Refracted Neurons

"Stories are antibodies against illness and pain."-Anatole Broyard . . . and I'm sick again.  I went home early from work today because I felt like crap, couldn't really hear out of one ear, and couldn't keep my snot in my nose.  So I've been sleeping, reading,  and taking hot baths all day long, but mostly just sleeping.  Now I'm bored, but I know I don't have any energy to do anything. I'm supposed to be writing a poem on pressure, but I'm waiting until I'm actually under pressure to do it.  Okay, so really I can't think of anything to write.  I should have done it two days ago when I had this weird pre-illness energy and decided that should quit my job and design clothing for Christmas tree angels.  The little voice of logic in my head had a royal bitch-fit over that one.  Something about Christmas only happening once a year and my sewing skills being questionable. 

Guy: "Women are only good for one thing." Me: "Brains?" Guy: "No." Me: "I'm pretty sure it's brains.  Hold on, let me check . . . yup!  It's brains."

I just got home from contra dancing.  It was so much fun, it completely changed my mood.  I would describe the dance as a partner dance in which you spin around until you are very ill and can't do it anymore.  But someone in the know described it much better: it's like square dancing only in lines instead of squares. The real question is: do guys know how charming it is when they partner dance and enjoy it?  If you are a guy, and you don't know, let me tell you, it is one of the most charming things you can do.  Some of the guys were very cute too, but not in a mainstream way.  Let me put it this way: about 20% of the men wore skirts or kilts.   My favorite was this little (shorter than I) guy with glasses and redish hair.  He was so happy when he danced and when he would spin me he would grab on to my hair so it wouldn't hit other people (a lot of people got hit with the hair). Waaaaay too much fun and I'm still dizzy. 

I feel so numb right now that if I touched my face, it would be cold as if I had been standing at a bus stop in a rain storm. 

I've been saying that I have a crush on this guy, but I think really I'm just entertained by him.  It's harmless because he lives with his girlfriend, so there's absolutely no chance of getting with Crazy.  Today when I drove up to my friend's apartment, I could see him outside on the balcony wearing an ungodly hat and pajama bottoms.  In the time that I've known him, he's run around in various states of undress and disrepair (no shirt, black eye), usually while grilling.  Today he was making candles.  I was fascinated and ran up to him to beseige him with questions, "What are you going to do with them?  Are you giving them away for Christmas? How do you do that?  What's the wick made out of?"  He couldn't answer any of this because he was brushing his teeth. My friend said, "It's kind of weird, he's been doing that all week long." "That's how I like it," I said. "That's part and parcel of y

My soon-to-be roomate and I saw the scariest apartment yesterday.  It was, to give it credit, huge.  It had three bedrooms, two bathrooms, and tons of storage space.  It also reminded me of The Shining. The first thing that really made my jaw drop was the free-standing wood burning heater in the living room.  Then I made the mistake of looking up in the bathrooms.  Someone has decided it would be soothing to have blue paint splotches all over the ceilings of both bathrooms.  The icing on the cake of this apartment was what I refered to as "the closet room."  It was a narrow room, about three feet wide, with nothing but two giant closets in it.  I stood inside the room and gaped at my roomate.  I kept having visions of storing Sysco 10 cans in the closet room and making out with strangely attractive corpses in the splotchy bathrooms while my roomate breaks the lease by chasing other tenants with an axe and then running away in a snowplow.   Needless to say, we decided to

"Oh, you're a Libra, that explains a lot!  I used to date Libras.  Man!  You'll find love with a Libra, whether you like it or not!"-One of my co-workers on Libras "It's not mindgames, it's empowerment, that's all." -Evira after being told by me that she was playing mindgames, boardgames, all kinds of games. "'I suffer,' he announced firmly. 'Then you really must find another job,' she urged him sympathetically, 'You certainly must be qualified for some work where you don't have to shoot people, or beat them or torture them to death.' 'Job?' he said, frowning . . . 'There is nothing wrong with my job.  It is my mistress who causes me torment.'" -Dorothy Gilman The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax 

Me: It's not rat poop it's jelly beans. Co-worker: How can you be sure? Me: Because I ate one.

Every month I have to go to the bank and cash the petty cash check for work.  It's kind of boring and the only thing that has kept it interesting is one of the bankers, who I think is a vampire.  He has black hair, pale skin, bottomless eyes, sharp incisors, and long fingernails.  He usually dances around behind the plexi-glass (installed so he won't bite the customers) and makes his hands into gun shapes when the the money counter makes its "rat-a-tat-tat" sound.  In short, he's entertaining. So you can imagine my dismay when I found out that the bank had moved, and Gary the Vampire Banker was no where to be seen.  Did the new management stake him?  Did they try to move during the day and he turned to ash?  Does the new bank cramp his style due to the lack of underground catcombs, creaking doors, and abundant vermin?

I've been disorganized, tripping over things, forgetting things, losing things, unable to point east on a cloudless morning.  The good thing is that I've been working on a new Agnes Adventure! I've been frickin' frackin' busy for about a month.  I took a GRE prep course and I've been trying to study, but today it just isn't happening.  I had a really weird dream last night that I had wandered into a garden full of wolves.  There were other women and a (male) gardener/game warden there.  I was running late for work, but I had to move slowly through the garden so the wolves won't see me.  The gardener herded the women and me together, telling us not to panic or the wolves would attack.  Then he said that one of the wolves had "locked on" to one of the women (like a guided missile?).  Suddenly this furry thing came running towards us, and I panicked.  It bit me right in the crotch and I thought I was going to die.  Then I realized it was a do

I found out last week that I have a rare skin disease.  It's called Pityriasis Lichenoides Chronica.  I've had it for six months and thought it was excema the whole time.  Fortunately, mine is just on my hands.  I saw some pretty scary pictures of it on people's butts on the internet.  I would explain more about it, except that the whole thing seems confusing and no one knows what causes it.  It's not contagious, and as my dermatologist said, "It's related to a disease that's related to another disease . . . be very careful when you look it up!"  He was trying to tell me that he doesn't think I'm dying (of AIDS, cancer, Epstein Barr, Hepatitis, etc). Anyway, the medicine is a lot worse than the disease.  It makes me feel sick and requires blood monitoring.  I looked that up too.  He's giving me a small dose of a chemotherapy drug.  It makes me wonder how people manage when they're on chemo.  I met a guy once who was on chemo and had

Guy: So, you got your eye on any of the guys here? Me: All of them. Guy: Good answer. Me: This room is just swimming with hotness.  I'm overwhelmed!  My head is spinning!

This was on the church bulletin today: "Pastor ____ will bring a message on 'The Cup of Wrath.'  We will participate in the Lord's Table together."

I am a very picky eater. However, I love Starbucks' cinnamon rolls.  Apparently, so does everyone else because three quarters of the time I try to buy one and they're all out.  Here's how the conversation goes: Me: Do you have any cinnamon rolls? Overly Cheerful Barista: Oh, no.  Sorry, sold out.  How about a pumpkin cinnamon scone or a slice of non-fat cinnamon pound cake? Me: (looking disgusted) No, no, no!  Really, that's okay! Honestly, I find the rest of their pastries overly pretentious and the rest of their food not very good either.  So here's the question: if you make something really fabulous that sells out every day, why not make more of it and earn better profits?  Why only stock a specific number of cinnamon rolls?  Is it a franchise specification? Also, why don't independent/no slave labor/shade grown/fair trade coffee shops sell cinnamon rolls?  They always have tofu doughnuts and mafia muffins (heavy as cement shoes).  Why not somethin

I kept seeing this purple blob in one of my outdoor planters.  The winter has been so hard, there was no way it could be what my intuition was telling me it was.  "It's a flower," said my intuition, "a purple flower, a pansy." "That's ridiculous," said my logic, "it's a tag from one of the winter blooming pansies that died last spring from too much sun." I went out and looked and it was a purple pansy.  I think the reason I grow plants is because they never fail to remind me how tenacious life is. 

One of my friends told me today that a friend of her boyfriends had really liked me when he met me. I thought this was really strange because I met him in a bar when I was feeling the most depressed that I have ever felt in my life.  I felt like someone was pouring concrete in my head and I was having a lot of trouble concentrating.  As a consequence, I didn't say very much because I couldn't figure out what we were talking about half the time.  I also had to feign interest in him because I wasn't interested in anything.  Either I'm really good at faking it, or this is a tactic I should take to lure men . . . distracted, disinterested, and really slooooow. 

I went to Oregon to visit my best friend.  I intended to leave here Friday night, but I ended up leaving Saturday morning instead.  I was tired and had bad heartburn.  Anyway, the weird thing about this trip was that I ended up taking my cat with me.  I couldn't find anyone who could give him his meds twice a day so I went to the pet store to find something to block off my trunk so he could have the whole back area of my car (I have a two-seater hatch back, so it's not really a trunk).  I ended up buying this net thing that turned out to be totally useless.  It may work in a standard car, but my car seemed to be missing all the parts I was supposed to use to anchor the net to.  So the poor cat had to be cooped up in his carrier for three hours straight.  He was better behaved than I expected, probably due to the herbal sedative the pet store sold me. Anyway, the trip to Oregon was uneventful.  We (the cat and I) hung out with my friend for a while, then went for some pizza (m

My skinny neurotic cat has hyperthyroidism. I took him to the vet last week because he was writhing on the ground and limping.  The vet could find nothing wrong with him and thought that he may have had a seizure.  She said I could do a blood test on him if I wanted to.  I said to do the blood test and, what do you know, his thyroid levels were high.  So now he has to take medication daily.