Do Not Want

It seems to be the case that after a serious relationship ends, I discover that certain aspects of it are things I do not want in any future relationships. Some of these are senseless allergies (omg no more Alex Chilton fans!!!*) but others, I think, are legitimate discoveries. It's hard to know how living with someone who does x or y or believes z will turn out. Sometimes I was blind to signs that I can now recognize, and others times, it just requires playing the experience out all the way to find out how it goes.

One thing I learned from my relationship with Ed that I don't want anymore is a little bit subtle, but important. One of the very noticeable features of Ed early on was that he was very emotionally literate (which I really appreciated, and continue to think is cool) and wanted to understand in minute detail what I was thinking and feeling about various aspects of the relationship. He didn't feel safe if he didn't understand my exact feelings.

This went both ways. If Ed found a feeling in himself that he thought might be a deal-breaker or bad news for me, he always told me about it. He was very open with me (which is a good thing, in general) and scrupulously honest, to the best of his ability.

All of this is why "radical honesty" was a tenet of our relationship.

I'm not against radical honesty. I think as an experiment it's fun. In fact, as long as you remember that it's called "radical" for a reason, it's all good.

But I don't want to be in another relationship with someone for whom that is of prime importance. I want my future partners to trust me to manage my own thoughts and feelings. I want them to trust that I'll tell them what's important, but be content with my being somewhat of a black box. I want to be with someone who doesn't worry about it that much, and/or who just figures me out as we go along. And I want to be with someone who manages his or her own inner thoughts and emotions as well, sharing as appropriate or desired but sometimes holding things back that are counterproductive to share.

(* not actually on my list)

A Partner but Not a Boyfriend?

Ed and I started dating in May of 2007, and last November (2010), he broke up with me. Things hadn't been working well since around the beginning of the semester, when all of my attention went to school and I had no energy for relationship maintenance, and also, I think, some longstanding patterns between us weren't working well for me anyway. I had a distinct and increasing lack of interest in making things work. Sometimes I felt on the verge of breaking up with him, but doing so also felt unthinkable.

Since then, in many ways, things have only improved between us. We are still living together (not planning to change that anytime soon), sleeping in the same bed (which could change), getting along well (better than before, I'd say), and doing all of the things that boyfriends and girlfriends do. There are a lot of "I love you"s and other romantic things. We're experimenting with ways to be in a relationship with each other.

I often call him my "semi-ex-boyfriend." (I guess if this ends, I can start calling him my "ex-semi-boyfriend.")

It occurred to me the other night that he's sort of my partner but not my boyfriend. But given that our relationship is indistinguishable from a regular boyfriend-girlfriend one, what makes him not my boyfriend? Is it just that we're not using those words? Is it purely a technicality?

I don't think so, necessarily. For one thing, our relationship isn't exclusive at all. It has always had a degree of openness to it, but it's more blatantly non-exclusive now than in the past. And for another thing, we lack a certain sense between us that we are staying together. In general, the assumption with a boyfriend is that if nothing goes wrong, you're going to stay together, possibly forever, maybe leading to marriage if you are the marrying type. Our relationship lacks that sense right now, because it clearly doesn't meet the conditions for us to be happy together long-term, at least as each other's primary partners. This just isn't where I'm laying my bets for the future.

So for now I am just living with, hanging out with, and loving one of my closest friends. I'm sure it's confusing for other people, but it seems to be working for us pretty well right now.

Zu Ende

Ed and I began dating in May of 2007. Last night, we broke up.

It's been an interesting and mostly great three years, but I won't get into all of that now. Why did we break up? Well, I keep thinking that it's a long and complicated story, but I think that really it is a short and simple one.

My relationship with Ed has always required high inputs of energy. It has been a high-drama, high-maintenance relationship, which has mostly suited me well.

But grad school takes up all of my energy. It's not that I don't have time left over for talking or hanging out or whatever, but I don't have mental energy and space left for being an extremely involved partner. I was thinking about this last night, and what I think is, I could only be a really involved partner to someone new (where you have that crazy "new relationship energy") and, if that happened, I would probably fail my classes, because I really can't do those two things at the same time. Maybe if it were someone more studious than I am and also in grad school, then it would work out, but otherwise, I don't see how it could. (I am certainly not looking.)

Ed tried to deal with my benign neglect as best he could, but it made him increasingly hurt and angry. This came up a week or so ago in a big way and we made some changes to try to resolve it, but I think the changes were too little, too late, and last night he decided to call it quits.

It wasn't a big surprise. I had felt (and said, a few days ago) that I thought our breaking up might be inevitable. There was a lot that I valued in the relationship - so much that I couldn't decide to break up with him myself - but there was no more that I could do to fix things, I didn't think. I decided to proceed as though the relationship would continue in the best possible way and let the chips fall where they might. And this is where they fell.

We are still friends. I consider it nobody's fault that the romantic part of the relationship is over. (I started to say that it was nobody's fault that it "didn't work out," but it did work out, very much so, and the fact that it was of limited duration doesn't change that.) I don't think either of us is moving out of our shared apartment anytime soon, so we will have to get through this awkward stage of being newly broken up. I think we will.

Thanks for three and a half great years, Ed.

Money in the Relationship

The night I met Ed, we ended up having a late-night snack at Denny's, and I paid. He was, after all, a poor grad student.

"I felt weird about it even that very first night," he said recently.

Being as I am not a starving grad student, I have generally paid for most of our restaurant meals and other outings over the course of our relationship. I not only have the money, but am willing to spend it in this way, because I really do like going out.

When Ed first moved in with me, last September I believe, our arrangement was that he would continue paying me the amount he paid for rent + utilities at his previous place, which was less than half of my rent and utilities, though certainly more than he cost me by living with me. I also didn't generally charge him for household things like laundry detergent, toilet paper, etc. Once he got a full-time job, it was understood that he would start paying his half.

Now that he has the full-time job, he is indeed paying his half of the bills, which is awesome for me. And a couple of weeks ago I negotiated that, since I cook meals for us two or three times a week and also buy other items for the household, instead of divvying up all of those bills, perhaps he could just pay for a meal out for us once a week and we'd call it even.

It's an interesting situation that I thought was fair when I proposed it. Say I spent $30 preparing three meals for us, and he then spent $30 treating us to a meal out. Aren't we even? Well, yes, except that I'm still forcing him to participate in eating out, so that we're spending $60 on four meals altogether. And Ed is trying to pay off student loans and maintain his former thrifty lifestyle, so he doesn't like paying for meals out.

Yet going out is important to me. I re-negotiated: I will charge him for half of all the mutual household things (meals, paper towels, whatever - and of course he can charge me half if he buys things like that), and if I want us to go out (which is typically once or twice a week) I will pay for it.

This makes him uncomfortable. Now that he could afford to pay for half of our meals out, he feels like not doing so in favor of paying down student loans is practically the equivalent of taking my money and paying his loans with it. Why should he get treated when he has a good income? And I'm sure the fact that he's the man and I'm the woman doesn't help; our culture doesn't really have a good model of a woman taking a man out to dinner.

But I think we have to resort to some principles here. A partner in a relationship should have the right to be as thrifty as they wish. I want Ed to take the best care of himself financially that he can. Yet, a person with a thrifty partner should not be unduly limited by the partner's thrift, I think. I have a job that pays me reasonably well, I am putting money aside for retirement, I have almost no debt (< $1000 as of this month), and I think I should be able to eat in a restaurant with my boyfriend once or twice a week.

Imagine if I had a rich boyfriend who wanted to fly to Paris with me for the weekend, but I refused because I was unwilling (and, in the long-term, unable) to pay my half. It's no big deal to him - he's happy to pay my half! - and my refusal only thwarts things he'd like to do with his own money, like have an expensive romantic weekend with his girlfriend.

Of course, I would be uncomfortable if I had a boyfriend like that, at least until I gave in and decided to just enjoy the largesse, which I imagine I'd be able to do after a bit. (After all, free money and things is basically good and nice, if you don't let principles get in the way.)

I guess there are two ways you could decide to do this, while dating someone:

1. I refuse to participate in things without paying my half, or
2. I'm willing to let my partner treat me to things that aren't in my budget.

You can take a stand and go with #1 if you want, but I think #2 is generally a nicer way to be for your partner, if you can relax about it a little bit and also trust your partner to keep their own boundaries intact.

If Ed and I get married and decided to handle our money jointly, some of my excessive spending will probably have to go away; I know that not all of it is justifiable from the perspective of what our joint financial priorities should be. But I do think, under present circumstances, that I would press hard for us to be able to eat out more than occasionally.

Passive-Aggressive Tendencies

It's important to me to keep getting better in whatever ways I can. Of course, I start out with a basic package of assets and flaws, and my relative strengths and weaknesses may not change all that much over time. But I do work on many of the things about me that are troublesome.

Something I've worked on a lot in my relationship with Ed is passive aggressiveness. I've never thought of myself as particularly passive-aggressive, and I don't think most people would characterize me that way (in the spectrum of humanity), but I definitely have tendencies. Ed is particularly sensitive to it, and that has...helped.

When I get angry with someone, my first impulse is to be silent at them. Once I reject that option, the next few that come up on the list are also passive-aggressive. I could make a snide remark to let them know I'm angry. I could say something sarcastic. Or I could just go somewhere else and wait for them to figure out that I'm avoiding them on purpose.

These days, I try to first think and determine whether the anger seems justified or not. If it isn't, or if I can't tell, I'll say something like, "This may not be fair. But I'm feeling kind of angry [about X]." Otherwise I'll just say the angry part.

Even at this point (and Ed is amazing supportive of this type of communication), it's hard for me not to follow up with passive-aggressive remarks like, "I guess I just thought you would have known how that would make me feel," or, "I guess I just trusted that you knew how to cook a steak," or, "Never mind - I shouldn't have thought you'd get it."

It's not that being passive-aggressive is generally so very awful. There are definitely worse ways to handle anger. But I think my tendency to be this way comes from feeling essentially powerless whenever I am angry. I see no hope of remediation, and that's what makes me want to just snub the other person. I feel contemptuous or fundamentally angry towards them, as though whatever has happened changes the underlying reality of the whole relationship.

I am actually getting a lot better at this through practice, this thing of just saying, "I am angry. Here is why," and listening to the response and working through it. For me, right now, in this relationship, even when it turns out that my anger is unfair I seem to be better off expressing it.

Math Is About Definitions

My college (Metro) has a course that is designed to transition you into higher (proof-based) math. It is called "Introduction to Proofs." At the Colorado School of Mines, the equivalent course is Discrete Math (which is also taught at Metro - I took it, as you might recall - but doesn't have the same gateway function). A lot of other schools seem to have a similar course.

I expected Proofs to be pretty easy, because I did very well when I took Logic at Rice, and I've always been good at doing logic and proofsy things. But actually, the course was pretty challenging although I did do well at it.

But there was one main thing that I learned, and I find that I keep learning this thing over and over again: math is about definitions. When you need to do a proof in math, the main thing you need to focus on (at least in my experience) is the relevant definitions.

Case in point. I was thinking the other day about how to prove the distributive property of multiplication over addition, that is

a * ( b + c) = (a * b) + (a * c)

It's pretty easy to prove in the natural numbers (i.e., positive integers). a * b is b added to itself a times, and you can get to it pretty easily that way. But when I got to thinking about the real numbers, I couldn't imagine how you could go about proving it.

I was talking to Ed about it, and he wasn't sure either, and at some point I realized, of course I can't prove this: I don't know how to define multiplication in the reals at all! How could I have an inkling of a proof if I don't even have a definition of multiplication? (There is no way to get at "pi times the square root of 2" through repeated addition, at least not that I can see.)

And that's how it always is. If someone asks me to write a proof, the main technique I have is to look at the definitions involved and then work from there. If I'm missing a definition, then I have to solve that problem first. For some reason, I find this easy to forget, but also easy to learn.

Infinity

Ed commented the other day that "never" is a good substitute for "infinity" in thinking. I had never thought of that before, and I think it's a very neat idea.

You can apply it to my previous post. Are you skeptical that two parallel lines meet at a "point at infinity"? What if we say, instead, that they meet "never." Sounds pretty good.

Similarly, the value of the function y = 5 - 1/x (graph at left) approaches 5 as x approaches positive infinity. When does it reach 5? "Never."

See how that works?

Lovey Dovey

Sally is coming to visit me for Memorial Day weekend, three weeks from now, which is very exciting. She'll finally get to meet Ed, who I started dating just shortly after her last visit here. We drove practically right by his old apartment last time, but it didn't seem right to introduce them. Both of them have (rightfully) given me crap for this ever since.

Meanwhile, sometime around Sally's visit is our one-year anniversary. It's hard to believe that it's been nearly a year since we started this goofy experiment. The time has been well spent.

Overall, the relationship is just great. Sometimes when Ed is stressed, or I'm just weird, things get worse between us, a bit, and I start to wonder what the hell I'm doing here, but then we get some time together, talk, have sex, cry, or whatever, and things are fantastic again. I'm crazy in love with him and it seems to be mutual.

So, yeah, life is good.

Brilliant Math Genius

The other day, I showed up at Ed's house, found the front door unlocked, raced up the stairs to his room, met him in the hall, and said, "Your girlfriend is a fucking brilliant math genius!"

Let's back it up.

I'm not a math genius. I am pretty good at math, and getting better all the time. I also think that almost anyone can learn and enjoy math, and that most people who think they are "bad at math" just haven't had good experiences with it and thus haven't stuck to it. (This applies double to my mom, who loves formal logic and puzzles and therefore is obviously math-inclined despite apparently never having enjoyed math itself.)

But math can really kick you around. Unlike history or literature, where you have progressively increased knowledge leading to mastery and insights, math can make you feel really stupid when you don't get it. (I might not understand the causes of the Great Depression, but this makes me feel, at worst, ignorant. When I do know some history, I am unaware of my lack of insight about it. You don't have to have the proper insights to understand what others have written.) The flip side of feeling like an idiot when you don't understand math, though, is feeling like a genius when you do.

Last week, I had a section on transition matrices and change of basis. (I promise I won't talk about this in detail.) I did all of the homework pretty quickly by stumbling (by some insight I couldn't recreate until recently) onto a method that worked, but when I triumphantly showed it to Ed, he didn't like my method (he's not a fan of the augmented matrix; he prefers an algebraic approach).

When we sat down to figure out the actual algebra, we found the section of the book rather inscrutable. (I have since seen the completely clear presentation in his linear algebra book, so I have a basis for comparison. No pun intended.) What we found by deduction from what I'd done in my homework didn't seem to make any sense, and Ed didn't feel it was consistent with the book's text. He hypothesised (hypothesied? hypothesized?) that someone different had written the questions from whoever wrote the text, and that the two didn't match. He also found that the questions and answers were not themselves consistent.

"But I did them all the same way," I protested, "based on what I read. And my answers match the ones in the back."

I said this over and over, but I couldn't show how it was true, because I had lost the understanding of what I'd done, somehow. I'd lost the knowledge of how it made sense.

I don't want to make it sound like I just rolled over, either. We worked on this hard for a long time, on two different days. We came to a conclusion about how most of the problems worked, but the conclusion was just stupid. It would sometimes require things to be multiplied backwards, in the direction that doesn't work for matrices. And it was just plain not sensible, even though it was workable in a lot of instances.

I was troubled. The night before my breakthrough, I felt that I thought about these problems all night while I slept. By morning, I had a new tack to try, and I hastened to the library to work it out.

By 90 or so minutes later, I was ready. I had figured out how to show that the book was consistent, correct, and sensible, and I was eager to demonstrate this to Ed. We had been stupid and missed a kind of obvious point. (For my fellow linear algebra students, I will state the central insight thusly: a transition matrix does not change a basis to another basis; it changes a vector stated in terms of one basis to the same vector in terms of a different basis.)

Hence my rushing up the stairs, declaration of myself as a genius, etc.

Ed was skeptical. We'd worked pretty hard and pretty clearly on this, after all.

"We're going to run this like a game," I said. "And games have rules, right?"

"Does this mean our relationship is a game?" he asked.

"Yes, but you knew that already."

"I guess you're right."

"OK," I said. "These are the rules. You can't go ahead of me, and you can't go sideways from me. You have to let me show you this. You can only interrupt me if you think I've done something wrong, or if you don't understand what I'm doing."

"No going forward, no going sideways. But I can go backwards? Got it."

We chatted a little more while he made some tea. He asked if I was going to be crushed if he didn't agree with me, once I had showed him my argument. I told him I'd only be crushed if I still thought I was right, but that I was confident we could come to an agreement either way. He was pretty sure I was going to turn out to be wrong.

I wasn't. In fact, once I gave him the central insight, the rest pretty much fell into place, though I went through my demo anyway. It was terrifically fun. Some of my algebra was wrong (for instance, in one place I divided each side of an equation by a vector, which is an undefined operation), but it led to the place we'd ended up the other day anyway, except that now that place didn't seem nonsensical. (The algebra worked in the other direction, just not in the way I'd derived it. What I provided was not in any way a proof, but I did show some relationship between our work the other day and the sensical way that the book was really working.)

Like I said. Brilliant math genius.

Dedicated Spaces

I am noticing a pattern - I really enjoy going somewhere specific to do something.

In the past week, I have visited my local library branch twice to work on my linear algebra homework, and both times, I was quite productive. The library just got remodeled, so it's pretty nice inside. (Unfortunately, the chairs are uncomfortable - as in, my feet don't reach the ground - but I was able to move one of the comfy sitting chairs to a table and use it instead.) There are computers there, but you have to reserve one if you want to surf the Internet, and there are no computers at the plain tables where I sit. There are virtually no distractions - just enough so that when I get bored, I can wander through the stacks for a few minutes to invigorate myself.

I am the same way about exercise. I have an annual pass to our local rec center, and going there to exercise is actually easier for me than exercising at home, or by walking around outside near my home. It's a dedicated place. It's a trip. I think I like going places to do things.

Last night, Ed and I went to Perkins (a 24-hour chain restaurant like Denny's or IHOP). We had dinner, and then pushed the plates and condiments to one side of the table while he joined me on the other. We spent the next hour or so hashing through some math that I didn't understand.

It was perfect. The flat, smooth plastic table was ideal. The restaurant was nearly empty, so I didn't feel we were stealing a table from our waitress. (I did overtip when we left.) Our drinks still got refilled. It was just much nicer than attempting the same thing at either of our homes.

I think my preferences in this respect may be the opposite of what most people want. It's not that I don't value being home. I just feel like I get more done, more easily, and with more fun, if I go to a dedicated space to work.

Not Tired

Well, OK, right now I am tired, but that's to be expected - after a three-day weekend, I had to get up at 6:15 this morning. The day should be fine, except that I also have class tonight until 9 PM. I might die.

But in general, the three-day weekend really let me catch up on rest, so that I got to a point of not being tired for the first time in about four weeks since school started. It was nice. Last night I even got bored, a sensation so unfamiliar that it took me a little while to identify it. I also did seven loads of laundry.

I spent much of the weekend with Ed - so much, in fact, that I think we kind of got sick of each other. I know I got irritable a lot, which is kind of the bane of my existence as a person. But mostly it was good. I even made food that he willingly ate.

Wednesday night, we had Valentine's Day. He was working furiously on his thesis (for which his defense is March 21 - exciting!), so we just ate dinner at a nearby place before going to my apartment for a while. I love that guy.

I had no linear algebra homework to fall behind on this weekend, but I did utterly fail to accomplish anything for sweprac, which is getting critical. Ouch.

Wrong But Not Ridiculous

In the car last night, Ed and I were discussing the blog I Blame the Patriarchy by Twisty Faster. It is a favorite read of mine even though my style of feminism is pretty far away from Twisty's in many ways. For Ed, the blog goes wrong in many ways, and he appreciates it less than I do.

Twisty could be reasonably accused of holding that all heterosexual sex is rape, a position that strikes most people as ridiculous. It's an idea that is often used as a straw man. But we were talking about this last night and I wanted Ed to understand why I see this argument, like many on Twisty's blog, as wrong but not ridiculous. (I can't find an instance of Twisty actually arguing that all heterosexual sex is rape, and she may not actually espouse that position, but it doesn't actually matter for the purposes of this post. You could read this delightful post about anal sex, or this one proposing a legal solution to rape to get a general idea.)

I argued it to Ed this way. Is consensual sex possible between a slave and a slave owner? Even if the slave wants it? You might answer yes, but surely you can see how it's possible to answer no.

Consent is really a continuum, from the enthusiastic and informed "yes" of free, sober persons, to actual forced sex. At some point, we draw a line and say, "This isn't consensual enough." I think sex with a willing but drunk lover is fine, but sex between a teacher and a horny 16-year-old is not consensual enough for me.

So, slaves and masters: consensual enough or not?

Assuming you can see this point, it's not such a stretch to say that insofar as women are subordinate to men in a culture, sex between the two is less consensual than sex between free people. If you don't think there's real consensual sex between masters and slaves, do you think there is consensual sex between husbands and wives in Saudi Arabia? What about 1940's America?

What about present-day America?

For me, the question about present-day America is easily answered: sex between willing adults is plenty consensual for me these days. It's not really a close thing for me at all. But Saudi Arabia is.

That's why I think the position (which may or may not only be held by strawfeminists in any case) is wrong but not ridiculous.

Anger in Relationships

Before Ed, I hadn't been in a relationship with anyone for...8 years? Something like that. Having a boyfriend again is lovely, but also strange in some ways. One of the problems I keep having is dealing with anger - both my own and his.

On my side, it's like this. I'm an irritable person, and I tend to snap at lovers. I've gotten way better about this over the years (and this was something I could work on with Mosch as well), such that I really no longer say things like, "Can't you eat like a human being?!?" but I'm still a bit over the top. Ed tends to take my irritation very seriously, which hurts him and is not the best response to it.

But when it comes to actual anger, I have a really hard time expressing it. Instead, I let it build up until I either go passive aggressive, or come out with the anger is an overly harsh way. (I was talking to Sally the other day and realized I have never, ever gotten outwardly mad at her. I really don't think I have. And, you know, I've known her for 15 years, so it's not like she's never pissed me off in all that time.)

When I do act angry, I usually end up feeling later that I was in the wrong. I can't really tolerate being wrong or unfair. So I usually either just try to get over what is bugging me, or else I express it and then feel wretched later.

On the other side of the coin, Ed is also irritable, and gets irritable with or angry at me more often than any boyfriend I've had. His anger is really clean - he's not scary and he doesn't say intentionally hurtful things. I sometimes think of it as a "clean, protective anger." It is usually about a demand for fairness or to be taken seriously. (Belittlement is intolerable to him.)

But it crushes me. I think partly because I grew up as the only child of a single parent, when my partner is angry at me, it feels like the end of all relationship. (Think about it. In my family of origin there was exactly one relationship.) It feels like he hates me. I don't usually get angry or defensive back - I just crumble inside, and want to do anything to appease him.

It's bad. I wish I wouldn't respond this way. I am still able to respond somewhat rationally to whatever he's saying - weigh his arguments, decide (generally) that he's right, apologize, and whatever is required. Sometimes I will make a case for myself when I think there's one to be made. He listens too. We often handle it well in the moment. But afterwards, or maybe later when he jokes about something unrelated, I'll cry. It builds up.

I want to learn more healthy ways of dealing with this on both sides. I'm less concerned about my own anger, because Ed can handle it, and I do eventually get my points across somehow. But I'm afraid my response to his, if I don't get over becoming a basketcase whenever he gets mad, may destroy things.

The Boyfriend

Ed and I started dating in late May. It's been about five months now, and we are still together, with no signs of that changing any time soon.

He makes me really happy. He's in love with me (which is mutual, as should be obvious), and he's wonderfully emotionally supportive, a drama whore like me, and just great. I can't believe how great he is in these emotional ways. Also, the sex is the best I've had.

He's still working on his master's thesis. It's hard for him to stay productive with hardly any external constraints, but that's sort of the nature of theses. I have no doubt he'll get it done.

Lately, we spend about two evenings and one weekend day together each week. We also play an online game together (EVE Online), which gives us a light way to spend time together (online, of course, not in person) without it being too intense. (We have a habit of getting intense over IMs, and it doesn't always turn out well.)

His birthday is Monday, but we're celebrating it Friday. He'll be 24.

Surgery Update

I emailed all of this to my mom, but here's an update on the surgery I'm having in 13 days.

My surgery is two weeks from yesterday - August 29th. I had my pre-op appointment Monday and they went over everything.

Well, first this horrible nurse talked to me. She was friendly but useless, and didn't talk to me like my surgery was a serious thing. She usually works for a different surgeon and she came in not knowing anything, and asked me what kind of surgery I was having and when. I guess it was lucky for her that I knew, huh? She told me some wrong stuff, like that I wouldn't have a bone growth simulator (I will) and that I shouldn't take ibuprofen for six months after - she denied that the other NSAIDS (aspirin, naproxen) were included in the ban, but my surgeon confirmed that they were later.

Then I talked to the resident who works with Dr. Patel (my surgeon) and he was cool.

And then I talked to Dr. Patel himself, and he went over everything again. And then to another nurse who actually gave me her direct line (unheard of at this place) and was pretty awesome.

Here's some stuff I learned.

I'll have a collar (brace) for six weeks after the surgery. The company that fits them will call me and arrange to come out and meet me at my house or whatever two or three days before the surgery, and I'll get the fancy collar then. I'm supposed to wear this all the time. But what Dr. Patel told me - which was really nice to learn - was that plenty of surgeons do this exact surgery and don't ask their patients to wear a collar, so it's more of a precaution than an absolute necessity. I'll wear it anyway, but this should cut down my paranoia about it. (I'm really paranoid about my head breaking off after the surgery. I mean, not literally breaking off, but the idea is for the bones to fuse, and I'm worried about that not happening. The resident told me that the success rate for healthy young people is 98% for this, so my odds are good. I wonder what the other 2% do wrong?)

I'll also have a bone growth simulator, which is like a shock collar that I'll wear a few hours a day for . I've been told that it does not hurt, which I assume is true.

I was worried that I might have to stop taking the gabapentin before the surgery. I don't really notice if I miss a dose, but if I miss two doses, I have really intense pain in my tricep for a while. (The tricep is the back of the upper arm.) I hate that a lot. But Dr. Patel said he wants me to take the gabapentin straight through the surgery, and continue taking it afterwards, and then wean myself off of it over time as the nerve heals. So that's good.

I couldn't get a consistent answer on whether to stop taking the Pill. (Ed and I use the Pill and condoms, so stopping the Pill doesn't really change much.) The only issue there is that it increases the risk of blood clots, and that's one of the major risks of surgery too. (I'll have special hose on after surgery and I'll wear those for a while afterwards - I'm not sure how long, but a week?) Dr. Patel said not to worry about it, his resident said I should stop taking it, and the bad nurse said I should ask my ob-gyn or gp. I'm going to stop taking it. We don't have that much sex and we do use condoms already anyway (not that we couldn't start if we didn't, but since we already do it's even easier) and I am really anti-death.

Having surgery is like having furniture delivered in this one way: you call the day before and they tell you what time to show up. They schedule a few for the same day and they can rearrange the schedule at the last minute. At least it's not a "window", though in practical terms I guess once you show up, there's no absolutely guaranteed time that they do stuff. You know how doctors are. (The bad nurse kept apologizing about not being able to tell me right now what time to show up. I wanted to say "It's ok, I'm taking the whole day off, it really doesn't matter.") I can't eat any food starting 8 hours before the surgery, but I can have clear liquids (including gatorade, water, coffee without cream, clear juices, etc.) until 2 hours before.

Mosch can go with me into pre-op, where I meet with the surgeon again, and the anesthesiologist, and get blood tests, and have an iv put in, and stuff like that. (This is the part I'm nervous about. Pre-op.) Then when they take me into surgery, he goes into the waiting area. They'll give him a pager so he won't feel like he can't leave. I'll be gone 2-4 hours, but the actual surgery part of the surgery only usually takes about an hour.

If I were adamant, I could theoretically leave the hospital the same day, but they like to keep you overnight to make sure you don't have problems with breathing or swallowing. (Since they operate through the front of the neck, there is a possibility of damaging your windpipe or esophagus, though the resident assured me that all of these things, including major nerves, are "in the same place in every patient" and so this is not too likely.) I'm cool with spending the night. I'm not that big a fan of choking to death at home. (Of course, just being in the hospital gives you some chance of getting an antibiotic-resistant infection or something too. But this is a very new and fancy hospital and hopefully they know what they're doing over there.)

Of course they want you up and walking around as soon as possible after the surgery - this is to help prevent blood clots - and the next day, you can go home as long as you are walking, peeing and pooping, breathing fine, and eating and drinking. I'm supposed to have some soft foods at home because my throat will be really sore, as though I had a tonsillectomy.

Mosch is planning to spend the night at the hospital with me. Ed is going to come with us (according to the current plan, anyway) and wait with Mosch, but Mosch will drive him home for the night. I hope Ed will come over the next day, when I'm home again, and help me if I need anything (while Mosch sleeps). I trust Mosch more at the hospital than Ed, because he has more experience being an advocate for a patient in the hospital and he knows me and my preferences really well. Also it's a lot to ask from a boyfriend of 3 months.

Deliriously Happy

So much stuff about and with Ed makes me just deliriously happy. I know this is just kind of typical in-love stuff, so I won't bludgeon my readers with the sappy details. But being in love with someone who is really, unequivocally, openly in love with me rocks.

The Fourth

Ed and I spent yesterday at his parents' house in Longmont. When it got dark around 9:15, we saw a lot of neighborhood fireworks, plus the fireworks at the county fairgrounds some miles away. We all sat out in the street in lawnchairs. It was suburban in the best sense.

I enjoyed seeing the family again, and I was more relaxed this time. Ed's mom (Jean) was feeling better than last time and we got to spend some time together fixing up her cell phone and installing some software on her computer. She told me that last time she had had the aunts interrogate me since she wasn't feeling too great.

"Did you get some good intelligence?" I asked.

"Yeah!" she said.

Ed's dad (Ed) sat with me and Ed for the fireworks and we joked together quite a lot. After arguing about who was whose straight man, the general pattern seemed to be that he would set up the jokes and I would knock them down. Ed bore the brunt of most of it.

We also had another fabulous dinner with two kinds of pork loin (cooked on the grill), three kinds of potato salad, cole slaw, corn, and two kinds of garlic bread. It was feast-like. I had milk with my dinner, which is uncommon for me but seems to be a regular thing in their household.

I think they like me OK.

Dreams

This morning is my surgical consult, where I get to find out if I'm going to maybe have surgery to fix (?) my neck. And last night was kind of a strange night with Ed. So naturally I had the following three dreams that I remember.

I dreamed that I had some kind of a nervous breakdown and was put into a mental institution. It was a nice place and very restful. I got out after a while, but then Ed made me crazy again (it's just a dream, Ed) and I had to go back in. It was partly because I just never got enough sleep "on the outside." In the last part of my dream I was trying hard not to get classified as actually crazy because then you would get your own room instead of sleeping in the common area, but it was much harder to get out again.

I dreamed that I had some kind of an STD. I don't remember what kind but it wasn't HIV or anything.

And I dreamed that I was diagnosed with some kind of leukemia-like condition. It was probably not going to kill me outright, but was instead a manageable but life-shortening condition like Type 2 diabetes. But I was going to have to go in every week and receive some kind of injections into my bone marrow, which were going to be really painful. I went in for the first two and they were not as bad as I'd feared.

In real life, Mosch is going with me to my surgical consult. It helps to have another person at important medical things.

Ed's Thesis & Geek Love

Sunday night, Ed did some work on his thesis at my place. He had brought over his computer to hook up to my monitor, keyboard, etc., so that he could do work. I got to watch over his shoulder some.

Ed's thesis work is basically (in my highly generalized understanding) about how to make computers or other devices in a network communicate with each other peer-to-peer if each knows its own location but not necessarily the location of every other one. When he was explaining it to me, I used the goofy analogy of an array of penguins, each drifting around on its own ice floe with a walkie-talkie. If Flippy wants to get a message to Pete, he broadcasts on the channel that any other penguin within range can receive. With his message, he sends his own location. Somehow, given this information, each penguin that receives the message decides whether to pass it on or let someone else handle it. They don't know where Pete is, but only the path the message has followed so far. Somehow given their own location, and Flippy's location, they can figure out how to route the message so that it eventually reaches Pete.

Ed is doing this with some version of the right-hand rule for navigating mazes. This rule (which doesn't work in all cases) says that you can navigate a maze by always cleaving to the right-hand wall. Once you reach a dead end, of course, the old left-hand wall is the right-hand wall, so for many maze configurations, this will eventually result in a full traversal of the maze.

Anyway, Ed was stuck at some point, so I suggested he explain his problem to me. Many people find that explaining a conceptual problem to someone (even if the "someone" is a dog or other noncomprehending beast, which I expected to be) can give them some insight into solving it.

"Do you prefer lined or unlined paper?" I asked. Unlined (score!) ".5 or .7?" He knew I meant lead size (of course) and he had a strong preference. God I love us geeks.

So he explained the above to me, with some sketches, and started telling me about his problem, which was kind of a vector calculus one. (At least, it was material I learned in vector calc that enabled me to understand it; there wasn't any actual calculus involved.)

"It really turns me on to watch you draw diagrams and write math," I said at some point.

He looked at me and blinked.

"You'd feel the same way if it were me," I said.

He thought for a minute. "Yes, I would!" he said, surprised.

Ah, geek love.

(Comic from xkcd.com)

Handling Drama

Sunday afternoon, Ed and I had some relationship drama that was kind of interesting. I find I don't often post about things that are super personal here, so I'm stretching myself a little bit.

When we were making our weekend plans, we made a date for Saturday night, and I asked Ed if he would spend the night Saturday and plan to spend Sunday at my house until around my bedtime. (He typically gets up in mid-afternoon and goes to bed before or around dawn, I think, so our schedules are quite different.) He agreed to this as long as he could bring his computer so he could get some work done. No problem.

Sunday afternoon we had some sex and then I said, "Hey, you wanna watch a movie or something?" and he said, "Actually I think I'd rather go home."

I think I kind of froze or something. "Do you have to?" I asked.

"You're disappointed," he said.

"Yeah," I said, and went into the bathroom for a minute to pee and think.

I had really arranged my mind around the idea that I had him until bedtime. Part of me was rational and did not want to trap him at my apartment, and wanted him to be able to get his work done wherever he felt he could best do it, or whatever. I wanted to get over it, let it go, and be mature. But the other part of me was just a child from whom something was being taken away in a completely unexpected and unfair fashion.

Given this, my temptation was to go out and do some kind of passive-aggressive bullshit thing like, "No, it's fine. I'll take you home. I obviously just can't make plans with you and have you stick to them. That's fine, I know that now," etc. Argh. I really wanted not to be passive aggressive and try to lay some thick smack of guilt down on him in an unsuccessfully sneaky fashion. (It's not like he wouldn't notice if I did that.)

So I went back to my room and started putting my clothes on. He came over and said, "You're not OK," and I said, "No, I'm not," and he put his arms around me and I told him how I felt ("We agreed that you'd be here today, and I want to let this go and be mature, but I just can't," to paraphrase) and he admitted he had done wrong in agreeing to stay and then not getting any work done Friday or Saturday and bailing on me, and he apologized and continued holding me tight while I cried a little bit.

(This all sounds ridiculous as I type it out, but you know, in the moment these things are harder. We were probably standing there 2-3 minutes total.)

He sat down to put his shoes on, got one on, thought for a minute (while I closed my eyes, sitting across him on the side of the bed, rocking autistically), took it off, and got into bed with me. I was really getting better by this time and had put my own shoes on, which he took off me. He said he was getting freaky from not having eaten much (I'd made some peanut noodles with seitan but they were a bit weird for him, and also he's really accustomed to eating meat) but he had brought his computer and could just work at my house if he got something to eat. I suggested we could go out for fast food if he liked, and he did.

We went to eat at Chipotle and spent much of the meal giving each other all manner of compliments about our superb handling of the situation. Of course, I want to make it clear that my own handling of the situation was only at all good given the context of my feelings, which I wasn't able to really control in a mature way. At best, I had sort of a bad hand dealt to me by my brain, and given that bad hand, I played well.

Now it's Monday morning and Ed got some good work done last night and spent the night and is no doubt sleeping in my bed right now. I love that boy.