I'm not even Catholic

But every year I consider observing Lent. Some years it's abstaining from something concrete like chocolate or cable TV; some years it's cheesy like giving up giving up things, denying myself nothing, or embracing mistakes. Most years it's nothing at all. This year I think I'm going to give up TV on weeknights. Everything I really want to watch I already DVR so I'm not beholden to the television at a certain hour but as language becomes more a death march than a journey, it's very easy to let the best of the night slip away from me to re-runs of 30 Rock, even though I have the first 4 seasons on DVD. I expect to blog more during Lent (as evidenced by this post) since my practice of the art of procrastination isn't limited to TV watching.

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Boy am I conflicted

I was talking to my Mom today about my pending assignment. I told her how it's all but certain I will not pass the language test the first or second time I take it. It *just* occurred to me that part of me wants to fail to spite my terrible teacher. I couldn't be a better poster child for cutting off my nose to spite my face if I tried.

Anyway, Mom said she had been praying about this assignment. To say my parents aren't nuts about it is putting it mildly. I know how they feel and while there are parts about it, like moving, settling in, not knowing jack shit, figuring out what to do for Baloo, etc, that I dread with every fiber of my being, that kind of thing is not unique to this assignment. I dread that when I go on a business trip. The feral dog colonies are a little unique but also not that unusual for much of the world outside of North America and Western Europe. The job itself could be really fun and interesting assuming the people I work with and for are not total ass wipes.

I told Mom I was pretty ambivalent about the whole thing and not going wasn't going to derail my career (such that it is) if something like language disqualified me from going. With that new information, Mom informed me she was going to make a sharp turn in her prayer request as it concerned me. Where she had been praying for God's will to be done, she was now going to ask for God to honor the desire of her heart which was for me to stay. She doesn't know about the lymph node and it's potential to serve as a catalyst for the Ava stays option. That's kind of fucked up right? For a prayer to seemingly be answered in such a fucked up way? I kind of wanted to tell her right then and there so a seed could never be planted in her mind that her prayers were somehow a part of an issue I've been ignoring for a year now. But I held off because I hate for them to worry and that is exactly what they would do. I really do think it will be much ado about nothing but I do consider the opposite too and think of silly things like not being able to work out or losing my hair.

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Does my chiropractor have a crush on me?

I've been going to the same guy for 6 years. A new guy joined his practice last year and I was't real keen on him because he is super friendly and there is simply no reason for that. I don't know you like that, take it down a notch. It's been a few months now and while he is still not my preferred adjuster, I've stopped actively zapping him with waves of haterade when he Ned Flander's me and everyone else within earshot.

He seems to be a big sweet guy, the kind of guy who played football in a small town but still may have been picked on. He's the kind of guy that seems like he would want you to wait for him to get out of the car and open your door. He just seems sweet and maybe a little sweet on me. He gave me his e-mail address today and told me I could send him a list of masseuses I was considering and he would call and interview them for me so I would be more sure I was getting someone who could help me. That's weird, right? I was joking with him about something and he laughed and put his head on my shoulder. That is also weird, right?

He seems to be a nice guy so I'm going to let him interview some local places for me. Saves me some time though I'm not ignorant that this gives him a better sense of where I live since I told him I was looking for some place close. It's a weird move to make if he is indeed making a move but I'll either be out of the country or working through much heavier things in the next 4 months so why not have an interesting guy story to fill out the narrative here?

Junk drawer

Dear Pharmaceutical Company(ies) who market depression drugs,

You know what? I'm good. Going to cope with my body image, self esteem, social anxiety, discomfort with clowns, etc the old fashioned way by eating, or exercising, learning crochet or some other something. I'm not sure if your commercials are made by people actively suffering from depression but I do know I kind of want to end it all when I see them. The music is awful, like sad porn music, and whether the commercial features actors or animation, no one ever looks happy. They all just look okay like, 'Well, now I can manage a close mouthed smile for a family photo but my eyes say I still feel dead inside.' Way not to oversell the benefits of anti-depression medication. If the commercials are anything to go by, seems depression is worse than herpes by a long shot. At least with herpes, I'm living life, I've got a boyfriend, I'm riding horses, there isn't a bathrobe attacking me as soon as I wake up and stalking me even when I'm on Abilify and some other medication that clearly isn't cutting it. Just thinking about that animated stalking bathrobe or dark cloud makes me sad. I guess if you are depressed the best they can do is turn down the volume of suck. Finally, herpes wins a 'would you rather' contest.

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Girl crushes

I love girl crushes. It's so much simpler once you both confess how much you like each other. You just become friends (Hi Teresa@good-grace).

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Where I'm from

I went back to Omaha for the first time in a decade or so and felt like I needed to acknowledge it as one of my homes. I'm not from anywhere but there are formative places and Omaha is one of them. It was our first family home. It was my first public school. I learned to drive there, had my first kiss and first concert, first and second gay dates to military balls. I'm at least a little bit from all the places I've ever been.

Much as I want to hate this place I'm in, I'm from the Washington Metropolitan Area as well. I've lived here longer than I have anywhere else. I bought and sold my first home here, I got Baloo here, I bump into people at Trader Joe's or in the hallway at work that are a part of my near and distant past. I bumped into a guy I used to babysit overseas in the hallway at work a few years ago. I bumped into a guy I haven't seen in several years at Trader Joe's today. Turns out he applied for the assignment I'm jokingly hoping (in very poor taste, I know) for cancer to get out of. Can't make that shit up. He high-fived me because I got it. It makes me feel crazy because I just know that was just a plant to make me take to this page and write about it. I also know if this trouble maker lymph node is semi-serious, I will want to forge ahead and go at the same time I am relieved to have an option to stay. Just feels good when you know where the exits are, I guess.

Mercy

I don't know about you but sometimes I fantasize that one small thing will be fixed in my body and everything will fall into place. Intellectually I know my joints consider their best days behind them and we're really entering a maintenance phase for this body rental. A part of me though thinks of something like this little bump being the clue that unravels the mysteries of all the other phantom ailments. Wouldn't it be nice if all the little mysteries fit into this little bump? It's one thing to not feel well, it's another thing to not know why. Even worse to feel you have to cede your quality of life to just feeling okay because few doctors are truly interested in your wellness. I went to sleep with a pillow and ice on my face last night unable to find comfort any other way. This morning, I woke up at 2 to find my left side feeling normal but my right side rumbling with the threat of another headache.

I've been up since then, drinking tea, doing laundry, taking Tylenol in a vain attempt to get ahead of pain that is already way in front of me. It's almost time for me to get up and I'm finally winding down so today is probably going to be awesome. I have a big talk ahead of me at work and I just have to keep reminding myself that I have nothing to lose. I hate confrontation but I hate wondering what would be if I had just stood up for myself. I'm getting a little too old to endure bullshit without at least going down swinging but I hate to be doing it on a day when I'm feeling less than my best.

It's like telling a stranger

'Maybe,' the blog name for an old and strangely endearing friend of my mine recently had surgery to remove a mass from his lung. He called me the day before the surgery to let me know and told me I was on the list of people his girlfriend was to call if anything went wrong. Last time Maybe had surgery, it was an emergency removal of his gall bladder. When he got out of the hospital, he wrote me a long e-mail telling me what happened. His e-mail concluded with something along the lines of 'I just wanted to tell someone everything that happened, not for sympathy, but just so someone would know. Writing you was like sending a post card to Post Secret.' He had a girlfriend at that time as well but telling someone who wasn't there, well sometimes you just want to tell a story.

Post Secret for the second to last person on earth who doesn't know what it is (I only say that because *I* know what it is and I am usually the last person to get the memo) is a public confessional. No response is necessary or even possible but your story gets an audience. The things people confess are sometimes whimsical but often they are heavy and deeply affecting. Like snail-mail twitter with no attribution. So when Maybe compared me to this book, I knew exactly where he was coming from. He could be miserable, dramatic, throw a complete damn tantrum and I could just take it in without reflexive lament or attempts to comfort or commiserate. I could just ooh and ahh and offer the 'anything' that people always do only once without being frustrated with the expected 'no' in response.

With the time between wondering what is going on and knowing what is going on with the trouble-maker lymph node, my personal post secret community is the best thing going. People who can randomly know something about you but you really don't have to worry about them following-up or even remembering. Maybe, both for his temperament and his very recent experience at the hospital I will probably use make him ideal. Today, he wanted to see and touch the lump and it was just kind of funny. He touched it, laughed and said, 'oh yea, I can totally feel that,' and then we moved on without further comment to a discussion of how his doctor doesn't get any of his sports analogies.

I can not get into an emotional deep dive on stuff like this. A missed opportunity to get the number of the cute boy that I talked to in line at Ross; that I can get sad and emotionally twisted about. But this, no. I just don't like knowing. What it is now, it was yesterday and will be tomorrow. What can I really worry about? I feel about this how I feel about the question of whether I will ever get married. That question will be answered one way or another, it's the wait to find out that wears on me.

Random parting shot; I hate fasting bloodwork. Nothing brings the full attention of my mental faculties to hunger like knowing I can not eat.

Ambivalent

Preparing for this mock language test tomorrow is like asking me to prepare for the rest of my life before Monday morning. I haven't a clue where to start. I am having a crisis of confidence, a consequence of some poorly timed and poorly handled feedback on my progress.

January was a banner month for me. I felt like I was finally able to have something that resembled a conversation in this language. It was still riddled with imperfection but I was starting to find the words I needed even if I didn't always conjugate them correctly or use the correct gender. I felt like I had something I could work with for the next few months and would start making some significant strides. Not so much. According to the experts, I'm far enough behind where I should be that it would be a miracle for me to hit my marks in the time I have left. Seems like something that should have come up before now but I don't want to digress too far off topic to dig into that ridiculousness. It is what it is. It has been a very deflating two weeks and I'm two steps back from the three steps forward I felt I made.

I'm disappointed in an abstract way not to be oozing excellence but I'm more disappointed in myself for not trusting my own instinct about how this was going to play out. I should have found a new teacher as soon my current teacher told me, "That's just the way it is boo," when I told her I didn't think we would get there from here if we didn't spend time on the basics and kept piling on additional information out of context. No, that's not just the way it is, boo. This is not a Bruce Hornsby song and I'm paying several grand a month for one-on-one instruction. I say how it is.

I used my best learning-as-buildling-a-house analogy to come at the importance of a solid foundation from another angle. All I got in response was some urban slang and "This is how it is. This is how it works." So I deferred to her judgement and my desire to just have one thing locked down 3 weeks after moving back to D.C. and literally set myself up for failure. Perhaps I would still be in this position if I had found another instructor who focused on fundamentals and complemented my learning style. I honestly don't think so. I think I would be killing it. But I can't know that so I'll salvage what can be salvaged from this, which is largely an object lesson in ownership. If I'm the one accountable, then we do it my way. I would rather fail on my terms. Doesn't mean I'm immune or resistant to wise counsel but this was a no-brainer really. I never should have doubted myself. Nothing against her as a person but she is not a good instructor and I knew that in the first 3 weeks. Live and learn.

I was talking with a friend today and she asked if I really wanted this job. I responded with my typical 10 minute answer but thinking about it now and trying to distill how I feel into far fewer sentences, the word I would pick to describe how I feel is ambivalent. I had/have no innate desire to go to this place but my penchant for magical thinking, my curiosity, and my lack of more desirable options at the time all came together and here we are. I have often felt anxious with the anticipation of something new but I have never had the ominous feeling I have had (just once) in thinking about this assignment. I was just out walking the dog and something just came over me. A very strong feeling of dread/fear/anticipation of something bad. So now, I am passively open to an out in whatever form it comes. But if it doesn't come, I guess I'll go. All that to say, I'm disappointed that I'm not excelling but as it concerns this assignment, they have no power over me. There will be no crying in my cornflakes if this doesn't pan out.

It's not a tumor!

I can't remember what movie that is from but I do remember that it was Arnold Schwarzenegger who said it. I finally went to the doctor yesterday to discuss a lump in my neck that's been there over a year. It's not something that bothers me and though Ashley has been after me for a while insisting it isn't normal, I just kept forgetting to bring it up because when I am at the doctor, it is for something acute for which I am probably loaded up on meds and not exactly on point during the visit. I like this doctor because she's not one to freak out but she's still all about getting to the bottom of things and ruling out the worse case scenario so I will have the lump removed, etc. I anticipate the prognosis to be good and the diagnosis to be that I think too much and one of my thoughts got stuck. Perhaps a thought about a ninja encounter or a small well of haterade pooling for quicker retrieval.

It's truly not a big deal, but it's one of those things that I really want to skip to the end of quickly. I just want to know for sure what the deal is so I can deal and plan. For now, I've decided not to tell my parents which is hard because I tell them almost everything and we talk often. It's been a hard year and I don't want them worrying for no reason. The upside of the worst case however, is not going overseas to stand guard for 2 years every time I go out to walk the dog for fear of a stray dog encounter. That's kind of a big upside actually. Not sure what outcome I'm rooting for. No one gets out alive after all, right? I think that is funny but I suspect at least 2/3 of you won't find it funny at all (that's literally 2 out of the 3 actual people who read this).

Moving on...

There are a couple of people with whom I enjoy a shorthand dialogue. There is no preamble to our conversations, it's like our minds have compatible wavelengths. I don't have to explain myself. I can and have actually begun conversations with statements like 'I've made a huge mistake.' They don't stop me so they can understand what that means. They just let me talk. That is such a gift. They don't really ask questions unless you count, 'What, Seriously, Holy shit, WTF?' Unless I ask what I should do, they don't really offer advice and they don't ask me what I'm going to do. It's hard to explain but it's more important for them to listen and commiserate than it is for them to understand specifically what is going on in my life. This would-be tumor business, they won't be after me seeking updates, they will wait. They won't call to see if I want to talk about it, they'll let me talk about it or about not being able to find the yogurt I like. I don't doubt for one second that they care.

In other news, I think people underestimate just how much time I prefer to spend alone without obligations or plans. I have a massage today and it's kind of stressing me out because I really want to take a nap right now and I still need to walk the dog and shower. Being unscheduled and free to move about on a whim is also a great gift.

In still other news, my mother who could not even blow her own nose 9 months ago, played Just Dance on Nintendo Wii with me a couple of weeks ago. I was soaked in sweat to the point I actually caught a chill. Her upper lip didn't even get a mist of sweat. I keep looking at her just marveling and hating the doctors who had given up on her. My dad marvels too. He sent us a text the other day telling us that he loved us and was touched by how we came to help when my mom was sick--"not enough to say thanks, but I *am* touched." Love my family. We are so, so, blessed. That was an awful time.

Stupid massage appointment. Have to get out of this warm bed and walk the dog so I can be ready. This is why I hate making plans.

I want to get there, I just don't want to go in

Sometimes when I arrive at my destination, I sit in the car and take a mental coda before the next movement. I'm not sure why I do this, maybe I want arrival to mean that I've finished something, or that arrival by itself is enough.