What the Dooce?

I’ve decided to join the thousands of other bloggers and chime in on the Dooce situation. I’m not one of the mean commentators who is laughing maniacally at this, saying I saw it coming. I didn’t. Or if I did, I didn’t want to. I feel sorry for both Heather and Jon. I feel sorry that their separation is happening so painfully publicly. Of course, the fact that they have both worked from home for several years, bought their dream home, and have sponsors pay them to design their dream home with sponsor products is a result of making their lives so public. So yes, while they want privacy for themselves and their children in this difficult time, it’s hard for the public, especially their readers, to give them that luxury. Their readers are screaming, “We bought you your house! Tell us why you’re separating!!” (Those exclamation points are for Dooce. You’re welcome!)

I hate divorce. It’s that simple. I hate that it happens, and I hate that people cause it. Infidelity, conflict, “irreconcilable differences,” it doesn’t matter (I will put abuse in an entirely justified category—that’s not what I’m addressing here).

One reason it bothers me so much is that it’s so popular and trendy to say you’re “marrying your best friend.” Yes, I probably said that. Heather and Jon said that. Everyone says it. It’s cute and hip to marry your best friend. Does that mean you divorce your best friend? Or do they stop being your best friend before that point?

I’ve had a ton of conflicts, jealousy, anger, etc. toward my best friends from both high school and college. And yet, they’ve never stopped being my best friend. I don’t think we could ever have “irreconcilable differences.” If we had them, we never would have become best friends in the first place.

Back to Heather and Jon Armstrong. I hope this is just a separation and not divorce. However, it’s not looking that way. Jon is buying furniture, having their children (oh, those poor, sweet children) sleep over at his apartment. He’s looking for a new job, getting seriously into photography. Would he go back to Heather if she asked? Just for the kids—or would he want to?

The man is amazing. He’s dealt with his wife’s mental illness, book deals, travel schedule, launch into internet fame—while working quietly behind the scenes to keep her incredibly successful website up and running smoothly, while simultaneously putting up with a woman with a certified mental illness. And having their entire relationship broadcasted on her blog.

If the Armstrongs were to divorce, I would have thought it would have been after Heather checked herself into a mental hospital for post-partum depression and suicidal thoughts, way back in the mid-2000s. Instead, he brought their infant daughter to see her every day, despite battling his work for the time off. Heather was a stay-at-home mom (or work-at-home mom) then, with an infant. And she contemplated hanging herself with a dog’s leash in their garage. She had a serious mental illness and needed help. But if there was ever a time to leave someone, Jon could have made his break. She was endangering his daughter!—he could have walked away then. But he didn’t. He stayed, which is what made all of us think they really could last forever.

I’ve been reading Dooce, and occasionally Jon’s blog at Blurbomat, on and off since high school. I feel like I know them. I feel like I’ve grown up with them, and this separation feels as real as if a friend was facing this. Of course, I’m dying to know the details--any reader who says they aren't is lying. Obviously we're obsessed with reading intimate details of the lives of people we've never met--of course we're interested in your scandal!

So what did he do so wrong? They will likely never tell us, but I’m much more interested in that than Heather’s current saga of growing out her hair.

So for the love of sweaty goat balls, tell us already!!!!!!!

50/50

My personal interaction with cancer began years ago, and it’s been part of my life ever since. I was in middle school when my grandma first became sick with the disease, and she’s battled it several times since then. There have been good times when cancer remains in its small corner. Other times, it occupies almost every thought, every day. And thinking about it makes my throat hurt, makes my mouth taste like it’s full of pennies. Hearing, talking, or thinking about cancer hurts.

Despite this, the film 50/50 interested me from the first time I saw a preview. A dramatic comedy about cancer—is that even possible? Joseph Gordon-Levitt is a fantastic actor who stole my heart in 1999 in 10 Things I Hate About You. He was pitch-perfect in (500) Days of Summer. And of course, he was the true acting genius of Inception. Seth Rogen (who plays Gordon-Levitt’s best friend Kyle), on the other hand, makes me want to scratch my eyes out. I would love-hate the stars in this movie. It really would be 50/50.

And of course the cancer theme. Could it be portrayed in a real, authentic way? Would the directors, actors, producers really understand what cancer is all about—not just the disease itself, but they were attempting to capture the life around cancer—from the point of view of the person with cancer, to the best friend, the girlfriend, the therapist, the mother. Each has his own stake in this life; each suffers differently. What if they didn’t get my view of cancer right?

For the entire movie, I felt the pennies in my mouth. I wanted to cry the whole time—I wanted to break down as I watched Joseph Gordon-Levitt get skinnier, paler, with darker circles under his eyes. He lost his hair—he lost so much—and it was so real. Because he remained so calm. And maybe that’s not how everyone fights cancer. But that’s how I fought my grandma’s cancer. I never let it boil over—just kept pushing it down, just kept swallowing the feeling that there is nothing you can do.

And then, he breaks. Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s character Adam finally breaks. He gets into drive Kyle’s (Rogen) car (although he doesn’t have a license and doesn’t ever drive) because Kyle is drunk. He’s a bad friend who’s been using Adam’s cancer to get girls. And Adam drives furiously the wrong way down a one-way, driving too fast, and finally, Kyle yanks the emergency break and halts the car. Adam orders him out, and then loses it. He screams, yells, smacks the steering wheel console. It’s a raging moment, bordering on ridiculous and crazy. And it’s one of the most real moments in cinema. He’s having life-threatening surgery the next day, and he finally admits he just wants everything to be over. He’s tired of being sick.

There’s a subtle moment in the next scene where Adam gets Kyle to bed. He’s in Kyle’s bathroom where he finds a dog-eared book, with underlined and highlighted sections, Facing Cancer Together. It’s a good moment, a renewed hope in their friendship, and a look at the silent pain of a best friend.

Angelica Houston as Adam’s mother is brilliant. It’s almost painful to watch her incredibly real portrayal of a woman dealing with both a husband with Alzheimer’s Disease and her young son with only a 50/50 chance of survival.

There’s so much pain in this film, so much real-life pain, as it was developed by screenwriter Will Reiser, who was diagnosed with a rare spinal cancer at age 24. His real-life best friend, Seth Rogen, helped him cope with the disease by coming up with ideas for comedies about cancer. 

The entire movie is a play on the title 50/50, Adam’s initial survival rate. It’s half charming and funny and half heart-wrenching. Reiser had explained the film doesn't make fun of cancer itself, but instead finds humor in how people close to cancer patients react to their diagnosis.

“For myself and everyone involved, the most important thing was to be true to the characters and make it feel honest,” Reiser told Indiewire. “Anything that felt like it wasn't real, we would cut. We didn't really sit around and think about what other movies had done. We thought about what was honest in this world we created.”

And then the real-world application. Brett and I watched together, laughing out loud through several scenes, quietly inflecting during others. And of course, both pondering How would we react? Adam, as real-life Reiser, received this diagnosis at 24. I’m 24. And that’s the beauty of life—the imperfection, the fragility, the unexpected. Every day, every single one of us is living with the 50/50.

Moving Day

We are moving. We bought our first house and we are moving out of our first apartment.

Anyone who has ever visited our apartment knows my complaints (you know…bed in the living room/kitchen, having a living room/kitchen, having a hotel-sized kitchen, ONE cupboard, two square feet of countertop, light over the kitchen that doesn’t work, no windows, centipedes, street parking, not being able to order delivered food because we live in a non-existent cave world, bobsled-run hill to walk down in the winter…to name a few).

But as we’re beginning to move out of the very first home we made together and have lived in for one and a half years, a few things have become aware to me that I will miss when we leave our little cave.

**This was going to be a Letterman-style top ten list—but I’m not sure I actually have ten, we’ll see.

Of course, the most obvious: Ann. Our landlady and wonderfully crazy upstairs neighbor. She wears robes AT ALL TIMES. She is a millionaire. She drives a Jaguar (That’s pronounced: jag-you-are). Her glasses chain has CHARMS on it. She is our very own Betty White. Only crazier. In the winter, she keeps the house around 100 degrees. In the summer, 25. We will miss her immensely.

The heater in our entry way that blows warm air on the coat rack directly below it. When I’m getting ready to go out into the cold each morning, I put on a coat and scarf that is nicely toasted.

Our Harry Potter closet under the stairs. If it wasn’t the only closet in the apartment, I would empty it out and turn it into a reading nook. Or put our bed in it and really be like Harry Potter.

The map. One entire wall is covered in a map from around 1970. It includes the USSR and Communist China. And Greenland is spelled “Gronland” since it belonged to Denmark at the time of the map (and maybe still does, who knows, geography is in that science category for me) and the “o” in Gronland has a line through it—so it looks like it said “Groinland,” which both amuses and confuses our company. The map also has pins in all of the places Ann has traveled—and several in places where Mike liked to think Ann has traveled.

And the number one thing I’ll miss about our apartment when we move to a real house is: the barn wood walls in the entry way. And the green pole provided for Amy when she came to visit.

Today's Things

Some things I’m currently loving:

I didn’t have to scrape inch-thick ice off my car windows this morning. Although a little Christmas snow would nice, I’m loving not driving to work in a blizzard every day.

TWO FOUR-day weekends. IN A ROW. Thank you, Tim Penny. I’m loving working for a nonprofit and getting off four days for Christmas and New Year’s. Not working on Monday two weeks in a row, is there anything better?

Feeling empowered. For the last month, I’ve gotten up at 6:30 a.m. to work out on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. Yes—this girl who hates mornings has committed and I’m sticking to it. For now.

Christmas. Of course I love the decorations and season and family and warmth and holiday joy. But really, Christmas is where it all started. The reason for everything else.

Some things that bother me:

These oil things. I hate them. I don’t have a real reason for hating them, but I do. They scare me.

Some things I’ve been thinking about lately:

People ask Brett and me all the time, “How’s married life?” When does this stop? We’ve been married a year and a half. Do people keep asking this your whole life? Are they really asking for the secret inside information for what married life is like? Because I moved in with him, changed my name, and got a tax break—totally earth shattering.

I destroy toothbrushes. Is it normal for the bristles to be completely matted after a month? I used to go through them really fast when I had braces, but I don’t anymore. Apparently I have dangerously shredding teeth.

Merry Christmas!

F.R.I.E.N.D.S

Last night I watched the final episode of Friends for the millionth time. And it still gets to me.

In 2004, I remember watching the 1-hour special series finale. I was sitting in a TV chair about 20 inches from the TV in my parents’ basement. I was soaking in every line, every emotion, convinced that the characters’ tears were real tears of the actors. I mean, it really was the end of an era! A ten-year era.

I grew up with Friends. In the early years, it was definitely above my level of comprehension, but I loved them. I watched reruns all week, then longed for that new episode. I loved Chandler’s jokes, Phoebe’s quirks, Joey’s stupidity, Monica’s craziness, and of course, the love saga of Ross and Rachel.

It made me want to work in fashion, be an actor, a masseuse, a chef, a paleontologist, and whatever the heck Chandler did (transponster!) And it made me want to be friends with them—sit around in Central Perk and drink coffee on a super comfy, orange velvet couch.

With the rest of America, I yearned for Ross and Rachel to be together—cheered when they finally kissed in the coffee shop, chided Ross for making that list comparing Rachel and Julie. I teared up a little when the prom video finally sealed it for Rachel. And then, the break up. The painful episode where Ross cheats when THEY WERE ON A BREAK. And the reunion at the beach house that ends quickly with an 18-page letter (front and back) Ross didn’t read. And then Emma. Once I found out Ross was the father, there was so much hope that they would be together. But they wouldn’t. Not until the finale.

I’m not an overly emotional person. But every. single. time. I watch that episode, I make it through finding out Monica and Chandler are getting twins, I make it through the scene where Chandler lets Joey keep Chick Jr. and Duck Jr., I’m fine even during the very last scene, when they all turn in their keys, but every, single time when Rachel says, “I got off the plane,” I lose it. Tears. SHE GOT OFF THE PLANE!

And why Friends? Why did a show about nothing run for 10 seasons? Because it’s what we all want. Their lives are exactly what I wish I had. Six friends, being friends, living their lives. Together.