Tag Archives: Marriage

July 14, 2013 · 0:00

Confessions of a Pooter-Pack

It was about 5-1/2 years ago when I first recommended canonization of my husband, John, to the Vatican.  Even though I am a very lapsed Catholic, I’m sure they’ll go along with it.  Because he really does deserve it.  Good spouses of many people with chronic diseases deserve special recognition, but I’m pretty sure only John deserves sainthood.  Because all the good saints have been tortured, haven’t they?  And John absolutely fits that bill.

Saint Sebastian by Il Sodoma, c. 1525

Saint Sebastian by Il Sodoma, c. 1525
(Image from Wikipedia)
I couldn’t find any saints who were suffocated, so John has a good shot

Let me mention that I’ve been reluctant to write about this subject.  But after multiple requests following my last post about good hygiene and the New Jersey Turnpike, I figured I’d just get it over with and get on with my life.  

I knew from an early age that there was one moniker I never wanted to have.  I never wanted to be a “Pooter-Pack.”

It’s a bad thing, being a Pooter-Pack.  Nobody likes them or wants them around.  And nobody wants to be called a pooter-pack.

In fact, in possibly the only instance where my brother was caught doing something wrong, Fred’s mouth was washed out with soap for calling our paperboy a “Pooter-Pack.”

What, you might ask is a “Pooter-Pack?”

It’s a pack of pooters, DUH!  You know – farts.  Butt burps.  Cutting the cheese.  “Fluff” as my childhood best friend Liz’s family called them for no logical reason.

I did not want to be a pooter-pack.  No-sirree Bob.  And for the longest time, I wasn’t.  Those were golden years that I did not fully appreciate.

To set the record straight, I did not become a pooter-pack that day when all the kids in my 6th grade English class thought I did.  I was viciously maligned.  Tagged.  Ridiculed.  It was a hot spring day and my young, innocent, bare leg stuck to my plastic seat.  When I moved, I made a nasty fart-like sound with my leg.

Let’s be clear about this:  I did not fart.  I would have died first.

But Tommy O, the main bully in my life, led Kevin E and John L in a sing-song around me:

Elyse Farted!  Elyse Farted! 

She did she did she did!

I wanted to disappear.  Disolve.  Die.  It was so unfair.  I didn’t!  Not even so much as an SBD!    And it had no smell at all because I hadn’t farted.  It was a leg, umm, fart.  They’re different.  Somewhat pleasant, even.

I tried to defend myself, but the whole class heard the noise and believed the boys, not me.  I hate them all still.

Fast forward past many fart-free years.

In the early 1980s, I had a severe case of colitis-that-was-really-Crohn’s disease.  That was when I really started tooting my own horn.  Quietly, though, thankfully.  SBDs.

One of the treatments for many kinds of bowel disease is a drug called prednisone.  One of prednisone’s most notable symptoms is flatulence.  Prednisone does not give a girl delicate lady-like whiffs of something vaguely unpleasant that might induce a brief nose wrinkle.

Nope.  Waves of heavy, inescapable stink accompany a person taking prednisone.  Like Charlie Brown’s friend, Pig Pen, a smelly cloud hung around me wherever I went.

(Google image. Done by Charles Shultz, of course. Who, I am quite sure never had gas.)

(Google image. Done by Charles Shultz, of course. Who, I am quite sure never had gas.)

In the Metro.  On a bus.  In an elevator.  In my office.  I was engulfed in my nasty, stinky cloud.

In spite of the evidence of everybody’s senses, I never admitted I had a problem.  That it was me polluting the air.  Nope.  I didn’t say a word to anyone.  I just couldn’t bear another bit of humiliation.  (But frankly, unless there were a whole lot of lucky people around me suffering from anosmia, loss of smell, people were polite or stupid.)

I’m going with polite.  Because my friends and co-workers were truly terrific.  And they knew just how embarrassing life was for me.  You see, when you have bowel disease, you are constantly in humiliating, compromising positions.  I’ve written about that many times, including here.

I didn’t mention that I’d become a pooter-pack to my parents, who were, luckily for them, safely in another state.  I couldn’t mention it to my sisters, including Beth, the nurse, who would have known the reason (I didn’t)  or Judy, who would have laughed herself silly and taken me along with her.

I also didn’t mention it to my roommate, Keily.  Keily lived with me.  She was exposed to the ill effects of the prednisone but never once broached the subject (she is the biggest-hearted person in the world, my friend Keily is).

I’m pretty sure that my dog, Goliath, loved me more because of the smell.  Dogs are gross.

The only person who ever mentioned flatulence to me was my gastroenterologist, Dr. C., the guy who gave me the damn fart pills.

“Are you having any gas?” he’d ask.  It was always the last in the usual lineup of embarrassing questions.

I would look him straight in the eye and say:

“Gas?  Me?  No,” I lied, every single time.

Dr. C would tilt his head like Goliath and look straight at me as we sat together in my stink cloud.  Every time he’d wait for my answer to change.

It never did.

As far as my medical records from that time are concerned, I have never ummm, fluffed.  Dr. C surely wrote me up in a medical journal somewhere.  Or perhaps he went to a doctor to have his own sense of smell assessed.

Anyway, I had my surgery and for years I lived up to what I told Dr. C.  I did not pooter.  Truthfully this time.

I’m not sure that that was what first attracted John to me, but I’m sure the fact that I did not have a stink cloud around me didn’t hurt.  We’d been married about 20 years when my Crohn’s symptoms, ummm, re-erupted in about 2006.

I felt fine, actually.  But something peculiar happened whenever I would go to bed.  It started out slowly, gently, and then progressed to putrid:  Whenever I lay down, my bottom end erupted.  The most noxious substance passed out of my body and into the air in the bedroom.

It never happened if I was upright.  Ever.  Only John had to deal with it.

“There’s actually some comfort in it,” John said towards the beginning.   “Not every husband can be sure that their wife won’t lay with another man.”

I pursed my lips and glared at him.

Still, I couldn’t imagine what could possibly be happening.  But then I started to worry.  You see, when I had my surgery in 1982, which was for documented colitis, the doctors disagreed after the fact about what I had. If it came back within 10 years, it was Crohn’s; if it didn’t, it was colitis.  It turned out that it was Crohn’s that came back over 20 years later.  And it came back with a bang.

The first person I told my gaseous problem to was my late sister, Beth.  Beth was a nurse, and she was incredibly smart.  Amazing, in fact.  She could diagnose any malady in a nano-second.  So I told her about my problem, and that it was getting worse.

“I really don’t know what to do,” I told her.

“Gee, Lease,” she said sympathetically, “It sounds like you could clear Walmart.”

“Thanks, Beth.  That helps.”

“Try some GasX,” she recommended a bit more helpfully.

And I did.  GasX works.  It really does.  It even works on weird gas problems like mine.  Sort of.

At that time, GasX was available in two forms.  One that claimed it kept gas away for 4 hours, and the other said it kept it away for 6 hours.  Never was a drug label more accurately written.  Because exactly at 4 hours plus one second, all that stored up flatulence would burst out into my bedroom, like a neutron bomb.  In the middle of the night, and into the place where my poor husband tried to sleep with me.

He never complained.  Occasionally, he would moan “Oh, Lease,” but I’m sure that was just his way of searching for oxygen.

My boss, a physician, noticed me researching flatulence one day, and asked me why.  I confessed my problem to her.

She stood in my office and laughed until her belly hurt.

It’s never good when a doctor can’t stop laughing after you’ve described your symptoms.  Unfortunately, she couldn’t help me either, and she’s brilliant.  She’d never heard of reclining flatulence, either.  Nor had Google, my bible.

Unlike my previous time as a pooter-pack, this time there was no cloud of stink.  Instead, this time the stink formed a curtain, a wall around the bed.  It was truly horrible laying there in the poisonous air.  But I would, being the good wife I am, try to rid myself of the gas by going to the bathroom.

When I came back?  Getting back was like walking through a brick wall.  There was literally a physical wall of stinky bricks.

Which brings me to the reason my husband should be canonized.  Because for 2 years, and until the third of three different doctors poked and prodded and tested, did the third one figure out what was wrong with me (an internal abscess that required surgery), my husband did not complain that I was not exactly a dream wife.

And never once did he call me a pooter-pack.

*   *   *

In a last-ditch effort to save a little bit of my nearly exhausted pride, I will tell you that since that surgery, I have not been a pooter-pack.  Honest.  Would I lie?

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January 11, 2013 · 0:00

Marriage Strains?

There’s nothing like the sound of young love.

Well, except when I try to eavesdrop on my son and his girlfriend.  Then the sound of young love – “dub step” — is, well, not “moon/June/spoon”- inducing.

Back when John and I fell in love, well, things were different.  Music was wonderful, made to share.  And so I did.

About three months after John and I started dating, I made him a tape.  (For the youngin’s amongst us, it’s like a portable playlist that can be played on any appropriate device available in the prehistoric period in which your parents were, ummm, young.)  Yes, I made my love a cassette tape of my very favorite songs from that and every era.  It contained, among other songs, the following:

Juice Newton, The Sweetest Thing

Joni Mitchell, A Case of You

Bonnie Raitt:  Home

Linda Ronstadt:  Blue Bayou

It was too late when I learned that not only did John not love the songs I loved, he hated them.  Every single one of them.  Over the years, he has solidified his position.  For example, John has threatened to divorce me should I sing Blue Bayou within range of his supersonic ears, an approximate 5 square mile range.

Let me tell you this:  It is not an ideal situation for a critically acclaimed former singer to be banned from singing her favorite songs.  Especially when the ban includes those rare times when I am actually doing housework.  It has been a rather sticky issue for 26 years now.

I try to be accommodating because I am wonderful.  And because I have a huge repertoire of first verses of songs that will get stuck in John’s head for when he really pisses me off.  John has been accommodating by vacating the house immediately when I begin singing/playing/thinking about any of these songs.  Generally he is in search of a divorce lawyer.

But you know what?  Payback is hell.

You see, in the past, I’ve often told John that he needs to outlive me, because I don’t want to have to deal with all our financial issues.  Seriously —  I haven’t balanced a checkbook since we got married, and I don’t intend to start.

But now, after reading an article in today’s Reuters.com, I’m reconsidering my position on who gets to “go” first.  You see, I read that there is:

No rest for the dead with surround-sound coffin

Because now I can get John a specialty coffin complete with seriously impressive stereo speakers, hooked up to the latest iPod/music technology.  And I will get to choose the playlist.

I wonder if I can find that cassette.

Coffin speakers

I promise I will only need one.

Payback is, literally, hell.

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January 3, 2013 · 0:00

For Cryin’ Out Loud!

In the spring and summer of 1986 random parts of my face started growing for no apparent reason.  I would be at home, on the subway, or off working somewhere around DC.

First it was a swollen eyebrow.  Then that would go away and a day or two later, my cheek would grow so that I couldn’t see well out of one eye.

Mostly it was my lips, though.  They would grow, sometimes individually, sometimes  together.  I looked like a duck.

Did I mention I was also getting married in September?  That September?  And while John and I had a fairly small and simple wedding, I was unenthusiastic about going to the altar looking like a daisy.  Especially this one.

Daisy Duck

Of course, John’s lips would have been normal.
Mine? Not so much.

But work was so completely crazy that I ignored it.  I was a lobbyist/flunky at the time, and was spending long days up on Capitol Hill working on the Tax Reform Act of 1986.  (And it was the perfect assignment for me; I did my own taxes – on the U.S. Government 1040-EZ form.  Tax Returns for Poor Dummies.)  I was in over my head, didn’t have a clue what was going on, what was important, or which way was up.  I was a wee bit stressed.

Plus that summer we decided to buy our first house just so we could send my stress level through the roof of my brand new adorable little house.

But back to my problem.  My ever changing facial features.

People were looking at me strangely which I understood – I often and suddenly looked really odd.  But even stranger, they stopped talking whenever I would approach.  These were people I’d worked with for more than six years.  Something weird was going on.

And I found out what that was early one morning as I stood talking in the front lobby to my boss, also (irritatingly) named John.  He was giving me instructions on that day’s most important issues, when to pay especially close attention, when to call him immediately with an update.

At the beginning of the chat, my face was normal. But as we talked, my lips spontaneously grew larger and larger.  More duck-like.

“Elyse,” my boss said, “what’s happening to your lips?”

“They’re growing.  Spontaneously.  I don’t know why.  But you’ve seen me with a swollen face off and on for the last couple of months.  Haven’t you noticed?  And it keep on happening.  Luckily, John has promised to marry me even if I look like Daisy Duck when I arrive at the church.”

The look of relief on his face was instantaneous – he joked with me about the fat lips, about stress, about what I might be allergic to.  He’s a really nice guy, and he cared about me.  But it wasn’t until much later when I realized just why he had looked so relieved.

He thought I was being abused by my husband-to-be.  And he, a very powerful Washington DC lawyer, who knew/knows everybody in town, had no idea what to do.  He didn’t ask me if anybody was hurting me.  He didn’t threaten to report John, or try to find out discretely whether folks in John’s office thought John might be abusive.  No, my boss talked to other folks who also cared about me and who also didn’t know what to do to save me from what, had it been true, would have been a huge mistake.

(In fairness, they didn’t know my John at all – it wasn’t a very social office.)

And once I made the connection, I remembered feeling similarly helpless once.  I thought about a secretary named Kelly who had worked with us briefly a few years earlier.  She and I had become a bit friendly, even though we worked on different floors and in totally different departments.  We both loved to play softball.  One day I saw Kelly with an enormous black eye.

“I was playing softball with my husband’s team,” she said, shaking her head.   “I should have caught the damn ball.”

“I once caught one with my left thigh,” I responded to her, truthfully, but naively.  “You could see the stitch marks on the bruise.”

The next day she was gone.  Obviously to everyone else her husband had been beating her, and she got help and got away.

The image of her face has haunted me.  What would I have done – would I have been able/willing to help her?  Would I have ever figured out what was happening to her?

My story ended well.  I hadn’t had time to eat properly and subsisted pretty much on a diet of Milky Ways for two months.  Woman cannot live on Milky Ways alone. Maybe ducks can.  I stopped eating chocolate and looked OK at my wedding.  Or at least, I didn’t look like a duck.

I don’t know how Kelly’s story ended.  I never will.

*     *     *

Yesterday, the GOP in the U.S. House of Representatives allowed the Violence Against Women Act, which had been law since 1994, to expire.  And they let it happen because it would have expanded coverage of the law to more women including immigrants and Native Americans.

Perhaps you don’t know what the Violence Against Women law does.

My bible, Wikipedia, says that it provide programs and services, including:

  • Community violence prevention programs
  • Protections for female victims who are evicted from their homes because of events related to domestic violence or stalking
  • Funding for female victim assistance services, like rape crisis centers and hotlines
  • Programs to meet the needs of immigrant women and women of different races or ethnicities
  • Programs and services for female victims with disabilities
  • Legal aid for female survivors of violence

But what it really does is help abused women.  To let them know that they can get help.  That they are not alone.  And it can also give their families, friends and co-workers vital, life saving information about how to help.  How to act.  What to do besides wonder amongst everyone else but the person most impacted.  Literally.

Now tell me, what’s not to like about this law?  It gives vital assistance to vulnerable women – those who most need it.  A place to go where they can take their kids, get help.

It gives folks who don’t know what to do or what to say a clue as to how to help women in need.

Where they don’t have to give up that last little bit of their heart.

I have stated this more often than I can stand, but the men in the GOP are not on the side of women, or on the side of men who respect women.

GET THEM OUT OF OUR LIVES

Then, Damn them to Hell where they belong

***

What you and I can do:

Contact your representatives in Congress and demand they pass the Violence Against Women Act as it stands today with expanded services: http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/

Other sources:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/vawa_factsheet.pdf

http://denisedv.org/what-is-the-violence-against-women-act-and-why-is-congress-playing-politics/

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November 27, 2012 · 0:00

Blowin’ in the Wind

I take war pretty darn seriously when it comes, so I try to pay attention to the rumblings and rumors of yet another conflict.  That way, I can be sure to make my feelings known.

That probably comes from the fact that when I was in 9th grade everybody in my entire school got on a bus and drove down to Washington DC to that huge rally on the Mall.  Me and John C were the only two kids left behind.  Spending a day with John C was NOT my idea of a good time, but my parents wouldn’t let me go.  I’ve never gotten over it.

I DID make up for it though.  In 2003 I saw Peter Paul & Mary live on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, singing Blowin’ in the Wind and Give Peace A Chance, just like they had back in 1971.  We were all there to protest the impending invasion of Iraq the next day.  George W Bush flew overhead in Marine 1 on his way back from Camp David.  He hovered over us, just long enough for the assembled protesters to flip him the finger.  I’m sure he returned the gesture.

For this new war?  I got no warning, no notice, nothing from MoveOn.Org or Code Pink or anybody else.  How could that happen?  I’m on every single political email that goes out to special people like me.  And you know what a news junkie I am – I read everything.  Still I missed it.  Damn.  Because this war might be in my living room before long.  And yours.  Or maybe it will snake its way upstairs, into our bedrooms.

It’s The War on Men.

Yup.  At least according to Phyllis Schlafly’s niece, anyway.  Oh you remember Phyllis, don’t you?  She was one of the main spokespeople behind the anti Equal Rights for Women movement.

Why didn’t she just stay home and bake?

So, in keeping with having a family full of non-feminist women who stay home and bake cookies, Phil’s niece, Suzanne Venker works outside of the home.  She “stumbled” upon a bunch of men who are unhappy with women and who say that they aren’t going to get married.  Not no way, not no how.

Why?

Because “Women aren’t Women anymore.”

Well, I’ll be.  Excuse me while I check on my lady parts.

Now Suzie wrote about it (well sort of, it’s an article on Fox).  She claims that men haven’t changed.  Apparently they still have all the same instincts that they had back in the day.  But women?  They’ve changed.  And not for the better according to Suzie.

They’ve gotten uppity.  They want to work.  They want to get paid for working.  They want to use their hearts and their minds.  (And I bet they still want Equal Rights.)  THE NERVE!

Suzie also says that this whole attitude on the part of women, well

“[It] has not threatened men. It has pissed them off. It has also undermined their ability to become self-sufficient in the hopes of someday supporting a family. Men want to love women, not compete with them. They want to provide for and protect their families – it’s in their DNA. But modern women won’t let them.

It’s all so unfortunate – for women, not men. Feminism serves men very well: they can have sex at hello and even live with their girlfriends with no responsibilities whatsoever.

It’s the women who lose. [Sniff]  Not only are they saddled with the consequences of sex, by dismissing male nature they’re forever seeking a balanced life. The fact is, women need men’s linear career goals – they need men to pick up the slack at the office – in order to live the balanced life they seek.

So if men today are slackers, and if they’re retreating from marriage en masse, women should look in the mirror and ask themselves what role they’ve played to bring about this transformation.  [Emphasis mine all mine.]

Perhaps it is the fact that in the decades that most of us have lived in [and I think we can assume that Suzie has been stuck in a perpetual space-time continuum] well, we’ve been able to make our own choices about when to have children, and a whole mess of other economic issues that earlier generations of women couldn’t because they were barefoot and pregnant.

But fortunately, Suzie tells me not to worry about this war.  You see, I can actually do something about this one.  And actually, you can too.  I’m relieved.  Aren’t you?

Women have the power to turn everything around. All they have to do is surrender to their nature – their femininity – and let men surrender to theirs.

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August 16, 2012 · 0:00

Hot Diggity Dog!

I grew up poor and white on the Gold Coast of Connecticut in Fairfield County.  Yes, I grew up surrounded by beautiful mansions of the very rich.  My family?  We were really poor.  One bathroom, share-a-bedroom poor.  No heat those first few winters-poor.  Clothes that weren’t hand-me-downs were bought at Barkers, the local discount department store.  Way before saving money and Targét became cool.  Barkers was decidedly not cool.

The Gold Coast. That house on the left behind the trees has a ballroom. Literally. They held Cinderella balls there. Or Gatsby balls. They didn’t invite this guttersnipe, though.

We never complained.  Not that we didn’t want to, but it did no good.  Once, my sister Judy complained:

“None of my friends have to buy their Easter dresses at Barkers,” she began to whine.  She stopped when she saw that Dad had overheard her.  She knew what was coming.  So did I.

“Well,” said Dad, “you’ve never gone to bed hungry, have you?”

Judy and I exchanged looks.  It was coming.  The hot dog story.  That was the reason we never moaned aloud about our penury.  We knew we’d have to hear the hot dog story.  Again. And we’d have to figure out what “penury” meant.

“When I was your age,” Dad continued,  (Judy and I tried not to look bored)   “When I was your age,” he repeated, “the Depression was on.  My Dad, your grandfather, who built some of the houses around here, couldn’t find work.  No one was building.  No one was hiring.  No one was paying for anything.  No matter how hard anyone was willing to work, there was no work.  No way to feed the family.”

“There were seven of us.  And I remember being hungry.  Going to bed with an empty stomach because I made sure that my mother would have half of my share.  Whatever we had.  One night I remember I had to go to the store to get two hot dogs.  That night, there were two hot dogs and some beans for dinner.  And that was a feast.  For seven of us.”

The story never had the impact on us that Dad intended.  It made us roll our eyes.  It made us certain that he was exaggerating.  It made us feel embarrassed that he was even more poor then than we were now.

Of course we didn’t go to bed hungry.  We lived in America.  Duh!   Kids don’t go to bed hungry here!  Jezum Crow!

But you know, our friends were oblivious to the idea that there were things that folks like us couldn’t afford.  They didn’t understand why we weren’t jetting off to the Caribbean or to Europe or to Disney the way they did.  They didn’t understand that we couldn’t be in the school play because we couldn’t afford the special (very expensive) skirts that became the von Trapp children’s outfits that were supposed to come from Maria’s drapes.  That we couldn’t even bear to ask our parents for it.

Lack of money was something that our friends simply had never experienced.  They weren’t intentionally callous, they just didn’t get it. It was like trying to explain music to a someone who had never been able to hear.  Possible, but challenging. And it took a lot of work.

Now I tell you this story so you know that I have been surrounded by rich people.  So I’m familiar with just how completely oblivious folks can be if they have never had to live on nothing more than two hot dogs and some beans.

Today, I would give anything to have Dad deliver his hot dog lecture.  And I know just who needs to hear it.

You see, today I read an interesting article about Ann and Mitt Romney, and how poor they once were.  Yes, it’s true.  Mitt and Ann were once poor. Ann said so in an interview in 1994!

I was astonished.  Aghast.  I wished I had a couple of hot dogs to offer them. (Sadly, they now have a “no dogs” policy.)

Ann tells the gut-wrenching story about how they once lived in a basement apartment with no carpeting.  They had to eat tuna and pasta.  They didn’t entertain.  They struggled.  They had to sell stock to pay the bills!

Yes, the poor Romneys.  [Hanky, please!]  All they had to live off was the stock that Mitt’s Dad had given him for his birthdays.  Stock that had started at $6 per share but ended up at over $90.  And, hard swallow here, Mitt and Ann were chipping away at the principle!  Eating their seed corn!  Whatever would become of them?

Imagine that.  Just imagine having to sacrifice so much.

So I totally get how big-hearted they must be.  How they understand the plight of the working poor, how they understand the sacrifices needed to achieve success.

Because all you really need to do to succeed in today’s world is to get stock from your parents.  Duh.

Mitt and Ann in rags. Very formal rags.

Related articles:  http://www.samefacts.com/2012/01/income-distribution/mitt-romney-and-ann-the-students-struggling-so-much-that-they-had-to-sell-stock/

*     *    *

As a kid, I really did feel like I was poor.  But I wasn’t.  As an adult, I learned that there really were poor people, people who went to bed hungry and whose children went to bed hungry.
I also learned that “The Poor” does not include folks who live by selling bits and pieces of their stock portfolio.  There is a big difference, and it’s not just in perception.  It’s in reality.

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