Cum On FU the Noize

It has been an adjustment having the kids home now that online college is standard for all the cool cats and kittens. It was wonderful having them home last Christmas, but also wonderful to see them head back to school in January. Whooda guessed that they would be HOME INDEFINITELY just TEN WEEKS LATER?

Now that we have had several weeks to adjust, we Fus have settled into Quarantine Rhythm. It’s similar to New Baby Rhythm of long ago: Eat, Sleep, Poop. Except Quarantine Rhythm is markedly less hectic. Thank you, Jesus.

Interestingly, while the streets and shops outside are weirdly hushed, the noise level INSIDE our home has climbed. Recently, Albert started working from home occasionally since most dental procedures are prohibited by the American Dental Association, so we are also treated to loud conference calls.

Albert is a generally quiet dude. He’s pretty pensive and thinks a lot. When he does decide to speak, one of his favorite hobbies is relaying essential and important information while walking away from me or facing the opposite direction so that I can only understand approximately one third of his words.

I suspect that all of his coworkers have heavy earwax buildup or enjoyed an Essential Business AC/DC Concert the night before, because Albert is a VERY LOUD conference caller.

I find myself getting up very early in the morning or going for long walks to find my quiet. On one of my walks this week I listened to an Invisibilia podcast called “The Last Sound.” This episode featured a fellow named Bernie who is the dude who invented the THX sound check that you hear before every Star Wars movie.

In the podcast, you can hear what it sounds like when wolves whisper around 8:00. Wolves whispering!

The sounds of a Kenyan watering hole rise up from creatures that are slurping and chirping and croaking around 10:30. All these critters making all different kinds of sounds at the same time! It sounds kind of lovely. So here’s the weird thing. 

There are four Fus living in this house right now, and if all FOUR of us are talking and singing and gaming and farting, our house becomes NOISY and DISSONANT. Extra credit if you can match the sound to the Fu. (Hint: there was a fart heard through the ceiling.)

Besides the THX sound check, Bernie developed the Acoustic Niche Hypothesis. It states that creatures sharing an ecosystem evolve to make sounds in different rhythms and pitches so they don’t get in each others’ way. Animals find sound niches so they can communicate without interruption because this conserves energy. Animals figured out how to work together.

The Converse Acoustic Niche Hypothesis states the opposite: constant uncoordinated noise and interruption causes exhaustion, aggravation, and escalated drinking. I just made that up, but I am six thousand and fifty-five percent certain that it is true.

The podcast also introduced to me the Portuguese term “Saudade,” which describes an edgy feeling of nostalgia. Saudade was discussed in the context of all the noises of daily life that we might be missing now that we are sheltering at home: busy streets, traffic, malls, subways.

I don’t miss any of that. I kind of love silence. Actually, I get pretty irritated when my silence is disturbed if I’m not expecting it. Even though we’ve all been hanging out at home for a month, I still find the extra noise jarring.

With no end in sight to Shelter-at-Home orders, I’ve been challenging myself to flip my irritation into gratitude.

Consider the alternative. When Audrey is RAGING to me about her f*cked up online classes, I dredge up a load of gratitude. 1) She trusts me enough to express her feelings to me. 2) I have an opportunity to be a sounding board, allowing her to process her feelings. 3) *I* am not the one who has to take that garbage class with that dump truck professor. 4) I have a chilled bottle of white wine in my fridge that will not stain the 5) Invisalign trays that I started using JUST THREE DAYS before my orthodontist’s office shut down in mid-March.

I began using this Consider the Alternative technique with Albert many years ago. Not only do this man’s farts reverberate through architectural structures, but he is a champion snorer. He snores so loudly that he frequently wakes HIMSELF up. My sister and daughter will attest that I am not winning any Miss Congeniality awards if you wake me up. So how are we even still married?

Consider the alternatives. I could sleep in a different room. I do not love decorating and am not interested in designing a new bedroom for myself. Besides, who would keep my toes warm?

Albert could stop snoring. That’s not something I would want.

My solution? I bought myself a box of 50 deluxe earplugs and keep at least a half dozen on my nightstand. I’m a pretty talented sleeper, and it works out fine. In Acoustic Niche Hypothesis, creatures sharing an ecosystem evolve so they don’t get in each others’ way. In the A-Fu-stic Niche Hypothesis, *I* just stay out of the way. Audrey gets to rage. Chris gets to seethe with the cynicism of youth. Albert gets to snore and fart. We Fus figured out how to work together! Like animals.

I hope all is well in your home. Thank you for reading!

Would Fu Rather...

You guys are an interesting bunch. And that statement comes with the highest compliments! I have known some of you for decades, and yet you are still full of delightful surprises! With shelter-at-home orders in place for the past four weeks and with no end in sight, I’m finding myself very grateful. My family and my two nice, little dogs are pretty cool to hang around with most of the time. We are all healthy and are truly minimally disrupted by this global pandemic. And I have wacky friends. What more could a girl want??

Chris used to love a game called “Would You Rather” when he was a kid. It was all the rage with eight- and nine-year old boys because it allowed them to be a little bit naughty in the name of creativity, AND it was usually pretty disgusting. As far as little boy games, this wasn’t terrible IMO. It involved conversation and thought mixed in with farts and poop. Balance is key honestly. Chris’s go-to question was: Would You Rather be naked in front of your whole class or go poop in front of one person?

A few weeks ago, I posed some Would You Rather COVID19 Edition questions to you. My goodness, I learned a lot about my friends!

Would You Rather get touched all over your face after I just picked up dog poop OR I just got back from the grocery store?

Poo Hands won almost unanimously. One family chose to risk a grocery store infection after much deliberation, but flipped their votes after I told them that someone had handled my cilantro. And one friend wasn’t worried at all about being exposed to the virus. He’s very healthy and eager to begin building immunity and protecting fellow humans. Brave and noble. 

Would You Rather eat a pizza with one booger OR fourteen giant larvae like Bear Grylls ate?

Booger Pizza for the uncontested win. Just about anything tastes good when it’s cooked on a pizza. I don’t know why people have a problem with pineapple on pizza. It’s like having a problem with peanut butter on a burger. Don’t like that? Perhaps it’s YOU that is the problem. Just think about it.

Would You Rather wear a face mask made out of your mom’s old bra OR your dad’s old underpants?

Most of you picked the old bra, feeling nostalgic and comforted in mom’s bosom, I guess. Only one person opted for dad’s old underpants. This young friend is a boy in the Under 10 Category, so this makes perfect sense. When my boys were this age, they would say and do things that made me worry that they would grow up to be robbers or Pee Wee Hermans. Albert would pat my head and tell me that they were fine. Boys are strange, strange creatures.

Would You Rather get sneezed on by a tiger with the sniffles from the Bronx Zoo OR get pooped on by an elephant with diarrhea from the Oregon Zoo?

A tiger from the Bronx Zoo tested positive for COVID19, so I was surprised that about 75% of voters would take a chance with this! One friend did some thoughtful research before answering and informed me that animal-to-human transmission occurs only when a human eats the infected animal. Huh. Perhaps this was a sillier question than I thought.

Would You Rather be dropped off in Central Park without a face mask OR in the Hoth Ice Wastes without a tauntaun?

This is an extremely dorky question with a Star Wars reference. You’d have to be very resourceful to survive in either circumstance. Your choice probably depended on whether you prefer warm or cold weather, urban or rural environments. You know, the choice is personal and I respect yours.

That said, most of you chose Central Park. Only very dedicated and well-informed Star Wars fans felt confident enough to brave the Hoth Ice Wastes.

Would You Rather be quarantined with criminal Joe Exotic and his arch nemesis Carole Baskin OR little asshole Caillou and his sister Rosie?

Some people have it tough at home with their families right now. Joe Exotic and Carole Baskin would be at each others’ throats constantly. But Caillou is such a whiney little jerk and all Rosie wants to do is play with him. Here’s what I learned about my friends after asking this question: YOU GUYS ARE MUCH BETTER PEOPLE THAN I AM.

Not only would most of you NOT MURDER Caillou, but you would love to play with him or you think he’s cute or you’re not driven to the brinks of madness by his constant whimpering and complaining. I DO NOT DESERVE YOU, FRIENDS. That awful brat would not be in my house for ten minutes before Child Protective Services would need to intervene.

Just a couple of you would be hanging out with Joe, Carole, and me. One of my friends didn’t even choose Carole because he hates that shitty little Caillou that much; he believes that he can get Carole to confess to murdering her husband.

I hope you are all staying well and hanging in there with these stay-at-home orders. Thank you for reading!

Mask Your Ass!

It feels super weird to wear a face mask in public, but I’m totally game since it helps stop the spread of Stupid COVID19. I am so sick of that POS virus. By now we’ve all heard the CDC recommendations and that masks prevent the droplets from reaching other people. Blah. Blah. Blah.

My dear friend sent me an article last week with the information that we’re really interested to hear. “Can Farts Spread Disease?” Totally scientific, I swear. I read the article and am prepared to present! Ready for Journal Club, my friends?

An operating room nurse was concerned that her farts might be contaminating the sterile surgery field. All that effort that goes into scrubbing under fingernails and carefully placing surgical drapes and then **POOT!** It’s all gone to shit.

She was so concerned that she posed the question to an Australian physician and author, Dr. Karl Kruszelnicki.

This subject and name reminds me of a guy in my pharmacy school class with kind of a crazy name like that. We called him JJ. He was big and silly and he regularly let a loud one rip right in the middle of a lecture. So juvenile, I know. But OMG it was so funny! This is how we used to Zoom Bomb, Kids!!

I wonder how I would feel if I worked really hard to prepare a lecture and some kid cut a big cheese right in the middle of one of my sentences. Would I be mad? I don’t know. I have a feeling I might get the giggles so hard that I wouldn’t be able to finish my presentation.

After the nurse asked Dr. Karl about whether farts will contaminate a sterile field, he got right to work! He contacted one of his microbiologist buddies who conducted an experiment by asking one of his buddies to cut a muffin into two Petri dishes from a distance of about 2 inches. One time his buddy had his pants on, and one time his buddy did not.

How does one prepare to fart two times? Did the farter do this in one hour? One day? Did the farter perhaps carry Petri dishes around, prepared to whip them out whenever a gas amassed?

Or was this a very talented farter who was able to split the fart? Kind of like Butt Kegels. Is that a thing? Now you’re going to try it, aren’t you? I know I am.

Were the science friends together when the toot samples were gathered? I just don’t know if I could start my motorcycle with someone watching. Performance pressure, you know?

And if the friends were together, WHO HELD THE PETRI DISH? It was amply complicated to hold that pregnancy testing stick in the right place while aiming my pee, and that had a nice, pink handle. A standard Petri dish is about two-and-a-half inches in diameter and about a half in thick. AND ROUND. I can’t imagine trying to hold that sucker two inches from my butthole AND ALSO coax a bottom burp.

Would you hold that Petri dish for me, my friends? In the name of science? I don’t know if I could do that for you. I would probably laugh so hard that you would have to aim your stinker at a moving target.

And this was not the only experiment that was cited. Earlier this year, an officer for the Chinese Center for Disease Control announced that pants should be an effective barrier against farts that might carry COVID19.

IS COVID19 IN FARTS?? This is next level SBD!! I don’t think so, since Dr. Karl found that most of the bacteria in his experiments were not harmful.

In the end, Dr. Karl deduced that pants do indeed provide an effective barrier to farts. So along with wearing masks in public, don’t forget to cover that trouser cough.

Thank you for reading, my friends! I hope you are all staying safe and well. Wash your hands and don’t forget to wear pants!

Here's to New Beginnings

What does Easter mean to you? It’s always a pensive time for me. My parents took my brother and me to Easter Sunrise Services when we were little. These are much more common in Southern California but not so much in Oregon, because it’s just too fricken cold on Easter morning around here. Nobody would ever love Jesus again because all the Christians would be frozen to death.

Even in Camarillo, it is usually cold and foggy until at least 10am, so those services were C-O-L-D. My brother and I were roused at 5am to get to the ridge and sit on frigid, metal folding chairs that were set up on the dewy grass that dampened our Easter-best shoes. Seeing the sunrise was pretty cool, but church is never much fun when you’re a kid. We fidgeted and sighed until it was time to go inside for mediocre pancakes served on Styrofoam plates with tiny plastic forks and impotent knives.

We Fus usually avoid church on Easter. The last time we attended an Easter service was about fifteen years ago. We probably even arrived to church on time, which is completely abnormal behavior for our family. Were we even rewarded for our punctuality? NO! We are even late when we are on time! The Easter service was so packed that we Fus sat on the balcony stairs. It wasn’t terrible, but the message was nothing new. I just love and appreciate Jesus so much more when I’m not fighting for space in a crowd.

We Fus are notorious trendsetters, and it looks like the whole world is following our example this year and staying home for Easter worship. Except for those insane people heading to Pennsylvania because their nutcase pastor says that coronavirus prevention is the work of the devil. Weirdo.

As if frosty sunrise services or sitting through Easter worship in sukhasana is not memorable enough, I’m about to tell you about my most memorable Easter in 2015. Albert and I spent the day together at the Emergency Room the first time Alex threatened to kill himself.

It started in October 2014 when Alex was 17. As Ron Burgundy would say, it escalated quickly. He was sailing through high school as a junior, preparing to apply to colleges with ambitions of becoming a math teacher. Albert and I saw no evidence of the warnings we had heard about teenagers. We were (and are!) extremely grateful for our exceptional children, but also probably a little arrogant about our parenting, taking way too much credit.

Alex was captain of his rowing team, excelling at school, helping with chores at home, and more pleasant to be around than approximately 90% of other teenage boys. He participated in family time within reason and was an enthusiastic participant in our church’s youth group. He had just recently volunteered as a camp counselor to 5^th and 6^th graders and was entertaining the idea of pursuing this as a paid a summer job.

And then he met this girl. We were all very excited for him! Alex has never been conventionally “cool.” None of us Fus are. We’re all a little dorky and unusual, and I’m kind of proud of that. But this is hard to embrace when you’re 17. She asked him to her school’s Homecoming dance. We got him a suit and tie to match her dress. He was smitten. It wasn’t long before her true colors began to show.

Alex told us that she was smart and beautiful and perfect. A model! A straight-A student enrolled in several AP classes! An enthusiastic Christian! She described herself as “untouchable,” meaning that she was exceedingly flawless and popular at her school.

NOW. My kids are the GREATEST, and any partner would be lucky to be with them. But why would the prettiest, smartest, most wholesome girl need to look out of town for a boyfriend? My Spidey Senses were on high alert by the time we finally had a chance to meet her.

Her modeling career? Oh, she hadn’t had any jobs yet, but she showed me a very popular picture of herself in her underwear taken at the modeling agency. She was getting a lot of attention and would be very successful.

As she and Alex baked cookies, she could not figure out how to measure one cup of flour using a 1/3-cup scoop. Seriously. Our whole family collectively whipped our heads around to see if she was joking. That’s some dumb-ass AP math you must be taking, Skeezy. I was on to her and cautioned Alex to proceed slowly. But she already had her claws in him. Like Carole Baskin.

Alex started staying up late at night to chat with her online. He started missing homework assignments, causing mounting anxiety. Before long, he was skipping school and crew practice. The slide was steep from there. He became disrespectful of our rules at home, flying into fits of rage when we tried to talk to him. By May, he was in the hospital. It took just seven months for this girl to get under his skin and cause immense suffering.

This was not all her fault. She was a 16-year-old girl at the time. I give her the benefit of the doubt that she knew not what she was doing. But she was definitely the trigger that set off years of pain for our family. A friend of mine likened her to a drunk driver careening down the freeway, unaware of the death and destruction she leaves in her wake.

That Easter Eve in 2015, Alex was holed up in his room and wouldn’t talk to us. Any attempt was met with screaming and pushing and spitting and escalation. On social media, he told friends of his plans to stab himself. His friends called the police, who knocked on our door at 3am. All the shit always goes down at 3am. The police came in and talked to him through the door while we waited downstairs in our pajamas. Albert and I were questioned, trying to remain calm. Yes, we know he’s been struggling. Yes, he’s seeing a therapist. No, we don’t have guns in the house. No, we aren’t having other family problems.

What they really wanted to know? What kind of shitty parents are you?

The officers decided that Alex needed to go to the hospital because he had a suicidal plan. It sounds absurd now but it was super scary at the time. His plan? Stab himself in the chest with his Swiss Army knife. The one that his grandpa gave him with the one-inch blade. And then he was planning to wait and bleed to death. This was a typical Alex Fu Plan back then: not exactly thoroughly thought through.

When the ambulance arrived, the EMT snapped on his latex gloves as he warned us that this could get pretty distressing for us parents. “Don’t be alarmed if there is shouting. Sometimes things get violent.” He assured us that he would do his best not to hurt our son while trying to keep him safe. It was awful.

After the ambulance left, we were advised to get some sleep since Alex would not be seen by the psychiatrist and social worker until the morning. So Albert and I found ourselves at the hospital on Easter morning 2015, waiting for our son to be evaluated. Staring at two boxes of toys. One box of Clean Toys. And one box of Dirty Toys. I wondered what kind of terrible mother would think it funny that a family waiting room would house a box of Dirty Toys.

I was hopeful that this Easter was a day of new beginnings. And it was. The Beginning of a Five-Year Ordeal that was deeply distressing and completely disorienting. A slow, painful slide like a slow-motion train wreck. I consider our family to be well-educated, resourceful, involved, and informed. We were completely lost and alone. We didn’t know what to do, where to turn, or whom to trust.

There were miracles and angels along the way. We learned so much as a family. How strong we are! How to communicate authentically and intentionally. How to be present.

I can confidently tell you that nothing frightens me anymore. I was so scared to lose Alex. We tried everything in our power until we were stripped bare of options. I spent a lot of time praying, and there was a moment when an inexplicable peace came over me. It felt like a momentary loosening of my chest, allowing me to take just one breath and not feel like I was going to die from fear.

It was jarring at the time. I know for sure that this is the peace that passes understanding. Thy will be done. You are going to be OK. I am with you. Trust Me. 

Over time, one breath of peace became two breaths, then three. Once I finally stopped struggling, the learning and progress got faster. And even when it wasn’t as fast as I would prefer, it didn’t hurt me or exhaust me. Everything became an opportunity to get stronger or smarter or more connected to my family or my friends or to God. And when you look at things that way, everything is worthwhile. Nothing is wasted.

Alex is doing great these days. He's been working and living on his own for over a year. He tells me that he feels confident that he has the skills to prevent himself from falling into such deep despair again. Here's a picture I took with him after Easter breakfast 2019. His beautiful smile is back. His eyes sparkle once again. 

I’m happy to tell you more if you want to hear about it. Hit me up for coffee or a glass of wine if you want to hear about the other times we were in the hospital or the police came to our house. I’ll tell you about getting fired by one of our therapists and the residential treatment program that helped our family so much. I’ll tell you about the people who don’t talk to me anymore and the people who have surprised me with their wisdom and compassion. We need to embrace and encourage open conversation about mental health.

These days, we’re discovering more and more that we’re all in this together. Thank you for reading and for accompanying me and enriching me on this journey of life.