Cranky Fibro Girl

Harnessing the healing power of snark

Apparently, My Powers Have Some Limits

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Because today, I broke my website. And you know what did me in? Pride.

Last week I took a quiz to determine just exactly where I fell among all of the deadly sins, and here were my results:

Greed: High
Gluttony: High
Wrath: Medium
Sloth: Medium
Envy: Medium
Lust: Very Low
Pride: Very High

Take the Seven Deadly Sins Quiz

This will of course come as no surprise to anyone who is married to me, is related to me, went to school with me, is friends with me, was friends with me, has ever worked with me, or has ever passed by me on the street.

And if there is anything about which I am prideful, it is the correct use of grammar, and my own personal correct-grammar-using-abilities. In other words, I am a Grammar Snob.

Just two weeks ago on vacation (VACATION!) I declared to my husband that I could not bring myself to eat at the Western Sizzlin’ because its name is composed entirely of adjectives and contains no nouns. (Fortunately for him, he packed lots of tequila.)

So today I asked him to install a new plug in on my blog that would change the way that the comments appear on each post. He did, and everything was fine until I saw that for some reason, it generated the following sentences: “[x] and [y] have already leave comments. Why don’ you?”

Well, there’s not enough tequila in the world to make that acceptable to a grammar snob, so I took it upon myself to just go in and “correct” the grammar written in the HTML code. Because everyone knows that having a Master’s Degree in Spanish and being able to write beautiful, densely packed, grammatically correct paragraphs in two languages means that you are also an expert in computer code.

Not.

Fortunately my husband, the person who actually knows how to write computer code and who has pretty much built this entire website for me, was able to fix it, with only a minimum of eye-rolling, whistling, and use of the phrase “screwed the pooch.”

And because he loves me very very much, and because there is some tequila left over from vacation, he also fixed the grammar for me too.

Why, While Making An Excellent Rebel, I Will Also Never Be A Technology Master

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Me, on the phone with my husband.

Me: “Say, hypothetically speaking, you went to the store and bought a “26” printer cartridge because you thought that was the right one, but then you got home and you discovered that you actually need a “56” printer cartridge. Could you just go ahead and use the “26” anyway?”

My husband: “Uh, n-o-o-o. They put those numbers there for a reason!”

Why I Will Probably Never Be A Spiritual Master

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Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

Today I had a session with my coach and we had the following conversation.

My coach: “OK, I want you to try something. I’m going to teach you an exercise where you will learn how to generate feelings of love from inside yourself, rather than trying to ‘get’ love from somewhere outside yourself.”

Me: “OK, that sounds cool.”

My coach: “Pick something that’s easy to love.”

Me: “I’ll pick my cats.”

My coach: “OK, now focus on your cats. Feel the love start to flow out from your heart chakra. Feel it filling your whole body, down to your cells. Now let it expand, and grow, and start to flow toward your cats.”

Silence, as I practice.

My coach: “Aw, was that a purr?”

Me: “Um, no.”

My coach: “Oh, I thought it would have been so cool if you were doing this exercise and one of your cats came up to you and started purring.”

Me: “Yeah, that would’ve been really cool. Unfortunately, that was just the sound of me burping into the phone.”

Rage Against The Machine

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Two Christmases ago one of my fifty-something relatives gave my twenty-something brother the gift of a fart machine. And because, deep down inside, we are all still only seven years old, we all thought that was just hysterical. Especially the men, who immediately went about testing the highly detailed and technical scientific hypothesis entitled, “Hey-what happens if we do this?!”

So this weekend I was visiting my brother and sister-in-law, and for some completely inexplicable reason I was compelled to discover whether or not he still had the fart machine.

“Oh yeah, I’ve still got it,” he said. “And did I tell you that whenever I use my cordless phone, it sets the fart machine off because they both operate on the same frequency?”

No, he had not shared that awesomely hysterical fact with me. But wait-the story gets even better.

Because one day he had to call maintenance for his apartment because his toilet, of all things, was broken. So as he was trying to explain his bathroom problem to the maintenance guy, he was being accompanied in the background by a continuous soundtrack of variations of the sound, “PBLTTTTTT!”

That, to quote Mastercard, was PRICELESS.

A Mind Is A Terrible Thing

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You know that saying, “Nature abhors a vacuum?” Well I have found that nowhere is that more true than inside my own mind.

Here’s an example of what I mean. I have a friend with whom I’ve had pretty regular, almost daily, contact over the past two years. Then this summer my friend went away for a month and was involved in something that had absolutely nothing to do with me. So for a while there was this s-p-a-c-e between us.

And the thing about space is, it’s totally neutral. It just is. Unless you are me. And then space becomes the fertile breeding ground for “stories-that-I-make-up-in-my-head,” each one crazier than the last, but all ending in exactly the same way:

“And so he went away, and he met all these really cool people and did all these really cool things, and that made him realize Just How Much I Suck, and then he came back, and he never wanted to have anything to do with me EVER AGAIN. The End.”

The good thing is that I was aware of the crazy mind games I was playing with myself and I decided to try and do things differently, but the bad thing is that whenever I try and retrain my mind, it usually goes a little something like this:

Me: “OK, mind, I think it is time for us to find A New Way to think about this particular situation.”
My mind (reclining in a Barcalounger, scratching itself with one hand and knocking back a soda with the other): “Whatever, man,” (followed by a loud, obnoxious belch).

I would rather feel miserable, rejected and lonely. I would rather spend all my time looking for evidence to support all my stories. I would rather be right about why all of these things are true than simply think a different thought.

It’s times like this when, inspired as I am to share with him the inner workings of my mind, my husband looks at me and says, “How do you get through the day?”

School Daze

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I have no idea how this happened, but apparently it is almost time for school to start again.

This will be my fifth year working as a Spanish tutor, and so a lot of the students who started with me as freshman graduated last year. And as I think about them as they get ready to start college I have been wondering what, if anything, I managed to impress upon them as they begin to make their way out in the world.

As their tutor I covered a lot of areas with them-organization, study skills, how to get along with their teacher, etc., plus all the Spanish-specific topics.

But as I reflect back upon my time spent with them, I think the only thing I can in all honesty guarantee that stuck with them is this:

“By God, don’t you dare steal my pens!”

See, I am really weird about my pens. I only like this one kind called “Bic Crystal”. And I can only find them at the grocery store because, despite the fact that they are The. Best. Pens. Ever, they are apparently not “highfalutin” enough to be sold at actual office supply stores. So that means that if anyone else ever uses one of these pens, or thinks about using one, or even looks in the general direction of where I keep them in my office, I become terrified that all of my pens will disappear and I will never be able to find any more ever again. Because they are just that awesome.

So not only do my students NEVER steal my pens, but if they ever see any Bic Crystal pens anywhere else, like in their car or lying around their house, they IMMEDIATELY gather them all up and bring them to me. Because I have scared them that much.

I have apparently convinced them that I am the rightful owner of all Bic Crystal pens in the entire Universe. And woe be unto those who are discovered with any of my pens in their possession.

And lo, The Teacher looked out at everything she had made, and how she had successfully transferred her craziness to others, and she saw that it was very good.

It’s So Not A Party Until I Get There

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Today my husband and I drove from Atlanta up to Raleigh because my brother is getting married tomorrow (YAY!) We both have parts to play in the wedding, so we had to make sure we arrived in time to attend the rehearsal.

We had not been at the church for more than 10 or 15 minutes when I horrified my mother with the following exchange:

My grandfather: “So, how long did it take you to drive here?”
Me: ” A little under 6 hours.”
My grandfather: “And how many miles is that?”
Me: (not realizing that I hadn’t taken the time to switch over into Pretending I Know How To Act Like A Grownup Mode)  “An ass-load!”

How Does Your Garden Grow?

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Up until a few years ago I used to go around bragging all the time about how I had a “black thumb”. Unfortunately it was true that I was spectacularly unsuccessful in keeping alive things like plants, flowers, and a beta fish. But I never realized until recently just how weird it was that basically I was saying, “You know, I just want to tell you how excited I am about this special talent of mine where I am really good at killing living things.”

Looking back now I really don’t know how my husband and I ever had enough confidence in our abilities to take in and nurture living creatures other than ourselves, given the fact that every time he goes out of town on a trip he has to sit me down, look me in the eye, and remind me to continue eating while he is gone. Or the fact that once my husband was in serious stomach pain for like 5 days, and it wasn’t until the day when he could no longer stand up straight and was walking around the house bent over at a 90 degree angle and I could actually physically overpower him and force him into the car that he went to the doctor to get treated. [Read more…] about How Does Your Garden Grow?

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