Cranky Fibro Girl

Harnessing the healing power of snark

Magical Thinking-2, Reality-0

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(For those of you who’ve been following my saga with the imaginary snakes.)

Last week I tried to explain to one of our friends, who also has his pilot’s license, why I just was not OK with him taking my husband up for a ride in his plane:

“It has nothing to do with you (and it really doesn’t). It’s just that deep down in my heart, I truly don’t believe that planes should be able to fly. It really feels like that violates all the laws of nature. I think that the only reason it’s worked so far is that we’re all under some kind of magical spell. And it’s only a matter of time before the spell ends, and all the planes in the world come crashing down.”

One Of The Many Reasons I Have A Coach

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After many years of therapy, and medication, and working on myself, my support team and I have together come to the conclusion that this may be the time when I can gradually begin to get off of my anti-depressants. Yay! So yesterday I had the following conversation with my coach as we worked out a plan to support me during this time.

We discussed the various symptoms I’ve noticed before when changing medications or doses, and came up with a list of things to watch for.

My coach: So on a scale of 1-10, how intense do these symptoms have to get before you either call me or your doctor to get some help with them?

Me: ……..

Me: Um, usually I just wait them out and endure through them until they’re over.

My coach: I know! But we’re not doing it that way this time. That’s the whole point of this scale. This time we’re going to do it gently and easily, so gently as a matter of fact that you might not even notice a damn thing!

Me: Oh.

Me: I can do that?

H.A.L.T.

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You know how when you’re attempting some sort of behavior modification, such as quitting smoking, or losing weight, or planning some sort of highly flammable, explosive revenge on all the spammers who insist on filling your inbox with their constant offers of mature grandma/teen/ebony/latino shemales, the experts advise that you never let yourself get too Hungry, Angry, Lonely, or Tired? Well I’ve found that that is also an excellent checklist for me to run through in my mind to determine whether or not I am in an appropriate state of mind to post something on my blog. Only for me my issue isn’t so much with hunger as it is with sadness, so my acronym is actually S.A.L.T.

I’ve developed a little pre-posting questionnaire for myself that looks like this:

Sad

1. Do you frequently find yourself using phrases containing the word “existential” when other people ask you how you’re doing?

2. When you last talked with your coach, did she use the words “skewed” and “not real” to describe the way you are currently perceiving the world, and then:

a. ground you from using any self-help tools for the next week

b. suggest that you immediately gag yourself with duct tape so as not to irrevocably f&*@ up every single one of your current relationships

c. suggest that perhaps it was not a good idea to experiment with getting off your medications and not tell anyone about it

d. all of the above

3. Are you about to post something that sounds like this on your blog for the entire Internet to read and wonder about:

“But whatever the reason suddenly the box flies open again, and instead of consciously acting as the rational, competent adult you are now, you’re unconsciously reacting as a 5 year old. Or a 12 year old. Or in my case, a 19 year old without the first f*&@3*^ clue as to how to deal with other human beings.

Yes, that’s right. Lately the Enormous Blind Spot of “Things I Never Resolved Back When I Was 19” has finally overtaken The Car Of “Speeding Blissfully Down The Highway Of Jenny’s Life”, and smashed head on into the Giant Brick Wall Of “Hi. This Is Your Life. I’ve Been Trying To Get Your Attention Now For The Past Couple Of Years, But You Never Listened. So Unfortunately Now You Have No Choice But To CRASH.” (Self-judgment, much?)”

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A Perfect Example Of Why I Am A Terrible Employee

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AKA, “If Something Is Stupid, I Am Going To Point It Out To Everyone.”

My husband: “I might get the Nintendo Wii before Christmas. If I do, then I’ll be asking for some of its accessories on my Christmas list.”

Me: “I heard that people are having a lot of trouble with those.”

My husband: “Yeah, apparently the strap keeps breaking on the wee-mote.”

Me: “Excuse me, the what?”

My husband: “Yes, that’s what it’s called. The Wii-mote.”

Me: “Hm, and apparently it was named by Elmer Fudd.” (“I wost my wee-mote. I wuv my wee-mote.”)

Keeping Me Humble

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Recently I have been having some really great sessions with my coach, where we are clearing out a lot of old “stuff” in my life and making room for new stuff to come in. I’ve been pretty excited about all the progress I’m making, and so one night I described in grand detail to my husband how I’ve reached this fabulous new mental and emotional place from which to launch the next phase of my life.

Ha.

Apparently what really happened was that cleaning out all of that inner, mental space means that now I just have more time and energy to spend obsessing about the fact that there is something growing on the top of my head. This means that we have been having a lot of conversations like this:

My husband: “So, what do you want to do for dinner?”

Me (hysterically): “I DON’T WANT TO HAVE A HEAD MOLE!”

I also got my permanent crown last week, which means that when I’m not freaking out over the Foreign Body Protruding From My Scalp I’m walking around the house announcing things like, “My fake tooth feels so shiny and smooth!”

Not surprisingly, things around here are going a little more slowly (I have a head mole!) than I had anticipated (And a fake tooth!) as I figure out a new strategy (My fake tooth, it is so smooth!) for dealing with this new level (Now all my other teeth feel so sharp and pointy!) of crazy-ass, monkey-mind chatter (Maybe I’m part wolf!)

Seriously, my mind? One scary place.

Is It Wrong…

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…that when I went to the eye doctor yesterday to get contacts for the very first time ever, and the lady teaching me how to put them in and take them out said, “Wow, usually it takes people an hour to learn how to do this, but you learned really fast!”, that I felt an immense surge of pride in my superior contact-putting-in-and-taking-out skills?

Or, on second thought, is that just kind of sad? Just like the fact that yesterday evening I took a shower, got dressed to go out, did my hair, put in my contacts, put on my glasses, and then thought, “Holy cow! After all I’ve been through today with my eyes, why the heck can I not see?!”

I guess these are just two more links in the longstanding chain of evidence which proves that I will never, ever, ever be cool, as least not as the world defines it.

Why I Love My Husband So Much: Reason #1

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He “gets” me.

Today my husband invited me out to lunch, and as we were eating I was telling him how I was kind of nervous about a meeting I will be attending tomorrow. Everyone is very nice and very welcoming, but they have the entire agenda planned out Minute. By. Minute. and everyone has a specific title that you must use when referring to them, and basically there is just a lot of protocol, all of which I am completely unfamiliar with.

It’s not that I don’t respect those kinds of things, or that I purposefully want to be disrespectful. It’s just that I’m nothing if not non-conformist, and I’m afraid that the stress of trying to follow all of those rules will just build up inside of me until the point where I lose all control over myself and just start screaming out “ASS! ASS! ASS!”in the middle of the meeting because I can no longer take all the pressure.

Not only was my husband not horrified by this confession, he actually thought it was pretty funny. And then he offered an extremely insightful comment on my situation, saying, “Hm, kind of like Tourette’s by stress?”

Exactly.

See? He really gets me.

I Just Love Being Me

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Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

As I mentioned before, this past weekend I went to North Carolina to visit my family.

I drove up Friday to my parents’ house, and then the next day we went to visit my brother and his new bride. I think my brother is really cool, for so many different reasons. Not the least of which is the fact that he has two different colored eyes, which he kindly let me take a picture of this weekend to share with all of you. It was only recently that we learned that this is an actual condition called “heterochromia iridium”, and not just my brother being different in his own unique way.

So that doesn’t really have anything to do with the rest of this story, except for the fact that I think it’s really cool, and the fact that going to see my brother and sister-in-law was the reason I was at my parents’ house and able to participate in this story.

After we got back to my parents’ house it was time to watch golf. I don’t have the energy right now to go into all the details of my family’s passionate love affair with golf, but suffice it to say that everyone except me L-O-V-E-S it, and thanks to cable it is now possible for them to watch golf 24 hours a day.

So apparently this weekend a lot of the major players on the PGA tour were in Chicago participating in the Cialis Western Open. And, as usual, my parents were trying to convert me into a golf lover, extolling all the virtues of the game like mental discipline, elegance, beauty, drama, history, tradition, blah, blah, blah. But I was not buying it At All, because I could not get past the fact that the whole entire theme of this particular sporting competition was, “Men Having More Sex Because Their Penises Work Better.” (Apparently I was the only one who found that even a little weird.)

And so I declared to my parents that from now on I was going to refer to this particular event as, “The Penis Open”.

And they had nothing to say after that.

How Far The Mighty Have Fallen

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I personally do not believe in using bumper stickers to express my most deeply held beliefs and opinions for all the world to see. But that doesn’t have to do with bumper stickers themselves, so much as it does the fact that my personal opinions tend to change at the speed of a teenager with ADD playing “Burnout Revenge” after consuming 5 cans of Code Red Mountain Dew. And so that is why God made blogs. And people with no long-term memory.
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Not Quite As Clever As I Thought

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Yesterday I had to sign into one of my many online accounts so that I could order a refill for one of my prescriptions. Unfortunately I had forgotten my password, but luckily there was a link I could click on that would give me a password “hint”.

I expected it to be a question that I had to answer like, “What year did you graduate from college?”, or “What was the name of your first pet?”

But clearly I had forgotten who I am. Because when I clicked on that link, I saw this:

“The hint for your password is…’ham’.”

HAM.

What?!

Clearly “cleverness”+me=not a good idea At All