Why the Modigliani Face?

I keep trying to turn the corners of my mouth up, but today it is not working. No, no, no, not at all. Even my stupid art joke of a title doesn't do anything for me and I LOVE bad puns, especially if they have a snobbish reference in them.

It is as though the muscle relaxer I took over 24 hours ago (whoa, the muscle spasms lately) is still lingering in my face. But not so much my brain, because although it may be feeling rather lackluster in mood it seems to be spitting out all sorts of random shit at normal speeds. I can feel that the grey matter is maintaining its weight atop my shoulders, but damned if I can figure out what the hell it is scheming up there.

It amazes me that something so integral to my entire concept of self can be such a fucking mystery at times. When my body does weird-ass shit and my mood plummets I get this distorted way of looking at things. It is as though I am looking at everything I do, people I interact with from above, or away from myself. Watching me, as though in a movie, with one goofy perspective.

Another strange side-effect of a crummy disposition and the sorta-sickies that are plaguing me (get it? Plaguing-->plague-->sick. This play on words has never been done before, I am sure of it.) is the sudden sensitivity to the most random of stimuli. The smell of popcorn in the office (co-workers, seriously, three bags in one hour!?) makes me want to puke in someone's desk drawer next to their post-it notes and paperclips. My own internal monologue seems really EMPHATIC suddenly, but I can't make myself not hear it as LOUD NOISES.

Today, I got into a shouting match, with my brain between my perceived external persona and my brain's narrator. It was all kinds of WHOA.

External Me: Hey brain voice, do you know you are shouting the email you are trying to compose? You needn't do that.

Brain Narrator: ACTUALLY, I DO RIGHT NOW. IT IS HELPING YOU FOCUS. JUST TRUST ME.

EM: I do not feel HELPED right now. In fact it feels like the opposite.

BN: NO, THIS IS A GOOD THING. THIS WAY YOU CANNOT HEAR THE USELESS BANTER OF OTHERS. SEE? IT IS ONLY ME SHOUTING. GREAT, HUH?

EM: (rubbing temples) That makes NO FUCKING SENSE, BRAIN. Please, just go back to normal volume. I promise I will stay focused.

BN: NOT YET. I AM REALLY SEEMING TO GET THE HANG OF THIS LOUD THING. GONNA RUN WITH IT FOR THE NEXT FEW HOURS.

EM: FINE. Just don't mind me when I box my own ears.

BN: WHAT? I CAN'T HEAR YOU OVER HOW AWESOME WE ARE BEING RIGHT NOW.

(this is what I imagine it would look like if re-inacted by a small asian child and a bovine-like animal)

And then my brain asploded. It's been happening a lot lately.

Distraction Action

This post is purely an excuse to take a break from working on lesson planning sheets. I have about 55 to write by the end of the week and my brain is starting to make a "ffzztz-fztzz" noise. WHEEEEE!

Look, I know this looks creepy and has every potential to smell really bad, but the truth remains: I want to go to there.

FINALLY! It is about time someone drew up the anatomy of Godzilla. I mean anthropologists, come on! And to think you called yourself scientists up to this point. Pfff.

I am going to attempt to use the word peapod more often from here on out. Try it. It feels really, really good to say. (Oh, that's just me? Fine, I will say it as much as I please and you can have the other vegetables. Have fun with cabbage.)

I love this anthropomorphized penguin ever so.

Heheh. I mean, don't be this guy. Too much.

This post did not take nearly enough time to fully distract me from my actual responsibilities. Thus I shall now make a mix CD for some poor SOB.

What!? I Am Not Peter Pan's Hot Sister That Also Never Has To Grow Up?

I keep thinking I would blog about growing up in an eloquent, I'm not just stringing a litany of complaints together way. I am not sure I am there yet, but I just gotta get this out.

"Everybody knows

It sucks to grow up
And everybody does
It's so weird to be back here.
Let me tell you what
The years go on and
We're still fighting it, we're still fighting it
You'll try and try and one day you'll fly
Away from me

Ben Folds knows what's up in this regard. We all know how hard it is to take on the trappings of adulthood and not go fucking insane every once and a while. Go on a bender of excess, irresponsibility, shortsightedness. But we also can't stay young and cared for by others forever. In fact we resist it mightily for much of our formative years only to figure out how fucking sweet we had it once we flounced out of our self-described 18-and-under prison and experience post-college paying bills and cleaning our own messes (food spills, employment woes, etc) aspect of life.

Hey... so, oops Mom and Dad. I take back the prison comments I used to make. Ha ha. All a joke! More like four-star hotel! Private chef! Personal spa! Chauffeur! (just wondering if the basement is still open?)

I do an adequate job of being a grown-up. I don't call myself a girl very often anymore. I actually say woman without blushing or adding caveats to qualify my statement. But I still struggle to maintain certain expectations about my performance more than I would like. Like waking up from my dreamscapes for work, doing my laundry, sticking to a budget, dressing my age (whatever that means), thinking seriously about home ownership... I watch some of my peers make small people, take on debt for a home and my mind reels. How do they do it without their heads exploding each morning!?!

'Cause I am pretty sure that is what would happen to me if I tried any of that shit.

Baby-steps. Holding down a job, waking up before 10 on weekends of my own volition, planning dinners ahead for the week. And there is nothing like relaxing with a book, candles going, a glass of wine, music low and a clean house in the evening. I do love me a good night out with beers, loud music, late hours and suffering the ensuing headache earned through the debacle of the previous night. Just not every night please. My old joints can't take it, and my stomach lining really insists I cool it. Oh darn, guess I will just stay in and cuddle with the cats. Rough life, I tell ya.

I Am A Study In Psychosomatic EVERYTHING

If you every wonder how I am doing and have the misfortune of knowing me in real life you don't really have to ask. Just look at my posture, my healthy glow or conversely my pallor, my cuticles... Okay, actually ask me instead of inspecting me like a monkey searching for nits and such, but you get the idea. I can hide my emotions and put awesome make-up to cover up the haggard look I sometimes sport, but too long in the sunlight and it fades. It melts away and my smile doesn't crinkle my eyes like a genuine smile should. It is at this point that people tell me I look tired, or worn out and I nicely resist punching them in their fucking neck.

When my mind is stressed my body is soon to follow. AM and I have a tiff about something trivial? Eczema only on the wedding ring finger. I am under deadline pressure at work and feel overly burdened? Back spasms assault me when I reach for a cup for my tea at the office. Existential angst about my "true calling" or "path"? Insomnia for a week or five. Not being able to afford donations to local NPR station or Loaves and Fishes? Break out the Malox and fiber pills, Mama can't digest her food.

And heaven forbid someone near me get ill, injured or overly stressed. Whatever ailment you have I pick up because I care for you so much my brain makes my body freak out with sympathy pains. Example: I had boyfriend in college who had a family history of bad knees. Here is what happened:

BF: (limps into apartment, sets down soccer gear)

Me: Are you okay? What happened?

BF: I slide tackled (name) before he could score and fucked up my bad knee.

Me: Oh shit, have you iced it yet?

BF: Nah, I should be okay.

Me: Really? Let me get some frozen peas. Just in case. It sorta looks swollen...

Five Hours Later

BF: Uuurgh! This really hurts. Can you grab me some more ibuprofen?

Me: Coming up shortly. (gets up stiffly from couch)

The Next Morning

Me: (waking up, I toss the covers off my legs) What the hell is going on with my knee?

BF: You mean MY knee? I can't bend it still. I think I might go by the doctor.

Me: Umm, no. Look at my knee. Something is going on.

BF: (he looks) Holy shit! Its as swollen as mine almost. Did you hurt it last night?

Me: (flopping back down on the pillows, realizing what it is) No. This is just because I love you.

BF: What?

Me: Sympathy symptoms. I must like you something awful 'cause this hurts a ton.

BF: You're body is weird.

Me: Yes, thank you for pointing it out.

When he twisted it playing soccer and it swelled to epic proportions, my corresponding knee was not far behind. I couldn't bend it and it actually swelled enough that I stopped by the school clinic. I took anti-inflammatories for a week and hobbled about until he was better. Once he was, overnight, the pain was gone. Same thing when he got his wisdom teeth pulled. I couldn't swallow or talk for 48 hours (relief to some I imagine).

So, it's cool and all that I know I can feel very strongly for others (and for my own gerbil on a wheel of a brain), but perhaps there is a way to feel a little less literally. Oh, who am I kidding? If tomorrow I lost this oft inconvenient way of experiencing the world I would feel... lost, disconnected, numbed. And, let's be honest I'd bitch about having lost it just as much as I do about having it in the first place.

But just because you love me and I love you, please do not seriously injure yourself or become intensely ill, thank you. I can only handle so many ailments at a time and right now there seem to be a few more flair-ups than I would like.

Walking Contradiction

Every person I know changes their mind sometimes. It may be about trivial minutia or big, changing-my-life items. We contradict what we insisted last year we would never be caught dead wearing/doing/believing. My sister used to remind me that when I was in 9th grade I swore up and down that I would never be caught without mascara on and would never smoke pot. Guess which one I stuck with?

Okay, yeah neither.

The point is that we change our opinions all the time. Its normal. However, I sometimes engage in what can only be described as paradoxical behavior. As in, I am believing or engaging in two rather opposite behaviors at or nearly at the same point in time. Exhibit A: I was looking at waist cinchers online (for a Halloween costume idea that requires a tiny waist) while eating a chocolate bar and four servings of garlic melba rounds. Exhibit B: loving the taste of lime in my bloody beer (tomato juice, cheap beer, pepper with a squeeze of lime), but finding the lime in my menudo (tripe soup with tomato base broth) to be completely gross. Two similar versions of lime in tomato only six days apart is a completely different experience somehow.

The more serious types of incompatible thoughts are of course the projection judgments I place on others, decrying their inconsiderate nature, disgusting habits, etc all while knowing deep down I share a bond with them for these very same behaviors. Stealing, cheating, lying. We have all done some variation of these, and perhaps while hiding it from the world as best we can we are pointing fingers at someone else.

I watch someone bite their cuticles and I want to vomit. I get nervous about a deadline at work and suddenly, as long as I hide doing it (sort of) it is not so gross. The list goes on a long time and I do have some deeper, scarier things that I am not even willing to fully face (or put on my blog at least) that swim in the depths where light barely filters through to. Freud talked about defense mechanisms of the ego (in order for the ego to survive it has to create and live in a world of defense mechanisms) and as outdated as much of his interpretations of the internal world are nowadays, I find myself going back to these ideas. Hell, much of my blog could be called one big intellectualization of my emotions. Not as in, "I am awfully smart and reflective aren't I?" but more so in that I distance myself through analysis and attempt an objective standpoint so all the touchy stuff isn't so damn sensitive. And it works. Sometimes.

God, where the fuck was this going? Umm, humans are weird and confusing and judgey, including me? Yes. Yes, I think that is it.

I am going to push publish now and pretend that this post is better than is actually is. Is that denial? Repressions? Rationalization? Another resounding YES.

Playing Dress Up

Halloween, the greatest holiday pretty much ever is nearly upon us and I do not know what I am going as this year. Last year I was Mia Wallace from Pulp Fiction post-OD from snorting heroin with syringe extruding from my breastplate. It was awesome. The year prior I was Beetlejuice from the movie of the same name with greenish/yellowish hair, striped pants and killer make-up. Again, awesome.

(some further adjustments were made after this quickie photobooth shot, but you get the idea)

This year I am at a loss. Anything that involves being dead or almost dead is clearly high up on the list, but I just haven't been struck by inspiration yet and I am getting nervous. I want this year to be epic and thus I am culling the extensive knowledge of my readership (all four of you) for ideas. Ready, set, COMMENT.

Winning idea gets a beer on me.