Oh, To Be Young Again!

Kids. Isn't it great how they love to roam barefoot, and frolic, and act goofy? Just look! Two of 'em put their feet together and it looks—from the knees down—as if it is only ONE child, twisting her legs in an unnatural way, and standing SO freakish and wonky that parental types only have to LOOK at the mock-pose to feel their own knees ache, and hips pop.

The thing is, though, that this WAS one child, twisting her legs in an unnatural way. Worse, it was MY child.



And worst of all? Now she knows HOW MUCH IT BOTHERS ME WHEN SHE DOES THIS.



Eww. I couldn't even do that when I WAS young!

FAIL

While ostensibly provided for the separatist transport of fresh fruits and vegetables, the plastic bags at the local warehouse grocery mart are truly a tool of the Devil. Oh, they come off their unholy roll just fine, but try to OPEN the little demons, and you'll discover a frustration exceeded only by that of attempting to lose "the last five pounds"—it seems like it should be a reasonably easy task, but in short, OH NO IT'S NOT.

So when I noticed that there was a neatly laminated photograph and single line of instruction taped underneath one of the many plastic-bag HELL GATES, I was more than a little intrigued. This appeared to be a new tactic, as not all such dispensers were so marked, but there did seem to be a wave of mini-instruction-manual labeling spreading amongst the evil flock. And as I bent closer to examine the directions carefully, the crinkly fiend in my hand hissed a plastic protest.

What the photo succinctly showed, the written instruction bluntly backed up: instead of rubbing my thumb and forefinger along the opening to the bag for condensed eternity (until they frictionally—and fractionally—separated, permitting me to shake the bag open), I was to take one of the flimsy, sprouting handles in one hand and one in the other and pull them apart.

"Huh," I huhhed aloud. Seems simple enough.

And so I did what I routinely exhort others to do ... I RTFM and then I did what it said, and though I certainly did not exert a Herculean force upon the fragile form of the demon seed of Plastic Satan, that little beast RIPPED RIGHT DOWN THE MIDDLE, rendering it utterly incapable of carrying so much as a single grape. And it STILL stayed seamlessly sealed in areas where it didn't rip.

WTF? I thought, staring like a toad blinded by the beam of a frog-hunter's flashlight. And then I belatedly looked around the crowded produce department, even as I hurried to cram the recalcitrant plastic bag—I swear the little bastard was GIGGLING—alongside a whole member of its treacherous family inside my cart. Smashed between the red Bell peppers and some apples, I swiftly silenced its imaginary crinkling snickers.

And then I went back to not following the directions; it takes a lot longer, but I can actually put stuff IN the bag when I'm finished.

Leeches Suck: Thinking Critically Doesn't

Back in the day—as in, when I was young and impressionable, and didn't even know that when you sent off for the gimmicky bullshit in the back of a comic book, you were supposed to send a check or a money order, NOT coins—I think I had an excuse for my stupidity naïveté stupidity. I mean, when you really don't know any better, that's a pretty good excuse for acting like you don't know any better.

But then you get older and wiser, and you learn that gee, if it really were that easy to change a $5 bill into a $20 bill, YES, everyone WOULD make the $2.95 (plus shipping and handling) investment, and we'd all be rich bastards. Right out of the pages of, and with great thanks to, the entrepreneurs that advertise in the back pages of the comic books.

The other thing you learn—or should learn—as you get old and/or wise is how to THINK beyond what you wish was true. I believe it used to be called "critical thinking," although who knows what they call it now. This is the skill that is beyond readin', writin', and 'rithmetic ... it is what is imperative beyond ALL ELSE that anyone teaches, or is taught. You can learn to read at any age, and writing, well, at least you can learn to text and then you'll be okay. Arithmetic is done by cash registers fairly well these days, but HOLY HELL, people, if you don't learn how to think critically, you, too, might find yourself telling David Letterman about the virtues of "highly trained medical leeches."

(I know it's been awhile since this shit hit the fan, but it's taken me this long to be able to address it at all. It's that freaking ridiculous.)

Now, I like Demi Moore well enough. She looks fantastic, she seems a fine actress, and how can I not like a woman who snags a much-younger man (even if I don't find him even vaguely attractive), because HEY! Why should old men have all the fun with younger women?

But this nonsense about "optimizing your health" with "leech therapy" ... I mean, umm, come on! Did she not stop to consider how a leech knows the difference between "bad" and "good" blood? Granted, leeches have some use as it pertains to removing pooled blood under a skin graft and restoring circulation in blocked veins, but where, may I inquire, is some SPECIFIC MEDICAL DATA to back up the idea that they can "detoxify" blood? (Which, if you are interested in basic biology that you should have learned in middle school, your blood already takes care of waste products quite nicely all by its damn self.)

How DO you "train" a leech? And how does it know your "toxic" blood from your "non-toxic" blood? Because I'm picturing a little leech agility training session, and it's not pretty; nor is the vision of leeches being fed "toxic" blood and "non-toxic" blood, and whipped if they smile little leechy smiles while ingesting "non-toxic" cells instead of SPITTING THEM OUT, like their WELL-TRAINED parasitical brethren would do.

I mean, if one's health were optimized by bleeding for "quite a bit," would it not be more simple to just open your own freakin' vein? Like, OH I DON'T KNOW, when you DONATE BLOOD? Because if Demi thinks it's better going to a herd of well-trained leeches, I'm thinking maybe the Red Cross might beg to freakin' differ, especially NOW, when donations are typically down as we all go off to party during the summer, but tornado-spawning storms and other natural (and non-natural) disasters and accidents and other blood-loss-type situations are UP.

(Granted, Demi was talking about her little leech buddies back in March, when perhaps more people were donating blood, but considering how few do so regularly anyway, I still don't think we've gotten to a point where blood should just be THROWN AWAY TO INVERTEBRATES when we feel like we've got some non-healthy cells to spare.)

Honestly, maybe I didn't wait long enough to address this issue, because I'm feeling absolutely disgusted now, and my blood pressure is probably MUCH higher than it was before I plucked this piece from the potential-posting pile, and seriously, is there anyone out there who went, WOW, I wish *I* had thought of going to Austria to lie in a shallow pool while I paid some UNGODLY sum of money to let LEECHES bite into my flesh and suck out my PERFECTLY GOOD BLOOD?

Anyone?

You know, if you've got money AND blood to throw away, there ARE blood donation services who would be more than happy to help you with both of these problems. You will be optimizing the health of OTHERS along with making yourself feel warm and fuzzy (not to mention, these kind folks who are HIGHLY TRAINED in taking your blood to help others will frequently FEED you after you donate) and it won't cost you anything but a little time reclining in the donation chair and a pint of blood that your body will be more than happy to regenerate.

And instead of giving millions of critical thinkers something to laugh and shake their heads over, you can SAVE A LIFE. (Think about it. And then tell Demi Moore. Everybody but the leeches will thank you, but they'll find some other sucker to suck, in their oh-so-highly trained ways.)

The Summer of My Not Understanding

Having done so relatively little writing over the past few months, and having such a sloppily replete pile o' writing notes from which to choose, it is irritating—like the niggling itch left behind a few days post-blood donation—that I would feel most drawn to a scrawled generated writing prompt. It's like going to a dessert buffet and selecting the vanilla pudding.

That being said (with apologies to The Righter for that horrid phrase), today's prompt—generated a long series of yesterdays ago—is this: Something nobody knows about me is ...

Now, it's difficult enough, when I've confided everything from how much I loved The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe to my (many) issues with hypothyroidism-induced constipation and some other disturbing and/or odd things in between, to think of something ELSE ... specifically, something else that NOBODY knows about me. Also, something else that nobody knows about me that I don't mind sharing with THE INTERNET. Sure, it's easy to do with stuff like the unexpected flight of a feminine hygiene disposal unit, because that JUST HAPPENED, but I did share that story with several people IRL before going relatively-anonymous-blogging with it.

And? To be something that NOBODY knows about me, wouldn't I have to think of something even I don't know about me, thereby disqualifying that thing as a criteria-meeting fact or incident at the very moment that I think of it?

(Overthinking it? Really? Huh. Well, you might be right.)

Anyway, if we do—for the sake of completing this post before the end of the month and the duration of any poor, lingering potential reader's last remaining nanosecond of patience—assume that by "something nobody knows about me," what is actually meant is "something nobody, excluding myself, knows about me," then I think I may, after a day and a half of on-and-off pondering, have a little something. And the only other thing I have to say is THANK GOODNESS the prompt didn't also include the word "interesting."

FINALLY, here it is: Something nobody knows about me is ... late one summer night, when I was sixteen or so, I snuck out into the kitchen, opened the knife drawer, and removed one of the sharpest knives from the drawer. I remember a light, cool breeze pushing in through the kitchen window, which was often open a bit during the summer, since we had no air conditioning, and the summer heat could be stifling.

I remember, too, the perfect stillness of the night—not windless, as I said, nor silent, either—but still, like a dream, where things are not quite real, but you know you're not dreaming, either. It was an offset, misplaced sort of stillness, with bugs chirping their odd symphonies and the scent of green life everywhere more pungently aromatic than fabric softener could ever wish to be.

And I remember the way the knife felt when I drew it across my upturned left arm—light, because I had no intention of harming myself, but heavy, because I had an intellectual understanding of how some people my age really could hear the dark, internal whisper that told them that hope was nothing more than a concept, and things would only get worse. So I skimmed the knife slowly across the very surface of my skin—hard enough to feel it, but not even close enough to the force required to break that fragile barrier—but even then, I could not fathom the depth of the ache that could propel the force required by the knife to slice through skin, much less cut into arteries.

The summer could be stifling, but I shivered when I put the knife away. It was, I think, the first time I understood how very fortunate one can be to not understand something.

Caution: Contagious

I don't think I'm going to actually do it, but it did occur to me that my blog could use a new name. Something like, "Erratic Digressions of the Boring Kind" or "Occasional Depressed Digressions." (That last one has the bonus of acronyming down to the simple but appropriate "ODD," but it's a little too far away from the established pattern to be tolerable in the anti-change corner I do so adore inhabiting.)

The other thing I've been wondering in my blogging absence—well, ONE thing, as there are many things that I wonder, not the least of which is WTF is WRONG with Corporate's many bathrooms, because I seriously do not believe my trials there will cease until or unless they decide to become the third company to lay me off, not that I'm obsessing about that or anything, although, yes, I AM—is why "catching up" sounds so much like a noxious disease, at least in my head, and/or when applied to blogging.

As you can kind of tell from the title of this here blather, I've concluded it is simply the obvious, literal root of the beast that has struck me so—not unlike, perhaps, the SCARY-ASS TREES that totally stole the battle scene in Prince Caspian, which I just saw on opening day with The ListMaker, because HELLO? when ELSE would two long-time fans of The Chronicles of Narnia see the next movie in the series EXCEPT on opening day?—and not anything deeper or more profound than that.

Which doesn't make for much of an interesting blog entry, perhaps, but excuse me, since when is this blog about entertaining the masses? Right. Pretty much never.

Anyway, it's not that nothing's been happening here in wyo's world—quite the contrary, in fact. Alas, it appears that nothing more enthralling than an average, ordinary mid-blog crisis has kept me from blogging, and it's only moderately less boring that my mid-blog crisis has extended fat tendrils of tenatitivity into my other writing endeavors as well. (It's not even "just" my novel that's been affected ... the limited writing that I do by day at Corporate has been liberally coated in the contagions, too, like a peanut-butter sandwich assembled by a three year-old, using his fingers as the spreading implement.)

However, I haven't been petrified by fear of failing, or flummoxed by inability of interesting. No, not this or any other mixed-metaphor of blended alliteration has stymied my ability to get the heck out of bed and pound the keyboards on a semi-regular basis—I just haven't done it. I've been obsessed with my apathy and I've been SO into not-caring that I haven't even questioned why I don't care ... because I just don't care!

(I'm not even embarrassed to admit this, which is almost embarrassing in and of itself.)

How DO you—the "general" you, unless a particular "you" has some significant or perhaps amusing personal insight to offer, in which case, please feel free—convince yourself to care about something that you do not care about? You may well be able to give a fair performance of caring, but I'm not sure it's possible to invent an honest interest in something. Even if an interest has previously run rampant—like a raging fever that burns up all other considerations in its own egomania and self-centeredness—it's a difficult proposition, at best, to reconjure it up where it has vanished.

I have to think there's some magic involved behind the scenes when it comes to interest and drive: some unquantifiable, precious, LIVING magic. You can wish for it all you want, but it rarely responds to your wishes, preferring to arrive unannounced and unexpected.

And that is, perhaps, exactly why you can't stop preparing to receive it, even when it deserts you, even if such desertion comes at a very painful time ... a time when you might say you need it the most, and you are left alone, bereft, and echoingly empty. Creativity of any sort is a great boon at such a time; it doesn't ease the pain but at least it keeps it company, while apathy only serves to invite greater pain, with longer echoes.

(Just so you know, I kind of thought this entry would be funnier than it's turning out to be. Because I really did fully intend to discuss how "catching up" is a bit of disease, firing up like a rash on one person and spreading to the next, and the next, and then the next thing you know, ALL the kids are wanting to jump off the same cliff, although because the vector is electronic, it's only a virtual cliff.)

I do feel better now, though. And I will agree—however grudgingly—that it's better to write without motivation than not to write at all. But I will not even begin to suggest that it's better to read something that was written that way.

Picking the Moral of the Story

The behavior of cellphone-talking, traffic-weaving, non-signaling blonde in the beige luxury car was virtually indistinguishable from any other obnoxious driver with whom I consistently find myself sharing the road. And despite some habits that any after-school children's show host would frown upon, she and I DID share the road. In fact, we were neighbors more often than not than during the 15 minutes after which I initially noticed her.

She flew by me right after the point where the posted speed limit took a nose-dive from 65 to 45. Considering that I was going 55 at the time, I can't say for certain that she had let up on the accelerator at all, although I would be willing to bet a round at the bar—*waves to The ListMaker*—that she had been going substantially faster than 65 prior to that point.

I saw the car seat handle sprouting up out of the center of the back seat when I caught up to her, and spotted the towheaded child on one side. Still, the woman was clearly deep in conversation with the party at the other end of the cellphone, and I wondered whether the baby was sleeping, and if not, if the other child was amusing, annoying, or ignoring the baby.

I wasn't in a cursing mood, being absorbed in my own exhaustion and unwillingness to drive to work at all, much less SPEED there. I noted what I saw in an absent-minded sort of way, although some annoyance clearly wormed its way into my dark soul despite my purported ennui, because when I happened—without trying—to pass the woman a mile or so down the road, I found myself smirking broadly. I thought, I really should pay more attention to the speed-demons who feel it necessary to cut in front of just ONE MORE car, so I could see for sure whether they are (as I've often suspected, or at least hoped!) more often than not unsuccessfully in getting THAT far ahead of those they seem so hell-bent on passing.

Of course, the logistics of such a study would be impossible, because unless you DO keep the driving villain in sight, how do you determine if they have reached their destination an appreciable time ahead of you, or if they have simply turned a different way? I pondered that for a bit, as well as my delight at the sight of a mini-van ahead of me refusing to let the beige-car chatty chick cut in front of it to make a certain popular turn. And of course I felt chastened by Fate—or some facsimile thereof—because there she was, ahead of me again, and so SOON after I'd been so smugly pleased to have passed her.

I switched CDs at the next light (okay, I did it WHILE MY CAR WAS IN MOTION, whatever ... it was slow enough that it COULD have been at a light) and frankly forgot about the woman, who I was sure had it all together and was probably taking her kids shopping in the nearest metropolis and had oodles of spare time and no need to pass me anyway. Screaming metal mayhem often has the happy effect on me of removing my obsessing mind from routine annoyances.

I did see her turn off ahead of me at one point, but I was working hard on shrieking in harmony with the beautiful chaos that IS my precious IN FLAMES (I do love their latest album, but we will talk about that another time, my dears). I drove on and I made my turns where I needed to, and even waved at the construction crew that smilingly directed me around their work area.

I almost didn't notice the beautifully-coiffed beige-car driver when I saw her again, waiting for ME to turn at the intersection one block from Corporate parking. And although I admit that I laughed evilly then, I stopped when I saw her turn into the daycare across the street. For all my assumptions were just that: ASSumptions—the evidence in my rear-view mirror showed just another working mom like me ... better dressed and more comfortably charioted, to be sure, but more alike than I would like to admit.

It was a warmly moral moment, I tell you, and I mean it. Although less due to the fact that I'd made erroneous assumptions—which I admittedly have been known to do—regarding the driver, and more because the tortoise DID beat the hare.

Yeah, well, I know which moral of the story I am going to focus on ... you do what you like. ;)

A Brief History of Overall Clutziness and General Stupidity: Part Two

Continued From (You Guessed It!) Part One

~1985 ... On a camping trip some 40 miles from the nearest medical establishment (a new record!), wyo falls some 15 feet out of a tree—yes, at the tired old age of 16 (or possibly 17?)—and although she lands on her feet, she immediately collapses. The split-second experience immediately after the fall during which she cannot feel her legs is terrifying to her, but sensation rapidly returns, bringing with it an intense lower back pain. She marches in her high school band competition the next day anyway, but thereafter spends several weeks recovering with the aid of high doses of ibuprofen. She does deign to retire from competitive tree-climbing.

~1989 ... As a young college student possessed of painful shyness and delicate sensibilities, wyo is working hard to "put herself out there." One of the activities she chooses to do so includes bicycling some unpaved trails near campus with a group of other college students. Because she has only a "touring" bicycle—and because she doesn't have enough sense to think through the potential perils of riding her thin-tired bike over gravel that is at least as wide as her tires—wyo attempts the foolish endeavor boldly. And if that weren't enough, she decides she can JUMP her bicycle up from the gravel onto the first of many small bridges along the route, even though she's never even tried to do this before. The wipeout that ensues, while not of Biblical proportions, is nonetheless impressive, and although the gravel and dirt embedded deeply into her knee (not as deep as the 1973 nail, though) is painful, it pales in comparison to the super-cute male bicyclist who stops—because he can't get around her sprawled body—to ask if she is okay. After assuring him that she is, and laughing over the bleeding mess on her leg, wyo limps off, walking her bike back to her truck. She does not cry until she's safely home, washing off her road rash in privacy.

~1989 ... During a chemistry laboratory session, wyo blatantly disregards a safety instruction in her haste to smell the "sweet and fruity" scent of the product of the experiment. Because the ammonia that concealed the scent had not, however, been fully evaporated before she stuck her face over the crucible—rather than using her hand to waft a diluted portion of the odor towards her—she blacks out for the first time in her life, awakening some (small) time later in the hallway. Having no memory of getting to the hallway, she is aghast to discover that her geekish instructor and (you guessed it) CUTE male lab partner had to carry-drag her incapacitated self out of class. It is gruesomely embarrassing to admit her error and return to class to finish the experiment, but she does so, and her instructor is a tremendously good sport about it, and doesn't even yell. Reflecting on the unforgettability of the incident—and the fact that she has retained a strong aversion to the scent of ammonia even nearly TWENTY YEARS after the fact—wyo realizes that he knew damn well he didn't have to yell.

1990 ... While playing a fierce game of raquetball with the man she would end up marrying, wyo runs right into a wall, connecting with her (GUESS! JUST GUESS!) TOE. While her right foot continues to suffer the effects of The Breaking Game, it is not, at least, her pinky toe that suffers this time. Instead, the x-rays reveal that she has shifted a chunk of the top of her big toe ever-so-slightly back from its traditional positioning. Back to the highly unfashionable 2x4 shoe wyo goes, although because this break does not endanger the structural integrity of the toe, she requires it more for the fact that she can't put on her right shoe comfortably anymore rather than the healing process. Her clutziness remains a great source of irritation to her, but wyo rationalizes that at least now she can drink alcohol legally.

~2000 ... After retrieving her dropped soap in the shower, wyo turns to stand and connects her tailbone with the tub's faucet. While the grapefruit-sized bruise cannot be seen by anyone who is not offered a private viewing—and very, very few are—it is truly stellar in its artistic rendering of a black-and-blue rainbow reflected over a pond. The coloration becomes even more impressive as it gradually fades into yellow and green, and wyo becomes a firm believer in the old adage, "Let dropped soaps lie."

~2002 ... During a particularly frisky session of performing the horizontal mambo with her husband, wyo rolls right when she should have rolled left, and whilst attempting to extract herself from an already awkward position, stabs her thumb into her eye, causing her to see stars of a distinctly different variety than the ones she was hoping to see. The resulting black eye and her blushing unwillingness to reveal the cause—memo to clutzes everywhere: ALWAYS come up with a better story than the truth when it involves stabbing yourself in the eye during sex—concerns a work colleague, who far-too-publicly (and very, very seriously) suggests that if her husband is hurting her, she should really seek help. Embarrassment of epic proportions follows, though the ridiculousness of the idea makes wyo laugh out loud despite being entirely appalled. This honest reaction thankfully silences the over-vocal (though well-intentioned) colleague.

~2004 ... In a remarkably ill-advised attempt to retrieve the mail from the mailbox without stopping the forward motion of her vehicle, wyo fails to flip the mailbox's door closed quickly enough, resulting in the mailbox's handle/lip ripping a six inch-long arc of the skin on her left forearm. While not deep or ragged enough to require medical attention, it is nonetheless a dire-looking tear. Fortunately, wyo does not mind embarrassing herself with the truth of the matter at work this time, and her coworkers—well acquainted by now with her proclivity to trip over things (even things that aren't there)—hardly even seem surprised.

2008 ... In the stressful midst of preparing an urgent Corporate report, wyo sneezes. This seemingly insignificant act takes on epic importance when, simultaneous to the sneeze, wyo feels her lower back spasm and lock into a three-ibuprofen-pill pain-level. She spends the following weekend in the warm embrace of her herbal heating pad, and the following week recovering.

2008 ... Determined to get back into running, wyo scoffs at the icy conditions and goes out for an early morning jog-trot-pant-wheeze. She notes the slippery conditions carefully and skirts them by staying along the gravely shoulder of one of her favorite trails. At the bottom of the hill that is her weenie-distance turn-back point, she carefully crosses the road to loop around, but not carefully enough. Too late, she realizes her error, landing VERY forcefully on her well-padded backside. This would have been fine—although mortifying enough—except that her forward momentum across the black ice-slick carries her into the slide so irreparably that her head hits the pavement all-too-painfully, and audibly. She stands carefully, stunned and wary of potential dizziness, and wishes very much that she had brought her cellphone with her on this ill-advised excursion. She slowly makes her way home, where she promptly downs a dose-and-a-half of ibuprofen. She does not discover that the primary injury was not to her behind, head, or pride, but rather to her left shoulder, for about an hour.

And here's where we are now, just about one month post-flattening: I'm going to physical therapy twice a week (I do like the massages but the rest of the appointments are not so much fun), doing twice-daily stretching exercises for my shoulder (girly push-ups seem eons away in attainability these days), seeing the Corporate Ergonomics Expert to make sure my work-station is properly arranged (it wasn't), correcting my posture constantly (it sucks), and wearing a posture-enforcing torture device to work (this thing is such a bitch that I cannot IMAGINE what hell a corset must have been). All in all, I think I got off fairly lightly, as I did hit the pavement HARD with my rock-like head, but to be perfectly honest with you, I'd rather stab myself in the eye during sex on a daily basis than go through falling on the ice again just once (your mileage may vary).

I'm not sure why I decided to compile this list—although I did see when I was checking a few dates with my medical record that I left out ... well, rather a lot—or what the point of writing it up was. There's certainly people clutzier than me out there (maybe?), and granted that accidents can happen to anyone: that's why they're called "accidents" and not "idiot-planned injuries." You can't anticipate everything and even walking on eggshells has some potential for disaster.

But do let's be careful out there, shall we? And by all means, if you've got a clutzy and/or stupid story of your own to share, please feel free.

A Brief History of Overall Clutziness and General Stupidity: Part One

I am not the most graceful pigeon in the flock. In fact, if I were pigeon, I would probably fly into a solid, very obvious, 500 year-old wall while attempting the ever-popular "dive-bomb" move—AND I'd miss my target while so doing. While laziness has certainly played a key role in my most recent blogging lapse, so too has the last item on this list (which is by no means complete, but which does contain more than a few of my more stellarly stupid moves over the past almost-four decades).

Yes, what I've done, basically, is compile a list of ways in which I've injured myself. Why? Well, I'm glad you asked, Figment Of My Imagination! Because while it's not so much encouraging to see each and every recollected move of overall clutziness and general stupidity spelled out in the totality of its funny backstory and/or ridiculous glory, it IS heartwarming—as I struggle to recover from my most recent bad move—that I've managed, eventually, to get past each one.

So sit back, alternate relaxing and cringing, and most of all, enjoy! (Hey, I can still type, so it can't be THAT bad.)

As you may have noticed from the delicate forshadowing of "Part One" in the title of this piece, I got a little long-winded and had to break this particular tale of woe into more digestible bits. Or at least something that won't choke you outright.

1972 ... Very young wyo, in a blatant breaking of the established rules about NOT tormenting the chickens, slips from the fence she was standing on and peering over the top of, and falls, ripping open the inside of her lip on the top edge of the fence as she goes. A thrilling trip to the emergency room, some 25 miles away, ensues, of which all she can remember now is bright lights and scary faces. No stitches were required.

~1973 ... While playing in between the framed walls in her newly-constructed home's basement, wyo decides—despite the clear hazard of NAILS sticking out of said frame at seemingly random intervals—to hang on to a cross-beam above her, pull her knees up from the floor, and swing back and forth in front of the nail. It doesn't take long, of course, given her already-established propensity for overall clutziness, to drive a nail right into her knee. She remembers limping up the stairs to her mom, streaming tears and terrified at the sight of the puncture wound, but not the aftermath of the event, except that some years later, she had to have a giant cyst excised from said knee. She now looks back at this event as the defining moment of her entry into the widely-participatory field that is general stupidity.

1976 ... While performing an easy (for her) spin around the highest of the single-bar monkey bar set, wyo loses her grip, falls, and plants her chin firmly into the concrete-like surface of the hard-packed dirt below. A trip to the local clinic, some 10 miles hence, is warranted, and she receives a small but impressive—primarily because said stitches were sewed onto her very white skin in a high-contrast black thread—set of stitches in her chin, which is then covered with a band-aid of gargantuan proportions. She remembers the humiliation of being seen in such a fashion monstrosity more than the stunning nastiness of the tear in her flesh, but manages to cherish the scar that results.

~1980 ... Racing through the woods near her home, wyo slips and manages to ground herself in such a way that she rips her right palm open on an old, fallen expanse of barbed-wire fencing that she had avoided countless of times before. The cut is only about an inch long and is surprisingly straight for having been created by barbed wire, but because said wire was rusty, wyo wins a free trip to the local clinic—with which she is now well-familiar—for what turns out to be a slightly-overdue tetanus shot.

1983 ... Rounding the corner of her bed, wyo catches the pinky toe of her right foot on a nearby bookshelf, pulling it an estimated 45° out of its normal alignment. When she is unable to wear her right shoe the following morning due to pain and swelling, she is duly carted back to the clinic for x-rays, followed by crutches and instructions to "rest." Again, the treatment proves to be more painful than the injury itself, as she is incapacitated enough not to attend a state fair trip with her family that weekend. Being a worthy teenager, she spends her first weekend of convalescence moping and whining.

1983 ... During the course of "healing" her broken toe, wyo is instructed to firmly tape the injured digit to the uninjured adjacent toe, creating a splint of sorts. While she unenthusiastically follows this advice, she is nonetheless thorough, and before long—before long AT ALL, in fact"—she is permitted to return to normal shoes and most activities, while continuing to tape her toe. However, since one of her activities consists of "early morning band practice" on a rather damp practice field, and since she tapes her toes so tightly that she creates a small cut between the splint toe and the next toe, she unwittingly creates yet another health problem. The cut is tender, but rapidly becomes red, sore, and when wyo—late on a Friday night, of course—notices an angry, red line running up her foot from the cut, she sees her (college biology instructor) mother for a consult. Whereupon she is aghast that her mother shoots out of her reading chair and herds her back to her room to redress for a near-midnight trip to the emergency room: wyo has managed to contract "blood poisoning" (more properly known as "lymph poisoning") and is told by hospital personnel that she's fortunate not to have waited even 12 hours longer. Antibiotics and medicated soakings—followed by THOROUGH DRYING and only HIGH-LEVEL taping—follow, and the frightening line thankfully recedes.

1984 ... Thoroughly healed and happily over the dreadful Saga of the Broken Toe, wyo wanders, barefoot, into the bathroom one bright, sunny day, veers a bit too far to the right, catches her right pinky toe on a very-slightly protruding cabinet door, and BREAKS THAT SUCKER AGAIN. She is not amused by the emergency-room doctor's comment that, should she break it a third time, he would be suggest amputation, but she nevertheless makes an effort to smile at his lame sally, because he is kind of cute. Because the consensus is that this break occurred at least due in part to poor healing of the last break, wyo is given substantially more stringent instructions regarding her activities. Also, in addition to crutches and "rest," wyo is provided with a "shoe" composed of a textured 2x4 with a BRIGHT BLUE fabric upper and stunningly white laces; she is instructed to wear said shoe forEVER—or so it seems, as her teenaged sense of time is, like everything else, distorted. This time, however, the toe heals well and thoroughly. Thereafter, wyo refrains from roaming her house barefoot.

To Be (Unfortunately) Continued

When OCD and Road Rage Collide

We've all—for the purposes of this here blog entry, anyway—heard this cliché: "Two wrongs don't make a right." Yes, yes, very (sanctimoniously) lovely.

Many of us—at least the smarmily sarcastic ones in the group—have even used this in rebuttal: "But three lefts DO make a right!" (I'll give you a minute while you draw that one out. Oh, you got it right away? Umm. Yeah, so did I.)

Anyway, what I discovered the other day wasn't so much about wrongs or lefts but because the fact that two of my more undesirable traits did seem to cancel each other out, I still made the connection. And so here we are, three (short) paragraphs in and still lost in the Country of Vague. Oops.

Although it has never been "officially" proclaimed, I think it quite obvious that I'm a wee tad bit obsessive/compulsive. Even if you only examine the particular routine I maintained for, oh, about seven YEARS, wherein before leaving the house, I had to—HAD. TO.—locate each household cat and snorgle the beast, dropping precisely two (2) nose-tickling kisses atop her head EVERY TIME I LEFT THE HOUSE, well, yeah. Pass me the OCD crown, for surely I have earned the right to be photographed in it.

Likewise, I have done a neat job of establishing the blossoming case of flaming road rage that I've been nurturing for years, although moreso now that I have to drive all the way to Corporate. Apparently, that's the route most of the Road Rage-Inducers like to take, too.

So. During a recent snowstorm—and we have had way damn too many of these white-screeching, wind-ripping, road-coating nastinesses this year BY FAR, and the record books are totally backing me up, so there—I was making my bitter way home, as per usual. I wasn't doing so well with the creative cursing either, although rather than drop into the deep pits of "FUCK! FUCK! FUCKITY FUCK FUCK FUCK!" I was hanging out in the somewhat reasonable realm of "I HATE YOU! I HATE YOUR PARENTS! AND I REALLY HATE YOUR DRIVER'S ED INSTRUCTOR!"

What? At least I've been occasionally refraining from the F-bomb! This blog-entry notwithstanding. But back to our story, already in progress.

While I was surrounded by drivers for whom I'd already vulgarly expressed my loathing, I noticed a car making its way up the line of traffic. Remember, it was snowing. The road was coated in snow, the cars were churning up snow with their tires, snow was blowing sideways and swirling and churning, AND there was MORE freaking snow coming down. In short, this was not the time to play Indy-500, and yet, here was Joe Teenager (I'm guessing; I didn't get a look at the driver and I will explain that in a moment), doing just that.

When he swerved around me—getting too close for even perfect-weather driving—I was within a quarter mile of the next turnoff. Knowing, as I did, the habits of local drivers, I realized that he was about to perform the immensely offensive Pass One More Car Before The Turnoff maneuver, and I felt a surge of rage that truly surpassed all previous road-ragings: I actually lost vision in my right eye for a split second. Which is, of course, not what you want to be doing in heavy traffic during a snowstorm.

When Joe Teenager not only did just as I expected, but HAD TO BRAKE TO DO IT, I lost my freaking little mind. And I screamed (something like):

"AAAAAUUUGMLTDFLTZ! AAAAAAAAAAAA!"

Now. Much as I was grateful for the fact that I did have my vision back after that momentary—though very real—half-way blackout, in my head, I was still Going Off. Because vocal clarity was still absent, I was mentally screaming at Joe Teenager all the way until he turned off, lecturing him on the sheer—no control-top or reinforced toes WHATSOEVER—stupidity of his "driving," the fact that BY GOLLY IF YOU HAVE TO BRAKE TO GET AHEAD OF SOMEONE YOU HAVE NO BUSINESS BEING AHEAD OF THEM, and oh yes, YOU'RE TURNING THE FRICK OFF SO WHY THE BLANKITY-BLANK DO YOU NEED TO PASS ANYONE?

In short, I was wondering how stupid you have to be to do something like this, and because it was an interesting question, I quickly diverted to answering it. My chain of "reasoning" went something like this:

You have to be really stupid. Well, duh, you have to be stupider than THAT. How stupid? This is an exercise in quantification.

You have to be as dumb as a squirrel. True, but trite. What else have you got?

Your brain has to be about as big as a squirrel's left nut. Oh, come on, think about that. The left nut is bigger than the right, isn't it? Care to rephrase? Right. Yes! Rephrase, AS IF YOU HAVEN'T BEEN DOING THAT ALL ALONG.

You have to be so stupid that if a squirrel's right nut was surgically removed, your brain would not even fill up the void left in his nutsack. Aha! Now we're getting somewhere!

You have to be so stupid that if a squirrel's right nut was surgically removed and your brain was transplanted into its place, there would be so much room left in the nutsack ... Wait a minute. No, really! I'm serious! HEY! ALL ENGINES STOP.

Is "nutsack" singular or plural? I mean, is it all ONE encasing, or is there, like, a divider thingie? Like in a purse with two pockets, you know, and ...

Yeah. I was all calmed down and non-violent by the time I came to the next exit—just a mile or two down the road. Because I got all distracted by the question of whether a nutsack was, technically, a single entity. Because I NEEDED my insult—which only I could hear, Joe Teenager being long gone and OH YES, IN ANOTHER VEHICLE—to be ACCURATE. Precise, yes, I was pretty well there, but by golly, that was NOT GOOD ENOUGH.

Anyway. To make a long story short(er)—though not by much, I imagine—I ended up deciding that my OCD was a wonderful counterbalance to my road-rage, and I would be better served by employing THAT, rather than creative cursing, to calm my angst and, oh yes, hopefully prevent another split-second blackout. Which, let's be perfectly blunt, is way damn more dangerous than the stupidity of others.

I must confess, though, that the image of the squirrel pondering just what the hell is going on with his right nut is a surprisingly reassuring one. (Your mileage may vary.)

Back—Not in Black

Unlike some truly excellent bloggers whose work I greatly enjoy, I did not begin this blog to make funny, or crack wise, or expound on topics of great and lasting importance. I think I've done all of those things on occasion—and goodness knows I am inspired by so many people and writings out there in the wide, wide world of the Internet—but as the tagline continues to proclaim, I blog because it's cheaper than therapy, and this means that I will at least pretend not to feel bad when I post something that's a complete and total downer.

Of course, I do, and not just because I was down when I posted it.

That being said, this is not a kiss-off post—"GOODBYE, CRUEL INTERNET! I SHALL NO LONGER BE POLLUTING YOUR ELECTRONS WITH MY MENTAL SPEWINGS!"—not that there's anything wrong with that except I miss them when they go. It is, rather, an admission that I haven't really been trying to write blog entries lately. I wanted to, but because I wanted to write a post of happy memories of Old Lady Cat and could not bring myself to do so because it's so damn hard for me to type when I'm crying because I inevitably get my fingers on the wrong keys smf Eot'f mimfayjrm ejsy upi rmf i[ eoyj od nimvj pg honnrtodj yjsy ypys;;u n;phd—and not only does it blow Word's mind, but you can't tell where your misspellings are because at some point, you also hit the Backspace key (or the <--BkSp key, as it is here on my ancient loaner Windows 95 machine).

Not to mention, I want that piece to be a happy, funny one, which is likewise hard to achieve in a mood that's roughly even with the sewer pipe that runs under my house. If not lower.

So. Given that I can't quite pick up the keyboard where I'd like to, thus providing a beautiful remembrance piece to follow the sad announcement that constituted my last post, please excuse me and understand that I will complete it when I'm able—on some sunny, lovely day when she would have enjoyed curling up right in it—and meanwhile, accept my deepest and heart-felt thanks for your many kind words and cyberhugs ... I appreciate every word, very much.

For now, I have pretty much nothing to offer, beginning with a post on nail polish and most likely progressing to (yet another) road-rage-inspired rant.

November Sunrise

It's December 1st, but I'm going back in time because I'm slow and didn't have a chance to upload these pictures from a November sunrise that I not only savored every moment of, but also actually dragged out my camera for. And? It was so beautiful that I don't even feel bad for ending those sentences with prepositions. So there.

East:


I'm not sure the photos do it justice, as it truly was a horizon-to-horizon color explosion—in slow motion, of course.

Northeast:

Southeast:

South:


And the colors kept rippling out, spreading and shifting and metamorphizing in utterly amazing brilliance. It was mesmerizing enough that I was late for work.

East:


Thanks, Mother Nature. I'll be cursing you soon enough for biting sleet and bitter cold, but for this one November sunrise, I am very, very grateful. It was uplifting in the purest sense of the word.

Farewell to Thongs

When I was young enough to feel like a grown-up and not yet old enough to know better, I swore I would never wear the atrocity commonly known as "butt-floss" (aka, thong underwear). Despite their increasing popularity—in general, and also amongst my fashion-forward friends—I just knew those things were not for me. I mean, the very design could not be more uncomfortable in appearance, and HAD TO wad and wedge and, umm, "chafe" in places where nothing of the sort should possibly occur.

Okay, fine, nothing of the FABRIC sort. Details.

I, myself, was purely a cotton bikini-underwear gal, ode to the occasion upon which I'd had a certain large mole removed from my posterior, and the doctor explicitly told me not to wear nylon or other sheer fabrics on my heiny while it healed. Because of the gruesome risk that such things would SNAG upon the stitches on my tush. So, yes, because of one, very special, ruggedly-stitched week, I converted to full-time cotton. Well, hell, you've seen the ads: cotton is the fabric of our lives! Or something.

One thing that cotton was not wonderful for, though, was the horror known as "panty lines." Mind you, I didn't even know I was exhibiting such—in what was apparently such a grossly obvious way that a friend had to take me aside and delicately inform me that I should invest in some good thongs—and it happened just as I was transitioning into larger sizes of pants, so it was probably at least partially attributable to denial and unreasonably squashing myself into too-tight jeans. But when you have panty lines through DENIM, of all things, you have to conclude that you've got them in every other sort of fabric.

Thus, I did unwillingly foray into the wonderful world of thongs. Fairly newlywed at the time, I was surprised that even at my "larger volume," my husband was incredibly supportive of my new choice in undergarments, and since they also came in COTTON, I was quite an easy convert. Because, contrary to their awkward appearance and my sneering prejudgment, a great majority of thongs really are quite comfortable. When one wears the proper size, of course.

I've spent many years since as a devoted thong-afficiando, transitioning from cotton to sheer to low-rise and merrily wearing not only representatives of each of these subspecies, but also a variety of cross-breeds in between. I've worn them almost constantly, and I've even recommended them to friends myself. BUT. (No, not "butt"—stick with me here.) These were still the days of my denim fetish, and aside from the occasional funeral or other somber occasion, I did not wear anything except jeans, and therefore, my thong habit was not tainted by the difficulties posed by "dress pants."

Because sheer underwear or not? Dress pants are NOT generally made of a fabric with which thongs of any variety can remain happily undetected. Fortunately, I discovered the issue on my own in this case, sparing myself the embarrassment of another friendly Underwear Intervention.

I've now been introduced to one of the new—at least to me—trends in underthings: "invisible" underwear. Far from being produced in Romulan territory, these particular undies spring forth from the Dominican Republic. And they really do—in most cases—live up to their claim of invisibility, being made of a fabric so sheer that it is practically non-existent, and furthermore, seamed at precious few points. The secret lies in where the leg openings lie against the body; when properly fit, they go exactly where the heiny becomes the upper thigh, fitting unobtrusively into the natural bendy area there. This, combined with their ultra-thinness and lack of (much) seamage, results in what I like to call The Next Generation of Stealth Underwear.

Just don't try to imagine Jean Luc Picard in these things. Especially not the pretty pink ones.

Anyway, it is because of this most recent conversion that I now bid a decided—and certainly long-overdue—farewell to the thongs of my thirties. That's right, I purged my underwear drawer of thongs entirely and am sticking not only with stealth underwear in general, but with a particular variety produced by Hanes®. I would like to tell you what exactly that is and where to get them, but since even though they are a mass-market product, and are sold through at least one mass-market venue, I've only been able to find them at ONE such store, despite having looked in FIVE such establishments—two of which bearing the same mass-market name as the one in which they actually are sold. And because it's taken multiple trips to this one store, in which my size is almost always sold out (HELLO? ORDER MORE, EINSTEIN!), I am not about to let anyone else in on it.

'Cause I know you all want your own underwear cloaking devices. Happy hunting!

Don't Look Back

Aside from Christmas cards, the majority of which come in a sudden, happy rush around three days or so before the big event, I receive an average of two posted communiqués per year. I don't mourn this lack of snail-mailed missives so much as I feel a bit wistful about it, probably because I'm old enough to remember a time before email, and therefore I recall what it was like to receive actual mail on a fairly regular basis. I loved the anticipatory rush down to the mailbox, the growing excitement as I sifted through the envelopes, and the Jump-Up-And-Down-For-JOY! dance when I found the letter—or even a plurality thereof—with MY name on it.

Despite getting more than my fair share of electronic salutations, there's still something very special about a real letter that someone has sat down and taken the time to write LONGHAND, stamp, address, and place into the debatable "care" of the USPS. It's a sense of genuine and deliberate effort, distinctly and honestly made, and a connectedness that seems, in the busyness of modern life, to be headed the way of the Passenger Pigeon more often than not.

A few days ago, I received a four-postcard series of written mail from The Artificial Hermit Crab, a coworker of mine from three jobs back who now lives far, far away, but thankfully—and a little surprisingly—remains a good, interested, and interesting friend. In fact, he's far surpassed a few others of that era in steadfastedness, which would have been the very last thing I would have guessed when I first met him.

The Artificial Hermit Crab, you see, was not especially easy to talk to. I'm not even sure he grunted when my then-boss introduced me to him on my first day at work. I was, therefore, somewhat dismayed to learn that I would have to elicit information from him as part of my routine job tasks, and for some time, we conversed in the very barest of simplistic discussions, and then only about the particular job at hand.

And then one day, after popping in unannounced as a group of us laughingly conducted a purely brainstem-dedicated task, he cracked a truly nasty joke from his observational post at the corner of the room and then promptly exited, his poker-face unchanged, his arms still crossed protectively over his personal space. And Butterfly, the only other woman in the group, commented to me that as vigilant as The Artificial Hermit Crab was at projecting a misogynist, antisocial attitude, I must nevertheless not be fooled—that he was a great person once you got to know him.

Dubiously, I glanced down the unbroken chain of in-office windows at The Artificial Hermit Crab. I had an entirely unobstructed view, for those who were not engaged in envelope-stuffing at our end of the office were trapped in the weekly hour-long torture session of a meeting that the boss liked to call "The Roundtable" at the far end. And I saw, to my shock, that The Artificial Hermit Crab was smiling—actually smiling, though ever-so-slightly—as he sat, his status as a crude crank unchallenged, and resumed his regularly scheduled work-avoidance activities.

Not long afterwards, when the boss had ripped The Artificial Hermit Crab a new hole for displaying a small calendar he'd extracted directly from the pages of his Playboy magazine, I approached his office for our monthly informational exchange. Seeing the calendar not-yet-hidden on his desk, I lightly commented that there was nothing inappropriate about it in my opinion, particularly since it showed only the faces of the "calendar girls." The Artificial Hermit Crab stared at me as if I'd just professed my allegiance to Beelzebub, and after a long, silent moment, he smiled that tiny, genuine smile I'd seen only once before. It was at that precise moment I knew we were going to be friends after all, though I could certainly never have guessed the enduring quality and simple ease of that friendship.

Friends like that are hard to find, and I don't know how it works for other people, but I don't have the ability to predict such friendships, or set out to cultivate them. Sometimes, it seems like I don't even do a token amount of maintenance, and yet, I have a surprising number of friendships of time and physical long-distant, and sometimes both. But as rewarding and wonderful as these diverse relationships are, they all have a sad test in common, and that is the point at which the routine and regularity of time spent together is severed ... sometimes gently, sometimes harshly, but always painfully.

I'm not stupid nor avoidance-minded. I knew when I got laid off from my most recent job at the end of June that it meant not only the end of a job, but the end of a number of friendships—at least, the end of those friendships as I'd known them. The daily meetings and frequent conversations and impromptu jokes would stop, the shared luncheons would cease, and the well-oiled hinges of well-established, team-working processes would be suddenly seized and frozen in unbreakable stasis. And all of that which was once so commonplace, so taken-for-granted would henceforth live only in fragments of memory, faded echoes of once ringing tones.

It was sharply brought to my attention just the day before I got The Artificial Hermit Crab's first postcard that this was now the end of such things with my very good friend The Pretzel Logician. It took his announcement of his new job at a location some two hours distant for it to really register, perhaps because those of us who'd been laid off together had been meeting each week to exchange information in the comfort of like-experiencing friends. And while I am sincerely pleased for him in his new endeavor—one that looks to be both personally and professionally rewarding for him—I was absolutely crushed when I walked away from that meeting and into the brick wall of the transitional point of this friendship.

Unlike the boxes and boxes of Things I extracted from my former cube, a friendship is not going to stay where it has been left. One way or the other, it will change, and I can only hope it will change in a way that retains its best and brightest parts. I've not always been as fortunate with friendships as I have been with The Artificial Hermit Crab, The ListMaker, and a few others I'm too tired to think of blog names for at the moment, wherein we've actually grown closer following a disrupting change. Time, distance, and circumstance can and have interfered, even when all those concerned are devoted and willing to prevent such hindrances.

I don't mourn this transition so much as I feel a bit wistful about it—a really great big mongo lot of a HUGE "bit"—but the obvious, pre-transitional strength of all my friendships seems, just now, insufficient to carry me along into the amorphous future. It's difficult, at the teetering breaking point, to even recall past successes, much less rely on them as I go forward. That there is no other option for movement but forward likewise seems irrelevant and insubstantial, although that is clearly an emotional projection, and not reflective of reality. Maybe it would help a little if I didn't see "realistic" and "pessimistic" as synonymous, but I doubt it.

A long, long time ago, I watched a movie whose title I cannot recall, but a key scene of which I cannot forget. One character was leaving, and instructed the other not to watch him as he rode out of sight, as it was his belief that to do so would prevent the two from ever meeting again. I haven't stuck to this peculiarity in every instance of parting, but it has risen to the surface for me more often than not, and so I didn't look back until I was certain my friend was out of sight.

But seeing that empty space where we'd all said our goodbyes (for now) still burned my eyes and tightened my throat ... and it also gave me a very strong urge to go buy some stamps.

The Boy Scouts Would Be Pleased

It seems to me that interviews require an extra-special combination of innovation, honesty, and craftiness. If that weren't enough, they frequently demand the spicy flare of extemporaneous speaking skills, the bright flash of quick-wittedness, and a twist of mind-reading ability.

There isn't a list of key words and phrases that will get you a "pass" to the next level of this game, and even if you did know the questions ahead of time—with so many conversation-killing options available to an interviewer, I doubt it's even slimly possible to do this—you wouldn't know what the interviewer really wants to hear. Not without those it-would-be-handy but utterly-and-completely-imaginary mind-reading brain waves.

I prepared for my first telephone interview in over eight years with absolutely fantastic attention to detail. Little Girl was delivered to my parents so as to assure her cooperation with my plans for Zero Interruptions, Bad Dog was secured in her basement kennel and bribed with a bone, and a large WARNING note was taped to my front door—DO NOT DISTURB! IMPORTANT PHONE CALL IN PROGRESS!—should Neighbor Girl decide to pay an impromptu visit.

I'd read recommendations for how to conduct oneself during a telephone interview, and had prepared "standing room only" in the kitchen—apparently, your voice sounds stronger when you stand up. I'd placed Every. Single. reference paper I could POSSIBLY need on the counters in front of me, with those I considered more potentially necessary handily arranged in proximity to me: my resume, a description of the job I was applying for, and an exhaustive list of my past accomplishments and relevant experiences.

To the side, I arranged all of the materials I'd sent to this particular employer, as well as some things I'd hastily—but carefully—researched that were beyond my current experience, but which might be handy to demonstrate a basic working knowledge of. I had a pen and a notepad. I had a short list of questions for the potential employer. And because the ceiling fan was running constantly in the ridiculous heat of the day, I had TAPED EVERYTHING DOWN lest it blow off the counter at some tragically inconvenient moment.

In short, I did everything I could think of to prepare myself for the interview, and then some. I hadn't been able to shake the headache that had plagued me since the preceding day, but that was not for lack of trying ... however, they told me at the local forestry center that clear-cutting all trees and flowering grasses in the county to reduce the chances of me suffering an allergy-related headache during a telephone interview was pretty much out of the question. Rule-following bastards.

I'd done deep breathing and relaxation exercises, and I'd recited ALOUD my accomplishments and other brilliances in as minorly sarcastic tones as I could muster when that didn't help. I'd smiled and done my hair and BY GOLLY I WORE CONTACTS FOR THIS! And in the end, I think my voice probably carried just fine, and I sounded confident and reasonably competent, and I wasn't NOT able to answer any of the questions, although there was one that stumped me like a brisk walk into a wall, forcing me to use the dreaded phrase, "Hmm. That's a good question!"

And yet, when I hung up the phone, I pretty well dissolved. I wanted this job, I'd done everything I could ... and I had no idea whatsoever if I'd done well enough to continue to the next level of the interviewing game. I was exhausted, my head was pounding like an incompetent country-band drummer, and I wanted nothing more than to sleep away the Time of Waiting that comes between each step of job-seeking: between sending a resume and receiving a call, between receiving a call and scheduling an interview—often several levels of interviews, too—and between the last interview and the final call.

But there were papers to stack up and notes to be made, and there was tape to peel off the counter and a warning to remove from the door. There was Bad Dog to be released and Little Girl to be picked up. And there is another interview with another company to be prepared for next week.

I'm going to need more tape.

Public Service Announcement: Lyme Disease

It's been awhile since I've done a public service announcement (about five months, actually), and while I'd much rather serve as a good example than a dumb warning, I keep getting dealt cards in the Stupid suite, so I guess I'd better just play what I've got. The eternally-springing, if utterly ridiculous, hope that my 20/20 hindsight will help someone else in the future makes me feel warm and fuzzy even in the cold, harsh light of stupidity (it's a sort of red light, but it's not warm ... oh shut up, it's my metaphor and I will twist it however I like).

Anyway, regular imaginary readers insomniacs may recall that I had a "suspicious rash" a few weeks back, which sent me scurrying to the doctor for medical advice and also saw me scheduled for an echocardiogram. Yeah, well, welcome to wyo's world—it's an "interesting" place to visit, but you wouldn't want to live here. Unless you're "interesting," too, and I totally mean that in the air quotes-enclosed sense of the word.

So despite being symptomatic enough to be offered Borrelia burgdorferi-killing antibiotics on the spot, I remained enough of a skeptic—ME! Skeptical! I know! It's absotively unbelievable, and yet, it's TRUE!—to defer treatment, unless such point did arrive at which I developed Lyme-indicative symptoms other than a rash. And here, RIGHT HERE, my dears, is where the Public Service Announcement portion of this typically digressing blathergram comes into play, so sit up straight, eat your vegetables, and pay attention. Ready? Good. I'm only going to say this once (or twice or fifty times, maybe, depending on my redundancy threshold later in the post), but I'm going to say it LOUDLY:

If your doctor suggests that you take antibiotics for Lyme disease, EVEN IF s/he says you may choose to "wait and see" if other symptoms develop, TAKE THE MEDICINE, AND TAKE IT IMMEDIATELY.

See, what my doctor didn't tell me is that even if I did get symptoms? They still might not definitively prove whether or not I had Lyme disease. And even if I did take a blood test? It might not absolutely establish whether or not I had Lyme disease. The only way to be really, truly, absolutely sure if you have Lyme disease, you see, is 1) to be a person in which the disease spreads rapidly enough to be detected by whatever point at which you proceed to be tested for the disease, or 2) to get the disease so thoroughly and so badly that it may become difficult to annihilate once tests do indicate the presence of the nasty little bacteria that cause such an unpleasant and diverse range of symptoms in so many people.

Now, in case you're thinking I've been reading too damn many "scare" sites in which people who have Lyme disease or only think they have it, and I've not been reading enough actual, medical sites, you would be wrong. While I do flop onto many a scientifically-questionable website, I also make every damn effort to get away from those as fast as possible and focus on MD-approved information, especially when I intend to rebroadcast it in the form of a Public Service Announcement. I don't like looking like an idiot, and since I inadvertently do that with distressing frequency, when I have at least some semblance of advertence—yes, I made that word up, but you can extrapolate its made-up meaning from context—I do my best to avoid a repeat idiot performance.

Here's the thing: Lyme disease, in its advanced stages, is a Very Bad Thing. It can be chronically debilitating, and it becomes increasingly difficult to get rid of as it disseminates throughout your system. Therefore, if you're suspicious and you talk to a doctor and the doctor supports your suspicion, you should NOT delay treatment; sure, you might be wrong, but the CDC itself says that "Lyme disease is diagnosed based on symptoms", as well as physical findings (like erythema migrans, aka, "the rash"), and possible exposure to infected ticks. Furthermore, the CDC says: "Validated laboratory tests can be very helpful but are not generally recommended when a patient has erythema migrans." And that means you don't need a blood test to be officially diagnosed with Lyme disease, particularly when you have a rash (such as I did), and more importantly, you should NOT wait until you have a positive blood test, because at that point, you may have harmful bacteria partyin' like rock stars ALL OVER YOUR BODY, wreaking havoc while they raise hell.

By now you have certainly and rightfully gathered that I did almost everything wrong. You may have also correctly concluded that even though I did get a blood test, it wasn't positive, and negative with a Lyme test doesn't so much mean "Yay, I'm safe!" It could just as easily mean, "Wow, I'm slow." (Yes, I know what you're thinking, and I'm flipping you off even though I often say the same thing myself.)

Although you don't need to know, if you choose to heed my red-lettered screaming message above, I'm going to tell you anyway, because it illustrates another reason why you should take the damn antibiotics already: Murphy—of "Murphy's Law" fame—is a bastard, 'cause he's right, and that's why you shouldn't wait to develop symptoms. Because you WILL, and they will develop on FRIDAY NIGHT, and you'll be on a camping trip, and you'll have joint and muscle pain like you do with fevers, only it won't just be in one knuckle as you clench your alcoholic beverage in your clammy grip, but it will zip out of your fingers and into your wrists and elbows. It will grab at your biceps and stab at your ankles. Your calves will seize up for absolutely no reason with just as much vigor as if you'd been running a damn marathon after not training for the last four weeks preceding it, and you'll KNOW something's wrong, even when you finally manage to drink enough that you dull the "aches"—too mild a word for it by far—enough so that you quit flinching in your lawn chair.

You don't need to justify it to anyone, not even yourself. If you feel something's wrong and the doctor agrees, TAKE THE FUCKING MEDICATION, and don't bother with the blood test. If you wait until you test positive, you do yourself a disservice, as statistically, you've got only a little better than a 50/50 chance of doing so—EVEN WHEN YOU ARE INFECTED—within four weeks of infection (assuming I'm reading all this stuff correctly ... I is not a doctor, remember).

Also? Please wake up just for one more minute, because this is important, too:

The "characteristic" bull's-eye rash of Lyme disease is notpresent in a significant proportion of people infected with the disease (actual numbers vary, and continue to be disputed), and not only that, but a uniform rash with NO central clearing occurs more commonly than a bull's-eye rash.

After obtaining my antibiotics, I waited an extra day so I could be tested. I wanted a peace of mind that I didn't realize was still unlikely to be had, even with a blood test, even though I waited for symptoms and I waited until approximately four weeks post-(possible)-infection. And all of that waiting was SO not worth it when I could have taken the antibiotics and been done with it ... I could have bypassed a four-day period of near-constant, free-ranging aches and pains, the strength and intensity of which I had been previously and blissfully unaware. I could have gone directly to collecting the closest thing to certainty of NOT having Lyme disease by just TAKING the antibiotics when they were originally offered to me. Antibiotics which, I Trivial-Pursuit®-ishly add, also protect me from anthrax while I'm taking them. Bonus!

My one regret is that for a few days prior to the aches up to a few days after I started taking the antibiotics, my long-attendant insomnia had all but disappeared. I never felt "exhausted," or that I would fall asleep at any given moment, but I could and did—miraculously for me—drink caffeinated beverages ALL DAY, and still fall blissfully asleep every night, just after Little Girl did. AND, I enjoyed a 1-2 hour nap every day as well. The aches are thankfully all but gone now, but OH, do I miss that amazing, short-lived foray into effortless sleep.

Be well, people. And please, do as I say, not as I do. ;)

Public Service Announcement: Drug Interactions Online

Let the record show that I am not a doctor, nor do I play one online. Well, I DO, but I pretty much only play doctor with myself. Okay, that sounds very wrong, but it's only going to get worse if I go on, so I think I'm going to just consider the point—which, lest you've already forgotten, is that blogs are no substitution for actual medical advice—made, and move on.

*ahem*

Because "they" are always warning you (and me!) about drug interactions—and because, contrary to popular opinion, vitamins and other "natural" supplements ARE covered under the "drug" umbrella—I thought I should compile a list of the various crap I'm taking now, including those pesky supplements, and make sure to discuss it with my pharmacist. But because The Hot Pharmacist is apparently no longer employed at my pharmacy AND I don't particularly care for any of his replacements—although The Scary Pharmacist seems pretty knowledgeable—AND because I am pretty down on talking with people I don't really know about the substances with which I'm polluting my body in general, I then wondered, "Isn't there an easier way? Like a website or something?"

A-HA!

After the nightlight flickered on, albeit dimly, above my head, I went straight to Google and found this: Drug Digest: Check Interactions

I'm not a doctor or a pharmacist, so I can't vouch for the overall accuracy of the site, but I will say that the list of drugs that you can select from is VERY impressive in scope, and that, of the drug interactions that I'm aware of within my own pharmacopoeial collection, all were neatly represented in the output. There was even an option to receive, in ADDITION to specific drug interactions, a list of foods that could potentially interact with the selected drugs, which was totally good for me, because I'd forgotten that grapefruit juice and levothyroxine don't mix (not that I'd tried this particular uncomplimentary cocktail, you understand; just that I'd forgotten it was on the shit list).

In fact, because the drug list was SO specific, and the resulting interactions likewise, I have something new to research, and that is this: does calcium citrate, which I currently take in lieu of calcium carbonate (in hopes of avoiding the potentially constipating effects of the calcium carbonate, which I SO TOTALLY DON'T NEED) really NOT decrease the absorption of levothyroxine? Because if it doesn't, that would be TOTALLY COOL, and I could work a much-needed second (or even third!) dose of the stuff into my daily regimen. The little warning lists that come with my levothyroxine all simply mention calcium, so I had been operating under the assumption that calcium citrate and calcium carbonate both pose similar problems in that arena; this website would seem to suggest otherwise, so I will be sure to add it to the (exponentially growing) list of questions I have for Dr. Mark Hamilton the next time I see him.

And I'm pretty much counting the days. Snookums.

Anyway, it's not necessarily the beallendall of pharmaceutical information, but it's a GREAT starting point, and you can take the printout of your results—including the list of your medications—with you to your next appointment with your personal physician, and TOTALLY look like you know what you're doing!

Even if the unfluoridated toothpaste in your bathroom at home would distinctly prove otherwise.

Why I Still Enjoy Spam

Despite the fact that it routinely clogs my Inbox, incessantly pollutes the cyberworld, and doesn't taste anything remotely like chicken, I still enjoy me an occasional helping of Spam, and I'll tell you why: that shit can be DAMN FUNNY.

Just to be clear—because I'm usually not—I'm speaking of Spam, the unwanted email Spam, NOT of SPAM®, the registered trademark meat-in-a-can that makes pretty good "cupcakes" SPAM®. I would think that my blathering about my Inbox and cyberpollution would make that point for me, but because I had to go and throw in the bit about chicken, perhaps not so much. Oh well, I DIGRESS.

Back to email Spam, because although I very seldom do more than read the "name" and "subject line"—both of which are being bear-hugged by quotation marks to further emphasize the point that I doubt the veracity of either Spamish quality—I am sometimes COMPELLED to do so against my better judgment anyway. Just to see what the rest of the story is, you know.

So this past, very blah Thursday, I happened to peek in my Deleted Messages folder—because that's where my Very Excellent Email Filters conveniently (for me!) relegate most of my Spam—to see what I could see. And one of the things I saw was this:

It's not wonder that more than 600,000 doctors choice ...

Something about the horrific grammar embodied in what I can only IMAGINE was supposed to pique my curiosity rather than enrage my Inner Grammarian struck my funny bone instead, and I started to snicker. This juvenile reaction led to a chain of ponderings—seriously, how COULD I not wonder what all those doctors "choice"—and soon I was literally laughing out loud (LLOL, rather than that vastly overused LOL you so often see, because if all those people really WERE LOLing, there in their cubes at work? be a lot more people unemployed or snugly embraced by straightjackets, I'll tell you what).

Anyway, to get a little closer to the point, I clicked the link, and while the rest of the brief missive was rather bland—and I'm not sure what I would do with Viagra of my very own anyway—I was heartily amused by the sender's email address:

flattenscrack uzoom.net

Seriously, putting "flatten" anywhere NEAR the vicinity of "Viagra" wouldn't even seem POSSIBLE, much less a good marketing decision, but "flattenscrack?" WHO IN THE WORLD WANTS THAT? And might I see this interesting procedure performed—with the relevant bits strategically blurred-out, of course—on Dr. 9O21O anytime soon, perchance?

Hooooboy! Yeah, I pity the people who don't see the value in a little bit of Spam. I can't remember that last time I enjoyed losing my "waterproof" mascara quite so much. Or with so very little provocation.

Thanks, "flattenscrack," whoever you really are. But just for the record, I still am not in need of your Viagra-distributing services, NOR WILL I EVER BE, as I have neither erectile dysfunction nor a penis.

Reflections in the Aftermath of the White Cold Wrath of Winter

I believe it's been fairly well-established that I hate Winter with an unbridled passion that approaches anti-lust. I try to ignore it, but especially when it's THERE, flaunting its evil, bitter, excruciating whiteness, blowing miniature icicles like needles at warp speeds, insinuating its vileness and chill and deathly blankets of vision-obstructing, landscape-covering, crushingly heavy SNOW into every possible nook and cranny of my every waking, sleeping, and other-ing (What else is there? I don't know; just go with it!) moment ... then I hate it even more than usual. Which is, as I've repeatedly said, quite a damn bit.

Anyway. So we had this "winter storm" recently. Only to call this thing a "winter storm" (a benign-enough term without context) is like referring to Satan as "that cranky guy in red;" there really is NO comparison. This wasn't a "winter storm" so much as it was my own personal fluffy white version of Hades, wherein the ENTIRE Known World was greedily swallowed up by the the beast, disappearing utterly behind horizontally flying layers of snow, which then packed and shifted and morphed into whale-like creatures all across our long—very, VERY long—driveway, and proceeded to DIE THERE. Like, you know, eight feet or so to either side wouldn't have been an equally fine place to make a snowy high point.

It also wasn't ONE blast from the polar-opposite of Warm Hell, for upon the first night of the "Great Big Badass Winter Storm" (as I like to call it), we received only the initial payment: 14 inches of wind-packed snow. (Note that I cannot explain why, if 14 inches was enhanced to 28 in places, AS IN MY DRIVEWAY, there weren't also corresponding stretches of snow-free blandness. But, there weren't.) On the SECOND DAY of snow-boundedness, we got the remaining—or REAMaining, as I originally typoed—"standard" eight inches. As if this were truly not enough, there were three more fresh inches flaunting their ferocity on the THIRD morning after the initial strike.

Little Girl, of course, was uninhibitedly exhilarated by the trophy-caliber Snow Dump, and bounded through the drifts that threatened to strand her—again a vision of pinkness—amidst them. She did not even truly believe her father's warning that she should NOT attempt to sled down the "big hill," lest the great and unexpectedly exhausting venture of returning to the top sap her of all of her seemingly boundless energy, but when she fortunately (for her) wiped out less than halfway down, she learned that he DID, indeed, know whereof he spoke. At least, in this instance. And she made a delightfully big show of her valiant effort to return to the top of the hill, only to be forced onto her back—repeatedly—like a pink Snow Turtle by the steepness of the climb (and, like as not, miniature Snow Demons pulling her down).

(The teeny little Snow Demons were MY theory. Needless to say.)

The "Great Big Badass Winter Storm of Aught-Seven" (year added 'cause it's SO much fun to say "aught," even if one is saying it in type) also put a damper on EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. of my not-insubstantial weekend plans, replacing them with, "get a two-day headache and slink around like a whiny child when you're not busting your ass to shift unspeakable quantities of snow." It didn't actually SAY that in my Palm or anything, because, frankly, you don't NEED a note in your PDA to remind you when a vile bitch of a blizzard has etched villanous havoc right into your soul. It was not until the third day that it occurred to me that I really SHOULD just put on some big girl panties and deal with this gruesome personal reality; you know, like I'm forever SAYING IN MY BLOG.

Another thing I find myself thinking rather often in the (likely too brief) post-blizzard lull is how sick I am of fucking perspective. I mean, PUT IT IN PERSPECTIVE: it was a massive storm and it was dealt with. And now, heeeeeeere comes another one! So what? I got stranded, not sick (except for the unrelenting sinus headache). I got bored, not hurt (except for the backache from shoveling snow). I got annoyed, not depressed (except for my "usual" dose of SAD). Half-joking exceptions aside, I got perspective, too. But it wasn't anything as Earth-covering as the blizzard was ... no, what I learned was this: driving fast is really, really fun, and when I can't do it, I miss it.

No, wait, don't quit reading in disgust—assuming you're still reading at all—because there's a little more to it than that, although, not much. See, after the storm, when the plows had done what plows do (including knock our mailbox over, but that's a side-rant so I will not digress ... any more than