Viva Las Vegas

Nikki B.
4-19-05

If Only it Was the Drugs

So anyone who has been following my hebs probably knows that I haven’t been having the greatest week. Anyone who actually knows me knows that my week has been much worse than my hebs have let on. If you haven’t been reading my hebs, don’t worry. I will set the scenario for you.
It was 5:30ish on Friday afternoon. I knocked back a couple of codeine and had just fallen asleep in my bedroom at my best friend’s house (long story for a different heb.) My tonsils were still swollen to the point of not being able to swallow my own spit and my mind was completely selfishly focused.
I heard my cell phone ring next to my head; always a pleasant wake-up call. I looked at the number: some crazy area code I had never heard of. I thought about hitting the silence button and rolling over, but I had already ignored one phone call from the same number that day.
I answered the phone to hear my mothers voice and instantly regretted answering. She had told me that she was going to meet one of her new boyfriend’s friends in Maryland and I didn’t really want to hear about every freaking place they had visited.
She asked how I was feeling. I told her that I couldn’t talk and that I was trying to sleep. She said that she was sorry to hear that, but that she had to tell me something.
She then in her oblivious happy voice that I have heard so many times before started to tell me about her trip. It turns out that it was quite the trip. She didn’t go to Maryland, she went to Las Vegas. My extremely naïve mother decided to elope and had to wake me up from a Codeine nap to tell me. Can anyone say midlife crisis.
I haven’t been that mad at her in a long time. She can marry whoever the hell she wants, but this was ridiculous. My mother hasn’t been dating this guy for a whole four months.
It didn’t really hit me until I hung up the phone, just how little I knew about this guy. I immediately burst into tears. That was the first time in my life that I have ever really considered my mother irrational. I didn’t even know her new last name. I instantly had two step brothers. I have only met one of them. One is nine and the other is eleven. I didn’t even know the eleven-year-olds name.
I knew that she would marry the guy. I just didn’t realize that it would be half as soon as it was. I thought maybe I would have a chance to get to know him. Hell, she doesn’t even know him. You can’t know someone in four months, no matter how much time you spend together in those months.
Call me a skeptic of love in the first place, but I think that there is a difference in loving someone and being in love in with someone. Maybe it is possible to love someone in four months, but you can’t be in love with someone you don’t know. It is near impossible to be in love with someone you have known for a year.
Honestly, I don’t care how she screws up her own life. It is all hers to make mistakes with. The only thing that I am really worried about is my little brother. How stupid is it to involve children into irrational behavior. My brother has no say in who my mother marries, but it will greatly affect his life. How intelligent is it to make a man you don’t know a permanent fixture in your child’s life.
If it was anyone else and I wasn’t hurt by the situation and my brother wasn’t involved, I think that I would find it pretty comical. What is even more funny than the story itself is a crazy thought that ran through my head on Saturday. I was sitting talking to my best friend’s mother about my mother. All of a sudden, I looked at her and said “Wouldn’t it be funny if the whole thing about my mother was all a Codeine enhanced dream.” Needless to say, she made me check my caller Id.

When Not to make a Joke

My father is a funny man. I will give him that. He can make almost anyone laugh and is always the life of the party, but sometimes he just goes to far and has awful timing. Last Wednesday would be a perfect example.

I am dealing with a pretty severe case of mono and Wednesday has probably been the worst day of it. My dad had to pick me up and take me back to the doctor because I was having trouble breathing due to my extremely swollen tonsils (I know its disgusting). He took one look at me and told me I looked pretty rough and I would have to agree. I had the chills and was shivering the whole way to the doctors office. I felt like crap and just wanted to lie down. I thought that I was going to pass out so I made my dad go get me some water while we waited for the nurse to call my name.

Somehow I managed to make it through the appointment. The doctor gave me codeine and Prednisone which is some kind of steroid that they don't really like to give people especially for long periods of time. It was supposed to be a miracle drug that would reduce the swelling back to normal in 12 hours, which it has yet to do 48 hours later. The doctor warned me that the prednisone could cause some swelling in my hands and feet, which was honestly the least of my concern.

On our way out of the doctors office I managed to throw up all of the orange juice and water that I could handle swallowing. I was so pissed. It took me a damn long time to make sure that I wasn't going to get dehydrated not to mention the pain of swallowing. I couldn't believe all that work was completely gone in two seconds. I felt so defeated.

Dad drove me to Walgreen’s and went in to get my prescription while I napped in the car. He came back twenty minutes later with water, vitamins and my meds. As we started to drive dad was telling me about all of the side effects that the pharmacist had explained to him. Dad decided to through in one of his own and told me that in addition to the possible swelling in my hands and feet that it was possible for my face and forehead to swell. He said, "Nik, that will be so funny. You'll look just like Crowe Magnum Man." I started to cry and told him that it wasn't funny. He said that he was sorry and that he was just kidding.

What the hell was running through his head. He already knew that my usually good sense of humor was temporarily gone and that I felt like shit. He couldn't have picked a worse time to piss me off. I think under normal circumstances I would have figured out that he was kidding, but I seemed like such a cruel time to make a joke that it didn't even cross my mind.

heb 10

Nikki B.
3-30-05
Heb 10

Research Narrative
So here I am before I have even started researching. Honestly, I am not too excited about this Heb. It is going to be very hard for me to make this interesting.
I guess that I am going to start with researching Chris Ware on Google. It would be pointless to sift through all of the people trying to sell me one of Chris Ware’s books so I am going to search under “Chris Ware critics” and hope for the best.
Well I can say that I hoped, turns out that a few promising links to Yale and the BBC turned out to be useless, and my best result came from a blogger type review called “Poopsheet: Reviews.” The most interesting thing that he had to say about Ware is that he loved his attention to detail, but that is fairly useless. I also found an interview with another comic, Tymothi Godek, that praised Ware and interestingly enough brought up Scott McCloud.
So I just realized that I really have to do this at the library. Maybe I should read directions twice when I start. I probably should select all and delete, but this is a journey right? I like to think of it as a bump in my journey. A bump that I am not really all that enthused about, if I’m not going to lie. So off to the library I go.
Lucky enough for all of those of you who are bored enough to read this, my experience at the library played out more like an Indiana Jones movie than anything else (at least in the beginning). So you can call me Georgia Jones (still a state, but a little more feminine--wow I am a dork).
It started with the long treacherous journey to Memorial Library. I braved my way through the crowds of people and descended Bascom Hill where I was almost backed over by a dump truck. Close call, but that wouldn’t stop me.
Upon entering the mysterious library, which I hoped held my grail of information on Chris Ware, I was questioned by the guardsmen. One must be very careful with these sorts of people, they are unstable and can be easily agitated.
After sneaking past the guard I faced “the gate.” It swung with such a force that it threatened to amputate both of my legs from the thigh down. Don’t worry, I didn’t let such a gate or my clumsiness deter me from my goal.
Now for the real challenge. I faced the computer, which would make or break my mission. I had to decode the system and find out where the information about Chris Ware was hidden. My first combination was to type Chris Ware into the key words search. No luck. I should have know that it couldn’t be that simple. Next I tried “Chris Ware.” This presented a few leads. It looked like I had found exactly what I was looking for with a book by Daniel Raeburn, but then there it was: “Checked out—due back the 12th.” Damn them. I knew that I couldn’t be the only one on this mission. I knew I had to work fast.
After numerous failed attempts, I tried to go back and find something through the databases. Lexus Nexus provided nothing as did everything else that I tried through the databases. I found a few leads that looked promising, but left me disappointed and frustrated.
Finally I lost the ego and asked for a little assistance. Turns out this so called specialist wasn’t so good at her job. I think she was new. She gave me nothing to work with, thus frustrating me more. That meant that I would have to brave it alone.
I’m not going to lie, I thought maybe I could find a shortcut by looking up critics of Chris Ware on Google. Bingo—kind of. I found an amateur website (http://www.pitt.edu/~ync8/i-like-reviews/ware.htm) which had some good links.
One of the links was an awesome info on Chris Ware on CNN.com. It was an article about Ware and his books, including an interview. Beth Nissen provided some interesting information with this article. She talked about how Ware met his father half way through writing “Jimmy Corrigan” and how Jimmy is based off Chris himself. I found it quite interesting. (For the record: http://archives.cnn.com/2000/books/news/10/03/chris-ware/index.html.)
I tried to look up the article up in the journal magazine search, but found nothing. Next I looked at more of the links that I had previously found. I found an article by Fiachra Gibbons wrote another article on Ware. This one was about him winning the Guardian First Book Award. Apparently it is pretty prestigious and comes with £10,000 . (http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,6109,614821,00.html). Once again I thought that maybe I could find a paper copy. It seemed to me that it was a fairly real possibility considering that “The Guardian” is a newspaper, but nope. Once again I was left frustrated.
I looked at my watch. My time had more than run out because this was not my only mission that I was running. Two hours at the library and I had in sight what I was looking for, but it was out of reach. Maybe I’m just not cut out to play Georgia Jones. Somehow I don’t think that she would have left frustrated, annoyed, disheartened, irritated, and empty-handed. But make certain that I may have left empty handed, but not due to a lack of effort.