moping on a national holiday:
memorial day was spent zipped up in chris' sleeping bag(to which i have developed an unhealthy attachment) watching movies with the sound off so i could read my trashy novel. i ordered a pizza from pizza hut and as i waited anxiously for the delivery person i prayed hard that no one i knew would see them come up to my door. i felt like i had ordered out for some crack. embarrassment level 4. the guilt of spending almost $20 on something so disgusting also weighed heavily on my crack-addled mind. after i slunk back into my bedchamber with my junk food, i lit a bunch of vanilla candles to start the odor-masking process i knew would need to happen. after two hours of being locked in a room with those 2 smells, they sort of mixed and became each other...the original spicy meat scent had begun to tango with the soggy cardboard of the pizza box, and the candles lent everything a skanky, cloying edge. i hopped, still ensconced in the sleeping bag, to the door and flung it open. i spent maybe five minutes contemplating taking out my newly acquired violin or maybe getting started on a draft of a new story and quickly put both of those productive ideas down, as i wouldn't be able to continue to stew in the sleeping bag and do either of those things.

i hopped back into the bedroom and collapsed face down on the bed. i did not roll myself over, but fell asleep like that for over an hour. i woke up to the smell of vanilla marinated pepperoni emanating from the now almost liquefied pizza box about an inch from my head. i blew the candles out.

this morning i bought a violin. i do not know how to play the violin. i have never even picked up a guitar. but a year or two ago i had a dream in which i was a tragic gypsy woman with twisted caramel hair who wiled away the evening hours in front of an audience of a bonfire and a horse playing tragic gypsy pieces on her one material possession: a violin. okay, so i'm embellishing the great hair detail and the horse being in the dream because i've always wanted beautiful thick buttery hair and it goes without saying that i have always deep down in my heart of hearts wanted a horse because i am a girl. yes, yes, i realize it's a stereotype about girls but it wouldn't be a stereotype if it wasn't a little bit true, right? but i digress. so my dream self was so able to express herself by playing this instrument that it sort of resonated into my consciousness. i woke up feeling like if i picked up a violin, the sadness of the girl in front of the horse and fire would come spilling out in the vibrant tones that i heard in my dream. why i felt this to be true as opposed to say, me waking up with the sexy hair that i've always wanted is, i suppose, related to the fact that i assume that the physical world is going to be the same when i wake up as it was when i went to sleep. there is a mathematical term for this but i'll be diddled if i can remember what it is...hmm... anyway, i understand that there is no such thing as santa claus or the toothfairy and that my hair will be the same fine, purple clump that doesn't quite hit my shoulders because i understand that hair doesn't just grow two feet and get lustrous overnight unless you've got a kick ass fairy godmother, which, as it happens, i don't. my fairy god mother is drinking in front of an all day monster movie fest in her birdhouse or wherever it is that she lives and is staunchly ignoring my presence.

the same thing applies to the horse. i know that in order to unlock that secret desire, i'd have to win the lottery, move to the country and wear dungarees, actually have to go out and BUY the horse, blah blah.

so, knowing that i'm not going to be nuzzled awake tomorrow morning by a mare searching for the sugar cubes i keep under my pillow, i turned my inner cretin, always hungry for fantasy and something to put her grimy little bit of faith into, to the violin portion of that dream.

i have heard stories of people suddenly stumbling upon their life's calling. horsing around in the public swimming pool with friends and taking a dare to dive off the highest diving board and fuckin a'! you're a natural! you plip back into the water, toes automatically pointed, body stick straight, barely a ripple in the water where you disappear. and so it is because that "these things happen" that i am able to justify spending $150 on an instrument i don't even know how to hold. i am not expecting to pick it up tonight, rosin the bow, and whip out a concerto, although that would be nice, and certainly i did feel like it was possible the day after i had that dream. but i do feel like if i hunker down and spend time with my new wooden friend every day that i will eventually be able to reconnect with that gypsy dream self of mine.

i've also sent a letter to my mother requesting that she raid my cedar chest in the attic and send me all my model horses from when i was a kid. that way when i find myself playing for the druggies under the esplanade i can plant one of my little horsies in the dirt by my feet and my dream will become a reality. maybe i could even get a wig.

i now have, um, purple hair.

the bugs in my bathroom are springtails, and now that i know what they are, i have been able to back burner my obsessing over them and boil some other interesting tidbits that have for too long not seen the light of day. like the tiny fine hairs that grow around my belly button. why do they grow slightly darker there? and why do i feel the compulsion to rip them out by the root? social conditioning? medication withdrawal? why?

there are these little fucking bugs in my bathroom. i think they are coming up out of the drains. i have plugged the tub and the sink, and yet i still find them crawling around the counter, the tub, the toilet paper on the back of the toilet. they are small and i know they're not going to hurt me, but i don't like them. in fact, i think it's safe to say that i hate them. hate. them. they are small enough to not be noticed by my boyfriend, who wonders why i notice them in the first place. i know that if they are scuttling around in the bathroom where i can see them, they are also burrowing deep into my belongings, setting up camp, breeding. i don't think they're cockroaches, because they're too small and shaped more like they have segments, although they do have these disgusting feelers that are as long as their bodies. i tried to take a bath last night to relax, but it took me twenty minutes to search the tub and floor around it before i could get in and then i couldn't lean up against the back of it as i was afraid i would get crawled on. spiders are no problem. i've even started to let the ones i can't easily reach live, in hopes that they will eat the little freaky bugs that i can't stand. i feel claustrophobic every time i enter the bathroom, like getting on a crowded stinky elevator where i can't breathe or think. all i can do is bend down and scan the tub like a nutjob, looking for tiny squirming things. when chris came in the bathroom this morning, he caught me doing just that, and i stood up fast, like i'd been caught doing something inappropriate. i'm embarrassed about my obsessing, but i can't help it. i wish i could obliterate the bugs and live in a people only zone. help me, because i can't help myself.

i would like to state for the record that i have achieved something of a small personal best: i have not actively picked at my face, or any subsidary thereof, for an entire week. oh the freedom in not acting like a monkey!

chris and i were playing a video game called 'thunder and lightning' that stars a japanese looking pig-man and his super gorgeous, way-taller-than-him girlfriend. the premise: a dark demon-thing flies down to the beach where this couple is walking and kidnaps the non-mutant lady from her porcine-esque boyfriend. then the pig-man has to bounce ping-pong balls off of what appears to be a snack tray that he holds above his head in order to break down magical walls piece by piece so that he can follow the winged bad guy and rescue the super model. only the first level of this is played on land. then he has to do the same thing underwater. and of course then octopussies attack him and sit on his snack tray, keeping him from going as fast as he normally could, and sometimes he will wander in the path of a magic tidbit that will give him special powers, like, say, make his snack tray sticky enough to hold onto the ping pong balls when he catches them or split his pin-pong ball into three or more so as to better assault the magic walls. i only made it to level 2 after playing the equivalent of 12 quarters(i'm talking old-school here, too, like when a video game at the rollerskating rink only cost 25 cents) chris was blasting through the levels as if he had been born a pig-man and was somehow transported to this world and into a human body so that he could do things like play thunder and lightning really well without having put in too many practice hours. i am, of course, notoriously bad at playing video games. the only one i've ever been any good at was 'stampede' on my atari 2600. rope them doggies! yee ha! i guess i did alright at 'frogger' too, although i never made it past level 3.

last night my estranged father called me.

"i have to ask you something. do you hate me?"

he, the man who dug graves for twenty-odd years, taught me to shoot a gun, and told my mother that if he hadn't left her by just disappearing one day, he would have killed himself, was asking me if i hated him.

what to say...

"okay, how bout this: how do you feel about me?"he revised.

"um...i don't know. i feel fine about you. i mean, what do you want me to say?"

our conversation lurched through yet another vague explanation for his sudden departure and his weird philosphies of life rewritten with four letter words, and ended when he stated that my sister and i were living in times that were complicated and implied that we just didn't see where he was coming from. the other unspoken implication here was that we would never understand anything, really, because we weren't men. we were women. and not just any women, but my mother's flesh and blood, and that gave us an unhealthy disadvantage.

and yet still here he was, lonely and cracked, awkwardly asking his oldest daughter if she felt anything so strong for him that could be considered hate. christ! i started to need a drink. my father, the man from whom i could count on having heard about 500 words out of his mouth my entire life, sounded like he had had a tough session with his therapist that day.

we had left the keys for the apartment in the mailbox for the guys from the appliance store, so they could bring in our new stove while we were at work.

chris was called out of town suddenly to go to a funeral in utah.

i was alone, at night, in our sort of spooky victorian apartment.

i decided to take a bath. i also left the phone in the bedroom, all the way across the house. i got in, started reading my book of vampire stories, and scared myself wondering if all the creaking i heard was caused by members of the undead. then i started thinking about the keys. i have heard innumerable stories about women giving their keys to the mechanic, only to have their houses broken into later, their vcrs stolen, their privates defiled. i started to seriously freak out. for real, not the fun kind of freak out i had been subjecting myself to previously. the creaking of the house settling became quite ominous. every sound i heard felt like a door opening, a crazed gas stove appliance installer creeping in with a glint of nutball in his slightly crossed eyes.

i realized that i didn't have a weapon, not even a phone. i stood up as quietly as i could and fumbled for the linen closet. i grabbed a pair of scissors with a blunt end and a metal pair of tweezers. brilliant. i got back in the tub and put my weapons on the edge. then i thought i would have a better chance of stabbing someone in the throat if they didn't know i was armed. so i eased them under my butt and sort of sat on them. for the remainder of my bath. of course no one broke in. my vcr remained where it was. my private parts were untouched by the criminal i had imagined so vividly while naked and wet.

still, i called up my ex-husband the next morning and got a loan on the dog for the rest of the weekend.

chris is sitting and chewing comtemplatively in his room when i join him.

"what are you eating?" i ask him. he looks down, then back at me, sheepishly.

"i don't want to tell you. you'll get upset."

"what do you mean?"

he opens his mouth to reveal a large, purple, rubber cockroach sitting on his tongue. most people don't like cockroaches, but i spend almost 20% of the time i am at home scanning the cracks and corners for them as i hate the little fuckers worse than anything else in the world. i never find any, but, you know, better safe than sorry.

anyway, back to chris, sticking his tongue out at me loaded with bug, and i scream, like a girl i am ashamed to say, and then i call him by his full first name. "CHRISTOPHER!" i leave the room, disgusted, mostly at myself, for turning into the type of person who would get upset about something like that.

later, as i am soaking in the tub and reading my trashy vampire romance novel, he comes in and sits near me and puts the rubber roach on on the lip of the tub.

"get that thing out of here. i'm serious."

"what would you do if i put it in the water with you? would you be mad?"

"you don't even know how mad. don't do it."

"but would you be really mad or just sort of joke mad."

"you're not respecting my boundaries."

"yes i am."

"not if you put that thing in here with me, you're not."

so here i am trying to have a psychobabble conversation with my boyfriend about why he should not but a big purple cockroach in the tub with me. as if i needed a reason. but i'm also feeling conflicted. because situations like these are exactly the reason i love him. i mean, he's 30 years old and spends his time chewing on toy bugs. woo hoo!

chris' grandpa had a dog named glueface. aptly named because it was one of those long-haired show dogs that no one ever groomed and so it would get eye slime build-up sort of smeared across it's flat little face, looking like boogers, and if anyone tried to clean it off, it would bite them.

my aunt had an african gray parrot who used to fall over if someone sneezed. one time he was perched on the edge of the counter when it happened and he fell all the way to the floor without even opening his wings. it was like he was drugged or hypnotised or something.

my dog jake peed like a girl dog until he was almost three years old. we're not sure why.

my sister's last cat would walk until it bumped up against the wall and then it would just stand there, head pressed to the sheetrock, not even trying to turn around. for hours.

i once tried to make a white mouse and a hamster cohabitate. the hamster, named pooky, practically eviscerated the mouse. she eventually recovered and gave birth to 11 baby mice, and they all lived happily in a laundry basket in the basement of my parent's house until my mom found out.

my friend brendan had two chamelions, one twice the size of the other. one day he came home from school to find the smaller one had choked to death in an attempt to eat the bigger one, legs and tail jutting out of it's mouth. there were no more chamelions after that.

when my sister and i were very young, probably too young for the responsibility to keep something alive, we had a few rabbits that we kept out in an old chicken coup. a week went by and we realized that we hadn't fed or watered them in a really long time. they had died, of course. our mother was seriously pissed off. we felt so bad that we never played out in that old building ever again.

my mother named her cats 'skittles' and 'boots.' these were the replacement animals that took over for my sister and me when we moved out. am i 'skittles?' am i 'boots?' hopefully i will never know.

my whole athsma story gets shittier:
i now have to use a peak meter to gauge the flow of my breathing capacity three times a day and record the data in a little graph book for months so we can see if there's a pattern. when i'm feeling unable to breathe, that is. i was also strongly encouraged to keep a diary of the things i do everyday like exercise, how much, what kind, work, exposure to cold air, rain, dust, bugs, whatever so we can check the activities against the graph info, AND keep a little tabulature somewhere of how many times i use my different inhalers so i can have an idea of how empty the canisters are so that i can get my prescriptions refilled before they run out. whoa nelly! i'm suddenly feeling really frail. my doctor assigned me these tasks and i guess i just sort of google eyed him because he then explained that plenty of people my age still die from not taking athsma seriously. now everytime i feel a rattle in my chest i feel like i'm about to go into a victorian swoon, like my dress is cinched up too tightly. I have to admit though, after a couple of days of recording my breathing strength, it is interesting to see how different times of the day are the same everyday, and yet so different from other times, AND YET I DON'T FEEL ANY DIFFERENT! oh, and if anyone knows how to get around the albuterol shakes, please please please let me know: ohthedrama2003@yahoo.com

confessions:
i once lost my engagement ring at the airport.
sometimes i buy too many tomatoes.
i watch myself in store windows as i am walking past them. i have also been known to adjust my clothing or fool around with my hair but try to act like i'm not.
i drink decaf. all the time.
sometimes when i smoke, i think i look cool.
i am more afraid, for some reason, of the next ice age swooping in on civilization than i am of losing my job at the library, which is certainly more plausible.
i like stephan king.
and david duchovny.
i don't see my dog anymore, even though i have been encouraged to by my exhusband, because the thought of picking him up from the house that i used to own and seeing it redone in the new girlfriend style etc. is way more than my petty mind can handle. plus i just plain don't want to deal with the stress of the weird triangle that is formed there. i guess if you add the dog into the equation, it'd be more of a parallelagram.
i think i ate someone else's yogurt in the employee fridge a few weeks ago. not on purpose or anything, but still. i didn't leave a note.
after a near collision with a parked van, i drove away with my heart pounding and adreneline making my teeth buzz thinking, "man, if i would have hit that guy, i would have probably just sped away! i am a horse's ass!"
i judge my mother's lifestyle and yet expect her to just roll with the punches when it comes to mine.
i have cried in frustration when i couldn't open a jar.
the thought has crossed my mind, in all sincerity, that i am out of some people's league, romantically speaking(as in: "look at that nutjob! if he asked me out i'd have to try not to laugh in his face...")
i have looked at fat people and thought, "whoa!"
a girl with a black eye and bad posture looked at me once, the kind of look that is really a silent plea for help, and i didn't ask her if she was okay.
allegedly, i once told my sister that girls with mustaches don't get jobs.
at seven years old, my passive-agressive nature germinated when i put my friend melissa's apple in the freezer because she wasn't letting me wear the cooler pair of fake vampire teeth, the ones that didn't make you drool all over, and then i got angry when she threw it away after one bite saying it was 'too cold to eat.'

miasma:my asthma. two scary middle of the night emergency room trips later, it turns out that my allergies have a companion. i cough and wheeze and just try to respirate. amazing how the stock in everything else goes down the tubes when you have to think about breathing, forcing it in and out. i have had two breathing treatments(very victorian, where is the bowl of leeches?), intramuscular shots of cortisone, chest xrays, friendly nurses bringing me graham crackers and apple juice, rolling veins, steroid tablets, steroid inhalers, preventers, relievers, no sleep. i have snored, i have heard a small child scream that he was really feeling much better when the doctor attempted to insert tubes into his ears. i have been sternly talked to about not drinking anything before having my temperature taken and then been sternly talked to about being dehydrated. i have been told to avoid animals, dust mites, pollen, dust, germs, cold weather, stress and have been advised to change my salt intake to sea salt. i have worn the same clothes for almost three weeks. i have slept on my face for four hours at a time. i have napped through lunch at work and have stayed awake at night sniffling and hacking. i have grudgingly inhaled lots of albuterol and been disturbed by how much it makes me shake. i have eaten three times as much food as usual because of all the steroids. i have an inhaler that tastes like rotting grapes and one that tastes like melting plastic. neither of them are what you'd call gateway drugs or something you'd take to have a good time. i have calculated what my expenses for two er visits and medication would be if i didn't have insurance and i can say that the attack the bills would have given me would have killed me.

no, it's official: spring is here. i am a mouth breather. i suck in snot about once every 8 seconds. i stick my tongue out to do so. i bite down on my tongue and inhale, or attempt to inhale, and this makes a noise like the last of the bath water exiting noisily down the drain. and still my nose leaks on my upper lip. sure, i have tissue, in fact, i am currently balling one up in my left hand as i type this, disabling my thumb and making typing a chore. i blot and i apply pressure and i blow lightly and i suck snot. my eyes feel rolled in cat litter. i open them wide and then squish them shut. they itch. i rub them. there is pain. i open them and the itching continues, worsens. i am breathing through my mouth and i am unable to open or close my eyes with any deal of comfort and they are watering and i look and feel like a zombie. i walk around with my arms out in front of me. i keep my knees locked and stagger around. i hunt for benadryl. my head pounds. i think about going home, but the only advantage to that would be that no one would be able to see me sneeze my lungs out of my nose. these invisible things keep attacking my face, and i have to control the urge to scratch my face off.

how to describe the slimy itchy redness that used to be my eyes...ahh spring has arrived! or perhaps not! i think it's the lucky strikes i smoked last night while trying to pretend that my boyfriend staring at the wall and unsuccessfully attempting to pretend that his exgirlfriends presence at the dinner party wasn't bothering him wasn't bothering me. jesus, my sentences are reading like a sixth grade journal. but so anyway, i smoked these lucky strike cigarettes that my sister had given me. they had filters. which they usually don't have. in fact, the whole point of buying the pack of lucky strike cigarettes and slapping them down on the bar in front of you is to make you look tough, like, "i don't need a filter to keep at least some of the shit that i'm inhaling out of my lungs. i'm fucking indestructible!" but these were pansy-assed cigarettes in a tough-looking box and they tasted like those cheap old man cigarettes...old gold or whatever...and after i came in from outside i smelled like i should be sitting in a state-funded vet's home with an afghan over the shriveled remains of my legs, chain smoking these cheapo smokes and coughing until i throw up. they made my eyes water. then itch. i rubbed my eyes until i could hear the squishing sound that signals that maybe i was rubbing a bit too hard, but oh! it felt so good. and the relief that came from this frantic eye rutting was fleeting at best, and it simply came running back into my face at full throttle, and all last night, even after a lukewarm bath, my eyes just kept getting more raw and sandy. right now, even, while i'm typing this, if i squish my face up and really squeeze my eyes shut, the best thing that happens is a temporary reprieve from the itching by the introduction of a minor pain. oh visine! where for art thou?

8:30am dentist appointment. i figure if i schedule body maintenance first thing in the morning, i'll get a jump start on the day. i arrive about 5 minutes early. attempt to check in. lady tells me that i'm at the wrong clinic, that where i want to be is all the way across town. so i jump back in my car and break the speed limit(sorry mom) for 15 minutes and get to the other clinic at 8:40. i explain what happened to the receptionist, who looks about 13 years old, and she said, no problem, they called us to let us know. i figure i'm off the hook here because really there's no way this is my fault. the hygenist, whom i'll call sandy, although that's not her real name, calls my married name(argh!) and without waiting for me starts to speedwalk back into the antichambers. i'm catching little glimpses of her ponytail as she turns corners and is sort of talking to me over her shoulder about how we really need to get going because i was late and she is overbooked(or something) and they don't give her enough time and on and on. i'm stilll feeling a little guilty and think to offer to reschedule but she tells me to sit down and rips through my file and shoves my xrays up in the little wall-hanging light table thing that i think is so cool, and she says to no one: "Oh great. You've got ALL your teeth. Well, that just adds to it." thinking she is joking i sort of half turn and say "what?" and sort of smile but she looks like she just has a headache and would just as soon strangle me as scrape my teeth. and then my repressed catholic guilt kicks in and i start to think that maybe i deserve whatever retribution she's going to dish out to me for having all my wisdom teeth. and speaking of which, i've never heard anything negative from any of my many dentists and hygenists about my teeth. i have room for my wisdom teeth, they're straight with out braces, i have one tiny cavity, my gums are the gums of someone far healthier than myself...basically i have teeth that everyone dreams of having. which sounds snotty and solopsistic and everything except that my radiant features pretty much end there. so i take great pride in my teeth. plus i don't have nightmares about the dentist like most people i know, as i have never really had any negative experiences there...they just look around in my mouth and i try to breathe through my nose and then they give me a new toothbrush that i use to clean around the kitchen sink and then i go home. but i digress. so this lady, sandy, she's not kidding. she's stressed and is not happy with me. and i want to do anything in my power to undo whatever unfairness has been dealt to her this morning, because in like, two minutes, she's going to have a sharp metal hook in my main orfice. so i sit still. i open before she says. i waive the polishing, which would take at least 15 minutes, i think. she doesn't say anything, and she doesn't really seem to be taking out anything on my gums, and the dentist comes in and looks around in my mouth and tells me i have great teeth and that's it and sandy seems relieved. and then she swipes some minty flouride around my gums and that's it. she must feel sort of bad because she says as she's finishing up my chart, "At least you were easy to work on." which, fuck it, i take as an apology, which is the closest i'll get here. i can't believe that i got chided in a dental office for having all my teeth. more teeth means more scraping, which takes more time, i guess. jesus, if anyone reading this is a dental appointment scheduler, for the love of god, give these people a few minutes extra every day. and double check which clinic you are sending people to. so i left and started drining away and felt an aching settling into my whold mouth. pervasive. definitive. all i could eat was peanut butter bread by sucking on it until it sort of dissovled. it ached all day. my fear of the dentist is now elevated.

my ex-husband asked his girlfriend to move in with him, and i figure that now is the time for us to renegotiate my visitation rights for our dog, jake. as it is now, i see him maybe two or three times a month. i go to what used to be our house, and grab jake's leash from the wall, and take him for a walk to the park or just around the neighborhood. this is alright, i'd like to see him more, but there is plenty of weirdness involved for me to show up at the house at all, the memories are pretty huge, and jake himself can cause me to completely break down when i leave him looking out the front window standing on the couch. my boyfriend has suggested, with my best interest in mind, that maybe it's time to just let jake go on with his life without me, and i do agree intellectually, but emotionally i am having a rough time. anyfuckingway, all that crap leads me to where i was yesterday, which was the grotto, that catholic outdoor rock formation thingy with piped in chanting, and i know it's corny, but i love to just go there and be outside in the quiet. it's just a big park that isn't noisy and loud and whatnot because the signs everywhere scare the crap out of people and beat them into blessed silence: THIS IS A SACRED PLACE. HELP US KEEP A PRAYERFUL ATMOSPHERE. so i got my 99 cent candle from the mexican food section of safeway and strode on in through the drizzle and went up to the alter and lit my candle and asked the universe for some help in achieving peace with the probable permanent separation of a dog and his estranged woman. when i was sure that the candle was going to stay lit, i retreated to the pews and sort of curled up with my feet on the kneeler, and god, if my grandmother was alive and with me she would've totally flipped out about that. so i'm sitting there and watching my candle kind of stop flickering and it's blending in with all the other candles lit for loved ones or problems or whatever and i'm starting to feel a little better and this old lady in a purple jacket walks up and stands in front of the candles and starts picking them up one by one. i put my feet on the ground and immediately tense up.. what the hell does she think she's doing? i'm thinking that maybe she's just voyeuristic and is looking for the written prayer under them or maybe hoping to take some cheap rosary that may have been left behind, i mean, people collect weirder things for less reason. but then it starts to make me mad because she's actually looking under each and every one and it's taking a long time and i had just wanted to sit here and feel the serenity and space out watching the little flames lick their cheap glass containers, and this old lady is totally blocking my view of my own perceived avenue of calm acceptance and then i feel like an ass, because who thinks stuff like that? so then it hits me: what she's doing. she takes a candle that has gone out because of the weather or whatever, but still has some wick left to it, and she holds it up to the wick of my brand new, high in the glass candle and relights it. she's relighting the flames of other people's wishes. with my candle. she's using the flame i lit to help myself to feel better about not being able to see a dog to keep in the "eyes of god" the thoughts and prayers of other people, probably with way more serious problems than myself. and now i just feel like the biggest shithead in the world and somehow that feeling like a jerk makes me realize that things are going to be okay for real and that maybe feeling crappy about feeling crappy is the best thing that's happened to me in a long while, spiritually speaking. and i get up from my little birdshit spattered bench and get in my car and turn up a billy joel album really loud and sing along with it all the way home.

email me at ohthedrama2003@yahoo.com! tell me about your weird pets! commiserate about the crippling effects of OCD! recipes! i need good recipes with exotic spices!

i was taking my vitamins at the drinking fountain at work, and i didn't quite have enough water to swallow all three and the vitamin c got stuck in my throat, right where it branches off into my lungs. i could feel it rattling around in there when i inhaled. it hurt. alot. i was terrified that i was going to aspirate it, and end up having to go to the hospital to, well, i don't know what they do when you've inhaled a vitamin c, but they could at least pat my head and tell me it'll be okay. so anyway, the pain was actually quite explosive, and i tried to drink more water to try to wash it down, but that just gave me one of those headaches associated with eating ice cream too fast, "brain freeze" i think is the popular nomenclature...and so i tried rubbing my throat like i've done with cats and dogs taking heart worm medication, but that just hurt worse, and i'll never do that to another animal, i can tell you that with all confidence. then i started to panic. it wasn't moving. i started sweating. then my gag reflex kicked in. i barely made it to the bathroom, swinging into the first stall and dropping to my knees like a penitent sinner before god, dry heaving into the bowl. nothing happened. my stomach contracted and i made awful noises, but the vitamin held its ground. i couldn't believe it. i was still retching, producing copious amounts of drool, i was drooling continuously into the toilet. i didn't realize i was capable of conjuring up that much mucus, it was scary unto itself. finally, sweaty and getting dizzy from my gut clenching over and over, i felt the tablet move, not much, but a little. and then it moved again, so i swallowed, hard. it went down my throat painfully, but it wasn't threatening to get sucked into my lung anymore, and so it was good. after a minute, it disappeared into my digestion, and i got up and went back out to shelve books, and i tossed the bottle of vitamin c in the trash. only flintstones for kids for me from now on...

the latest on the whole doctor experience:
after my appointment to find out what was wrong with my stomach, a grueling ordeal with tubes and cameras inserted unceremoniously into my butt, which also left me feeling like i had eaten a can of olestra for the rest of the day, i mentioned that i had a mole on my back that i would like removed, and could i make an appointment for it. my doctor said he himself could just freeze it off right then and there, and told me to wait just a second and he'd get the liquid nitrogen. i was thinking "jesus christ! liquid nitrogen? i'm outta here!" but there was the little problem of me not having any pants on and there wasn't anything sitting around that i could use to wipe myself down with before getting dressed, and my doctor could walk back in at any time and so i just sat there, pantsless and feeling quite gross. then he came back with what looked like a blow torch and i gasped, for real, like in a movie or something, and he reassured me that it wasn't at all scary, and proceeded to blow some liquid nitrogen on his hand to prove it. so i lifted up my shirt and let him blast me with the chemical and it felt like a little needle was being dug into my ribs, but he was right, it wasn't engulfing me in flames or anything. then he told me that in a week it should scab and fall off, like any other frostbitten area of skin. cause you know, i've lost lots of chunks of me to the frigid effects of frostbite. i thanked him and he left me with a box of tissue that i was incredibly happy to have, and i spent the next several minutes trying to will myself to not look at the table with the instruments that had recently been in my butt.