Living in the limins

Benjamin Kunkel wrote in “Last Things: The Sinister Charm of Frederick Seidel” that “[Poet Frederick] Seidel writes as if id had become ego, but in the worst way: all insight, no cure.”

The quote resonates with me because I feel in some sense as if this could be an oversimplified analysis of my own life. I live in a space where impulsiveness is recognized but not controlled. I admit to eating a bowl of cookie dough like one would eat ice cream—and I admit that it’s a travesty against my bodily health—but I don’t stop, no matter my awareness of how willingly self-destructive I am.

I am id become ego, insight sans cure. Do I care? Id says no.

Sweet dreams of you

I took a nap on the couch for the last five minutes before I had to leave for my Sunday shift at the library. I dreamed I was ice skating in Chicago, in Millennium Park. The dream re-played all the real events I saw and experienced when I used to skate on my lunch break. There was the silver fox in his cashmere coat, casually drifting in languid ovals. I saw the two guys who always skated together, competetively, to see who had the best aggro hockey moves. And last was the guy who would come on to me by executing a quick turn at my side and skate backward while smiling at me.

Then Matthew said, "You have five minutes to get to work," and all the ice and skates melted away, back to dream land.

Signs, signs, everywhere signs

I talked about managing the things I could control in my life, like looking for a new job, right? I got a phone interview with a potential employer! Yay me, step one accomplished. Now I’m totally nervous because I’m dying for the call-back for a face-to-face interview. Please universe—I want this so bad!

In the meantime, I feel like everywhere I look, I see omens and portents that the job is so nearly mine. First, after seven months of employment, my boss finally got me business cards. That’s surely a sign that he wasted his time, right? Second, I saw a stack of books in my current library that were received via inter-library loan from the library where I phone interviewed. Third, I *just* saw a student here walk into the library wearing a shirt for the football team affiliated with the other library.

Either I’m getting mega thumbs up for all my positive vibes I’m sending out to the other library, or the world is unspeakably cruel. I like to believe in the former, but can I tell you how much I fear the latter? I don’t regularly buy into positive energy field projections and stuff, but I feel like that’s the key to pulling this job to me. Am I going nuts (nuttier)? I don’t think so, actually. It’s felt good to dwell on the positive feelings instead of always dreading the self-doubt that usually comes with these things.

Matthew said, “No matter what, you did the absolute best you could do.” He’s right. I’ve given this my best, now I just have to see how the universe chooses to reward me.

Hairstyles of the damned

Yesterday


Today


For more of the un-dread-ing saga (before, after, and in-process shots), tune in to my Flickr page.

A slight penchant...

I haven't written about my various bad media obsessions in quite some time now, and I keep meaning to, but I'm totally busy with bad media.

But this--THIS--re-cap of an All-Star America's Next Top Model just slayed me so bad I had to write.

(Do you have to be an insider to get this? Probably. Call me if you totally want the insider dirt. I'll dish. For hours and hours on end. Doesn't that sound like fun? Totally. Call me. For real.)

Ugly on the inside

At my physical therapist’s insistence, I finally went to Jacksonville to see my orthopedic surgeon for my exit x-ray. I am officially healed. He said that the only way I can really hurt it at this point would be if I were to do something calamitous—again. Here’s the thing: it’s ugly.

He pointed to the bone fragment that chipped off and my whole tibia and said, “Here is what was broken, and see, new bone has knitted in there.”

I asked, “Is it chunky monkey?”

He looked at me like I was nuts, “No, it’s fine. The piece is a little out of alignment, but it’s not over the joint so it should never give you any problem.”

“But it’s chunky monkey,” I said, pointing to the projecting bone. “It didn’t go back into place exactly. It’s kind of sticking out.”

He looked at me weird again. “Yes, it is kind of sticking out.”

“You can call that chunky monkey.”

He finally caved, “Your bone is chunky monkey.”

That settled, I was totally bummed that my leg healed ugly. It’s healed alright, but the x-ray does not reveal a pristine tibia restored to its former wholesomeness.

“My leg is ugly,” I told Matthew.

“But it’s healed,” he pointed out, trying to get me to shut up about it already.

“It’s chunky monkey. It doesn’t look good.”

Look from Matthew.

“When I’m a mummy, and they x-ray me, they can look and say, ‘Here’s where the specimen broke her leg ante-mortem and it healed ugly.’”

“Yeah, that’s what they’ll say.”

Lines in the mirror

There’s lots of little things (and some big things) to worry about in the mind of Christine Wy. Will I get the interview I want? Where did I put the romance novel I’m reading? Is the weather tomorrow finally going to be just right for my outdoor self-portrait?

My worry lately: will my face look like worry?

I’m worried about worry wrinkles. The wrinkles that make you look unhappy even if you just feel, you know, even.

Today, Peculiar Woman approached me and said, “You look like someone who is deadly bored.”

That stung. In the first place because it was Peculiar Woman, and in the second place it was just because I wasn’t smiling at my computer monitor. So does my regular face look like worry?

And—wait—if I am worried, is it wrong for my face to look worried? I mean, except that I don’t want the worry lines, right?

To counteract the worry, I try to smile to myself at random times. Now I’m worried I look creepy. Which makes me look worried…

Hullo, I'm Christine Wy

This is my 300th post. In honor of it--I'm doing nothing! How bout if I promise to work harder at taking pictures? Like a New Year's resolution? Ooh, I will also promise to set up my scanner and do scanograms of the detritus that shows what's going on in my life. How bout that?

Love and more love,
Your Lady Friend

Hold my bones

I’m bone weary today, though I can’t put my finger on why. Emotionally ragged? Sleeplessness catching up with me?

I’m starting to climb out of my sadness fog. That little gray raincloud over my head is lightening up, but today I need snuggles. I need to cozy up with someone and talk about nothing. Things we saw on the internet, movie phrases we like, Simpsons quotes.

Instead, I’m at work, cloistered and alone behind a desk, working on the world’s most tedious microfilm project. I’m trying, I’m really trying, but the project is like… it’s like… a noxious odor that you know you have to scrub away before you can be clean again.

I miss you, all of you, just guess who you are. I wish I could snuggle you right now and we could tell each other it’s going to be alright.

Merry Christmas!

Seems late for Christmas, right? Not in our house. Discussions of gift giving reverberate through the whole year. And have for many years. There is my husband’s great revelation that I give gifts I think the receiver should want, but not what the receiver actually does want. Then there is the issue that Matthew’s gifts are always “almost” but not quite right.

Christmas 2007. My gifts to him: Bowl of Cherries, by Millard Kaufman and Comedy by the Numbers, by Eric Hoffman and Gary Rudoren. While he admits that Comedy by the Numbers was dead-on gift-perfection hilarious, he also told me he doesn’t like books as gifts. Let’s see, other recent gift purchases by Christine for Matthew: What Ever Happened to Orson Welles?: A Portrait of an Independent Career, by Joseph McBride, Christmas 2006, and Monkey Portraits, by Jill Greenberg, Valentine’s Day 2008.

My logic behind these was that Matthew loves slap-stick comedy (got that one right at least), Orson Welles, and monkeys. Turns out Matthew didn’t care as much for the foremost contemporary Welles biography as I thought he would. And monkeys? He loves monkeys. Why wouldn’t he love a book of monkeys? He said, “It’s pictures. You look at it once and then you put it away.” Ouch. I thought it was genius.

He loves video games. This morning, as I walked out the door, we agreed that in the future of all gift-giving situations he will make me a list of the video games he wants to be given. That’s the most unromantic gift situation I can imagine, but whatever is going to keep us sane is what is going to work.

But, wait! Matthew’s not innocent either!

I won’t get into details because that’s shitty to slander him on my blog where I reduce him to defenseless words, but I’ll give you one example. All I wanted for Christmas was this stuffed sheep. I begged for it. I sent out more than one Christmas list e-mail saying how badly I needed the sheep. Not only did no one who read my Christmas wish list get me a sheep, but neither did Matthew. When you demand a sheep, don’t you expect at least your husband to get you a sheep? I loved the sheep so much, I even gave a frog as a Christmas gift to someone else (who loved it like I would have loved a sheep).

What did I get instead? Silver earrings. This may sound nice, but there are two reasons this gift flopped with me, one practical and one medical. First, my sheep was half the price of the earrings, and he was seriously over-charged for the earrings he got. Second, I’m allergic to most metals and can only wear silver earrings for a few hours. So these expensive earrings would then be useful only at special occasions where I could wear them for a few hours and then take them out immediately, when I would next hit the cortisone cream and Benadryl. The sheep I would have used every single night.

Anyway, we’re all guilty. I want to give gifts that reflect me and my tastes so that I can share myself with the gift receiver, but Matthew claims I’m wrong and that no one gets what they actually want from me. I don’t know which of us is actually right—I still think there is a part of the giver in the gift—but I know that in the future we’re sticking to the play list. No more surprises, since the surprise always leads to disappointment.

So ho-ho-ho, merry effing Christmas, quite late.

I'm knot a knitter

I don't knit, but I love the last sentence of this post:

"I could cast on another sock and admit: I am an unfinished project."

My shoelaces are loose

If I had a microchip that connected my brain to a word processing program on a remote computer, my blog would be full to the brim. When me and my sleep dysfunction lay side-by-side, we think of awesome sentences that put all the words together in such an echt way. I feel like an ingénue laying in bed awake at night, but there’s no way for me to type out the words and still fall asleep.

Awake, the thought nuggets are there, but they are sleeping at last, and the sentences just don’t go together the way they should. I have a million fragments of one sentence openers I’ve written, but never gotten farther than that one premise.

Too bad I can’t stay up all night. I’d be a genius.

Butttermilk Pie

Also called Magnolia Pie

Pre-heat oven to 325

2 cups sugar
1 stick butter, room temperature
4 tablespoons flour
3 eggs, slightly beaten
1 cup buttermilk
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
1 unbaked 9-inch pie shell

Beat eggs (slightly). Add butter, sugar, buttermilk, and vanilla (my method is to run the mixer and slide the ingredients in). Add flour last.

Pour into unbaked 9 inch pie shell and bake for 1 hour at 325 degrees or until knife inserted in center comes out clean.

Allow to cool.

This recipe calls for a 9 inch pie crust, which is generally difficult to find. If you make this recipe and put it into an 8 inch pie crust, you will have batter leftover. I like to buy three pre-made graham cracker crusts at the grocery store. If you double the recipe, you can make exactly three 8 inch pies! Tah-dah! Share the two extra pies with your co-workers, and they'll hate you less ;)

Dreaded questions

I probed, I prodded, I may have prevaricated (a little). I demanded, I plead, I hypothesized, I proposed. I cornered, I pinpointed, and I cajoled.

And the answer was “Yes.”

I have asked everyone whose opinion matters to me, “Do I keep the dreads, or do I give up now and start growing out my hair?”

Worst answer: “Either you do or you don’t.”

Best answer: “Make the decision based on your career goals and how you think your hair will affect how you get there.”

Right answer: “I think they look cute.”

My dreadlocks have been a self-esteem struggle for me: “Do I look cute or do I look ridiculous?” They’ve been a career struggle for me: “Do I look eccentric or just badly unprofessional?” A motivational struggle for me: “Do I wax them tonight or do I procrastinate again for the thirtieth day in a row?”

Now, I feel the decision has come to a head, as it were. My dreads have looked basically the same for the past month, neither particularly improving in their healthy roundness nor disintegrating into wiry frizz. I feel like this is the crucial moment where I make the decision, to cut or to commit?

I asked everyone’s opinions, but, ultimately, their answers revealed what was in my heart all along but I wasn’t listening to. Some said “cut them off” in a kind way, but I still wasn’t committed to that answer, no matter how committed to that person I am. I finally got a row of three people--a good friend, an acquaintance who hates dreadlocks, and a barber—to all say, “They look unconventional but they look good.” They all said that. All three in a row. And there was my answer. There was the mirror to my heart: “They aren’t quite right but I like em.”

To all the respected “no’s” I received, thank you for your input. I really needed it as a balance, and it made me decide what I was feeling on the inside. And to all the people who said “yes,” thank you for revealing what I really felt.

The dreads stay. Who knows how long they’ll stay, based on what does happen with my career, but for now, they stay. It’s still a fun ride, though some days they drive me nuts.

When I’m ready to hear “no,” I think the “yes’s” will tell me what I’m really going through inside.

Emulsion propulsion

“Tightly bundled neuroses kept marginally in check by a slight grasp of reality.” If I had only one sentence to describe myself to eternity, that would be it. I don’t take it lightly, really. As contrary as I am, I also recognize the full weight of those words. That might not be the one sentence my dear readers would choose to describe me, but that’s the one I feel. To the outside world (but not the world wide web, of course), I seem like a pretty together babe. On the inside, I feel churny.

Sometimes churny is good. Sometimes churny is powerful and motivating and brings about change. Sometimes, though, churny makes my brain all twisty-straw and my thoughts are goopy fluid being twirled in spirally circles.

The churny’s been pretty out there lately, as readers know (but not my co-workers or my fake friends or … who else is there?). I’ve been taking great care to change the churny things about my life that I can control. I’m looking for a new job, for starters, which answers a bunch of churny yearnings like depressed pay and depressing work, and I’m looking for local friends. I found a new psychiatrist (yay crazy pills!), and I’m on track to find a new therapist, so the things that I can master I am trying to master.

Except the creation churn.

I don’t believe that one day I hatched and discovered that it was of critical importance to me to be an expert at something before I even tried it, but I do know that I woke up one day and realized that’s how I was acting. I don’t want to start anything new just in case I’m not awesome at it. I don’t want to walk into a room and not already be the most advanced science club member present. I don’t want to crawl and then walk and then run—I want to hit the ground a well-honed Olympic sprinter. I want to walk into fiction writing class and be Margaret Atwood. I want to walk into the stable and be Annie Oakley.

I’m taking a free photography class for fun. Let’s insert “fun” in air quotes here. I was having a great time on the first few weeks when we talked about theory and “this is how a lens works,” lording it over my pathetic air-quote “peers.” “Fun” ended Monday. For the first time Monday, I saw my classmates’ actual photographs. Damn, they’re really freakin good. Like amazingly light-years ahead of where I am in compositional skill. I went from being the girl whose hand was always up first in class to the girl who was like “How do I do this lasso thing on Photoshop again?” I went from teacher’s darling to girl-who-ties-up-the-color-printer-with-her-sophomoric-attempts-at-photography.

Doesn’t sound “fun,” does it? See? That’s the churny. Why can’t I look at their work and say, “Wow, that’s really inspirational that they’re just students too and were able to accomplish so much”? Why can’t I take that inspiration as a challenge to try harder, to push myself to achieve at their level?

I can’t wrap my mind around it. My intellect says, “You’re being foolish. Get out there and shoot; it’s the only actual way to improve,” but my lower intestinal tract says, “God you’re arrogant and naïve to walk in and assume that you are holier than anyone in your presence. Since you'll never be good enough, you should quit now.”

I try to channel Camus in these moments: “Imagine Sisyphus happy.” Can I? The first time I heard that quote, my heart swelled with understanding the thing Camus wanted to tell me, but I’ve never been able to hammer it inside me properly. Can I be Sisyphean-ly happy? Can the quest gratify me? Or do I need to have the boulder at the top of the hill before I’ll even condescend to be pleased?

My superior behavior is condescending to others. I let myself down when I descend into condescension. And I descend a slope of scree when I expect myself to master the tightrope blindfolded without ever trying a harness.

Crawl; be new. Be Camus’ Sisyphus. Be contented with learning. And making mistakes. Obviously, this bundle of neuroses will never be perfect, so un-churn a bit, let loose, and, hey, have fun. Make your one sentence "Imagine Christine Wy happy."

I watched “Thirteen” so you didn’t have to—you’re welcome

If memories of the adolescent social scene make you uncomfortable (check), if you remember your friends as backstabbing, fashion-obsessed, nasty bitches (check), and if seeing real teen trauma go untreated brings back too many flashbacks (check), well, then, you can skip this one. Oh, unless in your real life there was no light at the end of the tunnel. Well, I guess if you have internet access and you read my blog, there was probably light somewhere at the end of your tunnel, but whatev.

The movie opened to the typical “I’m a nerdy middle-school girl jealous of the in-crowd” and quickly montage-d into “this is what it’s like to *finally* be accepted!!!” complete with surrealist lighting and spinning camera angles. Cliché! But, wait, is that Holly Hunter? It is! What’s she doing here?

Chicken, egg, I don’t know. Holly Hunter made her appearance as the mom right around where the movie started to get less hackneyed and more believable. But! Even our quirky, indie-film doyenne couldn’t save this movie from itself.

For its genre, teen-angst-a-thon, Thirteen was actually pretty decent. It felt sort of documentary in that there wasn’t a whole lot of moralizing or interpreting events, rather, they just let teenagers be teenagers and do the things terrible teenagers do—hurt and be hurt by each other. There’s the peer pressure to shop lift, which mounts to peer pressure for body piercing, which escalates to peer pressure to make out with guys, which then turns into peer pressure to escalate drug abuse. Frankly, it’s just “kid-gone-wrong” stuff.

Until we learn Tracy is a cutter. We learn that Tracy’s home life isn’t as All-American as it seemed in those opening shots, and that one reason she’s so susceptible to let pressure escalate her self-destructive behavior is that she’s already engaging in out-there self-harm. This kid isn’t just acting out the way an adolescent does, this kid has serious problems.

The conclusion was so real it hurt, though. In the end, once Tracy has been kicked out of the cool girls’ club, her erstwhile best friend, Evie, rats on everything Tracy ever did. It begins when Evie spreads lies about Tracy to get her shunned at school. It worked. Then Evie had her guardian stage a disingenuine intervention with Tracy and her mom, pouring out onto the coffee table all the secret stashed cigarettes, alcohol, and pills. Coup de grace? Evie wrenches up Tracy’s sleeves to reveal the long rows of cutting marks from her wrist to elbow.

After that dramatic catharsis, Tracy and her mom fight, but Holly Hunter has learned that Tracy needs love more than she ever realized. Mom grips Tracy and says, “I’m never letting go again.” They fall asleep in Tracy’s bed, wrapped in each other’s arms. It was an unexpectedly genuine moment in a movie that alternated between real youth drama and clichés.

All of this leaves me wondering who the prospective audience was supposed to be? You know I’ll watch any crap, but there were many times I wanted to turn this off because it was so boring. And obvious. And tedious. The zinger? It was rated R. Seeing it, I know *why* it was rated R, but the movie fell into a teen no-man’s land in between the grit-free PG-13 and the gritty R. Audiences most likely to be affected by it are in that no-man’s land too, I guess.

If you really want to see Holly Hunter do good angst, watch Laurel Canyon. "Thirteen" is only worth watching if you had a clinical problem as a kid and want to feel vicariously vindicated through Holly Hunter’s love.

Ten little bits

1. I don’t like Dinosaur Jr. I’m really sorry, Matthew, I’m trying, really I am, but I just don’t get it. I think it’s one of our generation gap things.

2. That earlier piece on being fat, that really was written a whole year ago. There’s lots of ways I’m not OK, but, at the moment, I’m a proud size 16 shopping for plus-size sexy bikinis for my summer flirty beach debut.

3. I don’t like watching re-runs of Sex and the City because I get all twitchy. I start thinking I’m investing too much in a relationship that isn’t happening on my terms and that I’m not appreciated or loved enough and that maybe my love for Mr. Big just isn’t big enough to carry both of us…. And then I remember that I’m the Mr. Big in the relationship—emotionally unavailable, difficult to love, taciturn, whatever. Oh, but I’m not rich. I also don’t have a car and driver. Anyway, me, I’m not Carry Bradshaw. I’m going to make a flash card that says “You’re not Carry Bradshaw” and tape it to the entertainment center. “Oh yeah, right, I’m angst-ing out over something totally fake. Duh!”

4. I wish I spoke German. Or French. Preferably German and French.

5. This one shouldn’t be relegated to Number Five, but when you’re trying to keep something outside your brain, sometimes that something slips in somewhere weird. My little baby nephew had some sort of seizure. I didn’t hear it called a seizure, but something bad happened and he behaved abnormally. He had a spasm and then couldn’t be woken up. Good news is that it happened on Sunday and he seems perfectly fine now. He went to the emergency room, woke up, had many tests and observations done, and they think he’s fine. If it happens again, he’s not fine, but if it’s just once, he’s fine. That’s pretty vague, huh? I’m opting for the “he’s fine it was only once” vague but comforting route. Also, he was excited about the hospital room. He pointed to everything and said, “Mama, we have a new TV. Mama, we have a new lamp. Mama, we have a new bed.” To me that’s comforting evidence that nothing about him has changed.

6. In honor of the Worldwide Wrestling Entertainment spectacle called “Elimination Chamber,” which is really just a cage match or “Hell in a Cell” but fancied up, I have decided to re-name our bathroom The Elimination Chamber. The first time I used The Elimination Chamber tonight, it took all my powers of self-control and maturity to not shout: “Hey Matthew! I’m in The Elimination Chamber!”

7. It turns out that Matthew doesn’t even like bikinis. I guess that cancels out the search for the world’s sexiest and sturdiest support bikini ever. That’s OK. There’s a lot more one-pieces for us chubbos out there.

8. Lately I need to be physically restrained from rescuing dogs. Only the reminder that our lease was very grudgingly written to include just one dog keeps me from dialing that rescue number at the vet’s. Is this nesting for childless people? Wanting dogs?

9. As usual, I really ought to be in bed.

10. Love ya, Ta Ta For Now!

BDD

January 31, 2007, excavated today:

Lord, give me the courage to fast. No, not be fast. Give me the courage to fast.

I want to be anorexic. I long to be anorexic. I want to switch to a diet of caffeine and cigarettes and smell terrible but wear size two clothes. I want to be my teenage shape, petite to the point of tiny. Everyone gripped my forearm and said to me, “God, your arm is so thin I could break it with one twist.” Proud—I felt pride. I was so fragile I could be broken or protected. Or both.

But even then I didn’t see my body as magazine thin—and that was fifteen years ago, before models looked really anorexic. Not that I was allowed to read magazines other than peeks sneaked at my mother’s Southern Living. What I saw when I looked down were jiggly thighs and loose abdomen. Looking down I saw imagined cellulite and pasty skin.

Psychiatrists call it body dysmorphic disorder now. Fuck that. Fuck them for making it a disorder. I want to be size two again. I remember when I grew to size four and I was devastated. Fast forward to size fourteen, and I’m a hulking monster.

God, I want to be anorexic.

Maybe I want to be a zero. Maybe I want to be nothing. Nothing at all…

***Update, 2/5/2008: That whole bit was from a year ago. I don't feel like being nothing right now. I found that unposted blog entry and thought it was interesting that at a year ago I was having a tough time too. It felt parallel. And the message was never about suicide--it was about dissolving into un-being. Write me if you're worried and you need to talk about this. I won't tell you I'm OK, but I will tell you that I'm getting help and that I'm positive I will be OK. See? Not so bad after all, right?

Help me I'm fallin'

Depression is a mind hole, but, falling into it, I feel no impact. There’s no point of contact. I bump against the walls of the well as I go down, but there’s never a bottom to land on. No place to say, “Well, I’m here; now it’s time to climb back up.”

It’s not even a bungee free-fall plummet. It’s not a roller-coaster’s descent. It’s not cushioned or feathered, it’s not soft or hard--it’s not even a slope. I just wake up one day and realize I’m falling.

I’m so used to falling by now that I never know when it’s time for help. When is it my ordinary dip and when is it a plunge? Where is the dividing line between “get over it” and “seriously Christine, this is bad”? I can’t feel that space.

I always ask my therapist, “What is normal sadness and what is clinical?” I ask, “When is it my need to pull myself out and when do I need your help?” He says he can’t answer that. He says, “No computer can do therapy because there is no scientific parameter to it. It’s too delicate.”

Wednesday, my husband said to me, “You need to call your doctor.” At the time I wanted to ignore his advice because I didn’t feel like calling anyone, which, coincidentally, is a sign of depression for me. I didn’t resent him, I didn’t feel offended by his request, I just didn’t want to do it. How did I know this wasn’t normal and that I needed help? I didn’t know, but I guess he did.

I called my doctor Thursday. I felt better Thursday, which made me feel kinda silly for calling, but Matthew said I should anyway. My doctor said—without any prompting on my part—“It’s good that you called and told me this. We need to get you back to baseline.”

Baseline. It sounds like the starting point of a base jump. Is that depression? A base jump with no parachute? No target, no landing zone?

How do I rewind? How do I un-jump backwards, pulled up by invisible wires, like a kung-fu movie in backward slow-mo?

Matthew wants me to come back. He wants to help. He sees me bobbing away and knows I’ve gone too far to reel myself back in. On Thursday, after I called my doctor, I told Matthew, “It’s good of you to have told me to call my doctor. I want you to know that. Sometimes I need that outside perspective of someone who can see me and tell me it’s time to check back in.” I hope he understands how much he helps me when I’m falling.

The Honeybell

As promised, a photo of the delectable Honeybell orange



It's the vibrant fruit on the left. Feast your eyes!

Wednesday, it's about Thursday

“Hi, Wednesday. Um, we need to talk. I kind of want to see someone else.

“No, it’s not over between us. There’s just someone else I like so I thought we could step it back a bit and be more casual.

“Really, I still like you. It’s not like I’m going away. I’m still watching all the Gossip Girl re-runs even though I’ve seen every one.

“I know, America’s Next Top Model starts February 20. I’ll be back full-time then.

“But, it’s like, you don’t have any new episodes that I’m into right now. You know I’m committed to you, but I just need a little break.

“No, it’s Thursday. I know Monday is the Gossip Girl behind the scenes episode, but that’s just one night. This every Thursday.”

“It’s… it’s… Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew.

“But you know I love whipped cream pseudo-drama. You knew that going into this, Wednesday. I like the empty calories and brain-slushing. This show is perfect for me right now.

“No, I’m sorry, you’re still perfect for me too; I just need to see Thursday for a while.

“Well, it’s interesting because it’s self-destructive D-List celebrities airing their dirty laundry and actually getting good therapy from Dr. Pinsky’s treatment center.

“I like a train wreck. I like harmless strife. It doesn’t affect my life at all. I like that check-out.

“I hope you understand, Wednesday. It’s just that Gossip Girl doesn’t come back until the fall. I’ll get tired of Thursday when all the D-Listers implode themselves because of their inability to face their responsibility for their own actions. I’ll be back.

“I love you, Wednesday. I’ll see you soon. Bye-bye.”

New traditions

Being my first winter in Florida, I can’t say with authority how things work here, but I have discovered a local custom that I find quite tasty. People with orange trees in their yards share their extra fruit with friends. Delicious, they’re the most delicious oranges I’ve ever eaten. Today a man named Enzo dropped off a bag of grapefruits, oranges and Honeybells at my office neighbor’s desk. The moment I heard him leave, I begged for a Honeybell. I told her she should keep the rest of them for herself because of their utter orangey bliss. I can’t wait to eat my new treasure. And I love this new tradition.

Paranoid android

4/4/2008: Sorry, in good conscience I had to delete this post. It was funny. Make up whatever story in your mind that you think is funny, then laugh, then it will be like you were really reading this entry... Are you laughing yet? No? Visit LOLCats here then. If you don't laugh, you're not on the right meds.

Fake French

The problem with fake friends is that they’re just like white lies: how do you keep all the stories straight? Like, which friend was it who I overheard making fun of my food allergies behind my back, so now I know I can never tell her about any of my other maladies? Which friend pretends to my face that she’s queen of the world, but then I hear stories that she has personal problems she's unwilling to share with me? Which friend is it that I have learned I can make jokes about my therapy with? Now, toss all those little complications in a bowl, mix with a raspberry vinaigrette, and you have the salad that is my personal life in Florida.

I have many wonderful, spectacular friends with whom I am completely myself and I never have to lie to or hide things from, but none of them are in Florida. What’s a girl to do with a gaggle of half-friends and no real friends? Lie. Lie by omission only because I do have some moral standards, but, in essence, I lie.

You know what? I’m not a good liar. I know every time I open my mouth that it’s just a matter of time before I reveal that I have fibromyalgia to the woman who believes every ailment is “fake”(her word). I’ll accidentally reveal how little I trust the woman who pretends to be such a great friend but doesn’t confide in me that she’s having troubles. I worry most that I’ll accidentally tell one of the campus gossips a personal detail about my life and that it will spread like wildfire around campus, hurting Matthew’s reputation as well.

And I worry that I don’t have any real friends in Florida.

I know, real friends take time. I didn’t get Monyas and Boyds in my life overnight—they took time. But when you’re new to town and you’re missing the Boyds and Monyas, the comfort of real friendship sounds awfully reassuring. I should be grateful for the acquaintances I’ve made and not force any of the fakers to be anything they’re not capable of being. Mostly, I’m grateful that I still have the Monyas and the Boyds there to reassure me when I need some long-distance lovin.’

It read like a bitch-fest, but this is a love letter to all my adored friends out there in the world. You know who you are, and you know I love you.

Sunshine State True Friend,
Christine Wy

Upgrade / Downgrade?

Dispatch from the broken leg update: I started physical therapy today. I felt so good before today, like I had really turned a corner in my healing, and I was on my way to walking like a healthy two-legged person. No, I’m not as close as I thought.

I learned today that the boot has been doing all the muscle and tendon work for me, so my tendons and muscles are really painful and tight. I got upgraded today to a splint instead of the boot, and, surprisingly, it hurts worse. I couldn’t wait for the splint, but now my muscles and tendons are learning to work on their own again, and it’s quite painful. I’m now walking slower today than I was yesterday with the boot.

All complications aside, it does feel great to be out of the boot, and my ankle does feel happy (if not sore) to be moving again. I’ll be doing physical therapy for another four weeks, but my total healing time will be another 20 weeks. My physical therapist said that recovery time is generally two times the length of time I was in the boot. I had the boot for ten weeks, thus 20 weeks from now I can expect to be pretty much healed.

Somehow, it seems my healing time keeps getting pushed further and further away. Not that everyone hasn’t been honest with me about healing, but as I get further into healing, the end seems farther away.

I’m walking. I’m walking slowly, but I’m walking. One foot pushed in front of the other, here I go….

Cat poop, eternal doggie delight

My nasty dog. She *tries* to gross me out, I swear.

Because of my broken leg, we've had the cat's bedroom necessities set up pretty oddly. Instead of the baby gate blocking total canine entrance into Loki's room, we moved the litter box and food bowls into the closet and sort of wedged the baby gate across it.

Yesterday, the dog breached security.

I feared that this moment would come, that the dog would realize she's much stronger than the temporary closet situation we had erected, but for the past three months she was oblivious to this. Until yesterday.

I heard the dog snuffling around in Loki's bedroom, and I knew with certainty that something bad was about to happen. (I think I'm going to vomit just writing about this.) I had to go to the bathroom though, so I left the vortex of doggie mischief unattended. Fromt he bathroom I heard the unmistakable sounds of the dog chewing. She broke down the baby gate and munched away on cat litter.

(Yep, I'm probably going to vomit now.)

As soon as I could, I jumped up screaming at the dog. She knows it's wrong to eat cat poop, so she was out of there like a flash, but the damage was done. Her breath reeked of litter box. Shudder.

Unfortunately, Matthew was at home so I couldn't get away with Scoping her mouth and feeding her cough drops to disapate the germs and neutralize her mouth odor. He did suggest using our last charcoal bone (usually reserved for doggie gut cleansing), which wasn't a bad idea, but I couldn't help but hold her at bay for the rest of the night.

Poor babe, she was confused that suddenly mommy didn't want her face licked, but I just couldn't stand it. All I could think of was the amonia smell of her breath after her poop rampage.

I let her get up on the couch next to me instead of on my lap. What did she do? She stretched her neck and let out a great cat butt belch. God she's gross.

I know you can't carry me now

There are the times that I want to talk to you, and then there are the times when it’s OK to call. Like now. I need you. Just something simple, something stupid, to ask you about a book. But it’s 1 am and you’re asleep.

I want to reach you on shared ground, but we can’t seem to get that footing lately. We both slip and end up somewhere else. Do you feel it? Or is it just me?

We share a piece of soul, but what I wanted from you this Christmas was peace of mind. I didn’t get that. Sometimes you give it and sometimes you give intellectually to my emotional needs. Like ice water through a sieve, you chill me and there’s nothing to hold onto. You give me no purchase.

But not all the time. It’s not always like this. I want to rewind and start over. I want to draw a line in time and say, “That happened in the past, and in the future we’ll grow like this….”

Is that a phone call I can make? Can I create that barrier on my own and carry you over, or do we both need to use our legs? Make the bridge that piece of our shared soul. Walk with me.

Time won't let me

I had no idea I'd been away from the blog for so long. I've had some strife. Nothing earth-movingly dramatic, but little things.

I went back to work full time after all those weeks of bed rest and then part time in-office hours. It was stressful and hard to get the swing of. I really felt kind of wracked by it. It sounds so simple, but going to work was so taxing.

Next I went to Kentucky for a week, which was simultaneously stressful and relaxing. Half of the people were just pleased to get to spend time with me, and the other half just couldn't be pleased by me at all. There were people I ended up craving to be away from, and people I craved to be with to get away from the former. How sad.

Now I'm sick. My first two days back to work after the holiday, and I already used two sick days. Great way to start the semester. It's a sinus infection, and it's not going out quietly. No, it's lingering and kicking up a ruckus, but I'm on antibiotics and improving slowly.

I have things to write, and one on the burner that's been cookin for a while, so I'll get back to the blog. I regret I've been away so much since I broke my leg, but, I know you understand, dearest friends.

Oh, the shining news of the New Year is that my leg is much better and I'm improving all the time. I walk around the house in just regular shoes, and when I go out I wear my walking cast but don't use the crutches. It's a real relief to finally see the light at the end of this painful tunnel. It still hurts and there's lots of ways I can't move my foot, but I'm vastly better over the beginning of the saga. Think back to this:



Now flash forward to a Christine only occasionally whining instead of constant whimpering. Ask Matthew how much better it is.

Much love to you, internets. Thanks for the sympathy and understanding.

Love.

Trap doors

My memory has two faces: one, the idealized happy places; two, the grim, desperate places. The haunted side sticks like a broken record in the grimiest corners of my memory, no matter how hard I try to fight it.

Tonight, as I lay awake once again, sleepless, I am actually stuck in a loop of idealized happiness. Tonight, I lay awake yearning for Chicago.

I’m imagining Whole Foods--of all the things in the world to miss—and seeing the bulk bin of Israeli couscous and the diminutive glass jar of Thai red chili paste. I imagine buying henna, even though I’ve never used it before. I visualize the beautiful organic bacon and its thick, apple wood-smoked slices. I see the bulk herbs aisle, smiling at me with its bright lavender and dank burdock root scent, beckoning that I mix teas for sore throats to give as Christmas presents to my friends.

I also see downtown, Michigan Avenue by the Chicago River and north. The lights—beautiful twinkling lights—the red bows, the odd lighted glass globes artistically arranged in cedar branch covered flower beds. So many people, smiling, happy, taking pictures of the lights with point-and-shoot digital cameras set with the flash on (those pictures never come out; you have to set to night mode.). People are shoving and there are armloads of packages jamming sidewalks, but the children smile with glee, and the tourists stop to appreciate the wonder.

I’m thinking of the Chicago River, lighted so green in a summer gleaming blue sky with just the right amount of puffy white clouds in the distance. I see sunlight on art deco buildings, suddenly striking and awe-inspiring as the vision of their masters reveals their ornate, fanciful creations for the rare birds they are. I see the same Chicago at night, when the towering, black, art deco creations seem to loom with sinister intent—or maybe I imagine too much, maybe the Santa Fe building doesn’t glower.

And I lay in bed, thinking, “You chose to leave, Christine. Remember all the reasons you left?” And I think of an acquaintance’s t-shirt that was written in the style of “I heart New York,” but hers read, “I dot Chicago.” I remembered being stunned by it. How could someone who loved to lunch at Fox and Obel’s “dot” Chicago? I asked her about it, and she laughed at her feigned ambivalence toward the city. “You know, it’s the opposite of heart. I don’t love Chicago.” But she was a liar, I know.

But the “dot” t-shirt. Remember Christine? The “dot” was why you left. Christine, you were tired of traffic and public transportation and crowds and indifferent security guards who saw you four times a day for three years but never remembered your face. You were tired of how hard it was to get to Whole Foods. You were tired of even regular grocery shopping at over-crowded, picked-over, under-staffed stores. You were tired of parking. You were tired of your job. You were insanely tired of cold and ice and lingering slush that managed to find its way into your Wellington’s (how did it do that?).

And so, St. Augustine, the anti-Chicago. Little, quaint, tropical, easy-going.

Christine, don’t let Chicago keep you up at night. It’s a chimera. Halcyon. It doesn’t exist; it’s just an ideal you’ve encapsulated into pill form that you accidentally took before bedtime.

A friend once asked me why I didn’t blog about Chicago. She said I had so many interesting things to tell her about Chicago, but I never wrote them. I told her, “I’ve never been able to write a place where I lived. It could only happen after I left. I don’t know when I’ll leave Chicago, but that’s when I’ll tell Chicago stories.”

I feel I’m being trite, but it must be time. It must be Chicago bursting through me at last. But I have to remember the “dot.” It wasn’t all herbal teas and fresh sushi with lucky parking.

Goodnight sweetings. I hope I dream of sushi without regret for loss. I longed for St. Augustine and got it, now I have to keep from losing it to the memory of something that only existed sometimes.

About feet again

Remember this, "Induction ceremony"?

I was just told I had huge feet. I am still reticent to admit that my feet have spread and grown a little since my lithe sixteen-year-old 7 narrow days, but I'm still only a 7 1/2.

Peculiar woman: "Christine, you look like you have small feet. What size shoe do you wear?"

Me: "7 1/2."

Peculiar woman, laughing hilariously while slapping knee: "That's HUGE! Oh my god you have such big feet!"

Me: "No, I don't."

Peculiar woman: "Yes you do!" still laughing.

Me: "I believe 7 is average."

Peculiar woman: "I wear a 4 1/2," she said with pride.

Well, I got midget feet beat. They don't make many 4 1/2 women's shoes, but there sure are a lot of 7 1/2's! Joke's on you, peculiar woman.

Dear Christine, (part one)

I received a Q&A request from a fave reader (shout-out to fellow Kentuckian and librarian! Holla!), but I’ve been too sick to answer. Turns out I had an infection and it was giving me a fever. Not that I’m trying to use the Q&A as a bitch session, but just wanted to update why I’ve felt so crappy and haven’t been blogging. Two rounds of antibiotics later, I’m feeling much better.

From Jason:

i've been following your hair chronicles online. what's the process for getting dreads? i'd always heard, "let it get really nappy. don't wash it. maybe pour some coca-cola on it." i saw your flickr pics, but i still don't understand what the hairdresser does. care to explain (either on the blog or in an email) professionally-done dreads? i'm just curious.

also, tell me about your job.

Well now, for question one, Jason, let’s start with a visual aid:

Sumner has delicately partitioned my hair into agreed upon segment size and locations. He then used a very fine toothed metal comb and back-combed my hair while occasionally twisting the hair slightly. You’re a boy, do you know what back-combing is? It’s also what girls would call “teasing” the hair, basically. Back-combing is combing the hair in reverse direction toward the scalp to intentionally knot or tangle the hair together. In that picture, Sumner is pushing my hair toward my scalp while hanging on to a foundation piece of hair to give it something to knot to.

After six hours of this tedious process, my neck was exhausted from the constant tension of the pull on my hair. But I was not nearly as exhausted as Sumner, whose hand was numb by the end of the day.

To complete the dreadlock-ification, Sumner used a special beeswax blend to put into my hair and help it take shape. He put a little wax on his palms, which heated it up, then rolled each dread in his hands, just like the way your kids will soon roll Play-Doh into strings.

Dreadlocks are washable. Sumner didn’t recommend a particular brand, but said chemical and conditioner-free shampoos were the way to go. Nothing that would leave deposits on the hair. I first chose Dr. Bronner’s Castille Soap in Baby formula for its absence of perfumes and dyes. Plus I knew from experimenting with that soap before that Dr. Bronner’s dried out my hair and made it stick together. I didn’t really dig it though for washing the dreads. Just didn’t feel right.

I turned to dreadheadhq.com for products. I ordered the beeswax balm Sumner used, the leave-in locking spray that encourages knots, and, my new favorite, dreadlock shampoo. I love the shampoo more than I love the other products. I feel so clean after I use it, even better than Dr. Bronner’s. My scalp feels fresh and my dreads smell like nothing but clean hair.

As you know, I’ve been on bed rest for the broken leg for a few weeks now. I got my locks nine days before I broke my leg, and bed rest has not been kind to my locks. They look pretty scraggly. It takes at least three months for the dreadlocks to really lock and not look crazy, but bed rest has set me back by about three months, I think. I have a penumbra of loose hairs all over the place. In a ponytail, I just look scraggly. Hair down, I look homeless and possibly insane.

I’ve never heard the “pour coke on it” urban myth, but in high school when I first wanted to dread my hair, everyone said linseed oil. Can you imagine that? That’s a freakin wood varnish. In college, not knowing what I was doing, I tried to dread someone’s hair. We started out with wee tiny braids and then he didn’t wash his hair at all. He got dandruff from the pressure on his scalp from the braids, and it turned out he had oily hair so the braids kept coming out anyway. We abandoned that after a pretty short time. I don’t know how everyone in the world gets dreads, but so far the only results I have seen have been from back-combing. And Sumner has quite the portfolio of clients.

I would also conjecture—not based on experience or fact at all—that not washing your hair and letting it get nappy wouldn’t work. It seems like oily hair isn’t that good for dreads since it ends up lubricating the hair, thereby relaxing the dread knots. Plus, the dreads would have no rhyme or reason as to size and location and would look mighty silly, in my opinion.

I hope that answers question one enough. As for question two, I’m typed out and I’ll get back to that one. Or that two.

All apologies

I have a Q&A request to reply to, but I'm not feeling so good. I had a doctor's appointment this past Friday to see if I had a blood clot in the broken leg. I don't, so that's good news. Two bad news though. They put me in a new removable cast and it weighs a ton and it's huge and hard to drag around behind me. I'm supposed to go back to work this Tuesday, but, Dear God, the thought of lugging my leg around the library exhausts me just to think of it. Second bad news: the doctor is afraid I'm not healing right. I get a full CT scan of my ankle region on Tuesday to determine if I need surgery.

I'm just exhausted from all this. Nothing has gone wrong (yet), but just the physical act of going to the doctor's then the ultrasound clinic wore me out for days. Or my body is just catching up from all the nights I stayed up too late reading romance novels, I don't know. Either way, I'll catch up soon.

Pace yourself

Matthew gets up every morning, walks the dog and feeds her, feeds me breakfast, then goes to work. On his lunch break, he comes home and lets the dog out and feeds me lunch. In those in between times, we debate what to do with the dog. Crate or let her roam? She can’t get into the bed with me because she’s too heavy and rough to be near my broken leg. If she’s out, though, she really wants to be near someone, so she tries sneak attacks on the bed which result in yelling, or, she walks her route.

When she’s not in her crate, and one of us is gone, she is really lonely for the missing person. On days when we leave the dog out of her crate, she starts in my bedroom, looks at me and begs, then walks down the stairs, sniffs the door, cries for Matthew, then comes back upstairs to cry at me and beg to get in the bed. She repeats this cycle ad infinitum.

She annoys me so much that I’ve basically conscripted her to the crate if Matthew’s not here, no matter how short the time is. Her toenails clacking up and down the stairs and her nose whines are enough to drive me nuts. Today I agreed to leave her out, and she seems to have actually laid down to rest somewhere out of earshot. It’s nice when we get a peaceful family working like this.

Frustration island

My dad asked me tonight if I had been blogging about my experiences having a broken leg. I told him, “There’s not a lot to say. It hurts, I can barely get around, I’m confined to the second floor of our house, and I fall down every time I try to practice walking with crutches.” I think I’ve covered all those topics so far. If not, there you go; you’re up to date.

My friends who know I’m a frustrat(ing) novelist all ask, “How is work on your great American masterpiece coming along?” I know how much they mean well, but, honestly, it stings a bit. I am frittering away my bed-ridden hours watching endless movies, back to back. I’m up to at least 20 movies, over the course of exactly 8 days (as of writing this, not as of posting). Does that tell you how uninspiring having a broken leg is for me? I can’t even read, and god knows that has always been my refuge. No, TV is my snuggle blankie now.

I tried to act out the movie Rear Window and spy from the window right by my pillow. All I can tell you is that the three palm trees need their dead branches trimmed and the back fence neighbors do a very poor job of taking care of their yard. I quit looking after two attempts and no changes. Matthew told me he keeps expecting to come home and find me sitting at the window with a pair of binoculars and ask him to come quick and look. Nope. It’s nothing like Chicago here, where I could have seen a million things from my window (if I had one to look out of), but, here, it’s just pretty quiet and slow. No crime to spy on and investigate.

This did just give me a thought, though. Maybe I’ll start a photo project. If I can get the screen up on my rear window, maybe I can document my three palm trees at different times of day and over the course of the season or something. Or maybe that’s mega dull. Do palm trees ever change? Are they evergreen? I’m too new to Florida to understand nature’s intricacies. I always thought I was a good Southern girl, but then I moved really south and discovered how Midwestern I actually was.

I did have one nature surprise two nights ago. Three times, several minutes apart, around three a.m., I thought I heard an owl. But I thought I must be nuts—are there such things as palm tree owls? I thought owls were like an endangered Pacific Northwest anti-logging campaign or something. Today, Matthew confirmed my observation. He came back from the evening dog walk and told me “Two interesting things just happened on our walk.” The first was irrelevant and involved a near-fight with our neighbor’s cat, who smartly retreated rather than take on her majesty, hunter supreme, Blanche DuBois Wy. The second was relevant: “I just heard two hooty-owls,” he said, with his eyes wide in his silly way.

I told him, “You mean there really are owls? I thought I heard one the other night, and I thought I must be going nuts.”

“No, it was real.”

Then I admitted I thought owls were Pacific Northwest etc, etc. He assured me that owls are everywhere.

“So, what are they? Are they Palm Tree Owls?”

He didn’t think so.

In truth, I recognize that there are also an abundance of large, ancient, delightfully crusty live oaks here in St. Augustine. They are probably Delightfully Crusty Live Oak Owls. I also imagine that, like the squirrels here, they have adapted to have smaller bodies because of some sort of heat ratio aspect thing. Thermo-dynamics, you know.

I guess I should turn the blog’s attention to matters of laughing at the injured Ms. Wy. O, if only our heroine’s misadventures were more humorous, instead of calamitous.

Whenever I decide to test walk my crutches for the fifteen feet from my sick bed in the cat’s room to the bathroom, I make sure Matthew is here, and I make sure I’m feeling mightily strong. Without fail, I get exactly half-way between destinations and lose my balance. I fall flat, splat on the floor. Since the crutches actually slow my descent, I have time to swing my right bad leg out of the way, and I generally land on my back, which I assure hurts much less than landing on my front. Matthew comes running up the stairs, poor guy, and I lay like a frier hen laughing hysterically on the floor. “I’m not hurt, Matthew; I just can’t get up.”

The carefully executed maneuver necessary to lift me off the ground is difficult and awkward, you know, whole right-foot-can’t-touch-the-ground thing. I like to push off the floor with my right arm, and have Matthew pull me from the left arm while I push up with my left leg. I swear my left leg has done more in the past eight days than it has since I was in high school and I liked to rock climb.

The other confluence of Special Christine Circumstances is that I have combined forgetfulness with my injury and become more illogical than usual. I can’t walk five feet on crutches, but I promised my boss I’d be back to work at the end of ten days (I reneged on that promise today). I carefully devised an excellent plan to use the night librarian’s designated parking spot as my handicapped spot so that I could be right by the door, then remembered it was my right leg that is broken and I can’t drive anyway (I hatch this plan anew every two days.). I also think how fun it would be to sew since I have all this time off, then I remember that I use my right foot for the machine controller, and I have no ability to press with my right foot (I also think of this one every two days or so.). Then I thought that maybe I could get my library friend who lives in a retirement community to see if any of her neighbors could loan me a wheelchair for a few weeks, then I realized I’m a germaphobe, and I hate touching things other people have touched, and it would take a lot of sani-wipe-downs before I’d be able to touch it without rubber gloves. It’s a difficult, circular logical place to live in Christine’s mind. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve had the brilliant plan to drive to get Oreo cookies only to remember half-way off the bed that I can’t drive (or walk).

I actually had a painful stumble today, which was weird because it was absolutely the least dramatic of my broken-leg-fall-downs yet. I was getting off the bed, pulling myself up with my old lady walker. This requires getting the left foot firmly on the floor to push, and all four legs of the walker squared up on the floor and perpendicular to my body. As I push/pull up, I then have to swing my right leg behind me for safety, ballast, protection, what have you. Critical failure achieved at push/pull moment. I didn’t have my left foot down properly and it gave out on me. Since my right foot wasn’t behind me yet, this meant I pitched forward onto the walker and wrenched my right foot. Ouch. How does a person bend her leg out of whack again when it’s already in a cast? Easy answer: That person is Christine Wy There you go, I’ve just written a riddle for you. Feel free to use it at cocktail parties; everyone will love it.

So there I am. Day seven feeling like one day I’ll walk again, despite my continued failure with crutches, day eight feeling like I’ve just re-injured all those sore tendons and muscles. I count my blessings that it doesn’t feel anything like when I first broke my leg, so I’m praying I haven’t done damage to the bone healing process.

I guess there really is more to my story, like Dad thought. I can actually think of a million things more I’d like to say, but I feel like I’ve said enough for now.

Not to end on a downer, but I’m lonely. If you have my number, call me during the day, just for a quick chat. If you don’t have my number, you know how to e-mail me to get it. Of course if you call while I’m taking Tylenol 3, it’s a toss-up whether you’ll get fun, wacky Christine, or whether you’ll get “I’m a zombie let me sleep now” Christine. The choice is yours, if you’re up to the challenge.

Also, let me know in comments or by e-mail if you’re interested in all the movie reviews I’ve been writing. I’ve tried to keep them short and sweet, and I’ll publish them here if anyone cares.

Ta-ta Christine lovers.

Updated on the busted leg

So far I've been called "gimpy," "cripple," and "Hop-Along." I'm keeping "Hop-Along," I like that one.

Having a broken leg sucks for sooo many reasons, where shall I ever begin?

My pain pills have been cut off. They said I should take Ibuprofen. I went from Tylenol 3 to Ibuprofen. Does that seem right to you? Not me. My foot doesn't generally ache like it did before, but now all the twisted muscles and tendons that got injured in the fall are chiming in with their own special chorus. And no Tylenol 3. So I can say the pain has improved somewhat. But definitely not enough.

Also, the rest of my body is killing me. I have to use a walker to get the ten feet from the spare bedroom to the bathroom. This means keeping my balance on one leg while pushing the walker ahead, then using my upper body to pull and my left leg to hop to close the distance. My wrists are killing me and my poor left knee isn't very appreciative either. I have been keeping myself too dehydrated probably, just to avoid the grueling trip to the bathroom.

I'm also missing out on all the action that's happening on the first floor. I could be getting my own cheese crackers, but, no, instead i have to beg for three slices of cheese to be carried up at earliest convenience.

Forget the outside world. Even now, with my window closed, I can hear all the fun of the annual neighborhood street festival. Now come on, that's cruel. I should totally be there. And I'm going on a rampage if they have funnel cakes and I'm not getting one.

I'm also incredibly dirty. I'm actually ashamed to admit this, even though I'm the first person to laugh at how gross I am. It's next to impossible to bathe, and even then I don't feel particularly clean. I'm also in too much pain to go looking for clean clothes every day so so far I'm managing a semi-clean ensemble every two or three days. Now remember that I'm spending 24 hours in these grubby clothes, including meal times, and think about how much this adds to my misery.

The good news is that I'm catching up on all my really questionable movie watching, and my boss dropped off four romance novels from the library to keep me entertained. Bless his heart. I put on a bra in case he wanted to come up and say hi, but he was in a hurry. I was sad because I wanted him to see me suffering.

My current dilemma is unpaid sick leave versus temporary disability. And I can't get in touch with the HR dept. Am I staying out too long and using all my sick and vacation days? Or do I need to stay out longer so I can qualify for temporary disability?

The only happy person in all this is my cat, Loki. Since I'm in his bedroom, he gets to spend 24 hours a day with me, and he couldn't be happier. Right now he's laying on his back, curled up to my bad leg, his feet up in the air, looking at me with one eye--sheer feline bliss, let me tell you. When the dog comes into the room to check out what's going on, the cat takes defensive battle station in preparation that he might need to defend Fort Mommy from canine intruder.

And yep, that's all the excitement. The pain, the gore, the dirt, the dilemmas, the animals--that's my world.

Feelin the love from y'all,
Christine

which hurts more? broken heart or broken leg?

I just sent this e-mail out to my friends. I'm too lazy (high on pain pills) to write a real story for my blog. The irony is that I wrote to whine about coffee, finished my coffee, then... you'll see.

ok, so you probably know me well enough to know that i'm a fabulous klutz. really, i
like to refine it to an art form, which i will demonstrate to you now.

monday was one of my days off. i was leisurely drinking coffee, finished a novel i was reading, and i was getting ready to take a shower. i decided to finish one last tiny little art project before i got in the shower. just one last thing. i went upstairs to get the accessory i needed, and then i went back downstairs to finish the project.

except i didn't descend the staircase properly.

somewhere around stair two or three, i lost my balance or slipped or something and went careening toward the floor. it all happened so fast, i can't even tell you the cause or how it happened or where i landed. what i can tell you is that i broke my leg.

yep. i told you i'd take clumsiness to a new level, didn't i?

it turns out i broke my tibia, which it turns out is the load bearing bone in the ankle, so i can't put even the wee tiniest pressure on my foot. i was told by the orthopedic (bone doctor guy, however you spell it), that i was quite lucky. the break was millimeters away from requiring extensive reconstructive surgery. so i guess in all my bad luck, i've got some good luck in there somewhere too.

i am manditorily off work for a week. i have been temporarily confined to the second
floor of our house for that week because the bathroom is upstairs and i'm REALLY bad at crutches. plus i just shouldn't move and all that stuff.

so i have my crutches to limp around on, and my health insurance bought me a walker, so all in all i'm doing ok. the only problem is getting back to work. my weekend job isn't very hard, but my weekday job is in a tiny cramped office, and i don't see how i can work on any of my projects there.

i would also really like to shower, but it's going to be a two person thing, involving garbage bags and duct tape.

matthew's being a saint. i feel terrible, like i'm taking advantage of him, but, i just can't move without terrible pain.

oh yeah, you probably want to know if it hurts. yes, it does. i know that there are
worse pains in the world and worse broken bones, but i'm in pain. i don't really know how to describe it, except that it feels like i broke my tibia near the ankle. and that's what it is.

the best part of the story: for some reason they fast-tracked me in the emergency room. i didn't have to sit in my courtesy wheelchair and wait forever while sniffling people went ahead of me. it went fast for emergency room treatment. my actual dr. was a jerk though. he was like "you broke your tibia. we don't put on casts here. you have to make an appointment with one of these doctors to get a cast. good luck." everyone else was super nice though, so he was just balancing them out i guess.

and to conclude, they gave me very few very weak pain pills, so i'm depressed about what i'm gonna do when the pills run out. my leg had better feel less painful by then!

finally, i'm writing this on pain medication, so i hope it makes sense and there aren't too many typos.

send me air hugs and love. and pray that i don't get bedsores since only one position is comfortable!

your injured friend,
christine wy

Coffee, Smithers

I'm so unmotivated today that I can't even make coffee, even though that's the only thing that will cure me.

I had a really bad experience with my new St. Augustine psychiatrist. He basically accused me of being a drug addict in the lobby of his practice. Re-read that sentence and think about how unprofessional that is.

I've been depressed since moving to Florida (please insert no jokes, I really do love it here), so I went to a psychiatrist for psychiatric help. I only sort of got help. Most of what I got was fear and shame, and I'm terrified to go back to him if he's going to keep violating HIPAA laws and yell at me in his lobby about my legally prescribed medication.

I haven't slept well since seeing him. When he decided what medication I should have, I was too afraid to contradict him, even though it was contrary to my current medical regimen. It's just not the right medicine, and now I can't sleep.

I'm miserable from the no sleep and the medication, and I'm miserable from the way he treated me, but I don't see an easy solution. I called him and left him a voice mail where I admitted to being afraid of him and that it was the wrong medication, but what will he say? What will he do? Will he yell at me for being a drug addict again and then make fun of me to his staff?

I'm working on getting a new doctor, but somehow I foresee a commute to Jacksonville in my near future. Supposedly scary unprofessional guy is the best game in town.

As a slightly related aside, I dreamt I was in Chicago this morning as I woke up. I woke thinking, "I'll go to the store and buy some Fred Soll's incense, and that will make me happy." Then it dawned on me that I was in St. Augustine and I'd have to order Fred Soll's off the internet.

It's the weird things like that that make me miss Chicago. Not the beautiful skyscrapers, not the green river, not my wonderful old neighborhood. It's incense and that shop in China Town where you can eat Lotus Cakes. It's Whole Foods house brand soy milk and almond butter. It's walking to my psychiatrist's office after work where I was treated kindly and professionally. They add up, the little odd moments that I took for granted.

St. Augustine may be it's own paradise, but its charm doesn't get me almond butter.

A little cat tale

Loki Cat loves black things and luggage. Black things make perfect sense: he's a black cat, and when he nestles into his black nest, he's pretty much invisible until he deigns to turn and meet your eyes. I'll tell ya, nothing will scare you quite as much as a black cat in a dark corner laying on that black t-shirt you threw on the floor when he turns and gives you the "what now, human?" evil eye gaze. Makes me jump outta my skin every time. Right now, the cat's favorite black thing is a vinyl bookbag/purse I left on the floor accidentlly. He has conquered it as his own.

But the real draw for Loki Cat is luggage. Man that cat loves a good suitcase. You leave your suitcase unattended for five minutes, and he is either in it or on it. You think that suitcase was put away, but it turned out that the cat could get into the closet, and when you withdrew the suitcase, it was covered in fine, black fuzz. The black cat struck again.

Out of some misguided animal (enabling) generosity, I've left the cat a few treats. I didn't put away that black vinyl purse so he could have it to lay on, even though I don't quite see the draw. And I didn't put away my suitcase after the last time I used it so that he could have a nice bed nest to sleep on.

I don't know why I'm such a sucker for that cat, but he just hits me in the right spot in my heart. I don't want my black purse covered in fur, and I don't want to have to vacuum my suitcase the next time I need to use it. But, there you have it, the cat has possession of both.

And there you go, Loki, a little story about you.

Bitter prize

I’ve confessed to loving romance novels in the past. I love to be transported to a place where all the men have handsome, deep eyes like liquid amber pools in which the perfectly manicured heroine finds herself drowning. It’s fun. Good, mindless fun. And besides, having a Masters degree in literature, I’ve read more serious fiction than most would in a lifetime. Not bragging, just saying is all.

Enter the lush promise of the romance novel. I am promised to be transported to a place of perfect imperfection, where quirks are charming, and no one has as many nervous tics as David Sedaris. Women inherit dilapidated country homes from great aunts and their amazingly handsome and strong neighbor turns out to be a talented carpenter, willing to work for free for the promise of just one, perfect, rosebud kiss. Robust business men who always seem to have time to workout but never time to look for love suddenly discover that the woman who volunteers at his pet charity is a blossom waiting to be plucked by his dappled gray eyes.

Until God comes along.

Walking the dog the other morning, I discovered a box of books set out on the curb. “Score! Free books!” I shouted, really hoping no one would notice me in my dog-walking outfit, yelling to myself. I rooted through the books, and they were his and hers. Half the books were Michael Crichton and his ilk, and the other half were florid pink-covered romance novels. Pay dirt.

I picked the pinkest cover to read first, The Healing Season. It promised to be a period piece set in London around 1815, involving a scandalous stage actress and a staid surgeon. Very inviting. I read and read, waiting for the love connection to blossom, but they always missed each other at every turn. As I got near the end of the book I realized two things: 1. I’d gone too far to quit; 2. This was unrequited love. A person—a normal person—does not read a romance novel for unrequited love. I railed against the heavens that I had been so abused.

And then I discovered the real plot. The doctor developed an inoperable brain tumor; the actress entered a brutal arrangement with a man who promised to get her headline roles in London’s respectable theater. Prayer—PRAYER!—saved them both. Through the power of prayer, the brain tumor healed itself, after the protagonist found himself filled with the Holy Spirit. Escaping her torturer, the stage actress was taken in by a religious mission, and she too found redemption in Jesus’ love. Thus, the two were redeemed and made whole by God, suddenly on the last page of the novel, able to wed chastely and wholly in the eyes of the Church.

Boring! No bodice ripping there. In fact, that was the exact opposite of bodice ripping, I’d say.

OK. On to garbage book two. Trouble in Paradise. “Is this a religious title?” I wondered. But the dust jacket assured me it involved a bohemian artist who moved to the country to write fiction who swoons to her cowboy neighbor, ensnared by his limpid brown eyes. Lied to again! Regarding our authoress, on page 21, “For months, she’d felt God calling to her to put her faith into words on paper, to tell stories that would exemplify God’s power over evil.”

Who is this cruel trickster who brought me tantalizing promises of morality abandoned for love, but instead delivered love abandoned for morality? How could they do this to me?

I’m going to offer the books to my sister’s church. After that, back to the trash. At least The Healing Season was well-written, but it left me bitter that no women’s garments were rendered asunder in fits of passion. Ah well. I guess I need to visit the “morally bankrupt” section of the bookstore.

Owning the hair

I know I keep harping on this, but it's been the biggest change on my mind lately. More on the dreads.

I love America's Next Top Model. There's always the bitchy one, there's always the clueless one who's so beautiful she rocks without trying, there's the one that *could* be talented but just isn't, there's the one with the bad attitude, there's the one that has *too* good an attitude. Love it. The drama of these personality clashes--a bunch of girls locked together in a house for weeks--rules. Girls, bring your cattiness, your slumber party, your artificial alliances against your enemies, and, most of all, be ready for bare knuckles boxing.

Then there's the makeover episode. Every girl gets a new look. Some are excited and feel honored to be styled by what's-his-name Pavel, and then there are the girls who think they look fierce just how they are... and then, there's the girls who HATE what happens to their heads and fight it. They never look good and they can't recover from the ego blow because they never learn to live with their hair.

With the response I got from some people who are nameless, I felt like the girl who couldn't learn to live with her hair. I felt like my ego was damaged, and I couldn't help but be disppointed at how ugly I was when I saw the look of disdain in their eyes.

But their eyes aren't my mirror now. I'm not sure how many days it's been since I got the dreads, but, you know, they're my dreads and they're what I wanted. I chose this. Pavel didn't choose this for me, I did.

And now I feel great ownership of my head. This is what I look like. I'm nappy headed. People may not like it as much as I do, but it's my hair and I'm wearing it. I haven't been using scarves to hide it, and I haven't been using rubber bands to tame it. I've been letting them fly, free. And as conflicted as I feel about my self-image and my need to be accepted by others, for now, I feel great being me and letting my hair be itself. We're going to get through our awkward growing in stage together, and we'll make it, I swear.

As Tyra Banks would say, "You need to own your new look."

PS Someone on Team Christine just said my hair looked like "nascent dreadlocks." Perfect description.

Hair as interpretation of self

For the past four days, my dreadlocks have made me kinda grumpy. They didn’t hatch as glorious and beautiful as I had imagined. I guess that dreadlocking takes time. I’m not really the queen of beauty patience, which puts my endeavor into a pretty questionable no-man’s land. Buyer’s remorse? Or commit?

Today, the answer is commit. I came to work without a headwrap, looking scraggly and ragamuffinly, and I was proud. I am taking a chance, and, maybe it won’t work, but I’m willing to step out there and see what happens.

Putting myself out there? That’s big. It’s huge. Taking a chance on my already weak self-esteem by road-testing cuteness questionability, it’s a big risk. I’m generally more into risk management, not risk-taking.

Cuteness risk challenges my ability to accept me for me. It challenges me to define myself not by my body, but by my, I don’t know, personality or something. My ethereal self.

I have also turned myself into walking performance art, as my hair evolves and takes new shapes. Each little strand of poking-out stick hair makes the viewer assess, art or folly?

When you see me next, you decide. But don’t tell me, keep it to yourself. I’m tired of the “it’s cute” faction versus the “I hate it” faction. I need to hear my own voice, not theirs.

Herbert Asbury is killing me

I picked up Herbert Asbury's 1927 novel "The Gangs of New York: An Informal History of the Underworld" through interlibrary loan. I have until Nov. 30 to finish reading this book and return it, as there are no renewals on ILL.

I'm dying. This book is killing me, not like the Bowery B'hoys would have, but, slowly, from boredom and tediousness.

The novel is written in that affected post-Victorian way of bad travellogues. And, really, that's what it is, a travellogue through the underworld of New York.

Books of this period were meant to be read slowly, in the evening, by gas light (if one was lucky, right?), after one's day of terrible toiling. I sympathize with those hoistoric readers, because I am certianly toiling terribly over this novel. I can stomach about ten pages before I become so numb that I have to put it down again to go read fashion slams on Go Fug Yourself.

After having the book for two or three weeks, I've read 68 pages of 373. How am I ever going to get through this thing on time? I'm going to have to buy it online or something, because this is one tome calculated to kill--with tediousness!

Supposedly, Asbury based the book on facts, but claims it is a novel meant for entertainment, and fails to cite any of his source material. He claims it is real crime in one breath, and claims it is fictional in the next. Either way, he's killing me dead.

The novel drags, moving non-linearly from character to character, out of time sequence totally, randomly mentioning at odd times tidbits about the histories of the Fifth and Fourth Wards and Five Points gangs. This could be a good book. Loitering in the musty underground passageway of this book is an actually interesting, entertaining, and informative piece of work. I guess that's what Martin Scorcese tried to do with Asbury's jumble, but I haven't actually seen the movie to know for sure.

No matter the hidden gem in this novel, I don't foresee finishing the book in time for the ILL deadline. See? I'm even blogging rather than read this damn book. Time to go back, back to the Daybreak Boys at Slaughterhouse Point, I guess.

Christine, Christine, so contrary

Contrariness update one.

I’ve been wanting dreadlocks for a while. I decided that when we moved to Florida, I would assess my job situation, then go for professionally upgraded hair. Matthew and I discussed it, and he felt that not only would it enhance my already high cuteness factor, but that I also have the type of job where I get to be eccentric and it’s cute (god bless being the only archivist on campus). I told my library work friend about my plan, and she went a little bananas. “Dreadlocks are disgusting. They’re dirty. You know you can’t wash your hair, right? There’s parasite in Florida that you don’t know about. You could get infected.” She then showed me a picture of her daughter at approximately age 12 with the rattiest looking dreadlocks I’ve seen since my hippie days. “See how bad it looks?”

What happens to Christine when she hears “No”? Her brain turns it into “I’m doing it right NOW, sucka foo!!!”

I like this library chick, and her daughter’s cool, but there are a couple of things working in my favor that didn’t seem to happen for her daughter. I’m having my dreads professionally done. I know that you can wash them and that they don’t have to be dirty. I know that they don’t have to be ratty and that they can be smooth and kinda classy lassy, just like me. I know that one doesn’t need to worry about Florida parasites if one is clean. Eww.

The earliest date I can get my dreadlocks is Saturday night, though. I’ve been waiting a week! How can I stand the burning pressure of the need for defiance? And guess who’s going to be the first person at work to see my dreads… the anti-dread friend. I’m so excited and eager that I actually dreamt about it this morning. I don’t remember the dream, just that there were dreadlocks and I was happy. This is one thing I’m not doing just to be contrary, she just happened to accelerate the plan.

I also just realized that I wasn’t going to tell my family, and if they *actually* read my blog (doubtful), they’ll know my secret… The perk of living so far from home is that it’s easier to keep secrets.

Roach motel

We have roaches. There, I've said it. It's felt like a shameful secret, so I didn't want to admit it to anyone. But, we got roaches.

They came with the house, and we kind of figured they would, considering it' a 90-year-old house in the deep south. But these ain't no palmetto bugs. These are some seriously bad-ass mother fuckers. These are roaches that'll knife you for your apple if you don't leave them the core.

We don't leave food out. We don't try to feed the roaches, but, they're here, they live here. We had a fly swatter always on hand when we lived in Kentucky, because for some reason every time we opened the door a fly would come in with us. now we keep the fly swatter on permanent assignment in the kitchen.

Recently, I found a big old granddad prowling, looking for a fight, and I tried to squish him with the washcloth I had. Matthew heard me screaming "Die mother fucker!" and came running. My little washcloth was useless, and not matter how hard I squished, he just got up and walked away. Matthew grabbed the fly-swatter and said, "Stand back." He squished that thing dead like a pro.

My name is Christine Wy, and I have roaches. But man, Team Wy kills 'em every chance we get.

Well played, Gore

Oh, and by the way, this is how I really feel: kudos to you, Al Gore. You deserve the Peace Prize.

Pundits like to pre-analyze how posterity will view the historicity of political leaders. I won’t gauge George W. Bush. His father may enter the annals as “Father of George W. Bush,” not as a politico in how own right. George W. may come out as “igniter of escalated discord and instability in Middle East,” or, he may surprise us with a full-on “improver of Middle Eastern relations.” Personally, I’m rooting that he’s one of those totally historically forgettable presidents that you just have to memorize because he’s on the list. Only time and Houghton-Mifflin will tell.

Al Gore’s had a hard time getting people to listen to his own new groove after the electoral debacle. He’s talked, and his loyal followers have listened, but, in the U.S. political vacuum, it’s seemed like he was one dog barking into the wind of Republican corporate American flatulence. Gore’s Peace Prize momentarily freed me from the U.S. media bubble, and I realized, with awe, “there’s a whole world out there that pays attention to what smart Americans are doing.”

Thank you, Nobel Committee, for noticing the good in our country. I feel like Miss Kentucky in a beauty pageant where Miss Hawaii is expected to win: surprised and elated that someone noticed--they finally noticed!—that, hey, we’re amazing too, just not in the way you might have expected. I hope history feels that way about Gore, too. I want him recorded in textbooks as "the man the world recognized for changing our minds about the gravity of global warming."

Dealt a bad hand

I wonder what Al Gore has nightmares about. Does he dream of losing control of the electoral process, over and over, ad infinitum? Does he wake, sitting upright in bed, fists clenched, gritting his teeth, thinking “Not again!”? Does he dream that he’s lost his clothing on the way to the Supreme Court where he challenges the legality of George W. Bush’s presidency?

I told my friend last week that I never dream about being inappropriately naked. Apparently, I lied. Last thing this morning, I dreamt over and over, rotating scenarios, that I had appeared somewhere important naked. I don’t recall ever having this dream before, but, in disturbing tableaux, I was forced into situations where I must act as arbiter, mediator, or other authority in front of an audience. In the last scenario, I sat behind a diner table, and I tried to scooch down to hide my nudity. It was useless, though, because my moderation of the debate between two warring political factions was being televised, and CNN commentators seemed to be focusing on my inappropriate attire, not on our important progress toward peaceful negotiations.

I’m feeling more Al Gore right now, though, where this waking nightmare is a shameful daylight truth that one tries to escape like the pall of a rain cloud.

I lose at Uno. Over and over, I lose at Uno. Hand after hand gets dealt, and I lose. I don’t remember ever being a winner at Uno, not even as a kid. As a kid, the competition amongst my cousins provided the fun, not the winning. As an adult, I honed a competitive bitterness that spurs me to win.

But I can’t win at Uno.

I feel like Al Gore, making TV appearances about the importance of my new think tank work, winning Nobel Peace Prizes for my advocacy on global warming, but always followed by the acrid taint of “Hey, he’s that guy that lost to a retard in a presidential election. God he must be stupid to lose to a retard!” And, let’s face it, he’s lost credibility. Yeah, we get that everything he says is true, and we know from Futurama that he’s funny, but, I mean, he’s that guy that lost to the retard, right?

Uno, Al Gore, dreams, retards—how’s all this stupid stuff make sense? Uno is a retarded game that children play, yet it’s my living nightmare that I can never win. I grit my teeth and clench my fists: “Not again!” I give up on you, Uno. I won’t challenge any more popular vote versus Electoral College versus disenfranchisement of voters just to lose another hand. You taunt me like a recurring naked-at-the-high-school reunion dream. I get it. You win, Uno. Now, leave me alone and let me start my think tank to rehabilitate women’s rights in the Middle East.

Ego boost with a side of snide

I’ve felt fat and old-looking for the past couple of years. I felt like, once I started gaining weight, I started looking my age. Few of the women in my family actually look their age, so I felt kind of like a family genetics beauty reject. (Many of the women are overweight, so that makes me feel like part of the club.)

Working on a college campus, I’ve been mistaken for a student more than once. Today I went to the campus coffee shop for my ghetto latte (espresso shots with milk added later from the condiments bar). I pulled out my debit card for my $1.85 drink, and I said to the cashier, “I know this is so sad; I have no cash.”

She said, “Don’t you have any money left on your student ID?”

“Oh no, I’m not a student. I work here.”

She pointed to the food court, “Here?”

“No, in the library.”

“You’re not a student?”

“No, I’m staff.”

“Really?”

“Well, yes,” I said, getting nonplussed by her insistence that I couldn’t be old enough to work here.

Really, though, I was deeply flattered and I even blushed. “OK,” I thought, “maybe I don’t look that fat and old.”

Returning to my post at the weekend reference desk, I settled in with a book and my ghetto latte. A student approached. “Are you a student worker? I need help from a librarian.” High hopes for the look of eternal youth dashed, I assured the young man that I had my MS in Library Science and that I was a “real librarian.”

Turned out he was just a little crass, not stupid, so I didn’t end up totally hating him for the mistake, but the same student ID confusion boosted my ego and shamed me. A hackneyed cliché like “double-edged sword” is regrettably appropriate here. I suppose I should take the blessing of youthful appearance as a compliment, no matter how it’s delivered.

Or maybe it’s just my acne that causes the confusion.

Tiny frogs

After all the rain we've had in St. Augustine, and all the standing water that just won't recede, we've had tadpoles swimming around in our little swamps in the middle of streets and teeming in sidewalk sinkholes. Now they've hatched. Riding my scooter today, I chased away throngs of the tiniest little baby frogs, newly emerged from tadpole stage, hopping on their panicked way. I think they're adorable. It almost makes me wish we had a little rain pond in our yard so I could add tiny frogs to our tiny lizard population

Answer key

I had a professor at the University of Kentucky who studied psychological effects of physical spaces on people. I know that sounds weird, but she had a great example:

In your house, a light-bulb burns out. It’s a special light-bulb that you don’t have in the house, plus it’s in a really weird place and you’d need to get out the ladder to change it, and it has one of those glass shades over it that you’d have to unscrew… So you put off changing the light-bulb. You don’t get around to it because it’s complicated and when you’re at home you want things simple. It makes sense; it’s one of those annoying chores you just don’t want to even remember to do.

But then you walk past the light switch. You know the light-bulb is burned out. But you turn on the light switch anyway. Every time you walk past the light switch, no matter how many times you do it, you turn on the light switch. And each time you say to yourself, “Duh! Why am I so stupid? I know the light-bulb is burned out.”

And that’s a psychological effect of a physical space. Your environment, the light switch you use several times a day every day you’ve lived in that house, has conditioned you to respond in a certain way. In this case, you responded by flipping a switch.

At my old job, I needed a set of keys to get into the restroom, and I always had them in my pocket. I worked there for three years, and several times a day five days a week, I would open the bathroom door with my set of keys.

At my new job, I need a set of keys to get into my office, and I always have them in my pocket. As I walk to the bathroom, I reach back into my pocket and get out the key to my office. I hold the key to bathroom door, and my mind somersaults while my brain remembers, “Duh, you don’t need a key to open this bathroom door.”

I’ve never been caught holding my key to an unlocked bathroom door, but I’m embarrassed by it every time. Each time my brain flip-flops, I go back to the old hallway and see the marble floors and the locked mahogany door, until I remember that now I work in an industrial-carpeted building with large public restrooms. I blush, thinking how silly and impractical it is to imagine these bathroom doors locked.

Culture shock from leaving Chicago strikes in even the smallest ways. Like in the keys that lock and unlock my brain.

Must find this QUICKLY!

Bacon Salt

Old Testament God is speaking to me

I hate mass forward e-mails. One I got required the sender to make a wish and then forward the "special" message to ten people to make it come true. I was a recipient. The addendum to the "special message" said, "Please make sure to forward this to 10 people. I have a VERY special wish I need to come true!" *

What I just received was, "I thought this was cool and I wanted to pass it on." It turned out to be "My Birth Verse," a Bible verse that is supposed to be tailored according to your birthday, as tabulated by a random computer somewhere on the interweb.

And my result....

Genesis 7:5 NIV
And Noah did all that the LORD commanded him.

I write about my non-compliance all the damn time. Really? The Bible thinks I should do all someone commands me to do? Hah! I scoff thee, Genesis. I do the OPPOSITE of all I'm COMMANDED to do! Take that, Lord, I'm coveting all over the place!

*Not to be a total bitch, but it turned out she wanted to get pregnant, and she gave birth to an ADD child with severe anger issues beginning at the tender age of three. Was that what she wished for? Yes, I guess i am a total bitch, but, so what, the Lord told me not to be, so that's what I'm going to do ;)