Cranky Fibro Girl

Harnessing the healing power of snark

Not To Put Too Fine A Point On It…

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…but after many years of careful observation I have come to the conclusion that sometimes, I am REALLY weird. (As opposed to the rest of the time when I am merely “quirky”, “eccentric”, and “entertaining”.) Here’s an example of what I mean.

Yesterday I was at Quiznos attempting to pick up dinner, but I was stymied in my quest due to the fact that I was behind a family of four who had absolutely no idea how to order a sandwich. This despite the fact that there is a sign directly above the ordering station that details the entire 3-step process, with pictures and everything. Here’s how that process went.

The Quiznos Lady: “What kind of sandwich would you like?”
Family: “Honey mustard and mayonnaise.”
The Quiznos Lady: “What kind of sandwich would you like?”
Family: Extremely long consultation among the four of them; no response for the Quizno’s lady.
The Quiznos Lady: “What kind of bread do you want?” (trying a new question, since the previous question wasn’t getting through)
Family: “We want ALL the vegetables.”

There were many possibilities available for how I, personally, chose to respond to that situation. Anger. Disgust. Irritation. Impatience. Laughter. Extreme Eye-Rolling. But did I choose any of these? Um, no.

Instead I took a deep breath, marshaled all of my inner resources, and decided, “When it is my turn, I will place The Most Perfect Sandwich Order that has ever been seen in any Quiznos in the history of all time.”

YEAH! Because that’ll show…no one…nothing? But in that moment I honestly believed that my perfect sandwich ordering behavior would become such a shining beacon of light as to show that family of four the gross error of all of their ways, leading to a grand repentance and renouncement of all of their former restaurant practices, and a personal culinary redemption.

See what I mean? Weird.

Cool-I Didn’t Know We Were Allowed To Do This!

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Yesterday at the bookstore I also saw this book: It’s not how good you are, it’s how good you want to be. That sounded pretty normal, and similar to many other personal growth books on the market. But then I saw its subtitle:

“The world’s bestselling book by Paul Arden”.

WHAT?!

I didn’t know we got to just declare stuff like that for ourselves! How cool!

Of course, my husband did point out that instead of reading that as, “I, Paul Arden, am declaring that THIS IS the world’s bestselling book”, it could be saying that, of all the books Paul Arden has written, this one is the bestselling one. But I think it’s way more fun to read it my way.

And on that note, now that I am giving myself permission to make impressive declarations for myself, from now on you may all refer to me as “Her Royal Highness Jenny Ryan, Supreme Empress Of The Universe.”

The Wussiest Temper Tantrum Ever

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Yesterday I came to the blinding realization that the ENTIRE WORLD was engaged in an evil conspiracy against me. I’d been feeling badly for a week. I couldn’t eat or sleep. I couldn’t get on the Internet, and the phone didn’t work. Clearly the fact that I had to wake up every morning, open my eyes, breathe in and out, feel air on my skin and be conscious was an exceptionally cruel and unusual punishment, and was not to be borne any longer.

So I decided to do what any normal person would do when faced with the fact that their daily existence has become excruciatingly unbearable: I decided to throw a temper tantrum.

Sadly though, I soon discovered that my temper tantrum skills had seriously declined over the years, due to my having bought into the whole “story” of needing to become a rational, logical, self-controlled adult. What was I thinking? Because when the time came and I really needed to be able to throw a really satisfying fit, it was not pretty. [Read more…] about The Wussiest Temper Tantrum Ever

Once An Overachiever…

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After officially having a migraine for one week and one day, I finally stepped out of my denial today and admitted that it wasn’t going to go away on its own. So I called the doctor and was able to see both my chiropractor and my massage therapist today.

As I was lying on the table being worked on, my massage therapist said, “I’ve never felt a [some muscle in my neck] this tight before.”

“Well,” I replied, “I always like to excel.”

Lemmings

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lem·ming n.: Any of various small, thickset rodents, especially of the genus Lemmus, inhabiting northern regions and known for periodic mass migrations that sometimes end in drowning.

If every single person in your office is wearing the exact same blue dress shirt and red power tie (as was the entire table of 6 businessmen seated next to me at lunch the other day), then I’m wondering just who is left to be impressed that you’ve dressed for success?

The Lowest Common Denominator

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Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

Today I walked by a plastic fish, and it sang to me.

I was quite startled as you can imagine, since this is not the experience I normally expect to have when I am dropping off a prescription at the pharmacy.

I glanced at its sign as I was walking quickly by (you don’t want to stand too close to your singing plastic fish until you know exactly what is going on) and it said something like, “blah, blah, the benefits of taking fish oil.”

That experience got me to thinking, as this is not the first time I’ve had animated plastic figures sing to me about important health related information.

My grocery store has a large display of vividly colorful plastic fruits and vegetables located directly above the produce department. They too have a song, all about the benefits of eating fruits and vegetables, which is performed in a catchy reggae style complete with steel drum accompaniment.

5 a day, 5 a day,
We all know it’s the healthy way,
Fruits and vegetables,
They’re OK,
The healthy way,
Eat 5 a day.

This song has penetrated my brain, much like some kind of musical virus, to the point where occasionally my husband will look at me with an extremely furrowed brow and ask incredulously, “Are you singing the Kroger produce song?!”

So now I’m wondering what all of this means. Have the Powers That Be decided that we as a people are incapable of knowing how to take care of ourselves? Or that we are too defensive at the slightest hint that someone might be telling us what to do? So now they have to pipe in important information as a kind of subliminal background track to our daily lives, using the most innocuous, non-threatening characters they can find? Do they think that we have collectively become that dumbed down, with the attention span of a gnat?

These are important questions that need answering, and I plan to pursue them just as soon as-oh look, a bird! It’s so pretty.

Um, what were we talking about?

With Apologies To Dr. Seuss

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I do not like to smell you, rats,
nor hear your sounds-and that’s a fact!

I do not like to smell your poo,
or think of what you do for food.

I do not like to hear you scratch,
opening the crawl space latch.

I do not like you out-of-doors,
I do not like you in our floors.

I do not like to have you, rats,
and please beware-for we have cats!

How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count The Ways

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Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

I’ve given this a lot of thought, and I’ve come to the conclusion that there just are not words to describe just how much I love my Black Berry.

I bought my Black Berry last year as a birthday gift to myself, and I have enjoyed it so much over the past year that sometimes it causes me to spontaneously burst out into verse:

“I think that I shall never see/a poem as lovely as my Black Berry.”

or song:

“Oh Black Berry, Oh Black Berry, how lovely is thy keypad.”

My Black Berry is like a tiny, tangible talisman of love. Whenever I hear it vibrating away as it receives some email I think, “Hooray! Someone wants to talk to me!

Of course to hear my husband describe it, my Black Berry love is less adoration and more addiction, but what does he know? Sure I like to have it near me at all times so as to instantly be able to access my emails, even to the point of keeping it right here on my desk with me as I work on my computer. And yeah, so maybe I did ask my husband to drive me down the mountain on which my in-laws’ house is located on Christmas Day so as to be able to receive a signal, despite the fact that they have wireless Internet connection at their house and I could technically do whatever I wanted or needed to do on my laptop. And yes, perhaps there have been times when I’ve awoken in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and have been seized with the uncontrollable urge to check my email despite the fact that I don’t actually know anyone who emails me important information at 3 am.

And don’t even get me started on Instant Messaging and Text Messaging! (Oops! Please excuse me for a moment while I wipe the drool off of my computer screen.)

But anyway, the point of all of this is that now I can stay in constant communication with all the people I like without actually having to speak with them on the phone. Because, and this has been a deep, dark secret of mine for a LONG time, I am a “phonophobiac”. Yes, that’s right. I am afraid of calling people on the phone.

For a long time I was even terrified of having to place my fast food order into those speaker boxes they have in the drive-through line. But I was soon cured of that because, let’s face it, what doesn‘t an order of McDonald’s French fries cure?

If you’re reading this and thinking, “What?!”, don’t worry. You’re not alone. I’ve only met one other person who understands this fear of mine. Everyone else just looks at me as if I’ve just said something like, “You know, I’ve found that having to breathe in and out on a regular basis is really just too much for me to deal with.”

I recently tried to explain this to my family, but they just gave me The Look. You know, the one that says, “I hear the words you’re saying, but they’re…just…not…making…any…sense.” (Incidentally, this is a look that I am VERY familiar with, as I frequently see this same expression on the faces of my tutoring students.)

“So,” ventured my dad slowly, struggling to understand what I was saying, “is it getting any better?”

“No,” I sighed, rolling my eyes so hard that I temporarily severed important connections to my brain, “the whole point is that I finally realize that I don’t have to get better. It is OK for me to be this way. I am finally coming out as a phonophobiac!”

“So, you’re embracing it,” offered my brother, who is himself a Professional in The Art Of Being Unreachable By Phone.

“Ex-actly!”

And all was well for the next hour or so, until I heard my mother calling up the stairs for me to pick up the phone so I could talk to not one, not two, but THREE people on the phone ALL AT THE SAME TIME.

So you’d better believe that the gods of irony are going to be hearing from me about this, just as soon as I figure out how to reach them electronically. Um, does anyone know how to IM the Universe?

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!)

Sometimes I Like To Make Lists

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For example, here is a list of things I’ve heard people (including myself) say that I think would make great titles for something-I just haven’t figured out exactly what, yet.

1. When Busty Women Meet

2. I Am The Grit In Other People’s Oysters

3. He Walks As If He Still Had Testicles

4. Even In Death, Pumpkins Are Still Useful

5. Me And My Colorful-Ass Monkey Mind

6. Sometimes You Get To Throw Grenades

7. The Beaver Emergency

8. Blame The Wookies

9. How I Was Able To Use The Word “Autopsy” In An Everyday Conversation

10. You Can Never Have Too Many Krumkake Irons