frivolity

I thought I broke my headphones today but I didn't, and I am very happy about that.






Sometimes lab is really hard and life is really hard and it feels like everyone wants so much from me even if it's just a biography and a picture of my daughter and these things are so overwhelming and anxiety inducing that I don't know what to do. My happy place is alone in my bed asleep but that doesn't work, that's called 'depression.' My new happy place is just learning. I'm isolating a bunch of bacteria for myself and it's wonderfully calming. Streaking them onto plate, noting colors and shapes, when colonies appear. Science! Life! The unknown!

Yesterday [two days ago, actually, I wrote this yesterday] I extracted DNA and PCR'ed up the 16S region and sent if off for sequencing and today [yesterday] I waited for results and got them. I can name these cells (babies) that I isolated (found), grew (raised), and save them. I'm not using our fancy label maker because anxiety attack, so I'm hand labeling my tubes, and with each label, each date and initial, it feels like I am labeling my anxieties: naming them, acknowledging them, putting them away.






I really am so happy that I didn't break my headphones, but with the news today I can't be happy about that, because of the news.

How does the news impact the delicate ones. It is hard to let myself be anxious and weird. Hard to let myself be silly over little things. Even harder when the news is the news.

There is so much outrage, so much anger, so much sadness and pain in the world. I want to not listen, but that is the definition of privilege. But it is hard to listen. It is hard to feel all of these things on top of the little things.

Headphones. Music. Drowning out the world. Drowning. Drowning. DROWNING.

Here. Listen to this song. Listen. Just listen.

music as catharsis

Right after I wrote this post I started listening to a lot of mainstream hip hop. My friend mark calls it "ignorant rap", as in "I'm sorry I listen to a lot of ignorant rap." But it is so good. The misogyny, the rampant drug use and relentless posturing. It is all so good.

I then started telling people that I've been listening to a lot of misogynist hip hop, and they say, "why?" as in, "You identify as a feminist, why do you listen to music that advocates for the objectification of women?" And I thought about it, and I think it's the catharsis.

I wrote a little bit about it, in different words here, when I mentioned that when I was pregnant I listened to T.I.'s Whatever you like just about non-stop. Because it was just this out of body experience--that in those moments I'm not pregnant rachael, I'm just in the song. And then now I'm not stressed out, insecure rachael, I'm Wiz Khalifa smoking joints and getting my dick sucked. (Oh pops you can stop reading now and also you don't have to listen to any of this music because I don't think you will like it.)

Or in the club, high on perp (wtf is perp?) with some shades on, tatted up, miniskirt, with my J's on.

And then sometimes there's just a song that just perfectly describes a feeling. Which is the definition of art, right? And the role of an artist? To express universal feelings in a new way for people to experience? Which Big Sean does incredibly well in the following song. (What a effin' brat though, right?) 

Or it's just a few lines, the hook, the beat. I'm just livin' life. And let my momma tell it n----, I ain't livin' right. 

I asked mark what they were saying in that last song the first time I heard it, and he says, "I ain't got no type," and the song keeps playing, and then he says, "Excuse me, 'I own't got no type.'" 

heh. ok. so that's what I've been listening to for the past week or so. I know there is a plethora of non-ignorant rap, but man. This just fills a niche in my life like nothing else. 

play on playaaaah. 

"wish you would step back from that ledge my friend"

L had a new play date this weekend with a girl down the street from us. I would like to take a moment to give myself a pat on the back for overcoming my social anxiety and setting up this play date yes I did that all by myself thankyouverymuch we are very proud of how much we are growing up.

The mom is great, when we were making small talk at the bus stop I asked if she was from this area and she said, no, but she feels like it anyway since she's been here since she came for college in 1986.

*long pause*

Well I was born here and she's still been here longer than I have.

I did some "back of the envelope calculations" (the best phrase ever) and figured out that she had to be at least 18 years older than me. C'est la vie. (Pronounced "cess la vi".) At the park I find out we're twenty years apart, and we laugh at this, but we then find we have so many shared experiences. Wanting to force our kids into Sunday school, crying in the bathroom after we found out we were pregnant. Loving to share the most intimate details about our life. We're not so different.

We walked our kids to the park together, chatting the whole time, and after two hours outside L went over to their house to play for another two hours, while I made all the meals for this week (10 black bean and sweet potato burritos which after making them I never want to eat) and a lasagna. I walked over to their house to pick L up, and there is Christmas music playing. Fred (that's the mom, who is also Jewish) said, "I was trying to find some innocuous music. They didn't like Nat King Cole so we settled on this." She says to me then, when her daughter was a baby she listened to the Clash and the Kinks but now she's older so she worries more about the lyrics.

That's the only time I feel conscious about an age difference. L and I listen to a lot of Third Eye Blind and Rilo Kiley.

90s kid!

Music nostalgia

Every Sunday Stephanie and I have a running date, which is really awesome for lots of reasons, but one is that as I'm driving home on Sunday morning after my run, I always listen to 96.1, (no longer called 96 rock, for the Chapel Hill homegrown) which just plays like, quintessential rock music. A fair amount of Pink Floyd, Journey, you know, like "rock" music. But also. they play a ton of Nickleback. Do people still listen to Nickleback?? I thought Nickleback was like, a giant joke of a band. Of course this is also how I feel about the Republican party. And people that don't believe in feminism. It's like, you're kidding me, right?

Anyway, so Steph and I were listening to 96-rock-but-it's-not-called-that and talking about like, what this type of music reminded us of, and for me it was totally end of middle school, early high school, and for me it was before I really figured out what kind of music I liked, and I was totally into Everclear and Third Eye Blind. The Red Hot Chili Peppers!!

Music nostalgia. It's like, the closest thing to time travel I've found. Unlike going through my old journals in high school which makes me cringe and feel very retroactively embarrassed for my high school self (retroactive embarrassment = a really productive emotion), music just takes me back to like...sleepovers, and dance parties in basements, and walking on Franklin street and going to Schoolkids, and you know, figuring out who we were and how to feel and angst and Kurt Cobain, and crushes, and insecurity, and all the best parts of being a teenager.

Okay so I know this post was about like, the fact that I really miss listening to the Goo Goo Dolls, but I had to share this song which just brings me back to being pregnant with L. This song came out and I listened to it non-stop. I can't explain it. I mean it was popular for a reason. But damn, I can't tell you how many times I just put this on repeat and just...listened. 

It was like T.I. was singing to me!

I mean, is there anything more that you need in the world?

Baby you can have whatever you like...