your back is an investment.

for the past eight or nine years, i've felt like i've been trapped in a 60 year old woman's body.

not that that has really stopped me from doing stupid stuff like breaking bones, hoisting kids up rock walls with broken hands, or thinking that i can do things that i can't.

to be honest, i don't know which pain started first, the lower back pain or the upper back pain. i used to characterise it like this:

my upper back hurt more often, hurt more, but didn't hurt as long.

my lower back hurt not as often, didn't hurt as much, but hurt for ages when it did.

since i was an athlete, i got some tests done. x-rays, bone scans, all the jazz.

bone scan was clean. so was the x-ray. so we moved on.

my back pain got worse. and like a smart person, i ignored it. i knew my limits when it came to stuff outside of swimming. i stopped mowing the lawn, i stopped lifting heavy stuff that i should be able to lift, and i didn't participate in human pyramids.

it wasn't until that i was a freshman in college and swimming at the collegiate level that the pain got unbearably bad.

like, keep me up at night crying having problems walking and breathing bad.

back to x-rays i went. nothing. back to bone scans i went. nothing.

my swim coach told me to get it fixed over the summer, so i went to an orthopaedist like "FIX THIS PLEASE IT'S BEEN A LONG TIME?"

i got an MRI and they didn't tell me anything about it, just that i had a bulging disc in my upper back.

a disc is like a cushion between your vertebrae. a bulge meant that my vertebrae were squeezing it and squishing it and that some of it was sticking out where it wasn't supposed to. like if you squeeze an oreo and some of the frosting comes out of the sides.

that didn't explain my lower back pain, so they gave me a back brace, sent me to physical therapy, gave me six spinal injections that hurt like a bitch, and told me to have a nice life.

the brace made my lower back worse, the spinal injections didn't work and they made me cry, and i still had back pain.

i went to my chiropractor for a while. she attempted to adjust my upper back and loosen it up. her diagnosis was that i had no lower back stability so that my upper back was carrying all the weight.

after eleven weeks of physical therapy and going to my chiropractor, i still failed every lower back stability test that they gave me.

so i went back to school, avoided moving heavy objects and being a part of human pyramids.

that's me avoiding being in human pyramids.

then, this past winter, i started having lower back pain that shot straight down into my leg, down into my foot, and made my leg go numb sometimes.

this was new and alarming.

i just sang NEWWWW AND A BIT ALARMINGGGG in my head from beauty and the beast, by the way.

i went to webmd and quickly learned that i had spinal cancer.

... i do not actually have spinal cancer.

so i looked up some chiropractors that i could help me out. i hadn't had too much success with my old one and her kids had left my swim team for our enemy swim team, so i was bitter.

i ended up calling dr. busch and scheduling an appointment.

at the time, i didn't know that dr. busch was all over the radio and all over TV with his AMAZING AND LIFE CHANGING DRS PROTOCOL TRADE MARK.

so i went in for an appointment and they were like, "did you hear about us through a radio advertisement?" and i was like "lol no you were the first link i found and old people seemed to like it here, so i'll fit right in."

boy, do old people like it there. i am the only person there under the age of seventy-five.

dr. busch is like gilderoy lockhart but smart. he came in, shook my hand, took a bunch of x-rays, told me that i had degenerative disc disease in my lower back and that i had a horrible horrible disc bulge down there that was causing me problems, and he'd go over my VERY OWN SUPER SPECIAL TREATMENT PLAN TRADE MARK. NEVER FEAR, DR. BUSCH TRADEMARK IS HERE.

then he gave me a signed copy of his book and i just about threw up in my mouth.

(i also got a complementary t-shirt. it's actually pretty comfy.)

and then the bill came and it was four thousand dollars.

did i want to spend that much money for an asshole to fix my back pain?

my parents and i decided to go for it, with me paying a thousand of it in installments every month. because i'd had eight years of failed attempts and this was probably actually going to work.

at least that's what it said on TV! and the TV can never lie, right?!

so we paid for it.

it was around this time that dr. busch started grabbing my shoulder affectionately and calling me kiddo.

uh, no. don't do that, bro. you have kids older than me.

according to him, i was the PERFECT candidate for his DRS protocol, the only thing like it in the country, and that i would be a huge success because i was young and vital and all that crap. at this point, now that i'm done with the treatment, i don't even know what the DRS thing stands for.

when i went in for treatment, after they gave me a bunch of hippie pills to take, they had me lay down on a table with a pillow under my upper back because at that point, i couldn't lie down flat. they put me in a harness around my hips which connected to an angsty machine in front of me.

then they put ANOTHER harness over my shoulders and tightened it so much that it was hard to breathe.

the harness around my hips was attached to the angsty machine. they set the angle of my harness running to the machine, and then they pressed a bunch of buttons, stuck a cannula in my nose, shut off the lights, and let me play on my phone for twenty-five minutes while the machine groaned and made angry noises at me.

the DRS machine basically does this: while i'm strapped to the table and pretty much unable to move, it physically hones in on my two problem vertebrae and moves them to where they're supposed to go, making my disc get all big and happy and squishy again and letting it breathe and go back to its original position before my vertebrae got angry and smooshed it.

cool, right?

i did it four days a week for like, four weeks. then three days a week, then two, then once a week, then once every two weeks, and now i'm done.

i'd either nap while i was hooked up, read through @mugglehustle on twitter, or text the man friend. then when i was done i got some electrical stimulation on my back and sat around with a bunch of old ladies who told me that i was too young for this kind of thing.

when i say old, i mean old. miss dorothy and miss grace are both 93. they shuffle in every day, talk about their dead husbands, and how one of them still goes out to karaoke every tuesday with her son.

when i'm 93 i hope that i'm staying out til midnight at karaoke bar. i mean, HOT DAMN.

the treatment wasn't that bad. i eventually started getting adjustments from dr. busch personally and not just getting the DRS treatments with his entirely female staff. so he'd come in and say, "good morning, kiddo!" and grab my shoulder and i spent like, a month trying to find a way to tell him that like, i was twenty-three (at the time) and working two jobs to support myself.

so finally with about a month left of treatment he asked me how i was and i said very pointedly, "well i'm very busy working two jobs to support myself as a young woman with a liberal arts degree" and that seemed to alert him that i wasn't like, twelve.

he still kept calling me kiddo, though.

EUW.

now that i'm all done with the treatment, i have exciting news, and that is that...

MY BACK DOESN'T HURT!

i mean, it does sometimes. it did when i vacuumed today.

BUT MOST OF THE TIME IT DOESN'T HURT!

so... four thousand dollars well spent?

now my dad is treating my back like this insane investment. when i told him about the insane inflatable 5K he was like, "your back is worth $4,000! do not ruin it! do not total it!"

i mean, i have a pretty good idea of what i can and can't do with my body.

and since i did this weird treatment with a creepy dude that gave me a free book that i'm never going to read, i can do a lot more than i used to.

now, if i can stop breaking bones and spraining things and tearing ligaments, maybe i'll be in the body of a twenty-four year old and not a forty year old.

that's the dream.

"do you dream of freedom from your back pain? look no further than the DRS treatment, which is very costly, doesn't accept insurance, and is run by a creepy middle-aged man that dyes his hair and will probably call you kiddo!"

the charlie cox post.

it's always hard to blog on sundays.

sundays are lazy, time gets away from me, nothing exciting happens, i never have any strokes of inspiration, and nobody ever reads my posts on sundays.

i mean, you're reading this. thanks, i really appreciate it.

i went to my grandparents' house today and i asked my dad, as he is my most faithful reader, what i should blog about. he shrugged and it was then i decided it was time for the charlie cox post.

like, i don't even know where to begin with this. "the charlie cox post" has been this vague idea just floating around in my brain. i didn't have any true format of what i wanted for when i blogged about him and his glorious ass. like, was it going to be a buzzfeed thing where i listed stuff about him that was amazing followed by a picture and an inappropriate quote?

that sounded great until i found a buzzfeed post along the lines of 16 times that your thirst for matt murdock was too real.

which i read at work and let me tell you i had to duck underneath my desk because i was so overcome.

IF YOU'RE INTERESTED, HERE IT IS. 

i'm making this post up as i go. here's a picture of charlie cox so that you get a sense of where this is coming from.

i swear to god that smile could cure most illnesses.

so i was first introduced to charlie cox in the movie stardust, WHICH EVERYONE SHOULD SEE BY THE WAY, on an airplane in like, 2008. it didn't have any sound because i was watching it on someone else's screen and i was like, "this looks like a really rad movie" so we rented it.

netflix's synopsis of it is perfect.

"a love-struck lad goes to another realm to capture a fallen star. he can handle a witch, but can he handle a cross dressing pirate?"

the cross dressing pirate is robert deniro, by the way.

it's got witches and kings and queens and really great humour including the best dick joke of all time besides the one in titanic, a freakin' unicorn, and robert deniro as a cross dressing pirate.

like, what more could you want?

seriously, it's in my top five favourite movies, it's on netflix, GET GOING.

FORREAL THO.

(i watch it about once a week, honestly. i watched it this morning.)

when i started watching daredevil, i kind of recognised the main character, but it was difficult for a number of reasons.

1. when he's daredevil, he's wearing a mask over his face and all you can see are his lips. his, sweet, sultry lips.

those lips tho

2. when he's a lawyer, he's wearing sunglasses.
3. in stardust he was 24 during filming and now he's 32 and all grown and super fit and buff and has some real nice beard scruffle.

so he's beating some dudes up from the russian mob and takin' names and then it cuts to the theme and it says STARRING CHARLIE COX and i was like, THAT'S THAT BRITISH GUY FROM STARDUST

and sure enough, there he was in all his british glory.

he's just really hot.

he's also like, adorable?

how does he do both? i am confused?

i've had similar fads with other british actors. my most outstanding was andrew garfield, which spanned like, three years. if i hadn't rediscovered charlie cox, we'd still be going strong.

i watched andrew garfield's ENTIRE filmography. on my whiteboard in my dorm room, i put him as number one on my to-do list. (eheheh.)

i've seen charlie cox in three things. stardust, daredevil, and the first episode of downton abbey.

i do not recall much of that episode, nor him being in it. i know that he kisses a man. i feel like i would remember that and be like, YAAAAS GAAAAY because much of my life is like, YAAAAS GAAAAAY.

he's in two seasons of boardwalk empire. i've seen a few clips, particularly the one where he violently murders this dude in a bathroom, spits on his body and says, "fuckin' piece of shite" in an irish accent and i was like, fanning myself.

now i'm on a quest to watch boardwalk empire.

"really, emily? just because charlie cox is in it?"

hell yeah. i suffered through THREE terrible andrew garfield movies for him, i can watch two seasons of a critically acclaimed HBO show for my new british fav.

i share my love of charlie cox with my friend laura. when we get sad, we send each other pictures of charlie cox. when she had a rough night, i sent her a picture of him looking up into a beautiful godly light holding a latte and i said "charlie cox is thinkin' bout u".

when i found the incredible buzzfeed article, she said "HOLY MOTHER OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN" and we thirsted for a good hour.

there are many things to like about charlie cox.

1. he's hot as shit.
2. he's also adorable as shit.
3. he's a really nice down to earth person in real life? and he like dogs?
4. he takes his acting very seriously. like, he's been acknowledged by the american foundation for the blind and visually impaired on how seriously he took his role as a blind person on daredevil and how well he did it.
5. his smile could probably cure cancer.
6. he laughs like a nerd.
7. HIS ASS IS MAGNIFICENT.

number seven is a proven fact. his co-star, elden henson, who plays his best friend foggy on daredevil, has been quoted in multiple interviews as saying that dat ass does not quit.

he also brought ice cream for the cast and crew on set because he's nice.

like, WHAT A PERFECT HUMAN.

me: oh my god
adam: are you thirsting after charlie cox again
me: yeahhhh
adam: should i leave you alone
me: probably
adam: are you gonna leave me for charlie cox
me: i mean, if he showed up at my house and asked me to marry him that would definitely be a thing.

adam and i talk about having celebrity outs. you know, if ever a famous person came to you like, "i love you let's have sex".

i was like, "i get two, a man and a woman because i'm bisexual" and he was like, "well then i get two" and i was like, "you're straight?" and he was like, "i would do major things to hugh jackman" and i was like, "okey dokey then".

so charlie cox is my current male celebrity out.

laura and i talk a lot about things that we would do to charlie cox if given the opportunity. i'll let you contemplate that.

like, honestly, i just kind of want him to give me cuddles, play with my hair, talk to me in his british accent, read to me in his husky american accent, and then give me kisses on the forehead.

yeah, that sounds about right to me.

i don't know, man. i'm just real thirsty for charlie cox. and i think we'll leave it at that.

and some pictures.

CONGRATULATIONS ON BEING A PERFECT HUMAN SPECIMEN.

sing! sing! sing!

i have enjoyed singing pretty much my whole life.

nobody ever told me that i was good at it. i did band in middle school and high school. i started playing the piano when i was five and i moved on to trumpet and cello. but i still enjoyed singing.

it wasn't until i was in college that i decided that i could be a choir kid. so i joined chorale, the medium kid choir, halfway through my junior year and i enjoyed it immensely.

i auditioned for the alma choir, the big kid choir, and didn't make it in.

even though this was over two years ago, i'm still bitter about it because that group travels around the country and around the world and gets to wear cool tartan vests.

did i mention they travel around the world?

it's evident that i'm still bitter because i STILL have dreams where i've made it into that choir and i wake up upset and full of longing. like the dream i had last night.

like, honestly, i need to get over myself.

when i auditioned for chorale, doc, our choir director, made me sing a scale until my voice cracked. then he sighed and said, "well, you're an alto."

that was something that i was already painfully aware of.

in chorale my senior year, i stood next to my apartment-mate lindsey. we were both first altos, which means that we were the higher of the two alto groups. this suited us just fine but sometimes, sometimes, we had to sing up to a D, and that was difficult, man!

we sang a song called "ride on king jesus" and let me tell you, it got lowwww. like, drop it to the floor low.

it became an inside joke. we'd be sitting in our living room doing homework with emily, our first soprano apartment-mate that was in the big kid choir, and sing, "NO MANNNN CAN A-HIN-DUH MEEEE" as low as we possibly could.

then we'd bitch about not being able to sing disney songs.

frozen came out my senior year and we were consequently obsessed with it, as was usual. (frozen is actually really problematic in a lot of ways but that's a different post.)

me: i just want to sing a disney song? and not like, go into a terrible head voice?
lindsey: I KNOW, LET IT GO IS THE WORST I CAN'T REACH ANYTHING
emily: what are you talking about?
me: says the operatic first soprano with classical voice training.
emily: wanna take a buzzfeed quiz to see what type of food you are?

i was a burrito, by the way. i'm proud of that.

constantly singing in an alto range means that your voice will stay down there. while singing in chorale, i hardly ever had to go higher than a D. it also meant that i got to actually read music, which was fun, because that was something i'd been doing since i was four and i didn't like having to rely on the melody. i loved almost everything we sang, from the circle of life at homecoming to mozart's requiem mass for masterworks.

that's us singing the circle of life. i'm in the front row, can you find me?

choir was also how i met adam, so that's cool.

doc is always talking about choir couples. when we have the alumni concert at homecoming, which i unfortunately did not get to sing in this year, he always asks, "who fell in love on choir tour?!" and there's always a couple that's been married for ten years like, "we fell in love on choir tour!"

adam was standing behind me and he yelled, "what if you fell in love at festival of carols?!"

bless my man friend. bless him.

when adam was in scotland, he and doc were drinking at a pub and adam had to remind him that he was a in choir relationship. but doc forgot because i wasn't in the big kid choir, i was in the medium kid choir.

and such is life.

after i graduated and i sang loch lomond in my cap and gown and cried a little bit, i knew that i wanted to keep singing.

my dad is a singer. he has been singing his whole life. he did choir and show choir. he sang in college. he has a beautiful tenor voice that is slowly working its way down to baritone as he ages. (sorry about the aging thing, dad. but you're like... kind of old now.) he has sung in the church choir since before i was born.

and i thought, well why couldn't i be in church choir?

so i showed up at church and went to our choir director, melody (ISN'T THAT AMAZING?!) and said, "hey, i'm here to sing! i'm an alto."

and she looks at me and she goes, "oh my god NO we have too many altos. you're a soprano."

... okay.

choir practice for my church is on wednesdays at seven. unless i'm coming from work, my dad and i carpool. sometimes my mom accompanies the choir and the three of us all go together. we don't stand, we sit. there are like... twelve of us. total.

and i'm the only one under the age of thirty-five.

like, forreal. my dad is almost 55 and he's one of the younger ones.

there are three sopranos: me, leslie, and karla. we sit in the first pew. of the three of us, karla is the only real soprano. leslie used to be an alto like me, but we needed her to be a soprano so that's what happened.

most of the time we laugh and screech and let karla do most of the work when it gets really high.

have a descant? give it to karla. anything above an F? leslie will drop out and i'll just pray that i don't strain a vocal cord.

we sang a beautiful version of "here i am, lord" and it was hella high. i was practicing at home with my mom and my brother was like, "OH MY GOD CAN YOU STOP SCREECHING" and i was like, "I WILL HAVE YOU KNOW THAT THIS IS LIKE, FIVE NOTES OUT OF MY NORMAL RANGE".

i had to sing it the day after i coached a seven hour swim meet. i drank about eight cups of lemon tea with honey before that song and it was still terrible.

but after singing soprano for nine months, i've felt my range shift. which has been pretty cool.

the problem is, it's not expanding. it's just shifting.

i can't sing low anymore.

if lindsey and i were to get together and sing ride on king jesus, i wouldn't be able to hit the low notes below the staff.

i'm very happy that i can now sing a high F almost comfortably. but i miss my super low G's and my manly alto range.

since switching from alto to soprano and classifying myself as a mezzo soprano with my new range, i've come to know something that i didn't know existed: choir humour. 

it shows up on my tumblr dash occasionally and this is how i know i'm following quality blogs.

how many altos does it take to change a lightbulb?

none, none of them can get that high.

AHAHAHAHA.

how do you know when a soprano is at your door?

she can't find the key and doesn't know where to come in.

AYYOOOOOO

i've also come to notice part erasure, which adam finds to be a rather sensitive subject. when i met him he was a tenor, but since then, he has become a baritone and sometimes a bass. honestly, he just kind of moves wherever doc wants him.

when he was a tenor, i used to tell people that he spoke like morgan freeman but sang like mariah carey. adam has a very deep speaking voice.

most of the time adam's a baritone. most of the time i'm a soprano but i'm really a mezzo soprano.

according to tumblr logic, there are four genders: soprano, alto, tenor and bass.

someone commented: BARITONE ERASURE IS A VERY SERIOUS PROBLEM AND NEEDS TO BE ADDRESSED THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

there's a whole thing about which choir parts go best with each other, like altos dating basses and basses staring at altos asses.

this is true. you can feel the basses standing behind you staring at your ass. you can feel it. and they talk about it. like, i know which asses were subject to the most scrutiny during four hour festival of carols rehearsals. because they would talk about it.

"ayyyy did you see the way that so-and-so's ass was moving when they did their step and clap during the virgin mary had a baby boy? DAMN GIRL."

i got my pay back when the men had a song and they stood in front of us. i took a picture of a bunch of the basses butts and put it on instagram and labelled it "CHOIR BOY BUTTS HEART HEART HEART".

i brought up this pairing with adam and i said, "what does that make us? the baritone and the mezzo?"

"invisible," he said sadly. "it makes us invisible."

my cousin matt, a true choir nerd and band geek, told me that it made us "UNSTOPPABLE AND AWESOME."

so here we are. the invisible unstoppable choir couple.

it was definitely a transition going from a fifty person semi-professional choir to a twelve person volunteer church choir. when we sang an easter song in latin, i got really excited and yelled "THIS IS JUST LIKE COLLEGE!" and then i consequently had to help everyone pronounce the latin.

choir members: how do you know this?
me: when you practice mozart's requiem for four months you kinda learn it.

i'm so glad i'm in church choir.

i wish that i had joined choir my freshman year and started in glee club. then i would've gone to chorale, and then by my junior year i would've been in alma choir. i could've spent two years doing that. (and i would've gotten my complementary alma choir fleece, along with the chance to travel around the country and around the world.)

but alas, i didn't get that chance.

but i did get a chance to sing. to work on my vocal technique. to expand my range.

i got a chance to sing and it was awesome, and i'm still getting that chance and i'm blessed. i love singing and whether or not i'm good at it isn't the point.

the point is that it's fun.

SING, YOU GLORIOUS CREATURE. SING.

distance isn't cute.

today's post is probably going to be really angst-ridden, and i'm just going to allow that to happen because it's just kind of been an angsty day.

i fell asleep trying to accomplish my homework, so it didn't get done, which is unfortunate. i also went to the orthopaedist and found out that i likely tore my meniscus in my right knee, so that's two for two on that front.

but that's not the point.

this post is about long distance relationships and how they aren't romantic or sweet or good plot devices.

when my man friend, adam, and i started dating in december of 2013, we knew realistically that i would be moving back to indiana in late april and that he still had two years left of school in michigan. and when he wasn't at school, he would be at home.

when he's at alma, he's three hours away.

when he's at home, he's three hours away.

we started officially dating at eleven o'clock at night on my bunk bed while i drank half a bottle of wine to deal with my emotions and a long choir rehearsal. when he went back to his room, i went to brush my teeth and i could not stop smiling because we were dating and i was so happy.

then i looked at myself in the mirror and said out loud, "i'm graduating. what the fuck am i doing?"

and i didn't worry about it because i was happy now and we would cross that bridge when we got to it.

we have certainly gotten to that bridge.

adam and i have been dating for a year and six months and we have spent a year and two of those months in a long distance relationship.

three hours is not that far. but adam doesn't have a car, which means that i have to do all of the driving. even with working two part time jobs, i can't always afford the gas. my van doesn't get the greatest gas mileage and going to alma and back or detroit and back is a full tank.

this allows me to see adam once a month if it works in our schedules while he's at school.

but as of late, it's been closer to every two months, and often, all we get is a weekend.

some people think that this is romantic and cute. they say, "oh, it must be so great when you get to see him!"

yeah, it's excellent when i get to see him after two months. but three days later i'm saying goodbye and it's like the weekend didn't even happen. and it sucks.

a lot of people tell me that it's a good thing that we live in the era of technology. we can skype and talk on the phone and text.

all of that is great. adam and i talk on the phone about once a week. we skype about once a month. we text every single day.

but that does not replace a person.

there are things called love languages: how we like to give and receive love. there are five of them. my primary is physical touch, followed closely by quality time.

as i often tell people, i like to spend quality time touching people.

for my emotional wellbeing and to feel loved, i need to be cuddled. i need people to hold my hand. hannah and i cuddle together when we watch movies and we hold hands when we go shopping. i need lots of hugs from family members.

i also give love this way, which is sometimes problematic because some people don't like to be touched. i'm a hugger. i want to hug everyone and not everyone likes to be hugged. i hug my parents constantly. i come up behind my mom and scratch her back. i pat people on the back. i touch people to show affection.

i need to touch people to show that i love them and to know that they love me.

this is very difficult when the person that you're in a long term relationship with is three hours away and you can't see them for two months.

a week after i graduated and moved back to indiana, adam went to scotland to tour with the choir. something him about being in scotland absolutely killed me. i think it was the idea that i couldn't drop whatever i was doing and irresponsibly go see him. we were able to talk on the phone through the messenger app (and because of that i don't badmouth it) and we were able to send each other pictures of what we were up to. i wrote a really angsty poem called "how to love someone far away". i read it to him over the phone.

i missed him so much that i took a day off of work to drive to detroit and pick him up from the airport. when he came through customs i dropped what i was holding and cried. in front of the whole choir.

most people thought it was cute. it was mostly embarrassing.

all of this stuff can be kind of sweet. the whole running into each other's arms when you haven't seen each other in so long. lying awake at night dreaming about them cuddling with you.

but there's other stuff that's not as sweet.

there's the ruined plans where you had planned a weekend to see each other and it falls through.

there's everyone around you that has their significant other with them and available.

when i have panic attacks that i can't get through myself, i have to call adam and pray that he's available to talk me down. sometimes he can't help over the phone.

there are the late night conversations that go like this.

me: i miss you.
adam: i miss you too.
me: only a few more weeks.
adam: why can't it be now?
me: because that's not how this works.
adam: FUCK.

when you are actually are together, you try to cram in everything you want to do in a short period of time. adam was here for five days for my birthday and i hadn't seen him in two months. i still had to go to work and class. i had other obligations that i needed to attend to. we did a lot of running around and doing other things than just being with each other.

when we just want to lay around and not do anything but just be together, it's not us being lazy. it's us finally being able to be together and feel each other and just be with each other.

i get bitter about people that live with their significant others or live close to them. at people who see them every day or even just every weekend. i try not to let it happen, but it does. it happens a lot.

the question i get asked the most is, "how do you do it? i could never do it."

you do it because there's no other choice. because you love a person that lives far away and you're not going to let distance stop you.

in my initial plans, i was going to be going to grad school in england starting this fall. adam and i were talking on the phone the other night and he told me that if i left for england this fall, that probably would've been it, we would've been through. he told me that he can deal with having me be in a different state and the seeing me every two months.

he didn't think he could handle me being halfway around the world.

one of my friends met her boyfriend in scotland. she finished up her year at alma while her boyfriend lived in edinburgh. after she graduated, she moved to edinburgh with him.

that is comitment. maybe adam and i could've done that, maybe we couldn't have. i don't know.

after i get my master's degree, i'm moving out of the country for a while. asking him to move out of the country with me is a lot to ask of someone. he told me that we'll cross that bridge when we get to it.

we've crossed the first bridge. maybe we can cross the second one without falling in the water.

i believe in us. i do. we make it work because we have to if we want to be together, and we do. we want to be together because we love each other.

it sucks. but we do it.

long distance relationships aren't cute. they are late nights spent crying. they are phone conversations when you never want to hang up. they're long drives and bad poetry and a deep sadness that never really goes away.

it sucks. but we do it.

what's your damage, superhero?

"hey, jake from state farm? what's my insurance coverage for... uh... superhero collateral damage?"

i can't be the only one who thinks about this.


i am a huge marvel fan. i saw the avengers five times in theatres. the amazing spiderman? four times. (that one is my favourite.) i finally saw the incredible hulk this year. both captain americas. all three iron mans. iron men? x-men, even though that's like... a different universe and the timeline is all screwed up.

of course, as you read in my last post, i'm really into daredevil.

i really like superheroes and superhero movies.

but there are sooo many things that i think about when i watch superhero movies.

the two most important things are these:

1. nobody knows how to take care of injuries?! I'M LOOKING AT YOU, MAGNETO.
2. WHAT ABOUT ALL THE DAMAGE?

the first marvel movie that i really thought about this, the damage part, was iron man. obadiah in his big-ass suit picks up an entire car and is prepared to throw it with a woman and children inside. as he does so, he says, "collateral damage, tony!"

iron man saves them, which is cool, but a hell of a lot of cars get smashed up and a bus gets flipped over.

then stark industries blows up.

now, there's the amazing spiderman. not much happens for a while, but then there's cars? hanging off a bridge? held on my spiderman's web shooting stuff? not to mention the cars that the lizard throws around.

"hey, this is emily and i was wondering exactly how i'm going to get my car down from hanging off this bridge. i didn't put it there. like... if i let it fall in the river do i get a new one?" -- me to my insurance agent.

when i got in my car accident last year, i hit a guard rail and cracked my bumper pretty badly. i also lost a tire. i asked my dad if i needed to make an insurance claim and he said no, i don't have collision insurance because my van is too old and past the point of needing outside repairs.

i don't know much about insurance, but i know that i don't have collision insurance.

so what on earth would happen if a giant mutant lizard threw my van off a bridge? who's gonna pay for that?

and that's just like, me personally. what about intense damage like at the end of the movie?

oscorp tower is a big, tall, expensive building.

spiderman and dr. connors COMPLETELY WRECK IT AND ALL THE BUILDINGS AROUND IT.

not even thinking about the billions of dollars that's going to take to fix, there were people in there.

i can't be the only person who thinks about this.

what about the avengers? good LORD the damage that's done in those movies is absolutely ludicrous, starting right at the beginning where an entire military base is LEVELLED.

then, at the end, with the attack on new york? billions of dollars of damage. clint crashes a small helicarrier into a bank. that giant sea slug fish thing? that thing probably flattens at least fifty buildings.

don't even get me started on the chitari raining from the sky and blowing shit up.

and the hulk? get that under control, bruce.

in age of ultron he wrecks a few buildings in brazil, if i remember correctly. he's also notorious for "breaking harlem".

daredevil actually uses the MCU (marvel comics universe) to its advantage as it discusses hell's kitchen, where matt murdock lives. it was essentially flattened in the battle of new york in the avengers and it's on the rebound after the catastrophic damage.

nice move, marvel.

last week, adam and i watched captain america: the winter soldier . adam hadn't seen it yet.

its most impressive feature is all of the amazing car scenes.

what is it with superheroes flinging cars around?

in winter soldier, nobody's flinging cars around, but people are blowing them up and running into them. nick fury, in his pimped out yukon (there is so much chevy product placement in that movie) bulldozes over at least a dozen cars. there's a myriad of car accidents that is SURE to leave about fifty people dead in that scene alone.

then there's the whole highway montage with the winter soldier. cars are flung into buses, cars get blown up, cars fly off bridges.

these aren't just cars, people. they aren't just on the road minding their own business.

there are PEOPLE in these cars. people that are now dead.

adam and i snuggled and began a little game of watching all of the damage and saying, "whoomp, he dead" every time damage was done that would've killed someone.

it eventually got to the point where it way too much and we had to stop.

you could turn that into a drinking game if you want to end up in the hospital with alcohol poisoning.

"drink every time a person you never see driving a vehicle dies in captain america! beware of hangover."

on top of the probably hundreds of people that died in that movie, what about the three helicarriers exploding into each other? they also like... destroyed SHIELD, which was one of the most expensive buildings in the world.

superheroes gotta tone it down, man.

the one movie that i've seen this addressed is in the disney movie the incredibles.

yes, the incredibles. the most underrated disney movie of all time, besides the hunchback of notre dame.

at the beginning of the incredibles, bob and helen (coincidentally, those are my grandparents on my dad's side) as mr. incredible and elastigirl are off saving the day and doing their thing. but superheroes are driven into hiding and anonymity as taxpayers begin to complain about raising taxes for all the shit that superheroes cause.

"our taxes went up because mr. incredible threw some cars and levelled a building. i won't stand for it anymore!"

that was some real shit right there. unhappy taxpayers.

i mean, i don't ever think i'll find myself in my van while it hangs off a bridge. i don't think a giant mutant lizard will toss it off a bridge and spiderman will save it and attach it to the bridge and i'll just be like, chillin' there. i doubt that will happen.

but what if we did live in a world with superheroes and the avengers and captain america accidentally killing people to escape from the winter soldier? what if bruce banner actually did level buildings when he got angry? what if you happened to be cashing your pay cheque when hawkeye just freakin' rammed a helicarrier into your bank?

we might want to live in a world with superheroes, but i don't know man, it seems risky.

and i don't want adam to get jealous that i'm talking to jake from state farm trying to figure out what to do when iron man blows up my van.

"hey, jake from state farm? yeah. i have another claim... no this time it was the hulk. my van? oh, it's stuck in the side of a building."

DAREDEVIL.

i have this weird habit of enjoying things over and over and over again.

this drives my man friend nuts. before we were dating and we were friends, i would listen to "pompeii" by bastille constantly. he'd be in my room and i'd have it on repeat.

we can't listen to that song anymore without him shouting "OH MY GOD NO." and walking out of the room.

my brother is the same way.

"ARE YOU LISTENING TO THE SAME SONG ON REPEAT IN YOUR ROOM? TURN THAT DOWN."

once i find a song, i turn it into a one song playlist so every twenty minutes i get thirty seconds of commercials and then it goes back to just that one song. on my spotify i have like... 30 playlists that are like that.

when i'm done with the song, i'll move on.

i now realise that i do this with television shows.

NEEEETFLIXXXX

(you know, it was just recently that i realised that netflix stood for internet flicks. and then i was like, OMG I AM SO DUMB WOW.)

i bummed my netflix off the elusive "sam sucks cock" for three years, and then i finally got my own.

and since i had more time after graduation, i was introduced to... binge watching.

i devoured orange is the new black. when it was over, i didn't know what to do.

i devoured house of cards. when it was over, i didn't know what to do.

taking me a lot longer than those show was grey's anatomy.

at first it was a guilty pleasure show, and it still is. but i genuinely like it. netflix had ten whole seasons. i didn't always feel the need to watch the episodes in order because as long as i could figure out who was having sex with who, i could follow along just fine.

then i realised what a great show it was and i watched ALL TEN SEASONS IN TWO MONTHS WHILE WORKING TWO JOBS.

two things that i particularly love about grey's anatomy.

1. it's not a bunch of boring white people.
2. almost everyone is gay and it's treated like a completely normal thing.

season eleven was just posted on monday. i've actually been watching that instead of the third season of orange is the new black.

blasphemy, i know. but this season of orange is just... well it's just not that great. at least in my opinion.

of the netflix originals, house of cards and orange is the new black have definitely been my favourites. i need to try peaky blinders and sense8. we'll see how that goes.

but when i saw "daredevil" as a netflix original in my banner when i logged in in mid april, i was a little concerned.

first off, i didn't originally notice that i was a netflix original. the banner for it honestly looked stupid, like some dumb agents of shield show.

(sorry if you like agents of shield. as an avid marvel fan, i tried it and hated it.)

i knew that the 2003 (or was it 2004?) movie was absolutely terrible and so i didn't want to click on it and try it. it looked stupid.

it came out on a friday. i had time after work to start it and see. but it just really looked dumb.

then on saturday everyone was like, OMG YOU HAVE TO WATCH DAREDEVIL.

so on sunday, after couch shopping with hannah, i clicked on it.

i saw it was a netflix original and got more excited. 

i was immediately hooked.

there were a few reasons for this.

1. it starred charlie cox, who is currently my favourite british actor.
2. it was DARK AND VIOLENT. (i like that stuff.)
3. the script was like, AMAAAAZING for television.
4. marvel? anyone?

i devoured three episodes that sunday night. that doesn't seem like a lot, but each episode is an hour, so it was a decent amount of time.

all day at work on monday i sat there thinking, "i have to get home and watch daredevil. oh my god. i have to get home. i need more. i MUST. WATCH. MORE. DAREDEVIL."

that monday i only worked at the ballet in the morning. as soon as i got off work, i snarfed some lunch, and set to binge watching.

six hours and six episodes later, i could not see straight.

that is not a pun about matt murdock not being able to see. 

there were only thirteen episodes! what was i going to do?! i had to keep watching in large bursts!

because of work and other obligations, it took me until friday to finish it. i agonised over it. when i finally finished it, i felt like a piece of me had died.

i've now watched all thirteen episodes about... seven times through.

"there are other things to watch on netflix!"

yep, i know.

"shouldn't you watch orange is the new black?"

probably.

"what about movies?"

... but DAREDEVIL.

i have been watching it for over two months now. netflix has tried to get me to watch other things. it has given me other suggestions. it has hidden it from the "continue watching for emily" panel so that i have to search for it.

but i will not be deterred.

in the past two months, i think there have only been about four or five days where i have not watched daredevil. it doesn't have to be a whole episode, just a piece of it. i watch it on my phone when i work out.

i just watch it ALL THE TIME.

i talked about it so much that my man friend refused to watch it. he did watch the first episode with me on my birthday, but only because it was my birthday and i crawled on top of him and cried a little bit. i secretly hope that he's watching the rest of it at home and just not telling me because he doesn't want to admit it.

at work at the nat i'd ask people if they'd seen it. my supervisor is on her second run through and i talk to her about it every chance i get.

i never shut up about it. i never stop watching it.

I CANNOT GET ENOUGH OF IT.

like, if you have netflix and you haven't watched it? you totally should. because it's a hot badass  blind guy wearing sexy pants beating people up. there's lots of explosions and gunfire and people getting their heads bashed in. and lots of funny stuff too.

like... it's really good. if you watch it, let me know and we can talk about it.

i listen to spotify radio in the shower, and there's an ad for a playlist about people that are TV show obsessed. and it's this peppy lady that's like, "are you obsessed with a TV show? like, take a sick day to finish the next season obsessed?"

yep. that's me.

right now i'm really focused on finishing the eleventh season of grey's anatomy. but i will watch at least one episode of daredevil a day (or a ten minute clip) while i do so.

season two has been determined and it's going to have the punisher in it, if you didn't think it could get more badass than matt murdock beating people to a pulp with his bare hands.

i don't know, man. i haven't done this blog justice. i'll probably talk about it more when i blog about how beautiful charlie cox is.

and his ass. his ass will definitely be a part of that post.

i just really love daredevil, okay?

go watch it. for me. and if not for me, than for charlie cox because he is so damn beautiful.

can i see that axe wound?

today's post is not safe for work, so if you're at work or around children or with your grandma that's stuck in the past like mine is, you should probably read this later.

i had two options to blog about today and i'll probably blog about them both before my june GO! challenge is over.

they both have to do with masculinity.

but today's post is:

VAGINA NAMES VS. PENIS NAMES AND WHY THEY MAKE ME ANGRY.

i was first introduced to the idea of genital slang through an english class, not a women's studies class. we were encouraged to look up names for penises and vaginas, you know, in case you don't call your genitalia by that name.

i call my vagina a vagina. sometimes i call it a vag. i have a shirt that says GOT VAG? and i wear it when i'm angry at old white men in power or when i'm feeling particularly gay.

my man friend, however, has many names for his penis, the most common being dick. sometimes he calls it a cock, sometimes the family jewels, sometimes his package.

i generally just call it his dick because dick is fun word and it would upset my mother.

not that i want to purposely upset my mother.

anyway.

in this english class we were encouraged to look up words for penis and vagina and to compare them.

i just googled "names for penis" and found an article called "what posh name does your penis deserve?"

does your penis really deserve anything?

so without further ado.

OTHER NAMES FOR PENIS.

divine rod
electric eel
hammer
gear shift
joystick
knight
love muscle
love shaft
magic wand
man's best friend
mast
pork sword (this one just reminds me of juno.)
purple-headed warrior
rod of destiny
staff
the pleasure pump
the titanic
zeus

let's take a few things away from this.

most of these names are generally positive. like, i'd be pretty excited if a slang term for my genitalia was one of the most powerful greek gods in ancient mythology. rod of destiny? sign me up. the titanic? that was a BIG boat. hammer? good for nailing, am i right? a knight! to honour his king and save the fair lady! mast! the tallest and sturdiest part of a ship that sticks out as a phallic symbol! purple-headed warrior! MY DICK IS A WARRIOR.

don't get me wrong, there are some weird names for penis that aren't exactly what i would call positive and uplifting. but they're not like... gross or anything.

but let's move on to the vagina, which is what i have between my legs.

OTHER NAMES FOR VAGINA

axe wound (we're getting off to a bad start.)
beef curtain
fur pie
hairy burger
soggy box
fish taco
bearded clam
meat flap
prison purse
piss flaps
lunchmeat
clown hole
open wound

i think we get the point.

in this list that i found (this is about half of it) i found only a handful of positive and uplifting names for vagina.

they are: tunnel of love, muffin, and the promised land.

everything else is just kind of... well it's gross.

axe wound? you're going to call my vagina an axe wound? like, you got the rod of destiny, leading you forth to victory, and i have an axe wound between my legs? what the hell is that?

soggy box. first off, my vagina is not a BOX, and it's not soggy.

when vaginas get excited, they become wet. wanna know why? natural lubrication.

your dick doesn't have that, homie. you gotta lube that shit yourself.

lunchmeat? beef curtain? fish taco? i can appreciate the food metaphor in terms of like, eating people out but i wouldn't eat something called a beef curtain. and i'm not just saying that because i'm a vegetarian. and i'm certainly not about to eat a hairy burger.

muffin is better if we keep going with food. i can eat a muffin. but... why is my vagina a muffin? what type of muffin is it? bran muffins are kind of gross. sorry if you like them.

tunnel of love is nice. i can't really find a flaw with that except it's a little heteronormative.

but the promised land, that i have a problem with, even though it's a lot more positive than axe wound.

the promised land is something that has been promised to you and that you journey to.

so basically, the vagina is this magical place and men are like, "i have been promised that i will get to this magical place called the vagina. when i reach it, i will stick my dick in it and it will be my land."

obviously not every man is going to think that, and certainly not consciously. but the idea that men are entitled to women and women's bodies is not a new idea and something that has been happening, quite literally, for a millenium. men kill women that reject them. men kill women that won't sleep with them. they do this all around the world, and they do it here. in america.

so you can see what i find the term "the promised land" a little problematic.

ever since i saw these names two or three years ago, it's something i think about from time to time.

like, why does your penis get to be this big staff that's going to deliver some act of god (i literally found the name scepter of god as a word for penis) and my vagina is a freakin' axe wound or a hairy burger?

i just don't really think that's fair.

i brought this up with my man friend and he didn't take it really seriously.

"what, you don't like your vagina being called a bearded clam?" he asked me jokingly.

no, i really don't. my vagina is not a weird slimy sea creature that has a beard. my vagina is a sexual and reproductive organ that's way stronger than a penis.

betty white may have said it first, she may not have, but she's certainly attributed to the quote: "why do we say grow some balls? balls are weak. vaginas take a pounding."

one time i acidentally hit adam in the dick, not hard i might add, and he went down like a rock.

my vagina, if everything goes to plan, will literally rip in half as i push a seven pound baby out of it.

i know this entire post sounds like man hating and i'm just being a feminist bitch and blah blah blah, but as someone that is indeed a feminist bitch and has a degree in looking at words, objects, and stories and making theories about them, i can tell you with a fair amount of certaintly that slang names for penis are generally positive and slang names for vagina are generally negative.

i think we can guess why: the elusive patriarchy. that's a different post.

i don't get too mad about this often because nobody has tried to call my vagina a weird, derogatory name, and none of the men that i know call their penises high and mighty names like zeus.

but i still think about it and puzzle and come to the conclusion that these horrible names for vagina are often spoken by men.

i don't hate men. but i really hate the patriarchy, and men, particularly white men, are a part of it and contribute to it.

it's also against FCC rules to say vagina on television but not penis, if you think that everything i'm saying is bullshit.

"but they say vagina on grey's anatomy, emily!"

yes, they do. and you bet your ass that shonda rhimes got in trouble for it and that's why she kept doing it.

in conclusion, this has been a feminist post with emily about the different slang terms for penis and vagina. i hope you have been enlightened. any comments, positive or negative, may be left in the comment section. comments that have the word "feminazi" will be deleted immediately because comparing an equality movement to the genocide of over 6 milion people is disgusting and you should think about that before using that word again.

enjoy your day!