top 5 things i miss eating

1) Bacon

2) Bacon

3) Bacon

4) Bacon

5) Cock

whole against the sky

Once we realize that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue to exist, a wonderful living side by side can grow up if they succeed in loving the distance between them, which makes it possible for each to see the other whole against the sky. A good marriage is that in which each appoints the other guardian of his individuality.

That Rilke quote is from my "So You Married a Drunk" book from Al-Anon and I've been meditating on it a lot these past couple of days. I can't do a goddamn thing about his drinking. He's sober now, but he might not always be. Staying married to him means accepting him for who he is, as he is, and that I am powerless to change him.

I have been called out by my most astute friends for saying that I'm going to try to stick it out for the kid, or because I promised to when I married him, and that those are cop-outs. I should stay with him because I love and accept the man he is, flaws and all. If I can't do that, I should go. Today I'm letting go of being angry and trying to just be present with him and attend to who he really is, aware that the past cannot be undone and that to love him or anyone I must first love myself.

The business of getting my own house in order is crazy hard. Being angry at him and deflecting blame is so much easier than owning my part in this situation. The ways in which I've chosen to interact with him play into the ugly dynamic we've maintained all these years and I've observed myself being slowly transformed into this nagging harpy, judging and micromanaging, undermining his self-confidence and trying to control every aspect of all of our lives, leaving me constantly exhausted and resentful and leaving most things I had my hands in only partially or poorly done. Instead of doing a thousand things badly, I wish to do one thing very well - taking care of myself - and let the rest of the pieces fall into place from there.

And goddamn it, I deserve to be well cared for. I'm fucking awesome.

ya gotta have friends

Bosom Buddy just texted me this:

I was reading the intro to some old Stephen King book and found a line that reminded me of you: "A dame with trouble in her eyes. And ecstacy, presumably, in her pants."

I have the best friends ever.

integrity

When we got married, we chose this as our wedding vow:

I take you to be no other than yourself, loving what I know of you, trusting what I do not yet know, with respect for your integrity, and faith in your abiding love for me, through all our years and in all that life may bring us.

I have been reflecting on this a lot in the past few days, on what it means for him to have turned his back to me when he could have leaned on me for support, to have pushed me away when I begged for intimacy, to have been able to look me in the eye, time and time again, and lie to me.

I know that alcoholism is a powerful disease, and I know that his decision to drink and hide it from me had nothing to do with me and that I am powerless to change it, but I find myself now questioning his integrity and my ability to trust him and I don't know where to go with that.

I know no decisions have to be made now. I know it's one day at a time. This is just where I am today.

my name's tits and my husband's an alcoholic

Okay, so my name's not actually Tits, but I like my job and stuff, so y'know.

I don't particularly feel like writing this post, and imagine I'll write a few hundred revisions before I actually publish it, but whatever. You put your fingertips on the keys and something comes out, right? One must start someplace.

Last Saturday night I found vodka hidden in the freezer. He was drinking again, in spite of his diagnosis, in spite of the fact that it will kill him. He was drinking again and I caught him and when I confronted him everything just came crashing down around us, all the years of lies and denial and excuses and now somehow we have to pick up the pieces. He went to an AA meeting that night and has been to at least one every day since, I went to my first Al-Anon meeting yesterday, and we're both pursuing therapy, individually and as a couple. I take my marriage vows seriously, so I'm bound to try and work through this and resist my urge to take my kid and run, but it's taking a minute-to-minute level of commitment. Forget one day at a time. It's one second at a time.

My hurt and anger and sense of betrayal over his lies cut so deeply, but it's nothing compared to my astonishment at how thoroughly and successfully I've denied his problem, year after year, in the face of so many obvious signs that I just chose to turn a blind eye to or explain away. It makes me feel like my judgment in general is suspect now. If I could deny the reality of what I observed and lived with, day after day, even having grown up with alcoholics in my family, even after finding out that he'd nearly drunk himself to death, what else am I choosing not to acknowledge? There's so much work to do here and I'm just trying to breathe through it slowly, because it's too deep and too vast to take on whole.

Facing this after watching my mother in the midst of a full-on bender when we were up at the cabin is such a blow to the gut and if it weren't for the support of my family and friends and community right now, I'd just fall apart completely. The one thing I know for sure is that this is not anything that any one person can tackle on their own. The sense of community and acceptance I found at the Al-Anon meeting was so humbling and I can't wait to go back. I worried about the twelve steps being so jam-packed with god and thought it would be a barrier for me, but when they said god I thought "community" and it worked just fine (and I just found a god-free alternative to the twelve steps here). People have been calling, emailing, texting, checking in every day to see how I'm doing and I'm so, so grateful, because I really need to feel like I'm not alone in this. I need it especially because I'm not just looking after my own well-being, but my daughter's, too.

His well-being is his problem. I can't do a thing about his drinking. All I can do is heal myself.

So, yeah. That will do for now.

a conversation with my mother-in-law

M-I-L: So, I did some reading. You know what is a big risk factor for the kind of heart failure you have?

Hubby: What, Mom?

M-I-L: Cocaine.

Hubby: Yes, I imagine it is a big cause. What are you getting at?

M-I-L: I’m just saying. I mean, I don’t know what you do…

Hubby: Well thanks Mom, I’ll keep that in mind next time I’m freebasing.

Yes, sir. That's my baby.

He had outpatient surgery today, to catheterize a vein and an artery in his groin and look for blockages. There are none. As long as we keep up with exercise, meds, low salt, and no drinking, the prognosis couldn't be better. He's in a great mood.

So am I. I get to keep asking, "How's your groin?"

top 5 ways my husband's heart failure has changed everything

1) So, yeah. He's been sick for months. He couldn't sleep at night because he couldn't breathe. Fist the doctor thought it was pneumonia, then she said it was just a stubborn viral infection, then she thought it was asthma. Meanwhile, days would go by for him with no sleep at all, he was constantly exhausted, couldn't walk a block without getting winded, and felt and looked like shit. None of the treatments our doctor prescribed made a difference. In spite of the history of heart disease in my husband's family, our doctor insisted that his heart sounded fine and his blood pressure was only elevated because of the inhaler she'd given him. Finally, he started retaining water. Like, huge amounts of water. He was horribly bloated and after a few days of no change, I pushed him to go back and insist on a second opinion. He went into our doctor's office and she pretty much took one look at him and sent him straight to the hospital, where they immediately diagnosed him as being in heart failure. Long story short, we have a new doctor now.

2) The good news is that his prognosis is excellent. Though his cardiologist was shocked he hadn't had a heart attack yet, my husband is in otherwise very good health, and the cardiologist says that if we adhere to his recommendations, his heart will repair itself and my husband will make a full recovery. Chief among those recommendations is to quit drinking and dramatically cut back on salt. Giving up drinking has been relatively easy, but cutting out salt is proving to be a major challenge. I'm doing most of the cooking now these days so he can relax and put his feet up when he gets home (he's on a diuretic to drain all that water out of him - he's already lost about twenty pounds of it), and I'm doing my best to keep things flavorful and interesting, but we both miss the salt. We console ourselves with the knowledge that we'll both end up losing a lot of weight because of the dietary changes and the necessity of incorporating more exercise into our daily lives.

3) Like fucking. Holy fuck, how I miss fucking. He moved out to the couch weeks ago because every time he was fully reclined, he felt strong pressure on his chest and couldn't breathe. Because his heart was working so hard just to keep him alive, sustaining an erection wasn't exactly a priority. The strain that his being sick placed on our marriage was extraordinary and divorce was mentioned more than once. When we finally found out what was really going on, we immediately clung to one another, our commitment to each other immediately renewed. Our relief at having his problem correctly diagnosed and treated is overwhelming. We are living so much more mindfully with one another now. Petty grievances are put aside. We listen more carefully. We're still not fucking yet, but that will come in time. No pun intended. In the meanwhile, I've always got porn.

4) Which isn't to say that it's all sunshine and roses now. The problems that have always existed in our marriage are still there. We're still broke as ever. I still work too many hours and am now even more exhausted than usual because I'm taking over a lot more of the cooking and housekeeping. We miss drinking. We miss salt. It's just that, y'know, the thought of his being dead kinda puts the rest of that shit in perspective. I'll take a lifetime without bacon and booze over a lifetime of parenting alone, thank you.

5) That changed perspective extends beyond the confines of my marriage. I've been indulging in all kinds of nonsense for too long, mooning about and whining that my needs weren't being met in any one of a number of ways. This has wrenched me firmly out of my own head and forced me to think hard about my priorities and goals. I love my family, I love my job, I love my town, and I should be nothing but thankful to have all that I have. What I'm glad of, I need to be grateful for, and what vexes me, I need to work to fix or accept. Period.

Thanks to the handful of you who knew what was going on and were relentlessly supportive and wonderful. I'm unbelievably lucky to be so loved, and I love you right back.

teaching anecdote

So I gave my honors students this really hard homework assignment, knowing they would struggle with it and wanting them to, because I'm always yammering on about important it is to be willing to make guesses and be wrong and labor at something until you come to a satisfactory conclusion blah blah blah. We spent most of the period going over the assignment, with students presenting their work at the board and me filling in the gaps where necessary or offering alternate approaches, and at the end of it, I pulled the lesson together by talking about how it had been my expectation that the assignment would be a challenge and how proud I was of them for rising to the challenge, even though they may not necessarily have enjoyed the process.

I said, "I know some of you probably found it frustrating and others of you might have enjoyed the challenge. For example," and I turned to one of my less ambitious students, "what did you think of the assignment?" He responded, "It sucked." We all laughed and I said, "Right," then turned to one of my more ambitious students and asked, "and what did you think?" She smiled and said, "I thought it was fun." I nodded and said, "So there you go. One person's sucking is another person's fun."

Silence. I contemplated what I had just said. Nervous giggling. "That didn't sound very good, did it?" Uproarious laughter. I blushed furiously and moved on.

I love my job.

In other news, hi. How's it going? I've missed you.

resolved

Yeah, so since I didn't do a single fucking thing from last year's list, I guess all that shit still stands, and can fit under one big umbrella resolution: get on with my stupid life, already.

happy new year

intoxicating

I just tucked the kid in and five minutes later she called out from her bedroom requesting water. I brought in a glass and handed it to her and she pulled my hand to her face, inhaling.

"You smell nice."
"Thank you. I just put on lotion."
"I love that smell. You smell like lotion and smoked meat."

Cheers.

crap that shows up in my inbox

So aside from my twittering, I've pretty much completely dropped being Tits McGee. Yet in spite of my almost total neglect of this blog, I still get about 300 hits a day (mostly from perverts who could use some help honing their search terms or who haven't yet discovered Google Image search) and some of those people like to write to me. Here are a few recent missives.

1) Can i view more picture of your body

That one was sent via mobile text message. Imagine how disappointed the sender would be if I'd texted back some mobile pix of my cellulite, stretch marks, and hairy armpits. Mmm...sexting.

2) Greetings. Somehow I stumbled upon your site. Would you kindly enlighten me. Maybe there is some kind of generation gap--I'm almost 62--but I'm confused. Or maybe I just don't get it. You are beautiful. That much I understand. You are a teacher? If so, that's great. But then I see all the other stuff. "What's wrong with this picture?" as they say. Nothing wrong with any sexually-related stuff, but how can you mix that with teaching? Your students know of your site? Please...Tell me what I'm missing, Tits McGee.

Yes, I put the url on my syllabus each semester. Also, I am impressed with your ability to understand how beautiful I am given that the only pictures of me on this blog are of my boobs.

3) Sooooo...... the spouse is telling me about a girl where she works who's had a boob-job. She's saying they've been calling this girl "Tits McGee" and have now shortened the name to "McGee." She knows this is a familiar name and wants me to look up the origin on the internet. I jump on this and find the Anchorman reference pretty quick..... but guess what else I find .....YOUR BLOG PROFILE!!!

Your profile is interesting in many ways and brings to mind several questions. Here they are now:

1. Is that really a picture of you? If so, were you ever on TV in the 80's?

2. Were you really a slut? If so, don't you feel that you've retired a little early at 34?

3. Do you like questions from strangers? If so, do you like them have secondary questions embedded in them?

Please get back to me on these soon. I'm on a hunger strike until they are answered and, at 5'11" and 140 lbs.already, time is of the essence.

1) Yes, and yes. And now, in addition to this blog, I write books about how Jesus wants you to spank your children.

2) Yes, and yes, but adultery is grossbuckets so I'm SOL.

3) No, and no, yet here I am responding all the same, when I really ought to be taking advantage of my day off by catching up on grading papers.

You may be dead by now, given that you sent that email about a month ago. If so, I apologize. Also, I am compelled to note that you refer to your wife as "the spouse." Stay classy!

In other news, it's my birthday on Monday and I'm turning 35. I find this extraordinarily depressing and plan to run away to the big city the following weekend to hide in Bosom Buddy's apartment and smoke weed and giggle until I pass out. Send cake and porn.

pain don't hurt

RIP Patrick.