Cranky Fibro Girl

Harnessing the healing power of snark

OK, So My Mom Was Right About This

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So last weekend my husband and I were at dinner with 3 other couples, and during the course of the conversation the woman next to me informed me that I was going to, and I quote, “H-E-double hockey sticks.” Oh, and not only was I going, but so was my husband. Oh, and not only was he going too, but the fact that he was going was also my fault.

That was a lot of information to take in all at once, and I really didn’t know how to respond to her statements. Plus, I was always raised to follow this advice: “if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.” I am even more of a believer now, and am considering a more prominent, physical representation of this statement (such as having it tattooed across my forehead), in order to avoid any more confrontations like that one.

Of course I couldn’t think of any snappy comebacks in the moment, but here are some responses I’ve come up with since then.

-“What?!”

-“Ah, yes, my powers are growing. I must be sure to use them only for good, and never for evil.”

-“I wasn’t aware that you were the person who got to make that decision.”

-“Um, I think your recruiting technique needs a little work.”

The pen may be mightier than the sword, but unfortunately, I’ve also noticed that it can be a whole lot slower.

The Road Less Traveled

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You know how sometimes in life you start out with these great plans, and then unexpected things happen and you find yourself in a place that you never could’ve imagined? Well, that is happening to me now. But not in a misty, nostalgic, “oh, look at the funny twists of fate” kind of way. It’s more of an, “I wonder how I could erase certain parts of my memory without causing myself actual brain damage” kind of way.

Because, through no fault of my own, and totally against my will, I am becoming…an Expert In Rats. Believe me-I have fought this tooth and nail (no pun intended). But these people keep on foisting off all of this unwanted knowledge on me, and unfortunately it’s the kind of knowledge that really sticks with you.

I wasn’t even going to write about this subject at all, because deep down, I feel like I’ve been tainted by the stigma of having a known association with rodents. Like somehow, the fact that I have a rodent problem means that it’s really my own fault. Like somehow my lifestyle is so shameful that its cumulative effect on the world is to explode into an actual, physical, nirvana-like haven for rodents.

That’s not actually true, but part of me is strongly tempted to think that it might be. It probably comes from being a girl, since we are conditioned from the womb to feel personally responsible for the Entire Known Universe. (But that’s a different blog post.)

But seriously, I am wracking my brains and trying to figure out exactly what it is I’m doing that is inviting all of this extremely unwanted knowledge into my life so I can make it stop. It’s like when you’re a teenager, (speaking of how girls are socialized) and your mother warns you about dressing a certain way or acting a certain way, because you don’t want to give boys “the wrong message”. But see, here I’m kind of walking a fine line, because I want to remain open and friendly enough so that the bug guys will still come and deal with these rats for me, but not so friendly that they continue adding to my increasing store of rodent-related information. And finding that perfect balance is still apparently a mystery to me, much like the mystery of how the [CENSORED] are getting into our basement in the first place.

So anyway, I’m sure I will have much more to post on this subject later, because apparently this weekend somebody, and by “somebody” I mean, “my husband”, has to go down into the basement and clean up all the old, uh, we’ll just call them “presents”, so that the bug guy can come back again next week and see if there are any new “presents”, which he can then track to see if he can find out exactly where these evil beasts are coming from. And maybe by the end of next week I’ll have convinced my basement to stop wearing such slinky, low-cut, rodent-enticing outfits and trashy eye makeup, and I’ll have convinced the rats to stop acting like elementary school boys who show their affection for you by hitting you, or teasing you (or poo-ing in your basement). And then the bug guy can make some new best friends.

Where Has All The Funny Gone?

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I feel like I’m experiencing a bit of a humor dry spell, which is a bit stressful. Because, looking back over the past three weeks, I see that I’ve had lots of experiences with “funny” potential.

For example, the week after Christmas my whole family and I met my brother’s finance’s family for the first time. In addition to the regular stress associated with such an event, there was also anxiety over the fact that they are from Poland, and we are not. I myself, safe in the knowledge that this event had absolutely nothing to do with me, and that I could just stay in the background and collect fun observations for my blog, did not really understand why that was cause for additional anxiety. But my family became obsessed with the idea that they HAD to learn Polish, or else Very Bad Things would happen. So they spent the 2 hours before the engagement party sitting in my brother’s living room, frantically trying to become conversationally fluent in a language that is not at all similar to English.

They tried very hard to convince me that this obligation also applied to me. But this was one time when being the self-proclaimed “black sheep” in a family of mathematicians, accountants, and scientists actually came in handy. Because I strongly believe that the fact that I hold a Master’s degree in Spanish dispenses me from all other language requirements into perpetuity, as well as from ever having to feel any kind of verbal inferiority.

But, do you see my dilemma? Here I was, in the middle of a situation rife with humorous contrasts, and I came back here with nothing to post.

So I wasn’t able to harvest any humor nuggets from my familial encounters, but then, immediately afterward, I got sick. And not with just a piddly little old cold, either, but with bronchitis-an antibiotic-requiring, double-injection-laden, Sickness With A Name.

And once again, I was surrounded by details that just begged to be laughed at. Like the fact that I had to go to what my husband calls a “doc-in-a-box” on a Sunday afternoon, where all the personnel apparently have been trained to view every single patient as slightly mentally impaired, and as an exact clone of every other patient they’ve ever seen. So when they encounter someone who is intelligent, articulate, and individualistic, they are completely thrown off. Or the fact that when the door closes on your exam room, you apparently become 5 years old again and have to get your injections in an extremely private and delicate portion of your anatomy, so that in addition to not being able to breathe or speak, now you are also not able to walk, sit down or lay on your side.

Then, due to circumstances beyond my control, I was forced to be sick all alone for 4 days, left to the tender (?) mercies of our 3 animal companions. As I’ve mentioned before , their skills at nursing are dubious at best, but they did keep me company, taking turns lying on my side like big, hairy poultices. And while they didn’t possess any of the healing properties of actual poultices, such as drawing out infections or clearing up chest congestion, they did know exactly when it was time for me to, “get up, Get Up, GET UP!”, which they effectively communicated to me by ramming their bony little heads repeatedly into mine.

Or, I could explore the fact that last night our across-the-street neighbors got a load of fresh, and I do mean fresh, horse manure delivered to their front lawn for use as a fertilizer. This happens with some frequency, and I have discovered that I have very strong feelings about how the outdoors should smell. If I had to make a list of all the qualities I’d like there to be in the odor of the outdoors, the very first item on my list would be”Not Like Poo.”

So this is what I’ve been dealing with. I can see the humor potential in the contrast between my family’s unrealistic expectations and my actual language experience. I can inherently sense the laughter potential in words associated with bronchitis, like “phlegm”, and “mucus”. I instinctively know that anything dealing with anyone’s ass is really funny. I can sense the oddity of having one’s fertilizer delivered straight from the horse’s, um, end, rather than buying it in bags at the garden center like everyone else. And don’t even get me started on the rat situation. But so far, none of these carefully planted humor kernels have blossomed for me yet.

I blame the phlegm.

Can We Start Again, Please?

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So far I have to say that, in all honesty, 2006 has not really impressed me yet. Here’s why.

First of all, I have had a really bad sore throat and head congestion for the past three days which, besides just making me feel icky, also makes it very difficult to talk. If you know me at all, then you know that this period of enforced silence has been an extreme hardship unto itself. I can only assume that this is the result of having had to be extra-charming for extended visits with my in-laws, my family, and my brother’s fiance’s family, all in one week.

So as I was lying in bed this afternoon, reading about the Sweet Potato Queens and brainstorming for possible Queenly titles I could bestow upon myself, I heard my husband call out to me from the living room: “Could you come here for a minute? I need your help.”

He certainly did, as I discovered when I entered our living room to find a large portion of attic insulation lying on the floor, and a sizable hole in the ceiling. Fortunately, as I have had some previous experience with this kind of situation, and since there was not a Scary Act Of Nature taking place outside, and since it was impossible that I could in any way be held responsible for this, I was able to remain calm. He was actually pretty calm too, since he had been able to complete the latest step necessary in his Pursuit Of A High Quality HDTV Signal. Apparently, a big giant hole in your ceiling is a small price to pay for good TV.

So the crisis passed, and I was feeling a little bit better…until I heard The Noise. If you have animals, you already know what The Noise sounds like, but for those of you without animal companions I will try and reproduce it here.

HOI-HOI-HHOOOIIINNNKKKAAAACCCCKKKK

That noise is, of course, the sound of the big cat horking stuff up all over the rug. In more than one spot.

Having lived with cats now for over 8 years, my husband and I have well-honed, highly ingrained abilities for dealing with this kind of situation, which mostly involve going off by ourselves so we can figure out how to make the other person clean it up. This often leads to our own, unique, slightly twisted style of gambling and upping the ante.

My Husband: I’ll trade you hanging up the clothes in the dryer and switching out the dishes in the dishwasher.
Me: I see your dishes and your laundry, and I’ll raise with dumping the trash and scrubbing the toilet.

It’s amazing, really, when push comes to shove, how many other things we can find that we are willing to do instead of cleaning up all the stuff that comes out of the cats. (Like figuring out how to turn it into a funny blog post, for example.) Of course, it’s even scarier when we come upon things we want to do even less than clean up cat stuff. But that’s another post. Right now, it’s gamblin’ time.

Sometimes I Like To Make Lists: v.3

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Today’s list describes “The Funny Scale”, which is the scale I use to test out new posts right before or right after I publish them to my blog. This scale is based on the various, repeated reactions I get from my in-person readers, and is listed in descending order, from most valued response to least valued response.

Flying Spittle

Tears

Snorting

Laughing Out Loud

Laughing Silently With Shaking Shoulders

Breaking Into A Grin

Reading With An “I’m Waiting For The Funny” Expression On Their Face

Things That Make You Say, “What?!”: Christmas 2005

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1. My husband and I spent the Christmas holiday with his parents, in their newly renovated mountain home. We were all gathered in the living room on Christmas Eve, in that nice, mellow, semi-hypnotic stupor that comes from knowing that there is nothing left to prepare for the next day, and that all of your loved ones are together in one place.

As we were discussing the arrangements for attending Midnight Mass, I saw my mother-in-law look over her assembled family and prepare to speak. I thought she was going to talk about how nice it was to have everyone all together, or discuss what a pleasant holiday it had been so far. Instead, we all witnessed the following exchange:

My mother-in-law: (to my husband) “So, what do you think about cremation?”

My husband: “You mean, as an alternative to going to church? Um, I’d like to go to church.”

2. Christmas Eve is also my husband’s birthday, so my family and his family got together for brunch to celebrate with him. As I was walking back to the table from the restroom I heard someone say, “Well, for that you really need your own bazooka.” I was afraid to inquire any further.

3. A new acquaintance explaining their entry into the world: “I wasn’t born. I was gifted down to people from the gods.”

The Outsiders

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We’re pretty excited here in blog land because this is our very first post that we’ve ever done from a remote location, and not sitting at home in our office. But despite my new feelings of technological mastery I clearly have some more work to do before I reach the levels at which my husband and father-in-law are currently residing.

Here is the conversation that my mother-in-law and I were having on the way home from dinner:

My MIL: “See how they’ve decorated all the lamp posts in town with those white lights.”
Me: “That’s really pretty. Remember when they used to have those really big multicolored lights? I really miss those.”

Here is the conversation that was taking place between my husband and my father-in-law in the backseat.

My husband: “Tonight after the movie we need to get started on that black belt level Sudoku puzzle.”
My FIL: “What we really need is a copier so we have enough sheets to try out different possibilities.”
My husband: “We could generate a spread sheet in Excel to do that for us.”
My FIL: “I bet we could even create it so that it checked to make sure that all of our totals were correct.”
My husband: “What is the total?”
My FIL: “What’s 9 factorial? Is that it?”
My husband: “No! 9 factorial is huge!”
My FIL: “Oh, you’re right. What was I thinking?!”
(Snorts and chortling laughter as they realize their mathematical gaffe.)

Clearly, I cannot start drinking eggnog soon enough.

Ye Olde Tyme Traditions

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Image courtesy of Free Photo.

Well, it’s that time of year again. The time when families come together to celebrate the holidays and strengthen family ties by participating in cherished, long-standing family rituals. And if I were going to sum up the essence evoked by my own family’s holiday rituals in one word, that word would definitely have to be…”speed”. Here’s what I mean.

Take, for example, the cherished tradition of the Christmas tree. Sure, there are many people who go out immediately after Thanksgiving, comparison shop to find The Perfect Tree, lovingly position it in the best spot in the house, and then create beautiful holiday memories of decorating the tree filled with homemade foods, holiday music, warmth, and laughter. Not us.

We prefer the thrill of the hunt. When Christmas trees are readily available at every home improvement store, grocery store, drug store, and church parking lot, well then we’re just not interested. Where is the challenge in that? But you just try and find a viable tree on Christmas Eve afternoon; that’ll get your adrenaline pumping.

Then of course there’s the Christmas shopping, and I can think of no better example to illustrate this than that of my brother. Every year he rolls into town about two days before Christmas. Up until this point he has completed exactly 0% of his Christmas preparations. But is he worried? Absolutely not. Because we are speedy.

He just grabs my mom and any other random family members who happen to be milling around at that moment and off they go. His personal goal is to go to one store, purchase presents for the 9 family members with whom we celebrate Christmas, and complete all of his shopping and wrapping (thank goodness for charities who raise money by wrapping gifts for crazed shoppers like us) in less time than it took him the year before. And somehow he always does.

(I decided to go along on the shopping trip last year, and because this is my blog I feel that I can TOTALLY take credit for the fact that last year, he beat his record by 50%. It now stands at under 30 minutes.)

Finally it is time for us to decorate the tree that we have so lovingly chosen speedily salvaged from the Christmas tree lot guy as he was closing down his business for the year. And here’s where the real fun begins, because in our house there are no rules. This stems from my mom’s childhood experiences of having a parent who forced her and her siblings to hang the tinsel on the tree strand by tiny, slippery, individual strand. (Even writing that sentence makes my head hurt in the place where my migraines start.)

So now that she is a grownup and can have her own Christmas tree, she has declared that anything goes. Anyone can put anything they want on her tree. If you can find a way to get it onto an ornament hook, it’s going up on the tree. This results in a unique, eclectic decorating style that I like to refer to as “Visual Anarchy As Staged On A Christmas Tree”.

I remember one year in particular where, in addition to the ornaments, our tree featured construction paper garlands made by my brother in elementary school, red, gold, and white tinsel garlands, at least 2 packages of individual tinsel strands, one tree’s worth of multicolored strands of lights that shone constantly, and one tree’s worth of blinking white strands of light hooked up to a variable-speed remote control. It was AWESOME! (Unless you are someone who prefers things like balance and visual harmony over absolute personal freedom. Then you probably wouldn’t like it very much. When I asked my engineer husband what he thought when he first experienced one of our Christmas trees he described it this way: “I felt the part of my head between my eyes and the rest of my brain shut down so I didn’t have to process what I was seeing.”)

So clearly our methods of celebration are not for everyone. But they work well for us. And so, on the eve (almost) of the 2005 holidays, I wish you a holiday that works well for you, or at the very least, a funny story to share afterwards.

Super Something

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Lately I have been thinking a lot about super powers.

It all started last weekend when I borrowed one of my technologically astute guy friends to help me purchase my husband’s Christmas present. My friend is an avid video gamer, and so as we were walking out of the store, I with my husband’s gift and he with a new stack of games for himself, we got to talking about super heroes.

My Friend: “I should never be given the power of invincibility, because if I were invincible I would go around hurting everyone else just because I could.”
Me: ” Hm, interesting.”
Me: (silently) OK, Universe, are you listening here?
Me: “So, you’d really be more of a super villain than a super hero.”
My Friend: “Exactly.”
Me: “And then you’d need a super hero to come against you.”
My Friend: “But no one could, because I’d be invincible.”
Me: “Ah, but everyone has a weakness. There’s Superman and kryptonite..”.
My Friend:  (interrupting)”Well, I guess you could bore me to death.”

(I still haven’t figured out if he just meant people in general, or if he was talking to me specifically at that moment. So I haven’t yet  decided whether or not I’m offended.)

So then I started to think about myself, and what super powers I could have. I would love to be able to fly, but that one’s probably a ways off yet. So then I started to make a list of everything I could think of about myself that could possibly be considered as some kind of super power. Here’s what I’ve come up with so far:

1. My hair is absolutely irresistible to cats. Scarily enough this is actually true. But try as I might, I really couldn’t think of any kind of situation where this ability would actually come in handy.

2. Apparently I am able to contain amazing amounts of tension in the muscles of my neck and shoulders. All the medical health professionals I’ve seen for this problem are just stunned when they examine me. I’m like the antithesis of “Elastigirl” from “The Incredibles”. But, once again, I really can’t imagine that the public would have much need for the services of “Really, Really Tense Girl”.

3. When people meet me they are frequently compelled to create a new nickname for me on sight. Now, I think this one could actually be useful. What this says to me is that I apparently have the ability to shape-shift, and to adapt myself to each situation and person that present themselves in my experience. So I could be “Chameleon Girl”, or even better, “The Confounder”. I can see a lot of potential uses for this ability.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go and see about a costume. (But no capes!)