Category Archives: True Story

Mar 4

Missing in Action

If you’re wondering why you haven’t heard from us, it’s because I was in Seattle this past weekend — my sister and I took my mom up there for her birthday. Christopher, while I was gone, had to have his appendix out in an emergency surgery, and he’s recuperating.

But that’s not the only reason we’ve been MIA. Since our big fight last week, Christopher and I aren’t really sure where things stand with “us,” and we may not be the “Chris and Chris” team much longer. We have a lot to think about on our own, and some things to talk about I suppose. I don’t really know.

What I do know is that I don’t think I’ll be checking in on the site for a little while. It’s just really hard for me and stuff.

I didn’t want anyone to think I’ve abandoned them– just taking some time for myself.

Carry on without me. :-)

Jan 24

The Secret to Happiness

What is your answer to this question…?

Which person do you think is happier– a person who has won the lottery one year after he/she won, OR a person who has become a paraplegic one year after he/she lost the use of his/her legs?

It seems sort of obvious to most that if, given that choice themselves, they’d choose the first believing that winning the lottery would make them happier than being wheelchair bound. In an actual study of both groups of people, they actually all reported the same level of happiness in their life.

I recently watched a 20-minute presentation by Harvard psychologist Dan Gilbert on www.ted.com (Technology, Entertainment, Design– which is an annual conference where intelligent, innovative people in their field come together to share ideas) about happiness and I thought it was good enough to write a post about.

Studies have shown, that pretty much any life event that we believe at the time could be life-changing (getting a promotion or not, failing or passing a college exam, moving or not moving, breaking up with a partner or staying together), have no measurable impact on the happiness of our lives 3 months after the event takes place. Of course those things do change the course of your life, but they don’t impact your level of happiness.

In essence, Dr. Gilbert suggests that we have a “psychological immune system” that lets us feel real, enduring happiness, even when things don’t go as planned. He calls this kind of happiness “synthetic happiness,” and he says it’s “every bit as real and enduring as the kind of happiness you stumble upon when you get exactly what you were aiming for.”

Gilbert breaks happiness into two categories. “Synthetic happiness” vs. “natural happiness.” Natural happiness is the happiness we feel when we get something we want or put effort into striving for– we interview for a job and get it, we hope that cute guy will ask us out and he does, we apply for a loan and get it. Synthetic happiness is the happiness we create when we don’t get what we want– for example, we DON’T get a job and instead get a different job and then say “Wow, I’m really glad I didn’t get that first job because the second one was so much better and if I had gotten that first job, I wouldn’t have accepted the second one.”

Most people feel that “synthetic happiness” is inferior to “natural happiness.” We are predisposed to hear our friend talking about how much happier he is that he DIDN’T get a job he wanted and we react by thinking “Poor guy… he’s trying to be positive about the situation because he really wanted the job he didn’t get.”

Gilbert proposes that our thinking about synthetic happiness being inferior is actually wrong. In reality, our friend isn’t convincing himself he’s happy, he’s experiencing true happiness about the situation.

He also suggests that freedom to choose is the friend of natural happiness but the enemy of synthetic happiness. There was an experiment at Harvard where they asked photography students to take two photos they chose as the best two photos they’ve taken out of several rolls of film. Then they split the students into two groups. The first group is told they have to give one picture up, can only keep one, but if they ever change their mind, they can swap the photos and ask to exchange it for the one they gave up. The other group is told they have to give up one of the photos, they have two minutes to make the decision, and they’ll never see the photo they gave up ever again. The first group, it was discovered, spent a great deal of time, even after the decision was made, wondering if they’d made the right decision, wondering if they should exchange it for the other, and even after the deadline to exchange it had passed, showed they weren’t as happy with their decision to keep the photo they did as the students who had to quickly make a choice and “got stuck” with the one they chose. That second group was actually happier with their chosen photo months later.

The

point is… the human brain has the ability to be happy regardless of the situation due to synthetic happiness. Yet, we place so much importance on natural happiness (which is much harder to achieve than synthetic happiness) that we can actually cripple our ability to experience

synthetic happiness by this obsession with natural happiness.

I find that to be good news. The more we agonize over a decision, the more less happy we feel with the decision afterward. When we aren’t given a choice, we accept our circumstances and move on.

I can relate to this very well. I’m the type of person who feels happiest when I’ve made a decision and can move on accepting that the decision is what it is. I don’t like being in situations where I am “in limbo” and weighing option after option. For example, a year ago when Christopher and I were out looking at apartments to move in together, Christopher– who is very comfortable with being in limbo– kept wanting to look at different places. Weekend after weekend of touring apartments, I found myself getting more and more stressed and hating the process. Christopher could see me getting stressed and not really recognizing WHY I was feeling like that, we decided just to keep our own places for the time being.

Anyway, for me, watching the 20-minute presentation was well worth the time. I actually watched it twice to make sure I hadn’t missed anything. Recognizing that synthetic happiness is a real thing and not just something someone pretends to have to “justify” not getting what they originally wanted helps me keep in perspective that there are very few “live or die” choices and agonizing over decisions will actually make you less happy with your ultimate decision than if you didn’t.

Jan 5

The Making of the Bread

Let me start by saying I’ve been in kind of a weird funk lately. I always get sort of depressed after the holidays and cold, gray weather affects me very negatively. So that’s what poor Christopher has been dealing with the past couple of weeks. I decided after being a grouch to be around, I wanted to do something for him to show him how much I appreciate him, so I decided to give him a few really good blow jobs and make this bread that he’s been asking me to make for seriously over a year.

It’s not like I’ve been blowing off making bread because I don’t give a shit about what he wants. The specific bread he wants is the kind they serve at a restaurant we have in California called “Black Angus,” and the bread is a really dark, dark brown color. Almost black really. I’ve never made bread before and I had no idea what kind of bread this was, so I just never got around to making it. But the other night, I decided I was going to figure out how to do this for him, so I went online and searched for a recipe for the Black Angus bread. I found a message board where apparently lots of other people were looking for the recipe too and someone posted one they thought was similar. I printed off the directions for both the regular way to make it and the way to make it using a bread maker and called Christopher and asked if he could bring his bread maker over.

He was pretty excited I was going to make the bread and offered to stop at the grocery store on his way over and pick up the ingredients I didn’t have. I thought it would be fun to try to figure out how to make it together, and since he’d used a bread maker before, thought it would go much more smoothly if he were involved. On the phone, he asks me to text him the ingredients I need.

“I think you better just call me from the store,” I say. “It’s kind of complicated.”

He agrees and about twenty minutes later, I get a call from him. He’s in the baking aisle. “I’m here,” he says. “What do you need.”

“I have flour, salt and all that stuff, so I need first of all, yeast. It needs to be dry active yeast.” He spends a few minutes hunting around for it before saying, “I don’t think they have that here.”

“I’m sure they do, hon,” I say. “It comes in tiny little packets. Like Kool-Aid.” He hunts around some more.

“Let’s skip that and come back to it,” he says. “What else?”

“Molasses.”

“What is that?”

“It’s like a dark brown syrup. It’s probably next to the Karo’s.”

“Karo’s?”

“Just look for something dark in a jar.”

After a moment, he says victorious, “Found it! What else?”

“Shortening,” I say. “Get the smallest little tub they have. I don’t need much.”

“Like Cisco?” he asks.

“Crisco. Yes.” I smile. Cisco (CSCO) is a stock he likes right now.

“Cool. I know what that is. Found it. What else?”

“Oats,” I say. “The old-fashioned kind. Not the instant packages like we eat for breakfast.”

“Oh my god, they’re right here. Right here in front of me,” he says, surprised and glad.

“Cool. Okay, just get the yeast and we’re good,” I say. I hear him ask some lady where the yeast is and then thank her.

He tells me he’ll be over in a little bit.

When he gets back to my apartment with the ingredients, I get out the measuring cups and spoons.

“I’ll read it off to you,” Christopher says. “One table spoon of salt.” I look up at him, confused.

“Are you sure? That seems like a lot of salt.”

“That’s what the recipe says.”

I pick up the recipe. It says 1 t. salt. “That stands for teaspoon, not tablespoon, babe.”

“Oh yeah… that’s what I meant.”

“Why don’t I read it off to you?” I say.

“Okay, okay,” he says. “How much molasses?”

“A quarter cup.”

He pours a quarter cup into the bread maker and we systematically go through the list until everything is in the bread maker. Christopher turns the bread maker on and it makes a very strange noise.

“Is that how it always sounds?” I ask.

“Yeah,” he says and opens the lid. “It’s just that little thing that turns…” His voice trails off. Then, a moment later, he looks up at me and smiles. “Uh-oh.”

“Uh-oh what?”

“I forgot to bring the piece that you put in the middle that kneads the bread.” The ingredients are just sitting in there not moving.

“Babe…” I say, somewhat annoyed.

“Don’t worry,” he says. “I’ll knead it by hand.” He takes the dough out and I pour some flour on the table and he starts to knead it.

“I don’t think this is going to work, hon,” I show him the recipe. “The measurements are totally different when you make it the regular way. Like we needed to activate the yeast and stuff before putting everything together.”

“It’ll be fine.” He assures me and kneads the dough. “Let’s just put it back in the bread maker and it can bake in there.”

“I think we need to let it rise first, but I don’t think it’s gonna rise because we did the yeast wrong and that stuff is really tempermental from what I understand.”

“It’ll rise.” He says with great confidence as he continues to knead the dough.

Whether or not we actually get any bread out of this experience, I realize I’m having fun with him. When he’s done kneading, he plops the dough back into the bread maker and closes the lid. “We’ll let it rise in there,” he announces.

About 45 minutes later, I go check on it and it hasn’t risen a single centimeter. “Oh…” Christopher says, “I forgot to turn the machine back on to make it warm in there.”

“Babe, this is really not gonna work,” I say.

“What do you want to do? Call it quits?” he asks, surprised I don’t have the confidence he does that the bread will somehow magically take a turn for the better.

“I think we should trash that stuff and I’ll make it the regular way tomorrow.”

There’s disappointment in his eyes. Finally he nods. “Okay.” I throw the dough in the trash. The next day, I made the bread the regular way. It rose, I punched it down, it rose again, I baked it.

Unfortunately, the recipe didn’t yield the kind of bread Christopher was hoping for, but it was still pretty good. I may have been more disappointed about that than he was. I really want to make him this bread he likes and I’m pretty much back to square one on finding the right recipe. But I will find it. And hopefully, by the time I find a new recipe, he’ll have brought over the thing he keeps forgetting (the piece that goes in the bread maker that kneads the dough) because right now I have a fairly worthless bread maker sitting on the floor in my dining room.

Even though popping my bread-making cherry didn’t turn out so well on the first try, stumbling through it with Christopher made the whole thing worth it. :-)

Dec 6

Herpes Genitalis and Acyclovir (aka Christine Freaks Out)

So it’s now December and I’ve been up here in Canada working for almost a month. Last year, when I came up for our December movie, I got a big ugly cold sore on my lip from the stress and spent most of the time I was at Christopher’s parents’ house in Pennsylvania applying Balmex and wrapping a scarf around my head.

After that incident, Christopher’s mother (who is a nurse) sent me some some little free sample packets of Acyclovir ointment so I could take them with me when I travel. As I was packing for this trip, I anticipated I’d be under a great deal of stress and braving the extreme cold up here, so I tossed the packets into my suitcase.

So two days ago, I get a call from my mom saying Meisha (my 2-year-old kitty) started breathing heavily. They rushed her to an animal trauma center in Los Angeles where her heart stopped and she had to be revived. It was touch and go for two full days as they tried to take her off oxygen and continued to get results of various heart tests back– none of which looked good. As of right now, she’s been released and is at my mom’s house, on heart pills and being closely monitored. Let me just say, I was a nervous wreck and of course, if the stress of being up here working crazy hours weren’t enough, Meisha’s little heart defect gave me a cold sore.

When I felt it coming on, I remembered I had the Acyclovir ointment Christopher’s mom gave me. Patting myself on the back for my foresight, I bust out the little packet and spread some ointment on my lip where I think the cold sore might come. It isn’t unti the fourth time I’ve applied the ointment that I actually take a close look at the packet. It says “Acyclovir Ointment 5%, for herpes genitalis.”

I stare at it for a moment. Herpes genitalis? That sounds like its for genital herpes. And then I think… hrmmm… that’s weird. The stuff my doctor prescribed last year didn’t mention it was for genital herpes…

A little worried, I google “acyclovir ointment gential herpes cold sore” and a series of sites come up. I find the one that seems the most credible (I can only get Canadian sites on google, so I pick an organization associated with the Canadian government) and click on it. It tells me that “Acyclovir Ointment is used for genital herpes and Acyclovir Cream is used for cold sores.” It also says that you should never put Acyclovir Cream on genital herpes.”

Does that mean I shouldn’t put Acyclovir Ointment on my lip? Oh shit. Is my lip going to bubble up and burn off or something?

I try to message Christopher’s mom but she’s not there. I wait. I look up more websites. Can’t find answers. Getting more and more worked up by the minute, I decide to call my pharmacist in Los Angeles and ask.

It turns out that Acyclovir Cream is actually more potent than Acyclovir Ointment and either one can be used on your lip, but not on your genitals. Thank God. I didn’t do something that will burn my face off. I’m still hoping that I can actually prevent it… but quite frankly, I’d be happy with just one stress-free day right now. :-) Cold sore or not.