Awkwardly Social

I saw my dentist this morning and after banging on my teeth and various other ways to determine I am not a proud owner of an exposed nerve, she decided I have somehow managed to strain a jaw muscle.  Probably from yawning too hard.

That’s right, ladies and gents, I’m a hard yawner.  The hardest yawner around!  I bet if there was a Crossfit for yawning, I would own that place.

So basically, I have to continue with the soft foods diet (more cheesy grits for me! hooray!) and do “moist heat” for 30 minutes a day and take it easy on the yawning.  She showed me how to yawn, you guys.  I have to put my fist to my chin when I’m yawning to keep my mouth from opening fully so I don’t make my injury worse!  (Who has bad yawning form? ME. That’s who.)  We’re going to reassess in a month when I get a cleaning.  (Another item checked off my to do list!)

I feel like I dodged the jaw cancer bullet and ran right into the you’re an idiot who can’t even yawn right bullet. I’ll take the latter any day.

Or as my doctor said, “Benign, benign, benign.  I want you to know it was benign.  I really thought it was a Basal Cell, but nope, it was benign.  See you in ten years, kid.”

Have I told you how much I love my doctor?  He sent me 4 articles about the culture of fear in journalism and the decline in journalistic integrity.  We had been discussing both right before he had his P.A. slice of a good chunk of my skin last week.  He just popped them in the mail, thought I would be interested.  I read them on the bus this morning.

So, no more cancer worries for me at the moment.  Phew.  Now I have a whole lot of anxiety time that can be spent with on my regular old ‘my ankle is still swollen maybe it’s broken’ concerns, and, my ‘that guy keeps coughing, I hope my cells are strong enough to repel his obvious virus of death’ concerns.

I had this thoughtful post partially written about Lauren Greenfeld’s documentary, Thin, but I took a vitamin this morning and I forgot how fucking jacked up and flighty and excitable and smiley and twitchy and possibly invincible they make me.  What?  I can’t hear you. I’m crazy high on proper nutrition!

Is it possible that I’ve just been missing some important vitamin?  Is that why I’ve been so unable to leave the house?  I didn’t have my Extract of Green Tea?

Thanksgiving plans are changing by the moment.  I keep refreshing my e-mail in-box to make sure we don’t have two more (parental) guests coming.  Not that I’d mind smoking weed in front of one of my closest friend’s (straight laced except for the wine and the possible pharmaceuticals) parents, I just think everyone else might mind me being high in front of them.  Am I allowed to talk pot smoking on the internet?  Can I be arrested for this?  It’s totally medical.  I have a perscription.  For my back pain.  And nausea.  Associated with my back pain.  Or something.

Those last lines made me very sad.  Because one day I might actually need to get a perscription for medical marijuana because I might actually be very ill.  And how can one enjoy weed if one is very ill?  I hope if you need marijuana medically that you will be able to find it.  And the bullshit administration won’t try to keep you from smoking it.  War on drugs?  War on Terror?  How about war on broken hearts, and war on death?

I’m telling you, this Weight Smart Vitamin makes me feel awesome.  I think I should take proper nutrition more seriously.  I wonder if I’ll build up a tolerance to it.

What are you making for Thanksgiving?  Or are you only responsible for bringing the rolls?

I stayed home from work today.  I was sick all night last night and had to sleep on the couch.  Louie didn’t ask me to sleep on the couch, I did it voluntarily.  Sometimes it’s just too much to have someone laying next to me in bed, blissfully unaware that I cannot sleep.  It makes me angry that they can just lay there and breath.  Next to me.  It’s not like I can ask him to wake up and stop breathing, because, while I am crazier than you thought, I do understand how the human body works.  Breathing is required, sometimes I just hate hearing it.

I know I’m really deep in the weeds of crazytown when I can hear Louie chewing and he’s clanking his spoon against his teeth and slurping and smacking it in the bowl and he can still somehow hear the television when all I can hear is the throbbing in my brain from the anger that his chewing is causing me.  I sometimes have to leave the room until he finishes eating.  Yeah, I get that stirred up inside, I can’t think it makes me so mad.  (Punch myself in the leg mad, cut my eyes out with scissors mad.)  I think this is why some people need to be institutionalized, because the humans around them are completely unaware of the sounds they are making that are making the rare individuals that have to live with them want to scrape their faces off with sandpaper so that they can’t hear the spoon.  clank.  against. their.  god. forsaken. teeth.

Also I haven’t left the house today or showered, so the crazy is full blown.  I’m not in remission at the moment, I’ve relapsed.  someone send ear plugs.

I think I am (indicating a hair’s breadth distance with my index finger and thumb) this far away from throwing out my back.  I was making fun of the way Louie rolls over in bed (which is not so much rolling over as flipping over like a fish out of water) and I felt a little tug on my spine.  It has come to my attention that not only does being 30 suck, it means I can’t act like a big dork either, for fear of throwing out my back.

I got up this morning and managed to avoid tripping over my suitcase and my boots but in doing so also managed to tweak my back a little in the process.  So this means I’m going to have to clean my room.  Which I’m also afraid will throw out my back.

The night before last, I kept waking myself up with all the talking I was doing in my sleep and went to the couch so as not to disturb myself anymore…yeah, I was half asleep, don’t ask, and the next morning, my back was a little off.

What does a girl have to do to get herself bedridden around here?  And some pain pills!?  Or muscle relaxants!?  Come.  ON.

I’m hoping when my back finally does throw itself ‘out’ it won’t throw itself so far as to give me spina bifida.

I thought when I quit smoking my skin would magically return to being soft and wrinkle free.  I also thought that if I quit smoking and drank water I would look like a teenager again.  Not the teenager I used to look like, or any teenager I’ve ever known in real life, but a TV teenager (not an ‘Osborne’ teenager, but a FAKE tv teenager) and I would be poreless and pretty.

I was denying the thing sitting on my face.  I said to myself, “Oh look, a really big freckle.”  I have a freckly face when it is exposed to sun, which it hasn’t been for at least 5 years (moisturizer w/sunscreen ladies, you owe it to your face).  And then when I considered the fact that I am A. 30 and B. a victim of several serious sunburns in my active horsey youth, I realized that the aging isn’t ever going to go backwards.  I will not magically wake up wrinkle free one morning.  I will not see the ‘new freckle’ fade.  I am old, and I have the face to prove it.

Someone please make me a cocktail.

I’m trying to pull my head out of my ass and pretend like last week sort of didn’t happen.  I’m not sure why I don’t want to talk about my mood swings in this public forum, but obviously they are apparent.  It’s funny, I was going through the old T and A archives and thinking, wow, I was sad a lot.  I’m sure if I go through these archives, I’ll think, wow, I was really unsuccessfully trying to hide my unhappiness.  Nice subterfuge, T.  Way to go.  Then I’ll pat myself on the back and roll around in a pile of one hundred dollar bills and my butler will give me a fresh mojito and all will be well in the world.

I’ve never been diagnosed with Depression, big D, but I do have a family history, and I do know the symptoms incredibly well.  I have a good support system, so if I do start to entertain thoughts of hurting myself (which, I don’t) I think I’ll be able to get the professional help I need.  It’s just that at the moment, I can pretend I’m just a hypochondriac, and that while professional help and pharmaceuticals would be nice, they feel a little like a luxury.  I get out of bed, I wash my hair (when required) I don’t attempt suicide, but I’m unhappy.  Isn’t that what life after grad school is like for most people?  Why do I get to be a ’special case?’  I have crap health insurance that I pay for out of pocket (on my credit card, YAY George Bush, working hard for the people!), and it just doesn’t cover the fancy help I so richly deserve.

This isn’t a cry for help (Tavia and Mom, put the phone down.  I’m fine).  I just wanted to be honest and say that last week was tough.  Monday was tough.  Today, I’m ok.  Tomorrow - we’ll just have to wait and see.  And that’s fine.  One day at a time.

I have slightly squashed the idea of buying things in order to nest, but I still feel the need to feather our apartment. No one told me that as soon as I moved in with my boyfriend I would want to instantly have certain bits of information at my fingertips. Like, how to make the perfect brisket, how to clean hard to remove soap scum stains, how to tidy the living room without disturbing the ‘lived in’ feeling of the place, how to convince Louie to get rid of the milk crate book shelves… It has me wondering if all the years of watching day time television as a kid somehow set a small switch in my brain that would only go into the on position when I had a ‘man to take care of.’

I just spent the last 2 minutes looking at recipes for pasta salad. Which is a slight rebellion against Louie because he claims he’s never met a pasta salad he liked. On one hand, I want to prove to him that my pasta salad will convince him that he just had never met a girl like me before and on the other hand, if he doesn’t like it, I can pretend that I was just making it for myself all along. I only spent 2 minutes looking at the recipes because they were starting to freak me out with the talk of cups and cups of mayonaise required for “the perfect salad.” I have in addition to the hidden homemaker switch in my brain, a fat switch. I think my lack of cooking skills might have something to do with the fact that when I know exactly what I’m putting in something, I’m too afraid to eat it. I like to eat things with complete nutrional information on the side, so I know how big a serving is and how much I can consume before I have to go for a 2 mile run. But if I make something, god forbid, and I go ‘off book’ and make the recipe my own, I’m sure that I’ll gain 20 pounds and no one will love me and I’ll have to be carried out of the apartment on a sling that they use to move injured horses. Oh, I’m crazy. Don’t you worry about that. I never really knew how deep the fat fear went until I rejected three recipes in a row because of the 2 cups of mayonaise requirement. Also, in addition to being afraid of mayonaise, I’m a hypochondriac so now I’m pretty sure my cooking fears are in some way related to an undiagnosed eating disorder. Which, if you saw me shoveling chips and guacamole into my face on Wednesday night and pouring choclate syrup directly down my throat last night might make you think I’m a little more crazy than you previously suspected. There’s something to be said about women and control and how it relates to eating and cooking and homemaking and how all of it is somehow programmed and tied together and making us shitbag crazy.

I guess what I’m really asking is, if I substitute Miracle Whip for mayonaise, do you think the pasta salad will still taste delicious?

I’m still a little under the weather, and since we’re currently suffering from June Gloom here in SoCal, I’ll give you a little hint and say, that’s not any kind of weather you want to be under.

I spent the weekend baking brownies. Eating brownies. And… pouring a mixture of tea and cranberry juice down my front. On accident. It was glamorous, let me tell you. The dinner hosts were gracious and cooked some awesome food in spite of my cranberry tea mishap. I also got to meet a blogger who’s currently in school at Brooks School of Photography. So that was nice.

We also were gifted an enormous television set. A set so big I can read subtitles without Louie’s assistance while standing the farthest distance away from the television that our living room allows. I just can’t tell you how happy it makes me.

Hey, it’s Monday. woo.

I mentioned briefly yesterday that I love how Louie takes care of me when I’m sick because my parents didn’t really care. (They’re either both adamantly denying it to themselves right now or nodding in agreement…) Let’s just say my mom was an RN (that’s Registered Nurse for the lay people) and she was more of the Nurse Ratchett school than the Florence Nightingale school. I actually have this weird memory of watching One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and having my mom think that Nurse Ratchett just got a bad rap (but I’m pretty sure my sister and I just made that up…). Anyway, because I was kind of sickly, and kind of a drama queen, I never got more than a pan to puke in and advice to take a nap.

Last night though… I was feeling pretty crappy. My bones felt like they didn’t fit in my skin correctly, I was sure I had a fever (Louie isn’t so sure…) and mostly I just wanted to crawl under the house and die. Louie made me Theraflu, brought me water, took care of the television and basically waited on me hand and foot. Since I’m the kind of person that can barely hold it together when I’m not sick, when I’m sick the whole world just falls apart. Everything seems hard. Everything. Getting up to go to the bathroom? Hard. Turning of the television? Impossible.

To make matters even worse, I spent an hour and 15 minutes in traffic on my way home. For some reason my normal route was just not working. It was like National Drive Your Car Day or something. Because everyone was on the road, slowly driving.

Anyway, I’m feeling better this morning. I’ve probably done enough whining to last me through the weekend.