Au Revoir, Weasel

One of my favorite bloggers — the Francophile, weasel-loving, red lipstick-wearing La Belette Rouge — has shut down her blog, though she assures me she will still visit this corner of the blogosphere on occasion. With 20/20 hindsight, I feel that a photo from my meeting with LBR in February foretold this grim day.

That’s my weasel on top. Look how he’s forcing himself on her weasel, who is turning her head with an obvious expression of disgust. Alas.

UPDATED TO ADD: I asked the Weasel for a copy of her post on “how not to get over heartbreak, huge disappointment, shock, death and despair.” This was one of my favorite posts of hers because it was typical of her ability to write beautifully and hilariously even in sad times. I hope she doesn’t mind if I repost it here. Remember, if anyone asks, this post is from La Belette Rouge:

How not to get over heartbreak, huge disappointment, shock, death and despair

Please know that I do not advise this plan for others and I get that my plan is without merit and should be avoided by all others. This plan is only intended for me. That said, this is my current regimen:

1. Eat crap. Now is not a time for following the guidelines of the USDA. Forget your greafy-leans, I mean leafy greens, and fiber and all other dietary recommendations that Dr. Oz or Dr. Phil or any other doctor told you. This is a time for crap. If you can’t eat this food without a knife it does not fit the bill. My recommendations are macaroni and cheese, mashed potatoes, cereal that has an extremely low fiber content. In fact any food that does not require you chew too hard should be okay. Ice cream is perfect as no chewing is required at all. I like to put my ice cream in the microwave to mush it up more. Other people are old school and want to wait until the ice cream melts on its own. As I feel so rotten I don’t have the endurance to wait for ice cream to melt. In my present state time is expanded. Minutes feel like hours, hours feel like days and days feel as long as months—I will not go on and tell you what months feel like because I am guessing you can fill in the blank on that one. Hence, it could take up to an hour for the ice cream to melt and I just can’t wait that long.

2. Do not groom or bathe. Looking and feeling like crap go hand in hand. This may be difficult to do, but, do not brush your hair, teeth or do any other brushing of any kind. And, if you are in shock and despair you just don’t have the energy to stand in the shower. Some who do not understand may suggest you will feel better if you take a shower—but they just don’t understand. In fact, f*ck any suggestion that is followed by “it will make you feel better.” By day three it may be hard to keep this one up. But, if you relent and take a shower do not admit to anyone under any circumstances that it made you feel any better. Lie if you must.

3. Have amazing friends who tell you how wonderful you are, how much they love you and listen to them tell you how everything will be fine. Then fight them tooth and nail and tell them how you are now and forever doomed and how things will never-ever-ever get better and how they just don’t see that there is no chance of things changing for all time, eternity and….

4. Watch crap tv. This is not a time for reading great literature–as even in the darkest of literature there will be underlying motif of resurrection or redemption. No, the companion to loss, despair and chthonic grief is “Charles in Charge” or “Small Wonder.” Nothing is more depressing than bad TV. But, as we currently don’t have a TV I cannot do what I would usually do, which is to flip through all 1000 channels and grow more despondent as there is nothing on. Instead, I have gotten hooked on the show “Lost” and I am finding it an apt metaphor for my current state of displacement, loss, alienation and lack of a rescue team arriving in Austin to make my life all better. The one down side of watching ‘”Lost” back to back, from season one to four, is that it is distracting me from incessant ruminations on all my misery and it also has cut down my crying which is unfortunate.

5. Do not move. You do not want to risk getting any serotonin, endorphins or any other “ins” flowing in your system. Move as little as possible. Keep remote control, tissues and whatever other accoutrement of despair you require on your person at all times. Be sure to keep things to remind you of the wound/loss/heartbreak/etc. are best to keep within a three feet radius of wherever you are stationed. I prefer the couch to the bed as it allows me to move less and have greater access to the kitchen and the bathroom with less steps to get there. And, when you do walk, be sure to walk like you are a very old person with severe arthritis.

6. Create a cocoon of darkness. No light. Curtains, drapes and blinds all drawn simultaneously. Ideally the room should be so dark that you could develop film in it. You want the room to match your inner life—and if it is dark as mine you are going for a kind of bat cave of darkness type look sans stalactites. Eschew well-meaning suggestions of turning on a light or opening a window to let the breeze in. Do not be tricked into inadvertently letting any light in.

7. Have the appropriate accessories of sturm und drang. This is a time for lots of pillows and blankets. Different flavors of grief may require different kinds of pillows and blankets. On occasion, I have gone for the cocoon variety in which I make a kind of larval structure out of a mass of pillows, and a stack of blankets that protect me from the hardness of life. Other times my grief has been more monastic and I have permitted myself only a single pillow and a thin cotton throw. Some sufferings require a downy soft pillow and a duvet filled with goose feathers to comfort my wounded soul. This time I have a trinity of pillows, one down pillow for softness, one hard pillow for structure and one throw pillow to create leverage when I need to sit up a little bit, as my spine seems unable to sit up on its own accord. My blanket du jour is what I call a Korean Velux. I don’t know what these blankets are really called, but they are extremely heavy blankets that feel like they are made out of the fabric that makes teddy bears and they usually have a less than aesthetically pleasing print on them. He-weasel worked with a Korean woman and he asked her if she knew of these blankets as I had long longed for one. I had once used one at a friend’s house (her sister had just returned from military duty in Korea and she lugged the 50 pound blanket home). He-weasel’s co-worker had a bit of a crush on him so soon after his inquiry he came home with my Korean Velux. I was so delighted to get the blanket and happily ignored the fact that that the women who gave it to us would like to be undercover with my weasel, not that she had a chance–my weasel is a one weasel man–blanket or no blanket.

8. Make a list of all the crap things that have happened to you in your life and read it over frequently. When find yourself feeling at all better repeat #’s 8, 9, and 10 until you are once again huddled in the fetal position.

9. Look at yourself in the mirror and make the cry face and watch yourself cry–amplify the feelings with words that will trigger you. My favorites are “why?”, “it’s so unfair” and “no.” Use words that will best get you crying. For best results number 8 and 9 can be done together. And, if you are sticking to number two seeing yourself in the mirror ought to amplify the pain.

10. Look at PhD programs that you have neither the GRE scores nor the cash to go to and see how if you just would have an ability for math you could be going to the grad school of your dreams instead of lying on the sofa, eating Captain Crunch and watching “Lost.” If this is not a sore spot for you–tour your internal regrets and see which one torments you the most and then find away to torture yourself with it. If you wanted to be a ballerina or a professional athlete or whatever you dreamed of being—there is a way to torture yourself with what could of been all by searching the internet on the comfort of your sofa.

Do not vary from the above activities. Strict adherence to the previous ten rules are required or you may start to feel better. I know because, yesterday, I took a walk, showered, ate a regular meal, let He-weasel open the curtains and laughed some—and I am feeling a little bit better today.