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.

My Little Bride

My grandma is dying. At a faster rate than the last 15 years, which were at a faster rate than her first 60, give or take a few. Much faster now.

I have known that her Crohn's Disease, the crippling arthritis that bent her spine, her extended morphine addiction, loss of hearing and deteriorating vision will take her completely from us one day. I have known for years now and I think I have accepted that depressing reality. Her body has stolen from her and from all of us. It is so strange to watch the slow progression of near constant pain take more and more of her corporal being from the people left to see it.

(Ohop Valley where my grandparents farm is located)

I miss a great deal of it living the distance away that I do. It probably gives me a buffer and will make her passing less of a striking impact on my life. I take no comfort in that truth. If anything I wonder if the distance I have established from these familial relations risks a great deal of closeness, love and feelings I could be sharing, experiencing... I don't want to get the phone call that she is gone and wonder what I am supposed to feel. But I probably will. And I will tell people out loud that I am thankful she was taken from the pain, safe in the knowledge that it was her time, blah, blah blah. I will also be pinching my own leg under the table. See, you still know how to feel, I will reassure myself.

Someone that will be feeling too much will be my grandfather. He will feel so much that he will cease to feel anything but the loss. Now, I readily acknowledge that I idolize my grandpa. I have always said that I do not use the word hero for anyone but Lucille Ball and My Grandpa. I decided that when I was young and it stuck. So yeah, my hero is going to loose his wife. And it is going to ruin him.

It is a strong statement, but entirely true. How do I know? Easy. My grandma has spent much of the last 6 months in a nursing home in an attempt to have her put on weight, heal deep and infected bedsores, receive physical and medication therapy, etc and every single day my 87 year old grandpa drives 45-60 minutes from their farm to the nursing home, spends 6-10 hours by her side and then late at night drives home. Alone. He has yet to miss a day as far as we know.

(That's actually great gramps. Photo by my uncle. Find him here. )

He became the staff favorite within days, no doubt in part to his "awe shucks" amicableness and simultaneous old soul/really listens to what you say-ness, but mostly because he so clearly loves my grandma. He has the taken to referring to her with the staff as "my little bride." As in, "take care of my little bride," "we gotta make sure my little bride is getting better," or "how's my little bride doing today?"

Yeah.

He has other pet names for her that only recently came to light in front of the family because he shows his soft side with the nursing assistants. Maybe when my mom, aunt and uncle were young they heard these endearments, but chances are they weren't privy to this inside world either until now. As lovely as he has always been as a grandpa, I know little of his parenting or his married life. And it's not mine to know beyond what they let us see.

My little bride. And she is little, even more now than ever. She used to stand at 5'7" and 120 pounds. Tall, thin, regally hosting dinners at times, dirty and sweaty from the zucchini patch at others. And my Grandpa no doubt has flashes of all those times and more as he tries to get a response from her hunched and nearly gone from this world frame. His love... boggles, inspires, hurts, repairs all at the same time.

What I will feel, regardless of close or far, will pale so dramatically in comparison to his loss it will risk disappearing. And I am glad. I am glad that his love for her is so powerful. I don't pretend to understand their relationship. It is foreign in too many ways to account for, but I understand what he means when he uses those terms of affection. It resonates like Shakespeare or Rumi.

Translated as best I can, My Little Bride:

Your being sustains me, gives me order, thrills me, breaks me, has been next to me for decades (millennia), is all I know, and I cannot bear the thought of losing this gift. I do not know how to live without you. If you disappear, will I also? I think I might. I love you my little bride. I love what we have had, as the farmhand on your family's homestead that teased the farmer's daughter and promised to come back for you after the war. I love you here and now in this smelly, sterile building I drive to and from where you are fading from me daily. I love you in all the in-betweens we spent together that only you and I really know. I learned love with you and I am scared to love without you. So I won't. When you leave me, us I will pack away my heart for the hereafter. I will save it for you as I always have and I will come to you again.

True Life: Random Happens

Some true tidbits from today:

After my shower I was toweling off in the hallway (don't ask) and I suddenly knelt down on the floor next to my slightly affected cat and sang loudly "THE FINAL COUNTDOWN!" I then stood back up, walked into the bedroom and looked in the closet for what I wanted to wear.

While rifling through a drawer for a shirt I came across a pair of panties and thought, "Hmm, underpants. What a concept." I AM NOT KIDDING. Who thinks these things? (other than me, clearly.) I am proud to say I am in full undergarment regalia today.

I made 18 phone-calls in a row to clients, employees and funding sources for work. Back to back to back to back to... Well you get the idea. I hate the phone intensely and get all sweaty and annoyed when I have to talk to that many people (or their voicemail) in a row. Then again, pretty much anything makes me sweaty and annoyed, so perhaps this last tidbit lacks the required randomness I was going for.

I made the thickest steak I have ever cooked the other night and the leftovers will not quit. Today I took a hunk and thinly sliced it to nom on. Very tasty and I went back for seconds. Which I followed by eating three spoonfuls of peanut-butter and two glasses of milk. My stomach wants to punch me in the face. Too bad for you GI track my brain controls voluntary movement of my limbs!! HA.

Tonight has lots of promise for a continued trend of WTF.

This Could Essentially Be a Tweet It Is So Short In Nature

I have threatened The Universe with my wrath more than once today if certain events transpire. I also bargained, pleaded, and perhaps briefly cussed out the Cosmos. I intend to maintain my stance that me holding a grudge against All That Is ranks as a pretty frickin' huge threat because though I may be diminutive in thought, word and deed I know some people. People you don't want on your bad side. Like the Russians. YEAH, pretty sure everything will turn up roses since I had my little chat with the Macrocosm.

And for good measure here is a tweet from earlier today with the added bonus of pictures:

sometimes when I worry about a loved one I visualize my brain as a burrowing animal, displacing dirt rapidly & accomplishing little.

Pretty Ones and Zeros

My anal retentive side loves organizing jellybeans by flavor. Like, I zen out on that shit. And then get a massive sugar rush because I ate half of them while organizing. Oops.

It's not so much that I have a crush on this vintage nerd as it is I respect the shit out of him. ACCORDION PLAYERS ARE AWESOME. It is a well known fact among hot redheads, but lesser known to the masses. It is my job to educate in the ways of accordion pride (and occasional lust. Fine, you got me.)

No idea. I just like the color.

I would wear every single pair of these ankle boots. In fact I think I may have a version of the top black pair. Vintage ads never fail.

These gals are my new best friends, they just haven't been informed yet. But they will know when I find them, dressed as a dancing peacock with a pumpkin in tow. Then all will be revealed and we shall frolic in fields of gold as scripture spake. Or Sting sang about. One of the two. I am too busy collecting feathers to check.

Editors note: I have no idea why some of my words are underlined and others aren't. Let's pretend there is a conspiracy theory that explains it all. When you have figured it out let me know in comments. Which means it will always remain a mystery because I have no one that comments. /echos into internet infinity-void.

Wanting To Be Electric

Because if I were I could simply plug in to a wall outlet and recharge. My little battery percentage status would blink 100% when I was ready and I would receive equally effective and accurate warning when my levels approached dangerously low. Instead of this highly controlled measurement system I operate in a world of "that was the third night in a row I hardly slept" and "what can someone make for dinner from panchetta, mustard, two slices of bread, and a carrot, because said person hasn't had time to go to the grocery store in a well over a week?" And my current favorite "acquiring deep, dark bruises when a the fluffy cat laid on your leg for 15 minutes. OMG WHAT THE HELL IS HAPPENING TO MY BODY. I think I might be DYING."

(art is titled "a pile of bruises" and be found here)

Yeah, it is time to attend to my health again. And a sanity check in with a therapist probably wouldn't hurt. And a spa day. In the south of France. Alright, spas and transcontinental travel is not so much a realistic option, but I did go the the GNC section of Rite-Aid today and stock up on my ulcer prevention meds, Malox, multi-vitamins, omega-3 fish oil pills. (Confession, I actually like the "tuna burps" those things give you. No one around me does, but I do.) I have a habit of starting medication and supplements and sticking with it for as long as it takes me to get back to well. After the anemia fades and the stomach cramps are gone I invariably get lax in my approach to healthy regimens and ho-ho's and pickles for lunch and dinner seems totally okay.

Drool....

Ummm, yeah that sounded so good I sorta went cross-eyed. I'm back now.

It always seems like recharging, attending to personal health, caring for your own person enough to actually treat it like a temple (or at the very least a nice museum or theater) should not be so dang hard. Why is it that I will have to schedule on my calendar what days I will go for a walk/run/die/sweat-fest and finally call the doctor to ask about the bruises, exema, and lethargy after saying I will do it tomorrow everyday for the last month? It would be in my best interest to take care of myself, but it is just one more damn thing I have to do. Hell, most days I come home from work so exhausted that I cannot think past getting my pants off of my being and having a glass of wine while I let my glazed-over eyes flit through the comments on Jezebel and Awkward Family Photos. Adult responsibilities can pretty much suck it as far as I am concerned at that point in the day.

The short-term effect is great. I get a little buzz before dinner, don't have to think too hard for 45 minutes and forget about the t0-do list. The long-term effects can really bite you in the ass though, huh? Laundry piles up to frightening proportions, you end up with more of a tolerance for wine than a gal your size should have and for me the anxiety kicks in at full blast, often in the middle of the night. Since I have been off pretty much all pharmaceuticals for 8 months now I don't have the "oh, I'll just pop a sedative and coast through the hellish landscape of panic attacks" option anymore. I keep some Ativan around just in case I really start to go sideways, but ideally I have been able to address the root causes and thus engage in preventative measures against those very moments. Until I lose focus and forget to keep apace with getting my shit taken care of.

It is no fun to be reminded that for as much of a blast as it is to work-hard, play-hard it is simply not an equation that is compatible to my system for long. Wishing I could leech energy from some easily accessible source and then just keep truckin' along ends up being kind of a lame desire after a bit of consideration. Perhaps if I put in the effort now to discover some of those recharging aspects within me I won't have to keep wishing and hoping for some saving grace from places outside of me. And I like the idea of that better than being an appliance any day.

This Is Not Really How I Feel

Angry Cats Are Awesome.