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For once, I AM like someone else…

2009
01.15

It  was not a good idea.

Something has happened to my body.  I’m not too sure who took it over, but they’ve done a great job messing it up.  After being in the 120 pound range for the last two decades, suddenly, the question I get asked most is “When are you due?”  Last year I probably used up 85% of my vacation time going to doctors.  Nothing. 

Could it be me?  Could I be eating more than I think I am?  My general doctor had created a diet which he said always worked.  A dry piece of toast for breakfast.  A salad as big as I want for lunch.  A lean cuisine type entree for dinner.  Follow this draconian diet for six days,  and you are allowed ONE ‘free’ meal.  The only problem is I hate salad.  So I took my salad fixings and blended them into a sort of mush in the food processor.  I figured this way, I’d be able to have a few bites, and that would equal out.  Another bad idea.

The pounds just have been staying, inviting their friends, and have been in no hurry to leave.  I have a bit of chronic kidney disease, a doctor told me.  Couple that with it not really being the best time out of the last 28 days, and that’s me today.  I’ve been spending a lot of time on learning about fashion and taste, because I really want to be wearing something other than wrap around skirts for the rest of my life.  I’m trying to figure out how to turn this eternal hippie wear into something more timeless.  I want to look cool, but classy as well, and in a day to day way.  I can do classy for something like an event without a problem, but on Monday, I’m lost.

Today I went to Nordstrom’s.  I had one of my books with me so I could understand what they’d been talking about.  I found some jeans.  I tried them on.  I could button and zip them…barely.  I see a lot of people wear their jeans this tight.  I couldn’t imagine being one of them, but I could if I wanted to.  I handed the ill-fitting pants to a saleswoman and gave a quick excuse-not a good time of the month to be trying on things.

But we got to talking, and I told her about my newly diagnosed thyroid /kidney condition.  She told me a relative of hers had the same thing-a huge weight gain out of the blue, and everyone asking her if she was pregnant because she looked like it.  Hey, that’s what happened to me last year!  The saleswoman said she could tell I was supposed to be thin-she could see it in my wrists and ankles.  Unfortunately, she then said that the condition the other girl had eluded doctors.  Bummer.

However, it was the first time since my body has been practicing circus tricks that another person understood.  Another person had seen this before.  Another person who (among the very few) said it wasn’t my fault.  She said to get over the ‘womanly week,’ and come in again.  Her name was Dana.  It was the first good ‘bad’ shopping experiences I’ve ever had. 

And I’ll be looking cool, timeless yet modern, and all that other fashion stuff some day.

Category Banging My Head Against A Wall, Better Living Through Chemistry, Random Musings |

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Waitin’ for Good Karma to Come Back to You

2008
09.19

I am not thrilled right now.  On Facebook.com, they have this whole application which allows you to send and receive virtual tokens of good karma.  It’s just one of the many things on that site that can dominate your attention for far, far too long.  I’ll admit, I log on there at least once a day to see what’s going on.  It’s been a great way to connect with people you thought you’d never see or hear from again.  Everyone from my high school days is a lot nicer to me now than they ever were back in high school.

However, that site is not the point here.  What the point is here is karma, and I seem to have far less in real life than I do in the ethers of computer land.  I’ve even taken steps to improve my karma.  For example, I was at the check out counter at the health food store, and the cashier accidentally rang me up for one deli item, when in reality there were four. So I, trying to live my good karma life, I pointed the error out to her, that she had accidentally UNDERCHARGED me.  I left the store fifteen bucks poorer than I could have been, but I was smug in the knowledge of the good person I was and how most people would have kept silent on such an oversight.

After that, I had to see a foot doctor.  He was really nice.  Unfortunately though, I have either fractured some bone in my foot or I have doinked the tendon that connects to it.  So I get thrown into a cast and sent on my way until they get my bone scan results next week.  Here’s how I got this injury:  During lunch,  I actually go OUTSIDE and walk 3.5 miles while reading.  Yes, I can read while walking, and I do it quite well in fact.  Don’t worry about me Honolulu, even though you have a high pedestrian fatality rate, I’ll keep on walking, with my book open, I’ll even promise that you won’t hit me (that last sentence should be read in a ‘don’t cry for me, Argentina’ melody in the background).  I can’t justify sitting ALL DAY.  In fact, I have to do far more sitting than I would prefer in the first place.  So one day tra la la, there I was, going on my route, and then this pain started.  That wasn’t unusual, this bit of discomfort had been going on for over a month.  But then it got bad.  REALLY bad.  And believe it or not, I even ‘cowboy’d up’ and finished the whole route. Then I came upstairs, got on the phone and yelled at my dr. to fix this problem.

And then yesterday, my coworker who sits next to me, she was about to send a friend a birthday present.  Her original view was to include a Starbucks gift card, but she decided not to at the last minute.  However, it just so happened that I HAD a Starbucks gift card in my wallet that I received for one of my freelance jobs.  Now if THAT wasn’t karma or a sign from the universe of good karma for her, then I know not what is.

So here I am, I’m walking at lunch, getting in a workout, I’m telling the checkout girl I should be paying her MORE money, I give my coworker the exact gift card she’d been thinking about, I should be having supergreat things happening all around me, right?  Rather, I’m sitting here in a hot (and increasingly smelly) walking cast that’s created a painful blister on my shin.

If you subscribe to Louise Hay’s notion of ‘what you put in to the universe comes back multiplied,’ ultra super great things should be happening all around me, right?  Is karma like a point system, where when you gather enough you get a free DVD or something?  I don’t know.

O we Americans are so impatient; perhaps we would have been better served if we were kept oblivious about such notions like karma.  You know we’ll just mess it up.  We’ll do something good today with the expectation that something great will happen tomorrow, when in reality, that good karma you created is perhaps making up for a bunch of bad karma you kept dragging along with you from several lifetimes ago.  Or maybe your good deeds today will put you in good standing in your next life in some way.  However, we’ve adopted the belief that these things/experiences will have a quick turnaround,  a sort of shelf life of a few days rather than a few lifetimes.  We’ve become a silly, overweight, shallow, lazy, ungrounded and lost nation that can’t even take care of itself.  We’ve been around the world, and we’ve exploited and/or taken advantage of  every resource, every labor force, low pollution standard, and have cherry picked just about everything else we think could be useful.  And lately, our scenery is one of extremes:  stock market volatility and panic,mortgages lenders tumbling, banks free-falling, insurance companies going bankrupt, and we’re fighting a war we know will never end.   In light of all this, from an objective light, perhaps karma has come back to kick our asses for all of our prior (and current) transgressions.

So I guess I’ll just be satisfied that I’ve done a couple good deeds and know that good things will come back…someday.  I think it’s when you STOP expecting something, when you’ve essentially forgotten the great deeds you did a ways back,  when you’re least expecting it that some ramification from the good karma you created will decide to shine on you.  Until then, I’ll try to be a good person and not be so peeved over the fact that I’m stuck in a baking hot walking cast while it’s just as hot outside-like wearing a pair of Uggs over wool socks in the middle of summer…

Category Banging My Head Against A Wall, Random Musings |

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Sad

2008
09.11

They had to happen on the same day.

Two years ago today was the day that my life changed forever when I had say goodbye to my beloved, Rufus Palmer.  And true to The Pet Psychic’s words:  “We never get over the loss of a pet.  We just get used to living without them,” that’s what’s happened to me.

Unfortunately, this all happened on September 11th, which has become to Americans “The day everything changed.”  For many, it’s a day of much grief and sorrow over loved ones who died.  That’s where I start feeling weird.  I actually say this to almost no one, because I feel trivialized when I do.  To me, this day sucks because I lost the one being most dear to me that I’ve ever had-he just wasn’t a human.  And I feel that for some reason, the fact that he wasn’t human makes my grief not as worthy or justified as those who lost human people in 2001.  As in ‘it was ONLY a dog…’   If people only knew…

There’s a growing number of people these days who are taking a look at the world around them and deciding that they don’t want to be a part of repopulating it.  There are some who are averse to children; there are some who simply value the time they have to themselves just too much to sacrifice it to raising a young version of themselves.  Perhaps there are even those, and I’m probably one of them, who are trying to skip karma by not having children, knowing what hellions they themselves were while growing up.  Whatever the reason, the American Dream has expanded to include those for whom the 2.4 kids just ain’t gonna happen. 

That doesn’t say there’s no parental instinct there.  For many, it just comes in a different form.  Many articles have been written about the new ‘trend’ some people are moving to, and that is to essentially act as thought their pets were their children.  And it’s true.  We even refer to them as ‘our children,’ and in a lot of ways, we mean every word of that.

I’m really sorry for everyone who was affected by 9/11/01.  I remember seeing it on CNN; the first airplane had hit, and the second was about to.  It was one of the most surreal things I’ve ever seen.  The only thought in my head was ‘our world is never going to be the same.’ And it hasn’t.  But for me, it’s a hard day because I had to say goodbye forever to the one being who gave meaning to my life when I found none.  And believe me, it hurts just as much.

Category Random Musings |

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Waiting in Line-A History

2008
08.07

I’ve often said ‘There are people who are born to lead, and there are people who are born to wait in line,’ and I believe it’s in my genetic coding to be among the former. However, it appears that the line itself is making a comeback.

I watched the line and its meaning dissolve in 1990 in Boulder, CO.  Prior to that date, people would start ‘lining up’ for just about anything,  usually concert tickets (OK, Grateful Dead concert tickets).  They had such devoted followers that being in line for a few days became a party unto itself.  Coming out of the 70’s, some bands were HUGE, and stadiums filled with people would sell out in minutes.  You had better be in that line.

However, in an attempt to curb people camping out, and to keep order for those days leading up to the on sale date, the main record store in Boulder first tried this:  If you were in line the night before the ticket went on sale, you’d be given a number based on their allotment, and if you got a number, you were guaranteed a ticket.  Perhaps it wasn’t the best ticket, but at the very least, you were IN.  Then, if there were people who didn’t get numbers from the day before or just decided to wait, if any tickets were left, they’d swoop in on like vultures once all the ‘guaranteed’ ones were sold.

The day the line died (funny that-the music died with Don McLean’s song in 1972, but the line seemed to survive) we can thank our friends at Ticketmaster.  Not only could you NOT wait the night before and have bestowed upon you a ticket guaranteeing you will get what you want the next day, you couldn’t even try to make a nice new line right then and there-on the day of the show-so if you got there at 4 a.m., you’d at least be rewarded for getting up so damn early.

It was the RANDOM numbering system.  This was done, of course, to discourage people from loitering around the ticket place and taking up space.  NOW, it didn’t matter if you got there at 4:36 am or 9:52 am (most Ticketmaster ticket sales begin exactly at 10:00 am), the numbers were distributed randomly.  Once the numbers were handed out, everyone had to change their positions in line based on whatever number they got.  You could have waited there for four hours and get pushed all the way to the end of the line, or you could have traipsed in at the last moment and be standing with ticket #1 (and everyone else hating you).  With no advantage to coming sooner, the line died….almost.

Oddly enough, the people who are now pining in lines are those who are waiting for the release of some GADGET.  And for some reason, since this seems to be outside the auspices of TicketMaster…so far.  Here you CAN wait all day, and you will be given a number corresponding to when you got there to hold what’s promised for you.  You can’t camp, you have to leave when the mall closes, but you can sit in one place for days on end…waiting in line

People are waiting in line so they can BUY something?  Eh? What happens three months down the road when everyone you know has the same thing?  Ooooh, is the dude’s phone, for example,  sooo much better because he waited in a line for hours and hours to purchase it on the first day, and this other girl spent five minutes and got the same thing three days ago?  Did they add some ’secret’ extra features for the ones who demonstrated their devotion so openly?  I doubt it.

It’s kind of sad, really, that THAT’S what kids are waiting for these days.  The days of nervously hoping that you’ll get in before tickets sell out, or before the GOOD seats sell out are gone; now it’s just another line to wait in…

Category Banging My Head Against A Wall, Music, Random Musings |

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