What does your brain instinctively tell you to do when, say, a runaway bus is careening toward you? Or a mugger with a knife is lunging for your guts? Or Rush Limbaugh is stumbling toward you with his pants around his ankles and yet another engagement ring in his hands?
Right. You run like hell. No thinking, no putting on a brave face, no fighting back.
Now pretend you’re retarded* (and I use that word on purpose here). Pretend that your run-like-hell instincts kick in every time a friendly person smiles and walks toward you. Every time you enter a crowded room. Every time you get a freakin’ party invitation in the mail.
Congratulations! You have a social anxiety disorder.
Based on my interpretation of my personal experience with this extremely stupid disorder—and, as you’ll see if you keep reading this freakishly long blog post, I have nothing but contempt for it and what it does to people—a social anxiety disorder is an extremely impractical case of bad wiring that makes you interpret friendly, fun, happy things as hostile and terrifying. And you have almost no control over it.
For most of my life, I’ve lived under the crushing immobility of this goddamned thing. Since before it had a name. Since before those drug commercials with the sad little purple ovals that never went to parties with the other ovals. Since before I even realized my instinctive, everyday terror of friendly, nice people was not remotely normal.
Here’s the part where I pre-emptively apologize if this post is nothing but self-indulgent navel-gazing and then explain that I’m not writing it for pity or to make you see me as brave for telling my story and exposing my soul. In fact, I’ve started and stopped writing various versions of this post about 50 times over the last five years. And I’m still not entirely sure I know what I’m doing here.
But I’ve kept coming back to it. Perhaps I feel the need to explain myself to anyone who thought I was standing against a wall being all arrogant and unapproachable that one time at that one bar/party/rehearsal/meeting/parade/street festival/movie/social setting. I was not being arrogant. I was not ignoring you. I was actually afraid of you. Terrified, even.
Or perhaps it’s because I’ve come so far since I finally unlocked myself from this prison thanks to some intense (and very expensive) therapy. I can now walk up to strangers and say hi. I can carry on a conversation without looking around frantically for a way to escape all its horrifying pleasantness. I even went to my 20-year high-school reunion—which even to normal people can be a whirling sea of panic triggers—four years ago and had the audacity to have a great time.
I think I’m mostly writing this just to focus my own thoughts and mark my place in time as I go on this adventure from part-time terror to full-time (I hope!) normalcy.
All my life I’ve assumed people hated me from the moment I met them. I’d look for proof of my suspicions and easily find it (that guy just looked away as he was talking to me! those people I know are having coffee and they didn’t invite me!) in the most innocent of circumstances. Then I’d retreat to the relative safety of my house and struggle to breathe in my dizzying sea of rejection and then wait for the next person to hate me. And it all seemed so logical and rational and everyday-normal that I didn’t even realize I was doing it. Or that it was fucking stupid.
My folks, without realizing how much I was struggling with this or even that I was in therapy, recently commented about how I was afraid as a little kid to run around the corner and ask our neighbors—who were our good friends—for something. Which tells me this stupid problem has been my “norm” since I was old enough to leave the house on my own.
In fact, while I’m friendly with people from grade school through college if I run into them somewhere, I made no lasting friendships there. Aside from the handful of people I exchange Facebook greetings and holiday letters with, I have no actual close friends from school. And at my high-school reunion when people were planning parties at their houses and hotels to keep the fun going, nobody invited me to any of them. And why would they? We have very little shared history, so we have no old times to relive and no catching up to do.
One of the cruel ironies of this stupid problem is that people can interpret your terror as standoffishness. You don’t talk to them because you’re terrified of them, so they avoid you because you don’t seem nice or approachable. And then they keep avoiding you. And then you have real reasons to think they hate you. And the cycle never, ever ends.
And it’s really the most retarded* problem you could possibly have. (“Hi. My name’s Jake, and I’m afraid of nice people.”) I mean really. It takes pathetic and illogical to pathological new lows. (I just made that up! But it kind of makes sense!)
Here’s a brief list of the everyday ordinary things my social anxiety disorder has made me too terrified to do at one time (or sometimes a hundred times) over the course of my life:
• flag down a waiter
• hail a cab
• ask a clerk for help in a store
• ask a stranger for directions/the time
• walk up to a stranger at a bar or a party
• let someone introduce me to a stranger at a bar or a party
• ask someone to spot me at the gym
• ask someone in the aisle seat to let me out at my bus/train stop
• call/text/email someone I just met and ask him or her to do something fun
• make small talk with a co-worker
• make small talk with a doorman
• join an informal gathering of people after work without an express invitation
• join an informal gathering of people after a rehearsal without an express invitation
• call a meeting for a volunteer committee I’m supposed to be heading
• throw a party
• go to a party
• make small talk in an elevator/gym/audition/dog park/you get the picture
Sounds ridiculous, right? But when you’re trapped in a crushing, paralyzing fear, doing any of these things is as impossible as melting into the ground, which you’d prefer to do anyway.
And just try to find your fucking self-esteem when you’re walking an extra six blocks to work in the rain because you were too paralyzed to ask a stranger to let you up from your seat so you could get off the train at your stop. And then stop wondering why I’m describing this disorder with so many swear words.
Fortunately, my case hasn’t been lock-myself-in-a-dark-room-for-20-years extreme. I’ve had entire days an even weeks where I found myself somehow unshackled from this stupid problem. And I’ve never had these issues in places where I was “supposed” to be—like family gatherings or job interviews or official work projects or client presentations or rehearsals.
And there are cures. They take work, but this big ugly animal can be killed. I’ve seen three therapists (so far) to make this happen. The first therapist diagnosed the social anxiety disorder about seven years ago, which gave my enemy a name … and gave me something specific to fight, which was actually pretty helpful. But that’s as far as she seemed to be able to take me. The second therapist just didn’t click with me, but I stuck with her for a while because she was in my network. And the third therapist was the one I needed. He asked simple questions and offered logical insights and maintained a bemused, judgment-free demeanor that let me voice all the crap in my head and hear just how ridiculous—how staggeringly fucking ridiculous—my fears were when they left my brain through my mouth and came back in through my ears.
I started seeing him in January 2006, and by May I considered myself reliably functional in polite society. I can now go places that have historically been nothing but a sea of panic triggers—parties, bars, street fairs, networking events, actually anywhere large groups of people congregate socially—and I can walk around and socialize and laugh and leave and spend hours without it even occurring to me to have an attack. It’s a whole new world … and all it cost me was a lifetime of frustration and loneliness, five months of intense conversations and terrifying real-life practice, and a couple thousand dollars in out-of-network co-pays.
Looking back, it’s also driven almost every major choice I’ve made in life: I majored in English literature (four years of reading—minimal human interaction required), I built a career as a writer (but not a reporter, because that would involve talking to people out in the real world), I studied piano (no time to talk when you’re trying to master Debussy), I became a six-day-a-week gym rat (lifting requires no human contact—and it helps grow muscles that might work as an ice breaker when a simple hello is too terrifying), I started running marathons (exercise, fresh air, physical proximity to other runners at times, but no human interaction required), I built up a mildly popular blog (all typing, no talking) … see a pattern?
This journey has also made me acutely aware of other people suffering through the same bullshit. I recognize the signs. I see the terror. I often step up and say hi when I see someone cringing helplessly against a wall in a crowded setting.
But I don’t try to forge friendships. These people represent what I hate the most about myself. At least my old self. I don’t want to be dragged down by their stupid problems, which I fear are still on the verge of re-becoming my stupid problems. Call me insensitive, but I look at my calculated distance as self-preservation.
Facebook has been both an ally and an enemy for me in this adventure. It’s obviously great for building friendships out of casual encounters and staying in touch and making plans with people. And for putting my always-trying-to-be-clever self out there for people to see and maybe like. But every once in a while I’ll be scrolling through the news feed and I’ll stumble on pictures of parties or dinners or roadtrips populated by lots of people I know. People who obviously didn’t invite me to join them. And the rush of rejection and despair and frustration sometimes hits me so hard and so fast it crushes my chest and literally sucks my breath away.
Yes, it’s irrational. Stupidly, retardedly*, even arrogantly irrational. Especially because I do get invited to do stuff. But in my mind I’ve worked so hard to meet people … to build organic, genuine friendships that don’t come from me being too eager or pushy … to not go to that place in my head that says the people I meet all hate me and I should just give up … that I feel I somehow deserve the payoff of a whirlwind social life and an exhausting social calendar. And when I see tangible proof that I’m not on everyone’s radar when they plan their get-togethers … well … let’s just say this adventure out of my stupid retarded* (last time! I promise!) problem is still more of a journey than a destination.
So.
If you’ve read this far you’ve concluded that I’m at worst a mess or at best a writer in dire need of a filter. Or maybe that I’m just as screwed up as everyone else, only I have a bigger platform to broadcast my problems to the world. But if my endless blather helps one person see there’s an escape from his or her anxiety prison—or if it helps you guys on the outside understand that pathologically quiet people are not always the unapproachable snobs they seem to be—then maybe I’ve embarrassed myself here for a good reason.
In the mean time, I’m still getting a huge kick out of my new skill: walking up to strangers and saying hello. Even better: walking into social settings and looking at strangers as potential new friends instead of obvious-to-nobody-but-me Ninja assassins. And if you need proof, I’m totally free to come to your parties and show you.
* I know retarded is a horribly offensive word in most contexts. My domestic partner’s brother is clinically retarded. And since he came to live with us I’ve stopped using the word entirely … except in extremely appropriate circumstances. Like describing a brain that’s terrified of friendly people. Or dismissing the rationalizations for denying equality to gay families.
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Friday, August 13, 2010
Celebrities I have been sweaty with
I used to work out at the Crunch Gym in the base of the Marina City towers (the buildings that look like corncobs for you youngsters and the buildings that were implied to be Bob Newhart’s office for you older folks), and my celebrity-dar is such that I didn’t realize Will Smith was working out every day right next to me to get pumped up for filming the movie Ali until someone told me months after the fact.
At least I know who Will Smith is. I once spent an irritating few months sharing the gym and the locker room (but never the bathroom once I found out who he was) with alleged-child-pee-er-on-er R. Kelly and his thoroughly douchebaggy posse. And I once got sweat sprayed all over my arm by a very jittery pale man running next to me on a treadmill, only to find out later that he was Scott Weiland, who apparently is a pilot for something called Stone Temple Airlines, which must be a limited regional carrier because I never see them as an option when I book stuff on Orbitz. And I also totally ogled a very athletic butt that I found out later belonged to a baseball player I’d never heard of named Kyle Farnsworth.
But that was my old life at my old gym.
I have no allegiance to gyms or gym chains. I realized long ago that the most important feature for a gym to have—aside from decent equipment and a few hot guys to motivate me—is a close proximity to my house or my office. If my home or my office moves, I move gyms too. Because the less effort I have to make to get to a gym, the more time I can spend in my vain pursuit of maintaining some sort of physical relevance in today’s youth-obsessed culture.
So when my office moved two years ago to the heart of the Loop, I found a nearby gym that, though it’s so expensive it kind of makes me choke every time I open my Amex bill, I go every morning at 6:30 plus I cough up the equivalent of two house payments every four months so I can have one of its more muscular trainers beat me three times a week like a Mel Gibson girlfriend. And I love it!
But! It gets better!
On one of my first visits to this shiny new gym, I was huffing away on a Stairmaster absentmindedly watching Pretty Woman on one of the ten bazillion TVs that are suspended over the cardio area when I looked down and saw Richard Gere. As in the Richard Gere from the movie that was playing above my head, only live and in person in front of me in my gym. And, as my previous experience at Crunch proved, it wasn’t entirely implausible that a bona-fide celebrity (meaning one I'd actually heard of) would be using a high-end chain gym in the heart of Chicago’s financial district. So I started fantasizing about all the fabulous celebrities I’d beshowering naked with sharing workout tips with now that I was an elite insider member of a fabulous, dripping-(literally)-with-(sweaty)-celebrities gym.
As I looked down at Richard, assuming all this time he’d been admiring my dedication to fitness and contemplating which blockbuster movie he’d like to use as a vehicle to launch my co-leading-man stardom with him, I realized that … um … he wasn’t actually Richard Gere. In fact, he barely even looked like Richard Gere, aside from his silver-gray hair and his cute-ish fortysomething face. And the fact that he was a man.
But! It gets worse!
Because once I started going religiously at 6:30 am (I’m the undisputed mayor on Foursquare, for those of you inclined to be impressed by such silliness) I started to notice all the morning regulars … including yet another celebrity lookalike. Fortunately for me, I knew right away this dude wasn’t the actual celebrity. Unfortunately for him, the poor fucker looks like Glenn Beck, who, even if you can get past his batshit craziness and his one-cylinder intellect, is still a goofy-looking low-budget circus clown. Bless his cold black heart.
And then this week a third celebrity lookalike appeared and started getting in the way of my morning workouts. This one looks remarkably like Rita Moreno in West Side Story, complete with plum-hued bouffant and fiery kohl-lined eyes. Unfortunately, he tends to take up two sinks in the locker room right as 30 other guys are racing to get cleaned up and get to work. But still. I bet he floats like a butterfly way better than Will Smith ever could.
At least I know who Will Smith is. I once spent an irritating few months sharing the gym and the locker room (but never the bathroom once I found out who he was) with alleged-child-pee-er-on-er R. Kelly and his thoroughly douchebaggy posse. And I once got sweat sprayed all over my arm by a very jittery pale man running next to me on a treadmill, only to find out later that he was Scott Weiland, who apparently is a pilot for something called Stone Temple Airlines, which must be a limited regional carrier because I never see them as an option when I book stuff on Orbitz. And I also totally ogled a very athletic butt that I found out later belonged to a baseball player I’d never heard of named Kyle Farnsworth.
But that was my old life at my old gym.
I have no allegiance to gyms or gym chains. I realized long ago that the most important feature for a gym to have—aside from decent equipment and a few hot guys to motivate me—is a close proximity to my house or my office. If my home or my office moves, I move gyms too. Because the less effort I have to make to get to a gym, the more time I can spend in my vain pursuit of maintaining some sort of physical relevance in today’s youth-obsessed culture.
So when my office moved two years ago to the heart of the Loop, I found a nearby gym that, though it’s so expensive it kind of makes me choke every time I open my Amex bill, I go every morning at 6:30 plus I cough up the equivalent of two house payments every four months so I can have one of its more muscular trainers beat me three times a week like a Mel Gibson girlfriend. And I love it!
But! It gets better!
On one of my first visits to this shiny new gym, I was huffing away on a Stairmaster absentmindedly watching Pretty Woman on one of the ten bazillion TVs that are suspended over the cardio area when I looked down and saw Richard Gere. As in the Richard Gere from the movie that was playing above my head, only live and in person in front of me in my gym. And, as my previous experience at Crunch proved, it wasn’t entirely implausible that a bona-fide celebrity (meaning one I'd actually heard of) would be using a high-end chain gym in the heart of Chicago’s financial district. So I started fantasizing about all the fabulous celebrities I’d be
As I looked down at Richard, assuming all this time he’d been admiring my dedication to fitness and contemplating which blockbuster movie he’d like to use as a vehicle to launch my co-leading-man stardom with him, I realized that … um … he wasn’t actually Richard Gere. In fact, he barely even looked like Richard Gere, aside from his silver-gray hair and his cute-ish fortysomething face. And the fact that he was a man.
But! It gets worse!
Because once I started going religiously at 6:30 am (I’m the undisputed mayor on Foursquare, for those of you inclined to be impressed by such silliness) I started to notice all the morning regulars … including yet another celebrity lookalike. Fortunately for me, I knew right away this dude wasn’t the actual celebrity. Unfortunately for him, the poor fucker looks like Glenn Beck, who, even if you can get past his batshit craziness and his one-cylinder intellect, is still a goofy-looking low-budget circus clown. Bless his cold black heart.
And then this week a third celebrity lookalike appeared and started getting in the way of my morning workouts. This one looks remarkably like Rita Moreno in West Side Story, complete with plum-hued bouffant and fiery kohl-lined eyes. Unfortunately, he tends to take up two sinks in the locker room right as 30 other guys are racing to get cleaned up and get to work. But still. I bet he floats like a butterfly way better than Will Smith ever could.
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Feet and ice cream
So the dermatologist told me I could take my mole-excision stitches out of my foot by myself on Friday or Saturday if the wound looked healed and the stitches felt like they were “pulling.” The wound definitely looked healed and I convinced myself that the stitches were indeed pulling on Friday night, so I got out the pointy little dissection scissors I still have from my college I’m-gonna-be-a-doctor-someday biology class, sterilized them with rubbing alcohol and started trying to snip the tiny little stitches on the outside of my foot. But my eyes are 42 years old, the outside of my foot is far away, and my hips and knees have all the flexibility of a Faux News anchor in a Sarah-Palin-is-totally-smarter-than-a-box-of-farts discussion. And by the time I’d hacked away enough of the stitches that there was no turning back, I realized there was no way I was going to get them all out with any precision … or even with any degree of certainty.
The domestic partner was gone, but he tends to be squeamish about such things anyway. Fortunately, our buddy Mike was staying at our house for Market Days, the Boystown street festival that elevates crowds, noise, drunkenness and shirtlessness into an art form, and he wasn’t squeamish in the least. So he picked out the last little bits of my stitches, I gently washed the wound, and as I started to bandage it for stability, the damn thing ripped open.
Which meant I got to traverse about 4,000 miles of crowded street fair all weekend in heavy bandages, sturdy shoes, and the hopes that no drunken fool would spill beer or full bodyweight on my foot. I carried a triage kit in a pocket of my cargo shorts in case I had to rebuild my foot after such an emergency, but it survived the weekend with nothing worse than a stabbing pain every time I took a step.
Which almost martyred me because Mike wanted to experience everything Boystown had to offer this weekend. So we did a lot of walking. And standing. And shuffling through unmoving crowds. And dancing. In place. Because of the crowds. But still.
On the plus side, I relished sleeping until 9:00 on Saturday morning instead of getting up at 5:00 to run 14 miles on a gaping foot wound. So there’s that. And even though I rarely wore a shirt this weekend, I abandoned all pretense that I like to eat radishes for breakfast and I stuffed endless piles of sugary carbs in my face at every meal. Which is why this gratuitous photo of me and (left to right) my impossibly hot friend Brad, a friend of his, and my handsome and intrepid foot-suture-snipping buddy Mike at the street fair is cropped above the waistline, Sunshine:
Speaking of sugary carbs, I have been extremely weak-willed this summer about one of my biggest vices: ice cream. I could happily eat ice cream for every meal every day of my life and regret nothing. Except the loss of my ability to see my feet. Which means I’d never get those damn stitches out. Those of you who keep track of such things may remember that my reward for finishing my last marathon was four flavors of Ben & Jerry’s, consumed alphabetically in bed in front of a DVR full of Bones reruns. (It’s a known fact that ice cream is healthier for you if you eat it alphabetically while watching fake but fabulously graphic autopsies performed against a whimsical background of insouciantly denied romantic attraction. Look it up.)
The only two instances where I can always say no to ice cream are if it’s a flavor I don’t love or if it’s just cheap store-brand crap. And the flavors I love tend to be pretty nothin’-but-sugar simple: vanilla ice cream with cookie dough, brownie bits, chocolate pieces, candy, cake, fudge and/or frosting.
Unfortunately, in my old age I’ve developed a disturbing new ice-cream-related shopping disorder: I’ll look through the window at the grocery store freezer, find a Ben & Jerry’s flavor I like, reach in to grab it, and not notice until I’m all the way home that I’ve actually picked up the flavor that was next to it … which is invariably a flavor I hate, like Nuts ’n’ Squirrel or Crunch Limbaugh or Jake’s Excised Moles or Sarah Praline. (I really hate nuts in my ice cream.)
Thankfully, my Frozen Treat Dementia (FrTD) probably keeps me from actually consuming ice cream for every meal every day of my life instead of just blogging about it in the abstract. Which is how I’m able to keep my weight at a reasonable level year after year. And as added insurance, every year or so I get another mole or two hacked out of my body. And now, to prevent myself from ever eating anything again, I cut out my own stitches too early and watch myself burst open all over the bathroom floor. It works like magic.
The domestic partner was gone, but he tends to be squeamish about such things anyway. Fortunately, our buddy Mike was staying at our house for Market Days, the Boystown street festival that elevates crowds, noise, drunkenness and shirtlessness into an art form, and he wasn’t squeamish in the least. So he picked out the last little bits of my stitches, I gently washed the wound, and as I started to bandage it for stability, the damn thing ripped open.
Which meant I got to traverse about 4,000 miles of crowded street fair all weekend in heavy bandages, sturdy shoes, and the hopes that no drunken fool would spill beer or full bodyweight on my foot. I carried a triage kit in a pocket of my cargo shorts in case I had to rebuild my foot after such an emergency, but it survived the weekend with nothing worse than a stabbing pain every time I took a step.
Which almost martyred me because Mike wanted to experience everything Boystown had to offer this weekend. So we did a lot of walking. And standing. And shuffling through unmoving crowds. And dancing. In place. Because of the crowds. But still.
On the plus side, I relished sleeping until 9:00 on Saturday morning instead of getting up at 5:00 to run 14 miles on a gaping foot wound. So there’s that. And even though I rarely wore a shirt this weekend, I abandoned all pretense that I like to eat radishes for breakfast and I stuffed endless piles of sugary carbs in my face at every meal. Which is why this gratuitous photo of me and (left to right) my impossibly hot friend Brad, a friend of his, and my handsome and intrepid foot-suture-snipping buddy Mike at the street fair is cropped above the waistline, Sunshine:
Speaking of sugary carbs, I have been extremely weak-willed this summer about one of my biggest vices: ice cream. I could happily eat ice cream for every meal every day of my life and regret nothing. Except the loss of my ability to see my feet. Which means I’d never get those damn stitches out. Those of you who keep track of such things may remember that my reward for finishing my last marathon was four flavors of Ben & Jerry’s, consumed alphabetically in bed in front of a DVR full of Bones reruns. (It’s a known fact that ice cream is healthier for you if you eat it alphabetically while watching fake but fabulously graphic autopsies performed against a whimsical background of insouciantly denied romantic attraction. Look it up.)
The only two instances where I can always say no to ice cream are if it’s a flavor I don’t love or if it’s just cheap store-brand crap. And the flavors I love tend to be pretty nothin’-but-sugar simple: vanilla ice cream with cookie dough, brownie bits, chocolate pieces, candy, cake, fudge and/or frosting.
Unfortunately, in my old age I’ve developed a disturbing new ice-cream-related shopping disorder: I’ll look through the window at the grocery store freezer, find a Ben & Jerry’s flavor I like, reach in to grab it, and not notice until I’m all the way home that I’ve actually picked up the flavor that was next to it … which is invariably a flavor I hate, like Nuts ’n’ Squirrel or Crunch Limbaugh or Jake’s Excised Moles or Sarah Praline. (I really hate nuts in my ice cream.)
Thankfully, my Frozen Treat Dementia (FrTD) probably keeps me from actually consuming ice cream for every meal every day of my life instead of just blogging about it in the abstract. Which is how I’m able to keep my weight at a reasonable level year after year. And as added insurance, every year or so I get another mole or two hacked out of my body. And now, to prevent myself from ever eating anything again, I cut out my own stitches too early and watch myself burst open all over the bathroom floor. It works like magic.
Thursday, August 05, 2010
May the best Jake win
I ran the Rock ’n’ Roll Half Marathon on Sunday in what turned out to be a sea of celebrities. And I mean “celebrities” in the “barely relevant people who’ve been out in public at some point in the last seven years” sense. Also in the “I’ve heard of only three of these eight people and I could identify only two of them by sight” sense.
But! The numbers are in, and though my watch said I finished in 2:14:07 while my official time was 2:15:49, I still beat all seven of the “celebrity” finishers. Especially Jake Pavelka, who I hope won’t feel too resentful to propose to me, romance me with his shirt off and then dump me before my husband finds out. Jake may be a douchenozzle, but have you seen him? I know he’s not really much of a publicity hound so he’s never on television and there are almost no pictures of him on the Internets. But wow. Just … wow.
If you want numbers, here’s the “celebrity” breakdown:
If you’re a Proposition 8 supporter—especially if you’re still a supporter after yesterday’s impeccably reasoned trial decision—you obviously have no reading comprehension skills (or use for facts, for that matter) so just look at the dramatic play of white and dark in the above screen grab. Then stick a chainsaw in your ass.
Speaking of bloody wounds, my foot cancer surgery went so well on Tuesday that it was practically over before it began. It took longer for the anesthetic (the injections of which really, really, really hurt) to set in than for the doctor to excise the mole, cauterize the wound, stitch the edges together, and slap on layers of nourishing antibacterial goo and bandages. All of which meant I get to wear flip-flops to work all week:
The doctor said the pain would be pretty intense once the anesthetic wore off so she prescribed some hefty Rush Limbaugh drugs for me. But instead of hurting, the wound just burned like a peeing hooker. So no hypocritical drug-and-divorce-addiction scandal for me!
She also said I’d need to keep the stitches in until the wound stopped swelling and bleeding, which could take 7–10 days. On the off chance everything healed just fine in the first 48 hours, though, she gave me permission to remove my own stitches on Friday and just keep everything tightly bandaged for a week.
And guess what? 48 hours after the surgery, everything has healed quite nicely. So by this weekend I’ll be able to add “suture removal” to my resume. Also: “bar mitzvah clown.”
But! The numbers are in, and though my watch said I finished in 2:14:07 while my official time was 2:15:49, I still beat all seven of the “celebrity” finishers. Especially Jake Pavelka, who I hope won’t feel too resentful to propose to me, romance me with his shirt off and then dump me before my husband finds out. Jake may be a douchenozzle, but have you seen him? I know he’s not really much of a publicity hound so he’s never on television and there are almost no pictures of him on the Internets. But wow. Just … wow.
If you want numbers, here’s the “celebrity” breakdown:
If you’re a Proposition 8 supporter—especially if you’re still a supporter after yesterday’s impeccably reasoned trial decision—you obviously have no reading comprehension skills (or use for facts, for that matter) so just look at the dramatic play of white and dark in the above screen grab. Then stick a chainsaw in your ass.
Speaking of bloody wounds, my foot cancer surgery went so well on Tuesday that it was practically over before it began. It took longer for the anesthetic (the injections of which really, really, really hurt) to set in than for the doctor to excise the mole, cauterize the wound, stitch the edges together, and slap on layers of nourishing antibacterial goo and bandages. All of which meant I get to wear flip-flops to work all week:
The doctor said the pain would be pretty intense once the anesthetic wore off so she prescribed some hefty Rush Limbaugh drugs for me. But instead of hurting, the wound just burned like a peeing hooker. So no hypocritical drug-and-divorce-addiction scandal for me!
She also said I’d need to keep the stitches in until the wound stopped swelling and bleeding, which could take 7–10 days. On the off chance everything healed just fine in the first 48 hours, though, she gave me permission to remove my own stitches on Friday and just keep everything tightly bandaged for a week.
And guess what? 48 hours after the surgery, everything has healed quite nicely. So by this weekend I’ll be able to add “suture removal” to my resume. Also: “bar mitzvah clown.”
Monday, July 19, 2010
The stench of evil
It’s always the most efficient to replace major appliances in groups so you deplete as much of your financial reserves as possible in the shortest amount of time. Which is why we scheduled our washer/dryer and our refrigerator/freezer appliance meltdowns within a couple months of each other last winter.
And everything was going fine with our shiny new appliances until about a month ago when we realized there was something dead or dying in our shiny new refrigerator. And it wasn't old-milk dead or Mel-Gibson's-career dead. It was stabbed-hooker dead. It was my-ass-after-a-marathon dead. It was Rush-Limbaugh's-fourth-wife's-wedding-night-yeast-infection-because-she-is-his-fourth-fucking-wife dead. And the stench was enough to curl the eyelashes off a buzzard on a shitwagon.
And everything was going fine with our shiny new appliances until about a month ago when we realized there was something dead or dying in our shiny new refrigerator. And it wasn't old-milk dead or Mel-Gibson's-career dead. It was stabbed-hooker dead. It was my-ass-after-a-marathon dead. It was Rush-Limbaugh's-fourth-wife's-wedding-night-yeast-infection-because-she-is-his-fourth-fucking-wife dead. And the stench was enough to curl the eyelashes off a buzzard on a shitwagon.
What's weird is we're not the kind of people who keep food in our refrigerator long enough to go bad. We shovel food down faster than Newt Gingrich processes divorce paperwork. And we replace it with trips to the grocery store every three or four days. Granted, we eat mostly preservative-free stuff like real fruit and organic cottage cheese, so our food isn't likely to stay fresh and lifelike as long as a box of Twinkies or a belief that gays are some kind of threat to heterosexual marriage.
In any case, we had no idea what was festering in our frost-free Freon fixture and assaulting our olfactory orifices every time we reached in to grab a Greek yogurt or a ... um ... Gripe peach.
So two weeks ago, the domestic partner took everything out of the fridge, sniffed it carefully for eau de morgue, found no evidence of rotten food or rotting corpses, wiped the refrigerator walls and shelves and all the packaging around all the food with bleach water, and put everything back in the hopes that whatever ghosts were haunting our fancy new refrigerator had been exorcised.
But not so much.
My parents visited us a week ago and the smell was just as bad as ever. My mom thought that maybe something (mouse? cat? Michele Bachmann's crazy eye?) had gotten into the space between the inside and outside refrigerator walls and had started to rot. We weren't sure what to do about that possibility, but their visit was all about being tourists (Grant Park Music Festival! Chicago History Museum! Navy Pier! Ravinia!) so we didn't pull the fridge apart looking for death while they were here.
Then this weekend we had a party celebrating the fact that I've lived in Chicago for 10 years. (Yay me!) And at our parties, our friends know they're welcome to poke around in our fridge for anything they may be hungry or thirsty for ... even if they don't realize they're going to get a noseful of death in the process. As with all my party planning, in the weeks leading up to the festivities I make mental notes about things I need to do (make sure we have enough paper plates, get fresh flowers for our fancy-ass vase, rid the refrigerator of Adolfo Pirelli's festering corpse before any relatives come poking around looking for him) and then four hours before the guests are due to arrive I realize there's no food or ice or liquor in the house and race to the store to get ready ... always forgetting to de-corpse the refrigerator in the process.
So this weekend as I was scrambling to dice vegetables for homemade lemon-feta pasta salad, scoop out avocados for homemade guacamole and slice peaches for homemade peach-raspberry cobbler (I'm really just writing this sentence to brag about all the yummy food I made) I barely noticed that the smell had disappeared somewhere between oh shit we have no food and add two tablespoons of olive oil. And by the time the door buzzed to herald the arrival the first guests I'd been so distracted that I'd pretty much forgotten we probably had a dead hooker trapped in the condenser. But when the first guest reached for the fridge to find mixers for his vodka drink, I leaned in to intercept him before he discovered our shameful secret ... and finally noticed that we no longer had a shameful secret.
I don't know if the street gang that stashed the body behind the condiments finally came back to claim it or if rotting field mice really do have a short half life, but the stench is miraculously gone, as though it had never been there. Like the pope's relevance. In any case, we can now entertain without suspicious guests calling in Seeley Booth (rats!) and we can enjoy fresh peaches without being forced to ponder the creepy fact that both peaches and rotting humans are covered in something called flesh.
And now when we have leftover shepherd's pie in the fridge, we never have to worry if it's peppered with actual shepherd on top.
Friday, July 16, 2010
Foot cancer!
Really? I can hear you saying. We wait 37 years for a blog update from you (the voices in my head tend to be both filled with devotion and prone to hyperbole) and you drop THIS bombshell on us?
Well, “foot cancer” is technically an exaggeration. But! Among the billions (hyperbole motif!) of moles I have on my body, my dermatologist found a few spots that concerned her enough during my April mole patrol that she had me come in again yesterday for a three-month follow-up. And one already grotesque, misshapen mole on my foot has doubled in size since then. (Asymmetry? Check. Border? Check. Color? Check. Diameter? Check. Evolution? Check.) All the letters of the moles-can-kill-you alphabet point to something bad. Like Glenn Beck in a hot tub. But it’s fixable. Like Mel Gibson in an oven. So it has to come off.
She wanted to hack it out of me right away yesterday, but since it’s on the outside of my pinky toe joint—an area that gets so much stress that sutures there tend to rip open just from everyday locomotion—she said I couldn’t run on it for at least two weeks. And since I’ll be on a sandy beach vacation in five days and I’m running a half marathon in 17 days, she gave me special dispensation to hold off until the day after the half marathon to get my foot hacked apart. And since she caught the big scary toe mole early enough, she’s fairly certain that the hacking will be the end of the entire adventure.
Not so much, though.
My always-casual-Friday company just issued an email stating that women can dress in clothes that expose their arms and shoulders and feet but men can’t. But my dermatologist says I need to avoid confining my hacking wound in shoes until it heals strongly enough to not rip open. So I’ll need to wear flip-flops for at least the first few days after the hacking. And probably tank tops, but only to create a coherent ensemble. So there may be repercussions. Even if I promise to keep my toe hair in check.
You don’t need to send me any get-well cards. But if you decide to shop for one, there’s a fine selection at Walgreens. Some of the cards even play music. As in actual clips from actual recorded songs and not just cheesy computer renditions of “La Cucaracha” or “Happy Birthday.” I know this because I stopped into my friendly neighborhood Walgreens for a card on a recent weekend night (because I’m an on-my-way-to-the-party card shopper and DO NOT JUDGE) and I found two girls checking out these song cards … and dancing to them. From the systematic way they opened each card, danced to its song clip, compared thoughts and then repeated the process with the next card in the row, I got the feeling they were in the Walgreens card aisle that night more for its nightclub qualities than for its purveyor-of-prewritten-greetings qualities. They seemed young, so I can only assume they were working around legal barriers to approximate a complete nightclub experience, which of course includes dancing to a range of songs and … wait for it … getting carded.
Well, “foot cancer” is technically an exaggeration. But! Among the billions (hyperbole motif!) of moles I have on my body, my dermatologist found a few spots that concerned her enough during my April mole patrol that she had me come in again yesterday for a three-month follow-up. And one already grotesque, misshapen mole on my foot has doubled in size since then. (Asymmetry? Check. Border? Check. Color? Check. Diameter? Check. Evolution? Check.) All the letters of the moles-can-kill-you alphabet point to something bad. Like Glenn Beck in a hot tub. But it’s fixable. Like Mel Gibson in an oven. So it has to come off.
She wanted to hack it out of me right away yesterday, but since it’s on the outside of my pinky toe joint—an area that gets so much stress that sutures there tend to rip open just from everyday locomotion—she said I couldn’t run on it for at least two weeks. And since I’ll be on a sandy beach vacation in five days and I’m running a half marathon in 17 days, she gave me special dispensation to hold off until the day after the half marathon to get my foot hacked apart. And since she caught the big scary toe mole early enough, she’s fairly certain that the hacking will be the end of the entire adventure.
Not so much, though.
My always-casual-Friday company just issued an email stating that women can dress in clothes that expose their arms and shoulders and feet but men can’t. But my dermatologist says I need to avoid confining my hacking wound in shoes until it heals strongly enough to not rip open. So I’ll need to wear flip-flops for at least the first few days after the hacking. And probably tank tops, but only to create a coherent ensemble. So there may be repercussions. Even if I promise to keep my toe hair in check.
You don’t need to send me any get-well cards. But if you decide to shop for one, there’s a fine selection at Walgreens. Some of the cards even play music. As in actual clips from actual recorded songs and not just cheesy computer renditions of “La Cucaracha” or “Happy Birthday.” I know this because I stopped into my friendly neighborhood Walgreens for a card on a recent weekend night (because I’m an on-my-way-to-the-party card shopper and DO NOT JUDGE) and I found two girls checking out these song cards … and dancing to them. From the systematic way they opened each card, danced to its song clip, compared thoughts and then repeated the process with the next card in the row, I got the feeling they were in the Walgreens card aisle that night more for its nightclub qualities than for its purveyor-of-prewritten-greetings qualities. They seemed young, so I can only assume they were working around legal barriers to approximate a complete nightclub experience, which of course includes dancing to a range of songs and … wait for it … getting carded.
Monday, June 28, 2010
Time Magazine didn't print my letter
Fortunately, I found a blogger who'd print it for me:
Dear Editor,
Your Gay Days coverage told the story of one family with kids against a background of (by my count) seven salacious details that painted the rest of the gay experience as little more than sex, drugs and disease. To be fair and balanced, your next article about a religious gathering should weave the story of one family with kids into a tapestry of snarky details about priests raping children, popes covering up scandals, preachers using meth with hookers, bigoted religious researchers hiring rent boys, terrorists flying planes into buildings and groups of fine young Christians fag-bashing people as they leave gay bars.
Jake
I saw Stanley Cup at the Chicago pride parade!
I think he’s the one holding the giant silver thing in this picture:
So another pride parade has come and gone, and I remain as ambivalent about the festivities as ever. But not for the usual reasons.
Despite a lot of people’s worries that the so-called freak-show aspect of the parade just feeds into negative gay stereotypes, I’m actually thrilled that the parade gives drag queens and leather queens and muscle queens and duct-tape-on-their-boobs queens a day to say To hell with what you think—this is who I am and I’m not going to apologize for it.
But.
I’m not a fan of the sheer relentlessness of it all. The noise. The crowds. The mess. The drunks. The drunks who manage to spill their drinks all over me. And the fact that anyone who forks over whatever the entrance fee is seems to get a place in the parade … never mind that the damn thing goes on for four-plus hours. Or that a bunch of people walking in mismatched T-shirts—no matter how noble their organization or how fabulous their cause—does not really make visually interesting parade fodder.
And yet.
I feel compelled to go every year. Even though I find it to be only about 50% fun. And I have no idea why I keep going. Maybe because I might miss seeing some hot guy on a float. Because in this day and age it’s impossible to find pictures of hot guys on the Internet. Or maybe because if some remote friend doesn’t see me there it might not occur to him to invite me to his pride party the next year and I’ll feel like a loser.
Despite my determination to not let myself have any fun, though, I did have a lovely weekend. I went to a few parties, I finished the Proud to Run 10K in a respectable time, I spent all day Saturday with a bunch of fabulous friends, I got a parade-watching sunburn, I got tons of compliments on my tattoos, I fell off the no-diet-soda wagon, I got back on, I fell off the almost-no-alcohol wagon, I got back on (after five drinks in one day, which is more than I usually drink in five months), and I spent the post-parade hours singing show tunes at Sidetrack with the domestic partner and a steady parade of friends who bounced in and out of our evening.
Plus I went to what was perhaps the only pre-pride brunch in the city that had three straight pregnant women on the guest list. Unfortunately, only one picture has been uploaded to Facebook so far and nobody in it is pregnant. At least not to my knowledge:
But I did take two artistic portraits at the brunch with my iPhone that will undoubtedly sell for thousands of dollars at my photography retrospective auction in the years following my untimely artists’ death. I have titled them for your convenience so you can place your bids more easily from the catalogue:
Pride Brunch with Cat 1
Pride Brunch with Cat 2
So another pride parade has come and gone, and I remain as ambivalent about the festivities as ever. But not for the usual reasons.
Despite a lot of people’s worries that the so-called freak-show aspect of the parade just feeds into negative gay stereotypes, I’m actually thrilled that the parade gives drag queens and leather queens and muscle queens and duct-tape-on-their-boobs queens a day to say To hell with what you think—this is who I am and I’m not going to apologize for it.
But.
I’m not a fan of the sheer relentlessness of it all. The noise. The crowds. The mess. The drunks. The drunks who manage to spill their drinks all over me. And the fact that anyone who forks over whatever the entrance fee is seems to get a place in the parade … never mind that the damn thing goes on for four-plus hours. Or that a bunch of people walking in mismatched T-shirts—no matter how noble their organization or how fabulous their cause—does not really make visually interesting parade fodder.
And yet.
I feel compelled to go every year. Even though I find it to be only about 50% fun. And I have no idea why I keep going. Maybe because I might miss seeing some hot guy on a float. Because in this day and age it’s impossible to find pictures of hot guys on the Internet. Or maybe because if some remote friend doesn’t see me there it might not occur to him to invite me to his pride party the next year and I’ll feel like a loser.
Despite my determination to not let myself have any fun, though, I did have a lovely weekend. I went to a few parties, I finished the Proud to Run 10K in a respectable time, I spent all day Saturday with a bunch of fabulous friends, I got a parade-watching sunburn, I got tons of compliments on my tattoos, I fell off the no-diet-soda wagon, I got back on, I fell off the almost-no-alcohol wagon, I got back on (after five drinks in one day, which is more than I usually drink in five months), and I spent the post-parade hours singing show tunes at Sidetrack with the domestic partner and a steady parade of friends who bounced in and out of our evening.
Plus I went to what was perhaps the only pre-pride brunch in the city that had three straight pregnant women on the guest list. Unfortunately, only one picture has been uploaded to Facebook so far and nobody in it is pregnant. At least not to my knowledge:
But I did take two artistic portraits at the brunch with my iPhone that will undoubtedly sell for thousands of dollars at my photography retrospective auction in the years following my untimely artists’ death. I have titled them for your convenience so you can place your bids more easily from the catalogue:
Pride Brunch with Cat 1
Pride Brunch with Cat 2 Friday, June 25, 2010
What the hell do gay people have to be proud of?
We’re proud because despite relentless persecution everywhere we turn—when organized religion viciously attacks and censures and vilifies us in the name of selective morality, when our families disown us, when our elected officials bargain away our equality for hate votes, when entire states codify our families into second-class citizenship, when our employers fire us, when our landlords evict us, when our police harass us, when our neighbors and colleagues and fellow citizens openly insult and condemn and mock and berate and even beat and kill us—we continue to survive.
We’re proud because pride is the opposite of shame—and despite what the Christian hate industry works so hard to make the world believe, there is nothing shameful about being gay.
We’re proud because more and more, we are able to live our lives openly and joyfully without fear of losing our jobs, losing our housing, losing our families and losing our lives.
We’re proud because we are smart enough to overcome the self-loathing that our increasingly venomous, mindlessly theocratic society forces on us, and we have the power to stop its destructive cycle by fighting back and by making intelligent choices involving sex and drugs and money and relationships and the way we live our lives.
We’re proud because after all we’ve been through, the world is starting to notice and respect us and emulate the often fabulous culture we’ve assembled from the common struggles and glorious diversity of our disparate lives.
We’re proud because this weekend we’ll celebrate with drag queens, leather queens, muscle queens, attitude queens and you’d-never-know-they-were-queens queens, and together we can see through the “pride” in our parade and enjoy the underlying Pride in our parade.
Quite simply, we’re proud that we have so much to be proud of.
We’re proud because pride is the opposite of shame—and despite what the Christian hate industry works so hard to make the world believe, there is nothing shameful about being gay.
We’re proud because more and more, we are able to live our lives openly and joyfully without fear of losing our jobs, losing our housing, losing our families and losing our lives.
We’re proud because we are smart enough to overcome the self-loathing that our increasingly venomous, mindlessly theocratic society forces on us, and we have the power to stop its destructive cycle by fighting back and by making intelligent choices involving sex and drugs and money and relationships and the way we live our lives.
We’re proud because after all we’ve been through, the world is starting to notice and respect us and emulate the often fabulous culture we’ve assembled from the common struggles and glorious diversity of our disparate lives.
We’re proud because this weekend we’ll celebrate with drag queens, leather queens, muscle queens, attitude queens and you’d-never-know-they-were-queens queens, and together we can see through the “pride” in our parade and enjoy the underlying Pride in our parade.
Quite simply, we’re proud that we have so much to be proud of.
Friday, June 18, 2010
The Internet is for Gary Coleman stories
For those of you not versed in the canon of high culture, there is a Tony-award-winning musical from times of yore that weaves stories of love, betrayal, understanding and redemption across socioeconomic and ethnic lines, all told against a backdrop of poverty and despair in a New York tenement. Much like Les Misérables, the show explores these themes through the characters caught in their mighty vortices, giving them both sympathy and dignity while taking groundbreaking liberties with the conventions of the musical theater genre.
The show is, of course, Avenue Q. And in its very early scenes, as its characters are introduced and defined through tales of their abject suffering, we meet the most pathetic, fragile creature of the entire dramatis personae: Gary Coleman
Yes, that Gary Coleman, whose first couplets are so full of pathos and heartbreak it almost pains me to quote them here for you. But I will anyway:
Anyway, when the domestic partner and I started dating and we’d spend our days listening to Broadway cast albums together—as all gay couples do, so do not judge—the domestic partner eventually turned to me and asked me if Gary Coleman received royalties for being portrayed every night so realistically in a Tony-award-winning musical of love, betrayal, understanding and redemption told against a backdrop of poverty and despair in a New York tenement.
And I, the keeper of all empirical truth, was for once unable to answer his question. For once.
But suddenly the Gary Coleman question became our shorthand for all things unanswerable. Like How do you throw away a garbage can? Or Why is Rush Limbaugh allowed to marry four times while we’re not allowed to marry even once? Or Why is Sarah Palin allowed to live?
So when we bought our Two Bedroomed Two Bathroomed One Fireplaced Barbie® Dream Condo and started painting and repairing and upgrading it before we moved in, I posted a picture of Gary Coleman in our so-palatial-it-has-its-own-ZIP-code master bedroom closet after I finished painting it just to give the domestic partner a giggle the first time he saw my finished handiwork.
And it worked!
But eventually we installed elfa shelving and stuffed the closet with the billions of dollars’ worth of designer clothing our celebrity designer friends give us when they use our TBTBOFBDC for their couture photo shoots, and Gary Coleman got moved to the mirror over the sink in our ultra-plush, members-only-spa-like master bathroom. Where we quickly stopped even noticing he was there as he started to wither and curl from years of exposure to shower steam and high-end hair product. Which is kind of like a sad metaphor for his career, but we were too busy trying on couture to really care.
But then Gary Coleman actually died.
And now that we’ve started re-noticing the picture on our mirror, it seems cavalier bordering on cruel to take it down and throw it away. Though we probably eventually will, just as soon as we finally turn the paint chips you see in the background of this picture into actual paint that we actually put on the walls:
In the mean time, I leave you with a charming pastiche number from Act 1 of Avenue Q that’s not sung by the Gary Coleman character, but most of his songs are pretty lame and unquotable so who cares? Enjoy:
The show is, of course, Avenue Q. And in its very early scenes, as its characters are introduced and defined through tales of their abject suffering, we meet the most pathetic, fragile creature of the entire dramatis personae: Gary Coleman
Yes, that Gary Coleman, whose first couplets are so full of pathos and heartbreak it almost pains me to quote them here for you. But I will anyway:
I’m Gary ColemanIn the show, Gary Coleman is played by an actor who is obviously not the actual Gary Coleman. Probably because the Avenue Q creators knew the actual Gary Coleman would eventually die and actors are easier to replace than Gary Coleman.
From TV’s Diff’rent Strokes.
I made a lotta money
That got stolen by my folks.
Now I’m broke and I’m the butt
Of everyone’s jokes.
Anyway, when the domestic partner and I started dating and we’d spend our days listening to Broadway cast albums together—as all gay couples do, so do not judge—the domestic partner eventually turned to me and asked me if Gary Coleman received royalties for being portrayed every night so realistically in a Tony-award-winning musical of love, betrayal, understanding and redemption told against a backdrop of poverty and despair in a New York tenement.
And I, the keeper of all empirical truth, was for once unable to answer his question. For once.
But suddenly the Gary Coleman question became our shorthand for all things unanswerable. Like How do you throw away a garbage can? Or Why is Rush Limbaugh allowed to marry four times while we’re not allowed to marry even once? Or Why is Sarah Palin allowed to live?
So when we bought our Two Bedroomed Two Bathroomed One Fireplaced Barbie® Dream Condo and started painting and repairing and upgrading it before we moved in, I posted a picture of Gary Coleman in our so-palatial-it-has-its-own-ZIP-code master bedroom closet after I finished painting it just to give the domestic partner a giggle the first time he saw my finished handiwork.
And it worked!
But eventually we installed elfa shelving and stuffed the closet with the billions of dollars’ worth of designer clothing our celebrity designer friends give us when they use our TBTBOFBDC for their couture photo shoots, and Gary Coleman got moved to the mirror over the sink in our ultra-plush, members-only-spa-like master bathroom. Where we quickly stopped even noticing he was there as he started to wither and curl from years of exposure to shower steam and high-end hair product. Which is kind of like a sad metaphor for his career, but we were too busy trying on couture to really care.
But then Gary Coleman actually died.
And now that we’ve started re-noticing the picture on our mirror, it seems cavalier bordering on cruel to take it down and throw it away. Though we probably eventually will, just as soon as we finally turn the paint chips you see in the background of this picture into actual paint that we actually put on the walls:
In the mean time, I leave you with a charming pastiche number from Act 1 of Avenue Q that’s not sung by the Gary Coleman character, but most of his songs are pretty lame and unquotable so who cares? Enjoy:
I’m not wearing underwear today.
No I’m not wearing underwear today.
Not that you probably care
Much about my underwear.
Still nonetheless I gotta say
That I’m not wearing underwear today.
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
10,000 miles is a long way to run
Especially when it’s really only 205 miles. But 36 hours of living like circus people in a crowded van with occasional breaks to run lonely 10Ks through oppressive heat or inky blackness has a way of feeling as long and arduous as a swim from Maine to Hawaii. Or a walk from Hollywood to Argentina. Or an emotional trek from Palin to reality.
In any case, the 205-mile relay from Madison to Chicago last weekend was at once exhausting, sweaty, painful, smelly as a bucket of goat butts and quite possibly the second awesomist running experience of my life … right after crossing my first marathon finish line.
Our team of 12 runners was divided into two vans, and we hopscotched all over Wisconsin and Illinois through 36 transition points, dropping off runners, picking up runners, grabbing showers in college dorms, grabbing sleep in 40-minute shifts on the van floor, changing clothes in front of each other, checking cell phones for updates on runners’ pace times, posting pictures on Facebook through the magic of iPhone technology, chugging more Gatorade than can possibly be healthy for anyone … and generally having a freaking amazing time collectively running a whopping 205 miles from 7:00 am Friday to 7:00 pm Saturday.
Since my van held runners 7 through 12, we didn't have to be at the start line in Madison so early on Friday so we took our leisurely time Friday morning getting up to just somewhere near Madison. Here we are at transition point 6 waiting for runner number 6 from van number 1 (got all that?) to reach us so we could start our half of the adventure:
I was runner number 9, which put my first leg of the race at 2:00 in the afternoon on what ended up being a swelteringly hot day. Here I am waiting for the baton—which was really a slap strap that wraps around your wrist—before my little Gatorade-distended belly and I began our 8.5 miles through what you can see is a pretty shade-free section of oh-my-holy-crap-on-a-fart-colored-cracker-is-that-hot rural Wisconsin:
My team found me around my sixth mile to reload my no-I'm-not-in-my-third-trimester-of-gestating-triplets tummy with water and Gatorade before sending me back into the oppressive heat:
As I continued slogging through my little sun-drenched nightmare, I found myself wishing that a local hunter might mistake me for a deer trying desperately to masquerade as a human by wearing hunter-orange running shorts and shoot me in the head for my hubris. But I had no such luck.
By the time I passed my grotesquely sweaty slap strap to runner number 10, I was sunburned and delirious, but already enamored of the epic adventure I had embarked on:
Once we got through our 12th runner, we passed the baton (as it were) back to van number 1 and used our six hours of down time to scrub the stink off us in a college dormitory and grab some dinner at a local carb emporium. The rules for the relay clearly stated that all runners had to wear reflective vests when the sun was down with no exceptions so we dutifully wore them to wolf down our bowls of pasta and plates of pizza:
I have no photos of my 2:00 am 6.5-mile run in my reflective getup and my headlamp (which felt ridiculous but ended up being an awesome accessory for running down rural highways in pitch blackness) but the weather had turned blessedly cool and I was positively euphoric through my entire hour with my slap-strap baton wrapped securely around my midnight-blackened wrist.
My van finished our night shift at dawn and we used our down time to nap in whatever configurations we could manage in the van, near the van and perhaps even under the van. And by morning we found ourselves waiting to start up our third shift in a school parking lot with hundreds of other team vans (this one time ... at van camp ...) while storms rolled in and threatened to shut us down completely.
Which they did. And they did. Except we never really saw the storms. But we got tons of tweets from the race organizers telling us to stay in our vans until we got the go-ahead to resume the relay. So of course we used the down time to organize all the crap we had stashed in the back of our van:
The race came back to life after two hours, and my last 5.5-mile leg along a manicured suburban nature trail at 2:00 was another study in glorious weather and runner's euphoria. And by the time I passed off my final baton, I had thankfully burned off the Gatorade bloat in my poor little tummy:
And now all that's left is the memories. And the few pictures we took. And of course the blog post. But now I have a new hobby! And since the team I ran on this year was a corporate team of some friends who are moving to freaking Australia in a few months, I've already emailed all my fun runner friends to build our own team for next year. And we're going to have a cool team name ("Princess Sparklepony and the Li'l Glitterpickles" is currently my working title) and cool shirts and cool vans and even more Gatorade bloat and goatbutt stink and it's gonna be awesome and I'm so excited I can't wait for June so I can do it all over again!
In any case, the 205-mile relay from Madison to Chicago last weekend was at once exhausting, sweaty, painful, smelly as a bucket of goat butts and quite possibly the second awesomist running experience of my life … right after crossing my first marathon finish line.
Our team of 12 runners was divided into two vans, and we hopscotched all over Wisconsin and Illinois through 36 transition points, dropping off runners, picking up runners, grabbing showers in college dorms, grabbing sleep in 40-minute shifts on the van floor, changing clothes in front of each other, checking cell phones for updates on runners’ pace times, posting pictures on Facebook through the magic of iPhone technology, chugging more Gatorade than can possibly be healthy for anyone … and generally having a freaking amazing time collectively running a whopping 205 miles from 7:00 am Friday to 7:00 pm Saturday.
Since my van held runners 7 through 12, we didn't have to be at the start line in Madison so early on Friday so we took our leisurely time Friday morning getting up to just somewhere near Madison. Here we are at transition point 6 waiting for runner number 6 from van number 1 (got all that?) to reach us so we could start our half of the adventure:
I was runner number 9, which put my first leg of the race at 2:00 in the afternoon on what ended up being a swelteringly hot day. Here I am waiting for the baton—which was really a slap strap that wraps around your wrist—before my little Gatorade-distended belly and I began our 8.5 miles through what you can see is a pretty shade-free section of oh-my-holy-crap-on-a-fart-colored-cracker-is-that-hot rural Wisconsin:
My team found me around my sixth mile to reload my no-I'm-not-in-my-third-trimester-of-gestating-triplets tummy with water and Gatorade before sending me back into the oppressive heat:
As I continued slogging through my little sun-drenched nightmare, I found myself wishing that a local hunter might mistake me for a deer trying desperately to masquerade as a human by wearing hunter-orange running shorts and shoot me in the head for my hubris. But I had no such luck.By the time I passed my grotesquely sweaty slap strap to runner number 10, I was sunburned and delirious, but already enamored of the epic adventure I had embarked on:
Once we got through our 12th runner, we passed the baton (as it were) back to van number 1 and used our six hours of down time to scrub the stink off us in a college dormitory and grab some dinner at a local carb emporium. The rules for the relay clearly stated that all runners had to wear reflective vests when the sun was down with no exceptions so we dutifully wore them to wolf down our bowls of pasta and plates of pizza:
I have no photos of my 2:00 am 6.5-mile run in my reflective getup and my headlamp (which felt ridiculous but ended up being an awesome accessory for running down rural highways in pitch blackness) but the weather had turned blessedly cool and I was positively euphoric through my entire hour with my slap-strap baton wrapped securely around my midnight-blackened wrist.
My van finished our night shift at dawn and we used our down time to nap in whatever configurations we could manage in the van, near the van and perhaps even under the van. And by morning we found ourselves waiting to start up our third shift in a school parking lot with hundreds of other team vans (this one time ... at van camp ...) while storms rolled in and threatened to shut us down completely.
Which they did. And they did. Except we never really saw the storms. But we got tons of tweets from the race organizers telling us to stay in our vans until we got the go-ahead to resume the relay. So of course we used the down time to organize all the crap we had stashed in the back of our van:
The race came back to life after two hours, and my last 5.5-mile leg along a manicured suburban nature trail at 2:00 was another study in glorious weather and runner's euphoria. And by the time I passed off my final baton, I had thankfully burned off the Gatorade bloat in my poor little tummy:
And now all that's left is the memories. And the few pictures we took. And of course the blog post. But now I have a new hobby! And since the team I ran on this year was a corporate team of some friends who are moving to freaking Australia in a few months, I've already emailed all my fun runner friends to build our own team for next year. And we're going to have a cool team name ("Princess Sparklepony and the Li'l Glitterpickles" is currently my working title) and cool shirts and cool vans and even more Gatorade bloat and goatbutt stink and it's gonna be awesome and I'm so excited I can't wait for June so I can do it all over again!
Thursday, June 10, 2010
When to think of me as insane
7:00 am Friday
I pile into a rental van with a driver, two friends and three people I’ve never met to trek to our starting point in the 200-mile, 36-hour Milwaukee-to-Chicago relay. Our team has 12 runners, but our van holds runners 7 through 12 so we don’t have to be all the way to Milwaukee for the 7:30 am start. Which means I get to sleep in my own bed instead of a van with six strangers the night before I run.
2:00 pm Friday
I’m runner number 9, and this is roughly when I start my first leg of the race … give or take a couple hours depending on how fast runners 1 through 8 get through their first legs. I have to pound out 8.40 miles on this leg. And thanks to my mega-double-hella-wicked sinus infection—which after 15 days is finally 99% gone—I’ve done exactly two training runs—maxing out at 6.34 miles last night!—to build up to what promises to be a freaking painful hour-and-a-half-plus of running in what promises to be freaking endless rain. And since I have what we will politely call the sense of direction of Sarah Palin trying to find her own ass with a flashlight, there is a very good chance I could miss whatever directional signs are placed along the route and find myself frolicking among Adam and Eve and the dinosaurs in cerebral Kentucky’s venerated Creation Museum without much effort. For this, I am actually nervous about a run. Which hasn’t happened since I ran my first half marathon almost 10 years ago.
1:30 am Saturday
Eleven runners later—assuming Adam and Eve don’t run over me riding their dinosaur to church—this is roughly when I start my second leg of the race. After sleeping and stinking and politely trying not to fart in a van full of sweaty, rain-soaked runners I barely even know, I get to leave the safe confines of my pleather bucket seat and run 6.46 miles somewhere in the wee early hours of Saturday. In anywhere from a 30-50% chance of rain. But it’s 1.94 fewer miles I have to get lost and wander off to dance to Quisling John’s music at Rush Limbaugh’s fourth temporary wedding.
12:30 pm Saturday
And then I’m back to running in the hot afternoon sun, assuming all the predicted rain clears up. So I’ll either have heat stroke or wet-shoe blisters to complement my unrelenting swamp ass. The start time on my last leg actually has a massive give-or-take window on our runner spreadsheet to accommodate the giant time variables involved in propelling 12 people over 175 miles through 33 legs to get me to the start of my last 5.86 miles … which is the one number that’s fixed on our spreadsheet.
4:30 pm Saturday
This is our predicted finish time, in a Chicago lakefront park that’s literally stumbling distance from my house. Or a short plane ride from the BP Gulf Coast Aquatic Preserve. Depending on my state of mind—and level of hydration—I may actually drink some alcohol to celebrate what will be either my coolest or my most horrifying runner experience to date. But either way, I get two T-shirts out of the deal. (I need more T-shirts!) And maybe some new lifelong friends. Unless they accidentally breathe in the van after I run.
One week later
I start my hardcore training for the New York City Marathon. Can I get a WOOT?
I pile into a rental van with a driver, two friends and three people I’ve never met to trek to our starting point in the 200-mile, 36-hour Milwaukee-to-Chicago relay. Our team has 12 runners, but our van holds runners 7 through 12 so we don’t have to be all the way to Milwaukee for the 7:30 am start. Which means I get to sleep in my own bed instead of a van with six strangers the night before I run.
2:00 pm Friday
I’m runner number 9, and this is roughly when I start my first leg of the race … give or take a couple hours depending on how fast runners 1 through 8 get through their first legs. I have to pound out 8.40 miles on this leg. And thanks to my mega-double-hella-wicked sinus infection—which after 15 days is finally 99% gone—I’ve done exactly two training runs—maxing out at 6.34 miles last night!—to build up to what promises to be a freaking painful hour-and-a-half-plus of running in what promises to be freaking endless rain. And since I have what we will politely call the sense of direction of Sarah Palin trying to find her own ass with a flashlight, there is a very good chance I could miss whatever directional signs are placed along the route and find myself frolicking among Adam and Eve and the dinosaurs in cerebral Kentucky’s venerated Creation Museum without much effort. For this, I am actually nervous about a run. Which hasn’t happened since I ran my first half marathon almost 10 years ago.
1:30 am Saturday
Eleven runners later—assuming Adam and Eve don’t run over me riding their dinosaur to church—this is roughly when I start my second leg of the race. After sleeping and stinking and politely trying not to fart in a van full of sweaty, rain-soaked runners I barely even know, I get to leave the safe confines of my pleather bucket seat and run 6.46 miles somewhere in the wee early hours of Saturday. In anywhere from a 30-50% chance of rain. But it’s 1.94 fewer miles I have to get lost and wander off to dance to Quisling John’s music at Rush Limbaugh’s fourth temporary wedding.
12:30 pm Saturday
And then I’m back to running in the hot afternoon sun, assuming all the predicted rain clears up. So I’ll either have heat stroke or wet-shoe blisters to complement my unrelenting swamp ass. The start time on my last leg actually has a massive give-or-take window on our runner spreadsheet to accommodate the giant time variables involved in propelling 12 people over 175 miles through 33 legs to get me to the start of my last 5.86 miles … which is the one number that’s fixed on our spreadsheet.
4:30 pm Saturday
This is our predicted finish time, in a Chicago lakefront park that’s literally stumbling distance from my house. Or a short plane ride from the BP Gulf Coast Aquatic Preserve. Depending on my state of mind—and level of hydration—I may actually drink some alcohol to celebrate what will be either my coolest or my most horrifying runner experience to date. But either way, I get two T-shirts out of the deal. (I need more T-shirts!) And maybe some new lifelong friends. Unless they accidentally breathe in the van after I run.
One week later
I start my hardcore training for the New York City Marathon. Can I get a WOOT?
Monday, June 07, 2010
There is so much going through my head right now
Most of which are the ingredients in crystal meth, apparently. I’ve been fighting the mother and father and pit bull and vindictive, murderous neighbor of all sinus infections for more than a week now. I finally broke down and admitted it was more than allergies late last week, and my doctor put me on four medications for it:
• Z-Pak to kill the sinus infection
• Flonase to shrink the polyp (which is such a pretty word) in my sinuses that is preventing things from draining properly
• Claritin D to start my own meth lab
• Ibuprofen to mask the pain that the other three meds are obviously incapable of overcoming
Have you tried to buy Claritin D lately? You have to go through a freaking background check—at least in Illinois—complete with a scan of your driver’s license, a series of questions and a signed statement that yes indeed you are suffering from horrifying head pain and not instead planning to blow up your toothless family in your cousin's dented trailer as you try to make enough meth to fund an afternoon at McDonald’s because all you are legally allowed to buy is 10 pills.
I’m happy to report that five days after firing up my own personal meth lab—ahem, combination drug therapy—I can finally function in polite society without hoping I stumble on an armed robbery so I can provoke the gunman into shooting me in the head.
I even ran 4.5 miles on Saturday, though the angry monkeys having a pickaxe fight in my skull were not happy with all the jostling and they banged their rusty implements of war on the side of my head right above my right ear every time my feet hit the ground. But I have to run this 200-mile relay on Friday so I had no choice but to soldier on and get some miles under my belt. Monkeys be damned!
I also haven’t missed a workout through any of this—vanity before comfort!—though there were a few days where the exertion of bench pressing 225 lbs (a number he worked modestly into his blog post) was enough to fill my throbbing head with images of brains and mucous and freakishly inflamed sinus tissue (and polyps! because you can never say that word too often!) splattered all over the gym walls. Polyps!
But! I’m happy to report that today I feel about 85% better, enough so that I’ve promised myself I won’t complain about the pain to my long-suffering colleagues today at work. You people, though? Different story. Please re-read this blog post 173 more times until your brain can approximate the pain mine has endured for the last 10 days.
• Z-Pak to kill the sinus infection
• Flonase to shrink the polyp (which is such a pretty word) in my sinuses that is preventing things from draining properly
• Claritin D to start my own meth lab
• Ibuprofen to mask the pain that the other three meds are obviously incapable of overcoming
Have you tried to buy Claritin D lately? You have to go through a freaking background check—at least in Illinois—complete with a scan of your driver’s license, a series of questions and a signed statement that yes indeed you are suffering from horrifying head pain and not instead planning to blow up your toothless family in your cousin's dented trailer as you try to make enough meth to fund an afternoon at McDonald’s because all you are legally allowed to buy is 10 pills.
I’m happy to report that five days after firing up my own personal meth lab—ahem, combination drug therapy—I can finally function in polite society without hoping I stumble on an armed robbery so I can provoke the gunman into shooting me in the head.
I even ran 4.5 miles on Saturday, though the angry monkeys having a pickaxe fight in my skull were not happy with all the jostling and they banged their rusty implements of war on the side of my head right above my right ear every time my feet hit the ground. But I have to run this 200-mile relay on Friday so I had no choice but to soldier on and get some miles under my belt. Monkeys be damned!
I also haven’t missed a workout through any of this—vanity before comfort!—though there were a few days where the exertion of bench pressing 225 lbs (a number he worked modestly into his blog post) was enough to fill my throbbing head with images of brains and mucous and freakishly inflamed sinus tissue (and polyps! because you can never say that word too often!) splattered all over the gym walls. Polyps!
But! I’m happy to report that today I feel about 85% better, enough so that I’ve promised myself I won’t complain about the pain to my long-suffering colleagues today at work. You people, though? Different story. Please re-read this blog post 173 more times until your brain can approximate the pain mine has endured for the last 10 days.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Bad Idea Bears
I haven’t even run for a bus since I took off my specially fitted, custom-orthotics-enhanced running shoes at the end of the Chicago Marathon in October.
So when a friend asked me to be on his 12-person team to run a 36-hour, 200-mile relay from Madison to Chicago three weeks from now, I wisely said no … though I told him if he got desperate he should ask me again and we could talk.
I never heard back from him, but then a different friend asked me to be on his team … and then he asked again … and again.
And I thought about it long and hard. I weighed the pros (bragging rights, cool race shirt, forced cardio just in time for spring, make new friends) and the cons (no foundation of training, 15 new pounds of bodyweight [good bodyweight, just for the record] to propel through space and time, sleeping in a van with strangers, pooping who knows where) and I decided against it.
But then I did the math. I’d be expected to run three eight-ish-mile legs with breaks as long as it takes 11 other team members to run eight-ish miles each. And I can usually ramp up to eight miles within my first month of marathon training each spring. Plus it’s a hellofa way to kick off marathon training for the summer.
So I said yes. Hesitantly.
And my initial burst of regret tinged with slight panic was ameliorated when I received the runner breakdown and discovered that as runner number 9, I was responsible for three legs of only 6.5 miles each. Which is totally doable. I think.
So last night I started training. I dug out my specially fitted, custom-orthotics-enhanced running shoes, unlocked my hamstrings, stripped down to a pair of shorty running shorts (hey, I didn’t eat right and get plenty of sleep and lift weights to put on 15 new pounds for my health) … and realized as I headed out the door that I hadn’t charged my grotesquely expensive GPS running watch. But I churned out three-plus miles with relative ease … though my quads and abs made sure I knew that my last mile was very unfamiliar territory after six months of enduring nothing but squats and crunches.
And when I got home and scrubbed the stink off so as not to repel my poor domestic partner into the more redolent arms of a homeless junkie, I sat down to read through the event rules and other runner information. And I was shocked to discover the complete anarchy under which the race will be run:
So when a friend asked me to be on his 12-person team to run a 36-hour, 200-mile relay from Madison to Chicago three weeks from now, I wisely said no … though I told him if he got desperate he should ask me again and we could talk.
I never heard back from him, but then a different friend asked me to be on his team … and then he asked again … and again.
And I thought about it long and hard. I weighed the pros (bragging rights, cool race shirt, forced cardio just in time for spring, make new friends) and the cons (no foundation of training, 15 new pounds of bodyweight [good bodyweight, just for the record] to propel through space and time, sleeping in a van with strangers, pooping who knows where) and I decided against it.
But then I did the math. I’d be expected to run three eight-ish-mile legs with breaks as long as it takes 11 other team members to run eight-ish miles each. And I can usually ramp up to eight miles within my first month of marathon training each spring. Plus it’s a hellofa way to kick off marathon training for the summer.
So I said yes. Hesitantly.
And my initial burst of regret tinged with slight panic was ameliorated when I received the runner breakdown and discovered that as runner number 9, I was responsible for three legs of only 6.5 miles each. Which is totally doable. I think.
So last night I started training. I dug out my specially fitted, custom-orthotics-enhanced running shoes, unlocked my hamstrings, stripped down to a pair of shorty running shorts (hey, I didn’t eat right and get plenty of sleep and lift weights to put on 15 new pounds for my health) … and realized as I headed out the door that I hadn’t charged my grotesquely expensive GPS running watch. But I churned out three-plus miles with relative ease … though my quads and abs made sure I knew that my last mile was very unfamiliar territory after six months of enduring nothing but squats and crunches.
And when I got home and scrubbed the stink off so as not to repel my poor domestic partner into the more redolent arms of a homeless junkie, I sat down to read through the event rules and other runner information. And I was shocked to discover the complete anarchy under which the race will be run:
- Obscenity Rule: any team vehicle that is decorated with obscene images or representations, use of obscene language Warning for 1st offense; 2nd offense; disqualification.
- Urinating/defecating or the appearance of urinating on public or private property that is part of the course including, but not limited to Transition Areas, will result in Immediate Disqualification
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
How to survive the dentist
1. Pee. Being trapped for more than an hour with an entire Teamsters union plus all their industrial-grade tooth-pulverizing tools crammed in your mouth is not the time to discover your bladder is painfully full. So take a moment to make a pre-emptive pee before you climb in the chair.
2. Sit still. Apparently I spent the early moments of my filling-replacement procedure on Monday wiggling my feet to distract myself from the fact that four adult human hands plus two suction tubes plus an assortment of super-glue-strength bonding compounds plus a rock-boring drill borrowed from the Manhattan subway expansion project were wedged in my delicate little mouth. I wiggled so much that my dentist’s assistant eventually had to ask me nicely but firmly to sit still. Like a big boy.
3. Breathe through your nose. Despite recent advancements in suction technology, water and pulverized tooth bits and probably clumps of leftover pudding from a nearby grade-school lunch program will puddle in the back of your mouth as your cracked old fillings are being drilled out of your head. Resist the urge to think about how easily this gunk could become a fatal choking hazard. Or to valiantly compare yourself to a waterboarding victim.
4. Don’t bite your tongue. It will be numb to the point you won’t even be sure you even have a tongue. Especially when you’re pumped full of enough Novocain to mask the horror of two filling removals. Keep in mind that your teeth are designed to chew meat. And your tongue is meat. So keep whatever bit of it you’re aware that you still have away from your molars.
5. Reward yourself with something nice when you’re done. My dentist is across the street from the Mac store. I went home Monday night with two new fillings, partial control over my lower face and one of these pretty kitties:
2. Sit still. Apparently I spent the early moments of my filling-replacement procedure on Monday wiggling my feet to distract myself from the fact that four adult human hands plus two suction tubes plus an assortment of super-glue-strength bonding compounds plus a rock-boring drill borrowed from the Manhattan subway expansion project were wedged in my delicate little mouth. I wiggled so much that my dentist’s assistant eventually had to ask me nicely but firmly to sit still. Like a big boy.
3. Breathe through your nose. Despite recent advancements in suction technology, water and pulverized tooth bits and probably clumps of leftover pudding from a nearby grade-school lunch program will puddle in the back of your mouth as your cracked old fillings are being drilled out of your head. Resist the urge to think about how easily this gunk could become a fatal choking hazard. Or to valiantly compare yourself to a waterboarding victim.
4. Don’t bite your tongue. It will be numb to the point you won’t even be sure you even have a tongue. Especially when you’re pumped full of enough Novocain to mask the horror of two filling removals. Keep in mind that your teeth are designed to chew meat. And your tongue is meat. So keep whatever bit of it you’re aware that you still have away from your molars.
5. Reward yourself with something nice when you’re done. My dentist is across the street from the Mac store. I went home Monday night with two new fillings, partial control over my lower face and one of these pretty kitties:
Monday, May 17, 2010
Three ways I'm celebrating Syttende Mai
1. Forgetting to wear red. Though there is a red star on my fancy reversible belt buckle and my trendy shoes have red detailing. For those of you inclined to oppress us Norwegians with your selfish ignorance of our rich, lutefisk-and-sweater-based culture, Syttende Mai—literally “The Seventeenth of May”—is Norwegian Independence Day, which celebrates the day Norway declared itself to be an independent nation from those oppressive Swedes in 1814. I have no idea if wearing red is any official way to celebrate this day, but I’ve always worn a red shirt on May 17 so I could be my own one-man Borgertoget. Except today, obviously. But I am wearing a pale gray shirt that pays tribute to the pale white palette of Norwegian foods and food-covering sauces. So there’s that. Ett språk er aldri nok!
2. Getting two fillings replaced. I haven’t had a cavity since junior high school, so these dull silver bad boys in my molars have to be almost 30 years old. My dentist says they’re cracked, and since the gums around these teeth always bleed when I floss, I’m inclined to think it’s time to go under the drill again. Traditionally Norwegian Independence Day is not celebrated by attacking Norwegian-Americans with drills, but replacing fillings carries with it a high probability of wearing a paper bib with blood on it. Which equals red. Which equals Norwegian pride. Vær vennlig og snakk saktere!
3. Writing my monthly blog post. Seriously, I have no idea why I’ve been so not-bloggy lately. I’ve had a ton of adventures to write about. And tons of snarky thoughts I wanted to share. (Sarah Palin was in Chicago last week! Which means puppies died and blood ran out of our faucets and thinking people got scabby rashes on our asses.) And I’ve even enjoyed two stay-all-day-in-front-of-the-TV days in the last month. Which means I’ve had time to write. Or time to be a complete vegetable. But since vegetables are good for you, the TV won. Luftputefartøyet mitt er fullt av ål!
2. Getting two fillings replaced. I haven’t had a cavity since junior high school, so these dull silver bad boys in my molars have to be almost 30 years old. My dentist says they’re cracked, and since the gums around these teeth always bleed when I floss, I’m inclined to think it’s time to go under the drill again. Traditionally Norwegian Independence Day is not celebrated by attacking Norwegian-Americans with drills, but replacing fillings carries with it a high probability of wearing a paper bib with blood on it. Which equals red. Which equals Norwegian pride. Vær vennlig og snakk saktere!
3. Writing my monthly blog post. Seriously, I have no idea why I’ve been so not-bloggy lately. I’ve had a ton of adventures to write about. And tons of snarky thoughts I wanted to share. (Sarah Palin was in Chicago last week! Which means puppies died and blood ran out of our faucets and thinking people got scabby rashes on our asses.) And I’ve even enjoyed two stay-all-day-in-front-of-the-TV days in the last month. Which means I’ve had time to write. Or time to be a complete vegetable. But since vegetables are good for you, the TV won. Luftputefartøyet mitt er fullt av ål!
Friday, May 07, 2010
I'm back from ... um ... Europe!
I made all kinds of awesome blog posts and posted all kinds of awesome pictures while I was there. But they were in … um … Euros so they didn’t translate to most American computers. Sorry if you had gotten the impression that I’d just abandoned my blog in favor of sitting around watching TV for weeks and weeks. Because I’d never get that lazy about blogging. Ahem.
Anyway!
I have three huge announcements to make:
1. I turned 42 while you weren’t looking. My bosoms have officially drooped and gone dry. I’m currently tucking them in my foundation garments so they don’t bounce around and hurt people when I walk.
2. I stopped drinking soda. Because my trainer told me to. About ten thousand times. I had my last bubbly, delicious glass of chemical refreshment the night before my birthday. And I think I actually had withdrawal symptoms for the first week. I’m a reformed junkie! Tomorrow will mark three weeks of sobriety, and I think I deserve some kind of medal or coin or dead hooker or whatever it is they give out to mark such milestones in other reformed-junkie support groups.
3. I switched from plastic gym water to metal gym water. My trusty plastic water bottle had seen me through two marathons and almost two years of lifting. It was really just a Powerade bottle I hadn’t thrown away because it had a built-in grip that was easy to hold through the sweatiest runs and a wide mouth that was easy to refill from any drinking fountain or hose or municipal toilet. Despite my best attempts to ignore the obvious, though, the inside of it had started to smell as sour as George Rekers’ boy-hooker-stained underpants. And I kept stumbling on more and more scary reports that my well-used bottle was already leaching polyethelene phthalates into my uterus and giving my unborn children mushy little Palin brains. So I finally broke down and bought a non-fetus-deforming stainless steel bottle in a hypermasculine gunmetal gray color to complement my hypermasculine demeanor and gunmetal gray pallor. Here is a candid shot of the two bottles meeting right before the old one went to the “retirement home” next to our garbage can. It just puts a lump of heartbreaking sorrow in my polyethelene phthalate-drenched uterus:
P.S. How awesome is our toaster? It has a digital toast setting … in a hypermasculine blue!
P.P.S. If I ever formed a drag band, I would totally call it Polyethelene Phthalates and the Estrogenic Compounds.
P.P.P.S. I wasn’t really in Europe. But I totally have a girlfriend who lives in Canada.
Anyway!
I have three huge announcements to make:
1. I turned 42 while you weren’t looking. My bosoms have officially drooped and gone dry. I’m currently tucking them in my foundation garments so they don’t bounce around and hurt people when I walk.
2. I stopped drinking soda. Because my trainer told me to. About ten thousand times. I had my last bubbly, delicious glass of chemical refreshment the night before my birthday. And I think I actually had withdrawal symptoms for the first week. I’m a reformed junkie! Tomorrow will mark three weeks of sobriety, and I think I deserve some kind of medal or coin or dead hooker or whatever it is they give out to mark such milestones in other reformed-junkie support groups.
3. I switched from plastic gym water to metal gym water. My trusty plastic water bottle had seen me through two marathons and almost two years of lifting. It was really just a Powerade bottle I hadn’t thrown away because it had a built-in grip that was easy to hold through the sweatiest runs and a wide mouth that was easy to refill from any drinking fountain or hose or municipal toilet. Despite my best attempts to ignore the obvious, though, the inside of it had started to smell as sour as George Rekers’ boy-hooker-stained underpants. And I kept stumbling on more and more scary reports that my well-used bottle was already leaching polyethelene phthalates into my uterus and giving my unborn children mushy little Palin brains. So I finally broke down and bought a non-fetus-deforming stainless steel bottle in a hypermasculine gunmetal gray color to complement my hypermasculine demeanor and gunmetal gray pallor. Here is a candid shot of the two bottles meeting right before the old one went to the “retirement home” next to our garbage can. It just puts a lump of heartbreaking sorrow in my polyethelene phthalate-drenched uterus:
P.S. How awesome is our toaster? It has a digital toast setting … in a hypermasculine blue!
P.P.S. If I ever formed a drag band, I would totally call it Polyethelene Phthalates and the Estrogenic Compounds.
P.P.P.S. I wasn’t really in Europe. But I totally have a girlfriend who lives in Canada.
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Underpants Gnomes
I'll be stripping down to my fancy underwear again this year to raise money for the Chicago Gay Men's Chorus' Big Package Auction fundraiser at Sidetrack on May 8. I don't know if that will inspire you to show up and bid on our fabulous travel/spa/entertainment/merchandise packages or stay home and hide behind the couch with a Bible and a can of mace.
Either way, here's this year's promo video featuring underwear-clad footage of last year's event. I might also appear in it as as one of the implied-to-be-naked package-holding dudes who flash in and out of the background. Clearly, I can be flattered into stripping down for anything that involves standing around in my underwear in a bar.
Either way, here's this year's promo video featuring underwear-clad footage of last year's event. I might also appear in it as as one of the implied-to-be-naked package-holding dudes who flash in and out of the background. Clearly, I can be flattered into stripping down for anything that involves standing around in my underwear in a bar.
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
We’re back from our Broadway overdose!
And I owe you reviews of all the shows we saw and catty comments about all the celebrities we ran into.
And I’m fully aware that by “I owe you” I actually mean “I intend to write but you have no obligation to read or even care about” but “I owe you” sounds more like my ramblings provide actual value, which helps offset my crippling self-image issues about the mole on my foot. Plus it makes that first sentence easier to embroider on a sampler.
In the mean time, I leave you with a picture of the dog we stayed with in New York. This is Q:
Q lives with a handsome college friend of mine and his equally handsome husband in their fabulous Art Deco sunken-living-room-and-arched-doorway Chelsea apartment. And Q has a bone. And he wants to make sure that you know he has a bone, so he shows it to you from many different angles and with many different grunts and whimpers so that there is no chance that you will miss the fact that he has a bone. He doesn’t want you to tug on it or take it from him or throw it for him to fetch. He just wants to make absolutely sure that you know he. has. a. bone. Plus if you take him for a walk in Chelsea, he will attract legions of muscular, well-moisturized men who will want to say hi to you. Bone!
And I’m fully aware that by “I owe you” I actually mean “I intend to write but you have no obligation to read or even care about” but “I owe you” sounds more like my ramblings provide actual value, which helps offset my crippling self-image issues about the mole on my foot. Plus it makes that first sentence easier to embroider on a sampler.
In the mean time, I leave you with a picture of the dog we stayed with in New York. This is Q:
Q lives with a handsome college friend of mine and his equally handsome husband in their fabulous Art Deco sunken-living-room-and-arched-doorway Chelsea apartment. And Q has a bone. And he wants to make sure that you know he has a bone, so he shows it to you from many different angles and with many different grunts and whimpers so that there is no chance that you will miss the fact that he has a bone. He doesn’t want you to tug on it or take it from him or throw it for him to fetch. He just wants to make absolutely sure that you know he. has. a. bone. Plus if you take him for a walk in Chelsea, he will attract legions of muscular, well-moisturized men who will want to say hi to you. Bone!
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