Kick It (Redux)

Since there was a big thunderstorm about the time I usually head to MA class and Steph was home early, she went ahead and drove me out to class. I changed into MA clothes while I was there, but since we got out late, jumped outside after class without changing back into my street clothes and hopped into the car.

Stephanie looked over at my shirt. "`When I See Something I Kick It'?" she inquired, as if I had chosen this shirt myself.

"We all wear them!" I enthused. "It's our uniform!"

"Oh you're kidding me."

"IT IS GREAT!!!!!"

"So you want me to take a picture for your blog?"

"Eh, maybe when I'm in better shape."

"It can be a `before' picture."

I thought that over. "We'll see," I said.

Until then:

Kick it.

Dinner at Applebee's with White Supremicists!

One of the best titles ever, for sure. And it gets better.

"This is our music magazine," racist Kevin interrupts, laying on the Applebee's table a publication that would look like any other indie/hipster music magazine, except that the music it's writing about glorifies Germany's Third Reich and denigrates blacks and Jews.

"We also have a record company," Kevin boasts, in a manner that seems to say, "Even though we're white supremacists, that doesn't mean we can't ROCK!" "We have over 750 CD titles."

OK, For Serious

Honestly, whoever this guy is who writes Dinosaur Comics?

Rapidly on his way to becoming my next Secret Boyfriend.

Here, yes. But most definately HERE.

OK, well, everywhere really.

The Song that Finally Made me Sign up For iTunes

I was listening to Whiskey from a Wire at work today (on headphones of course), and this song came on.

I was suddenly so utterly and completely distracted that I uploaded two copies of the document I was uploading - three times.

Three times, people.

The fact that the acrobatics described in this song assume a female partner didn't even give me pause. In my happy either/or world, I could make most of that work with either partner, which I am bound to do because thinking about sex these days generally puts me in mind of... well. Anyway.

Damn, that's a sexy song.

OK, maybe I've just been thinking too much about sex lately.

Or, more than usual.

I mean, it's less than all the time.

Usually.

That is a sexy fucking song.

Happy.

I am happy.

Real Life!

It All Looks the Same...

Netflix is Here!

One of the things I decided to do to cut down on the cost of going out to shows is... umm... to get Netflix instead :0

One of the things I miss most about life in Chicago is sitting around on the couch with on the weekends eating pancakes and watching our Netflix shows. We'd just started watching "Rome" when I left, and I'd like to watch the rest of it.

The first couple weeks are free, and complementing this weekend's pancakes will be...

Children of Men!

And for tonight's workout, I'll watch the next episode of Rome...

Most excellent.

Oh Dear...

I think I'm writing about my first non-dysfunctional couple!

How quaint!

And holy crap! I don't think I have any idea how to do this!

The Origins of "OK"

So if OK stands for "all correct," wouldn't it be "AC"? Not exactly, says linguist Erin McKean, who points out that the word was intentionally misspelled. Much like the way people on the Internet shorten or abbreviate words when typing, OK was misspelled on purpose.

"For instance, a lot of kids online spell "cool," "k-e-w-l," says McKean, senior editor for U.S. dictionaries at Oxford Press. "They know how to spell cool, but it just looks cooler to spell it "k-e-w-l."

It was cool in certain East Coast cities in the mid-19th century to substitute OK for "all correct." McKean says it was common for people of that day to use inside lingo -- shorthand full of puns, purposeful misspellings and abbreviations. For example, they'd use "SP" for "small potatoes," or "TBFTB" for "too big for their britches."

Way Kewler, Tho

What Price

I guess you're worth more before you're born into sin.

Being a woman is like being 3/4 of a real person. I mean, a potential person.

We're not worth much.

One for the Road

Holding Back the Desert

I spent an inordinate amount of time last night just before bed tossing and turning and playing out in my head the scene in Black Desert that finally made the whole thing fall together for me. It's a brutal little book, meaner than the last one but with more heart (you know, compared to the last one, not compared to any other book; feel-good movie of the week, it ain't). I found a lot of stuff I want to deal with in this book; the emotional core of the story, and immediately after that, about 80% of the plot-that-wasn't-there.

Turns out this means I need to go back and severely rewrite the first 200 pages that I've got before I can push through, but at least I have a proper roadmap now. I was sort of winging it there for awhile.

I mean, not that I'm not winging it (I'm *always* winging it), but it's starting to look real juicy.

SOMEONE HAS STOLEN MY LUNCH

SOMEONE HAS STOLEN MY LUNCH OUT OF THE BREAKROOM FRIDGE. THIS REPRESENTS A SIGNIFICANT FINANCIAL LOSS TO ME.

NOW I HAVE TO PAY FOR LUNCH, WHICH I CANNOT AFFORD.

WHERE IS MY FUCKING COKE AND STRING CHEESE YOU FUCKING NAZIS????????????

ALSO, I WANT MY TUPPERWARE BACK!! HOW MANY MORE HOURS WILL YOU HOLD ONTO THIS LUNCH YOU KNOW IS NOT YOURS??? IT HAS BEEN THREE HOURS, PEOPLE.

That is all.

My Blog Rating

AWESOME.

Best.Post.Opening.Evah.

"Revised my uterus."

Now, if only the story *opens* that way...

One for the Road

Conversations With My Roommate(s)

Stephanie and I were sitting at the kitchen table this morning lingering over our coffee and talking about the trip we took to the bookstore yesterday.

"I was so upset they didn't have that fourth book I wanted," she said.

"Which one was it?" I asked.

"It's called _Death in Little Italy_. It's set in late 19th, early 20th century America." She paused. "It's a murder mystery, obviously."

"Ha. Yeah, I figured that from the title. You know, _Death in Little Italy_. I mean, if it was called _Spaceship Number 9_ I wouldn't guess it was a murder mystery."

"Aha," she said, "but what if it was called _DEATH ON SPACESHIP NUMBER 9_?"

"Cross-genre marketing," I explained.

"Sneaky," she said.

We sipped more coffee.

I burst into uncontrollable giggling.

"_DEATH ON SPACESHIP NUMBER 9_!!" I gasped. "I so have to write that book now."

Sugar Crash

I biked down to the local Walmart to get out of the house and wander around looking for a bike headlamp and backlight, since I'll be biking home from MA class in the dark. I stopped by a cheap local diner for lunch (yes, I'm poor, and here I am spending $8 on lunch. Anyway).

I ended up eating an omelette with a side of buttermilk pancakes. I tested at 90 and took three units to cover the number and then another 5 units so I could eat a pancake and a half of the three next to me. I figured if I ate more than that, I'd get a headache from the sugar rush.

So, underwhelmed by what was supposed to be "the best breakfast place in Dayton," I walked across the street to Walmart.

I pricechecked a couple of bike lights, decided on the one I wanted, and started wandering up another aisle, looking around for various and sundry things that I can't get at the grocery store.

I started feeling a bit woozy, like there was this strange pressure in my head. Not a headache, exactly, but something that felt similiar to a high-sugar headache. Weird, I thought. I guess those pancakes *did* go straight to my head... but shit, I was at 90 before I ate them. I shouldn't feel this way unless I'm winging over 250. What the fuck did they put in those pancakes?

I checked the time. It had only been about a half hour since I'd eaten. It *had* to be a high. If I'm going to have a low, it's generally an hour and a half after I shoot up. That's generally the time it takes for the insulin to peak in my system.

So I kept walking, and started to feel increasingly anxious and disoriented. Why was this person in front of me? Why was everyone in my way? What the hell was wrong with everyone? I needed everyone to get away from me. Bloody fuckers.

I was having trouble deciding where I was going. Did I want to look down this aisle? What was down this aisle? Why was I hear again?

I turned back around and went down an aisle I'd already been down, completely clueless as to why I'd have any interest in going down there. Maybe I had *missed* something. SOMETHING WAS MISSING. AND WHO THE HELL WAS THIS OTHER PERSON IN MY WAY GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY WAY WHY IS EVERYONE LOOKING AT ME WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH ME I JUST NEED TO SIT DOWN.

Yes, I just need to sit down. Some small part of me was aware of the fact that I was hallucinating things (I think I only passed, like, two people) and was becoming increasingly paranoid.

I found an employee step stool and sat down. I wanted my head to stop feeling so stuffy. I wanted everything to stop. I wanted EVERYONE TO STAY AWAY FROM ME.

I pulled out my glucose monitor and tested my sugar, expecting to see some bizarrely high number like 310 or something. What the hell had they put in those pancakes?

I blinked a couple of times at the face of the monitor. It read:

37

How the fucking hell??

Wow, I thought. I just took a massive crash 30 minutes after eating. After eating *pancakes.*

The suddeness of the crash is probably what resulted in the severe disorientation, and, of course, my complete denial of the fact that it was the result of a low sugar episode. I believed it was physically impossible for me to experience a low like that half an hour after eating.

I ate a couple of lifesavers, and sat on the stool hunkered up into myself hoping nobody bugged me for five or six minutes until my head started to clear.

After eating the candy, I started to sweat and shake, which are usual low sugar symptoms. I think the low just came on so fast that my body didn't have time to react that way. What I felt first, instead, was the massive disorientation that resulted from my brain not getting enough sugar.

While I recovered, I thought about how I'd felt walking up and down the aisles, how I got that feeling of intense claustrophobia and that panicky, crazy-ass paranoia about how everybody around me was out to get me, and above all, my desperate need to GET AWAY from them.

One of the things I've been coming to grips with the last year is just how bizarrely fucking wacked out I was during the year before I woke up in the hospital. Mostly, I was exhausted, but when I wasn't exhausted, I was often paranoid and panicky. I'd go from anxiousness to panic really quickly, and because I was so used to living my life by "feeling," it meant I did and said a lot of hurtful things to people that felt absolutely correct and proper.

I've never been an easy person to live with, but being crazy and sick didn't make me any easier to live with, either.

Once I felt comfortable walking again, I got up and headed over to the Subway and got myself one of those big pretzels - I still had to bike all the way home and I had another hour of wandering around.

I ate half the pretzel and felt myself even out. My head cleared. Everything cleared. Things were a lot simpler. Less closed-in. I didn't feel like the whole world wanted to crush me, that everybody was out to crush and control me.

I tried to sort out what had happened. It was possible - I'd heard of it happening - that I'd hit a blood vessel when I'd taken my insulin shot, meaning the insulin went straight into my system before the carbs from the pancake had a chance to get absorbed, forcing me into a tailspin of a crash.

One of the reasons I try so hard to keep a tight rein on my sugar isn't just so I'll live longer, feel better, and be healthier. Yes, those are all great reasons, but I have my self-destructive days, and during those self-destructive days, I just don't give a fuck about my body. I hate it quite a lot, and I'll go into "fuck it" mode. Problem is, I do that now and it's not just me and my body's health that's hurt. It means I'll say and do hurtful things to the people around me.

And you know, I've already brutally hurt two people I cared very much about that way, and I'd rather not repeat that. There are a lot of people in my life still who I care deeply about and who care about me, and I'd like to make sure that I do whatever it is I need to do in order to spare them from this sort of behavior as much as possible.

It helps, I think, that people now are more aware of what this behavior is. There was some interaction Stephanie and I had when I was having a low, and she asked me a few minutes later if I was upset with her, and I told her no, I was just being short and bitchy because I was having a low, and I'd already taken something and would be OK in a few minutes.

At least there's something I can point to now. At least I can talk myself down from some of the anxiousness and the panic.

But I'd prefer to have as few instances of sugar-related paranoia as possible.