In Case We Ever Have to Fight a Zombie Army.

My husband and I both have a penchant for horror movies, especially those featuring zombies and post-apocalyptic situations. He likes the creepy blood-and-gore imagery, and I like the freaky stories. It's something we share.

One of the things I always liked to think about when we watched these movies together was how great he'd be in a post-apocalyptic zombie war. Put us together on the set of 28 Days Later, for instance, and I'd be glad to have hitched my cart to him. Yes, he can be a huge pain in the ass in the regular world, but I enjoy thinking of how his various skills would come in handy when we're facing an army of rage-virus plagued zombie creatures of the End Times.

For instance, he's great at stealing, and he can be quite resourceful. He'd maraud the other apocalypse survivors to make sure that we'd have plenty to eat and clothes to wear and shelter. His tactics at manipulation would come in handy as well, as he'd convince me that the human parts or deer brains that we were eating were actually soy based. I'm not good at eating people or other animals.

It seemed good, and fair. I'd have paid my dues in the pre-apocalyptic days with all my jobs and being the responsible one; he'd protect me post-apocalypse, fighting off animals and zombie armies and making sure we had food. It would be a situation where he would be strong and brave and helpful, and I could stand by and scream and be useless and silly.

Last night, though, we watched a really bad post-apocalyptic zombie army movie called Tooth and Nail, and I realized something awful. In the movie, the survivors were living in a hospital. They had medical supplies and food, which was a pretty good set up until the cannibal army came to ravage them. One of the survivors got bashed in the leg in a cannibal army rampage, and another had to treat him with syringes full of morphine.

Ahh! There's the rub!

In the post-apocalyptic world, there would be syringes full of morphine! There would be abandoned pharmacies full of oxycontin! There would be no reason to live! It would be a junky-fun-free-for-all!

If we were in the hospital with other survivors, he'd bash himself over the head to have a reason to get all the morphine for himself. He'd suffer from too much pain to be able to fight the zombies, and he'd need me to fight them for him. He'd need me to hunt and gather food, too, and he wouldn't like the food I found. When it was time to run and hide, I'd have to haul him around in a wheelchair with a morphine drip IV and fight the zombies by myself...but he'd have a lot of opinions about how my zombie-fighting tactics weren't good enough. He'd waste our precious bullets by shooting himself in the foot once his head-bashing healed, guaranteeing a continued supply of morphine. Once he'd robbed every abandoned pharmacy and looted every empty hospital in our area, he'd be useless from detoxing for weeks, and very sorry, and very angry, and make lots of promises in between yelling at me for doing everything wrong.

We'd bring ourselves with us, right into the Apocalypse, and continue acting out our psychodrama in the midst of the end of the world. I'm so disheartened.

It's A Wonderful Life.

Help me, Clarence, please! Please! I wanna live again! I wanna live again! Please, God, let me live again!

What a great movie. I watched it again like most everyone else in the world, and it seems this year to have special, secret messages for me about recovery, love, living in the moment, gratitude, and embracing the friends and family who love you. It's always good to remember, but it's extra good to remember right now.

I've spent my day reading, eating, and playing with a kitten. Those are good things. I'm surrounded by people who love me. Real life, with all its seeming endless struggles, is at least 24 hours away, and I'm grateful for a small break. I'm glad to have a husband who loves me, who is doing the best he can, and who I love with my whole heart. This moment is one of those rare and wonderful ones in which I have no regrets.

Bug.

I don't know why I love you so much. I hardly even know you. Seems like all we ever talk about is bugs...I guess I’d rather talk to you about bugs than talk to nobody about nothing.

Oooh! Everybody's got to rent Bug right now! The main character is a stark raving insane codependent. It's one of the most striking movies I've seen in a long time.

The freaked-out veteran is pretty cool to watch manifest all his insanity, but nothing is as good as Ashley Judd's character. Before taking on her lover, she was kind of lonely and kind of scared, but she jumps right on his crazy train.

A few folks have told me that they were reminded of me and my husband by various aspect of the characters and the setting and their relationship. The movie isn't scary, but fuck if that part of it wasn't...looking at these folks acting out their mad dance as emblematic of my own relationship.

And yeah, he probably could convince me to line the walls with tin foil.

Wuthering Heights

Today we watched the 1992 Wuthering Heights film. It was great...for years, he's been my Heathcliff. Here's that priceless quote from the book:

'I think that's the worst motive you've given yet for being the wife of young Linton.'

'It is not,' retorted she; 'it is the best! The others were the satisfaction of my whims: and for Edgar's sake, too, to satisfy him. This is for the sake of one who comprehends in his person my feelings to Edgar and myself. I cannot express it; but surely you and everybody have a notion that there is or should be an existence of yours beyond you. What were the use of my creation, if I were entirely contained here? My great miseries in this world have been Heathcliff's miseries, and I watched and felt each from the beginning: my great thought in living is himself. If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger: I should not seem a part of it.—My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods: time will change it, I'm well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff! He's always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being. So don't talk of our separation again: it is impracticable; and—'

And then this one:

'This is nothing,' cried she: 'I was only going to say that heaven did not seem to be my home; and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and the angels were so angry that they flung me out into the middle of the heath on the top of Wuthering Heights; where I woke sobbing for joy. That will do to explain my secret, as well as the other. I've no more business to marry Edgar Linton than I have to be in heaven; and if the wicked man in there had not brought Heathcliff so low, I shouldn't have thought of it. It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now; so he shall never know how I love him: and that, not because he's handsome, Nelly, but because he's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same; and Linton's is as different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire.'

Addiction Store

I put together some stuff in this store. Check it out to find answers or for treats for yourself. I've been trying to remember to reward myself lately (and I've got about 10 new pounds on my ass to show for it). From reading about my new favorite subject, Addiction,to lying in a bath with lots of candles, remembering to take care of ME first is the best thing I can do. Buy yourself something nice!