Cranky Fibro Girl

Harnessing the healing power of snark

What I Want You To Know

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Baggage over at Baggage and Bug is hosting a blog carnival on the topic, “What I Want You To Know”. I’ve never participated in a blog carnival before, so here I go.

What I want you to know is that I have always considered myself to be a “Black Sheep Girl In A White Sheep World”. Not because of any horrible traumas or dramatic personal failures, but just because I’ve always felt so different than everyone else around me.

I come from a family that is full of mathematicians, accountants, engineers, chemists, and financial planners. And I…write a humor blog on the Internet. So while my family members are all working through serious issues like, “Gee, I wonder how we can get these molecules to bond together and form this new cancer drug,” I am wrestling with complex problems like, “Hm, would it be funnier to use the word ‘underwear‘ or ‘underpants‘ in this story? And is there any possible way to work in the word, ‘weasel'”?

And that is just one of the many ways that I am proud to be a black sheep girl in a white sheep world.

Nice Try, But No Cigar

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Today was “leg day” with my trainer at the gym.

She showed me this exercise she wanted me to do that was a combination of a squat, a squeeze, and a ballet position. It is designed to work your entire lower body, but it looked really hard. So I decided to try and stall for time.

Me: “I never took ballet. I’m too short to be a ballerina.”

My Trainer: “True. But you’re not too short to squeeze your ass.”

Thursday Thirteen #4: 13 Funny Things Politicians Have Said

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Thirteen Things about Jenny Ryan

1. “I think we can agree. The past is over.”-George W. Bush

2. “A zebra cannot change its spots.” -Al Gore

3. “It isn’t pollution that’s harming the environment. It’s the impurities in our air and water that are doing it.” -Dan Quayle

4. “If we don’t succeed, we run the risk of failure.” -Bill Clinton

5. “There is a mandate to impose a voluntary return to traditional values.” -Ronald Reagan

6. “I regret to say that we of the FBI are powerless to act in cases of oral-genital intimacy, unless it has in some way obstructed interstate commerce.” -J. Edgar Hoover

7. “I’m running for president of the United States because I believe that-with strong leadership-America’s days will always lie ahead of us. Just as they lie ahead of us now.” -Bob Dole

8. “If I seem unduly clear to you, you must have misunderstood what I said.” -Alan Greenspan

9. “For seven and a half years I’ve worked alongside President Reagan. We’ve had triumphs. Made some mistakes. We’ve had some sex…uh…setbacks.” -George H.W. Bush

10 “Democracy used to be a good thing, but now it has gotten into the wrong hands.” -Jesse Helms

11. “Capital punishment is our society’s recognition of the sanctity of human life.” -Orrin G. Hatch

12+. “What we have here is an egregemous miscarriagement of taxitude.”

“I’m providing you with a copulation of answers to several questions raised…”

“The contagious people of Washington have stood firm against diversity during this long period of increment weather.”

“What right does Congress have to go around making laws just because they deem it necessary?”

“Outside of the killings, Washington has one of the lowest crime rates in the country.”

-Marion Barry, former mayor of Washington, D.C.

From 1001 Dumbest Things Ever Said, ed. by Steven D. Price

Links to other Thursday Thirteens!

Get the Thursday Thirteen code here!

The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It’s easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things. Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!

Just Taking The Wind Right Out Of My Sails

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Today, I was attacked by nature.

I was outside, doing my part to be a good neighbor and bring the trash can back down to the house, when suddenly I noticed an odd sensation in my right hand.

So I looked down and discovered that half of my right hand was entirely covered in fire ants, and the “odd sensation” was actually THE BURNING PAIN OF THEIR FLAMING, VENOMOUS BITES!

Not surprisingly (for someone with a severe anxiety disorder, I mean), I’ve spent this entire day manically flexing my hand to make sure I haven’t lost any mobility in my muscles, and wondering if there is any such thing as “Fire Ant Anti-Venom” and should I really be making more of an effort to find some, along with trying really hard not to freak out and envision their poison slowly yet relentlessly traveling up my arm in order to wreak its deadly havoc throughout my entire body.

So I just emailed this beautifully crafted story of my day to a friend of mine, and do you know his response was? “Be thankful, because when I get bitten by fire ants, I can die.”

Thanks, dude. Way to completely eliminate All Dramatic Impact Whatsoever from my story.

And don’t even get me started on the conversation I just had with another male friend who, when I gently suggested that women might possibly have had more of a role in the shaping of our history than would be suggested by the traditional, “accepted” textbooks, went off on a rant against “revisionist” history, where clearly “revisionist” was a code word for “fascist, communist, anti-American, mother-hating, puppy-killing, Nazi brainwashing propaganda.”

Geez! What does a girl have to do around here to get a friendly audience?

Prayers Of The Faithful

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You know how when you’re little you learn certain prayers to say at certain times, like saying “Now I lay me down to sleep/I pray the Lord my soul to keep…” before you go to bed, or saying “God is great/God is good/Let us thank Him/For this food” before a meal? And then you get older and you learn different prayers to say at different times?

Well I have noticed that since I began living with cats, I have learned an entirely new set of prayers for the particular circumstances that arise due to cohabitation with felines.

Such as, A Prayer For The Sick

Dear God,

Please let that noise I hear not be the big cat horking stuff up all over the rug.

Thank you.

Or, A Prayer For The Dead

Dear God,

Please let that black thing in the middle of the living room carpet not be anything alive.
Or anything that was alive at one time, but is now dead.
Or anything that used to have legs, arms, a head and/or wings, but is now missing them.
Or any of said legs, arms, heads, or wings.

Thank you.

Or, A Prayer For Deliverance

Dear God,

Please let whatever it is that Tigger just captured on the porch
and then brought inside
not end up on my bed.

Thank you.

Together we all say, Amen.

First Contact

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So when this day started off, I was feeling really good.

I was able to put my contacts in almost on the first try (although I did briefly revert to being 8 years old again when I had to ask my husband to please, please, STOP LOOKING AT ME while I did it.) So I was feeling good about that.

And then once they were in I went to work out, and I was feeling really good about that, because this will be my tenth week in a row of regular exercise.

But apparently that was just too much good feeling in one morning for me, because I had only been walking on the treadmill for about ten minutes when I rubbed my eye and accidentally popped my contact out.

Fortunately I did not lose it, but I did then have to figure out what I was going to do. My first instinct was to leave and go back home, which would have been awkward but doable. The place where I work out is not a regular gym, but instead is a by-appointment-only kind of place, which means that everyone knows who you are, and they notice when you come in, and they notice when you leave, and they have no qualms whatsoever about following you out into the parking lot and stopping you from driving away if they think you’ve left too quickly.

But I could deal with that. What was more difficult to deal with was the fact that my trainer arrived at that exact moment to work with another of her clients and I was instantly faced with an even more important dilemma, namely that of preventing her from changing the setting on my treadmill from the level at which I felt I could actually walk and still ensure the delivery of oxygen to my entire body, to the level at which she felt I SHOULD be working out (my level being, “Oh, The Burning!”, and her level being, “Spontaneous Combustion And Death!”)

So I stayed, clutching my contact the whole time, and when I finally escaped to my car I realized that I was so a person who’d had contacts for less than four days. Because, did I have my contact case, or my contact solution, or my glasses, or anything even remotely resembling an eye care product? Um, no. I had…an empty granola bar wrapper plucked hastily from the floor, thus ensuring that when I finally made it back home my contact would resemble nothing so much as a colorless, hideously deformed Shrinky Dink.

And I was left to wonder (yet again) at the fact that somehow I am allowed to be the person in charge of my own self care, and to fear for the other living beings who depend on me.

Is It Wrong…

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…that when I went to the eye doctor yesterday to get contacts for the very first time ever, and the lady teaching me how to put them in and take them out said, “Wow, usually it takes people an hour to learn how to do this, but you learned really fast!”, that I felt an immense surge of pride in my superior contact-putting-in-and-taking-out skills?

Or, on second thought, is that just kind of sad? Just like the fact that yesterday evening I took a shower, got dressed to go out, did my hair, put in my contacts, put on my glasses, and then thought, “Holy cow! After all I’ve been through today with my eyes, why the heck can I not see?!”

I guess these are just two more links in the longstanding chain of evidence which proves that I will never, ever, ever be cool, as least not as the world defines it.

Thursday Thirteen #3: 13 Crazy Things I’m Afraid Of

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Thirteen Things about Jenny Ryan

1. I am afraid to stand behind my car and reach a-l-l the way into the back of the trunk because I know the moment I do, someone will come up behind me, push me in, and lock me in the trunk forever.

2. I am afraid to go to the bathroom during thunderstorms lest the toilet be struck by lightening and render me infertile and unable to ever again enjoy marital relations.

3. I am afraid that if I ever completely finish an entire alcoholic beverage by myself that I will instantly become a raving alcoholic. And so I never ever have.

4. I am terrified of running out of stale bread at the park and being pecked to death by an angry mob of ducks and geese.

5. I am afraid to be outside at night because I am afraid that bats will come and nest in my hair. It doesn’t matter if there are no bats anywhere near me, clearly NIGHTTIME=BATSNESTINGINHAIR TIME

6. I am afraid to call people-any people-on the phone.

7. I used to be afraid to order fast food because I had to talk to people by way of those scary speaker thingies.

8. It occurs to me that I might possibly be afraid of (talking to) people.

9. I am afraid I might somehow read every book in the entire known Universe and one day be left with nothing new to read.

10. I am afraid of imaginary snakes.

11. I am afraid that if I ever resolve all of my issues with my hair and my weight that I will then have nothing to think about all day and thus be r-e-a-l-l-y bored.

12. I am afraid that, when I am walking outside, if I don’t step on exactly the same number of pavement cracks with my right foot as I do with my left foot, that my feet will fall right off and I will have to spend the rest of my life hobbling painfully around on my sad little leg stumps.

13. I am afraid that if I actually reveal these inner workings of my mind on my blog, that I will scare away all of my readers.

Links to other Thursday Thirteens!

Get the Thursday Thirteen code here!

The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It’s easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things. Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!