Friday, February 29, 2008

Friday Fill-Ins #61

1. I’m looking forward to working again next week.
2. I don’t handle monstrous amounts of stress, topped off by anxiety very well.
3. Sushi is something I could eat every day.
4. Warmth and sunlight are in short supply.
5. Colorado here I come!
6. I dig tattoo(s).
7. And as for the weekend, tonight I’m looking forward to a drinks date and Erin’s party, tomorrow my plans include cleaning, that sort of thing and Sunday, I want to prepare for a busy week, relax, and watch the Jane Austen bit on PBS (can’t remember what’s on tonight–final hour of Pride & Prejudice?)!

I’m always amused when people say that they’d like a large dog, or any dog at all, but their apartment is too small. It doesn’t matter how much space I have to work with, the dog is next to me. Right now, we’re both crammed onto this just-slightly-larger-than-a-loveseat couch. The entire rest of the apartment is clear and available. But here we are, we are together. Touching.

Inexplicably, I also get a canine escort to the bathroom.

I know I talk about the dog a lot. But you know, we’re bonded.

 

I am the personification of a train wreck these days. I have a mostly-Buddhist view of these things. I don’t necessarily think that just because I’m a mess right now I’m destined to a lifetime of it. Actually, now that I think about it, I think the opposite. My brain is so thick right now, I think there’s actual purpose to all this. This could also be some hard-core rationalization. I accept that.

But I think I’m going to come out the other side, and it’s going to be good. I think my Buddhist teachings would refrain from even placing judgments on these experiences: good vs. bad. But I’m from Indiana, sooooooo . . . I think there might be a limit to just how Buddhist I can ever be. Could be a linguistics thing, too–like I need to frame these experiences in language that everyone can grasp.

It is not lost on me how often I use the phrase “I think,” because I want to qualify what I have to say. I’m definitely not coming from a place of confidence right about now. (See above: trainwreck.)

I have developed a tremendous understanding of why people abuse drugs. I have this idea that coffee–and decaf shall never touch my lips–and its delicious caffeination helps me order myself, gives me some kind of energy boost that results in actual progress on my part. Today it just wrecked me. I’ve been a preoccupied mess. I can barely maintain the attention span necessary for a conversation, and despite a to-do list that requires my attention, upon which a lot of important stuff hinges, I have spent the day trolling the internet. I cycle through the same websites obsessively. On one website, I guess I thought I was sending a message, and went through the rigamarole of typing in that code to prove I am human and whatnot, but didn’t actually compose a message. I’m not actually cluing in to anything on the screen.

My brain is just thick. It’s full of all these questions. I often liken my depression to a physical sensation of wading through thigh-deep mud. I don’t have complete confidence that I can wade through it, either. I’d say my energy center is about thigh-level during these times. Not a lot of brain activity. Everything I’ve got is concentrated in the physical act of wading forward, of going through the motions of every day life: getting up for some job, navigating inadequate public transportation, suffering the daily humiliations someone with paper-thin skin suffers. Now, though, the activity is concentrated in my brain. And I have faith that the brain will sort it all out. Physically, I’m very quiet. I know I should be out running, doing any number of things, but instead, I sit here on my couch, with my laptop and German Shepherd wedged in beside me, mindlessly cycling through the same webpages, while my brain churns.

But at the same time, I’m feeling insanely restless. My usual M.O. is to just pick up and move to a new city when I muck things up, so the challenge for me is always to stay put. It’s a mammoth  exercise in empathy for me to realize that most people are afraid to change and want nothing more than for things to stay the same. To allay the restlessness, I actually placed an ad on craigslist, looking for someone up for a last-minute international adventure. I know, insane, but I figure I can swing something in the name of sanity. And it felt good. It was like expending negative energy. I put a message out to the universe.

Weird tangent to be explored further at another time: there is something kind of sinister about this American commitment to individualism. I hitchhiked through Ireland, something I would NEVER do here in the states. It’s more than gun control laws. There’s something to the overriding principles behind things like gun control laws: the good of the community vs. the good of the individual. I have the soul of a committed socialist at times. But at the same time, I know I benefit in countless ways from this system. Everything is good and bad, positive and negative.

I distract myself yet again. Whenever a train of thought enters the station, I gotta ride it to the end because if I lose sight of it, another train or seven come into view.

The epiphany, part two.

I changed my mind. I don’t want to be someone who only does exactly what she wants. Especially w/r/t sex. If we only pursue our own gratification . . . why even involve someone else? We can satisfactorily meet our own needs, women probably moreso than men.

But, not really . . . there is something undefinable about being with another human being, something not directly related to errogenous zones. It’s like skin is hungry. It’s touch. I can only really speak to a woman’s perception here, obviously, but surely men must find pleasure in touching, and I don’t mean just those places!

So I think what I’ve come up with, in an extremely roundabout way, is that I want to be a sexual dynamo; I want to be a giving partner; but it’s not a bad idea to examine my own motives. And someday, some lucky guy is going to hit the jackpot . . . imagine if I could cook?

∞

Funny story that might cost me a couple dog sitting jobs. We’ll see.

So, my dear neighbor asked if I could walk her dog, since she was going to be stuck at work for a while. This is no problem, of course, and instead of return her to her crate when we come home, I bring her over to my place to hang out.  Here’s Flo: 

She’s a great girl. She’s going to a new home today–my neighhbor is a volunteer/board member of New Leash on Life, a no-kill rescue here in Chicago (and in L.A.: nlol.org), and a family is adopting her. yeah! 

Once again, I distracted myself.

So, Flo comes over, and she’s a busy girl. Gotta completely scope out the new apartment, you know? Ruby’s got a couple of big toy baskets, so those needed to be evaluated, too. She finally found a bone she liked and got busy on that for a bit.

In her wanderings, she did a nice job of checking out my kitchen and cleaning up the edibles on the floor. She is like a kind of four-legged, easily distracted roomba vacuum. (This is invaluable, since, if you’ll recall from an earlier post, I have a dog who verily spews dog food.) What was precious is that she didn’t actually eat any of the kibble in the dish; just the stuff on the floor.

     

Some background before we proceed with the story: Chicagoland had a brief but fierce thunderstorm last week, and Ruby has terrible storm fear. As a last resort, the vet perscribed some tranquilizers, and now, unfortunately, I cannot do without them. The ethics of drugging an animal for my own comfort aside, they enable her to relax, so last week, I tried to pop a couple pills down the gullet. Took me two tries. I thought. Later, I see the remnants of a smashed pill in front of the fridge. She musta chewed one, I thought, and spit as much as she could on the floor. I cleaned it up, and carried on with the mundane details of my life. Unbeknownst to me, I missed another smashed pill.

Back to our story: Sarah comes home, comes to get her beast, we chat, she goes home, she calls me 10 minutes later. Could I come down? she asked. Something is maybe wrong with Flo? A second opinion, please?

Flo seems . . . kinda slow, kinda clumsy, her eyes are bleary . . . Sarah is studying Flo, who does seem a bit muted considering she’s just a year old and still prone to irrational fits of purest ecstasy. And I think to myself, dang, it’s like Ruby on a tranquilizer. Except, I didn’t have the pills out?

And then the memory of the smashed pill on the floor flickers across my vision, and I feel pretty certain that there musta been another place where Ruby spit out pill parts, and Flo found ‘em. Sarah was enormously relieved, of course. A doctor perscribed tranquilizer is far easier to deal with than a sudden onset neurological disorder that impacts vision and coordination. Whew!

So we’ll see if Sarah lets me near her animals again.

 ∞

I made some low-fat, low-cholesterol banana muffins last night that do not suck. I also put chocolate chips in them, but from what I can tell, the banana-bread-y parts genuinely aren’t bad.

Kinda had an epiphany tonight. A very interesting a-ha! moment . . .

So I’m talking to a guy about sex, and I asked about his appreciation for oral sex. As you might expect, he is an enthusiastic recipient, but then, isn’t everyone? But, in spite of his deep appreciation for it, he doesn’t reciprocate. Which. Blows. My. Mind.

He doesn’t actually do anything he doesn’t want to.

Now, if you’ve just read that, and you’re like, yes . . . ????? I want to tell you I think you rock. Because I have been very, very busy doing a lot of stuff that does not turn me on, that I would not choose to do, that maybe I do not want to do (and I might know this if I paid a little more attention to what I was thinking during sexual encounters) but I wanted my partner to be extremely satisfied, so I did it. Any partner. It’s like intellectually, I know that sex is not love. But why am I knocking myself out like this? Am I hoping that I will be such an extraordinary sexual partner that someone will be unable to live without me? Let’s dig a little deeper here: why do I feel like I need to demonstrate my sexual prowess? Why am I going to these lengths?? I’m researching techniques on the internet, reading books . . . I’m expending energy on this that I should have spent on my career or other aspirations. I’ve crafted myself into a sexual dynamo with a single-mindedness I didn’t even know I had.

Can I rechannel this? Can I take this somewhat self-destructive tendency and channel it into something constructive?

Can I qualify for the Boston Marathon?

Can I finish that novel?

Can I figure out how to snowboard without shattering both of my kneecaps?

It’s a winter wonderland again today in Chicago. I don’t know how many inches we got last night. As a rule of thumb, if the city got accumulation, then the ‘burbs got dumped on. Poor ‘burbs.

The food poisoning seems to have worked its way out of my system, thankfully. God, that’s awful stuff. I told someone else that the only redeeming virtue to food poisoning is that it’s only a couple days of discomfort (albeit extreme discomfort), unlike the flu that goes on for a week or more, or a cold, the hardiest strains of which can endure for a month, it seems like. I can’t imagine feeling like that for an extended period of time . . .

I know I’m almost 100% because I can resume caffeination. Dearest Coffee! I have so missed you, your steamy goodness, the irresistible creamy-sugary yumminess that blunts your edge! An ode to coffee!!

Coffee is probably best honored not with bad poetry *cough*cough*, but by its earnest comsumption. Down the hatch!

Oh wow, I just looked out my front window, and someone is actually shoveling the front walkway, as well as hacking up the ice that makes leaving the apartment building a bit exciting . . . I wonder what the occasion is? Seriously. The maintenance on this building is garbage. I love *love* love my neighborhood, but I need to move. This place is a dump. It’s ridiculous.

Finished yet another phone interview. These big companies are kind of hard-core. A totally humorless HR chick calls and has serious questions about my career and goals therein. I am then placed in the awkward position of having to lie and pretend to care deeply about the work of pushing paper around my desk, onto someone else’s desk, into someone’s computer, back from their computer . . . Pay me. Give me some insurance. Access to coffee. The company of reasonable human beings. And I can be your paper-pushin’ rock star! There’s only so long I can pretend like this work is more important than my dog or my family or the other people in my life who stick with me through thick-n-thin.

Just checked a fun blog of a woman who seems to have a herd of little dogs who let her dress them up and photograph them. I always immediately wonder what my dog(s) would look like in the same get-ups. I’d like multiple dogs . . . but I like big dogs. What if I had three German Shepherds? What if one of them let me put an Elvis pompador on his head?

Which then, of course, leads me to speculate about what life would be like with a herd of German Shepherds . . . unfortunately, it would most likely mean immobility. The one I have follows me from room to room to room; I pause when I stop before I turn or back up to let her adjust. What if there were three? It would be a chronic traffic jam of sorts. And I don’t think they sell couches big enough for all of us. And the noise. This one talks, talks, talks. I don’t know what she wants, but she narrates everything.

And she’s a slob. When she eats? Kibble seems to shoot sideways out of her mouth. Imagine three large dogs spewing kibble. And sometimes, god only knows why, she turns her food dish over. Is this to express dissatisfaction with the meal she’s been served? The manner in which it was presented? A fierce rebuttal to the insolence of the waitstaff? An exclamation point? I! Was! Starving! (although the bowl is nearly always full . . . so that’s probably not it) . . .

Just went down to switch around some laundry. I transferred someone else’s wash out of the machine. Bless their funny little hearts: one of my neighbors washes her fine unmentionables along with her dog leashes, all on delicate.

UPDATE: the neighbor also dried her delicates and her dog leashes together . . . on the delicate cycle.

It’s always interesting to see what happens when you get sick, and I don’t mean that in a biological way, either.

I’ve got a few fellas in the mix these days, and when I became grossly, semi-violently ill Saturday night, I had to cancel some plans. Interesting to me that no one asked if I needed anything.

But this morning, the ex came by to walk the dog and pick up my ’scrips at the drug store. He brought me the most precious gift of all: caffeine. I can’t actually enjoy the caffeinated beverage yet, but the thought does count.

My phone was fritzing on me, so he gave me his phone to make a call. He’s got that plan where you put your favorite five numbers in, and those five numbers are represented by little icons on the welcome screen. Obviously, I used to be in his favorite five, but now Kristin is in my spot.

He went to great lengths to assure me that she’s just a friend, but you know what? It’s ok if she’s not. If it’s not Kristin now, it’ll be Sarah, or Susan, or Jennifer, or Katharine . . . and it’s still ok. Our love ran its course. And it’s not that he doesn’t love me, because I know he does. Love changes sometimes. Erik out in Seattle still loves me. And there are a couple more people I loved and I am still fortunate to count as friends; our love changed. It does not diminish what came before. It just makes the future . . . less certain? but what future is certain?

It’s nice to stand beside someone and face the uncertainty together. You never know when you’re going to get food poisoning and need help walking the dog.

My mother was convinced that I have or had the flu, but I’m pretty positive that this is food poisoning. See, the great thing about the flu is that you have a fever, and while the fever marinates the brain, you aren’t fully aware of your own suffering. Food poisoning is pure, unadulturated suffering. I still feel a little like a bag of garbage, but after 24 hours of bodily expulsions, I desperately need to do some laundry.

Yesterday, I went snowboarding. I played competitive rugby for years, and I’ve run two marathons, and this was much harder on my body. My knees are swollen and bruised from landing on them. Every muslce in my body is sore. And to add insult to injury? I believe I got food poisoning from the overpriced lunch I bought at the restaurant. I don’t know when in my adult life I have felt this miserable. The first time I got food poisoning was also quite miserable, but I was with friends who took care of me. I’ve been on my own for this bout, in addition to being sore, except for wonderful Lori, who came over last night with ginger ale, walked my dog AND did the dishes in my sink. Tonight, wonderful neighbor Sarah walked poor Ruby. I tried, but I made it down one flight of stairs before I realized that getting all the way outside was out of hte question.

I wrote a blog entry yesterday, en route to the scene of the crime, which I will type up tomorrow when my innards aren’t still churning. Please God/Diety of choice, let  my innards stop churning.

It’s about 1:30 a.m., and I am still wrestling with the quirks of blogging. The spacing of my Friday Fill-In post is driving me quite mad.