Cranky Fibro Girl

Harnessing the healing power of snark

When Good Intentions Go Awry

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The other day my neck and shoulders were really tight from bracing all day against my fibro pain, so I asked my husband to rub them for me.

I needed him to work on specific spots in a specific way, so I demonstrated the technique on him. And since being worked on in that way feels so good for me, I kept going for a bit, thinking that he was enjoying it too.

He was quiet for maybe 30 or 45 seconds while I was massaging him, and then he burst out, in the tones of someone undergoing some kind of seriously painful physical torture, “OK, I’ll do it! Just, please, STOP DOING THAT!”

So I guess it’s true: one man’s pleasure really is another man’s pain.

Sigh.

If You’re Hoping For A Point To This Post, I’m Sorry To Have To Tell You That There Really Isn’t One

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So a few days ago I posted this really great quote about how even little bits of movement matter, and make a difference.

And then I proceeded to act on the wisdom I’d just received in a way that showed that I had completely understood the concept of “small movements” if, by “small movements” you mean, “moving at the speed of a herd of zebras fleeing the  pride of lions that is pursuing them across the plains of the Serengeti.”

But unfortunately, that is just how that week went.

Because later that week I went to get my hair cut, and somehow my stylist and I got to talking about how some people-and specifically, how some of her clients-just will not stop talking. And I said, “Yeah, some people are just really narcissistic and have no clue how they’re affecting the people around them.”

Then that led to a discussion about the exact definition of “narcissistic”, and I was happy to explain it to her. For w-a-a-a-y too long. I mean, I told her the entire story of Narcissus, for crying out loud, when all she’d asked for was a definition of the word.

And people: if that’s not a flagrant abuse of a liberal arts education, not to mention a PERFECT example of someone who doesn’t know when to shut up, then frankly, I don’t know what is.

But I like to think that maybe I redeemed myself at least a little bit at my pedicure, because I made a concerted effort to  listen to the manicurist’s stories instead of just blathering on about myself. And it was worth it, because in addition to the intense surge of virtuous pride I felt at being A Good Listener, her stories were really funny.

Like the time she was stopped for speeding and then explained to the officer that her speed was not actually her fault, but that of gravity.

Or the time she was stopped for wearing her seat belt the wrong way (like all other short people, the top strap cuts right into our neck). And the police officer said she’d have to pay a fine. And she asked him, completely unfazed, how much the fine would be. And he was kind of taken aback and her laid-back attitude. And she explained that no matter what the fine ended up costing her, it would be cheaper that what the insurance company would have to pay out to her husband on her life insurance policy if she ended up strangled to death by her own seat belt. And the police officer really had nothing to say to that.

And, in a final burst of randomness, you may remember that a few months ago my parents made a trip to some family property in order to get it ready for summertime use.

Well they had to go back a little while ago to do some more work and, according to my mother, they did not have to break into the house this time, which really disappointed The Family Friend who came to pick them up at the airport. I guess he hadn’t had the opportunity to walk on the Possibly Committing A Felony Wild Side lately.

Here endeth The Random. You may now return to your regularly scheduled day.

Hell Hath No Fury

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So I know it’s kind of late for me to be writing anything about Thanksgiving, but I’m gonna go ahead and play the fibro card, because if I can’t use it in situations like this then really, what’s the use?

Anyway. Last month when the six of us were all together for the holiday, for some reason the talk turned to comparing our really bad dating experiences, and of course when you get a whole group of people together there will be  a lot of stories to choose from. But here are the three that stuck with me.

The first one happened to me. And it actually has a title, as in, “Hey, Jen-tell that story about [first name] “The Good Catch” [last name]. This refers to a boy I dated in college who shall always be referred to in this way in my family, henceforth and forevermore, world with out end, Amen.

We spent a nice summer going out together-or so I thought. Then one day he picked me up and we went to the park to feed the ducks, and it became quite clear to me that we had broken up-but he had not found it necessary to share this particular bit of information with me.

So we were sitting on a little dock overlooking the pond where he explained his decision to me in that, “Well, I just know that I’m a good catch.”

Blink.

“Well,” I retorted, never at a loss for words, “SO AM I!” And then I glanced over his shoulder to see if it would be possible to push him over into the water. But unfortunately there was a railing in the way. Stupid railing.

How this story ended: The following spring my parents got a letter from X “The Good Catch” Y, in which he explained that he had been called to go on a mission trip to Russia, and would my parents please choose to support this ministry in the form of sending him some handfuls of money?

But unfortunately for him, that was the semester in which I was reading the book The Dance Of Anger. And as it turned out? I had quite a lot.

And so I wrote a letter to Mr. “Good Catch” wherein I explained that I thought he had a lot of damn nerve asking people for money to support a mission trip when he treated the people around him so badly. And then I stole the letter from my parents (who are nicer, much more generous people than I am) and threw it away. I REALLY SHOWED HIM.

[Read more…] about Hell Hath No Fury

When The Over-Educated Attack

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Once upon a time, when I had just finished Phase Two of my training to become a Certified Life Coach, my husband and I went on a hiking trip with some friends of ours. As we were planning our evening activities, I asked our fellow campers if they would be willing to be guinea pigs and let me use them to try out a coaching exercise. Happily they said yes, and so one evening we all gathered on the floor of our hotel room and I began my presentation.

That was around the time when The Secret was making such a big splash, and my little exercise was kind of along those same “woo woo” lines. As I recall, it was called something like, “The Be-Do-Have” exercise, and it was intended to reverse the thought system that proclaimed that if we could just Do Enough, and then figure out how to get all the things we wanted to Have, then we would Be happy. Instead, my happy-go-lucky little exercised proclaimed that if we would figure out how we wanted to feel (“Be”), say, creative, for example,  then we would be inspired to perform all the kinds of actions that a creative person would “Do”, and then aligning with those two things would enable us to attract (“Have”) all the things we’ve been wanting. (I’m assuming here that you are all picking up on my current, chronic-pain induced cynicism. But that is a story for another post.)

Now, I need to stop here and tell you that the group I was asking to perform this little New Thought Dance was composed entirely of 3 engineers and 1 lawyer-not a “woo woo” soul among them. I believe this demonstrates that, despite my obvious ignorance of the concept of finding the Right People for your particular offering, some part of me, somewhere, was fully aware of the potential there for tremendous humor.

So cheerfully, if somewhat naively, I began taking them through the steps of the exercise, deeply convinced in my heart of hearts that I was expanding not only their minds, but their souls as well. Because that was my spiritual calling as an almost-certified Missionary Of Personal Growth.

Things started off pretty well, with the first part of the exercise being to write down all the different things that you would like to have. But then it started to get a little rocky with Step Two, which was to write down everything you could think of that you would like to do.

“Anything you want!” I proclaimed. “Infinite Possibilities!” “No limits!”

This was where the immovable object of left-brained thinkers met the irrisitible force of my right-brained evangelism.

“Um, that’s impossible,” interjected one of the engineers. “You can’t actually do anything you want. There are limits to what is possible to do in this world.”

“No, I don’t think so.” I replied, unconcerned. I knew that in the end I could get them to see the Universe as I did. “For example, one day I would like to be able to fly.”

This caused everyone to look up from their papers and have a silent, yet urgent, consultation with their eyes.

“Uh, you know you can fly, right?” they asked, starting to worry that all of this goodness and light had somehow caused me to sustain some kind of serious brain injury.

“No, I mean FLY. Like, all by myself, up in the air. Just like Superman!”

Looking back on this now, I’m pretty sure that this was The Beginning Of The End.

Realizing that there was no arguing with me at that point, we all continued on to Step Three: Listing All The Different Ways That You Would Like To Feel.”

Now throughout all of this, one of the engineers had continued to become more and more frustrated. His way of working in the world was to sit down with a set of specific conditions related to a problem or situation, and then continue to  push back against them until he finally figured out the solution. But because of my whole Unlimited Possibilities view of the Universe, I refused to give him any, hoping to gently begin to free him from his silly need for limits and constrictions.

But when we finally go to the “How do you want to be?” phase of the exercise, he just couldn’t take it anymore. As I was the only thing he had to push back against, he kept poking and pushing and prodding, but I refused to give him what he was looking for.

Finally he agreed to just write something down on his piece of paper, which relieved all of to no end.

But, determined not to allow me the final word, he searched his mind desperately for a parting shot.

“Fine!” he exclaimed, the light of victory gleaming in his eyes. “I’ll answer the question. But…I AM USING A GERUND!”

He won.

The Firstborns

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Now that we have been married for thirteen years, my husband and I have gotten pretty good at working out the different roles in our relationship. Some things I’m in charge of, some things he’s in charge of, and some things we do together. It’s pretty balanced and comfortable.

But sometimes one of us gets a little funky in some area, and the other person has to step in and have a little “come-to-Jesus” meeting with the other person.

Case in point-my husband and his relationship to our rechargeable batteries. A few years ago we started buying rechargeable batteries since we both are so enamored of electrical gadgets. But lately, for  like, oh, the last year or so, the batteries have stopped holding their charge. So we’ve been having a lot of conversations like this:

Me: “So, the rechargeable batteries are losing their charge.”

My husband: “No they’re not.”

Me: “Yes, they are. Seriously-I put them in the camera, and I can take like two pictures, and then I have to replace them again.

My husband: “The batteries are fine. They work just fine for me.”

Seriously, it’s like one of those relationships where a girl is dating some scummy, lowlife guy who beats her, but she keeps on making up all these justifications for why she’s not leaving him:

“Oh, he didn’t mean it.”

“Oh, I know he loves me.”

“But I can change him.”

So last Friday  my husband got home from a business trip, and when he tried to work on his computer he saw that he needed new batteries in his mouse. And I am not kidding, he walked back and forth in front of me from the kitchen to his office THREE TIMES in the space of five minutes because, guess what? NONE OF THE BATTERIES WORKED! And as he passed me by his face dared me to say anything, which I didn’t have to, because the smug grin on my face said it all for me in that it was loudly broadcasting the message of, “SEE-I TOLD YOU SO!”

But even then he refused to admit defeat, continuing his attempts to manufacture tiny threads of hope that he could hold onto, so I had to stage an intervention.

“We are going to Fry’s this weekend, and we are buying new batteries AND a new charger!” I proclaimed.

“Oh we are, are we?” retorted my husband. But in his heart he knew that we were, because I almost never put my foot down like that, which means that when I do, he listens.

So we went, and he was all resistant and rejecting everything they sold, and I was like, “Dude-IT’S JUST BATTERIES! And we can get a charger AND a set of batteries for under twenty dollars. I don’t understand what the problem is here.”

He really didn’t have a good answer to that question, so I prevailed and we made our purchase. And so now we have two chargers plugged in in the kitchen, because apparently you can force my husband to go to the electronics store and buy new batteries, but you can’t make him use them. So now he makes a point of only using old batteries from the old charger as if to say, “I know Jenny has abandoned you, but I never will.”

It’s like these shoes he had back when we first got married. He had this pair of Docksiders which he loved, with a deep and abiding passion. Which was just fine, until the day I noticed that every time he wore them, he bled. His beloved shoes were MAIMING him, but he absolutely refused to admit what was going on.

Me: “You can’t wear those shoes anymore, because they are causing you to bleed.”

My husband: “I don’t know what you’re talking about. These shoes are just fine.”

Me: “There is blood flowing from your heels even as we speak. THEY ARE NOT FINE.”

My husband: “There is nothing wrong with these shoes. They are the best shoes ever. Go away!”

So somehow I managed to get him to throw them away, but to this day he still mourns their loss, and blames me for ruining their perfect relationship. Which I guess is just an example of tough love, when you have to step in and be the bad guy to keep a loved one from getting hurt.

And so I know that to be fair, I should include some stories now about how I am all unreasonable and in denial about things, but truly, around here it’s pretty much like, “Oh, Jenny’s being crazy again? It must be Monday. Or Tuesday. Or a day  ending in “-day”.” (See: The Having Of Fibromyalgia, And My Denial Thereof, In That I Am Not Really Sick).

But I can tell you about an area in our marriage where my husband and I are The Most Stubborn Human Beings Who Have Ever Lived.

When I was in high school my mom bought me an all-new set of bed linens, to replace the set I’d had almost since I began to sleep in a big-girl bed. The set was PEACH, to match the PEACH flowers on my wallpaper, and included a PEACH blanket. To go with all the PEACH in my PEACH room.

Well the blanket came with me when we got married, and for some reason my husband insists on referring to my CLEARLY PEACH blanket as “the pink blanket.”

For thirteen years now we’ve been having this debate, with neither side budging an inch. It’s gotten to the point now where one evening, when I was very sick and needed a blanket, I refused to ask my husband for help. Because if I asked him for the peach blanket, there was a chance he would refuse to bring it to me. And if I referred to it as the pink blanket, then he might think that he had “won”. Because we are dorks, and also, being firstborns, “I AM RIGHT. AND YOU ARE WRONG. WHY CAN’T YOU SEE THIS?!”

Don’t you wish you lived here too?

Stealing Hope And Crushing Dreams-All In A Day’s Work For Me

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A few years ago when I began to conceive of the idea for world domination, I decided that the first thing I needed was a business license. Because you want to be “official” and orderly as  your takeover progresses, not like those slapdash, haphazard rulers who just throw things together at the last minute and make it all up as they go along.

Of course this meant I had to come up with a name for my business, which completely stressed me out. I mean, I was years away from achieving the title of Her Highness, Supreme Empress Of The Universe-so how could I possibly know what name I would need for my supporting infrastructure this far in advance? It’s like when you go to college, and just at the moment you realize how much there is in the world that you don’t know, they want you to pick a major and decide what you are going to do with the rest of your life.

So I did what any focused, competent leader would do: I picked the first name I thought of, and figured that I could work out all of the pesky details later.

So I received my business license, and then I went back to my day job of subverting brainwashing tutoring the up-and-coming generation of soon-to-be adults. And I never gave my business license another thought, until I started receiving lots of phone calls from people who wanted to discuss my business with me. Which normally would be a good thing, but not here.

Because these people didn’t want to talk to me about Spanish tutoring (i.e., the actual service provided by my business).

No, they wanted to sell me leads for my business that would enable me to sell more life insurance. In my life insurance business. Which offered life insurance. For you to insure your life.

And it wasn’t just one person calling me about this, which could’ve been chalked up to making an honest mistake; no, it’s been a steady stream of people calling me with this same kind of offer.

Apparently, by including the word “life”  in the name of my business, I accidentally triggered some sort of secret business alarm that connects to every single human being who has anything at all to do with the selling of life insurance.

I don’t know why this offends me so much, but it does. I mean, it’s not like I lack for things that actually do call for a healthy dose of righteous indignation. Like the fact that, although his name does not appear anywhere, on any official documentation for my business, all my business-related mail for some reason now comes addressed to my husband. Even though, could he handle an emergency involving the need to construct a sentence using the imperfect Spanish subjunctive, making sure to apply the correct sequence of tenses? I THINK NOT!

So of course, the only option that now remains is for me to mock these callers in my own special way. Sure, I could be polite to them, but then I would have nothing entertaining to write about here, so, pshaw, whatever, politeness.

I attended a college that prided itself on turning out great masses of white-collar professionals, so as soon as I receive one of these calls I can immediately picture the caller, clad in their crisp shirts and ties (or blouses and skirts, as the case may be), sitting up straight on the edge of their chair, earnest and driven in their quest to, um, do whatever it is that these kind of people do. (I was an artsy-fartsy language major, remember.) And then we have a conversation that goes something like this:

Perky, professional insurance industry worker: “Hello, is this [name of my “company”]

Me: (Ugh-here we go again.)

Me: (In my perky, professional voice, just to string them along for a few moments) “Yes it is.”

PPIIW: “Great. May I plese speak with the president of such and such/the director of so-and-so/Jennifer Ryan?”

Me: (Switching over to my exhausted, world-weary voice) “This is she.”

PPIIW: “And so, your company sells life insurance, correct? ”

Me: (perkily, knowing that this will totally throw them off their game) “Nope!”

PPIIW: (pauses, trying to regroup and figure out what to do next, not quite resigned yet to losing this sale) “So this is not an insurance company?”

Me: (enjoying the sound of their hopes deflating, because I’m kind of bitchy like that) “Nope. I’m a Spanish tutor. And the company is just me-I’m the owner and sole employee.” (Or sometimes, if I’m wanting to sound more “official”, I refer to myself as an Educational Consultant, or an Academic Coach.)

Now I can actually hear the sound of their crisp business attire wilting, which makes me feel even more smug, as I am most often clad in my frumpy, shapeless, but oh-so-comfy pajamas, neiner, neiner, my life is so much better than you-ours.

PPIIW: (mentally releasing the amount of money they’d hoped to make from this phone call) “Well, I’m sorry to bother you.”

Me: (growing increasingly perky, the more they become depressed)  “Oh, no problem. Thanks so much for calling.” (Which, as everyone knows, in The South is a polite way of saying, “Ha, ha, @#$! you.”Among other things.)

Of course, when I finally achieve the position of Supreme Empress, I will hire people to be sarcastic for me, thereby freeing me to focus on more pressing issues, such as ridding the world of such abominations as “diet, caffeine-free soda”. Because then you’re just basically drinking brown water. And seriously, what is the point of that?

So if you’re interested in filling one of the positions of Official Snarker Of The Universe, start polishing up your resume. I’ll let you know when we here at World Domination Headquarters are accepting applications.

One More Party Story

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I did have one more interesting conversation at my neighbor’s birthday party with a fellow guest, who, after she presented our neighbor with his birthday present (a new bathrobe), came and sat down next to me on the couch.

For lack of a better way of starting up a conversation, I complimented her on her choice of gifts.

“Yes,” she said, “I decided to give him a hospital robe.”

I must have looked alarmed, thinking she knew something about his health that I didn’t, so she hastened to explain her remark.

“Well, you know how, when you give an older person a robe or a really nice set of pajamas, they always say, ‘Oh, good, I’m gonna save this just in case I have to go to the hospital?’ ”

Um, no.

But apparently she did. From the way she was talking, it sounded like she pretty much spent all of her time outfitting elderly people for intensive hospital stays.

“As a matter of fact,” she said, “my Uncle Bernie actually set aside a robe to be buried in.”

Aha-now this was something I could relate to.

“Well,” I said, “it might have been that he was just trying to save people from having to make that decision for him after he died.”

She looked unconvinced, which was great for me because it meant that I got to tell this story:

“Ten years ago this summer my family gathered to say goodbye to my grandmother, who was dying of cancer. Her wish was that when she died, she simply be wrapped in a white sheet before she was placed in her coffin. This was simple, and beautiful, and did not at all take into consideration the fact that this would require there to be A Person In Charge Of Sheets. Since my mom is the oldest child in her family, and I am the oldest child in my family, this duty fell to the two of us.

So we headed off to the local Giant Shopping Mart, but unfortunately there was no section labeled, “Linens for the Soon-To-Be-Deceased”, or, “Easy Coffin Accessories”, so we were forced to stand in the middle of the sheet and towel aisle and have the following conversation:

“Do you think a queen sized sheet will be big enough to wrap all the way around the body?”

“I dontt know. I think it depends on whether the body is laid end-to-end or diagonally.

“Will a top sheet be enough to wrap the body in, or do you think we need a fitted sheet too?”

“Why the heck are there so many freaking choices for ‘a white sheet’? I know Grammie’s dying of cancer and all, but I think she could have helped us our here by being a little bit more specific on her particular color preference.”

Now, my mom and I have spent a VERY large portion of our lives being the quintessential “good girls”, but we also watch an inordinate amount of crime and detective shows on television. We’ve never actually been “on the wrong side of the law” ourselves, but we do sort of feel like we are experts on what could take a person there. So as soon as we first uttered the words, “the body”, we felt like it was really only a matter of time until we set of some kind of Crime Alert Sensor and found ourselves face down and handcuffed right there on the floor of KMart.

However, while we were waiting for the S.W.A.T. team to come and take us down, we still had to pick out a sheet for the burial. Which meant that we had to continue pondering questions such as,

“Well, how many times do you think a king size sheet can wrap around a body?”

and,

“How are we going to make sure that the body and the sheet stay together?”

Shockingly, we made it to the checkout counter without any evidence of an increased law enforcement presence, and were able to complete our purchase. At least, I think that’s what we did. Because by this time I had completely left my body, in preparation for enduring my likely prison stay, and was hovering somewhere in the vicinity of my left temple. So the end of this memory is a little fuzzy for me. I do think it involved extremely large amounts of therapeutic chocolate, however.

“So,” I concluded for the benefit of my fellow party guest, “it could be that your Uncle Bernie was just trying to spare you guys from having to go through something like that.”

I don’t think she was convinced. She left me pretty soon after that, and as we were leaving my husband remarked that she was “giving us a really funny look.”

I guess we’re not gonna be BFF’s anytime soon.

A Few More Party Goodies

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Image courtesy of Free Foto.

1. About a week ago our next door neighbor called and asked if I could stay with one of her sons while she took the other one to swimming lessons. She couldn’t take them both, because her one little guy had pneumonia and wasn’t supposed to leave the house.

I told her that normally I would, but that I was sick too, and had just been diagnosed with fibromyalgia.

“It’s chronic, you, know, and my body’s all messed up, so I’m really not supposed to be around sick people,” I explained.

“What do you mean, ‘chronic’?” my neighbor asked, in what sounded like a panicked voice.

“Well there’s no cure-I just have to manage the symptoms.”

She sounded unduly upset as we hung up the phone, so as I was describing this conversation to my husband I said, “You know, I bet when I said ‘chronic’, she heard ‘fatal’.”

We saw our neighbor and her husband at the party we attended this weekend, and when I would have stood up to greet them they were all, “Oh, no, no, don’t get up. We gotcha.”

My suspicions were confirmed after they moved on to other guests when my husband turned to me and said, “Oh yeah-she thinks you’re dying.”

I really didn’t know how to handle this, but thankfully my husband was more than willing to go over and be The Ambassador Of Clearing The Air And Straightening Things Out, and was able to reassure them that, while things were kind of rough, I was not, in fact, dying.

2. Once that was all cleared up my neighbor and I had a grand old time catching up. We were talking about one thing and the other, and then somehow ended up with her asking me if I wanted to have kids.

I said no, that my husband and I live a pretty quiet life, but it really suits us because we are both nerds.

“Oh, nerds,” my neighbor said, “That always makes me think of someone who is really good with computers. Are you really good with computers?”

“Um, no,” I replied sadly. “I guess then that I’m actually just a dork.”