The Chronicles of Marge

Lost: I Actually Watched It Last Night

I know, it’s amazing. I watched Lost on a Wednesday at 9 p.m. and the TV reception wasn’t bad, which is surprising with this new digital TV switch, but then we did make an emergency run during halftime of the Carolina/Maryland game over the weekend to purchase a new antenna, and it now looks like a small cell phone tower landed on our living room floor. Ridiculous, I know. I should cave. I should get basic cable. But I’m a stubborn gal and what I would pay each month for cable would almost equal the cost of an Italian VOGUE, so I’ll stick with the VOGUE (and a husband who just rolled his eyes).

Since I’ve been out of the loop on Lost for awhile, I’m not going to make any great claims or impress you with my abilities to hypothesize. Instead, let me just share some of my thoughts about the episode that was the life and times of Jeremy Bentham, aka John Locke, man you never gets a break but just doesn’t stop trying. Dude, I would have told Abaddon to drive my ass to the closest DQ, where I would have ordered myself a large cappuccino Heath blizzard, and told Abaddon that the journey was over and it was time that he took a walkabout.

But I guess there wasn’t too much time for that because Abaddon caught several in the chest, which sent John into the following downward spiral: insecurity at the wheel due to leg in cast, amazing car crash, waking up to a bearded and bedraggled Jack (we discussed this, man—I know you’ve since shaved, but this look is NOT GOOD), purchasing an extension cord, ending up in a crappy motel room, positioning extension cord around neck, listening to Benjamin Linus tell you everything you want to hear (meaning lies, lies, lies), believing Linus, choosing life, then being strangled by Linus, dying, spending some time in a coffin, waking up on a sandy beach somewhere in the Pacific wearing Christian Shephard’s shoes, and communing with a bunch of plane crash victims—AS IF YOU HADN’T ALREADY BEEN THERE DONE THAT. Gosh.

As much as John Locke and his sad, pathetic existence perturbs me (can you tell I’m not a fan?), I wish upon Benjamin Linus a long episode of diarrhea. But I’ll settle for the fetal position on a Dharma Initiative cot—yeah Ben, welcome to how I spend the months of winter. Hope you enjoy.

You know, there was a point last season where I wanted to give Ben the benefit of the doubt. I wanted to believe that he meant some good, that maybe he could care for people. But he is a long way from that now and I don’t know who to believe: Ben or Widmore. They are both so convincing and compelling, and I think, at the end of the day, they both want the same thing. Yet they are still both liars, and I hate a TV liar (you know, real-life ones are obviously okay).

And I also don’t like these new folks: Caesar and Ilana. My hunch is that they work for Widmore. They seemed too nonchalant in the face of a disaster in the middle of nowhere (although didn’t this plane look marvelously intact versus its 815 counterpart?). They also seemed too familiar with the location. And Ilana, in particular, just seems too clean and a tab bit haughty for me. She also had Sayid in cuffs, and for that, I can only hope that she has to suffer through some less-than-pleasant away-toilet situations in the jungle. Enjoy the mangos, lady.

Lost and Other Things

I have no idea if anyone is mourning that fact that I haven’t written about the last three episodes of Lost—do I dare admit that I haven’t even seen last week’s episode yet? I don’t know what my problem is this year. Well, that’s a lie. Part of it is because Lost comes on while I am away from the house, and Jason and I usually don’t watch it until the weekend on the Internet, which hasn’t always been the most pleasant experience. I also find that watching it so far delayed from when everyone else in the world has seen it is rather dulling. I’m just not as excited. And by the time I get to writing about what I’ve seen, a new episode is on already, so what is a girl to do?

The other problem is this (and if you can’t handle real emotion, just step out of the kitchen now and don’t come back because I don’t want you around): I’m suffering from the worst winter of seasonal affective disorder that I’ve ever had. I’ve joked on this site before about spending the months of winter in a fetal position while nursing a bag of Ghiradelli bittersweet chocolate chips and a bottle of pinot noir, but that‘s not far from the truth. The truth is that right now I don’t feel like leaving the house. I don’t feel like moving. I don’t feel like seeing people, including you. I don’t feel like bathing (I actually just went 3 days without a bath so if you wondered what the funk was…), and when I do get in the shower, I don’t feel like leaving. I don’t feel like going to work. I don’t feel like wearing spandex, which, you know, is my favorite. And today, I slept until 8:43 a.m. That’s right, it was light for two whole hours before Large Marge got her ass out of bed, and yes, that was the realignment of the earth’s axis that you just felt.

Luckily, I know what is wrong with me and I have a great source of advice for this problem: my mother. My mother spent years wondering why she didn’t feel like getting out of bed in the winter. My father spent years wondering if this was the worse and sickness he had committed to and why the allure of bran and oatmeal in pancakes wasn’t helping. I spent years wondering what I had done to make my mother so sad. And then Seasonal Affective Disorder taught me how to do my own laundry at the age of 11 because otherwise it wouldn’t have gotten done. So all in all, I think the family broke even.

I also learned from my mom that you just grit your teeth and bear it any way you can. She started quilting with wildly colorful fabrics in the winter. I started forcing bulbs so that February in my house looks like a garden and smells like hyacinths.

I also know that this is a finite problem that will dissipate with the coming of spring. However, let me correct those of you who think that 2 weeks of nice, warm weather in February is a solution to the problem. Guess what, assholes, it is not. (Sorry, that’s the SAD Marge speaking there). It’s like a cold winter morning. The air is the coldest right before the sun rises. Yes, it may be light outside, but the coldest doesn’t happen until right before that sun breaks the horizon.  So it might have been warm and glorious at the beginning of the month, but my spirit has been slowly sucked dry of life and vitality and vitamin D since October, and February is the end of that long, dark journey.

Sometimes I think the animals that hibernate have it right. They just cut out this part of the year altogether. They take care of themselves by stealing away, balling up, and sleeping it off. And they probably take care of their friends and family this way too. No one has to worry about their moody and depressed spouse in the winter because she’s just off asleep somewhere and will return to the living in March as the joyous, passionate person that she is. And the seasonally affected person doesn’t have to worry about how she treats other people because she doesn’t have to treat anyone from the comfort of a nice solitary cave filled with warm blankets, chocolate, and the DVD of Colin Firth in Pride and Prejudice. And that’s why it is so hard for me to be around people right now. That’s why when I am out and about you will wonder, “Why the long face, Marge?” And you will give me that look of concern when you ask, “Are you okay?” but you don’t have the balls to then say, “Really, because I don’t think you are okay?” And that’s when I tell you to piss off and mind your own business because haven’t you seen those commercials about depression? IT IS NOT SUPPOSED TO BE HAPPY. I AM SAD RIGHT NOW FOR A REASON. And maybe it’s best that I do hide away for awhile because I don’t make the most intelligent or thoughtful decisions when I’m sad, and I am awfully sensitive to what people say to me, and my skin is so dry and flaky right now that I can’t afford physically to lose any more bodily fluids through tears. So just sit tight, folks, and wait until March. And then maybe I’ll start writing about TV like it’s the most important thing in the world, and maybe I’ll even tell you about the time I overdosed on laxatives. On purpose. And now you all are relieved that this was an essay only about my seasonal affective disorder rather than the state of my colon. Oh just you wait.

Men in the Building

Last week, my sister Kat informed me that she had joined an indoor soccer league. Mind you, she has never really played soccer before in her life except for some noble attempts at running up and down the field in the direction of the ball with her head down (she said this method gave the appearance that she knew what she was doing). I think the only thing more entertaining—no offense, Kat— would be all three of the Sisters Ryalls playing soccer on a field together. It would be a graceless display of flying appendages and multiple injuries to other team members caused by very pointy elbows. Anyway, I told Jason about this and he was all, "That is a great way to meet guys." I guess he would know about this since he is on the field three times a week. (And my brain goes: maybe I should check into that. Or maybe I shouldn't. Or maybe..oh hell, leave it alone Marge.) Anyway, I called Kat last night, and the following conversation unfolded.

Me: Jason wanted me to tell you that soccer is a great place to meet guys.
Kat: But I joined an all-girls league.
Me: Damn. [now yelling] Jason, she joined an all-girls league.
Jason: [yelling] Why did she do that?
Me: Why did you do that?
Kat: It was the only one I knew about. [pause] There are men in the building.

And to that I say, wear a lot of spandex. It may get you places.

Can You Tie Them in a Knot

Discovered a wrinkle in my earlobe this week. A WRINKLE IN MY EARLOBE!! I guess it’s better than jowls, which I’m convinced I’ll have by the age of 40, but still, it’s not what I needed to find in February, at the height of being seasonally affected, which means I have the self-esteem of a sixth-grade girl who realizes that all of the other girls are actually wearing real bras now, and an undershirt just doesn’t cut it anymore because the straps don’t snap when someone pulls on them and you are all found out and everyone knows that you don’t have boobs, which any idiot could have realized by looking at your chest.

Anyway, the wrinkle in my earlobe has upset me a bit, merely because it reminds me of my grandfather’s earlobes, which reminds me that I cannot escape genetics. There are three physical characteristics I remember about my grandfather: 1) he had really long curly arm hair—I mean, this stuff stood up and out from the arm in a mass of curl and if you pulled on it, the length would increase by at least 2 inches; 2) I saw him once without his teeth and he totally called me out on it (I think he enjoyed still being able to put fear into small children, albeit later in life from the comfort of a recliner); and 3) he had really long wrinkly earlobes. These were earlobes that said, “Hi, we’ve lived through The Depression.” And World War II. And four children under the age of 6. And congealed salad on a weekly basis. And now I wonder if I’ll end up an 88-year-old woman with hears that hang low, wobble to and fro, can be tied in a knot or tied in a bow, or thrown over my shoulder like a Continental solider. Or maybe people will just look at me and say, “Yep, her earlobes lived through Those Economic Times,” which, 50 years from now, is something the MTV generation will reminisce about from the comfort of a Golden LL5000 Lift Chair with a built-in surround-sound system and bedpan.