(Not to be confused with my spacIOUS brain.)
Earlier I read a reference to one of Britney Spears’ songs on a friend’s Facebook status and instantly knew the next few lyrics. Somewhat ashamed, I started thinking about it and realized there must be a lot of wasted space in my brain. No wonder I can’t think of the answer super quickly when my psychotic teacher calls on me in class. My brain has to sift through all the pop lyrics and baseball stats and who knows what else I’ve built up to get to a clear place and think of the answer. Sheesh.
I am the type of person who gets really excited about things if I like them, and then I try to learn everything about them. Or at least, I start out learning about them, gather a bunch of useful information, and then ditch it all for something else I decide to love. (I’m not like that about everything – I don’t think I’d be super interested if I had a baby and then suddenly decide I’m not that into it. I mean, there are bridges you can’t go back across. And sometimes I become RE-obsessed with things. Like fantasy baseball. It happened when I was 10, and here I am at 26 having a relapse). I also happen to like a LOT of things. It’s like trying on jeans at the store. I bring 15 pairs into the changing room and sometimes come out with one pair. Or none, usually. I guess I like to try new things. Not like heroin, but you know. It’s adaptive for something like school – I just LOVE learning! Except I changed my major like 9 million times, so a more cost-effective strategy would have been better. For instance, I’d be more successful if I became obsessed with and then excellent at linear algebra and nothing else. Instead I’ve settled for a general proficiency in a variety of crap. Well-rounded, I called it on college applications. I was an extracurricular-ly active kid.
That said, I have had several strong obsessions throughout the last 26 years. At seven years old, my parents asked if I wanted to subscribe to a magazine. We could pick anything we wanted. So I chose Parents magazine. Oh yes. I read about EVERYTHING. I read about autism, weaning, colic, cystic fibrosis, ectopic pregnancies, how to spice up your sex life (whatever THAT was) if you’re co-sleeping with your three-year-old. You name it. There were sections in that magazine on each milestone of a child’s life, and as I was reading them I was growing up into different stages (so I guess I was always introspective). Yet I recall nothing in depth. I have a very general bookish idea of what it’d be like to be a parent. When I read things like Sarah’s blog though, I realize I have absolutely no concept of what it’s like in practice. (Naked marathons! Where was that in the job description? In comparison, the motherhood interview process is a piece of cake – at least the first time around). Anyway, I would cut out the articles I thought would be useful for babysitting. I did a giant research paper in 8th grade on the steps to becoming a pediatrician, where I went and volunteered at a low-income and mostly with a Hispanic population medical clinic. I got to translate the Spanish for the doctor during a patient’s checkup. (I’m sure the doctor already understood, but still I felt special.) I read a book about medical school and dissecting dogs, and how one doctor dealt with the experience of examining a two-year-old with multiple bruises under her diaper. I was all for the rewarding aspects and the heartbreaking bits, and I decided when I was like 40 I would write a book about it just like that doctor I read about. In high school I started shaping my transcript and activities so I could pursue medicine. “Purdue pre-med program, here I come!” I said. I visited the campus. I wanted to major in biology and specialize in genetics.
Until I deferred admission there and instead studied abroad in Italy the first term of college and decided I wanted to learn a lot of languages and be a translator so I could travel for the rest of my life. In Italy I had a conversation with a fairly attractive Italian guy who didn’t know English but knew German, and I didn’t know Italian and knew German pretty well at the time. We spoke in German for a while, about President Bush and whether or not I agreed with his politics, and it actually worked! That kind of blew my mind a little. Until he wanted us to go somewhere in his “taxi.” Yeah! Totally like in that movie Taken. Except I’m not an idiot, so I was not taken. (On a related note, a similar thing happened in Barcelona, except that guy wanted me to go on a plane with him to Morocco the next day. Maybe later I’ll write a blog about how I escaped being kidnapped or whatever by that dude). So after that I decided I’d just translate for hospitals or something.
When I started at UO I had two years of both Spanish and German, and one year of Italian. I needed to learn maybe Japanese or French or something else useful. So, logically, I signed up for Danish. Not even first-year, it was some intensive crazy class for people who obviously were born in Denmark or something. I took two weeks of that class and opted out when we read this impossibly Danish news article. Why the hell do I need Danish anyway? I thought. I could just learn these things on my own and it would be much faster and more fun. So I made my friend, a Japanese major, teach me the Hiragana alphabet. He quizzed me and everything – I totally knew what sounds the characters made and a few of the Kanji characters. I bought French tapes and children’s books in Polish and all sorts of glorious things from the Powell’s language section (the Red Room). I had read the first Harry Potter in Spanish for a class, so I bought the second one in French. I studied the patterns and word order and sometimes thought I could actually understand it. I took linguistics classes and more Spanish. I know what a interdental fricative is. P’s and M’s are bilabial stops. And then I thought for like one second about the possibilities I’d have as a linguistics major and said screw this - I’m majoring in comparative literature.
I mean journalism. Wait! English. Actually I’m going to minor in Art – photography. Oh never mind I guess I’ll do psychology. And respiratory care at the same time. Yep, that sounds good.
I still am particularly interested in the power of the mind though – especially right now since I’m reading all these books about spiritual enlightenment and cosmic connections. But I already went through that phase when I took a bunch of philosophy classes around the same time as the Danish, so I’m not allowed to get obsessed again. There are too many other enticing and obsession-worthy things out there, right? But maybe not, if I just had enough space to figure out the spiritual enlightenment bit…but that is probably going to be difficult.
Because I bet I could remember how to play F@#% the Dealer if I was given a deck of cards and a 30-rack of Keystone Light. That is precisely the kind of space I denied my spiritual health. Thankfully I only needed to know it for a couple experimental years, and did not become obsessed - that would be alcoholism. Maybe then my blogs would be funnier. Anyhoo.
Let’s just say I don’t need any of that other filler crap now. Wasted freaking brain capacity. And that was space that I intentionally wasted!! I wasn’t even talking about automatic things I do to decrease potential. Those things are much harder to not do. Like memorizing an oldies song – like 50s and 60s oldies. I memorized them because I chose to listen to them for like four years straight, to my mom and dad’s horror. So maybe I had some control over that, but how the hell do I know what’s going to stick around for 17 years when I’m nine?! Parents of today’s kids, don’t let them listen to the 80s. It will not be cool. I have not changed for the cooler by listening to pop music my parents grew up trying not to listen to in high school. And yes I do have the Eugene oldies station programmed into my car radio. Keepin’ it real.
It’s the little things that I haven’t consciously put in my brain that I worry about. These are the things that make it difficult to answer an impromptu question. Like today when I was listening the teacher who I REALLY NEED to listen carefully to because at any moment I could shift slightly in my seat and he could use that as an excuse to call on me. I was listening attentively, but also staring at one corner of the wall, where it meets the ceiling. It’s never good to stare at a wall, because I do this thing where I connect invisible lines in my mind so that triangles are formed. I guess you could say I create invisible hypotenuses whenever I see an acute angle or a bunch of squares, or even bricks. Good thing I can’t measure the lengths of the sides and stuff, or I would be A-squaring plus B-squaring away my life. That’s the type of thing that I could really do without. (God it’s satisfying to use the word ‘hypotenuses’ in a sentence. Finally, after all these years of storing it in my files…wait. Ahhhhhhh!!!!) Also I count things. Sometimes I have to think something a certain number of times in order to be satisfied with it. Or split things into acceptable groups of equal number, and most importantly an even number (because then I can have one on each side of my mouth. Equal cavity chance). If I dump them all out on the table and there are 61 Skittles in my pack, this is annoying. It just is. Because there are five different flavors of Skittles in an original pack: red, orange, green, yellow, purple. You could divide them into five piles of 12, but then you’d have an extra one. I have to eat all the unmatched extra ones first because they can’t go in sets of two. Thankfully there’s only one extra one in that case, which would be extremely rare. Normally I have to whittle away at them until there’s five piles of six each or something. This is clearly just some obsessive-compulsive issue, but if you think about it, I could have been using all that space in my brain I took up by making a rule to sort Skittles for something useful! Good grief.
Another thing I do is make up little scenes in my head. Everyone does this to an extent I think – like after you do something and it’s embarrassing, you think of how the scene would have gone if you did it right. That’s kind of a productive way to use the scenes, except it means dwelling on unimportant things from the past. I ultimately know that whatever I did that was stupid, those who matter won’t mind and those who mind don’t matter. So why the replays? And why is that phrase about mind and matter in my brain anyway? Probably because my brain can’t hold onto anything actually happening in the present because it’s too busy going, “Step by step, ooh baby, gotta get to you girrrrrrrrl. Step one: you can have lots of fun, step two: there’s so much we can do, step three: it’s just you and meeeee, step four: I can give you more, step five…" Thank God I don’t remember step five - I think I just realized what that song was about. But maybe they’re only talking about second base. At least that’s all I would have comprehended when my insane child-self was committing this all to memory.
I also remember other jingles from my youth. Like this one (you have to say it aloud so it makes sense – there’s a lot of word play): “Miss Susie had a tugboat, the tugboat had a bell, the tugboat when to heaven, Miss Susie went to hello operator, please give me number 9, and if you disconnect me, I’ll cut off your behind the refrigerator, there was a piece of glass, Miss Susie sat upon it, and broke her little ask me no more questions, tell me no more lies, the boys are in the bathroom, zipping up their flies are in the meadow, the bees are in the hive, and Susie and her boyfriend are kissing in the D-A-R-K, D-A-R-K, D-A-R-K dark!”
Oh GREAT! I just realized something. I’m going to cardio pump in a little while with Nancy, and I’ve just started learning all the step calls. This is not good! I mean, I’m doing OK at it, all uncoordinated handicaps considered. But now when my teacher points at me to answer tomorrow in class (when I make a sudden movement to pick at my pencil eraser), I’ll probably have my cardio instructor saying, “Hamstring curl, karate repeater, turn straddle turn straddle, walk the curb, chug up chug down,” in my head. And it would all be to the beat of a Lady Gaga song I learned word for word. Let’s face it: I’m doomed.
June 23, 2010
June 22, 2010
The Terrible Tues...day?
Oh that title is amazingly cheesy! Whew.
This is going to be a rant blog – sorry. But today has been freaking rant-tastic. (If you want to read a funny rant blog, check out Matt's blog.)
First I was fully awake for no reason at 5:30. OK, I think. I’ll just roll over and shut my eyes and have another glorious, warm, peaceful hour of sleep. Orrrrrr, I’ll just lay there awake until 6:27 or so. The last time I looked at the clock it was 6:15, and then the alarm went off at 6:30, and Adam instantly suctioned himself to me.
I don’t know what happens while I’m sleeping, but when I wake up in the middle of the night and go to stretch my leg out or just find a colder area of the bed to lay in, Adam SENSES this, rolls over, and attaches to my back. I sleep on my side but slightly curled. I don’t want my legs to be straight down because then I wouldn’t be able to balance on my side. But Adam likes me to lie perfectly straight and unbalanced so he can wrap himself around me. Plus he has subconscious ESP. Like if I move slightly to reposition my arm or something, he will be stuck to my back in like one second. So I say, “Umm…Adam dear? It’s too hot, can you move back like four feet?” But he can’t hear me until like the fourth time, and by then I’m just like “BABE!! You’re suffocating me.” So then he thinks I’m sort of evil, because who just yells at you while you’re asleep? And in the middle of the night you can’t really be like, “No no, you misunderstood. There’s a back story here – I’m dying of heatstroke and I tried to tell you like nine times." Or at least I can’t, because I might be killed. Also, since I’m already on the subject, I used to be an insane sleeper, OK, but I’ve changed my ways. I was a frequent and unpredictable sleepwalker. See this blog for details.
But I never stealthily tucked the blankets around myself like a burrito and rolled away with them! And it’s always when I’m AWAKE, so it’s not like I just don’t notice and sleep on until I’m freezing in the middle of the night. I’ll be laying there fully under the blanket, awake and kind of mad about it because obviously I’m not asleep but at least I’m warm, and suddenly the blankets slide away. I sleep on the right side of the (queen size) bed with a foot of room to work with, because Adam can only sleep in the direct center of the bed. And I don’t like if my feet or hands or knees are hanging over the side because as a child I thought wolves were under the bed and I just get an uneasy feeling if they’re hanging out there. Anyway, so Adam will be lying there on his back totally passed out and unmoving, and then suddenly for no reason he’ll quickly roll to the right, gather the blankets with his legs, and roll back to the left with the entire blanket/sheet ensemble. It’s almost like he practices it. It’s maddening, but also really funny sometimes. I try not to laugh though because the Before-Coffee-Adam might kill me.
Anyway, today when my alarm went off, I was like OK, Tuesday. That’s cool. I forgive you for jacking my sleep because it’s sunny already, my classes are early, and I have the day off work. Take that. And I went to school, got a good parking spot, and put 2 hours and 45 minutes worth of change into the meter (I know, I know. Biking will commence soon. But I’m going to complain about things having to do with the car anyway right now because I’m stupid and drove my car). Then I walked to my classroom and then immediately all the way back to the car again to retrieve my coffee. My first class, Marital and Family Therapy, went fine. Well, except I wanted to sit in the back (because my hair is down today, and I have ripped out too much of it recently but I still wanted to wear it down because it feels nicer), so I chose a seat in the second-to-back row. I would have chose the back row but everyone else was sort of up further and I didn’t want to be rude and sit farthest away from the teacher. And then someone came in like 10 minutes late and sat in the seat directly behind me. There was a whole row!!! How was she going to see the blackboard RIGHT BEHIND ME?? I know perfectly well how irrational it is to care about my hair, but I just sometimes want to sit in the back of the classroom. Is that so bad? If this paragraph was perplexing, read this.
But in reality you’ll probably still be perplexed. I am.
Anyhow, then I had the class that I like the best but am most terrified of, because it’s “seminar-style” and there are only 15 students. Which apparently means the teacher just calls on you anytime he wants and sometime I’m going to have to lead a class discussion who knows how many times? Like stand up and present. At random. I mean can it get any scarier? Sheesh. The teacher is funny and talks about relevant things to 2010, which I like. When teachers use phone cords as an analogy like my chemistry teacher last term, I worry that almost everyone else in the class won’t get it because phone cords are before their time. (Except at work. Where we have long phone cords and I do the most moving and talking on the phone ever. I totally clothes-lined the relief pharmacist yesterday. It’s like those laser rooms in movies, where you try to get to the diamond but there are secret lasers every which way and you have to contort your body to get around them, and for some reason you have to wear very little clothing if you’re female and when you're dodging the lasers it's always a lot more racy than when the guy is).
Anyway, this guy talks about video games and cell phones and basketball and gorillas and uses youtube.com to show us fun videos. And then grills us on some totally new concept he’s just presented that day! Like the word ‘endogenous.’ He just said the word for the first time like one minute ago, and then he calls on someone and says, “So what does endogenous mean and how does it relate to misdirection of attention?” Huh? Thank God he asked the kid in front of me, who managed to extrapolate the meaning from the parts of the word. He’ll ask the question, and then say, “Yes? You in the green?” like you just raised your hand or something, and then you’re like, “Wait, me? Or…” It’s nerve-racking. I don’t even care about my seating arrangement in that class because I’m too busy scrambling to think of something that makes sense in any way. When I answer questions in class, even if I know the answer, I still manage to misspeak somehow, turn red, and correct myself. In the process I realize that what I said doesn’t make sense and then I just trail off. Today I asked a question about a project, and I said something like, “Our group was wondering, and I’m wondering I guess can we use, because I’m asking, is this, I mean are we, for the hypothesis, am I on the right track here? If I say, I mean, um, for the hypothesis?” And he stares at me sympathetically like, “What IS your hypothesis?” And I’m like, “Oh of course, sorry.” And then I get some kind of answer, hopefully, after I’ve actually asked something that even resembles a question. It’s horrifying, but I’m used to it. Moving on.
During the last 15 minutes of class, we split into groups for a project. Oh, JOY! We were supposed to bring an idea for an experiment today to share, and 3 of the 4 of us had it. And of the 3, I am the only one who followed the directions. I actually thought of it during my hour of non-sleep, which was awesome. So we had to use mine for the main thing, and so of course I was like, well I guess I’ll type it up and email it to the teacher early this afternoon!! Yay Tuesday! This teacher is crazy with his impromptu stuff. God I hate group assignments. The people in my group were smart – I could tell by the way they defined words they’d never heard. So what the H?
So I went to the computer lab, with the knowledge that I had approximately 34 minutes to get back to my car/write the thing and email it. But obviously I didn’t make it in time because there was a nice green ticket on the windshield. I think the parking meter maid Apparated, because I swear he or she should have still been writing the ticket as I walked up. Probably my meter had been blinking for like 20 seconds. I mean, I try to be a conscientious citizen. I don’t throw things out my car window, and I try not to take up eight spaces with my car (don’t even mention Mazzi’s, those of you who remember), I don’t run into people with my car, I don’t go 45 mph on Hwy 126, and I always pay the meter. Unless I forget. But this time I didn’t even forget!! And no one will ever know that I TRIED to pay it, because there’s no record! I tried, city.
I think it’s appropriate to insert a mini-rant about the Portland parking meters. They are innovative because you can use credit cards or paper bills or change, which is glorious. But it drives me crazy that you can’t add time onto it once you’ve printed out your sticky note thing. Like, if you’re at one that has a one-hour time limit and you put in a half hour’s worth of money, and then remember you need to go do something else for ten minutes, you have to print a whole new sticky note (you stick them on your window and they say the time you should return to the car) that doesn’t take into account your old sticky note. So then you have two dumb notes taped to your car window and one says you have to come back in a half hour, and the other says you have to come back in ten minutes. That drives me insane for some reason.
No matter, I decided, I’ll just go pay it and be on my merry way to enjoy Tuesday. Tuesday is frankly awesome right now by the way, so this blog is just a means of processing all the injustices that happened in the morning. I’m in a spectacular mood, and I’m not being sarcastic. Wednesday might be even better, who knows? So I put 30 minutes worth of change into a new meter outside the parking ticket office, which is also conveniently the Municipal Court, so I feel like a freaking criminal going in there, but anyway.
As I’m waiting for the lady to praise me for being so prompt on my ticket payment, she’s like, “Hmm, you have an outstanding balance on here from 2008.” So I go, “Oh. Shoot.” And she asks if I remember parking on 13th and Moss. And I’m like, “No way lady.” But she said it was only $24, which was a giant relief since I thought those things double by the month or something. Turns out they don’t even care if you don’t pay your ticket for two years. She even said I didn’t have to pay that one today! But I did, because if this happens again in 2012 I will freak out. So 16+24=$40 later (actually about $43 if you count all the change I PUT IN THE EFFING METERS), I was free. Free to go home and return a phone call from a couple days ago.
The lady on the phone said, “Is 1345 Ferry St. your current address?” And I said, “No. That’s where I lived in 2006 though.” And she goes, “OK, we’re a collections agency trying to collect a debt.” And I’m like, “OK. For what?” Because I can’t remember anything problematic in the last five years. Honestly. Don’t those people try to contact you like mad if they want money? I mean it’s been four years apparently. And she asks if I still have my Comcast modem from 2006 and I’m like, “No!” Who knows where that thing is…probably in JD’s stepdad’s garage for all I know. And she goes, “OK, you owe $99.99 then. Would you like to pay that today?” Yeah I’d LOVE to! Gahhhhhhhhh!! So I paid it, and then the lady was happy. I just wonder how they let these things go for like four YEARS, or two for the parking ticket, and then suddenly you have to pay it by Wednesday? I mean, I just want to know if something is wrong – and then I can take care of it. I’m trying to be a good citizen, I swear. Look, I just paid $139.99 before 11 a.m.!! Or more like $142.99. And then the lady, even though I thought she hung up because the phone went dead for like five seconds, as it had been doing periodically the whole conversation, says, “So is 1345 Ferry St. a current billing address for this card?”
This is going to be a rant blog – sorry. But today has been freaking rant-tastic. (If you want to read a funny rant blog, check out Matt's blog.)
First I was fully awake for no reason at 5:30. OK, I think. I’ll just roll over and shut my eyes and have another glorious, warm, peaceful hour of sleep. Orrrrrr, I’ll just lay there awake until 6:27 or so. The last time I looked at the clock it was 6:15, and then the alarm went off at 6:30, and Adam instantly suctioned himself to me.
I don’t know what happens while I’m sleeping, but when I wake up in the middle of the night and go to stretch my leg out or just find a colder area of the bed to lay in, Adam SENSES this, rolls over, and attaches to my back. I sleep on my side but slightly curled. I don’t want my legs to be straight down because then I wouldn’t be able to balance on my side. But Adam likes me to lie perfectly straight and unbalanced so he can wrap himself around me. Plus he has subconscious ESP. Like if I move slightly to reposition my arm or something, he will be stuck to my back in like one second. So I say, “Umm…Adam dear? It’s too hot, can you move back like four feet?” But he can’t hear me until like the fourth time, and by then I’m just like “BABE!! You’re suffocating me.” So then he thinks I’m sort of evil, because who just yells at you while you’re asleep? And in the middle of the night you can’t really be like, “No no, you misunderstood. There’s a back story here – I’m dying of heatstroke and I tried to tell you like nine times." Or at least I can’t, because I might be killed. Also, since I’m already on the subject, I used to be an insane sleeper, OK, but I’ve changed my ways. I was a frequent and unpredictable sleepwalker. See this blog for details.
But I never stealthily tucked the blankets around myself like a burrito and rolled away with them! And it’s always when I’m AWAKE, so it’s not like I just don’t notice and sleep on until I’m freezing in the middle of the night. I’ll be laying there fully under the blanket, awake and kind of mad about it because obviously I’m not asleep but at least I’m warm, and suddenly the blankets slide away. I sleep on the right side of the (queen size) bed with a foot of room to work with, because Adam can only sleep in the direct center of the bed. And I don’t like if my feet or hands or knees are hanging over the side because as a child I thought wolves were under the bed and I just get an uneasy feeling if they’re hanging out there. Anyway, so Adam will be lying there on his back totally passed out and unmoving, and then suddenly for no reason he’ll quickly roll to the right, gather the blankets with his legs, and roll back to the left with the entire blanket/sheet ensemble. It’s almost like he practices it. It’s maddening, but also really funny sometimes. I try not to laugh though because the Before-Coffee-Adam might kill me.
Anyway, today when my alarm went off, I was like OK, Tuesday. That’s cool. I forgive you for jacking my sleep because it’s sunny already, my classes are early, and I have the day off work. Take that. And I went to school, got a good parking spot, and put 2 hours and 45 minutes worth of change into the meter (I know, I know. Biking will commence soon. But I’m going to complain about things having to do with the car anyway right now because I’m stupid and drove my car). Then I walked to my classroom and then immediately all the way back to the car again to retrieve my coffee. My first class, Marital and Family Therapy, went fine. Well, except I wanted to sit in the back (because my hair is down today, and I have ripped out too much of it recently but I still wanted to wear it down because it feels nicer), so I chose a seat in the second-to-back row. I would have chose the back row but everyone else was sort of up further and I didn’t want to be rude and sit farthest away from the teacher. And then someone came in like 10 minutes late and sat in the seat directly behind me. There was a whole row!!! How was she going to see the blackboard RIGHT BEHIND ME?? I know perfectly well how irrational it is to care about my hair, but I just sometimes want to sit in the back of the classroom. Is that so bad? If this paragraph was perplexing, read this.
But in reality you’ll probably still be perplexed. I am.
Anyhow, then I had the class that I like the best but am most terrified of, because it’s “seminar-style” and there are only 15 students. Which apparently means the teacher just calls on you anytime he wants and sometime I’m going to have to lead a class discussion who knows how many times? Like stand up and present. At random. I mean can it get any scarier? Sheesh. The teacher is funny and talks about relevant things to 2010, which I like. When teachers use phone cords as an analogy like my chemistry teacher last term, I worry that almost everyone else in the class won’t get it because phone cords are before their time. (Except at work. Where we have long phone cords and I do the most moving and talking on the phone ever. I totally clothes-lined the relief pharmacist yesterday. It’s like those laser rooms in movies, where you try to get to the diamond but there are secret lasers every which way and you have to contort your body to get around them, and for some reason you have to wear very little clothing if you’re female and when you're dodging the lasers it's always a lot more racy than when the guy is).
Anyway, this guy talks about video games and cell phones and basketball and gorillas and uses youtube.com to show us fun videos. And then grills us on some totally new concept he’s just presented that day! Like the word ‘endogenous.’ He just said the word for the first time like one minute ago, and then he calls on someone and says, “So what does endogenous mean and how does it relate to misdirection of attention?” Huh? Thank God he asked the kid in front of me, who managed to extrapolate the meaning from the parts of the word. He’ll ask the question, and then say, “Yes? You in the green?” like you just raised your hand or something, and then you’re like, “Wait, me? Or…” It’s nerve-racking. I don’t even care about my seating arrangement in that class because I’m too busy scrambling to think of something that makes sense in any way. When I answer questions in class, even if I know the answer, I still manage to misspeak somehow, turn red, and correct myself. In the process I realize that what I said doesn’t make sense and then I just trail off. Today I asked a question about a project, and I said something like, “Our group was wondering, and I’m wondering I guess can we use, because I’m asking, is this, I mean are we, for the hypothesis, am I on the right track here? If I say, I mean, um, for the hypothesis?” And he stares at me sympathetically like, “What IS your hypothesis?” And I’m like, “Oh of course, sorry.” And then I get some kind of answer, hopefully, after I’ve actually asked something that even resembles a question. It’s horrifying, but I’m used to it. Moving on.
During the last 15 minutes of class, we split into groups for a project. Oh, JOY! We were supposed to bring an idea for an experiment today to share, and 3 of the 4 of us had it. And of the 3, I am the only one who followed the directions. I actually thought of it during my hour of non-sleep, which was awesome. So we had to use mine for the main thing, and so of course I was like, well I guess I’ll type it up and email it to the teacher early this afternoon!! Yay Tuesday! This teacher is crazy with his impromptu stuff. God I hate group assignments. The people in my group were smart – I could tell by the way they defined words they’d never heard. So what the H?
So I went to the computer lab, with the knowledge that I had approximately 34 minutes to get back to my car/write the thing and email it. But obviously I didn’t make it in time because there was a nice green ticket on the windshield. I think the parking meter maid Apparated, because I swear he or she should have still been writing the ticket as I walked up. Probably my meter had been blinking for like 20 seconds. I mean, I try to be a conscientious citizen. I don’t throw things out my car window, and I try not to take up eight spaces with my car (don’t even mention Mazzi’s, those of you who remember), I don’t run into people with my car, I don’t go 45 mph on Hwy 126, and I always pay the meter. Unless I forget. But this time I didn’t even forget!! And no one will ever know that I TRIED to pay it, because there’s no record! I tried, city.
I think it’s appropriate to insert a mini-rant about the Portland parking meters. They are innovative because you can use credit cards or paper bills or change, which is glorious. But it drives me crazy that you can’t add time onto it once you’ve printed out your sticky note thing. Like, if you’re at one that has a one-hour time limit and you put in a half hour’s worth of money, and then remember you need to go do something else for ten minutes, you have to print a whole new sticky note (you stick them on your window and they say the time you should return to the car) that doesn’t take into account your old sticky note. So then you have two dumb notes taped to your car window and one says you have to come back in a half hour, and the other says you have to come back in ten minutes. That drives me insane for some reason.
No matter, I decided, I’ll just go pay it and be on my merry way to enjoy Tuesday. Tuesday is frankly awesome right now by the way, so this blog is just a means of processing all the injustices that happened in the morning. I’m in a spectacular mood, and I’m not being sarcastic. Wednesday might be even better, who knows? So I put 30 minutes worth of change into a new meter outside the parking ticket office, which is also conveniently the Municipal Court, so I feel like a freaking criminal going in there, but anyway.
As I’m waiting for the lady to praise me for being so prompt on my ticket payment, she’s like, “Hmm, you have an outstanding balance on here from 2008.” So I go, “Oh. Shoot.” And she asks if I remember parking on 13th and Moss. And I’m like, “No way lady.” But she said it was only $24, which was a giant relief since I thought those things double by the month or something. Turns out they don’t even care if you don’t pay your ticket for two years. She even said I didn’t have to pay that one today! But I did, because if this happens again in 2012 I will freak out. So 16+24=$40 later (actually about $43 if you count all the change I PUT IN THE EFFING METERS), I was free. Free to go home and return a phone call from a couple days ago.
The lady on the phone said, “Is 1345 Ferry St. your current address?” And I said, “No. That’s where I lived in 2006 though.” And she goes, “OK, we’re a collections agency trying to collect a debt.” And I’m like, “OK. For what?” Because I can’t remember anything problematic in the last five years. Honestly. Don’t those people try to contact you like mad if they want money? I mean it’s been four years apparently. And she asks if I still have my Comcast modem from 2006 and I’m like, “No!” Who knows where that thing is…probably in JD’s stepdad’s garage for all I know. And she goes, “OK, you owe $99.99 then. Would you like to pay that today?” Yeah I’d LOVE to! Gahhhhhhhhh!! So I paid it, and then the lady was happy. I just wonder how they let these things go for like four YEARS, or two for the parking ticket, and then suddenly you have to pay it by Wednesday? I mean, I just want to know if something is wrong – and then I can take care of it. I’m trying to be a good citizen, I swear. Look, I just paid $139.99 before 11 a.m.!! Or more like $142.99. And then the lady, even though I thought she hung up because the phone went dead for like five seconds, as it had been doing periodically the whole conversation, says, “So is 1345 Ferry St. a current billing address for this card?”
June 10, 2010
It sounded good at the time...
I finished my chemistry final and I am flooded with energy. When I say flooded I mean my brain is being drowned. Seriously. I have no brain, and I’m being swept down a river of energy. It’s not the kind of productive energy that makes people want to clean their houses or go running for 6 miles, it’s bursty writing energy and it’s driving me NUTS!!! If you don’t know what bursty means, it’s what I call it when I have a ball of excitement in my chest and I’m suddenly understanding things much better than before and I am SO CLOSE to putting it all together and figuring out what the hell is going on with the world, and the only thing I want to do with it is write it down. But I can never express it. That’s why I’m in the energy river. It only makes sense to me! The ball of energy is always about liking something so strongly that it’s like I’m straining toward it. Usually it’s an elusive concept, like the FREAKING MEANING OF LIFE. Or the Oliver McBubbins story. So, since I have again failed to grasp and hold on to the meaning of everything and then tell you guys about it, I figure I’ll just talk about a bunch of dumb things that I remember from my childhood. I’ll try and relate them all to one phrase, which I’m going to repeat each time I switch topics because otherwise this won’t make any sense, and the phrase is this:
It sounded good at the time…
…to start squirt gun fights with the neighbor boys at our apartment complex. These kids were relentless. One’s name was Taylor, and the other was Kyran (which amused me greatly because MY name was almost the same spelling, and that is cool when you are a little kid. Except it wasn’t cool for him because it was kind of a girlish name). They were both a year older than me, and when they were together they were mean. Kyran on his own was OK. He used to play catch with me and that was nice, and he’d throw it as hard as he could, which was good because I liked catching it better that way. But Taylor was just generally terrifying. And he hocked loogies on the ground at the bus stop a few years later, which made me want to barf all the time. And since they were a year older than me, they were five years older than my brother Wyeth. Who was like FOUR years old. So already you would be rooting for us if this was a TV show. But sadly it was real. They were like the American Gladiators of squirt gun fights. Our main disadvantage besides age and size was our absolute lack of up-to-date weaponry. Remember squirt guns, and when Super Soakers came out? And it was like Super Soaker 100, or Super Soaker 275, or whatever? And the number indicated roughly how many feet you could squirt? OK, so we had like Super Soaker 10. And Super Soaker 25.
So our most technologically advance weapon had a water chamber that held about six ounces of water. Which meant we had to go reload at the garden hose about every thirty seconds. And of course, the hose was guarded by someone EVIL with a Super Soaker 3900 or something INSANE that could blast our faces off. And they always took head shots. One year Taylor and Kyran got backpacks with a fire hose attached to them, I swear to God. It was a PACK of water, I don’t even know how they ran. They were like Marines. It was horrifying.
And for lack of a better picture of the backpack, think of something like this:
Luckily we were fast and we knew the good hiding places. Big kids usually don’t know the hiding places right away, because they don’t need them. But it totally sucked if we were found, because we were always trapped behind the building somewhere far, far away from the hose or even our glorious water balloon grenade supply, which was probably left unguarded since we were hiding. And then Taylor and Kyran would just kill us. We were dead. I mean, you know when you jump into a swimming pool and you don’t blow out with your nose, so water goes up it? And you have water right in your sinus for like a day? That happened when they killed us all summer long. And thankfully it didn’t snow much in Oregon, because the year it did I stupidly threw a snowball at Taylor, just as a little joke, and then Wyeth and I almost died again.
It sounded good at the time…
...to put my hair in corn rows the night before my third grade school picture day, and then take them out so I had awesome crimped hair for pictures. My friend asked if I stuck my finger in a light socket.
It sounded good at the time…
…to wear hot pink and sort of shimmery Spandex shorts and matching hot pink Saltwater sandals with a teal hoodless sweatshirt several times in fourth grade.
It sounded good at the time…
…to let Dad have a sip of our soda, ever. Dad is the fastest soda drinker I have ever seen. Our maximum soda amount allotted was one soda per day. Obviously most days we didn’t have soda, because we usually drank juice or something else because soda is bad for you. We drank an abnormally high amount of grape juice compared to other types of juice, but that’s because Wyeth is and has always been obsessed with grape juice. Anyway. Dad totally gypped us out of like three-fourths of the soda EVERY TIME. “Just a little sip,” he’d say innocently. And then he’d tip the can back and literally in one second the soda was gone. And then he'd say "No Coke, Pepsi" even though it was really Coke. So really our maximum amount was like three ounces of soda per day. OMG, does anyone remember Nehi?? It was blue. And glorious.
It sounded good at the time…
…to get the DPT vaccine. The marketing was great – no diphtheria, pertussis, or tetanus! All you have to do is be stabbed once in the leg. I don’t care about needles, I watch every time, because I kind of want to know what is going on. And I like giving blood and stuff. Being blindly stabbed is bad. That’s probably where everyone gets their fear of needles in the first place. Of course it’s terrifying if something randomly STABS you when you’re looking the other way. The anticipation is the worst part. Anyway. Wyeth and I got stabbed in the leg once to protect us from DPT, and then we were crippled for days. Seriously, we couldn’t walk. We laid there dying FOREVER in our rooms. I mean it was probably only a couple hours, but I think we got tetanus in our legs for real. It wasn’t the normal ache, it was like something is clearly wrong and if it goes on any longer we’re going to amputate. Did that happen to anyone else? You’d remember. It was the shot that paralyzed your leg. And you were probably like five. Or one, apparently, if you were Wyeth.
It sounded good at the time…
…to swim in the ocean in Oregon in January. Or November. Whenever we were at the beach. We were crazed. Well, I was crazed and I dragged Wyeth down the wrong path with me. If you don’t know what temperatures are like on the Oregon coast, just think 40s. Or 50s. Or in August, maybe 65. That’s the air. The water temperature is an enigma. I would guess ice cold. It would be so cold out we’d be wearing jackets and sweatpants TO the ocean, and then sometimes long-sleeved shirts and sweatpants INTO the ocean. Most of you know that my face gets a pretty good shade of red when I’m hot, or nervous, or embarrassed, or thinking about something that could be embarrassing to someone else hypothetically, or just excited about my chemistry final being finished. I’m pretty sure I was flushed for like the whole afternoon today. Anyway, when I’m cold I turn very red, but with flecks of purple, blue, and fuschia. And not in the face as much as my entire body. It took about 45 seconds for us to be numb, which strangely is what we were going for. Once you’re numb, it totally doesn’t matter and you can stay in forever. Or as long as Mom and Dad wanted to stand in their winter jackets on the shore trying to read and watch so we didn’t die, which was a surprisingly long time. English majors. Anyway. Wyeth and I liked getting crushed by waves, and would get disappointed and impatient if the waves were not strong enough. We never went out higher than our waists really, but that’s because we’re smart. The waves here are not calm like in some places, where people just go swimming out past the waves and hang out in their wetsuits or whatever. I wished it was, but it’s not. The other thing that’s kind of underrated about the whole thing is that we took our glasses off sometimes so we wouldn’t lose them (one time Wyeth did lose his when we were in the ocean in San Diego and that sucked). So without my glasses or contacts Adam likes to refer to me as “Mole,” because I squint and lean forward and get really close to things to read them. Or FIND them, since glasses are usually what I am trying to find when I don’t have them on. So how on earth did we see how big the waves would be? Now that I think about it, that was totally and completely psychotic. Once we were numbed and bored of the ocean, we would run into the creek which ran into the ocean and dive straight in because it was warm comparatively. When we got to the house, we got the sand hosed off of us, which was the worst part somehow. Then one of us stood by the heater while the other one took a shower, and we’d switch until we were finally thawed. By that time we were ready to go again.
It seemed good at the time…
…to bring the cat with us to the beach and let her outside. She loved it, but would never come back, so we always had to wait until she came back inside to go home if it was the last day of vacation. And she had like cat ESP because she always was gone on that day. And once her tail got bit by some crazy animal at the beach and she had to wear a cone on her head.
It sounded good at the time…
…to sneak out of bed secretly in the middle of the night to read in the living room. I swear it was like the coolest idea EVER, and it was always my idea, since I am the oldest and the bad example. Now that I’ve heard other people’s stories about sneaking out in the middle of the night, I’m pretty sure we were missing the entire point. I would like a mulligan, please. We’d be laying there in our beds and I would finally whisper the plan to Wyeth after we could tell Mom and Dad were asleep. I would leap as far off of my bed as possible and gently land in the middle of the room so as not to be eaten by the wolves under the bed. They were confined under the bed though, so once I was touching the floor I was fine. We’d choose a book and quietly crawl down the hall, which was the hard part, since it was right by Mom and Dad’s room. And it was really FUNNY to be doing this in the middle of the night, so if I looked over at Wyeth stealthily crawling away I would always start to giggle, and then we would sprint-crawl to the living room where it was safe. If I were Mom and Dad I might have killed us, because we were so giggly and annoying, but they just captured us and returned us to our room. Where we could just read anyway, I don’t know why it was so exciting to read in the dark living room when I had a perfectly good flashlight.
It sounded good at the time…
…to let Wyeth try my Dr. Pepper-flavored chapstick, because he ate it. And then all I had left was stupid Strawberry.
It sounded good at the time…
…to start squirt gun fights with the neighbor boys at our apartment complex. These kids were relentless. One’s name was Taylor, and the other was Kyran (which amused me greatly because MY name was almost the same spelling, and that is cool when you are a little kid. Except it wasn’t cool for him because it was kind of a girlish name). They were both a year older than me, and when they were together they were mean. Kyran on his own was OK. He used to play catch with me and that was nice, and he’d throw it as hard as he could, which was good because I liked catching it better that way. But Taylor was just generally terrifying. And he hocked loogies on the ground at the bus stop a few years later, which made me want to barf all the time. And since they were a year older than me, they were five years older than my brother Wyeth. Who was like FOUR years old. So already you would be rooting for us if this was a TV show. But sadly it was real. They were like the American Gladiators of squirt gun fights. Our main disadvantage besides age and size was our absolute lack of up-to-date weaponry. Remember squirt guns, and when Super Soakers came out? And it was like Super Soaker 100, or Super Soaker 275, or whatever? And the number indicated roughly how many feet you could squirt? OK, so we had like Super Soaker 10. And Super Soaker 25.
So our most technologically advance weapon had a water chamber that held about six ounces of water. Which meant we had to go reload at the garden hose about every thirty seconds. And of course, the hose was guarded by someone EVIL with a Super Soaker 3900 or something INSANE that could blast our faces off. And they always took head shots. One year Taylor and Kyran got backpacks with a fire hose attached to them, I swear to God. It was a PACK of water, I don’t even know how they ran. They were like Marines. It was horrifying.
And for lack of a better picture of the backpack, think of something like this:
Luckily we were fast and we knew the good hiding places. Big kids usually don’t know the hiding places right away, because they don’t need them. But it totally sucked if we were found, because we were always trapped behind the building somewhere far, far away from the hose or even our glorious water balloon grenade supply, which was probably left unguarded since we were hiding. And then Taylor and Kyran would just kill us. We were dead. I mean, you know when you jump into a swimming pool and you don’t blow out with your nose, so water goes up it? And you have water right in your sinus for like a day? That happened when they killed us all summer long. And thankfully it didn’t snow much in Oregon, because the year it did I stupidly threw a snowball at Taylor, just as a little joke, and then Wyeth and I almost died again.
It sounded good at the time…
...to put my hair in corn rows the night before my third grade school picture day, and then take them out so I had awesome crimped hair for pictures. My friend asked if I stuck my finger in a light socket.
It sounded good at the time…
…to wear hot pink and sort of shimmery Spandex shorts and matching hot pink Saltwater sandals with a teal hoodless sweatshirt several times in fourth grade.
It sounded good at the time…
…to let Dad have a sip of our soda, ever. Dad is the fastest soda drinker I have ever seen. Our maximum soda amount allotted was one soda per day. Obviously most days we didn’t have soda, because we usually drank juice or something else because soda is bad for you. We drank an abnormally high amount of grape juice compared to other types of juice, but that’s because Wyeth is and has always been obsessed with grape juice. Anyway. Dad totally gypped us out of like three-fourths of the soda EVERY TIME. “Just a little sip,” he’d say innocently. And then he’d tip the can back and literally in one second the soda was gone. And then he'd say "No Coke, Pepsi" even though it was really Coke. So really our maximum amount was like three ounces of soda per day. OMG, does anyone remember Nehi?? It was blue. And glorious.
It sounded good at the time…
…to get the DPT vaccine. The marketing was great – no diphtheria, pertussis, or tetanus! All you have to do is be stabbed once in the leg. I don’t care about needles, I watch every time, because I kind of want to know what is going on. And I like giving blood and stuff. Being blindly stabbed is bad. That’s probably where everyone gets their fear of needles in the first place. Of course it’s terrifying if something randomly STABS you when you’re looking the other way. The anticipation is the worst part. Anyway. Wyeth and I got stabbed in the leg once to protect us from DPT, and then we were crippled for days. Seriously, we couldn’t walk. We laid there dying FOREVER in our rooms. I mean it was probably only a couple hours, but I think we got tetanus in our legs for real. It wasn’t the normal ache, it was like something is clearly wrong and if it goes on any longer we’re going to amputate. Did that happen to anyone else? You’d remember. It was the shot that paralyzed your leg. And you were probably like five. Or one, apparently, if you were Wyeth.
It sounded good at the time…
…to swim in the ocean in Oregon in January. Or November. Whenever we were at the beach. We were crazed. Well, I was crazed and I dragged Wyeth down the wrong path with me. If you don’t know what temperatures are like on the Oregon coast, just think 40s. Or 50s. Or in August, maybe 65. That’s the air. The water temperature is an enigma. I would guess ice cold. It would be so cold out we’d be wearing jackets and sweatpants TO the ocean, and then sometimes long-sleeved shirts and sweatpants INTO the ocean. Most of you know that my face gets a pretty good shade of red when I’m hot, or nervous, or embarrassed, or thinking about something that could be embarrassing to someone else hypothetically, or just excited about my chemistry final being finished. I’m pretty sure I was flushed for like the whole afternoon today. Anyway, when I’m cold I turn very red, but with flecks of purple, blue, and fuschia. And not in the face as much as my entire body. It took about 45 seconds for us to be numb, which strangely is what we were going for. Once you’re numb, it totally doesn’t matter and you can stay in forever. Or as long as Mom and Dad wanted to stand in their winter jackets on the shore trying to read and watch so we didn’t die, which was a surprisingly long time. English majors. Anyway. Wyeth and I liked getting crushed by waves, and would get disappointed and impatient if the waves were not strong enough. We never went out higher than our waists really, but that’s because we’re smart. The waves here are not calm like in some places, where people just go swimming out past the waves and hang out in their wetsuits or whatever. I wished it was, but it’s not. The other thing that’s kind of underrated about the whole thing is that we took our glasses off sometimes so we wouldn’t lose them (one time Wyeth did lose his when we were in the ocean in San Diego and that sucked). So without my glasses or contacts Adam likes to refer to me as “Mole,” because I squint and lean forward and get really close to things to read them. Or FIND them, since glasses are usually what I am trying to find when I don’t have them on. So how on earth did we see how big the waves would be? Now that I think about it, that was totally and completely psychotic. Once we were numbed and bored of the ocean, we would run into the creek which ran into the ocean and dive straight in because it was warm comparatively. When we got to the house, we got the sand hosed off of us, which was the worst part somehow. Then one of us stood by the heater while the other one took a shower, and we’d switch until we were finally thawed. By that time we were ready to go again.
It seemed good at the time…
…to bring the cat with us to the beach and let her outside. She loved it, but would never come back, so we always had to wait until she came back inside to go home if it was the last day of vacation. And she had like cat ESP because she always was gone on that day. And once her tail got bit by some crazy animal at the beach and she had to wear a cone on her head.
It sounded good at the time…
…to sneak out of bed secretly in the middle of the night to read in the living room. I swear it was like the coolest idea EVER, and it was always my idea, since I am the oldest and the bad example. Now that I’ve heard other people’s stories about sneaking out in the middle of the night, I’m pretty sure we were missing the entire point. I would like a mulligan, please. We’d be laying there in our beds and I would finally whisper the plan to Wyeth after we could tell Mom and Dad were asleep. I would leap as far off of my bed as possible and gently land in the middle of the room so as not to be eaten by the wolves under the bed. They were confined under the bed though, so once I was touching the floor I was fine. We’d choose a book and quietly crawl down the hall, which was the hard part, since it was right by Mom and Dad’s room. And it was really FUNNY to be doing this in the middle of the night, so if I looked over at Wyeth stealthily crawling away I would always start to giggle, and then we would sprint-crawl to the living room where it was safe. If I were Mom and Dad I might have killed us, because we were so giggly and annoying, but they just captured us and returned us to our room. Where we could just read anyway, I don’t know why it was so exciting to read in the dark living room when I had a perfectly good flashlight.
It sounded good at the time…
…to let Wyeth try my Dr. Pepper-flavored chapstick, because he ate it. And then all I had left was stupid Strawberry.
June 3, 2010
The Hunchback of North Cedar (Street)
Once upon a time in chemistry class today, my stomach started to progressively tighten into a nice knot. This was completely tolerable, since most of the two hour class we were sitting and stirring the same beaker. By the time we got to Brad’s house however, I was semi-dying, and probably most of it is because Brad is funny, so I kept laughing, which only fueled the knot. And on the way home in my car, I kept thinking about this really stupid thing someone in my class said yesterday, so I was cracking up AGAIN, which didn’t untangle the knot. We are learning about genetics and stuff, and specifically about alleles. And as the teacher was showing a chart that mapped out some of the possible combinations of the sex chromosomes (ie. XY, XX, XXY, XYY, X, etc.), literally aloud in the middle of class, this guy asked if one of the alleles would explain why someone is gay. Brad turned red, I couldn’t look at the teacher, there was a collective groan, and then the teacher handled it better than anything he’s handled all year by saying, “That’s beyond the scope of this class.” For once, when he said that, I was glad. The people in these classes of ours are priceless. So anyway I was cackling to myself about that on the way home, and consequently dying.
When I got to my house, I was hunched over. And hunched is how I’ve remained for the last four hours. It’s weird. I have a relatively high threshold for pain, or at least as high as I can tell, having never really severely wounded myself. So actually, I’ll retract that statement. I guess I have no idea. I could be a total pansy. I mean, yeah. I probably am. I guess I got hit in the face with a baseball bat once, but that only required six stitches. Actually I’ve been hit in the head tons of times with various objects during sports events. Most notably basketballs. Which are kind of stunning if they aren’t expected, and obviously they weren’t, or I would have caught or at least batted at them. So I had tape on my glasses a few times. And once I got sunburned so badly my face oozed stuff and crusted over and I had a slight fever and didn’t leave the house for three days. And a couple times my head bounced off the ground in softball, but you know. That's what happens when one lands ungracefully on the ground a lot. And one year in high school my nose would randomly bleed and I got migraines. And once I sort of passed out in the shower because of a nosebleed and landed on my hip on the metal track thing that holds the door. But the nosebleeds and migraines went away. And there’s something stuck in my kneecap, or like a chip missing from it, or something that really sucks to kneel on ever since I totally ate it off my bike on the way to work last year. (Embarrassingly, there were witnesses. But that was like a year ago and it’s still in my knee for whatever reason). Anyway! I never got severely hurt. I never even broke any bones! Except for a hairline fracture on my skull when I was two from falling off some stairs. Actually I don’t even know if it was a hairline fracture, but the back of my head was apparently squishy afterward, and the doctor said that was bad. Which probably explains a lot. But mild head wounds pale in comparison to something like childbirth. Or a dislocated shoulder. Or a bullet wound. So. Consider me a wuss, but still pity me because I am dying.
Anyhow, my point wasn’t really that I’m dying, because that part will go away. At least I hope, or I’ll be dead. And then, effectively, it will have gone away. Anyway, I research everything possible, because how can I resist, with infinite amounts of information just sitting there about EVERYTHING on the internet. And health questions always bring me to WebMD. My point was going to be: never go onto WebMD, ever. I'm not even going to link it for you. Because I revisited it today, and my future according to that thing is bleak. And I’m not by any means a hypochondriac or anything. I rarely am sick, and I don't really get pathetically sick when I do get sick. Except I have a slight cold today, which is stupid. I totally have WebMD syndrome though, which is similar to medical student syndrome, but probably less informed. WebMD just tells you you're most likely dying and there’s nothing really you can do to remedy it at home. Which I already knew OBVIOUSLY before. If I wasn’t freaking dying, I wouldn’t be that curious about it.
WebMD is totally crazed. I’m convinced they have to tell you every possible scenario so people don’t sue them or something, but really? Try it. I mean, do you have a headache? Could be AIDS. Weird rash? It shows you like 8 pictures of rashes that COULD be construed to look like your rash, so you possibly now have 8 diseases instead of just poison oak or whatever you thought it was. All rashes start to look the same on that thing. When Oliver had 5th Disease (which sounds terrifying, but seriously is a common childhood thing and fine), it could have been ringworm, eczema, psoriasis of the face, freaking anything according to WebMD!
I looked up red cheeks (since mine are always red, sometimes I get afraid that it might indicate something more serious than just having a windblown complexion, as Brad calls it, which is one of the reasons he’s funny), and I was almost convinced I have rosacea and soon my nose could get all bulbous and red. Wouldn’t that be fun? I turn red even if I think of something moderately embarrassing. Or talk, ever. Or if someone else says something moderately embarrassing. WebMD says blushing easily might be the only symptom you notice before you get rosacea.
A couple months ago, my eye was twitching, and someone on Facebook said it might be BELLS PALSY, because she just had that and her eye twitched first. And then her face froze for a while I guess! I was like you’re effing kidding me, but I looked it up on trusty WebMD and it brought me to a page that asked me, “Do you have poor night vision?” Umm. Yeah. I pretty much suck at seeing anyway, but at night, yes, it is harder. So then it said maybe I’ll get cataracts. Or retinitis pigmentosa, a genetic disorder affecting young people before the age of 30. Or diabetes, which I probably will get anyway due to all the sugary junk I eat. But I think WebMD reversed the eye twitch and cancelled it out, because after I read all that stuff my eye was fine. I’m still not certain that the eye twitch isn’t a clear predictor of the karmic stroke I’m going to have at 40, but until it twitches again I’m putting it out of my mind.
Every time I go on WebMD, it’s like that kids’ book, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. You give the mouse one cookie and suddenly it needs like tons more stuff. I read one article, and suddenly I need to know all the definitions and causes and symptoms. And I always think, OK, don’t get carried away. Just look at the most reasonable things, and don’t click on any links within the article. Because when I do that I’ve found my list of possible ailments greatly increases. But then some little voice is always like, since you’ve been badly sunburned tons of times before the age of 18, and totally unfairly because you didn’t even try to tan back then, you're just incredibly pale, maybe you should look at the sunscreen rankings again. Just for the ingredients? Maybe then make sure you’ve stocked a sunscreen with every possible ingredient combination in your house, just in case the rankings change. Which is how I ended up with Neutrogena Baby Sunscreen with zinc oxide (for that really hot, white-faced look at the beach), Banana Boat Sport Sunscreen, some natural Kiss My Face Sun Stick thing, Aveeno Faces, Neutrogena Ultra-Sheer Dry-touch Helioplex SPF 85+, Hawaiian Tropic SPF 6 (I think I was in denial for that one. I bought it mainly because it smells like coconuts), and probably 10 others in every size, type of application, and SPF. And like 900 chapsticks with sunscreen. There are three in my purse right now, two on the nightstand that I alternate each night, several more on one of my bookshelves, and random sticks in different coat pockets just in case my lips burn, shrivel up, or crack off. See:
And those are just the ones I could find within two minutes. I didn't even look in my car or softball bag, or the linen closet, in which I know for sure there are tons more. There’s a point every summer where I consider wearing light, long-sleeved shirts, pants, and wide-brimmed hats and only leaving the house before 10 a.m. and after 7 p.m. like it recommends on WebMD, but then I say screw it and end up sunburned no matter which sunscreen I choose. I may have tons of wrinkles by the time I’m 35, but at least I will have lived. As long as I don’t use any wrinkle creams with the wrong ingredients. And until one of my blistering burns contributes to skin cancer.
So I’m cutting myself off from WebMD. Because if I look up how carried away I get, it might tell me I’m being all OCD and paranoid, which might lead me to look up compulsive behaviors or delusions, which sounds like it would inevitably lead to reading my old psychology texts, and then I’ll just decide I have everything and call it a day. And then I’ll go on to read my bedtime story, Boomeritis (thanks, Matt!). It is difficult enough to read and analyze one’s consciousness levels and spiritual health without having poor night vision, skin cancer, diabetes, psychotic obsessive-compulsive disorder (that’s a new one for the DSM-V), and some kind of undiagnosed stomach knot. And now that I’ve sat here trying not to breathe too hard while I was writing this because my stomach is dying, my butt is asleep. Which I’m sure means I’m in some early stage of paralysis. But I don’t know because I’m not looking it up.
When I got to my house, I was hunched over. And hunched is how I’ve remained for the last four hours. It’s weird. I have a relatively high threshold for pain, or at least as high as I can tell, having never really severely wounded myself. So actually, I’ll retract that statement. I guess I have no idea. I could be a total pansy. I mean, yeah. I probably am. I guess I got hit in the face with a baseball bat once, but that only required six stitches. Actually I’ve been hit in the head tons of times with various objects during sports events. Most notably basketballs. Which are kind of stunning if they aren’t expected, and obviously they weren’t, or I would have caught or at least batted at them. So I had tape on my glasses a few times. And once I got sunburned so badly my face oozed stuff and crusted over and I had a slight fever and didn’t leave the house for three days. And a couple times my head bounced off the ground in softball, but you know. That's what happens when one lands ungracefully on the ground a lot. And one year in high school my nose would randomly bleed and I got migraines. And once I sort of passed out in the shower because of a nosebleed and landed on my hip on the metal track thing that holds the door. But the nosebleeds and migraines went away. And there’s something stuck in my kneecap, or like a chip missing from it, or something that really sucks to kneel on ever since I totally ate it off my bike on the way to work last year. (Embarrassingly, there were witnesses. But that was like a year ago and it’s still in my knee for whatever reason). Anyway! I never got severely hurt. I never even broke any bones! Except for a hairline fracture on my skull when I was two from falling off some stairs. Actually I don’t even know if it was a hairline fracture, but the back of my head was apparently squishy afterward, and the doctor said that was bad. Which probably explains a lot. But mild head wounds pale in comparison to something like childbirth. Or a dislocated shoulder. Or a bullet wound. So. Consider me a wuss, but still pity me because I am dying.
Anyhow, my point wasn’t really that I’m dying, because that part will go away. At least I hope, or I’ll be dead. And then, effectively, it will have gone away. Anyway, I research everything possible, because how can I resist, with infinite amounts of information just sitting there about EVERYTHING on the internet. And health questions always bring me to WebMD. My point was going to be: never go onto WebMD, ever. I'm not even going to link it for you. Because I revisited it today, and my future according to that thing is bleak. And I’m not by any means a hypochondriac or anything. I rarely am sick, and I don't really get pathetically sick when I do get sick. Except I have a slight cold today, which is stupid. I totally have WebMD syndrome though, which is similar to medical student syndrome, but probably less informed. WebMD just tells you you're most likely dying and there’s nothing really you can do to remedy it at home. Which I already knew OBVIOUSLY before. If I wasn’t freaking dying, I wouldn’t be that curious about it.
WebMD is totally crazed. I’m convinced they have to tell you every possible scenario so people don’t sue them or something, but really? Try it. I mean, do you have a headache? Could be AIDS. Weird rash? It shows you like 8 pictures of rashes that COULD be construed to look like your rash, so you possibly now have 8 diseases instead of just poison oak or whatever you thought it was. All rashes start to look the same on that thing. When Oliver had 5th Disease (which sounds terrifying, but seriously is a common childhood thing and fine), it could have been ringworm, eczema, psoriasis of the face, freaking anything according to WebMD!
I looked up red cheeks (since mine are always red, sometimes I get afraid that it might indicate something more serious than just having a windblown complexion, as Brad calls it, which is one of the reasons he’s funny), and I was almost convinced I have rosacea and soon my nose could get all bulbous and red. Wouldn’t that be fun? I turn red even if I think of something moderately embarrassing. Or talk, ever. Or if someone else says something moderately embarrassing. WebMD says blushing easily might be the only symptom you notice before you get rosacea.
A couple months ago, my eye was twitching, and someone on Facebook said it might be BELLS PALSY, because she just had that and her eye twitched first. And then her face froze for a while I guess! I was like you’re effing kidding me, but I looked it up on trusty WebMD and it brought me to a page that asked me, “Do you have poor night vision?” Umm. Yeah. I pretty much suck at seeing anyway, but at night, yes, it is harder. So then it said maybe I’ll get cataracts. Or retinitis pigmentosa, a genetic disorder affecting young people before the age of 30. Or diabetes, which I probably will get anyway due to all the sugary junk I eat. But I think WebMD reversed the eye twitch and cancelled it out, because after I read all that stuff my eye was fine. I’m still not certain that the eye twitch isn’t a clear predictor of the karmic stroke I’m going to have at 40, but until it twitches again I’m putting it out of my mind.
Every time I go on WebMD, it’s like that kids’ book, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. You give the mouse one cookie and suddenly it needs like tons more stuff. I read one article, and suddenly I need to know all the definitions and causes and symptoms. And I always think, OK, don’t get carried away. Just look at the most reasonable things, and don’t click on any links within the article. Because when I do that I’ve found my list of possible ailments greatly increases. But then some little voice is always like, since you’ve been badly sunburned tons of times before the age of 18, and totally unfairly because you didn’t even try to tan back then, you're just incredibly pale, maybe you should look at the sunscreen rankings again. Just for the ingredients? Maybe then make sure you’ve stocked a sunscreen with every possible ingredient combination in your house, just in case the rankings change. Which is how I ended up with Neutrogena Baby Sunscreen with zinc oxide (for that really hot, white-faced look at the beach), Banana Boat Sport Sunscreen, some natural Kiss My Face Sun Stick thing, Aveeno Faces, Neutrogena Ultra-Sheer Dry-touch Helioplex SPF 85+, Hawaiian Tropic SPF 6 (I think I was in denial for that one. I bought it mainly because it smells like coconuts), and probably 10 others in every size, type of application, and SPF. And like 900 chapsticks with sunscreen. There are three in my purse right now, two on the nightstand that I alternate each night, several more on one of my bookshelves, and random sticks in different coat pockets just in case my lips burn, shrivel up, or crack off. See:
And those are just the ones I could find within two minutes. I didn't even look in my car or softball bag, or the linen closet, in which I know for sure there are tons more. There’s a point every summer where I consider wearing light, long-sleeved shirts, pants, and wide-brimmed hats and only leaving the house before 10 a.m. and after 7 p.m. like it recommends on WebMD, but then I say screw it and end up sunburned no matter which sunscreen I choose. I may have tons of wrinkles by the time I’m 35, but at least I will have lived. As long as I don’t use any wrinkle creams with the wrong ingredients. And until one of my blistering burns contributes to skin cancer.
So I’m cutting myself off from WebMD. Because if I look up how carried away I get, it might tell me I’m being all OCD and paranoid, which might lead me to look up compulsive behaviors or delusions, which sounds like it would inevitably lead to reading my old psychology texts, and then I’ll just decide I have everything and call it a day. And then I’ll go on to read my bedtime story, Boomeritis (thanks, Matt!). It is difficult enough to read and analyze one’s consciousness levels and spiritual health without having poor night vision, skin cancer, diabetes, psychotic obsessive-compulsive disorder (that’s a new one for the DSM-V), and some kind of undiagnosed stomach knot. And now that I’ve sat here trying not to breathe too hard while I was writing this because my stomach is dying, my butt is asleep. Which I’m sure means I’m in some early stage of paralysis. But I don’t know because I’m not looking it up.
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