Background Noise

narcolepsy is not sex with cadavers

I just took 90 pictures off my camera.  Most of them were from the dodge ball tournament Joey and I had going this week after I bought a two-dollar plastic ball at Target.  You know the balls they keep in those tall wire containers that are big and light like plastic balloons?  Best two bucks I’ve ever spent. We had hours of fun kicking the ball around at each other in the house, and every time it ricocheted off something breakable like a glass candleholder or a window, I kept thinking about that episode of the Brady Bunch when the boys broke Carol’s vase with a basketball and Peter kept saying, “Mom always said, don’t play ball in the house.” And I was thinking about how Joey is lucky I’m nothing like Carol Brady because my motto is more like “Let’s play ball in the house, and if something gets broken we can blame the kitties!”

I accused Eli of slipping something into my diet coke last night because I came home from work, drank a diet coke with some pizza and then fell asleep on the living room floor for an hour and a half.  Joey was playing in my hair the whole time and jumping on my spine and I was still comfortable enough to sleep through it.  When I woke up, Joey was in bed for the night, Eli was in the shower and Friends was on TV.  I had carpet marks all over the side of my face that was smashed against the floor for 90 minutes and there was a wet spot next to my mouth from drooling in my sleep. This must be what narcolepsy feels like.

I had a lot to do this morning and I blew it all off. I was supposed to go to the lab and have my fasting blood drawn, but I screwed up my fast when I ate a piece of pizza for breakfast. I promised myself I would go through the stacks of bills and try to make some sense of them. They’ve been sitting in a pile on the table taunting me for a few days now, so to resolve that I moved them to a corner of the counter that’s hidden and put an oven mitt on them just in case I glance over. I used my bill time this morning to make two postcard secrets that I am going to mail later today. I know I’m too late to make it into the video but maybe they’ll show up on the website.

Anyway, I was going to show you some random pictures from my camera, but Joey is up from his nap. Next time…

time goes by

The days are going by so quickly lately.  I feel like I roll out of bed, spend a couple of hours doing stuff, and then it’s time for dinner.  Which is ridiculous because there are 12 hours in there that I’m not noticing. Yesterday morning I went to leave for work but when I got out to my car I remembered that I forgot to take my medicine so I ran back inside.  Eli and Joey were eating breakfast and Joey’s eyes lit up when he saw me walk through the door as Eli exclaimed, “Hey look Joey, Mama’s home from work already!”  The sad thing is, that’s what my life feels like lately, everything is accelerated and days pass by in a blur.

What is happening to all the time?  I remember when I was in school or when I was pregnant and feeling every moment of every day pass as though I was trapped forever in the present and time was standing still.  I wish for a day like that again.  A day with so many hours to fill that it feels impossible to come up with enough to do to pass the time. And just this week two people asked me, in casual conversation, if I was still living at home with my parents.  I don’t wear my wedding rings and I don’t have a baby strapped to my body when I’m at work so I guess it’s not obvious that I am much to old to be still living with my parents.  People who first meet me always assume I am a college student.  When I laugh and say that I live with my husband and my son I get weird looks until I confess my age.  As complimentary as it is to be told I look youthful, I’m getting tired of having this conversation.  Just as how I got tired of having the conversation about my military background.  “You were a soldier?” “Yes.” “No...” “Yes.”

I don’t fit my stereotype very well.

So it’s a small consolation that even though my life feels like it’s speeding away from me faster every day, my appearance doesn’t reveal my secret.  If only I could get rid of this nagging fear that one day the years will catch up to me all at once and I will age two decades overnight.

golden girl superpower

I am now officially old.  And this is different from the old I felt when I went through the Golden Girls rerun phase, or the times I’ve found gray strands in my hair.  It happened unexpectedly with a new prescription this week and forgetting to take my medicine one day before going to work and that’s when I decided I needed to buy the thing that makes me an official Golden Girl.

This is my new pill case.  It has a slot for each day of the week and I can set it up on Sunday and leave it on the counter so I remember to take everything each morning. 

How did I go from a single multivitamin in the morning to needing an organizer to keep all my pills straight?  I didn’t think I was taking this much stuff until I got it all into the pill organizer and realized that it’s not as empty as I thought it would be. 

If one more thing goes wrong I might need to upgrade to the super deluxe model or set up a whole drawer in the kitchen with dividers for each day of the week.  But I really only take two medicines a day. 

One is my antidepressant and the other is the new high blood pressure medication I have to be on because of my antidepressant.  The other pills are vitamins and a super B pill I take for stress.  Which is kind of a joke because wouldn’t you think a person on antidepressants and blood pressure lowering medication would have so little emotional and physiological stress they’d walk around blissed out all the time and have to be scraped up off the kitchen floor every day?  Not me.  Even with all that, I still need additional help in calming the fuck down.

Oh I almost forgot the patch I stick to my arm every morning that makes me not crave cigarettes.  I can’t believe how well the patch works, but I think I’ve found its one fatal flaw.  It may be waterproof against water that comes from the outside, but is powerless against the water comes from inside your body.  You can shower with it on and it remains stuck tight, but if you sweat even a little it slips right off. 

I was at work on Friday and after lunch I started feeling warm.  I spend my days working with people on exercise programs, and part of that is showing the proper form by doing the exercises for them so they can watch.  A few hours in the gym doing squats and steps and weight machines will make a person sweaty, especially if it’s a warm day.  On Friday afternoon I touched my forehead and it was wet, my hair was damp and stuck to my neck underneath, and then I started craving a smoke.  I thought I was just having a weak moment because it happens all the time.  I’ll be fine all day and then out of the blue I’ll get a mad craving that lasts for a few minutes and then goes away.  But Friday it didn’t go away.  It wasn’t until I was driving home from work when I went to rub my patch that I realized it wasn’t on my arm.  I couldn’t imagine where it fell off but when I glanced down my shirt, I saw that it had peeled off of my arm, traveled through the sleeve of my shirt, and adhered to the front of my bra.  No fucking wonder.

I wish there was a patch you could take in pill form.  I could just add it to my pill case with all the rest and forget about it.

But I love not smoking.  I can smell things now and I can sniff a smoker out from twenty feet away.  I’m always amazed by my sense of smell when I quit smoking. Suddenly I can tell things about people just by their smells.  I can tell what kind of fabric softener someone uses, their soap or perfume, what they ate for lunch (especially if it had garlic in it) and I can always identify a smoker by that burnt garbage aroma they wear like an aura.

And then there was the peculiar smell I came across the other day that may mean I am going beyond normal and developing supersmell powers.  I’m not sure if I understand pheromones.  It’s a subconscious thing and you’re not supposed to be able to smell them, right?  If that’s true then what is it called when you stand near a guy and he smells so good you want to fold yourself into his arms and bury your head in his chest and cling to his body until the cops pry you off?  I want to say that this phenomenon is pheromones because it’s stronger than cologne.

Eli has this effect on me.  When I get close to him, he smells so good that I want to pull open his chest and climb inside him.  That probably sounds a little gross, but it’s the only way I can think of to be close to Eli without him being bothered by my hair.  I hug him and he’s assaulted by my hair.  I’ve tried sleeping with my face pressed into his neck but he can’t stand the hair wisp tickles for very long and ends up moving me so that my head is far enough away from his face that my hair can’t choke him or tickle his face or get in his eyes.   

I don’t know how this ended up about Eli because he doesn’t really count.  I’m in love with him and there are other forces at work.  I’m talking about the raw attraction to a stranger who maybe sits next to you in a meeting or walks next to you and he smells so good it’s distracting.  And I don’t know whether it is pheromone-based, or if I’m just rediscovering my lost sense of smell, but it doesn't happen with everyone.  Is it the delightful scent of someone with great body chemistry or soap?   I like to think it's my new superpower at work. 

great tone

It's always a good day when you get a compliment on your body during a medical exam.

My nurse midwife is very sweet.  Actually, my whole ob-gyn team is wonderful.  My doctor kissed my forehead when he walked in and saw me desperately fighting through the worst of the contractions when I was in labor.  He told me I was doing a great job, and even though I was in so much pain I thought I would die, I was touched by his warmth.  When I was pregnant my nurse midwife told me I had really firm boobs and great nipples.  It was in the context of future nursing, but I was pregnant at the time and feeling a little down about the state of my body so I took it as a wonderful compliment.  And then today during my annual exam she asked me in a puzzled voice if I'd had a vaginal birth.  I said yes and then she told me she would have never known if I didn’t tell her. "Everything has gone back into place perfectly and you have excellent tone.  Good job on the exercises."

I didn’t have the heart to tell her I neglect my kegels always. 

She's not the first person to compliment me on my tone.  A couple of months ago Eli told me the same thing.  He sort of put his foot in his mouth though because his compliment went something like this:

Remember after you had the baby and you asked me if you felt the same?
Yeah...
And I said you did?
Yeah...
Well, I gotta be honest, you didn't then, but now!  Now you're completely back to normal.  It's amazing.

Hmm.  Then we had a discussion about how we shouldn’t tell each other body lies. 

I wish someone had told me that it would take my hips and other parts at least six months to go back into place.  I remember standing in front of the mirror about three months after Joey was born and staring at my hips trying to figure out what the hell was going on.  Everything else was back to normal except that when my eye moved down my body, past my waist and stomach, there were these hip bones jutting out so far that I looked like two different bodies stitched together at the waist.  So if you’re out there, and you’ve given birth to your first child and you’re wondering what the christ is going on with your strange new hips, know that you just need to be patient.  It won’t stay that way forever, and your body will continue to fix itself for about a year. 

And don’t ask your husband for a critique until it has been at least 12 months.  He’ll only lie. (because he loves you)

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If you were here earlier and saw a different post for today, sorry. Technical difficulties.  It had to go.  And also, it's national de-lurking week but since I don't have comments open here you should send me an email and introduce yourself.  You really should. Despite what you may think from reading here, I'm friendly and very nice.