me his dog is equally nutty and requires a similar cocktail of sedatives prior to checkups. “Is she your only?” he asked as I settled the bill, not specifying ‘dog’ or ‘child’ because we’d already sized each other up as childless homosexuals of a certain age and knew the two were interchangeable. It wasn’t a fun appointment and I’d rather not rehash it until we have a better idea of whether her new treatment plan is working; the gist of it is that the vet thinks our options are more limited than what the veterinary neurologist first suggested five years ago.
If she’s correct that Muriel isn’t a good candidate for surgery, pain management is all we can do. She gave us a backup plan in case her strategy for the next 10 days doesn’t work and apologetically said alternative treatments (laser therapy, acupuncture) would be the only other things she could try if medication doesn’t succeed in restoring her comfort. None of it was too surprising to me but Crankenstein had somehow convinced herself that allergies were the bigger problem (and that I’d perhaps been anxiously overrating Muriel’s pain level). Her dazed expression as the vet summarized her biggest takeaways from Muriel’s physical exam reminded me of her face when she asked the MDS “And we’re calling this…?” and the doctor replied “Parkinson’s.”
I believe we can get Muriel comfortable again and hope we’re able to keep her that way for a long time. But I also know her back has the mileage of a much older dog and her quality of life will probably decline earlier because of it. That’s all the more reason to make her upcoming gotchaversary a spectacular one.
05.08.25: We’ll take a closer look at the closet later, when the sun’s out and I can snap better pictures, but here was today’s progress on the movie nook. There are still a few more titles to shelve and the alphabetization will need a once-over since it was done hastily as Muriel slept, but it’s coming together well enough for something done quickly and on the cheap. Please note that this post was also thrown together quickly, while I was almost too tired to see straight, so there’s a 90% chance it’ll be incoherent. The subject matter’s unimportant, anyway.
The ‘adults only’ sign was put near Cruising and The Crying Game as a joke since leaning it against the ‘W’ titles (where an unintentional Theresa Russell double-feature of Whore and Wild Things sits) would’ve been too on-the-nose. It will eventually go on a shelf with a small collection of horror movies that remind me of Felix, who would appreciate the 18+ designation.
To avoid the domino effect hassle of rearranging the whole setup every time I add another movie, I’m leaving free space on most of the shelves. If you’re deranged enough to zoom in and peruse the spines, you’ll notice that some of my favorite films and directors are missing or underrepresented. That’s because they’re in the TV cabinet or they’re behemoths (like Criterion’s Bergman and Fellini sets) that don’t fit on standard media shelves.
A closer look at a couple of shelves. The ‘A’s cracked me up because there are all these serious films by phenomenal auteurs alongside the first three installments in the Angel series, which entered my life at an impressionable age thanks to USA Up All Night and forever altered my memories of Rory Calhoun.* Cliffhanger is missing from the ‘C’s and Assassins from the ‘A’s because Sylvester Stallone needs his own space, as do Burt Reynolds, Clint Eastwood, Woody Allen, and TV series. Exceptions were made for Rent-a-Cop and Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot because they embody the spirit of the collection.
This is boring and I apologize, but it was a welcome distraction from worrying about tomorrow, when Crankenstein and I both have packed schedules and Muriel has a mid-morning vet appointment that will be stressful for all three of us. (We don’t expect bad news or anything but the drive and exam will be tough on her back.) Tubi provided another welcome distraction, again starring Gerald McRaney, but I don’t have enough time to muse about whether he’ll become the male Judith Light over at Cranky. Deadly Vows was the name of that very dark tale and any TV movie aficionados who haven’t seen it should add it to their queues.
* Don’t lump Another Country in with the classics just yet; I haven’t seen it since I was a teenager but don’t remember it fondly. It was purchased on clearance and if my opinion’s unchanged after a rewatch it’ll be filed away with other mediocre gay and lesbian films I only own for academic reasons. The Fox, Staircase, A Different Story, Partners, Making Love, Personal Best, Lianna, friggin’ Windows, the godawful Bar Girls, I’ve held on to all of those and many more because gay films have a tendency to quietly go out of print. There are very few made between the 1920s and 2002 or so that I’d object to owning, but Go Fish, which recently got a limited edition Blu-ray release, is one of them. How did Guinevere Turner and Rose Troche parlay that into careers? I suppose it could’ve been worse and Maria Maggenti or Nicole Conn could’ve been elevated instead, but they were all so terrible that it left a void for the Wachowskis, two fetishist brothers who’ve since transitioned, to fill with Bound. Granted, Bound is superior to most lesbian films made by actual lesbians, but look how that’s turned out for us culturally.
05.06.25: It’s 10:30 pm and Muriel has been lightly snoring for the past hour. This return to her regular bedtime has me cautiously optimistic that she’s on the mend, but we know from past experience that it’s still too early to make any pronouncements. I’ve been trying to avoid the couch between 9 am and 5 pm as part of my latest effort to establish a new routine, which has been interesting over the past few days of having to temporarily restrict her activities. It’s unwise to stray too far from her unless she’s soundly asleep; she will happily and energetically play by herself otherwise, or succumb to overzealous watchdog instincts and angrily lunge at doors and windows while furiously barking at the mailman or the neighbors’ yard guys.
To remain productive while also keeping tabs on her, I’ve been dragging organizational projects into the living room: labeling basement and closet bins, filing paperwork, going through EOBs and requesting reimbursements for medical expenses. I used to do those things automatically, often while multitasking, and I miss that efficiency even more than I miss sleep. Speaking of sleep, it’s time to try to get some in case Muriel wakes up overnight and starts crying. If tomorrow is quiet and there’s no imminent danger of falling asleep the second I sit down, I’ll knock out a longer post.
05.05.25: This has been a bad night. I was going to say “and I wish I could switch places with Muriel,” but she deserves better than that. I’ll add more to this later if she gives me back my other arm, which she has claimed for herself.
05.04.25: The song remains the same with Muriel, whose condition is unchanged. We’ve been through this enough to know what to do with her medication, assuming it’s her usual problem, and if she shows no improvement within the next few days the veterinarian will want to see her. Last night I made it through a half-hour of The Seduction before falling asleep beside her. At 4:30 am, I felt her hovering as she tried to lower herself onto me, which took some maneuvering and a sad whimper or two on her part. We fell back asleep for another two hours before she was ready for breakfast and she’s not wanted me out of her sight since then.
Now we’re winding down for the night, an open library book on my Kindle and the TV tuned to the second overtime of the Blues-Jets game that will decide who advances in the Stanley Cup playoffs. The Blues outperformed expectations to make it this far and it’s doubtful the miracle of 2019 is about to repeat itself, but since Felix will text me about the game regardless of its result I might as well watch its denouement. I’ve not been an avid hockey fan since Cujo (also known as Curtis Joseph) left the Blues, but stuck around for the Grant Fuhr years. A time capsule from that stage of my adolescence was stacked on the office floor last week with other items I’d like to part with as the room is reconfigured: a binder full of women hockey cards from the year Felix and I collected them.
In a sign of things to come for both of us, most of his were immediately bent, lost or set on fire, while mine went directly into protective sleeves.* I was so (insufferably) meticulous about my belongings as a kid, and so full of angst if any of the books I purchased ‘new’ got so much as a faint crack on the spine or the teensiest corner ding. Classmates and family alike poked fun at how carefully I held paperbacks as I read, but there was so little in my life then that was entirely within my control and it pained me when my books were marred by other people’s carelessness. My mom was mystified by my agony the fateful summer afternoon a cousin spilled soda all over my brand new copy of Henry and Beezus, and it’s best not to revisit the SVU incident at all.**
Lacking a clever way to tie this up, I’ll abruptly shuffle away now in embarrassment, not least of all because I’d still shriek in horror if someone (including myself) spilled soda on a book.
This won’t be edited until tomorrow, at which time I’ll find a mistake or three like “property gospel” — an error in last night’s entry that’s since been corrected to “prosperity gospel” — and shriek in horror at that, too.
* He spilled Squeezits on them, probably, but didn’t set them aflame. Felix was many things when we were kids but never an arsonist.
** SVU stands for Sweet Valley University, for anyone who wasn’t a dweeby preteen in the mid-1990s. I came home from school one to day at age 11 or 12 and immediately noticed a disturbance in the force on my bedroom bookshelves and flew downstairs to investigate. My mom had helped herself to one of my SVU paperbacks (purchased new each month with my hard-earned allowance!) without asking and swore she wouldn’t crack its spine. But she’d brazenly folded the top corner of a page instead of using a bookmark, which left me apoplectic. Instead of performing a citizen’s arrest, which would’ve been funnier in retrospect, I had a ridiculous meltdown that presumably made her consider institutionalizing me or getting her tubes tied.
05.03.25: I’m once again coming to you live from the dog bed, which is actually a 72″ x 48″ x 6″ folding bed/sleeper chair that was purchased five or six years ago, during the worst of Muriel’s ordeal. She had a decent day but it’s been an unpleasant night that seems destined to end in another sleepover. This isn’t where I’d like to be tonight: One of my hips has hurt like the dickens for most of the past week, and if Muriel tries to sleep on top of me — as she often does when she’s in pain — it might make things worse.* But it’s an immense privilege when an animal, especially one who’s at her most physically vulnerable, trusts you enough to feel comforted by your presence, so my pillow’s at the ready if she doesn’t want to be alone.
If I’m stuck here for hours to come and can’t sleep, it’ll be Tubi time. Having grown up in the USA Up All Night era, I nostalgically associate late-night weekend viewing with cheesy horror movies and cleavage-heavy thrillers.** (There were also cleavage-heavy sophomoric comedies, a genre Felix greatly enjoyed but I found boring enough to skip.) Tubi offers countless serial-killer-stalks-call-girls flicks that would fit the bill, along with who knows how many Andrew Stevens thrillers. Off the top of my head I can recall that 1982’s The Seduction, with Stevens, Morgan Fairchild and Colleen Camp, is already on my watchlist.
In other news, the jinx continues: at the beginning of last month I wrote a bit about the cancer mutation that stalks my dad’s family, and today one of my aunts revealed she was just diagnosed with cancer. She hasn’t undergone genetic testing yet but so far the signs, including her age and the nature of the cancer, point away from the mutation. We’re hopeful she’ll get good news about the staging and trust an oncologist to guide her treatment rather than turn to the usual self-help gurus, alternative medicine hucksters, and prosperity gospel goons. And I’m privately hopeful that my sisters might snap out of it now and stop taking tomorrow for granted.
* Crankenstein asked what’s wrong with my hip earlier and I haven’t a clue. Could’ve been a nocturnal injury that I was oblivious to, or maybe I hurt myself during an almost-fall and only felt it on a delay. Arthritis flare-up is another possibility but other things would probably be amiss if that was the cause.
** Felix and our dad liked to rent kung fu movies and Hammer horror films for weekend double-features that started once Mom went to bed, so I also associate late-night weekend viewing with the two most important Lees of my childhood: Bruce and Christopher.
05.02.25: It’s a time-honored tradition of Muriel’s to act like a total lunatic in the moments before she’s given breakfast or dinner, so we knew she was still in pain this morning when there was no frenzied lunging or rearing up on her hind legs and jumping around like a speed freak on a pogo stick. She was guarded in her movements and mostly ignored the couch, which is normally her favorite lounging spot, so the two of us hung out on the floor today and kept excitement to a minimum.
During a longer stretch when she napped deeply enough for me to wander away, I did some light housework and moved a few more things that need to be out of the way for the next stage of my office overhaul. That diversion and my basement reorganization efforts, first mentioned in February or March, have continued but it’s been slow going.* Even when the stars align and I’m moving well for a couple hours, other PD hiccups (issues with sweating and low blood pressure) thwart dramatic progress.
Since the men’s semifinals in Madrid were boring matchups and there’s only so much James Michener one can listen to in a single day, I looked for a movie worth streaming and ended up at Tubi.** I’d been open to anything, from theatrical or direct-to-video, and ended up with a TV movie: The People Across the Lake (1988), a spooky Valerie Harper/Gerald McRaney effort best described as a horror thriller. The cast, which also included Barry Corbin (its MVP), Dorothy Lyman, and a young actor who resembled “Garbage day!” guy from Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 (sadly, it wasn’t him), had enticed me, but I ended up liking it enough that I’ll try to review it while it’s still in Tubi’s rotation.
* That’s why I haven’t shared photos: the difference isn’t impressive yet.
** I’m a longtime user of PaperbackSwap, where you list books you no longer want and ship them to whoever requests them. You earn a credit for doing so and can use that to request something you want. That’s where I get most of my NYRB paperbacks, though you have to be patient; some titles have been on my wishlist for five or 10 years. There’s plenty of Michener available there, along with anything else commonly found in basements and at garage sales, so I requested Chesapeake and Texas, which I can use as step stools until I’m ready to read them.
05.01.25: Muriel’s having a tough time tonight, seemingly because of her back. She tends to become alarmingly withdrawn when her pain is at its worst, so I’m optimistic on occasions like this that her heightened clinginess and demands for attention are simply signs she overdid it (while running around like a maniac, as she’s wont to do) and just needs a little rest. This evening she’s wanted my computer off to the side so my hands and lap are free, which hasn’t been an inconvenience because I’m too tired to write anything too intelligible anyway.
We’re currently on her bed and I’ve stolen a few moments to type this while she tries to fall asleep beside me. Once she’s succeeded I’ll sneak upstairs and will hopefully remain there until morning; Crankenstein has to be up early for work so our Muriel bases should be covered by the time she’s ready for breakfast. She’s rounding into senior territory now, our faithful canine companion — we’ll celebrate her seventh gotchaversary this month and her eighth birthday later this year — and almost every day she looks older to me but roughly the same to Crankenstein.
Today was worse than usual on the PD front after another sleep debacle, but all wasn’t lost: Jade, the absolutely terrible William Friedkin film starring Linda Fiorentino and David Caruso, is getting a special limited edition release on 4K and Blu-ray! Joe Eszterhas screenplays don’t get much worse than this, if that helps contextualize its awfulness for those who haven’t seen it, and I couldn’t be happier that Vinegar Syndrome, a specialty Blu-ray label, has been giving Eszterhack (as I’ve semi-affectionately called him for the past 25 years) his due.* My preorder was placed within 20 minutes of the announcement and I went with the standard edition to save $8; it’ll boast the same features as the other option but won’t have the cool slipcover.
* They also gave Showgirls the deluxe treatment a couple years ago and released a special edition of Sliver earlier this year. Might Jagged Edge be next?
04.30.25: Tonight was interrupted by a long call from my mom, who is tricky to write about because we don’t have the best history. Maintaining a relationship with her as an adult has required a lot of papering over the cracks that formed in my teens, when it was obvious I wasn’t the sort of daughter she would’ve selected for herself.* Those widened throughout the Felix ordeal, which was traumatizing for the whole family less because of his illness (there’s medicine for that) than because of my parents’ inability to handle it responsibly (regrettably, there’s no medicine for that).
There are other reasons why Mom and I have to work harder to connect with each other than with anyone else in our family, but none are unique or interesting. It usually boiled down to ‘Mom has too many feelings and I don’t have enough,’ which is why she once alternately told me that I had a black heart, a cold heart, and no heart at all. (Freud would have a field day with my subsequent choice of partners, women so awash in feelings that I’ve spent most of the last 20 years in a life vest.) I was a teenager then and will never forget that argument; the reason for those insults was so bleakly funny in retrospect that it deserves its own essay.
Contrary to her cardiological contention, I had — and still have — a perfectly serviceable heart. And of course I had plenty of feelings, they just weren’t as close to the surface as hers and tended not to be ones she shared. That was the case again tonight, when it was evident we weren’t anywhere close to being on the same page about assorted issues stemming from my sisters’ war with each other and Tom’s war on reality. We ignored the friction because we’re old enough to know, unlike the two of them, that our differences don’t always matter. If your closest relationships are all predicated on uniformity of thought and everyone meeting or exceeding your expectations 100% of the time, you’re going to be pretty damn lonely.
Here’s the recipe for Crankenstein’s blondies, as mentioned in last night’s entry. They were a hit with her coworkers today.
* That’s not a (melo)dramatization: she tried to emotionally replace me for a time with a girl who was a year ahead of me in school and more to her liking. At some point my dad confronted her about it and I’m not sure whether that put an end to things or if the relationship petered out on its own.
04.29.25: I’m starting to feel like Grady Tripp of Michael Chabon’s Wonder Boys, minus the weed and mistress. Today, as Crankenstein could tell you — she was working from home and kept interrupting me to urgently share memes and food — I spent several hours toiling on that damn unfinished post. It’ll be very anticlimactic once it’s live because the amount of effort it’s taken might suggest something sprawling, ambitious or good, and you have my word it’s none of those things.
Crankenstein’s culinary triumph was more masterful. This winter she bought bakery-fresh maple pecan blondies from Whole Foods on a lark and fell in love, only to find out it was a seasonal item. I never sampled the product in question, so I have no idea whether it was a copycat recipe she tried tonight or something slightly different. Whatever it was, it was delicious, and when I asked if it was an acceptable replacement she got a crazed glint in her eyes, like a Jack Nicholson character, and said “Better! It’s so good that I’m glad I promised to bring it into work tomorrow, because otherwise I’d want to eat it all.”
She’s already asleep, but I’ll request a link to the recipe tomorrow in case anyone wants to try it. And I’ll once again try to finish that post, which I really want to wrap up before moving on to my next TV movie review. Incidentally, I’d still like to move my reviews to a non-Cranky domain this year and have been trying to learn Elementor, a WordPress site-building plugin, to see if it’s any better than Gutenberg, which is what I currently use. Substack is also tempting since I wouldn’t have to deal as much with the technical side of things, but there’s a lot of superciliousness over there that doesn’t really jibe with detailed breakdowns of Vanna White movies.
04.28.25: Tonight’s writing time was spent trying to finish a longer post, so I have nothing much to offer before bed unless you want to hear neck and sleep complaints for the 800th time. A blackout in Madrid meant there was no tennis to watch while folding laundry, but I caught 20 minutes of Cannonball Run and thought of all the ridiculous Burt Reynolds content I’ve imagined and/or researched but haven’t yet shared with the world.* It’s mostly in the form of the written word but an homage will also appear in Crankenstein’s (miniature) cabin: a recreation of his Cosmo centerfold, complete with bearskin rug and ashtray.
* Maybe that will become my inspiration for regaining the upper hand against PD: Burt Reynolds scholarship, including creating the Internet’s largest repository of information about his divorce from Loni Anderson.
04.27.25: Who knew you could be exhausted by someone else’s Parkinson’s? Or in this case, their imaginary Parkinson’s, which makes the situation even odder. Your guess is as good as mine why anyone would want a YOPD diagnosis, but it’s something I’ve regularly encountered while moderating online discussions about the disease. It’s not as common as simple health anxiety, in which someone Googles a vague symptom with a million potential causes, like ‘twitch’ or ‘tremor,’ and is swiftly convinced they have Parkinson’s, multiple sclerosis, brain cancer or ALS. Unless their anxiety is severe, those people can usually be reasoned with; they’re afraid of the diseases that diagnosis-chasers want.
This is a topic worthy of a longer, more incisive post, but it’s hard to describe the disgust and contempt I feel for people who covet disease and disability. Intellectually, I know I should pity them, because they’re obviously unwell even if they’re confused about the nature of their affliction. What has rankled me lately is how transparently awful some of them are, going straight to words like “gaslighting” and “abuse” no matter how gently it’s suggested that they’re in the wrong place. The doctors who tell them they don’t have YOPD (some have consulted five or six!) are dismissed as arrogant, incompetent, abusive, ableist, gaslighting and neglectful. PWPs who don’t humor their delusions in support groups — which they always try to hijack — are gatekeepers and invalidating traitorous scum.
How do you validate something that doesn’t exist? What is it meant to accomplish? This isn’t like cancer fakers scamming people out of money (see the podcast or Hulu docuseries Scamanda for one such tale); disgusting as it is, there’s a logic to that. And it’s not completely about garnering attention or sympathy, though those are contributing factors. In this person’s case, they’re grasping for an identity. They’ve “fought,” in their words, for at least a half-dozen trendy, specious diagnoses in recent years. But none of those pointless labels changed their life in the way they believed it would, so the search continues. It’s so textbook by now that I know exactly what medical acronyms and convoluted sexual and gender identities to expect from them.
The gender stuff is either part of the problem or another symptom of it, especially for younger adults who mostly exist in safe little bubbles online. There are limits to the powers and possibilities of self-identification, as anyone tethered to reality knows, and it’s both offensive and insane to think that merely identifying with an illness is the same as having it.
04.26.25: It’s Saturday night and this is the first thing I’ve written all day because I was alternately busy with Crankenstein, Muriel, cooking, tennis, scale modeling, and Cher. It’s been a long time since I’ve written about scale modeling or miniatures here, since I was saving material for a hobby site that’s fully designed but hasn’t been launched. But I’m still at it and have been kicking around plans for my next TV-series-inspired diorama once “Angels in Chains” has been perfected.* A couple nights ago, in fact, I went to Miniatures.com for the first time in several months to see if the siding I wanted was back in stock for a summer project. The message that greeted me proved so distracting that I forgot to search for siding.
Both Miniatures.com (one-stop shopping for kits, supplies, and furnishings) and Houseworks (the biggest miniature brand in the US and probably all of North America) are closing their doors forever. This is being framed as a retirement issue but obviously wasn’t planned; among other things, the annual Creatin’ Contest was hastily canceled. The fact that neither operation is currently expected to be sold points to another culprit, one I wish more business owners would directly address: tariffs (and tariff uncertainty). This mess will devastate American hobby shops — already a dying breed — if not quickly and favorably resolved; their profit margins were slim to start with and these businesses are often kept afloat as labors of love.
If you have the time and money to spare and live near a local mom-and-pop shop, consider dropping in and showing your support with a purchase. Dollhouses, model train setups, and model cars and ships and aircraft kits aren’t for everyone, but they make great gifts for any detail-obsessed weirdos in your life who’d welcome hours and hours of tedious fun.
* ‘Perfected’ in the loosest sense, to be clear, for my painting skills still leave a lot to be desired.
04.25.25: “Have a good day at school!” I texted a niece earlier, after she seized her mom’s phone to play a game.
She replied with a video from the bus stop in which she cheerfully said “Have a good day at… life!”
And so I did, organizing my backpack between chores and enjoying quality time with Muriel as she sunbathed.* I put in another couple hours on the unfinished post and watched a short video Crankenstein sent that reminded her of Tom and a few other people we know. It’s about emotional fragility — Crankenstein loves feelings the way I love butterscotch-flavored Dum-Dums and mediocre ’80s courtroom thrillers — and how frequently it’s weaponized these days and ludicrously misrepresented as strength.**
Speaking of mediocre ’80s courtroom thrillers, it’s come to my attention that Suspect (1987), directed by Peter Yates and starring Cher, Liam Neeson and Dennis Quaid, is currently on Tubi. Crankenstein hasn’t seen that enjoyable dud and I’m just the dame to show it to her. Music Box (1989), the Costa-Gavras film (from a Joe Eszterhas screenplay!) starring Jessica Lange as a lawyer who defends her father (Armin Mueller-Stahl) against charges of war crimes, doesn’t appear to be streaming anywhere, which is a shame because Crankenstein would watch Lange read the phone book.^
Neither is currently available on Blu-ray, though Suspect had a shoddy, small-run release years ago, and I’ll cut this off here before it turns into six paragraphs questioning whether The Verdict is overrated and Absence of Malice underrated. I’ll be back tomorrow, either with something good or more excuses.
* It was easier to find a wife than a new backpack and I was pretty picky about both. I was quite attached to the old one but needed something smaller and lighter because of shoulder issues.
** If you liked that video, this one’s also worth checking out. I’m not familiar with this woman and know nothing about her qualifications or experience, so I glanced at her bio just now and was dismayed to see “coach and therapist.” Mental health ‘coaches’ aren’t something that I endorse but I’m always relieved when other Millennials call out the same cultural bullshit that I endlessly grumble about here. Young people, especially young women, are infinitely stronger than social media algorithms want them to realize, and too many of them fall into self-loathing and self-defeating traps they should’ve been taught to avoid.
^ Music Box pairs well with Class Action, an early ’90s father-daughter legal thriller with Gene Hackman and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, which is also absent from streaming platforms and Blu-ray.
04.24.25: It’s 10 p.m. Do you know where your children lesbians are? It isn’t really 10 p.m. as I write this — that’s a couple hours away — but I’ll be in bed by then, or maybe standing in front of the bathroom sink and making a mental note (promptly forgotten) to recharge my toothbrush tomorrow. My laptop will be fast asleep and hopefully my brain will follow suit as a new experiment begins. In the coming weeks my dedicated writing time will be shifted from the evening to the morning or afternoon, the better to gauge whether too much mental stimulation closer to bedtime has exacerbated my sleep woes. It’s one of several changes I’m making to schedules and daily routines and it’s unlikely to change much here since proofreading and publication will still happen at night.
My bedtime’s also moving up, which requires its own trial and error. Crankenstein will tell you it takes three hours to complete my pre-bedtime rituals, which started as a joke when we moved in together and isn’t quite as funny now that brushing and flossing and washing up and changing pillowcases takes two or three times as long as it used to. Stubbornness, denial, and perhaps a smidgen of apathy have made me slow (no pun intended) to use adaptive devices for household and personal tasks. That’s something else I’m about to experiment with, thanks to my in-laws. As tariff standoff stupidity continues, I’ve rounded up unused Container Store gift cards — their go-to holiday and birthday gift for me — and used them to get some gadgets that might help with cooking and cleaning.
The Container Store, once my happiest place on Earth, has been on the ropes for quite some time and entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy last year. My theories about how it lost its way could fill a 200-page report, but many of its most popular signature products have diminished in quality or disappeared from shelves completely. There’s not enough color, innovation or pragmatism in its recent offerings; almost everything’s disposable and Marie Kondo bland.* Crankenstein and I have speculated for a couple years now that our nearest Container Store is on its way out; there’s little foot traffic and the shelves are sparsely stocked. That bodes poorly for its chances of surviving supply chain disruptions, so we wanted to use the gift cards now even though I’d been saving them toward a second filing cabinet. Once I’ve had the chance to try some chopping, peeling and measuring doodads, I’ll reveal if they were actually useful or if the cleaning aids are already covered in blood.
* The failure-to-launch problem among younger generations isn’t helping. If you don’t have your own home or office or dorm room to organize, you have minimal use for the Container Store. But it was Target’s Threshold and Brightroom organizational products, and their extremely attractive price points, that savagely wounded the retailer by luring away its most prized demographic: finicky women 30 and older with disposable income to spare. I know this because I’m one of them and we’re legion.
04.23.25: The fuzzy-headedness of the last few days has lifted, at least temporarily, and I made good progress tonight on an unfinished post that’s caused an undue amount of frustration since last year. There have been two primary hindrances: the dynamic nature of the story (which is beyond my control) and the possible repercussions of writing about it (which isn’t). After months of reflection and indecision about the latter, recent events like the “Gimme Shelter” incident and a truly asinine exchange between my father and Youngest Sister have nudged me toward a “Que Sera, Sera” approach to writing about my family.
You might ask “Isn’t that what you’ve been doing all along?” The answer is yes and no. I write pseudonymously to preserve my privacy and theirs, and for every sensitive detail shared here there are many more that I omit.* Regular readers have probably noticed fewer posts examining family lore and old memories in the past six or eight months than before. That’s partly because I was sidelined by grief and partly because my parents’ behavior — and Tom’s shameless manipulation of them — has taken a hacksaw to old wounds. The absence of such posts has been glaring to me and I think the site’s suffered as a result and turned into a captain’s log of sleep disturbance. That’s one of several things I’d like to change this spring, though I can’t promise it’ll happen.
In other news, Finnegan Begin Again arrived today. If the name doesn’t ring a bell, it’s a 1985 made-for-HBO movie starring Mary Tyler Moore. Even better for us Crossing Delancey diehards, it was directed by the great Joan Micklin Silver. Finnegan was released on DVD in Australia this month and I was eager to get my hands on a copy but was accidentally sent Gidget: The Complete Series instead. There’s a review or two ahead of it in the queue but I’ll cover Finnegan on Cranky in May or June.**
* Crankenstein is the only person I know offline who is aware of this site’s existence, unless Ex follows along. My family doesn’t know about any of my active websites (or bylines, for that matter).
** The manufacturer says the DVD is region-free and once I’ve confirmed that to be true I’ll list some reputable vendors for Australian imports.
04.22.25: It took so long to complete last night’s entry (see below for the not-so-sordid details) that I’m leaving nothing to chance and finishing today’s as early as possible. That’s a lofty goal for someone whose thought process is currently slow as molasses: I started writing at 4:42 p.m. and now it’s 5:08 and this is as far as I’ve gotten. Were I more awake and alert, this would be the perfect opportunity to craft a post called “Where Is My Mind?”, about my quixotic quest to regain the executive functioning skills — particularly those involving time management — that Parkinson’s and/or sleep deprivation have eroded.*
Those were strengths of mine not too long ago and I’m convinced they haven’t disappeared into thin air; they’re just being held captive somewhere like characters in a terrible action movie. It’s my job to keep knocking down doors, like Burt Reynolds or Sylvester Stallone or a wisecracking Bruce Willis, until they’re found and freed. Part of that will require trying to retrain myself to sleep, which might be a fool’s errand but is worth the effort anyway since the alternatives are unattractive. The medication options aren’t great — PD doesn’t just cause massive sleep problems, it limits what you can take to treat it — and there’s almost nothing about my current circumstances that’s sustainable.
It feels like I’ve already lost control of my body and now I’m barely holding on to control of my life, which is unacceptable and has to change. That’s enough pontificating for now, though. Muriel needs to be fed and watered and taken outside for her evening activities; there’s trash and recycling to toss out, including a cardboard box so thick I’d almost rather flatten it with my car or dismantle it with a chainsaw than attempt to break it down with the Ryobi cutter; there are upcoming happenings both around the house and online that I need to prepare for; Crankenstein and I have to watch St. Denis Medical; and I need to fall asleep before 3:30 am, which will take a lot of work.
* Surely they’re both factors, with the impact of sleep deprivation being the most straightforward. The other effect(s) of PD are harder to untangle because it’s a two-pronged attack: your brain’s not as hale and hearty as it used to be, which obviously drags executive function down with it. More pernicious is the unpredictability of the physical and mental slowness that dopamine fluctuations foist upon PWPs. Even the world’s best time management mavens would be vexed by the problem of how to optimize our schedules.
04.21.25: Can anyone here besides Crankenstein point to their glabella? Prior to Googling the name for the area between your eyes and above your nose a few weeks ago, I didn’t know I had one. My curiosity was personal: I often get painful muscle tightness there during bouts of oromandibular dystonia and wondered if anything could be done for it. Though it wasn’t mentioned in any of the dystonia write-ups within the Parkinson’s literature we were sent post-diagnosis, it turns out you can indeed get dystonia there. The reason it didn’t make it into those APDA and Davis Phinney guidebooks is that it’s linked to a particular atypical parkinsonian disorder and not ‘regular’ PD.
That information only seemed to twist those muscles tighter, even though I know better than to put any stock in search results about medical symptoms. Nearly every day, Crankenstein comes home with maddening stories about patients and parents (oh, the parents!) who trust Dr. Google more than they trust nerds like her who’ve devoted their lives to the study of the organs and conditions in question.* Her experiences have taught me to tune out anyone but subspecialists when it comes to Crohn’s and PD; clinical medicine and medical research are far more nuanced than AI and algorithms currently understand. Still, I get a little spooked each time this happens — and become a bit more fearful the doctor might recommend a Syn-One biopsy one day.**
Anyway, I thought of that tonight while squinting at a blinking cursor, too distracted by dystonia to write about the Ostapenko/Sabalenka final I watched live this morning while trapped beneath Muriel. She’d woken me up at six on the dot and I made it through the day on four hours of sleep, harnessing all my daytime energy for laundry and other chores. For once I felt proud of the effort instead of frustrated, which made me cheerful when Crankenstein got home. We had a good hour, maybe, before ‘Niles’ gatecrashed the evening and my face hurt for hours afterward.
Now it’s 2:05 am and I’ve eked out three underwhelming paragraphs in four hours. In another four hours Muriel’s breakfast cries will begin and unless Crankenstein gets up with her it’ll be another day like today, right down to the Freddy vs. Jason showdown between ‘Niles’ and Parkinson’s. I’m sick of it. I know Crankenstein’s sick of it, too, but she’s been asleep for over three hours now and her glabella looks enviably serene.
* Dr. Google is less qualified than Dr Pepper but marginally more reputable than Malachi Love-Robinson.
** The only time she’s mentioned Syn-One so far was to say (two years ago) that the jury’s still out on how accurate — and therefore useful — it really is.
04.20.25: Happy Easter to those who celebrate. Crankenstein, our resident believer, was without seasonal candy today, an egregious error I’ll try to rectify tomorrow in deference to the hallowed religious tradition of honoring one’s faith, not only through worship and principled living and acts of devotion but via consumption of jellybeans and chocolate bunnies. Her vacation concludes tonight and then it’ll be back to the grindstone for both of us, though it remains unclear (to me and probably to you) what I actually do all day.
My goals for this week are to review another movie, write a few longer posts here, reorganize the pantry, and create new schedules: one for the workweek and another for the weekend. Looking ahead to later this month or early May, there’s probably going to be more Reba McEntire chatter due to the free Kindle Unlimited trial I just started. My reason for signing up was to gain access to a tawdry true crime story I wanted to read before watching its TV movie adaptation. But to make the most of the trial, I looked around for other books to borrow as well and found Reba’s Not That Fancy: Simple Lessons on Living, Loving, Eating, and Dusting Off Your Boots, a collection of homespun wisdom (and recipes) published shortly before Christmas of 2023.
“When my mama died, I didn’t know if I wanted to keep on singing,” its introduction began, and that’s when I started collecting quotes to share here or in future Reba-centric reviews. As I look at the list of similarly silly projects on my running list of unfinished posts — including the worst marital advice from a Suzanne Somers book, every Kathleen Wilhoite insult from Murphy’s Law, the resumption of the Susan Lucci book club series that I paused over at Cranky following her husband’s death, and observations on the musical stylings of Tammy Faye Messner and Grant Goodeve — a few zany crossover opportunities appeared.
One is viable enough that I’ll keep it up my sleeve for now, but the other requires technical skills I lack: manipulating the audio so it sounds like Reba’s behind those Murphy’s Law jibes. It would only amuse five people worldwide (or three besides me and Crankenstein), but who wouldn’t want to hear her folksy delivery of colorful ’80s insults like “Suck a doorknob, you homo!” and “Kiss my pantyhose, sperm bank!”, each slur punctuated by her sassy signature Reba theme song chortle? That is why the Internet exists, pornography and cat memes be damned.
04.19.25: Predictably, Jeļena Ostapenko’s mastery of Iga Świątek continued today, and the longer the streak continues — Ostapenko has won all six of their professional clashes — the more I question whether Andy Kaufman scripted their rivalry before his death. Their encounters, which feel interminable even when they’re brief, are so excruciatingly awkward and peculiarly anticlimactic that you aren’t sure whether you’re being entertained or tortured. Adding insult to injury, this was only a quarterfinal — I hadn’t watched any previous matches and wrongly assumed today’s was a semi since those often fall on Saturdays. After grimacing my way through that groaner, I’m not sure tomorrow’s semis will be a priority.
04.18.25: I’m checking in from bed, where I’m about to try falling asleep at a reasonable hour. For much of the past few years that’s meant staring at a darkened ceiling for several hours and listening to Crankenstein sleep while my muscles do strange things. That happens in the daytime, too — the strange things, not the sleep sounds — including this morning, when my left foot felt glued to the floor.
“I’m not sure it’s freezing,” I told Crankenstein, demonstrating how easy it was to lift the right in comparison. Freezing of gait is a common Parkinson’s symptom and I’ve deliberately not read much about it, probably to maintain plausible deniability — if only to myself — since it’s a leading cause of falls and I’ve had a few of those in situations where freezing often occurs.
Later in the day, after I’d done some light yard work and Crankenstein woke up from her post-church nap, I stood before her and exaggeratedly lifted my left leg. “Impressive, eh? See, it’s better now.”
She asked whether I’d been ‘off’ earlier (yes) and if I was currently ‘on’ (also yes) and kept whatever thoughts she might’ve had about it to herself. We had another Kathleen Turner movie to watch and Parkinson’s was but a minor annoyance compared to Michael Douglas.
This won’t be proofread until tomorrow and I still need to edit last night’s sloppy post, too. There should be time to do that during the Świątek-Ostapenko semi at Stuttgart; their matches are usually such bloodbaths that Świątek fans have to look away.
04.16.25: The combined efforts of ZzzQuil and James Michener netted me just over four hours of sleep last night. As the cumulative toll of sleep deprivation mounts, it feels like I’m backed into a corner and must choose each day between being physically or mentally functional; there’s not enough gas in the tank for both. It’s a sadder version of the Deneuve dilemma and today I chose ‘physical.’* If ‘mental’ wins tomorrow, I’ll probably be gabbier here.
* Catherine Deneuve famously posited that “A 30-year-old woman must choose between her bottom and her face.” Since my visage and derrière were never anything to write home about, I didn’t struggle with that dilemma. But Deneuve made the right decision in preserving her face.
04.15.25: Let’s lead with a little excitement — and I do mean a little, unless you’re a mycology enthusiast like Crankenstein, who was thrilled by my discovery yesterday of true morels. It happened by chance: I noticed them while wandering and sent her a photo. She giddily sliced one open as soon as she got home and found it hollow. Beaming, she shared a morchella maxim: “if it’s hollow, you can swallow!” It was nice to have a ‘Niles’-free interaction with her about fungi, a sentiment that’s as bizarre to type as it probably was to read.
We kicked off her customary Holy Week vacation today with a different type of foraging, browsing the bins at the neighborhood record shop and laughing at the price tags: $40 for new vinyl copies of old albums and an eye-watering $150 for a Talking Heads: 77 limited edition pressing from last year that must be made of solid gold. I brought along some old DVDs and sold about 90% of them, pocketing a wad of cash, and confirmed a hunch that I’ll make out better on the Blu-rays by arranging swaps with other collectors.
You’ll notice a few oddities thrown in there, including Poison Ivy: The Secret Society, the fourth in that ridiculous series. That’s because I watched the sequels and took notes and screenshots after publishing my review of the original, but those write-ups are earmarked for a non-Cranky feature about the intersection of direct-to-video thrillers (particularly so-called ‘erotic thrillers’) and made-for-cable movies. Nothing’s stranger than Gidget: The Complete Series, which an Australian company accidentally sent me last week instead of Mary Tyler Moore’s Finnegan Begin Again. The record store had no use for Gidget and neither do I, but maybe the library will take it for one of their movie sale fundraisers.
One we were done there, Crankenstein and I walked around in search of lunch, eventually stopping at a Mexican restaurant where she ordered portobello mushroom tacos and I got a burrito bowl. There are times when medication and luck can get me close enough to normal that I begin to question, if only for a couple hours, whether I really have YOPD; or maybe I’ll concede that I do but reason it’s not that bad. This lunch was like a splash of cold water right in my expressionless face, taunting me at every turn.
The first problem was the seating: high stools everywhere, no lower chairs or benches. I was able to clear that hurdle and then my drink arrived, 90% ice and 10% beverage, glass filled to the brim and no straws available. That meant I could only take tiny careful sips, which was more trouble than it was worth; the risk of spilling and sloshing was too high because of my tremor.* Our appetizer platter of tortilla chips and an array of guacamole, pico de gallo, and cheese dip, was delicious, but I had to nibble sparingly since food and pills get lodged in my chest. (Regular potato chips can make it through if thoroughly chewed, but anything harder and heavier, like tortilla chips or kettle chips, causes pain and discomfort. Oh, how I miss jalapeño-flavored Krunchers.)
It was a fun outing nonetheless, followed by a stroll to an ethnic grocer and a stop by Aldi, where I picked up a peanut buttery treat we sampled during Ruthless People, which Crankenstein chose for tonight’s viewing. Now it’s past my bedtime and everything else I meant to mention will have to wait. Gidget’s still in the crate, along with the rest of the record store rejects, if anyone wants to stay up late and watch it with Muriel.**
* None of those are barriers to having a good time. I’ll stash a straw in my purse from now on, ask waiters to go easy on the ice, and scope out seating ahead of time when dining someplace new.
04.14.25: Some things never change: We watched V.I. Warshawski tonight and its score made me laugh as much as ever. Crankenstein, who is obviously a woman of impeccable taste if we consider her choice of spouse, enjoyed Kathleen Turner’s foul-mouthed fisticuffs and was sad the film didn’t spawn a franchise. “Maybe it’s not too late…” she mused, but who could fill Turner’s high heels? She had the gams and gumption of a pre-Code heroine or a ’40s femme fatale, cinematic gifts that were rare by the 1980s.* I’ll have to give a modern Warshawski recasting some thought but no one immediately sprang to mind for either of us.
Another thing that hasn’t changed is my sleeplessness, which is why I was AWOL last night — sorry about that — and don’t have enough time to cover my accidental weekend nap during The Hammer, a Reba McEntire Lifetime movie (currently on Tubi). If I don’t finish a proper post tomorrow I’ll do an odds-and-ends roundup that covers, among other frivolities, my “Stop! Hammer Time!” nap; another round of waking Crankenstein up (twice in one night, unfortunately) with my REM sleep behavior disorder shouting; the probable conclusion of a long and grueling search to replace the backpack that’s rarely left my side over the last 10 years; more sleep strategizing; and how we plan to spend the vacation time Crankenstein usually takes during Holy Week.
* Until Ellen Barkin came along, the ‘broad’ market was mostly Turner’s. Dangerous dames made a major comeback in the early 1990s, but that Neo-noir revival was quickly overcrowded by silicone-heavy Cinemax offerings and never completely fulfilled its promise; for every ferocious Linda Fiorentino, there were 10 more Shannon Tweeds. Incidentally, I recently saw that Fiorentino is almost 70 and it tied my brain in bigger knots than Parkinson’s.
04.12.25: Hawaii it is! I was up until 4:30 am, a trend that needs to stop, and the library’s James A. Michener e-books were all checked out. Papa was a Michener man — we’ll return to that after this strange detour — and I could’ve taken those paperbacks and Book Club Editions decades ago but didn’t because of his serial defacement of books, magazines, and newspapers. My grandfather had unfortunately inherited his father’s obsessive-compulsive tendencies and had all kinds of phobias and strange habits.* An avid reader since boyhood, he’d developed a word game early in life that necessitated underlining or circling particular letters or phrases, which he did in blue or black ink.
As if that wasn’t horrifying enough — what kind of monster destroys books in such a manner?! — the game also had a scoring system since he was obsessed with numbers. This meant he didn’t just defile the text, he also scribbled numbers in the margins. He didn’t do it to every book he owned. Your nicer hardcover editions were generally left alone, especially those by authors Grandma also liked. Anything he considered disposable — newspapers, magazines, mass market paperbacks and BCEs he knew he wouldn’t reread — was fair game.** Michener, like Mario Puzo, Michael Crichton, Robin Cook, and John le Carré, wrote “airport novels” that fell into that category, so I avoided his copies of their work and read the John Grisham books he kept clean for Grandma.
While thinking about Papa’s Michener paperbacks, which probably ended up in a landfill, and my lack of e-book success, I remembered deleting an e-mail last month about unused Audible credits and pulled up the app. My first choice, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Tales of the South Pacific, wasn’t available. But my backup picks — Alaska, Chesapeake, Hawaii, Poland, and Texas — were, so I compared the lengths of each production to help stretch the credit’s value. This eliminated Poland, which was around 30 hours long. Everything else was in the 50 to 60 range and I finally settled on Hawaii because I’d like to live there for a few months, which is something ‘Niles’ won’t allow Crankenstein to do.^
If I’m restless again tonight, I’ll slip on some headphones and test whether Michener’s a better sleep aid than melatonin.
* That was passed down to some of his grandkids, though it manifested differently in everyone.
** Their World Book Encyclopedias were off-limits, along with a neighboring dictionary, and we spent many afternoons playing a game where I’d turn to any page of any volume, or pick any word in the dictionary, and quiz him. He’d read it all cover-to-cover and had a phenomenal memory, but their encyclopedias were from the 1960s and occasionally contained information (about the solar system, for example) that was outdated by the ’90s. This sometimes caused arguments that weren’t always easy to settle in the pre-Internet days.
^ Like all surly loners, I romanticize Alaska. But I read Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild at an impressionable age and am willing to romanticize its wilderness from a safe distance. I’d love to visit and spend at least part of the trip on a guided tour, which might put ‘Niles’ more at ease if Crankenstein came along.
04.11.25: Last night’s sleep — all four hours of it — didn’t arrive until five o’clock this morning. Now it’s almost midnight and my brain’s moving as haltingly as my left leg. Since the neurologist’s suggestions haven’t resulted in lasting change so far, maybe it’s time to take matters into my own hands and see if the library has any 1,500-page James A. Michener e-books available to check out. That might be more helpful than melatonin.
04.10.25: Today was much the same as yesterday, but without a refreshing nap. Crankenstein did something funny, though, and started a new group chat called “And Then There Were Three.” The original group was “All of the Women,” until Tom kicked me out and Crankenstein and Youngest Sister left; at that point, Tom and our mother were its only participants. Then another was started with everyone but Tom, called “The Women” or something like that. That group’s in tatters now that communication has temporarily broken down between Youngest Sister and our mom, so Crankenstein formed a third and we’ll see whether this one survives.
All of this upheaval makes us feel out-of-touch. We just want to share stupid links and memes in peace, see photos of our nieces and nephew with spaghetti-sauce-smeared faces, and laugh at the dumbest things that made the two-year-old cry today. “Asked for crackers, received crackers, immediately burst into scream-sobs” was a recent favorite. There’s a joke in here somewhere about Tom getting what she wanted and scream-crying in response, but my face hurts too much to look for it.
04.09.25: Would a stage direction of “sputters incoherently while gesticulating wildly” suffice in lieu of a description of how my day went? There was nothing unusual about it until this afternoon, when I dozed off with Muriel after too many sleepless nights in a row. My phone’s text notifications had been silenced and my watch was charging on the coffee table, so I was blissfully unaware of the shit-show (as the Internet would call it) that had just erupted between Youngest Sister and our parents. That changed as soon as I woke up and saw all the messages I’d missed.
What I wanted to do after skimming a few previews was throw my phone into a large body of water, but all that was handy was a half-empty 16 oz. reusable water bottle. Impassioned pleas of “Can’t you all stop fighting long enough for me to finish the two posts I’ve been working on for 900 years about how dysfunctional our family is?” weren’t feasible either, for obvious reasons. Once I’d gotten some fresh air and given it enough thought to realize I wasn’t entirely sure what my thoughts were, I started writing here to try to work my way through it.
I’m going to wait a day or two before finishing it, in case anything (including my exasperation) changes. Tonight I decompressed by watching The War of the Roses with Crankenstein, who was again captivated by Kathleen Turner’s insanity. Stress is notoriously bad for Parkinson’s, with worsening of tremor a common result; that happens to me and my facial muscles also painfully tighten. I’ve never been an “avoid stress at all costs” advocate, even when it comes to health: stress is a normal part of life and learning how to handle it, minimize it, and occasionally even embrace it is essential to building emotional maturity and resilience. But the PD response to stress is mostly automatic and I’m beginning to feel pangs of resentment every time my face hurts because of my parents’ staunch refusal to actually parent. It’s not a War of the Roses-level resentment, though. None of us have chandeliers that grand.
04.08.25: The first thing Crankenstein said to me when she came downstairs today was “Good morning!” The second was “I would wear that!” (Presumably she meant the fire-breathing feminist dragon shirt, not one that says ‘Daddy.’)
There isn’t enough time left for another ramblefest like last night’s, which is just as well since I’d probably give myself an aneurysm if I started in on today’s tariff lunacy. And I’ve not felt too chatty, anyway, since encountering a poignant reminder of Joe earlier. Muriel and I watched The China Syndrome yesterday and Jane Fonda’s tears and Wilford Brimley’s mustache made me feel moderately better about the state of the world, which is depressing considering the film’s subject matter. Maybe if I’m glum again tomorrow we’ll watch a laugh riot like They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?, though it might be too on-the-nose in light of current events.
04.07.25: This was another of those semi-lost days that results from lack of sleep and a spotty response to levodopa. Nothing I did — housework, minor office rearranging, solar shenanigans, working on a post that’s still in progress, or avoiding a tumble near the bottom of the basement stairs — was done easily or done well. But I was able to stay awake, which gives me a better shot at sleeping tonight, something Crankenstein and I would both appreciate since my overnight restlessness hasn’t gone unnoticed by her even though she’s a deep sleeper.
Speaking of Crankenstein, she recently got rid of some old t-shirts and I wanted to get her a couple new ones to wear as pajamas or when she goes running. A t-shirt with a raccoon cartoon captioned “Strawberry Jams But My Glock Don’t” was easy enough to find for something like $12 shipped. A “Three Possums Howling at the Moon” shirt attractive enough to meet my standards wasn’t available through sellers that looked sufficiently reputable, so I’ve spent the last couple weeks searching for an acceptable design of a silly fire-breathing dragon cartoon with a caption like “Feminism” or “Burn the Patriarchy.”
In her college days, young Crankenstein would’ve worn such a shirt earnestly; I know this because I’ve seen the “Venus Envy” and “Queer” tees she owned back then. Now, though still a feminist, she’s more interested in dragons, but that’s neither here nor there. So many novelty t-shirt peddlers license (and rip off) the same designs that I’ve probably browsed eight online storefronts and passed, unimpressed by their feedback. Today I looked at one that seemed like it might be promising — until I investigated the rest of its wares.
The store’s theme is pride of all sorts, which would’ve meant a few rainbow or pink triangle shirts in a bygone era, and maybe pitcher or catcher jokes on baseball jerseys. Now it must encompass all the slogan-based identities that kids with facial piercings and colorful clown hair assemble with help from TikTok, lest strangers at the grocery store not appreciate their uniqueness or feel moved by their bravery (for few groups are more marginalized and persecuted in modern society than people with limited attention spans who aren’t sure they’re interested in sex).
After clicking through a few pages of listings, I wasn’t sure whether this shop was a parody or an elaborate social experiment. It features shirts celebrating asthma warriors and pansexual pride; innuendo-filled lesbian garb that probably mostly appeals to straight girls and AGP fetishists (real lesbians rarely wear shirts with references to penises or oral sex, nor do we lustily call each other ‘Daddy’ or ‘Mommy,’ but straight women and biological men coopting our sexual identity surely do); shirts touting one’s trifecta of autism, anxiety, and ADHD; pleas for acceptance of ambulatory wheelchair users; and even designs announcing one’s irritable bowel syndrome.
But it was when I got to the first of several pro-Palestine shirts that my mood shifted from “For crying out loud…” to a baffled Gary Colemanesque “What’choo talkin’ ’bout, Willis?” — and for reasons that have little to do with the Israel-Palestine conflict and everything to do with gay rights in the Middle East. My search for a seller whose inventory doesn’t contain pandering “ADHD Burnout Club” clothes; “Anxious Aroace” nonsense (that’s aromantic and asexual, if you’re fortunate enough not to know); Tourette syndrome shout-outs; various gluten-free sentiments; references to joint subluxations; cutesy crap that infantilizes autism; or sentiments like “Personally Victimized by Capitalism” will sadly continue.*
Some of those shirts would make great white elephant gifts for Crankenstein’s coworkers, though, since they outrage self-diagnosed teenagers every week by telling them they don’t have those conditions and don’t need wheelchairs.**
* First of all, you’ve personally victimized yourself in a capitalistic way by spending disposable income on overpriced shirts that moan about capitalism. Second, awareness-raising shirts are fine, but they’re typically meant to draw attention to particular conditions or charitable organizations, not the person wearing it. How many people who have autism, Tourette syndrome or other conditions that cause significant problems in their social lives, want to advertise it to their fellow Walmart shoppers? The self-diagnosed-via-online-quiz types who buy these shirts would resort to their usual cries of “That’s internalized ableism!” But it isn’t inherently ableist to not want to be defined by the things that make you different or the challenges you’ve overcome, and to suggest otherwise is offensive.
** So much for writing about Clem Burke tonight, which I meant to do after reading Blondie’s announcement about his death this morning. Blondie is one of my favorite bands and Burke was one of my favorite drummers (my all-time favorite was probably Keith Moon); Blondie wouldn’t be Blondie without him. Most obituaries will focus on Parallel Lines, a masterpiece that’s built atop his beat. But Eat to the Beat’s “Dreaming,” “Atomic,” and “Union City Blue” contain some of his finest work. If you’re a fan, listen to “Dreaming” on its own sometime, and then to his isolated drums. (His “Atomic” drumming is crazier, but “Dreaming” is the better song.) Clem Burke and his talent will be sorely missed.
04.06.25: Putting this on the record now, before I log off for the night: If I read one more “Be greedy when others are fearful” or “The time to buy is when there’s blood in the streets” or “I hope it falls even harder so I can load up…”, I’ll be a hairsbreadth away from an angry Clark Griswold “Hallelujah! Holy shit!” rant. Anyone who wants the sort of economic pain a global trade war would unleash so they can buy a few more shares of their favorite meme stocks or ETFs should be ashamed of themselves. And because they’re usually younger and less experienced investors, they should also take a long hard look at their own finances before committing too much of their spare cash to a market that will be at risk of extreme volatility under this administration for years to come.
I’m hardly the Oracle of Omaha and wouldn’t suggest anyone follow my advice, so I’m not going to give very much of it. Crankenstein and I are conservative investors who are decades away from touching our retirement funds, and we don’t sink anything into taxable brokerage accounts that we anticipate needing within the next five to 10 years. As boring stay-the-course types who fully anticipated this administration — rife as it is with idiocy, malevolent incompetence, and naked contempt for our country’s founding principles — would tank the economy at least once, if not repeatedly, we’ve steeled ourselves for uncertainty and the possibility of tough times ahead. But we’ve also continued to invest monthly, with no plans to stop (as long as we can afford it).
What rattles me is that the people I personally know who are likeliest to be severely wounded by recessions and trade wars are the same types currently dismissing any possibility of calamity or rubbing their hands together excitedly at the thought of great buying opportunities on the horizon. They don’t realize whatever investing success they’ve had since the pandemic, which left them with more time (and cash) on their hands than usual, was due to a bull market and crazy overvaluations of some of their favorite stocks (like TSLA). They don’t understand how cash-strapped their families will be, or how quickly it will happen, if the proverbial shit hits the fan. And they surely don’t grasp how long it might take their stock picks to recover, assuming they manage to avoid investing in WallStreetBets junk that disappears entirely.
Some of them expect this will be business as usual: another insanely destructive Trump tantrum that he quickly walks back after touting meaningless tariff ‘wins’ with countries that have little impact on our bottom line, followed by a swift recovery. I’m not in the prognostication game when it comes to that because I don’t see how any of it matters when the people in charge are this stupid and corrupt. We’re in for four years of incoherent policy and general chaos, so any disaster averted is just part of a game of kick-the-can. Whether or not to be greedy is a decision every investor will have to make for themselves, but I’d urge them to feel at least a token amount of fear either way.
04.05.25: There’s still some rust to shake off over at Cranky, as anyone who read the new Two Mothers for Zachary review probably noticed. But practice allegedly makes perfect, so I’ll keep going and see what happens. And I’ll probably add another paragraph or two to the “…But wait, there’s more!” section within the next week, one that briefly mentions how terrifying custody disputes used to be for gay and bisexual parents — including Non-Racist Aunt.*
With Zachary out of the way, I’m going to rest my brain for the remainder of the night; it overheated a few times while finishing that review and needs to cool down. Tomorrow I’ll undoubtedly find a few mortifying typos that make me wish I’d held off on posting it, but getting it done today was a meaningful accomplishment and will free me to write something longer here in the coming days.
* In fairness to a third aunt, Brandon and Keith’s mom, she isn’t racist, either. But you’re expected to not be racist on that side of the family, while it’s more of a bonus feature with my dad’s family.
04.04.25: It’s technically 4/5 as I write this, as it’s 1:03 am, and I’m checking in to say that despite giving it all my today and staying up later than I should’ve tonight, my review won’t be ready until tomorrow. It’s 95% done but needs more polishing. Unsurprisingly, given all the One Day at a Time my mom subjected me to in the ’90s, my favorite joke is either an insensitive one about Bonnie Franklin or this idiotic caption:
04.03.25: Almost 24 hours later, those books still need reshelving. After my fifth or sixth near-fall today, some dumber and more dangerous than others (again I’m tempted to belt Rufus Wainwright’s line about slightly mysterious bruises), I traded housework for pursuits less likely to result in physical injury and spent several hours working on my next review.* Finishing it before April 6th would mean a lot to me, despite its overarching silliness, because April 6th, 2024 was the last time I posted a telefilm review.
It’s hard to retrospectively pinpoint when producing these simple articles became such an arduous task, but I remember feeling bothered and bewildered when it took an obscene amount of time to finish a writeup of Stoned, a typical flimsy Afterschool Special that wasn’t even an hour long. A look at the Cranky archives shows that was in January of 2023, so concentration’s been an issue for at least two years now and possibly longer. The investment of time and focus this hobby required began to frustrate Crankenstein, which compounded the irritation I already felt as it became harder to think and write, two things I’d always taken for granted.
What a year without reviewing has solidified for me, though the conclusion was never in doubt, is that time (and how we spend it) is one of our biggest marital flashpoints. As I either mentioned or alluded to in a previous post about relationship gardeners and flowers, Crankenstein feels more entitled to mine than she’d ever permit anyone to feel about hers. This isn’t a controversial opinion — she often jokes about it by indulging her inner Chrissie Hynde and singing “I gotta have some of your attention, give it to me!” in a gleefully menacing manner.** What changed is my response to it.
I accepted this availability mismatch earlier in our relationship, largely due to the pretense that things would change once the rigors of residency and fellowship were behind us; now I reject it (and laugh at my own stupidity for believing it in the first place). More corrosively, I become resentful of her resentment as soon as I can sense she’s upset about my divided attention. Earlier tonight, as we inched toward the precipice of the same arguments that regularly flared when I devoted more time to Cranky, I gave up on trying to write — for the evening, not forever — and redirected my attention to readying screenshots for the upcoming review and tidying the older reviews it will reference; this allowed us to engage more with each other.
She’ll repay the favor next time around, either as a compromise (something we’re fairly practical about) or after I threaten to make her watch movies about artificial insemination, amnesiacs with sinister spouses, and baby-snatching.
* That’s an unusually high number and it all happened by late morning or early afternoon. The problem was that I could barely lift my left foot off the ground. Other than that and the usual left arm nonsense, everything was as fine as it gets.
** She also sings it in her Muriel voice when Muriel demands our attention.
04.02.25: Today was a great day physically, which doesn’t happen often, and I worked on rearranging my office for longer than expected. Now it’s almost midnight, the room is still in disarray, and my thoughts aren’t any more organized than the stacks of books I need to reshelve. For almost an hour I’ve tried to make something happen here, typing and deleting, rearranging and deleting. The only thing I came up with is this:
It occurs to me that I should probably go back and correct last night’s entry to clarify that my dad’s ancestors have probably suffered in silence since time immemorial; “there was a lot of that for a couple generations” refers specifically to the suffering associated with the cancer mutation. To give you an idea of the scope of this genetic scourge, it has stricken a double-digit number of my dad’s aunts, uncles, and cousins — and now some of his cousins’ children have added to the count.
From there I wanted to mention how terrible my dad is at the kind of stoicism his family practiced (he’s rather more anxious than they were), but I couldn’t get it right. Then there was a failed attempt to reminisce about how my dad, in his twenties and thirties, used to huff that his family was healthy, and his genes were superior to my mom’s, when they bickered like 14-year-olds about why I was sick. The cruel implication was that Papa’s MS and Brandon’s CP were proof of her genetic inferiority, when in fact neither had a genetic condition.*
To write about that in a way that’s funny requires more alacrity than I currently possess, but his certitude was a laugh riot; the only thing his family’s richer in than cancer is mental illness and alcoholism.** Of course, he knew nothing of the mutation then and was still grappling with the pall those other issues had cast over his adolescence, which was when he started to realize there was something wrong with his dad and some of his uncles. But the biggest knee-slapper was still to come: my parents arguing over why Felix was mentally ill.
* They were never curious enough about IBD to read about it, which bothered me when I was a kid but was probably for the best. Had my father known Ashkenazi ancestry is a major risk factor, he never would’ve let her hear the end of it; that’s how immature they were at the time.
** His parents’ generation wouldn’t have laughed at that, but Dad and his cousins can crack jokes about it now.
04.01.25: No post tonight because Crankenstein and I have plans, but I’ll be back tomorrow.*
* Plans wouldn’t normally stop me from stringing a couple paragraphs together but the time I would’ve spent doing that was consumed by a call from my mom. She said “I’ve been thinking about my girl and wondering how you’re doing” about 17 times, and I assured her I’m fine. Then she spent 20 minutes (rightfully) complaining that my dad doesn’t take his health seriously enough and 20 minutes cataloguing the surgeries our Jewish relatives have either recently scheduled or were concerned they might need to schedule.
It would’ve taken twice as long when my grandparents, their siblings, and Papa’s hypochondriac mother (and her 32 equally hypochondriacal siblings) were still alive, but their ranks have thinned to only one survivor. On my dad’s side of the family, which was full of Methodist farmers and a smattering of Presbyterians, you were only supposed to see a doctor right before — or preferably after — you died of painful conditions that might’ve been treatable if not for your stoicism. There was a lot of that for a couple generations, until a few of my dad’s cousins all got cancer around the same time and a curious doctor ordered testing that identified a genetic mutation they had in common. My dad waited a long time to get tested; he didn’t want to know his status. He finally saw a geneticist a couple years ago, after much badgering from his wife and daughters, and didn’t have the mutation.
03.31.25: Since January, February and March were washouts, I’ve decided that April should be the month of the Cranky comeback. I worked on that this evening (the daytime was devoted to housework) but don’t want to say much more since previous attempts to get back in the saddle went nowhere. This time I’m trying a clean slate approach — new movie, new writing — in an attempt to build momentum, rather than stubbornly returning to old drafts that have already stymied me for too long. Whether it’ll work is anyone’s guess, and whether it’s a worthy use of the mental resources it consumes is up for debate, but I really miss writing about movies.
With that in mind, I could leave you tonight with a comprehensive list of insults Kathleen Wilhoite hurled at Charles Bronson and others in Murphy’s Law, but some of it’s so vulgar (and the rest is so puerile) that I can’t in good conscience dump it all here without context; it would be too rude. Instead, here’s a photo of the Blu-rays and 4K discs that need to be filed away now that I’ve cleared more space in the closet. Four of these are Crankenstein’s and they probably stick out like sore thumbs.*
March is an exceptionally discount-heavy month for movies, with yearly 3-for-2 deals at some stores and 50% sales at others. (My buying preference is for used media but it isn’t always cheaper, particularly for limited editions and imports.) Other than Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot, which was needed for my collection of Sylvester Stallone masterpieces, this was a respectable haul and some of its cost will be covered by the sale of older discs.**
* Crankenstein got Sleepy Hollow, Mulan, Inside Out 2 and Hocus Pocus. The older three of those are films she looks for on streaming services once or more each year and can’t always find.
** Kino’s spring sale didn’t start until last week or some equally lamentable Burt Reynolds bombs available on Blu-ray for under $10 each (Skullduggery, Stick, Paternity) would be in the photo. Also, Fanatic, which is near the bottom of the stack, is better known to US audiences as Die! Die! My Darling!, with Tallulah Bankhead and Stefanie Powers. I’d be remiss not to bellow in my grandfather’s fashion that Stefania Federkiewicz was Powers’ actual name, or would’ve been had her Jewish father’s surname not been changed to Paul.
03.30.25: This was a nice weekend, one that didn’t pass too quickly to fully enjoy, and I was able to catch the second set of the men’s Miami Open final just now while doing some digital housekeeping here and at Cranky. I’m still easing my way back into tennis and expect things will get worse before they get better (the season begins in January and typically concludes in November), but what little I saw of this tournament was refreshing even though Alcaraz and Świątek continue to struggle. Two 19-year-olds, Jakub Menšík of Czechia and Alex Eala of the Philippines, provided most of the excitement, with Menšík capturing his first career title tonight against Novak Djokovic, who looked gassed throughout.
Eala, a wild card entry ranked 140th in the world, ousted three Grand Slam winners — Ostapenko, Keys and Świątek — on her way to the semis, where Pegula sent her packing. The American was, as usual, cannon fodder for Aryna Sabalenka in the final, but we’re left with something to look forward to in May, when Eala makes her main draw debut at Roland-Garros. As for Świątek, my gut feeling is she struggles with change and there’s already been way too much of it for her this year. We’ll save that spiel for the upcoming clay court swing, but I hope she can keep it together and give new coach Wim Fissette a fair shake; a premature split might only cause additional setbacks.
Other weekend goings-on included an afternoon date with Crankenstein; a Saturday night screening of The Man with Two Brains (which earned her seal of approval); and some light garage organization. There was renewed weather suspense involving Youngest Sister’s family, which was one of the reasons for my grousing about Tom last night, but they were given a reprieve this morning when the forecast improved. I also realized while organizing a pile of receipts that I’d forgotten about a major expense in a recent post about back pay: my aligners. The first trays will arrive within the next couple weeks and now I can replace what I’d pulled from our savings to cover it, which is a relief.
Poor time management means I have to wrap this up, but there’s a Charles Bronson movie that I need to write about this week: Murphy’s Law, which is possibly exiting Tubi tomorrow. It’s essential viewing for anyone who loves terrible ’80s action flicks, casual homophobia, or Carrie Snodgress committing a string of bizarre murders while wearing wigs and pumping iron. Less importantly, there’s the matter of Jason Statham’s The Beekeeper, a 2024 film that I was unaware of until this weekend. Does he use the bees as weapons? Might he don a turban? At the very least, it’s worth investigating whether Gloria Swanson should be Photoshopped into any Beekeeper stills.
03.28.25: It took another few hours and no small amount of suffering — in correcting yesterday’s final console assembly gaffe, I managed to screw up again — but this was the sight that greeted Crankenstein when she arrived home today. I’m not thrilled with the final product, which looks approximately as cheap it was; it arrived with a few dings to the front and is a lighter ‘walnut’ than expected. But it’s fine overall, and we can eventually replace it with something smaller and darker that matches the speakers should we decide to keep it on the main floor of the house.
My hands were too clumsy for setting up the turntable or dealing with wires, which Crankenstein can help with later. Since we still haven’t received my grandfather’s records, I’ll have to dig out some of my own. What might Crankenstein want to listen to first? Judy Garland? Laura Branigan? Bette Midler? Kenny Rogers? Sheena Easton’s Take My Time? If it hadn’t perished circa 2015 during a horrific storm, she’d eagerly reach for Sleater-Kinney’s All Hands on the Bad One, which I’d preordered in 2000 and listened to countless times as a teenager.
There’d been a portent of doom earlier that day, when I unexpectedly heard from Former Partner, so it seemed appropriate when the sky turned black — as dark as I’d ever seen it in the daytime — and meteorological violence commenced. When I got home that evening, the basement was damp; a power outage had allowed the sump pit to overflow. Crankenstein was on her way over for a date and made dinner, including roasted asparagus, while I tended to the basement, setting up box fans and a dehumidifier and preparing to yank up the carpeting.
The basement, like the rest of the house, was nearly empty, and the few items I kept there were elevated in case of plumbing disaster. But a plastic milk crate full of records, some mine and some Ex’s, had been low enough and close enough to the sump closet to sustain minor to moderate damage. After she’d abruptly left town during the biggest and most explosive BPD episode she’d had up to that point, I figured Ex would cool down and return once she was satisfied she’d made her point. When that didn’t happen I packed and shipped the many belongings she’d left behind, along with anything else I thought she might need.
She hadn’t wanted her albums but I couldn’t bring myself to throw them out; she’d been so deliberate in her own teenage selections, patiently sorting through trash to find treasure during a time when she had few possessions of her own. Had she ever really enjoyed listening to Shonen Knife or Lydia Lunch? (Shonen Knife, maybe, but does anyone enjoy listening to Lydia Lunch?) The answer was irrelevant; the music was less important than what it represented, and the carefully curated eclecticism of her modest collection was achingly poignant.
My teenage vinyl wasn’t as pretentious as hers — I saved that for books and movies. There was a tattered copy of The Motown Story, a five-LP set that cost $5 used; some of the Gilbert and Sullivan that Papa insisted I listen to; and comedy records by Nichols and May, Woody Allen and Mort Sahl. Most of it’s freely accessible online now, so I probably won’t rebuild that collection. But if Crankenstein’s not in the mood for my eldergay music, we own at least one (double!) album by a Jewish comedian: Gilbert Gottfried’s Still Screaming.
This curiosity (he was generally opposed to recording his act) was purchased last year, even though we didn’t have a turntable then, to support his widow’s fundraising cause. Ten minutes of his vulgar screeching might make Crankenstein wish we still had a sump pit, but we also know from personal experience that she has an unusually high tolerance for obnoxious Jews.
03.27.25: You’d have to ask Crankenstein how many times I murmured “Almost done…” earlier without actually finishing what I was working on, but four or five sounds about right. The stereo console had looked easy enough to assemble when it was unpacked, but spatial reasoning continues to torment me in ways I sincerely find disturbing. My skills in that area were never too sharp, as anyone who ever saw me try to parallel park could attest (legend has it I married Crankenstein specifically because of her parking prowess). But over the past year or two it’s declined enough that even putting together simple shelves can overtax my brain enough to make steam come out of my ears.
Tonight’s progress was especially plodding because I worried that major missteps might be difficult to reverse without cosmetically damaging the boards. A couple of minor missteps were caught and corrected by the time of my final “Almost done…”, and victory was so close I could taste it. That’s when I realized that the board I’d just fastened was upside-down. By then I’d been at it for hours, so engrossed in trying to complete it by dinnertime — the original goal — that I hadn’t noticed when dinnertime came and went. As usual, I wanted to keep going, but what was the point? My movement was even slower and clumsier than my thinking, and I was hungry and needed more levodopa, and Crankenstein wanted to watch the latest Abbott Elementary on Hulu.
Strangely, this site also came to mind. Did I want to have to write another post about my stubbornness consuming much more time and energy than was needed to finish the task? “All right, this can wait until tomorrow,” I announced, gathering pieces of Styrofoam padding and stashing the remaining screws and fasteners in a Muriel-safe location. Crankenstein’s expression — equal parts impatience with my slowness (and stubbornness) and relieved we were moving on with our night — reminded me of the examiner who accompanied me on the driving test to get my license. The final skill she asked me to demonstrate was parallel parking, which I would’ve spent the next 90 minutes doggedly attempting to do if she hadn’t curtly stopped me about 88 minutes short of that to say “OK, you can stop. You’ve already passed.”
* Felix and I watched Billy Madison many times together in middle school and I strongly felt the license examiner wanted to say, “Ms. [Cranky], what you have just done is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever seen. At no point in your rambling, incoherent attempt at parking were you even close to being parallel with anything. Everyone in this car is now dumber for having witnessed it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.”
03.26.25: We received the judge’s decision in the mail today and it was long and boring. So far I’ve only skimmed it — it seemed clear enough after the hearing what sort of information was most important to her — but I was surprised by a few things, including how many independent medical experts examined my files at different times over the past few months and all came to the same conclusion: that I’m severely restricted in my ability to work due the nature of my conditions. Why all the hullabaloo, then? I presume it’s because their opinions are only marginally more important than the consultative examiner’s; ultimately, all that matters is the judgment of the person evaluating the claim.
Crankenstein was curious about the medical jargon and read the whole thing this evening, then shook her head and stared bemusedly at its final page as she took a sip of beer. “Your condition is expected to improve?!” Indeed, it ended with a recommendation to check in on me two years from now, since my condition is expected to improve.* I’ve heard of that being slipped into decisions with a much bigger “WTF?!” factor than mine, so I didn’t give much thought to its incongruity with all the details that preceded it. The judge is known for rarely approving anyone and even when she strays from that and grants a fully favorable decision, she has a reputation to uphold.
Sorry this was short, I have to be in bed early to see whether this latest three-or-four-hours-of-sleep streak can be broken. If you missed last night’s post and want to browse some movies I bought in the early aughts or feel personally insulted by my sister thinking 1992 was six million years ago, you can find it here. I looked up some old email receipts today to see how long I’ve had a few of the DVDs and found that I purchased “Manhattan” new 24 years ago, “Happy Together” used 17 years ago, and spent $4.76 on a used copy of “The Eel” almost 20 years ago (with $4.75 of that being the shipping cost). Imamura deserved more respect than that.
* Best-case scenario, something magical happens and I’m capable of full-time work again. Worst-case, they come a-knockin’ for a review sometime (medical, not Patty Duke) and interrogate my doctors about whether I’ve defied everything we know of science and medicine by regrowing a colon and reviving dead dopamine neurotransmitters.
03.24.25: It was dark outside and Crankenstein was still in bed when I left for the mammogram appointment this morning; it was over so quickly that I returned home before she left for work. I was operating on three hours of sleep, a deficit that wasn’t erased by a short mid-morning nap with Muriel, and I’ve already yawned thrice while writing this — “thrice” chosen as an affectionate Golden Girls reference while the Świątek-Svitolina Miami Open match plays in the background.
There’s nothing on my schedule tomorrow besides laundry and clearing out the office closet to assess movie storage options, so I plan to write a longer post then about topics undetermined. Maybe it’ll be musings on Janis Paige’s guest appearance in the fourth episode of Night Court, and whether it’s a sign that now truly is the time to rewatch it for the first time in decades and see if Joe was right all along.* Night Court, like M*A*S*H and Matlock and In the Heat of the Night, played constantly on KPLR, a local antenna station, when I was a kid, but it already feels somewhat new to me because I’d forgotten that Markie Post and Charlie Robinson weren’t there from the start.
Tomorrow was also when I was going to learn whether the SSDI portal was right that my backpay was issued today, but it’s almost midnight and I just received a deposit notification. Our share is in the upper end of low five-figures, if that makes sense, and the lawyer got the maximum allowed by law, which was $7,200 when we signed our agreement and is now $9,200. The first thing I wanted to do with this payment was buy Crankenstein the perfume of her choice as an appreciative gift for her support during all of this, but she’s not yet made a selection. My only other immediate plan is to pay the $2k or so in medical bills I’ve racked up so far this year.
More important to us than the money was the Medicare coverage you’re extended once you’ve been on SSDI for two years. If Crankenstein predeceased me or if marriage equality went kaput, and through some strange and chaotic confluence of political events (a far-right specialty), our marriage wasn’t grandfathered in, I’d lose my coverage as her dependent. The thought of that was stressful to both of us and frightened her because of her belief that my health requires subspecialty expertise and, by extension, decent insurance. Due to my onset date, I’ll be Medicare-eligible later this year and the premiums will be deducted from my monthly SSDI payment.
Are there less exciting topics I could’ve covered tonight than KPLR and Medicare? Maybe tomorrow’s challenge will be to write about something even duller, like the tweaks I made to my DIY Beau Monde seasoning to make it zestier.
* He usually was, though he had his blind spots the same as anyone else, like his love of Starship Troopers.
03.23.25: Last night’s entry is still in dire need of editing — Crankenstein was indeed having nightmares but I couldn’t quite make out what she was shouting — and I apologize to anyone who tried to make sense of it. The soonest I’ll be able to clean it up is tomorrow, once I’m back from an early-morning (routine) mammogram appointment, because tonight’s writing time was devoted to other things. From the time I woke up around 10 am, roughly six hours after falling asleep, the day had already gotten away from me, but other than that I have no complaints; my levodopa worked well enough to give my facial muscles a break.
There’s an idea I have for a review feature, Sinemet Cinema, that would occasionally spotlight movies relating either directly or indirectly to Parkinson’s. Awakenings, which is about sleeping sickness but prominently features levodopa, would be an obvious selection, but I’m more interested in having a bit of (occasionally morbid) fun by highlighting offbeat horror films like William Castle’s Mr. Sardonicus (about a man’s grotesquely frozen face), or movies about impulsive or eccentric behavior. This concept isn’t as important to me as the TV movie beat but it has some potential.
More tomorrow, including an SSDI update (additional information has been slowly making its way to us through the online portal), or maybe updates about past updates. Do I, for example, still plan to reckon with Tammy Faye Messner’s musical legacy? The answer is a solemn “yes,” I’m just waiting for the spirit to move me.
03.22.25: I couldn’t interest Crankenstein in Full Body Massage this evening, I’m sorry to report; she wanted to watch Prizzi’s Honor, so we saw Jack Nicholson naked instead. (Don’t worry, I did my best to picture Bryan Brown standing behind him, brow furrowed, awkwardly rubbing his arm.) She admired Kathleen Turner’s performance, just as she loved her in Serial Mom and Body Heat, and as a connoisseur of trash I’m naturally conflicted about whether to continue introducing her to Turner’s classics or make a sharp detour toward her worst offerings, such as Undercover Blues or Baby Geniuses.
It might be too soon for V.I. Warshawski, which bridges the golden and leaner years of her career; I’ll have to prepare Crankenstein for my unrestrained laughter when a terrible synth-heavy part of its score starts to play. (A great effort was once undertaken, unsuccessfully, to make it my Tracfone’s ringtone.) Maybe I’ll show her The Man with Two Brains next, if she promises to pause it every five or 10 minutes rather than every 30 seconds to critique its handle on neuroanatomy and other noggin-related matters. It’s been a few years since I heard Turner exclaim “Ouch! My balls!”, which would also make a fantastic ringtone.*
What else have I got for you tonight? The pickings are even slimmer than usual because I spent much of the day distracted by my face, or rather its various muscles that are afflicted by dystonia. Without veering off into more specific complaints, yesterday’s dystonia seemed charming and quaint compared to the misery of today’s, and it’s been hard to concentrate. Nonetheless, Crankenstein and I were able to track down almost everything she needed from an Asian market, minus vegan oyster sauce, and she whipped up a lunch that had Muriel salivating onto the kitchen floor.**
Meanwhile, I realized all too late that we were out of Beau Monde seasoning, which I needed for snack preparation, and made my own, which was subpar. This is the sort of thrilling content that keeps longtime readers coming back for more, and if alarming noises weren’t emanating from upstairs right now I’d muse about whether it’s time to revisit the original Night Court (it’s currently free to stream on Amazon), a show that Joe loved much more than I did. But Crankenstein seems to be having a nightmare and I need to make sure she’s OK and get ready for bed myself.^
* I don’t use custom ringtones, I embarrass myself enough in public already without my phone pitching in to help.
** Neither of us are vegan, she just needs a particular sauce. Crankenstein gave that alternative lifestyle the old college try, though, much to her parents’ shame — alas, her attraction to cheese was too powerful to ignore. (Speaking of passions, Crankenstein might never be ready for Turner’s performance in Ken Russell’s Crimes of Passion, but should she decide to experiment anyway she should do so with my unrated director’s cut 2-disc special edition and not the R-rated version that streams on Pluto.)
^ We might cancel our Prime membership when it comes up for renewal but for now we aren’t boycotting Amazon or Target. I’ll attempt to explain our reasoning on a future occasion, when Crankenstein isn’t sleep-shouting.
03.21.25: How many films about erotic massage were made in the early ’90s? Rubdown, a 1993 TV movie starring Dynasty’s Jack Coleman, was already in the Cranky review queue, and while rummaging around Tubi this evening I found Full Body Massage, a 1995 Showtime flick that almost sounds too good to be true. Directed by Nicolas Roeg (!), who’d apparently fallen on hard times after The Witches failed to conjure box office magic, and costarring Mimi Rogers and Bryan Brown (who is alternately known as either Rachel Ward’s husband or “the guy who wasn’t Richard Chamberlain in The Thorn Birds“), it’s forgotten today by all but nudity Roeg and Rogers enthusiasts. Might it, against all odds (Ward pun intended), be ripe for rediscovery?
What I’ve gleaned from its sparse Wikipedia writeup is that it involves an art dealer discussing romance, sex and philosophy with her masseur, presumably while nude and slathered in massage oil for 90 minutes; its DVD synopsis contains perfunctory references to liberation and “strange, erotic mysticism,” and winkingly calls the masseur Rogers’s “handy muse.” Sure, this makes him sound like Jennifer Love Hewitt in Lifetime’s ridiculous Client List (which also streams on Tubi), but since the cover art sends us mixed messages — Rogers is towel-clad and practically writhing, while Brown has the grim concentration of an emergency room physician poised to perform a closed reduction of her shoulder — we need all the help we can get.*
I could’ve used a massage today myself (and not the kind that got Robert Kraft in trouble) because my levodopa wasn’t working well and my neck, shoulder, and left foot and calf have been painfully tight for most of the last 24 hours. Between that, a couple of near-falls, and Muriel making a series of poor decisions in the backyard earlier that resulted in some Exorcist-like vomiting (hers, not mine), it wasn’t a banner day ’round these parts. Crankenstein and I haven’t yet brainstormed about new hobbies — maybe we’ll find one to do together — but one thing I plan to chip away at in the coming months is beefing up my Blu-ray and DVD collections.
Currently I’m well-stocked on foreign films, screwball comedies and noirs, but other than Rent-a-Cop all the countless horrible thrillers Burt Reynolds made while trying to fend off bankruptcy (and feed his pill habit) in the ’80s are conspicuously absent. Similarly, my Woody Allen collection has been a shadow of itself since the great 2014 purge of my belongings (which technically started in 2009), and I want to rebuild it bigger and stronger than ever before, preferably in Blu-ray. While we have no immediate need for these small and silly luxuries, the Musk administration wants to gut libraries in much the same way it’s attempting to destroy anything else that benefits all of society and promotes learning, and I’m not comfortable relying on streaming services to fill in the gaps that will inevitably form as a result.**
Thrift stores and used bookstores that also sell movies are good places to start, but what I’d really like to do is get clear-headed enough to resume reviewing all kinds of films, not just TV movies, so I can once again request screeners of upcoming releases. Maybe by the time I’m capable of that, Rubdown and Full Body Massage will have earned deluxe limited edition releases by Arrow, Shout! Factory, or KL Classics.
* Incidentally, Rogers wanted everyone to know her body “was not what it usually is” during filming since she’d recently given birth. Whether she made that announcement defensively or apologetically, I’m not yet sure (since I won’t read more about the film until I’ve watched it), but it seems unnecessary either way.
** Yes, libraries are locally funded, but they’re also aided by federal resources. In any event, they’ll hurt the same as the rest of us if the economy craters. Our well-funded library system has been tightening its purse strings for the last several months and I expect it will only get worse.
03.20.25: Now what? That’s what I kept thinking today as I looked around my home office, unsure of what to keep and where to put it. You could just as easily substitute “life” for “office” without losing considerable meaning — neither of us have much of a dedicated purpose anymore. If I’m not a worker, not a mom, and rarely feel like a wife, what am I? (I’m a writer, yes, but not the one I was before. Writing well is difficult when your brain’s as inelastic as your frozen muscles.)
That probably sounds more sullen and depressed than I actually feel, though, especially now that it’s spring. It’s my Bryan Ferry time of year, pregnant with possibility, and while my outlook often brightens in March or April, Crankenstein’s typically does the opposite. That was also the case for Joe last year, which I’m reminded of every time I walk past raised garden beds; his lost passion for gardening was a slightly dread-inducing sign that something was seriously amiss.
In keeping with the season’s promise of renewal, I’d like to resume some hobbies and projects that fell by the wayside over the past year or so, as weather and illness and sadness intervened. But I’d also like to pick up a hobby or two that’s entirely new and possibly even unexpected. Clog dancing is out, for my safety and Muriel’s, and learning to play the accordion requires too much coordination. Almost every unexpected hobby that immediately comes to mind, like juggling or riding a unicycle, is impractical for similar reasons.
Dungeons & Dragons makes a modicum of sense, given its overlap with painting miniature figures, but I already spent enough time around nerdy guys with poor hygiene and seething resentment toward women in high school. We’ll figure this out later, maybe after consulting Crankenstein and the broader Internet for ideas, but chess is an option, one that would naturally complement the Papa corner.
Your eyes do not deceive you, I didn’t check in last night. There was no interesting or exotic reason for my absence, I just fell asleep earlier than expected. Unfortunately, the ZzzQuil honeymoon is over and my sleep is again choppy at best.
03.17.25: After the disability hearing was over, and once we’d rejoined Crankenstein in the waiting room, my poker-faced lawyer reiterated what she’d told me on our way out: “You did great!” She explained that she’d have access to the decision days or weeks earlier than I would and to contact her when I received a status update from the SSA portal. Her parting words to us were “You deserve this. I hope she makes the right decision,” a thinly veiled reference to our judge’s notoriously low approval rate.
The judge had told us to expect a wait of six to eight weeks. Tonight, fewer than two weeks after the hearing, I received an automated alert about a change to my account and logged in to see whether it was appropriate to notify the lawyer. At 7 pm, I sent her an email that read “The SSA portal says we’ve moved to step 4, so I would assume you’ll be able to see something soon.”
Twenty-eight minutes later, she replied.
Yes, I will call tomorrow! This evening, Judge [Redacted] issued a Fully Favorable decision on your case – you won!!
I will also send a more detailed email tomorrow as well, but wanted you to know.
Congratulations!!
My surprise is surpassed only by relief, but I’m too dazed to say much more than that this evening. More tomorrow, once she’s filled me in on the details — and once I’ve had time to take a photo of that hideous (but very comfortable for short people) new chair.
03.16.25: It’s now nine minutes past my self-imposed bedtime and I still have to brush my face and wash my teeth, having been waylaid for the past hour by additional family intrigue.* My original plan for tonight’s entry was to mention a handful of trivial things like our ugly new IKEA chair, an orange corduroy number that sits rather low to the ground, which might make it attractive to Muriel. It’s destined for our Papa memorial listening corner, where it will sit on an equally unattractive shag rug of some sort, and I’ve selected a special Grandma Elaine tribute for the space as well, which will be unveiled later this week.
But, if you’ll forgive another sad-sack interlude, I didn’t feel much like writing after watching the women’s final at Indian Wells. Mirra Andreeva played an awful first set, which she later cheerfully acknowledged was mostly due to a bad attitude, but turned things around in the second and won another tournament. She’ll have a chance to win back-to-back-to-back Masters 1000 titles in Miami as the Sunshine Double concludes, but Iga Świątek might have something to say about that after falling to Andreeva, the eventual champion, in both Dubai and Indian Wells. And if not, well, Sabalenka already vowed to seek revenge in her characteristically charming runner-up speech.
How could I have possibly found myself sad after experiencing all this excitement? The answer is obvious: Joe would’ve loved this match and wasn’t there to share it. Tennis, among other things, will never mean as much to me now as it used to, and every happy moment it inspires will also be tinged with sadness. I know from prior losses that the ferocity of the pain you feel in a loved one’s absence eventually becomes easier to endure, but we’re still a long way from that — and this first full tennis season without him is still young.
03.14.25: It was a long day and a longer night, with no time for watching tennis, but the women’s semis went as expected: Sabalenka wiped the court with Keys and Andreeva went the distance in her three-setter. I’d love for Andreeva to pull something off against Sabalenka, who easily owns their head-to-head, and charge into Miami with a full head of steam; the WTA could use a Big Three and Elena Rybakina’s probably out of the running until she can extricate herself from her abusive coach/boyfriend’s clutches.
More tomorrow — and last night’s sleep was as successful as Thursday’s, so we’ll see whether this ZzzQuil reset has a lasting impact.
03.13.25: Forget about ambrosia, ZzzQuil’s the true nectar of the gods. My watch was still charging when I passed out last night, so there aren’t any AutoSleep screenshots to triumphantly share, but I got around eight hours of sleep and don’t recall waking up once. This morning I felt rested and invigorated, which has been a rare occurrence so far this year, and the timing was perfect because Crankenstein and I have a lot going on today and tomorrow.
There wasn’t much time for lallygagging on the computer and I’ve mostly been avoiding Indian Wells, but tomorrow’s women’s semifinals are intriguing: Madison Keys and Aryna Sabalenka last met in the Australian Open final and the Belarusian will want her revenge, and Mirra Andreeva and Iga Świątek are both on hot streaks. The Russian phenom — she’s all of 17, which practically makes Coco Gauff seem geriatric — beat Świątek convincingly in Dubai just a few weeks ago, on her way to her first Masters 1000 title.
If Andreeva continues playing like a top five contender (her current ranking is #11), there’s no reason she couldn’t do the same tomorrow, but beating Sabalenka in a final would be a tougher task. It’s easy to root for all four semifinalists, so I’ll be happy with any outcome, and maybe I’ll even tune in tomorrow night if we’re free. Tonight I have a date with The Pitt on HBO Max, which surprises me as much as anyone because ER was one of my most-hated TV shows as a kid and this John Wells/Noah Wyle reunion has more than a few things in common with it.
I disliked medical shows then for obvious reasons (or maybe not so obvious, if you’re unfamiliar with my many hospitalizations) and have typically avoided them as an adult. Crankenstein’s a killjoy about that kind of stuff anyway, so when I first caught The Pitt on a lark she wasn’t around. Since then she’s seen an episode or two, and snippets of a few more, and though she remains a killjoy it’s given her less to complain about than most medical dramas.*
Having rambled longer than intended, I must now abruptly segue to signing off — it’s time to slam a shot of ZzzQuil — and when I return tomorrow maybe we’ll do something really crazy and not talk about TV or sleep.
* She prefers medical sitcoms: St. Denis Medical, which is Superstore in a hospital, is her favorite show of the year, and she has historically ranked Scrubs as TV’s most accurate portrayal of medicine.
03.12.25: In lieu of words, which I lack the mental zing! to string together tonight — I just tried for over an hour and came up with all of three now-deleted sentences — here are two images that explain why I’m nearly at the breaking point.
Two hours and forty-eight minutes of sleep last night! That’s just under 1/4th of a Rivette.
Apparently none of it was deep sleep, which is also reflected by that elevated heart rate. I rarely open this app and don’t care about most of the data it tracks, but nights like this have been too common lately and it’s having a horrible effect on my health and concentration. If desperate times call for desperate measures, this should surely qualify (though I usually prefer chocolate, carbs, or another viewing of Sidney Lumet’s A Stranger Among Us in circumstances so dire). And so, with apologies to my MDS, I’m going to skip the melatonin tonight, and maybe even the levodopa, and guzzle some ZzzQuil instead.*
* Diphenhydramine and levodopa can cause confusion when taken together, so it shouldn’t be a regular event. But insomnia has the same effect, so I’m willing to take a walk on the wild side and see what happens; maybe I’ll wake up Crankenstein by sleep-fighting Barbara Stanwyck for Capucine. (Stanwyck remains my favorite actress, but by 1962 she’d been wed to that dowdy, matronly East Side, West Side hairstyle for 13 years and rarely strayed from it thereafter. There are so many private regrets I entertain while tossing and turning at 4 am, few more haunting than my failure to be old enough, or connected enough, to have intervened and gotten Stanwyck to wear crazy wigs during the second half of her career.)
03.10.25: There was nary a time I wanted to smash my life like a watermelon today, but I might’ve fantasized about taking a golf club to my insomnia after another night of fragmented sleep. Determined to resist napping (the better to improve my chances of going to bed exhausted) and hopeful I might accomplish enough to elicit a now-unfamiliar sense of satisfaction, I tried to remain in motion during my levodopa “on” periods and succeeded in staying awake. Progress was slower than I would’ve liked, both for the usual reasons and because my attention was divided between household chores, basement tasks, and office strategizing, but it was an acceptable start to the week and produced some momentum I’ll try to sustain tomorrow.*
* I’ll also try to write a proper post tomorrow, when I’m not too tired to think straight. And I’m adding another topic to my ‘stuff to write about’ list: my shameful childhood love of the band Heart, whose self-titled album was one of my most-played cassettes, right up there with Paula Abdul’s Spellbound, Billy Joel’s Storm Front, and Michael Jackson’s Thriller. There’s nothing inherently wrong with Heart fandom, mind you, it’s just embarrassing that their mid-’80s giant hair output captivated me more than their ’70s classics. Anyway, I need to close my computer now, before I start yammering into the wee small hours about the hilarity of Nancy Wilson’s cleavage in the “Alone” video or the magnificence of the band’s Kennedy Center Honors tribute to Led Zeppelin, so goodnight — I’ll terrorize you with aggressive 1980s décolletage later this week.
03.09.25: How many times did I want to take a sledgehammer to my life today? Not in a darkly destructive way, more in the tradition of a prop comedian foolishly attacking produce, but it was a persistent urge that blinked and buzzed in my wearied temples like a roadside motel’s neon sign on the fritz.
My disgruntlement went far beyond the usual Springsteenesque ennui of wanting to change one’s clothes, one’s hair, one’s face; I wanted an almost entirely new existence, one without this house, these relationships, these problems, this future. Was it the aggravation of the time change, which caused the derailment of my medication schedule for the second day in a row? Ongoing resentments about an inability to fully relax in a home that often seems to demand 98% of my attention because it receives 0% of Crankenstein’s? (Muriel helps with the other 2%.) Increased feelings of hopelessness after finally figuring out my administrative law judge’s name and realizing she has one of the highest denial rates in the country, not just the state?*
Whatever the reason, I was irritable all day and so was Crankenstein. But we avoided a Three Stooges poke fight, if only by a hair, which made the weekend a success.** Tomorrow I’ll start on a few small projects I’d like to finish throughout the month, from the office overhaul to making a cozy basement nook of some description. There are also several topics I want to write about here, most of which I’ve mentioned before, including rising familial tensions and the bizarre ‘prepping’ efforts of hysterical liberal women who don’t realize how insane they sound when they talk about walking from the US to Canada over the course of days or weeks, with 70 lbs of supplies on their backs, to seek political asylum.^ And if those posts don’t come to fruition, well, Family’s on Tubi and surely there are many jokes to be made about Kristy McNichol and Meredith Baxter as sisters.
* Crankenstein and I originally misheard it but not by much.
** We would never physically scuffle. As bookish sorts it’s beneath our dignity, we prefer to wound each other emotionally. (That’s a joke, which is how our arguments usually end, with us laughing at our stupidity.)
^ I’m increasingly alarmed — and I mean this earnestly — by the extreme tolerance my fellow liberal women nurture for the very abnormal theatrics of the far-left, whose attachment to reality is currently about as tenuous as that of my alt-right German Chocolate Cake hoarding aunt. Don’t get me wrong, I’m also gravely concerned about where our country’s heading, but please, for the love of God, focus on things that matter and stop giving trolls, even those who inhabit the White House, the exact reactions they’re trying to provoke with 98% of these cockamamie measures (many of which are unlikely to survive legal challenges).
03.08.25: Last night was almost entirely sleepless (through no fault of my neck’s) and this morning’s makeup sleep was woefully insufficient, so I’m hitting the sack early tonight and hoping to wake up without a headache. No progress was made in rearranging my office today because the conditions were too dangerous: Muriel was relentlessly clingy in response to my many absences during the week and I was extra unsteady after snoozing through a smartwatch reminder to take my second dose of levodopa. But if there’s time tomorrow I’ll take some measurements, share some photos, and try to talk through the puzzle of what belongs in the home office of someone who’s only marginally more employable than Scott Baio.*
* Maybe we’ll also tackle the mystery of why miniatures take up so much space.
03.07.25: I only have a few minutes for tonight’s check-in, but that’s more than enough time to apologize for an editing error that’s since been corrected — last night’s entry would’ve made more sense if I hadn’t accidentally removed a sentence explaining that Tom Bradford turns 50 yet again in A Family Reunion. In my defense, it’s been mentioned here before, and it’s a probably a safe bet anyway that the only readers who dare keep up with my Eight is Enough content are familiar with Bradford lore already; either as fans or because they’re slowly charting my descent into madness via Auntie V. shout-outs and obscure continuity complaints.* But I regret the error nonetheless, since it’s my goal to write with enough clarity that new and occasional readers can still easily follow along.
Today was busy, including a swing by the dentist’s office to pay for my aligners and submit to one last scan before the trays are manufactured. Later this month I’ll return to pick them up and then my teeth will be in a clear plastic jail for 21 to 22 hours per day, which the dentist belatedly informed me will probably lead to an increase in jaw-clenching and teeth-grinding until the trays are replaced with a retainer, at which time I should experience some relief. I was a little disappointed to only hear that from her now, since she’d left out the exacerbation-of-current-problems part before, but beggars can’t be choosers and short-term pain’s a fair trade for long-term gain.
More this weekend, including handwringing about how to rearrange my office and where to store my DVDs since the current setup is driving me crazy.
* Don’t get me started on Abby’s ever-changing family tree and whether she’s actually related to Jeremy.
03.06.25: How many times will Tom Bradford turn 50? It seemed to happen once a year on Eight is Enough, and now that I’ve watched the series in its entirety all that’s left to do — besides write another half-dozen promised blog posts and maybe a PhD dissertation about it — is watch the telefilms it spawned, Eight is Enough: A Family Reunion (1987) and An Eight is Enough Wedding (1989). Luckily, they’re free on YouTube, but at what emotional cost? We’ll have to hear Willie Aames sing again, for one thing, and his Wedding hairstyle was such an affront to basic human decency that Tipper Gore tried to get a parental advisory label slapped on it.
Sadly, Betty Buckley’s not there to make it more tolerable; she wanted nothing more to do with the Bradfords and was replaced by Mary Frann in Reunion. By the time of Wedding, Abby might’ve been played by a craft service worker who wore the right size clothing; Frann couldn’t be bothered to return.* But I suspect the most unforgivable recast of all will involve Merle ‘the Pearl’ Stockwell, who is played in Wedding by whatever Van Patten son was most underemployed at the time. Brian Patrick Clarke wasn’t just immensely likable as the aw-shucks Merle, he was easy on the eyes, and now I can only hope that Merle and Susan are divorced by the time of Wedding so it doesn’t look like she’s married to her dad.
Next on the agenda, if I wasn’t about to fall asleep, would be why the heck it currently costs eight trillion dollars to purchase all four seasons of Scarecrow and Mrs. King on DVD. The first season is priced normally, if memory serves, and possibly the third as well, but the prices for the second, fourth, or for the entire four-season bundle, are temporarily outrageous on eBay and Amazon Marketplace. It’s not a big deal as long as it’s still on Tubi, but this gives me agita as a semi-reputable Kate Jackson scholar and wholly reputable fan. Once it’s available again for a reasonable sum, I’ll acquire the whole series for safekeeping. The Dark Shadows box set, on the other hand, is likely to remain out of reach, since she was only in a fraction of its 1,225 episodes.
* Crankenstein and I are still watching Newhart, having recently started season two, and we’re having trouble adjusting to St. Louis’s own Frann. Don’t get me wrong, she wasn’t without her charms, but her comedic stylings were rather more passive than Suzanne Pleshette’s, at least in the early seasons. Fortunately, we’re at the point where Julia Duffy, a national treasure, becomes a regular, so things are looking up.
03.04.25: Oh, hell, Grant Goodeve really did record at least two Christian music albums, though it’s hard to find information about either of them. In the Storm was probably his first, its 1996 release roughly coinciding with his religious conversion; its title track currently has 382 listens on YouTube. Throughout the Ages is more of a question mark since I wasn’t able to find any old audiocassette releases confirming its provenance, but both have been rereleased on streaming services, including Spotify, where the actor and TV host has 20 monthly listeners.*
Tomorrow I’ll add a listen to that YouTube tally but today was devoted to other things, beginning with the ALJ hearing. The first thing the lawyer said afterward was “That went very well,” but I’m not sure whether that means anything; there wasn’t much time to ask questions because she had another hearing coming up. I’ll write more about this later, once my thoughts are clearer, but my initial impression of the judge was positive and I liked that she took time to correct a few small but important details previous adjudicators or consultative examiners got wrong, including who prescribed my Zoloft and why I’m taking it.
Once that was out of the way, Crankenstein and I stopped by a new bagelry and picked up some bagels and schmear, then went home for brunch with Muriel. I didn’t feel great today and was briefly worried about having to reschedule upcoming commitments, until an itchy welt on my arm reminded me of yesterday’s annual physical — and the pneumonia vaccine I was given after the PCP noticed the ones I’d gotten just prior to starting Humira in 2017 predated Prevnar 20. Now my assumption is that I’ll feel better in the morning and might finally have time tomorrow to finish a longer post.
* That isn’t unimpressive considering how niche those albums were and how long ago the more popular one was released. For comparison’s sake, “Eyes of My Heart” legend (around here, anyway) Terry Meeuwsen has 33 monthly Spotify listeners.
03.03.25: The end is nigh. A judge is mere hours away from determining whether I’m a “wuss, crybaby, faker” who oughta rub a little dirt on her Parkinson’s and Crohn’s and get back into the full-time employment game — but the lawyer cautioned her decision could take weeks or months to arrive.
Nearly a year after electing, reluctantly and with great ambivalence, to apply for SSDI, my expectations of success remain so low as to be subterranean. While my current situation is considerably more Bananas farcical than Naked Gun slapstick, I’ve privately regarded tomorrow’s hearing as “the final insult” since its date was first set. I’ll write more about that later, and why I decided to keep most of this private (other than detailing it here), but would rather not dwell on it — or anything else — tonight. Back tomorrow with either thoughts on the hearing or additional complaints about Grant Goodeve.*
* It’s not come up here yet because it isn’t relevant to Eight is Enough, but it is potentially relevant to future Tammy Faye Bakker discourse: Goodeve’s a born-again Christian and he was a Trumper the first time around (I’m not sure if that’s still the case). Between those grifts and his late ’70s musical aspirations, I wouldn’t be remotely surprised if he’s released an inspirational album or two. We’ll take a closer look at that sometime, unless Lesley Stahl beats us to the punch.
03.02.25: I’ve finally finished Eight is Enough, albeit accidentally; it concluded so abruptly that I double-checked IMDb to make sure Tubi was correct. It ended the way it was always going to, I suppose, with Grant Goodeve hoovering up valuable screen time that would’ve been better spent on any other cast member — or even on Preparation H commercials.
David Bradford was such an insufferable character by the first of his many breakups with Janet that Goodeve, who’d supposedly agitated for their divorce to restore his diminished status on the show, should’ve been given an ultimatum: accept a smaller role or get lost. (For God’s sake, wasn’t that terrible five-hour-long theme song enough? Was there no end to his sense of entitlement?) I’m sympathetic to the writers, who had a huge cast to juggle and a lot of offscreen misfortune to deal with, including Diana Hyland’s death and Lani O’Grady’s personal issues restricting her ability to work, but Ralph Macchio and more David were never going to be the solution to their problems — the daughters were the heart of Eight is Enough, along with Dr. Maxwell’s ugliest golf pants.
One thing I won’t be watching tonight is the Oscars, which was hardly an imprimatur of quality to begin with and becomes a more facile celebration of mediocrity each year. This year’s nominees are particularly forgettable and without Joe’s running commentary there’s nothing to make me even slightly interested in what happens. Someone, perhaps Baz Luhrmann or Julie Taymor, will eventually craft a sweeping epic about a one-legged consumptive nonbinary prostitute in a wheelchair dying aboard the Titanic; or Julian Schnabel will direct Come On, Aileen, a jaunty, trauma-informed musical about a chronically unhoused, schizoaffective transgender hooker who normally kills her johns improbably finding love (and understanding!) with one, a mute alcoholic tormented by memories of the years he spent as a Tourette-afflicted circus clown in Bergen-Belsen.* It will sweep every category, magically ending both world hunger and genocide in Sudan, and we’ll all become fully actualized beings. Then we can raze the Oscars to the ground and start anew, but not before giving Madonna an honorary award for her contributions to cinema.**
* The late Jerry Lewis will get a screenwriting credit, but only after his estate threatens to sue.
** Namely, that she mostly stopped acting after Swept Away. (If my concentration ever improves, I’m going to write a 400 page book about the erotic thrillers of the early ’90s and the varying debts of gratitude they owe Barbara Stanwyck, Lizabeth Scott, Kathleen Turner, Alfred Hitchcock, and Joe Eszterhas; Body of Evidence, currently on Tubi, will naturally make the cut.)
03.01.25: Maybe last weekend’s post should’ve been called “It’s 3 AM, I Must Be Screaming.” That’s around the time I woke Crankenstein up last night with a piercing shriek that set her heart pounding and adrenaline surging. It also woke up Muriel, whose collar jangled from downstairs as she dutifully rose to investigate and, finding nothing amiss, trotted back to bed. For an hour or two leading up to it, I’d been straddling the line between barely awake and barely asleep; I kept waking in a state of mild agitation caused by a lack of restful sleep.
Then I slipped into an obnoxiously vivid dream in which it was the middle of the night and Crankenstein and I were asleep when street noise nudged me awake — at which time I realized we were being burgled. I was alert enough to know on some level, at least briefly, that it was just a dream, but it wasn’t enough to stop what happened next. Dream Me looked out a window, found a band of thieves storming our (detached) garage and stealing everything in sight, cars included, and opened the window to scream and scare them off. Real Me, still in bed, frightened my wife and our dog instead.
In my dreams, as in reality, I have trouble shrieking; the old needs-to-scream-but-can’t trope was a recurring theme as early as first or second or grade and continued until somewhere in my teens. That I was capable of producing enough volume to jolt anyone last night is as shocking to me as it probably was to Crankenstein, who half-woke me afterward by slinging a leg over mine. She kept stirring and got out of bed to use the bathroom, which woke me up the rest of the way and prompted me to turn on my bedside lantern (which is preferable at 3:30 am to a brighter bedside lamp) and ask “Are you OK?”
“Yes,” she sleep-slurred. “Are you? You screamed really loud.”
“I’m sorry,” I mumbled, knowing she wouldn’t remember our conversation in the morning. “I’m fine, it was my dream. These people broke into the garage…”
Around 9:30 am, when we next interacted, one of her first questions was “Do you remember what you were dreaming about last night?”
We make quite a ridiculous pair, at least overnight, when I’m up to God knows what and she’s engaged in all kinds of shenanigans, and sometimes entire conversations, she can’t recall. If my half of it’s going to happen regularly — and my guess is it’s already a steady occurrence but I’m rarely loud enough to wake her — I hope my dreams can at least shift from confrontations to something funny, like a Roger Daltrey scream or Bela Lugosi’s “Karloff?!” rant from Ed Wood.
02.27.25: Cue the “Hallelujah” chorus from Handel’s Messiah: I’m barely aware of my neck this evening because it’s almost entirely pain-free. The range of motion’s still not great but this is either a fantastic fluke or a promising start to the next few weeks, either of which is fine by me. You’ve gotta strike while the iron’s hot, so I’m going to bed early tonight (it’s just shy of 9:00 pm) and will be back tomorrow with an explanation of assorted recent and upcoming events — and possibly questions of why writing about Lisa Whelchel’s Hearts of Spring is almost as thankless as parsing Vanessa Redgrave’s Second Serve, despite its comparatively uncontroversial subject matter.*
* I’d like to stay up late enough to continue rambling about Hearts of Spring but have to be up early. What it comes down to is mommy blogging, the alleged profession of Whelchel’s character in this 2016 Hallmark offering. If you don’t remember Whelchel’s days as a fundamentalist Christian mommy blogger, it’ll be my job to remind you, and figuring out how to do that without confusing and alienating readers who wouldn’t normally visit Cranky has been vexing.
02.26.25: It only took two days but I finally noticed that I’d rearranged the alphabet to put ‘I’ before ‘G’ on the 2/24 book list, so that’s been corrected. My neck might’ve been corrected as well at this morning’s MDS appointment, but it’s much too early to gauge our success. What a gift it would be — not only to Crankenstein and Muriel but readers fed up with my grumbling about sleep, sleep, sleep — if this restores some normalcy around here and makes it easier for me to dig out of this sleep-deficit hole and become less of a zombie.
The neurologist got the dosage increase she’d sought from my insurer and happily noted “We used all of it!” as she tossed the empty Botox syringes into a wall-mounted sharps container.* We played it safe, though, and she didn’t experiment this time to try to improve my swallowing; she followed the injection map from our second-to-last appointment and decided after the physical exam to allocate additional resources to my shoulder, upper back, and the back of my head. That whole area essentially felt like a brick, so any relief will be an improvement.
There are a couple of medication and sleep aid changes we’re making that might also prove beneficial, which I’ll cover when expanding on yesterday’s call with the lawyer since it all intersects. But now it’s time to get ready for bed since we’re having some exterior work done on the house tomorrow and they’ll be out early to set things up, much to Muriel’s chagrin.**
* Some of her patients get upset if any’s left over since it’s so expensive, which isn’t a concern I share since (a) I want as little Botox as possible; and (b) it’s financially irrelevant under my current plan, anyway, since I’ll hit my deductible regardless.
** I’d be remiss not to address Michelle Trachtenberg’s death in some way, though I have nothing novel to say about it. Felix and I grew up watching The Adventures of Pete & Pete at our grandparents’ house with our cousins Brandon and Keith, and all four of us loved Nona; then we saw Harriet the Spy countless times because of my younger sisters. Like most Buffy the Vampire Slayer fans, I wasn’t immediately sold on Dawn, the titular slayer’s surprise sibling, but Trachtenberg made her one of the few remaining characters worth caring about by the end of the show’s run. She worked primarily on TV before personal struggles disrupted her career, but Trachtenberg’s premature death leaves behind “What ifs…” of Brittany Murphy proportions. (One of those TV projects was a holiday telefilm that I still plan to write about as part of a Jews-in-Christmas-movies feature.)
02.25.25: My head’s still swimming from this afternoon’s long call with the disability lawyer; once my thoughts are clearer I’ll recap what’s going on with that. She walked me through what the hearing will be like, among other things, and I feel no better about it now than at any point in the past — even though she repeatedly emphasized that she has a strong case. I say “she” because it’s hers more than mine, even though it’s predicated on my history; she’s the one doing all the work and making all the arguments. My only job, as it were, is to continue existing in my natural state while waiting to take it on the chin again if the judge is unmoved.
In happier news, my last-minute Kindle archiving (see last night’s entry below if you’re confused) took less time than I anticipated. When all was said and done there were about 50 volumes I saw no need to grab since they’re in the public domain, and another 40 to 50 that weren’t transferable as long-forgotten library borrows I hadn’t manually cleared from the deepest recesses of my Kindle history.* The only truly “What the hell?!” discoveries were several Knut Hamsun tomes I’d gotten for free and never opened because I didn’t want to have to grapple with his antisemitism.
* I’d forgotten about those early freebies and the primary motivation behind it, which was to replace my physical media collections with digital counterparts to mollify an unreasonable ex who was never going to be satisfied by my deference, anyway, since it didn’t feed her self-loathing.
02.24.25: This was an unusually productive day in the basement, though I have nothing to show for it here: I cut up as much carpet (and carpet padding) as could fit in this week’s trash pickup and relocated some salvaged wood scraps to the utility room to make maneuvering easier. Having to do this work solo has been overwhelming at times (not to mention infuriating), for reasons you’ll understand once I’m done and explain more about it, but it’s best for everyone’s sanity to keep ‘Niles’ away from all the dust and detritus for now.
After reaching a good stopping point — something’s that harder to do now that my impulse is to keep going and going, even when it’s the worst choice I could make — I took a much-needed shower and started working on tonight’s post. Then I remembered the window for downloading computer backups of Kindle book purchases is swiftly closing and shifted my attention to that. Tomorrow’s the last day Kindle users will have access to that feature, which you can read more about here if this is the first you’ve heard of it.
This is quite a chore since it can only be done one title at a time and there are over 300 books in my collection, purchased over a span of 12 years.* Not all are worth saving but many are, so this has been a multi-day effort and one that remains unfinished. If anyone’s curious, my Kindle library’s mostly niche material my local library doesn’t offer via digital loan and mainstream stuff I expect to consult again in the future. Here are the 10 books I downloaded before pausing to write this entry, listed alphabetically by title so it’s easier on the eyes**:
- Call Me Anna: The Autobiography of Patty Duke (Patty Duke)
- Glamour and Mischief!: A Memoir (Michael Woulfe)
- Intimate Companions: A Triography of George Platt Lynes, Paul Cadmus, Lincoln Kirstein, and Their Circle (David Leddick)
- Moonlighting: An Oral History (Scott Ryan)
- My First Hundred Years in Show Business (Mary Louise Wilson)
- The New York Stories (John O’Hara)
- Picture (Lillian Ross)
- Stalin: New Biography of a Dictator (Oleg Khlevniuk)
- Tearoom Trade: Impersonal Sex in Public Places (Laud Humphreys)
- We Believe the Children: A Moral Panic in the ’80s (Richard Beck)
If I find anything strange or amusing tomorrow, you’ll be the first to know. I’m uncertain whether to alert my mother, an avid Kindle user who mostly downloads free smut romance novels, to this change; it’s doubtful she rereads any of it since every book’s the same. That’s not meant as an insult, either — back when she devoured Nora Roberts paperbacks and Danielle Steel hardcovers (oh, how it hurts to write that), she occasionally made it halfway through a new one before realizing she’d already read it; the covers and plots were so interchangeable it was hard for her to keep track.
Sometimes I noticed before she did, which I usually kept to myself since 10-year-olds aren’t supposed to read Jude Deveraux and V.C. Andrews. You can imagine my confusion upon realizing sometime in the ’90s that Andrews had been dead for years and only wrote seven of the approximately 12,000 novels published under her name. Admittedly, it felt like less of a betrayal than Francine Pascal’s byline deception, but my trust in prolific authors was shaken.
* I paid for few of them out of pocket. First they were purchased with gift cards and then Amazon started offering digital credits as incentives for choosing slower shipping methods; I would strategically break up purchases into smaller batches, especially around the holidays (when incentives were larger), to maximize those credits. At the same time, I kept a private wishlist of titles and swooped in when they went on sale, often for $1.99 to $4.99, and paid with credits. Probably 95% of my Kindle library was built that way. Even Tearoom Trade, the most expensive e-book I own, cost $44.99 when I bought it in 2022 — only $9 of which I forked over after using promotional credits.
** Here’s the obligatory legal disclosure that I’m an Amazon affiliate. This means if someone clicks my link to a Lifetime movie on Amazon and streams it for $2.99 or buys a $5 pair of socks while they’re there, I earn a few cents. These commissions don’t add up to much for esoteric sites like mine — I’ve made a couple dollars over the past few weeks — but if you’re a YouTuber with a million followers and you hype a $50 handheld vacuum or a $300 air fryer that just so happens to offer sales bonuses during the week you spotlight the product, you’ll rake it in, so you can see why disclosures are necessary.
02.22.25: For the second time in two weeks, I slept idiotically late (after tossing and turning deep into the night) and felt jet-lagged the rest of the day. Next week I’ll see the neurologist and we’ll reevaluate our sleep and Botox strategies; the tinkering we did with the latter three months ago had such a deleterious effect on my sleep that I’m not sure it’s worth trying it again, which she might suggest if my insurer granted her request to cover a higher dose. If there was only one thing she could wave a magic wand and fix, I’d currently choose sleep over rigidity, slowness and dystonia — and probably even cognitive fuzziness, if only to see whether the blurriness sharpens once my sleep quality improves.
Once I was sufficiently alert, Crankenstein got wild and crazy and suggested getting takeout from a restaurant down the street (minus her favorite salad, which she deemed too high a norovirus threat). The fun continued this evening with a screening of Robert Eggers’s Nosferatu on Peacock. She’s a fan of his folk horror, and of Dracula in general, and enjoyed Nosferatu very much. So did I, though she had to glance over to see whether I was joking following my “This is just like my previous relationship” lament during a particularly gruesome scene.*
Incidentally, that conviction only intensified during the film’s horrifying conclusion. Now I found myself wondering what scary movie is the closest parallel to our marriage — Hereditary seems too obvious. I’ll report back once I figure it out (but not before finishing the post about yesterday’s uncomfortable Lyft ride).
* Her estimation of this latest Nosferatu might increase in the coming days but for now I think Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula remains her favorite. It’s still mine, though Nicholas Hoult was a much better fit for the material than Keanu Reeves.
02.21.25: “A Tale of Two Lyft Drivers” will have to wait until tomorrow, but that’s OK because it’s anticlimactic despite one of them unexpectedly shouting something rude about “Polacks.” That was his word, not mine, as you likely deduced, and he spoke a great many words on our 20-minute drive, virtually all of them stupid. I wasn’t in the mood for it after again notching fewer than four hours of sleep, so I looked out the window and thought of my car in the garage back home and tried not to feel aggrieved about needing help with tasks I’d rather do myself.
Not all was lost: I crossed the first of several upcoming (routine) medical appointments off my list and was able to devote the rest of the day to slow, frustrating work, occasionally stopping to go outside with Muriel, who enjoyed her romps in the snow. And I saw that a (presumably) new reader was up all night zigzagging between reviews and silly Cranky content from almost 20 years ago, which is gratifying. I always get a kick out of it when truly obscure and ridiculous articles are dusted off by someone who shares the same weird interests, though it occasionally sparks a brief moment of panic in which I think “Oh no, not that one!” about posts I suspect were moderately to wildly insensitive.
02.20.25: This evening’s post was preempted by an urgent family crisis tech problems my mom wanted me to troubleshoot via text. How this turned into a 45-minute ordeal, I’m not quite sure, but I feel better about my absentmindedness now because at one point she sent me a Bitwarden screenshot of her login credentials for a site she couldn’t access and her password was rejected. “Let me see if I changed it!” she replied, and while awaiting her next message I idly attempted to pinpoint when she began punctuating everything with exclamation marks.*
She had, in fact, changed her password without updating her password management app, which reminded me of the dog-eared index card she’s kept in the interior pocket of her purse for the last 30-odd years, the one that lists the names and Social Security numbers of each of her children. As an adult I’ve asked her several times to please redact my information since purses are easily snatched, and she always says she will. But I’m sure if I called Felix right now and asked him to rifle through her newest bag, one she got just a couple years ago, he’d find it — probably next to a roll of Certs from the late 1990s and a plastic baggie full of Cheerios, her go-to purse snack when we were toddlers.
She kept that card in her purse in case we had medical emergencies and she had to rush to the hospital. It didn’t matter that we were all insured by the same plan and that our coverage cards were in her wallet, which was also in her purse, we were her responsibility and she had to be prepared. (Had her purse been any larger, she would’ve stored copies of our birth certificates, fingerprints, and possibly dental impressions as well.) Because she’s a consummate mom, I know she’ll still feel like that when she’s 90 — unless she forgets us first. If she ever changes her mind about being buried, the card should be kept with her.**
On that unintentionally morbid note, it’s time to transfer the relevant contents of my purse into a backpack ahead of an early appointment tomorrow. What it lacks in cereal and an entire family’s birthdates and Social Security numbers, it makes up for in mini Altoids, dollar store toiletries (don’t ever leave the house without Kleenex, floss, and hand sanitizer), and small flashlights.
* I believe it started in her late forties but only spiraled out of control with the birth of her first grandchild. She’s going to send a group text one day that reads “Your uncle’s in the hospital with liver failure! The doctor says it doesn’t look good! Not looking forward to the funeral!! Who’s coming to Thanksgiving? What sides does everyone want!”
** My father can’t be buried in our family’s Jewish cemetery because of its Orthodox origins (had it been established as Reform, exceptions could be made) and my mom doesn’t want to be buried at his family’s farm, so they’ve instructed us to have them cremated. Dad has further specified he wants my maternal grandparents’ rabbi to conduct his service and that we should tell his antisemitic older sister “to fuck off” if she has a problem with that. That special request of his would be easier to honor than our mom’s. She wants us to divide her cremains and for each of her kids to place a small urn on our bedroom dressers so she’s always watching us. “You can turn it toward the wall when you need privacy,” she suggests. I really wish she were joking, so I could turn it into a depraved version of the beloved children’s book Love You Forever, but she’s mostly serious.
02.19.25: Anyone interested in a slumber party? We can catch up on Rachel Maddow’s latest broadcasts if nothing good’s on TCM, listen to Muriel snore, maybe pass around a tin of Blue Diamond’s Sweet Thai Chili-flavored almonds. Crankenstein has taken ill with a sore throat, mild cough, and feverless chills, so I’ll bunk with Muriel or sleep in the Grandma Suite to spare her my nocturnal Rockettes act and avoid the germy Darth Vader breathing she directs at my face all night. It’s probably all for naught since my throat’s already a bit scratchy, in which case a slumber party’s a terrible idea — not to mention I have no idea whether any of you are sticky-fingered types who’d make off with my priceless collection of Golden Girls tchotchkes and tawdry tell-alls.
Rather than turn this into a footnote, I’ll digress here and mention that Crankenstein and I sometimes joke about how disappointed the average burglar would be as he ransacked our house. We have little in the way of jewelry (and her earrings tend to be odd, depicting, say, squirrels… or Judith Slaying Holofernes) and most of our electronics are cheap or outdated. There aren’t any guns, recreational drugs or thick wads of cash, and our medications are thoroughly unexotic; the only stuff potentially worth stealing has such a narrow market that an intrepid investigator could easily track it. Just follow the trail of Golden Girls figures; vintage Judy Garland, Barbara Stanwyck, and Pedro Almodóvar posters; lobby cards from long-forgotten Sandy Dennis films; framed Lucille Bluth art; and hardcover Liz Renay books back to the glittery den of turban-wearing thieves seeking retribution for something dismissive I once wrote about Joan Collins.*
Anyway, I’ve wandered far enough off-track that I forgot where I was going with this, a lapse that has less to do with cognitive strain than having worn myself out clearing snow again in frigid weather. I’ll go floss and brush my teeth and grab some pillows and blankets, and anyone who passes a background check can help themselves to popcorn or an assortment of Aldi cheese and crackers and stream some Falcon Crest on Plex.**
* One day I’ll write about the theft of Alvy, my first laptop, but the grief is still too raw 24 years later. (Windows needed names assigned to the computers and mine had a theme — Alvy, Isaac, Boris — in keeping with my early interest in Woody Allen films.)
** If you’d rather watch The Colbys, the complete set is in my DVD closet, assuming those vindictive gay thieves — I believe they have a Maltipoo named Farnsworth “Dex” Dexter — haven’t already absconded with it.
02.17.25: It was a rough day physically and mentally, enough so that anything I try to write about it right now would be an ill-considered and unsatisfying read. You’ve got to know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em, know when to walk away, and tonight I’m folding ’em and heading to bed. If tomorrow brings a reduction in stress, as it probably will, I’ll be able to joke about today’s challenges (complete with photos!), which have no real significance in the grand scheme of things but can wear you down sometimes anyway. Apologies for the lackluster non-post, which probably could’ve been avoided if only I’d sought inspiration from Tammy Faye.
02.16.25: We need to talk about Christian music again, which I’m mentioning now so you can prepare yourselves accordingly. In typical convoluted fashion, this started with the decidedly non-Christian grandfather who wanted me to have his record collection when he died. For reasons we’ll get to later, I never collected my inheritance, which in recent years has resided on a ping-pong table in my parents’ basement. Other relatives occasionally expressed mild interest in claiming it for themselves, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s been stripped of anything they mistakenly believed had monetary value, but nobody ever wanted the whole enchilada — until now. A crate of Papa’s records is headed my way and maybe it’ll inspire some future posts here.
Unfortunately, there’s going to be a slight listening delay. Each component of my high school stereo system had been carefully wrapped, boxed, and shelved in my parents’ basement in the early aughts, when I switched to a unit with a smaller footprint. Later, by 2009 or 2010, having acquired both an iPod and a girlfriend, I’d sold most of my CDs altogether and rarely used a stereo at all. Within a few years of that, Felix, who was always breaking his own audio equipment or selling it to finance his video game habit, asked if he could borrow my original stereo — which meant he’d already taken it, because he has no impulse control. Since I didn’t need it and none of it was high-end, anyway, I told him that was fine as long as he didn’t sell it, trade it or destroy it.
The exact fate of that setup — the five-disc changer and dual cassette deck, its five shelf speakers, and the entry-level Sony record player I later connected to it — has apparently been lost to time. My dad checked his basement yesterday and found no sign of it, and Felix was conspicuously silent when asked if he could recall its whereabouts. It’s not a big deal, we can easily replace it, but first I’ll need to read about newer technology and establish a preliminary budget if we go in that direction. Older gear is also fine, so we’ll put out feelers to Crankenstein’s parents, who are trying to downsize and regularly hound us about whether we’ll take this-or-that off their hands, and I’ll keep tabs on neighborhood buy/sell groups for castoffs.
This has all the makings of a fun side project, which brings us to Tammy Faye Messner and the albums she released as Tammy Faye Bakker on her own PTL Club Records & Tapes label. Certainly it’s nothing Papa ever owned, but I stumbled upon a few of these treasures today while searching for a secular LP I’d like to buy if it’s not included in his crate. The album covers are incredible, her song choices intriguing, and this is a spiritual journey we should probably take together if these shameless money-grabs are freely available on YouTube. More later, once we’ve had time to pray on it, preferably while dressed like a genteel churchgoing brothel owner.
02.15.25: Checking in with only minutes to spare to confirm that Crankenstein survived last night’s introduction to Bridget Jones and even occasionally paid attention. Granted, she understood Daniel Cleaver, Shazza, “giant mummy pants,” and the callbacks to Mark Darcy’s Christmas sweater and Bridget’s knack for public self-humiliation roughly as well as I did all the archery and fire and destruction of the Hobbit trilogy finale we saw on our first movie date. But it was comfort food viewing for me and I’ll admit without embarrassment that I teared up more than once. Zellweger was particularly great in her scenes with Jim Broadbent and Colin Firth; Bridget’s evening stroll with Mark is as good a representation of the Ivy Compton-Burnett grief I’ve previously written about as you’ll find anywhere. If you, too, are old and sad and sentimental, check it out.
02.14.25: Unless you’ve experienced Parkinson’s fatigue firsthand, it’s hard to understand just how crushing it is; as Johns Hopkins attempts to convey here, it goes beyond regular exhaustion. Other than griping about it on the pages of this site — and to Crankenstein and my MDS — it’s not something I’ve tried to explain in detail to friends or family because they have no frame of reference for it. What happened to me today might make it click for a nearly universal audience: I was so tired I fell asleep while getting a cavity filled, complete with drilling.
The dentist, who kept working, administered nothing more than a numbing shot, so I wasn’t under sedation; I’d gotten five or six hours of sleep the night before, so I wasn’t running on empty. Over the past year or two there’s been a growing list of odd places where I’ve almost fallen asleep, including in Lyft vehicles (which would be dangerous) and the bustling waiting rooms of various hospital buildings (where you risk becoming a Snapchat story or accidental TikTok sensation), in a very loud MRI tunnel, and even while standing in my own backyard.* Zonking out in the dentist’s chair was more embarrassing than those incidents; short of snoring in the middle of a Pap smear, I’m not sure anything could top it.
In other news, Crankenstein gallantly allows me to choose our February 14th viewing each year, a tradition she started on our first Valentine’s Day as a married couple. Since then she’s endured many films she never would’ve selected on her own, such as the 2018 remake of A Star is Born, 2019’s Judy, and Jennifer Lopez’s Marry Me. Tonight’s selection, a new addition to Peacock, won’t just make her groan and roll her eyes, but possibly feign convulsions and death as if she’d ingested strychnine. That’s right, we’re watching Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, and I’m as excited as she’ll be downcast, so keep her in your thoughts.**
* While Muriel took her sweet time getting down to business.
** This one might hold her attention if she gives it a chance — Crankenstein always forgets she likes Renée Zellweger, a favorite of mine whose Judy performance impressed her and whose limited series, The Thing About the Pam, she ultimately enjoyed more than I did. And Zellweger’s not the only draw, who doesn’t love Chiwetel Ejiofor?
02.12.25: We’ve entered the David Chase era of Northern Exposure and the show is losing its magic; its unique rhythms and continuity have all but disappeared, replaced by irredeemably lazy subplots like Shelly’s secret fluency in Italian. (More absurdly, this talent is revealed when she finds endless spare time for reading Dante to Ruth-Anne despite having a newborn at home.) If there’s a silver lining to the senseless destruction of such a wonderful show, it’s that Chase’s disinterest in Cicely, Alaska, might be the push I’ve needed to rewatch The Sopranos for the first time since it ended in 2007.
This is something I’ve looked forward to for several years now and have continually postponed, because The Sopranos is an experience best shared with others and it also requires your full attention. Crankenstein’s never seen it but I know her usual antics — immersion in her phone, getting up a half-dozen times in the course of a half-hour (followed by angst when Muriel seizes those opportunities to steal her spot on the couch), asking me to hit “pause” with 60 seconds left in an episode — would drive me to despair. I guess if I do this, it’ll be solo, unless a friend who had a connected uncle or two wants in on the action. Afterward I’ll finally read The Sopranos Sessions, which includes extensive interviews with Chase.
First, though, I must wrap up my Auntie V coverage and finish some reviews. There wasn’t any time for that today since I was chasing my tail after yesterday’s disruptions, but we’re due for more winter weather soon and if we’re left snowbound I’ll work on it. Or maybe I’ll get distracted by memories of my favorite Baby-sitter’s Club Super Special, which was titled Snowbound, and rant for five paragraphs about how stupid it was to pair Kristy with Bart when she was obviously gay. Of course, that was later surpassed by pairing Stacey with Robert, a dashing young man in preppy attire she met on Fire Island.*
* I still have the form letter and thick packet of resources a mailroom intern pretending to be Ann M. Martin sent me in the very early ’90s in response to a fan letter that mentioned my interest in writing. It also included a glossy headshot of the author, whose bio I checked with every new BSC release to make sure it didn’t suddenly mention a husband. I’m not sure I had a crush on her, it was more like I recognized something about Martin that I couldn’t quite put a name to; I knew it would be wrong — as in unsuitable or incongruous — for her to have a husband, just as it would’ve been wrong for Harvey Fierstein to have a wife. When she officially came out in 2016, I wanted to rant about Bart and Robert and send her a packet of silly lesbian resources, but resisted the urge since she’d been gaying it up longer than I’d been alive.
02.11.25: It’s a new day and a clean slate for these updates, but you can still access the old ones here, not that they’re worth rereading. This morning was a strange one: I didn’t fall asleep until sometime after 3 am and at 6:45-ish I heard Crankenstein get up, at which time I took my first dose of levodopa and dozed off again. An hour later (or so I thought), she appeared at my bedside looking extra put-together and said “You have to get up.”
“No, I don’t,” I mumbled, my voice barely audible. Her makeup reminded me she had lectures to give, which I assumed she was about to deliver over Zoom; she’s normally dressed more casually on Tuesday mornings, when she has administrative time. She leaned forward to better hear me and I added, “If you’re worried about [Muriel], there are KONGs in the freezer.”*
Whether she replied to that is a mystery, because I was almost immediately asleep again. Annoyingly, it wasn’t a deep, restorative sleep, but I wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth. A half-hour or so later, I was up for good and checked my watch — it was almost noon. How was that possible? Slowly and rigidly, I got up and took my overdue second dose of levodopa, aware that something more was ‘off’ than just my perception of time.
My swollen knuckle still hurt but that wasn’t it. The problem was clear once I’d shuffled to the dresser to get my slippers and a change of clothes: my thin pajama shirt was sweat-soaked despite the coolness of the room and bed.** Alas, it isn’t menopause, and I don’t think I’m fighting off a bug; it’s either PD or my old pal, arthritis, rearing its ugly head.^ The latter would also explain why I was extra tired, so I again wanted to kick myself for messing with my medication.
Crankenstein later explained that she’d already gone to campus and given her talks by the time I mumbled at her earlier; she’d just gotten home and wanted us to have lunch together. She’s usually the one who can’t wake up (unless she has to answer work calls), so this continues to strike her as bizarre and unsettling and I’m not a fan of it, either; I felt groggy the rest of the day. Now it’s only 9:59 pm but I’m heading back to bed since she requested we spend time together before she falls asleep. Fingers crossed this semi-lost day helps get my schedule back on track.
This is unforgivably boring, I know, but the good news is it can’t possibly get any duller tomorrow unless I’m comatose or decide to solicit opinions on what to do with some unsightly old tile in the basement.
* Muriel has been known to bark at neighbors’ UPS deliveries while Crankenstein’s giving presentations or answering journalists’ questions.
** The flannel sheets were put away once the temperature climbed above freezing but will return soon enough.
^ What an abundance of alluring diseases genetics has given me — Crohn’s could’ve also been the culprit, but there’d be more signs something was amiss — that it took a little time to narrow things down.