I happened to be reading Dr. Nadine Burke Harris’s book in my neurologist’s waiting room. He was running late, so I had an hour and a half to take it all in.

Harris is interested in how the effects of childhood trauma follow people into their adult lives, causing chronic and acute illnesses and a shorter life span.

Childhood trauma is measured via the ACE score–a 10-point test to determine how fucked up your childhood was (a point for a dead parent, a point for witnessing your mother being abused, etc.). The score on the test I found online a few years ago, at my doctor’s urging, was 8. The one Harris uses has me at a 7.

Harris notes that there are also cultural childhood adversity problems:

“In rural white communities, the story is about loss of living-wage work and the fallout from rampant drug use. In immigrant communities, it is abut discrimination and the fear of forever being separated from loved ones at a moment’s notice. In African American communities, it’s about the legacy of centuries of inhuman treatment that persist to this day–it’s about boys being at risk when they are playing on a bench or walking home from the store wearing a hoodie. In Native American communities, it is about the obliteration of land and culture and the legacy of dislocation. But everyone is really saying the same thing: I am suffering.

“It is easy to get stuck on your own suffering because, naturally, it is what affects you most, but that’s exactly the mentality that is killing black people, white people, and all people. It perpetuates the problem by framing it in terms of us versus them. Either we get ahead or they get ahead. . . . the science shows us that it is not us against them. In fact, we all share a common enemy, and that common enemy is childhood adversity” (195).

I knew some of the science, but reading it all at once was difficult:

“Twenty years of medical research has shown that childhood adversity literally gets under our skin, changing people in ways that can endure in their bodies for decades. It can tip a child’s developmental trajectory and affect physiology. It can trigger chronic inflammation and hormonal changes that can last a lifetime. It can alter the way DNA is read and how cells replicate, and it can dramatically increase the risk for heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes–even Alzheimer’s” (xv).

“A person with an ACE score of seven or more has triple the lifetime odds of getting lung cancer and three and half times the odds of having ischemic heart disease, the number one killer in the United States. If a large study . . . came out tomorrow saying that exposure to cottage cheese tripled your lifetime chances of cancer, the Internet would break and the dairy lobby would hire a crisis-management firm (40).

I have to say, I don’t like my odds.

But like all good books, this one’s stories moved me, scared me, most. One of the patients Harris describes is severely under weight. Something bad happened, and he just stopped growing, stopped thriving.

I don’t remember a lot of things that happened to me early on–my mother wanting to leave my father for his constant womanizing, his giving her a black eye, her fleeing with baby me.

My grandparents often told a story about when I came to live with them when I was 2. I was so small that they took me to a doctor. My grandparents were told that I was okay, but that I would be a tiny thing. But they didn’t believe the doctor, who said I would never make it to 5′. So they gave me small quantities of beer to increase my appetite and milkshakes filled with eggs.

And I wasn’t actually okay. All of a sudden I had life-threatening asthma, requiring frequent hospitalizations.

By the time my grandparents took me in, I was failing to thrive. I somehow hadn’t made that connection before reading this book.

What shook me most, though, was reading about all the studies showing that loving, stable homes can help people recover from trauma.

And I thought about another story my grandmother liked to tell. Their tiny little me was unconscious, and they couldn’t wake me up. They were packing me into the car for the hour trip to the hospital. Grandma saw (Grand)daddy packing his pocket with cigars and asked what he was doing.

“They’re going to want to keep her overnight. And I’m not leaving her there alone.”

And that was why, thinking about the loving, stable home my grandparents tried to give me, I cried in my neurologist’s waiting room.

Trump wants to be a Florida resident instead of a New York one. The Washington Post reports: “But despite paying ‘millions of dollars in city, state and local taxes each year,’ he complained, he had been ‘treated very badly by the political leaders of both the city and state.’”

In essence, Trump is saying that because he pays millions in taxes, he should be treated well.

Instead of fairly.

Let’s leave aside whether he actually pays millions (this is disputed) and the clear implication that Trump sees his taxes as some kind of bribe or tip, designed to get better service.

Trump DOES get treated better, because he was born wealthy. He had advantages and chances the rest of us didn’t.

When the rest of us go bankrupt, we can’t claim it was because we’re smart. We have to pay our bills. And a single bankruptcy ruins our credit. Simply because he’s Trump, he gets to keep borrowing and borrowing, despite four bankruptcies.

When the rest of us commit crimes, we get arrested. In many cases, we can’t afford good defenses or to post bail. We appear in handcuffs. Rich people have to really fuck up to be arrested. Most of the time, they get to turn themselves in, they are released without bail, and they get to turn up with their high priced lawyers, all wearing lovely suits.

Because we have lower income, our high tax burden affects us more. And even Trump’s beloved Fox reports that low income people are more likely to be audited.

Please stop bitching about how badly you’re being treated, Mr. Trump. You literally don’t know how good you have it.

Last week, I picked up a chicken at Safeway (about 6 lbs for $6).

I cooked it in my crockpot (on low all day with herbs). Here’s what we got out of it.

2 roast chicken meals

2 bbq chicken sandwiches

2 servings of chicken tacos

2 servings of hoisin chicken wraps

5 servings of chicken parmesan casserole

If you’ve ever wondered what I do when I’m not grading, it’s making plans like these.

There aren’t many truly spooky plays, ones that make you jump.

But Stephen Karam knew to write about one of the scariest things there is–Thanksgiving dinners with family.

The Humans started its run at CapStage on October 16; it runs until Nov. 17, making it both a Halloween and Thanksgiving play.

It reminds me of one of my favorite movies, Home for the Holidays (directed by Jodie Foster, 1995). Except the tensions and secrets in The Humans seem to be manifesting in the walls.

My favorite aspect, though, was the realism. Michael Stevenson, the director, and his actors captured all the ways families talk to each other. How each line is layered with a complete human past behind it.

One character, the live-in boyfriend of one of the daughters, is trying to ingratiate himself into her family, so he keeps trying to side with his love’s mother when the two start rubbing each other the wrong way. No one can irritate us as much as family can; we’ve had years to find all the rawest nerves and to create new ways to get on them.

The Humans has won many awards; I’m thrilled that its Sacramento premiere is in the hands of such talented actors, director, and crew. It also works well in the company’s intimate space.

We’re so close that we have dinner with them (I was tempted to put some ice cream away that was left out too long), we laugh with them about all of mom’s silly texts, and we cry with mom when her feelings get hurt because we laughed at her.

Ultimately, this is a play about family, not just about how they drive us crazy, but how we learn to love them and forgive them despite a crime they can’t help: the crime of being human.

On Monday night, my cat headed outside right after dinner, as usual.

On a normal night, he would have come home and found himself in my room, pulled by his desire to suck on my ear, sleep on my face, and wrap himself in my hair.

But then he didn’t come home.

For days.

While my son was out looking for him on Halloween, he got a call from someone just under two miles away. And then Thoth was home.

We don’t know everything about his journey, though we’re sure he said hi to as many people along the way as he could. His friendliness was probably mistaken for confidence–confidence in his ability to get himself back home after wandering too far astray.

Here’s what we do know.

He was sighted in a close neighbor’s yard, inspecting her chickens.

He was so loving at a house a mile away that they wrote down all the information on his collar in case he came back looking lost.

The kids at the last house, 8 and 9, have a dog. But now, after spending time with Thoth, they want a cat.

One neighbor took a picture of him, peering over her fence. It’s a look we recognize.

We’ve ordered a tracker, since he really misses being outside. And since a bunch of close neighbors will ask after him if he spends too much time inside.

So maybe the next trip won’t be so mysterious.

A few days ago, someone really hurt my feelings, my physical self-confidence.

Only a few days before, I’d decided I was going to try to not let that happen.

When I was leaving East Lansing, I was the only passenger going through security. When I went to retrieve my bag from the examination belt, the TSA agent stopped me.

“Wait a minute, ma’am.”

“Yes?”

“I just wanted to say that you’re absolutely beautiful.”

I managed to stammer out a thank you, which was hard–I wanted to deflect and/or contradict her.

I thought about that moment a lot that day, about how I’d like to remember that, to have that pop into my mind when I was feeling unattractive, instead of all the negative things that people have said. That I say to myself several times a day.

But as soon as something hurt me Thursday, Sunday’s great moment was knocked from my mind.

Until now.

I’m writing this down in an attempt to make it stronger. To manifest it when I need it most.

Our interview on The Best Darn Diddly Podcast went on so long that they divided it into two!

You can listen to both parts here.

We had a great time, so we want to share it with you, dear reader.

I’m going to get on the first of three planes to get to a conference in Michigan early tomorrow morning.

I am thinking about my last long travel day, which had me traveling without sleep for over 26 hours.

Those following me on social media know that the Munich airport made me cry, but not why, since I was too exhausted to explain.

I left my hotel at 3 a.m. It was too early eat in the Vienna airport, since things were closed, but I figured I could get something during my 3 hour layover in Munich.

For some reason, I wasn’t able to get the second boarding pass in Vienna, so I headed to my gate to get one as soon as I landed. Getting to the gate took about 45 minutes. For some reason, even though the gate was in my terminal, I had to leave my terminal and go all the way around, going through passport control.

Then I asked about getting a VAT refund for something I bought in Prague. They said that would only take 20 minutes. I followed the directions and found myself outside of security, because that’s where they keep the people with the stamps. I got my stamps and then had to get in the security line. I had my cane, so a guy pulled me out of the main line into a much shorter line. Then that line didn’t move. At all. I counted 43 people get through the regular security line before any of the 6 of us in the shorter line got through. Then I had to go through passport control again.

By the time I returned to my gate, my 3 hours was up. I remembered seeing a cafe by my gate and thought I could grab something while the first class people were boarding.

But the cafe was out of food. Out. of. food. Not a single bag of chips.

I couldn’t sleep on the plane to the States, and the food was awful, so I didn’t eat much. After going through immigration in the Dallas Ft. Worth airport, I found a southern/cajun restaurant, Pappadeaux Seafood Kitchen, by my gate. I was exhausted. I’d been up for about 24 hours, and I didn’t know if my body was awake enough to eat, and I was seriously hurting from the travel b.s., but the restaurant had catfish, which I love. Craving this is one of the few things that marks me as a Southern-raised girl.

So I ordered it.

My waitress, who had already proven herself to be cheerful and conscientious, asked me if I was okay when I was just sort of staring at the wall.

I wasn’t.

And I couldn’t eat, even though the catfish was perfect.

I asked for the bill, but the waitress got the manager, who refused to charge me.

I tipped my wonderful waitress and got on the plane to Sacramento, on which a toddler kicked my seat again and again. (His mom at least kept telling him to stop.)

And I went to bed without dinner, because I just needed to sleep.

Tomorrow, I have a 2 hour layover in Dallas Ft. Worth.

Friends, appeal to the travel gods for me. I need to get that catfish and to eat it this time!!!

On this National Coming Out Day, I think of my great-aunt Arlene and the day I realized she had probably been gay.

She lived up north, so I only met her twice, but when I did, she was smart and funny.

I don’t remember what prompted me thinking about it, but when I told my mom what I was guessing about her sexuality, mom said, “oh, we’ve all thought that for a long time.”

Yet Arlene was the only relative who came to visit who wasn’t asked about her dating/married life.

I don’t know anything–she might have been out, but my Florida family didn’t mention it. It’s more likely she was closeted, at least to them. Her brother, my (grand)daddy, was a conservative military vet, after all.

My mom’s assertion that it was an open secret infuriated me. How could my grandfather–and how could my mother–consistently vote against someone they loved having equal rights?

To all my friends who have come out, thank you for your courage.

To any of my friends who haven’t yet, I’m sure there’s a reason.

And I apologize for my family backburnering your human rights because of their focus on other bigotries and their anti-socialist hysteria.