Cranky Fibro Girl

Harnessing the healing power of snark

Just Another Manic Monday

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A good friend of mine sent me an email last week asking me some questions about a great product she’s created which helps people who are having trouble with their body image. I really wanted to give her a well-thought-out, helpful, insightful answer, but I haven’t quite been able to yet, as I explained in my response.

“I just wanted to let you know that I got your email-as a matter of fact, I was reading it on my Blackberry as I was on the way to the freezer to get some more Thin Mints, and so I was all, “What? Body Image? La la la la la, I can’t HEAR you!”

“And then, surprise! My husband decided at the last minute to got skiing this week with his dad, which meant that my father-in-law came down to stay with us Friday night, and of course the guest bathroom is all torn up because last summer someone was all, “Hm, I think it would be a really good idea to completely redo this bathroom,” and then someone else was all, “No, I have a BETTER idea-I’ll contract a painful chronic illness which will suck up all the available time and energy in our lives!” So my husband was like, “Well, we’re gonna have to let my dad use our bathroom,” and I was all, “ABSOLUTELY NOT! I AM NOT SHARING MY BATHTUB WITH ANYONE. YOU JUST CALL HIM UP AND TELL HIM THAT HE WILL HAVE TO STAY DIRTY!!” Because I’m all hospitable like that.

“And then I’m having to do all this remedial work for my sweater knitting class, which is really hard, and which is causing me to have a huge identity crisis, because, OMG!, I’m not the best student in the class!”

“And now the ants have started taking over our kitchen, which means that I am constantly having to massacre them with Windex, because even though I am all about supporting wildlife, I MAKE AN EXCEPTION WHEN IT’S SWARMING ALL OVER MY KITCHEN COUNTERS.”

“And so basically I have been exerting every last particle of my will towards the goal of not actually eating my entire house, as well as driving all over town, because, hello, Where are all the damn Girl Scouts and their cookies when you really need them?!”

“So I haven’t really felt like I was in the best place to offer insight on this issue right now, except for this little nugget: Keeping Thin Mints in the freezer=really not as effective a barrier as one might hope.”

“So, how are things with you?”

And I Haven’t Even Taken Any Pain Medicine Lately

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Nineteen years ago last month (!!!!) I attended my first official outing as my husband’s (then brand-new boyfriend’s) girlfriend, when I went to the ceremony in which he would be presented with his Eagle Scout award. I was pretty anxious about this whole situation because it involved going to a Catholic mass, and I myself had never really ventured outside the protective bounds of my safe little evangelical, fundamentalist Protestant world.

Being the sensitive guy that he is, he picked up on my nervousness, and also being the kind of person who likes to poke people in their vulnerable spots with hot, flaming, pointy sticks tease, he took advantage of my unfamiliarity with Catholicism to sort of “build the suspense” as it were, and allude to the fact that there was going to be A Very Special Surprise at this particular mass. Unfortunately, he was quite young, and hadn’t ever learned that there were people in the world who considered the Catholic Church to be the demonic offspring of the Anti-Christ and The Whore Of Babylon, and so was unaware of the increasing psychic burden he was placing upon me.

By the night of the ceremony I was completely freaked out, so I asked my mom if she would come with me, and she said yes. This was pretty hysterical now that I think about it, because if ever there were two “Good Girls” who would do anything to keep the peace and make sure that everyone liked them, it would be us (“What? Oh, you need some naked maidens to lie down on this altar up here, right underneath all those very large knives? Yeah, okay, sure. Where do we change?”) (So the moral of this story would be, Two Good Girls=No Protection Whatsoever Against Imagined Incursions By Hostile, Alien Religions.)

As it turns out, the Very Special Surprise ended up being nothing more than “The Blessing Of The Throats”, where they put two holy candles on your throat and bless you as a sort of a protection against getting sick, which, given the events of the past year, is actually pretty tame. (See: “Stool Transplants”, or, “The Horrifying Last Resort Treatment For C DIFF Which Thank God I Didn’t Have To Endure, But Which My Doctor Thinks Is Hilarious To Remind Me Of Every Time I Go In For An Office Visit, Even Though I’ve Been Free Of The Disease For Over A Year Now.)

But I am happy to report that everyone survived this incident completely intact, and he and I are getting ready to celebrate our 13th wedding anniversary, and he has continued to be involved with Scouting over the years.

The reason I am bringing all of this up now is that he recently received the latest issue of “Scouting” magazine which has been lying on our kitchen table all week. It features a cover story entitled, “Camp Cooking Winners,” but every time I walk by I read it as “Camp Cooking Wieners“, which is no surprise, because despite my chronological age (thirty-six), I’m pretty sure that internally I’ve never gotten past the age of twelve.

However now that I am (allegedly) a grown-up, I feel a certain responsibility to “walk the moral high ground”, as it were, and refrain from even the thought of sexual euphemisms when it comes to an organization that deals with young children. I told my husband that I could feel the eyes of the Troop Leader featured on the cover following me whenever I walked by, silently condemning me for my improper behavior.

“Well if it really bothers you,” he said, “we can just turn the magazine over.” Which he did.

But unfortunately, this didn’t help at all. Because the entire back cover of the magazine is a full-sized ad which proclaims,

“NUTS FOR SCOUTING!”

March Is International Women’s Month

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“Somewhere in our souls, we remember the burning time, when women were persecuted and burned alive as witches. This went on for three hundred years of the Inquisition. In what has been referred to in contemporary times as “the women’s holocaust,” more women were burned at the stake than were killed in the Nazi gas ovens during the Holocaust in World War II. First the midwives were burned for easing the pains of childbirth (which went against the biblical injunction that women were supposed to suffer), then the healers who knew the medicinal uses of herbs, women who celebrated the seasons, eccentric women, women with possessions someone coveted, outspoken women, bright women, women without protection. This collective memory has an effect much as any personal repressed trauma does; it makes women anxious when we discover our own sacred experiences and find words for them. We need courage to bring forth what we know. Somewhere in our souls, women remember a time when divinity was called goddess and mother.”

Jean Shinoda Bolen, MD
Crossing to Avalon: A Woman’s Midlife Pilgrimage

The Best Thing I Heard This Weekend

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From my friend, Jill Badonsky, author of The Awe-manac:

“March was originally the first month on the early Roman calendar. Its name honors Mars, the Roman god of war. To honor Mars, it’s the Awe-Manac Month of Unleashing Your Inner Warrior On All Tormenting Thoughts And Unfulfilling Actions Keeping You Captive.”

Right on!

Why I Love My Husband So Much: Reason 4

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Image courtesy of Free Foto.

He is quite the Renaissance Man.

He can receive the following text from me:

“If I’m asking myself, ‘How much pain should I be able to tolerate before I take any meds?’, is that a sign that I should be taking some meds?

Also: BUNNIES!”

and be just as happy to hear the one (that I am asking for help in taking care of myself) as he is to hear the other (signs of the return of spring).

Things That Make You Say, “What?!”: Experts

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The other day I walked into the living room and saw a computer generated/animated dinosaur cavorting around on our television screen. That was not at all unusual for our household, but was was unusual was just how flummoxed it seemed to be making my engineering, scientifically astute, technologically savvy husband.

“I’m watching this show about sex in space,” he told me-and then I was flummoxed, and could actually feel important neurological connections in my brain explode as I tried to reconcile his words with what I was seeing on TV.

Because,…what?!

So naturally I had to stay and watch after that, and after treating us to yet another re-enactment of How Dinosaurs Became Extinct (which, if I recall correctly, they lightly referred to as, “One really bad afternoon”, as the reflection of the fatal meteor loomed larger and larger in the eyes of the poor, doomed dinosaur), they then turned the show over to some experts to give us some commentary on how all of this related to us human beings. And sex. And also, outer space.

So they brought out some serious, academic-ey-looking guy, and I’m sorry to say that I don’t remember anything more about him, because I was so completely distracted by his message. Which more or less boiled down to exhorting us humans to hurry up and find a way to leave earth and go procreate in space, or else we too would fall victim to some horrendous natural disaster and be wiped out as a species. Only this time, it would be our own fault, because we foolishly chose to remain earthbound, instead of earnestly seeking out new environments in which to do the deed.

And that is this guy’s job. He is an expert at doom-mongering, and encouraging us to go have sex in rocket ships.

And of course, all I could think about was, “Where the hell do you go to get a Ph. D. in that?!”

The Blah’s

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I am coming off of an exceptionally bad pain week (STUPID FIBRO!!), which has apparently leached away all traces of humor from my system. I really hate that.

But I also hate not posting at all for almost a week.

So for today I will direct you toward this very cool blog I just discovered, whose author, Kendra Thornbury,, recently wrote a terrific post all about freedom, which happens to be my Very Dearest Love, right after Telling Funny Stories.

“What is freedom?” she asks.

And I love her answer to this question:

“In this moment, I think of it as an unrestrained expression of my true self regardless of who I’m around and what is going on and complete ownership of the reality I am creating. It’s feeling contentment with what is and realizing that regardless of what is transpiring, I am at choice. It is residing in the BEingness of my true essence, that which is unwaveringly solid in the greater truth. ”

As my coaching school instructors would say, “I’ll have some of that!”

“The Awe-manac” Blog Tour

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Back in 2004 I attended the first ever in-person retreat for Artella, the art magazine founded by Marney K. Makridakis.

One of the speakers at the retreat was the very funny and inspiring Jill Badonsky, whose latest book is entitled The Awe-manac: A Daily Dose of Wonder. Based on the idea of The Old Farmer’s Almanac, The “Awe-manac” contains 365 days worth of prompts, quotes, and exercises to help inspire your own personal creativity. Here is today’s entry:

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I am fortunate today to be the featured stop of Jill’s “Awe-manac” blog tour, so please make sure to give her a very warm welcome here to “Using My Powers For Good”.

Hi, Jill, and welcome.

I have had the privilege of meeting you in real life, so I know what a funny person you are. But in the preface to The Awe-Manac you write that, “While writing this book I experienced one of THE darkest shadows of my life in terms of loss, hardship, confusion, estrangement, renegade bio-chemistry, mental gridlock, and failure to use my emergency brake.” What role, if any, did humor play in helping you to survive this period in your life?

Surprisingly, sometimes I take things way too seriously. However, when meeting up with the perfect storm of family drama-laced abysmality intersecting with turncoat biochemistry when I was writing the book wasn’t one of those times.

The writing of The Awe-manac was like an escape into bliss-filled mirth, something I perfected during a rather screwed-up childhood for which I’m ever-so grateful. I sometimes think the greater difficulty I experience, the more raw and available my humor is. When I don’t use my energy to suppress the rancid darkness, it is available for lightening up. I was laughing out loud as I wrote the book, rather surprised at the humor I was being delivered and wondering if others would find it as funny as I did. Additionally, watching Ellen, The Daily Show and The Colbert Report was like fueling my funny bone. All three of which I would watch in order to put me in the appropriate mood for writing.

How do you see the relationship between creativity and spirituality? Do you think the practice of creativity could be considered a spiritual practice?

Creativity is a spiritual practice in my opinion. I believe we create our reality with the thoughts we choose to paint our existence, our attitude and our perspective. And it’s so clear that our ability to be creators is our divinity.

When we are in the creative journey we are most fulfilled, the timelessness and flow seems to be provided by a higher power and our creations have the potential of making an incredible difference in the lives of those who sense, see, hear, and touch them. When we overcome the demons that surface frequently when we are engaged in creative endeavors, we are strengthening our spirit with grace, patience, confidence and resourcefulness.

Spirituality comes into play in the Kaizen-Muse Creativity Coaching Model by facilitating our higher self in accordance with our creative call.

My favorite Awe-Manac observance so far this year has been January 22nd, “Cat Appreciation Day”. Cats feature heavily here on my blog, and I know that you are a cat lover yourself. If cats could speak, what do you think they would tell us, for example, about “How to use our powers for good?” or “How to live with more awe and wonder in our everyday lives?”

I believe that cats are wonderful role models for Zen-thinking and forgiveness. I stepped on my cat’s tail by mistake this morning and he instantly forgave me and forgot about it when I held him.

Cats would tell us to be vigilant about being present, be ready to swat a low-flying idea when it passes within our batting range, and when in doubt, wash. Nap frequently so these things are easier..

Jenny, thanks for asking such thought provoking questions and for having a blog that uses its power for good. I enjoyed being here.

It was my pleasure!

jillJill Badonsky, M.Ed., is an internationally recognized workshop leader, keynote speaker, creativity-coaching pioneer, multimedia artist, storyteller, humorist and business entrepreneur. She has creatively consulted with Seventeen and Bust magazine, filmmakers, comedians, storytellers, artists, business CEOs, writers, women in business and groups through-out the country. Her background is in occupational therapy, writing, performance, marketing, educational media and instructional design. She is an award winning public speaker, writes a monthly column for Creativity Portal and is editor of the monthly Muse Flash.

Jill is also founder and director of Kaizen-Muse Creativity Coaching – a ground-breaking model for coaching resistant and sensitive creative people or anyone wanting to create a positive change in their lives. She is author of The Nine Modern Day Muses (and a Bodyguard): 10 Guides to Creative Inspiration for Artists, Poets, Lovers, and Other Mortals Wanting to Live a Dazzling Existence and the upcoming book for Running Press, The Awe-manac: A Daily Dose of Wonder.. She wrote and performed the one woman show I Can’t Always Handle Reality, But It’s Really the Only Place to Get a Good Cup of Coffee. Jill lives in the San Diego with two cats and a bougainvillea.

Sometimes The Universe Winks At You

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Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I had to go to the doctor today and get my medications adjusted, as the past two months have pretty much felt like one, giant panic attack. As I was sitting in the waiting room, pretending that I was not seconds away from jumping out of my own skin, I was happily distracted by the woman across from me who suddenly asked, “Now, why are you taking off your clothes at the doctor’s office?’

I looked up, expecting to see a mother talking to a child, a situation which I could totally understand. As legend has it, as a toddler I myself was wont to throw off all my clothes at the slightest provocation, whenever I wanted to underscore a Very Important Point I was trying to make with my parents, such as, “Look at me!”, or, “Hey, I’m naked!”, or, “I would like some French Fries, please!’

However I was quite surprised to see that it was not a child, but rather a man in his 70’s or 80’s who was being asked about his sudden urge to unclothe. From what I could see he had entered the doctor’s office wearing anywhere from 7-10 shirts all at once, and was now delighting in deliberately removing them, one by one, and then folding them carefully and precisely into a pile on his lap.

That in itself was pretty funny, but the best part of the whole situation was the look of utter and absolute glee on this man’s face. It was as if he just couldn’t believe that he lived in a universe where he got to wear ten shirts at a time, and then remove them all in front of other people.

I couldn’t help but feel that this was a little gift for me from the Universe, just it’s way of saying, “Hey, don’t worry, we’ve got your back. You’re gonna be just fine.”

Either that, or the Universe really wants to see me naked.