Conversational Angst

I always feel uncomfortable when I'm with a group of people and the conversation turns to dieting or exercise regimens, and how much everybody wishes they could lose those last two or three pounds.

I sort of feel like adding to the conversation with my own personal experiences. Things like, "Did you know that, if humans were like amoebas, I'd probably already have divided into two people by now? Maybe three if they were particularly svelte?"

Or, "Yes. My darn gravity well just keeps getting deeper and deeper. I think if I have any more of this chocolate cake, I'll probably become a black hole."

Or, "Hey, do you see this softball rotating around my middle? It's a small moon I acquired just last week. It's the latest in plus-size accessories."

But instead I sit there, looking like a human beanbag chair, nodding sympathetically as people talk about elliptical machines and only being able to muscle down two bites of the incredibly sweet dessert that I've already had two servings of. As if I know what they're talking about. As if we're even from the same universe.

My back aches all the time, my ankle twists with great regularity, and I will probably die of a heart attack at age 39. Now. Can we please talk about something else? Books, I hear, are very nice conversational topics this time of year.

Something gross and something cool.

Two things to report today.

First of all, my body did something totally disgusting this morning. It was gross. It was absolute yecha sicko icky. And, naturally, it was also sort of cool. And definitely a bit of a relief. (I've been waiting for it to happen for ages, but why now of all times? Could my ear have been sweating?) But it was still pretty dang gross.

So I'm not going to tell you what it was. You'll just have to imagine. Given the clues above. Um.

Yes.

But that wasn't the cool thing. That was the gross thing. This second thing was the cool thing.

Second thing: I found an utterly cool website today. A website that harbors pictures of unusual furniture. Which I find myself wanting to buy. Very very much.

Having a room full of this furniture would be a bit like living inside of Disney's Beauty and the Beast. Except without the magic stuff. Which, I guess makes it marginally less awesome than it would be if the furniture were somehow infused with the ability to fly, or turn your best friend into an ottoman.

Now THAT would be cool.

Dead Bug Carcasses

Dead bug carcasses.

Eugh!

DEAD BUG A-CARCASSES!

I really, really, really, do not like me them dead bug carcasses, particularly when they're on my stuff, my stuff which I haven't touched for two years, and is thus covered in dust and gunk and dead bug carcasses.

I feel all dusty. And my boxes are far, far too heavy for me ever to lift up off the floor, let alone carry them downstairs, let alone load them onto whatever truck/van/SUV I manage to rent or otherwise wrangle into personal use so I can cart stuff to the post office and pay a great deal of money to have those same very heavy boxes shipped to my parents' house out westwards.

In short, I have reached the despair stage of moving.

So I'm taking a break to check my email. And blog. And complain. Hope you don't mind too much. It'll give me the strength to go back and pack up all the rest of the boxes I've got.

Look, I won't trash your traditions if you don't trash mine.

Every family has its holiday traditions.

Every family.

And I know that in some families holiday traditions consist of who is able to belch the loudest during the commercial breaks of the Rose Bowl. Still others celebrate holidays by dredging up all the old family dirty laundry that's been comfortably buried in piles of other dirty laundry for years and years and is now crawling with mildew (yes, mildew would crawl in this situation) and possibly young families of mice.

Others carol, tell tales of the histories of their people, light candles, swap embarrassing and heart-warming stories about the childhood exploits of blushing siblings, take road trips, watch movies, put together puzzles, do enormous amounts of baking, visit neighbors and elderly relatives and soup kitchens and heck, maybe even animal shelters.

My family does a lot of that too.

But our most persistent holiday tradition?

We get sick. Very, very sick.

And this year we played out our ol' familiar tradition in style.

The sickness can come from any direction, really, and it doesn't have to be any kind of sickness in particular, just something that knocks the majority of us down for at least a day or two, just enough to significantly reduce the amount of quality family time we're able to spend together during the holiday season (that is, if you don't count competing over who gets the highest recorded fever as 'quality family time').

This year, my older sister and her family got sick first. They all started experiencing some significant abdominal distress a couple of days after my youngest sister's wedding (the last of the girls to marry--other than me--hah!) but thought it had moved through and on by the time they came to my parents' house on Christmas Eve.

So they came, and we played and laughed and watched movies and ate cake and caroled around the piano and told embarrassing (and sometimes heart-warming) stories about each other. And it was great. We even thought we had escaped a general family sickness, since my older sister's family appeared unlikely to pass it on, and although my mom had been quite sick with a flu-like cold during my sister's wedding, (extremely unfortunate, but she fought through it like a trooper), the cold didn't appear to be spreading.

This is why my onset of nausea after eating Christmas dinner was somewhat distressing. But even more distressing was vomiting bits of turkey and mashed potatoes out of my nose a few hours later. And hearing everyone else vomit their assorted semi-digested eatings later that evening, in the middle of the night, and into the morning and afternoon of the day after Christmas, including my two-and-a-half-year and six-month-old nephews. (In fact, probably the worst part was hearing my six-month-old nephew crying because he was hungry, but couldn't eat because A: if he did eat, he was likely to throw up and B: my sister hadn't eaten anything for about 18 hours, and thus didn't have any mammary-produced sustenance with which to feed him.)

We're all feeling pretty okay now. A cleansing of the entire system (the entire system, I assure you) and plenty of ginger ale, juice popsicles and an assortment of bananas and toast has brought most of us back to about 90% of normal. And my sister and brother-in-law (parents of the two nephews) who had intended to stay with us only a few days have now spent many more days with us, due to being all sick and unable to get up and stuff, so that's been a boon of sorts.

And you know, I've been thinking. In all honesty, I'd take the 'puking and/or feverish colds every holiday season' over 'family fights and not speaking to each other every holiday season' any day.

So, I guess if we have to pick one terrible family tradition, this one isn't the worst. Maybe, when it comes to holidays, something that 'isn't the worst' might be pretty good after all.

Merry Christmas, everyone. And a happy, HEALTHY, new year.

Forgive me, Mother.

Mom, I know you will cringe at this post. I know you will hate it and shiver and that it will be horrible. And I am very, very sorry. Know that I feel your pain.

I went into the kitchen this afternoon to get a glass of water and found a fat little brown mouse crouched on the mat in front of our sink. I was startled (and disgusted) and became very surprised when the rodent didn't move when I approached and told it (very firmly, I might add) to scurry, dang it! (It was so that I could forget it was there for a little while and then later bring up the subject with my roommate to see if she had any leftover traps from our last mousy escapade, if you must know.)

But the mouse didn't scurry when I told it to. Perhaps it didn't speak English. Or perhaps...it was DEATHLY ILL??? Because it didn't even run away when I tried moving one corner of above-mentioned kitchen mat, I decided that I would try to scoop it up with an empty pizza box. (I had pizza last night, people. We don't leave pizza boxes around for days, or anything. Yeesh.) At that, it seemed to object, and scurried (at last) in the crack next to the oven.

Okay, I thought to myself. Now I will try to get a trap at some point so we can catch this furry marauder.

So I went to my room to read a little and shudder. Later, I came back into the kitchen, and the mouse was once again on the mat. What the heck?!? I thought to myself. I tried again unsuccessfully with the pizza box, but this time I noticed that the mouse was walking oddly, and kept swaying as if it were drunk. Had it gotten into my roommate's wine?

When I came back into the kitchen again, after having left said pizza box open on the floor in the (stupid) hope that it would crawl in and stay in while I surreptitiously shut the lid on it, I found the mouse lying prone on the floor, little paws stuck to the side, tail laid out along the tile like a fallen streamer. Oh, heck. Let me be realistic. It looked like a dead worm attached to an even deader mouse.

I looked closely at the mouse. It was not breathing. So, choking back my gag reflex, I used one of the ubiquitous Bed, Bath & Beyond coupons we get in the mail, and scooped it into the pizza box. I noticed that rigor mortis had already set in, since the thing didn't bend at all when I was doing said scooping. I took the whole ensemble down the stairs to the dumpster, all the while wondering what the thing had died from and, more importantly, whether the disease was likely to kill me too.

Things like, you know, bubonic or pneumonic plague (except that I'm not sure if mice died from that? or even carried it? was it just rats? and did just the infected humans die?) or, I don't know, some sort of feverish horribleness that spreads via seeing weird drunken-seeming mice weave around your kitchen mat.

So, if I start developing flu-like symptoms or buboes in the next few days, just drop me off at the local emergency room, warn them that the next pandemic (and possibly the end of the world) is now at hand, and oh--would someone be kind enough to take notes for me in class on Tuesday? I'm not sure I'm going to make it.

Candy for the masses

"It has come to my attention," she wrote, each finger tap punching briskly into the keyboard, "that there are some among my readers who wish for a more regular update of the events of my life."

She paused, hands poised over her computer, ready to pounce on them like so many warrior-like worms (she wondered for a moment--could worms be warrior like? She imagined earthworms clad in helmets and shaking spears with their back ends and smiled to herself) while she cocked her head and ruminated on the events of the day. Was there anything worthy to report?

Let's see, she thought to herself, hot oatmeal for dinner, a long nap this afternoon which I decidedly should not have taken, conversation with Mom prior to nap, class this morning...beautiful fall-ish day?

"It was a beautiful day today," she continued, allowing her warrior-worms to jump into the fray. "It was just on the chilly side of cool, which made my walk home that much more pleasant. But the weather is boring to talk about, and I suppose all of you are looking for something more...meaty."

I suppose I could finish my account of the marmot affair. She shuddered. No. Perhaps not yet. More recovery was necessary, she supposed, before she could bring herself to conclude the terrible tale.

"Alas; that's pretty much all I have to tell," she continued. "School's fine, work's fine, all systems normal. Even my toenails are doing pretty well, I guess. At least they're growing like crazy. Maybe a trim is in order."

She blushed a little and decided to erase the bit about the toenails. No one needed to hear about that.

Meaning to hit the backspace button, she accidentally (and unaccountably, because the two actions are pretty much completely dissimilar) hit the 'Publish Post' button instead. So the bit with the toenails was up there for all the internet to see. Chagrined, she decided to simply call it a post and withdraw.

For the time being.

Tagalicious

Wow. I've just been tagged.

I feel... I feel pretty sweet about that, actually. Mostly because it gives me a chance to share some random stuff about myself with you.

Just for the record, here's what Pat says about the tag in her tagging post: "*Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird.* Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs.* Let them know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog."

So, I guess my first random thing would be,

1. After quoting from Pat's blog, I felt a strong need to use APA citation. I think grad school is starting to get to me.
(Just for the record, I think it would be something like:
Pat. (2008, March 6). Granny's house. Retrieved March 7, 2008, from http://grannytsbungalow.blogspot.com/.)

2. I once made a movie with some friends that starred a small, terrycloth-covered, bean animal named Chobee. And I was the female lead.

3. I also once ate (as part of an initiation ceremony) an Oreo dipped in salsa. The weird thing is that, as gross as it sounds, the actual experience wasn't all that bad. I guess Oreos win out over all.

4. My biggest dream currently is to become a youth services librarian who writes books on the side. So far, I'm getting pretty far in the librarian business. The book writing thing? Not so much.

5. Okay. This one may be TMI, but I kind of enjoy plucking my face. I love that little tug you get right before a hair pops out. Um. Yeah. I'm sick.

6. Speaking of sick, and speaking of facial hair, I have this growing fetish for beards on men. We're not talking Lorenzo Snow type beards, here. C'mon, people. But I must confess: I really, really love that well-trimmed, full beard look (none of your goatees for me). Kind of like Commander Riker during his be-bearded days, but a little further up the cheek. Nice.

7. Which brings me to this one: I am a closet Trekkie. (It is true. In addition to being an APA citing, Chobee-loving, salsa & oreo-eating, author-wanna-be-librarianing, hair plucking, beard fetishing girl, I am also a nerd.)

And that's all you need to know about me.

So, to pass on the goodness, I think I'll tag:

Kim
Jekka
Nerd Goddess
Lindsay
Joseph
Christian
Joellen
Ethenielle

Which pretty much sums up my blogging acquaintances. (Although I would have tagged Pinto if she hadn't cursed given up blogging for Lent.)

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Edit: Aha. Hum. So, I tagged 8 people instead. I am not so good with numbers.

Sage Advice

If, on a whim, you decide to brush your teeth while completely naked,

Be forewarned:

It's not as exciting as it sounds.

Blech.

Hair is a lot like spaghetti when it's covered in tomato sauce.

I think I'll wear a ponytail while eating from now on.

If you don't like gross things then DON'T READ THIS POST!

Okay. Consider yourself warned.

I want to talk about how blasted amazing and rather awe-inspiring our bodies are, specifically the ability our bodies have to produce mucus.

Yes, mucus.

They sure can crank the stuff out!

I mean, you can blow your nose (emptying it, or so you would suppose) and within (I am not making this up) 60 seconds you can have a good ol' schnoz-full to blow into your already sodden and leaking tissue. (I TOLD you not to read this if you don't like gross things. You only have yourself to blame, you know.)

But I didn't really appreciate until this evening how blasted cool mucus can be. Did you know that mucus lubricates your digestive tract? And that it is antiseptic? And contains immunogoblins? (You can learn all this and more by reading Wikipedia's mucus entry.)

Makes you feel all respectful and stuff, doesn't it?

Yep. Mucus works hard. And our bodies work hard making it.

So really, the fact that I took a good chunk of yet another day off to finish up the second season of The Office doesn't mean I was being lazy, right? I was just giving my body a chance to rest up and keep churning out copious amounts of lovely, viscous, germ-trapping goo.

Go me.