Monthly Archives: October 2011
Spicing it up.
After eating the most deliciously spiced fake meat ever (made by “Mr.” Hit By A Pitch) the other night, and then eating bland boring food the next few nights, it hit me.
Somewhere in the past few months, I lost excitement in cooking and in eating. Nothing I made for dinner seemed appetizing, seemed worth gobbling. More often than I would like to admit, I turned to the sandwich fixings meant for lunches or even Greek yogurt with fruit or granola instead of chicken in the freezer or steak in the fridge.
Armed with a 20% off coupon to the local spice shop given to me by a co-worker, I went a little wild tonight buying a few blends that should inspire some adventurous cooking and eating. Taco seasoning, garlic salt, Hungarian paprika, and a Moroccan spice mixture all bring delicious ideas to the forefront of my mind.
I can’t wait to start cooking again…though I think the empty fridge and freezer need a good restock before I can share what goodness I am concocting.
The rambly fifteen, #4.
Fifteen minutes straight writing…begin…right…now.
I am staring out my window, at the pouring (cold) rain, wondering if I will need to exercise the rare option of working from home tomorrow. While the VPN is excellent, and plenty of people telecommute, my position is not meant for regular telecommuting. OH well. At the very least, in my department, safety is the first priority during snowstorms instead of showing up to work, even if it means taking vacation or personal time.
Just got finished reading The Perks of Being a Wallflower. While some of the main character’s experiences are unfamiliar, some of his thoughts and some of his teenage unpolished writing are so hauntingly familiar to me. Add to it, that it takes place during the year I was a sophomore in high school… sigh. Just heartbreakingly familiar.
I have been out and about “participating”, as Charlie is told to do in that book. “Let’s Talk About Books” club, which brought forth said book, is kind of cool. Not any particular book is discussed – just our overall favorites and recent favorites.
Old co-worker A and I met for lunch the other day.
And I got around to a two-year-old’s birthday party, where most guests were adults and with some adult beverages. No real explanations of what’s going on in my life needed with these strangers, lots of talk about football and Germany and the lack of real autumn in Colorado. I felt rather comfortable in the social situation, and I don’t think it was just the adult beverages I consumed – I felt like I could be myself talking about that stuff. Plus if I felt really uncomfortable, there was cavorting with small children and their toys.
I continue to drop weight without really trying – no real tries at keeping with diet or exercise, though blood glucose levels are fine, too. The only things that could be helping are the complete absence of diet soda (since Sept 29) and little alcohol consumption thanks to the newish anti-depressant that makes me hungover when I drink more than a beer or glass of wine. (The morning after the birthday party was not that bad, though.)
In bloom.
A lone flower still alive with color while others around it have become wiltered and dried…
…leads me to thoughts of what the flower garden will look like in the spring, with everything in bloom once again.
…leads me to hope of where I will be in the spring, a few steps closer to feeling settled into a new life.
The patient.
To the doctors and nurses who treat me, I am their patient. I sit in their waiting rooms as their patient, I get blood drawn as their patient.
To others who know me, I am a daughter, a sister, an aunt, a niece, a cousin, a friend, a co-worker.
To myself, who am I really?
A writer, a dreamer, a knowledge seeker, an expert at sarcasm, a wine lover, a sports fan, a cat herder.
But at times, I feel I am something else.
In the midst of high blood glucose, or while experiencing a panic attack, or during the morning routine of medication, or when feeling the darkness of depression, or even looking at the surgery scar in the mirror – I discover I am a patient.
Without the mask.
It felt safe.
I could be myself. Anxiety, depression, diabetes, major abdominal surgeries – all out on the table like a buffet. With all that disclosure came more confidence; with all that disclosure out of the way, focus could be achieved.
The longer I stayed, the more I learned in the face of downsizing. The longer I stayed, the more they depended on me in the face of pay cuts.
All of a sudden, I needed to break free, start fresh, find stability.
***
It does not feel safe.
I cannot be myself. Bits and pieces of the health story are out on the table, but not full disclosure. Confidence and focus are sinking further each and every day.
The longer I stay, the less I learn. The longer I stay, the less they depend on me.
***
Which leads me to a question. In the workplace, is it better to keep the mask of normalcy on, leaving all everything inside to fester – or is it better to rip the mask off, exposing all that is true in order to actually thrive in the face of adversity?
Because one of these days, the mask might just fall off and the worst will be revealed. And then what? Would they still trust me to do the job?
***
This is an entry for the next ChronicBabe blog carnival – about living behind the mask of “super-coping Chronic Babe”.
The rambly fifteen, #3.
Fifteen minutes straight writing…begin…right…now.
Sometimes when you dream about someone vomiting upon you, you wake up to hear a cat vomiting. If you are lucky, the vomit will not be on you.
Sometimes you need to go through a whole lot of shit in order to figure out stuff about yourself that might have saved you from some of the shit. If you are lucky, you still end up learning things that are actually kind of awesome, even if you still hurt and even if it is too late to change what happened.
Sometimes your team has a rough start to the NFL season and then they get to play the worst team in their division – which allows them to regain their collective egos as they rout that team to end up at 3-3. And sometimes you go 9-4 on your entire selection of NFL picks for a week. (Which makes you wonder when you will finally play fantasy football, too.)
Sometimes you just need to watch trashy television shows you swore off a few years back. Sometimes you remember why you swore them off as they are even more ridiculous than they were back then. Sometimes you think you could live without a television, and then you remember how much you love watching football and hockey on said television.
Sometimes you need to stop saying “sometimes you…”.
I am not going to lie, there has been a certain level of disgusting boredom at work lately. Things seem to be picking up, especially with spreadsheet creation and updating in order to analyze different aspects of the program’s finances, which excites me more than it should. I like being busy, it keeps my mind off all that shit I talked about earlier.
I guess I never mentioned that my month-old crock pot stopped working in April in the middle of what should have been a delicious Moroccan chicken meal and instead turned out to be a raw mess. Two things resulted since – chicken has turned my stomach and I have not slow cooked. I must remedy the second situation this weekend with the purchase of a new crock pot. That will hopefully last more than a month.
21 Things I’ve Never Done.
(This started with The Pioneer Woman, but I found it through Mama Kat and her weekly writing prompts.)
I am thirty-five years old and have not done the following:
- Visit Disney World.
- Watch the movie Titanic.
- Work retail.
- Seen a ballet performance other than The Nutcracker.
- Visit New Orleans.
- Read any of the Twilight series or watch any of the movies.
- Pierce any part of my body, including ears.
- Sleep in a sleeping bag in a tent under the stars.
- Read Ayn Rand.
- Attend a Chicago Bears game at Soldier Field.
- Use a Wii.
- Visit London.
- Possess a driver’s license.
- Attend an official viewing of Rocky Horror Picture Show.
- Cross-country skiing.
- Enjoyed prior visits to Las Vegas.
- Been arrested or cited for anything, in spite of plenty of underage drinking in a bar.
- Visit Alaska.
- Eat Baked Alaska.
- Hike Mt. Sanitas in Boulder.
- Toss aside my spirit of ’76 elephant to the trash or donation bin.
Friday cat blogging: Not so alone.
The year I turned nine, my parents separated for a few months. It ended up being just me and Mom at home.
We found ourselves at the local animal shelter picking out a kitten named Kizzy a few weeks after Dad moved out.
For the longest time, even after Kizzy passed away at the age of nineteen, I thought the cat was meant to smooth over the huge change that occurred in my life that year.
Now I understand that my mom must have also needed a little something to make her a little less lonely as she adjusted to a different way of life.
