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Saturday, March 5, 2011

The booger that chased me

On a three day get-away to Utah this weekend. Sara took my total cheapness to heart (completely ignoring the pinkie oath swear we had made to each other to not EVER stay in a hotel/motel that was less than $50 per night).

We took off like a herd of turtles and pulled into the Bates motel in St. George at 11:30 Friday night. I turned to her and said, "really?! How much did you pay?"

"$30 a night". I just groaned. I walked in the office and was immediately assaulted with a smell. Not to be bratty or anything but the smell was, I told Sara later, not American. Most people would say foreign or exotic, I'm not that verbose at midnight.

My nostrils constricted and I concentrated on breathing shallowly while filling out the old fashioned registration form. No fancy computers up in this joint. Tho' to be fair the 16 year old son came out and offered up the wifi password.

We got to our room (two steps away from the office) quickly and jumped in our jammies and went to bed. An hour later I feel Sara trying to meld herself with my DNA. Or maybe climb up under my skin in an attempt to find warmth. I'm not sure. All I know is that girl was attached to my back like a howler monkey all night. Which was fine. I was busy concentrating on sleeping on a slab of concrete.

Woke up the next morning to the gentle pounding on the door from housekeeping. Sara got in the shower first. After that I jumped in. Oh joy Luke warm water. I soaped up all my girly bits, yelled for Sara to open the shampoo for me while warily eyeing something on the shower curtain I was convinced was a booger. I tried to convince myself it belonged to my girl. That still didn't make it less horrifying. Here's the deal, I'm wide. Like my shoulders could be front linebackers for the Steelers. So trying to maneuver a small shower and avoid what may or may not be a glistening booger=not fun.

Meanwhile Sara gets the cap off the shampoo, hands it to me. I dump it in my hand and lather up. Immediately I yell out , "what's up with this shampoo, I smell like a Christmas ham!". Clove flavored shampoo?

I step out of the shower, look at Sara and say, "I don't know what's happening".

She's too busy laughing to answer. So far this is an interesting trip.

Thursday, March 3, 2011

How are you feeling?

My cousin texted me one day and asked, "how are you feeling?". I pondered for a minute and replied back, "mentally, physically or emotionally?" because really with me you just never know.

I'm a walking, talking mood disorder. Sure, I'm on heavy medication to stabilize that, but there is no cure, I still swing back and forth, just not as high and low, as often, mostly like a gentle swing porch swinging kinda way. But some days, oh those days, when I am up and down and up and down, it's hard. It's hard to live it and it's hard to live with it. I often think about my friends and family that have chosen to stick by me through all these times. How time after time they have displayed patience, annoyance, understanding and love. I can't even begin to express how much that means to me.

I know I'm not the easiest person in the world to live with, and yet, my wife hangs in there, year after year. She nags me to take my pills, calls me out when I make up lame excuses as to why I didn't tell her I was out, picks up my prescriptions, monitors my intake so I don't end up like a celebrity tragedy minus the news coverage. She's just always there for me, even when I try to push her away. During my darkest times, I push and push and push, but every morning when I wake up there she is. I honestly would have left my crazy ass years ago. I feel guilty that she didn't and now she's stuck with me. I feel like a failure. I promised her a better future, now the future is here and it's worse. She should have left. But she didn't.

Physically I'm a mess. I'm trying to make that better. I've lost a lot of weight. About 75 pounds. I had to stop losing to try to let my skin catch up. Too much too fast is not a good thing. I'm working on building up the muscle underneath. I kinda slacked off, I keep injuring my hip. I so want to be a runner, but apparently my body just can't take the beating. So I'm going to shelve that goal, for now. Maybe later after I've toned up a bit.

I have arthritis, it sucks. It started in my early 20's which really just isn't fair and I let it control my life and used it as an excuse for way too many years. I took my health back last year. It's mine now and I have no more excuses. If I stay fat it's because I'm lazy, not because I have to. I know that now. I'm never going back. I may stay where I'm at now, but I'm never, ever going back.

Emotionally, it's about the same as the mentally. It fluctuates based on the mental status, but also just because I am really emotional to begin with. Like seriously I cry all the time. I cry at dog food commercials, I get teared up talking about my loved ones. I'm just sensitive. My grandma used to tell me, "you wear your heart on your sleeve", "you would give anyone the shirt off your back" and "you need to learn to toughen up or people are just going to hurt you". Yeah, I never could do it. So yah, I let people hurt me. I care too much, give too much, love too much, talk too much, hurt too much, laugh too much. Everything I do is just too much.

I'm guessing my cousin is sorry she asked.

Sticks and Stones...

I was thinking this morning about how as a society we are leaning so much towards the extremes. Hence the term extremist I suppose. But the politically correctness of it all gets confusing. I mean I'm not even sure if I'm allowed to call my black friends black. I don't like to say African American because what if they are from Jamaica? It's the same way with my Hispanic friends. Is it Hispanic or Latina/Latino? Unless you are specifically from Mexico you aren't Mexican. But then some Mexican's don't like to be called Hispanic because they are proud to be Mexican. See it's all very confusing.

Some people might say, "why even use labels?". Well that's fine to a point but if I'm at a party and I point at 4 girls standing by the wall and say, "That's my friend J, the graphic design one", are you gonna be able to pick her out? But if I say, "that's my friend J, the cute black girl". You might be more inclined to know which one I'm talking about. I suppose I could just say they one in the paisley shirt, but why do I have to censor my descriptions. I wouldn't be offended if you called me the white girl. The pasty one. The one white as Wonder Bread. The short chubby girl. The lesbian. The dyke with the cool hair. Whatever. You see I don't mind labels. Words can hurt but only if you let them. Dyke used to be a derogatory term, and to some it still is. But I believe that if you take ownership of the word it loses it's ability to wound. I own the word dyke. By taking it and making it mine I take the hurt out of it. Gays did that with the word gay. It used to be shameful, fag too. But by taking ownership of the words, they no longer have that impact, and now we call ourselves those things.

I was walking down the street with my girlfriend, holding hands, and some guys walked by and said, "dyke!". I just laughed and said, "why yes, I am". Because, seriously folks if that is the worst thing you can think of to call me, I'll take it. Of all the things you could call someone (liar, bigot, racist, murderer, psychopath, abuser, etc.), if the absolute worst thing you can say about me is that I'm a dyke. Well by all means I will take it. It must mean I am doing something right.