who's up for thirds?

this year, i'm thankful for ...

• long vacations
• deal or no deal
• working from home
• having a new storage space for all of my liquids and gels: texas
• singing with billy joel
• taking the correct metro back to the car ... er, wait ...
• being 25
• six months same as cash
• ukrop's mac and cheese
• good cholesterol levels
• the right to stand up for myself
• new babies and healthy puppies ... no matter how crusty they all are
• automatic email deletion
• getting out of west virginia unharmed
• occasionally having good hair
• a bottle full of vicodin
• meeting invitations that begin like this: "drinks with..."
• you! awwwwwww!! :P

most of all, i'm thankful for miracles. my cold, cold heart has never been this warm.

happy thanksgiving!

in your own hands

is it just me, or does anyone else see the problem with drug manufacturers gratuitously hawking their goods directly to the general public? shouldn't they be trying to impress the medical care providers of the world? it seems to me that lipitor's marketing department didn't consider a target audience when they masterminded their plan. and! why can't i watch a football game without seeing a commercial warning the world about the apparently widespread crisis that is erectile dysfunction?

guys ... come on ... what the hell is going on?

granted, lots of us probably get headaches and heartburn. unless we're alicia ... if that's the case, we only get heartburn when we're pregnant. we may even have muscle aches, the flu, or a nasty cough.

yes. those are pretty basic and affect a good percentage of us. says me ... i don't have the numbers handy. i'd even go as far as including migraines in that list because i know people who've had them.

gosh ... insomnia, you say? that's right on the line. i'm sure lots of people suffer from it, but i'm also sure we have too many "cures" for it. you may try over-the-counter but end up having to talk to your doctor.

but what about meningitis? if you have meningitis are you going to trust your doctor to prescribe the right treatment or are you going to demand your treatment based on a commercial that aired during "how i met your mother?" you know, the one that was sandwiched between the ads for the latest pizza hut deal and bleach.

you also have serious decisions to make about restless leg syndrome, overactive bladder (a.k.a. frequent bladder urges ... we all have internal plumbing), peripheral artery disease, genital herpes, acid reflux disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, enlarged prostate, and depression.

what? is most of the country afflicted by these? i feel so left out.

so! today i'm staying up until 3 a.m. and occasionally spinning myself around ... that should get me caught up on a few side effects.

ends with a migraine

he'd walked into the bathroom and stepped on a wet towel. the next thing he knew, his face hit porcelain and he couldn't feel anything.

now he was lying on a stretcher begging that they not cut his sweater [please don't cut this sweater off me] and his pain was a twelve on a scale of one to ten.
after x-rays, collars and pain medications the room cleared and he was left with the constant beeping that sounded like it was emanating from his own head.

enter the receptionist with her white shoes, clipboard, and the following questions:

• can you confirm your name?
• what's your home phone number?
• do you have a living will?
• what's your religion preference?

or, in terms chris can understand:

• emergency room: "ouch, my head." "priest?"

HOLD IT: unrest declares indefinite hiatus

it's a good thing that baby boomers either don't listen to pop music or are starting to go deaf.

denise treated me to a concert not too long ago: sheryl crow and john mayer. had ms. crow taken the stage first, we'd already made a pact to leave before mr. mayer's act. as it turned out, tho, their order was switched and we had to stay.

after mayer lulled us to the brink of hibernation, crow took the stage to conduct her own personal version of an anti-war demonstration, which didn't seem to mesh with denise's headache. war is not the answer, ya know. then we got lost on the back roads of manassas for a half hour, but still managed to beat her sister and brother-in-law in the race back home.

anyway! john mayer made the teenagers swoon and the adults yawn. as aaron pointed out before we even left, "isn't he the guy whose songs all sound the same?" turns out he is. "1....2....3....4....1....2....3....4....1....2....3....4....," he sang. then came "it's time to rock this place!" girls screamed and we got, "1....2....3....4....1....2....3....4...."

on the journey up, i remember telling denise that i really wasn't much john mayer fan ... i'd only ever heard the songs that are played on the radio over and over and over again, and i thought i liked his newest release. it wasn't until i heard it in concert that i realized my true feelings about his newest song.

if i like a song the first time i hear it, it's because of the actual music part ... melodies, harmonies, beats, etc. once i decided those are fun, i start paying attention to the words.

my original intention was to share with you only a few of the most unbelievable lines. honestly, i found it difficult to delete anything. enjoy.

me and all my friends
we're all misunderstood
they say we stand for nothing and
there's no way we ever could

now we see everything that's going wrong
with the world and those who lead it
we just feel like we don't have the means
to rise above and beat it

so we keep waiting
waiting on the world to change
we keep on waiting
waiting on the world to change

it's hard to beat the system
when we're standing at a distance
so we keep waiting
waiting on the world to change

now if we had the power
to bring our neighbors home from war
they would have never missed a Christmas
no more ribbons on their door
and when you trust your television
what you get is what you got
cause when they own the information, oh
they can bend it all they want

so we keep waiting
waiting on the world to change
we keep on waiting
waiting on the world to change

it's not that we don't care,
we just know that the fight ain't fair
so we keep on waiting
waiting on the world to change

one day our generation
is gonna rule the population
so we keep on waiting
waiting on the world to change

we keep on waiting
waiting on the world to change

what the hell? i certainly hope young people aren't hearing this. i hope his mumbled, droning words aren't getting through. maybe no one's listening and dj's will immediately stop playing it. maybe he wrote it in great haste, meant to change the lyrics before recording it but forgot.

or maybe not. maybe the teeny boppers are listening. maybe they're deciding that it's more comfortable to listen to an iPod than it is to sing out loud. maybe the limbs of disinterest are stretching. maybe we should be listening to the curious george soundtrack instead:

Who's to say
I can't do everything
Well I can try
And as I roll along I begin to find
Things aren't always just what they seem

I wanna turn the whole thing upside down
I'll find the things they say just can't be found
I'll share this love I find with everyone
We'll sing and dance to Mother Nature's songs

This world keeps spinning and there's no time to waste
Will it all keep spinning spinning round and round

so ... you say you want a revolution? well, ya know, we all want to change the world.

er, wait ...

the writing assignment

smith was wearing a cool linen suit and a dandelion in his lapel when he swung his red-tipped cane to the north, finding the old brick sidewalk and a leg of the chair penny sat poised in. she glanced up from that morning's paper to find the dapper gentleman bowing his apology in her general direction and tipping a hat that he wasn't wearing.

"please sit," she said, lightly kicking chair across from her, which he briefly marked with his hand before setting himself on its plane surface.

"a lovely morning for breakfast outside," he gestured to the sky and unwittingly smacked the waiter who was approaching from behind. "a thousand apologies, my dear!" he said to the form that was now lingering next to the table. "i fear the wind took my hand."

"don't worry about it," said the slightly gruff voice of the offended party. "i'm adrian and i'll be taking care of you."

"good heavens," smith replied, looking surprised and amused at once. "nothing for me, thank you. i trust my lady friend has been, as you put it, 'taken care of?'" he gestured again, this time toward penny ... his sleeve dragging through a bit of powdered sugar where her donut had been.

"yes, i'm fine thank you," penny smiled and touched smith's hand, which he then returned it to the table.

the disinterested waiter hooked his unused pen to his apron and retreated as his internal radar informed him that the table of teenagers in the corner was, once again, attempting to set fire to their tablecloth.

"tell me, love, what's the latest dish?"

"oh, smith," penny said folding the news in her lap and taking his hand across a plate of eggs. "i'm afraid the critics have panned your performance again."

"damn," he said as he turned around in time to see adrian threaten the table in the corner with the business end a fire extinguisher.

not the writing assignment

it was one of those weekends during which you make a realization about your past that profoundly impacts your present and at the same time learn how to perform basic vacuum cleaner maintenance ... beyond the bag change.

it all began as many things do: with dog hair.

but why would i start with the floors when i could less easily start with the closets? well, one closet specifically. the one that couldn't be opened without the fear of blunt head trauma. the one that hasn't gotten any attention since the water heater died ... and before that, since i bought the place.

inside said closet, i dodged and weaved my way around a box of desk supplies, a mass of cords and wires half the size of zoey, a keyboard, a printer, a handful of retired purses, a dog crate, wrapping paper, a water bed mattress, and a porch swing. i kid you not.

the most interesting finds, tho, were the folders upon folders of college papers. as an english major, i wrote a lot. to complete the curriculum, i occasionally had to take two and three literature courses at a time. what a good idea.

i remember one stellar term near the end of it all when marcia and i took nothing but lit classes, and two of them were parallel topics ... we wrote daily journals, mid-terms, finals, long papers, short papers, daily journals, daily journals, and daily journals.

so, when i say i wrote a lot, i compare that output to, say, aaron’s DVD collection ... except that my collection only took four years to accumulate, it doesn't have to ever be alphabetized, and there are no duplicates. well, at least not many duplicates.

i also compare the quality of those papers to the quality of aaron's DVDs. there's a decent Criterion contingent, but there are many, many Shriek of the Mutliated resemblances.

sitting in the closet, reading all the red ink, i realized that i spent my college years applying myself just enough to courteously get by.

that hurt. most especially when the flood of awareness swept over me, and my head hit the door.

B, B+, B+, B. in the stacks of papers, i found one solid C, and it was well deserved: "please make sure your essays are at least 500 words long." yeah, man ... freshman composition. shortly thereafter, i declared my major. perhaps i should have done a little more thinking, but i was just a kid. how could i be expected to make an intelligent and important decision then?

honestly, now that i'm an "adult" how can i be expected to make an intelligent and important decision? am i still aiming to get by? the answers are i don't see how and yes, respectfully.

do you know that a small but essential plastic nub fell off one of the venetian blinds in my living room last week? of course not ... but i'm sure you know what i did about it. that's right … i opened the blind using the pull string rather than the twisty thing.

do i plan to replace that blind? of course not ... that is, not until mother visits and insists that it be replaced.

there i go again ... just getting by.

*sigh*

the road is long

with many winding turns
and leads us
who
knows where
who knows where

but i'm strong
strong enough to
carry him

he ain't heavy
he's my brother! :)

still so immature

the sign at the entrance to the edinboro inn says, "welcome retreads!"

apparently i'm way too childish to understand who's in town.

how far a little common sense can go

it's after 10 p.m. on a monday. your toddler is standing in the child's seat, listlessly punching you in the arm as you and your pregnant stomach wait for service.

you're wearing a white, embroidered spaghetti-strap top over a tight black wife beater, and your sister has the greasiest hair imaginable.

where are you?

(i think i gave it away.)

hit by a bus

yeah ... i read The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide again.


"The first thing they saw on leaving the elevator was a long concrete wall with over fifty doors in it offering lavatory facilities for all of fifty major life forms. Nevertheless, like every parking lot in the Galaxy throughout the entire history of parking lots, this parking lot smelled predominantly of impatience.

A hole had just appeared in the Galaxy. It was exactly a nothingth of a second long, and a nothingth of an inch wide, and quite a lot of millionths of light-years from end to end.

As it closed up, lots of paper hats and party balloons fell out of it and drifted off through the Universe. A team of seven three-foot high market analysts fell out of it and died, partly of asphyxiation, partly of surprise.

Two hundred and thirty-nine thousand lightly fried eggs fell out of it too, materializing in a large wobbly heap on the famine-struck land of Poghril in the Pansel system.

The whole Poghril tribe had died out from famine except for one last man who died of cholesterol poisoning some weeks later."

that smarts

i remember the day greg petrus delivered my second round SAT scores. i cried and cried. it took david letterman to snap me out of the funk a week later when he was introduced as "a man who got 720 on his SATs."

... but i took the test a second time because i was sure i could do better. i didn't have the flu that time, and my brain was more prepared ... right? wrong.

ah, the SAT. just thinking about it makes me feel inadequate. i only bring it up because whether we like it or not, we all have an SAT story and it's usually semi-harrowing at the very least. even if i had combined my scores, i was convinced that i'd never have the opportunity for higher education, especially since i was faced with relying mostly on my extra curricular activities. it's a miracle i got into college at all. thank god my dad worked at the school i selected ... and knew people.

anyway! the SAT is a rite of passage, practically a universality (<-- higher education: english major), and tho (<-- still an english major) it doesn't mean anything ... at all ... for real ... everyone can relate to taking it. everyone has a story. universal human experiences are rare. not all of us are going to get married, attend a billy joel concert, quit our jobs to hike thru the jungle, discover that we have food allergies, ride a mexican glue factory-bound horse named paco, or even hit an air pocket. as fascinated as you are by people who jump off the new river gorge bridge, you'll never take that step. and neither will i. and neither will alicia.

what, then, are we left with ... besides standardized tests? i find that it's a pretty short list: moving, job interviews, blood work, wisdom tooth removal, death, and the presidential fitness awards. or is "running the mile" limited to PA students? the worst part about death has to be that you wind up with a story about it, but never get to tell it. granted, your family, friends, and the newspaper get to tell it, but i think it would be funnier and more engaging coming right straight from you. other people always mess up the details, and no one has your sense of timing. purgatory should have a room with a video camera.

while we might not be able to share our "you'll never believe how i died" story in exactly the way we'd like to, we do have the next best thing, and it begins, "when i got my wisdom teeth out."

ah-ha! the detailed wisdom tooth story that you never think about until someone brings it up first just tackled you from across the room. i saw it. remember how you first became aware of them b/c of the shooting pain in your jaw? yeah, man.

remember the first time your dentist showed you the x-ray and said the word "impacted"? remember the booklet he gave you with the drawing of the bloodless jaw whose gum had been peeled back to expose the tooth that was growing sideways? [note: the booklet today is exactly the same as it was when aaron had his teeth removed and spent three days on the pull-out couch listening to the soundtrack from west side story.]

remember throwing up in the car on the way home? or sleeping for two days straight? or your allergic reaction to the medication?

remember dry sockets, salt water rinses, swollen faces, and the constant taste of blood? i know you do ... because you told me all about it when you found out what i was doing over the weekend.

you scared the crap out of me.

but i'm glad you did. i'm glad i knew all of the dangers and possible complications before i sat in the surgeon's chair. i'm glad they were there to loop and spin faster and faster in my imagination as april 21 drew nearer. it all paid off. by the time i approached the desk to check myself in, my hands were shaking so badly i hardly recognized my own signature. as i was writing it. how often does anyone experience that? ahem ...

when i got my wisdom teeth out, i was sedated. the dr. dymon (irony? destiny?) started the IV and said, "you're going to start feeling sleepy." i said, "ok" and the next thing i knew i had no feeling in my face and i was talking, talking, talking, talking, talking to my mom and a set of scrubs that was leaving not the room i had fallen asleep in. and then i drank water.

as the car sped onto I-64, i swam onto I-64 and proclaimed, "i could have driven this!" then i was watching days of our lives and trying not to chew on the gauze.

and that's really where the excitement ends. there was some bleeding and gauze changing, some TV watching, some almost napping, a little wandering around, drooling, zoey scratching and milkshakes. i apologize to those of you i tried to talk to through the gauze. that was unpleasant for both of us. then, on saturday the antibiotic started making me nauseous and mom bought me ginger ale. the end.

tomorrow afternoon i'll have my follow-up and i'm hoping to be able to eat something more than soup and pasta; tomorrow nite, i'm hoping for pizza hut.

i think from now on, i'll compare my wisdom tooth removal with the first time i watched signs. the suspense practically killed me, but once i saw the monster, there was nothing to worry about. i can't wait to see what happens with my next tooth extraction.

i only have three more pills to take before i can stop feeling seasick, so i went to work today.

"welcome back," ray said in the hallway. "i'm glad you didn't have the experience i did."

"me too." i should have asked what he got on his SATs.

some tabloid writers are better than others

"find out the secret barry manilow has been keeping all these years!"

ummmm ... no thanks.

with a whirlwind by her side

it was a hot(ish) and dry weekend. instead of leading with the usual gunshot deaths and kidnappings, the evening news started with the wildfires that are now terrorizing neighborhoods across the state and close to your home. the fires are so terrible (not that they could ever really be good things) that fire departments from across the state are trucking in water to areas without hydrants.

also, i've noticed that my car has two cigarette lighters and no ashtrays.

have a nice evening!

why we are the dominant species (or, wasn't that on the test?)

the alarm snapped me awake at 6.22 a.m. fortunately, i hadn't made a return trip to the zombie amusement park, but the radio did save me from a co-worker's family reunion and a straw hat.

i wake up every morning to soft rock, because it's the least likely to make me immediately grumpy. unless they're playing avril lavigne, but i take my chances. this morning, tho, there wasn't even music ... it was audience participation.

for some reason the hosts (because it's impossible these days to have just one radio host ... we need at least two so someone laughs at the jokes) were asking people to finish the sentence, "there outta be a law ..."

... and genius says, "... against driving slow in the left lane."

one of the hosts knew better. "there is!"

the fear of hearing more got me moving.

no deal!

there's practically nothing i enjoy more than spending a saturday and/or sunday afternoon with my nose in a book. like, reading it. not just sitting there with my nose in it. i imagine that to be wholly unpleasant and possibly itchy. but i do understand there are many of you who would find reading wholly unpleasant and possibly itchy, so it all evens out.

anyway! my penchant for reading is the main reason i was so excited that my good friend who will absolutely not remain nameless was kind enough to give me a box of his leftover books. i’d been able to deduce that after collecting them for years, he decided to give his new bride a break and not move all of them into their nest. for crying out loud, the action figures are already taking up all available shelving.

despite the fact that we'd talked about what kinds of books i like to read, i found myself walking to my car with my arms full of random books ... which is completely fine because i'll read just about anything. and i have to say, chris, your selection of books puts that statement to the biggest test ever.

when i returned from BW3’s thursday nite, the box made it only as far as the kitchen when i decided to save my new treasures for the next morning ... to make it like christmas. you know, like christmas before the Y. it's not every day i face the prospect of having 30 new-to-me books in the house.

instead of going to work on friday, i stayed home in a non-working capacity, which is typically ok with my manager as long as it's on the calendar and i find someone to cover for me. as i let zoey out for the morning, i nearly tripped on the box that i'd stupidly left in the middle of the kitchen floor and my excitement was immediately renewed. it came with me to the living room, where we sat together on the floor.

with baited breath … baited … and aware of my pulse, i removed the lid and peered inside.

seriously. staring back up at me? howard the duck. i wasn’t exactly sure what to make of it, but I also wasn’t willing to let my spirits be dampened so immediately.

somehow, i made it through ghostbusters 2 and back to the future 2, battlestar galactica, and tron (complete with a fabulous full-color photo insert!) without looking away. from there, tho, it really did become christmas at the Y.

alien … aliens … alien 3 … star trek 4: the voyage home … the best of trek 6 … the best of trek 14 … the joy of work: dilbert’s guide to finding happiness at the expense of your co-workers

[insert dejected sigh here.]

it's pretty clear which bookshelf i'd gotten, but the irony is phenomenal. this was the first time it ever jumped from behind a wall and assaulted me like that …

many of these titles are already in my house … their pictures move.

making the most

i was talking to aaron when my plane left the gate. i waved a polite little "good-bye" to my fellow minneapolis-bound travelers. they would make it. my fate wasn't as certain.

2.4 minutes earlier, a chuckling ticket agent had reserved my place on the standby list for the next flight from CLE to MSP. not yet knowing what kind of wait i had in front of me, i'd hesitantly approached him with, "hi, may i ask you a question or is this a bad time?" he'd been following the dilbert principle of shuffling papers to look busy.

i thought that was a witty entrance, until i realized his real reason for chuckling was my next question: "what time does that flight leave?" suddenly i was waiting four hours for a two-hour flight.

"it's scheduled for gate D11," he said from behind the podium at gate C1, which is further from gate D11 than you might think. when you find yourself running from D12 to C1 with only minutes to spare for a flight you're doomed to never set foot on, you pass gates C5, C4, C3 and C2 but have to go thru practically a shopping mall to get to C1. it's disheartening, but i nearly bought a $10 pashmina. "you can take your time … and there's always a chance they'll change the gate, so you'll want to check the boards."

last spring i took a crash course in not panicking when confronted with circumstances that are beyond my control. i wish i could say i graduated unscathed, but it didn't exactly work that way. like alicia says, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. well, she sort of says that. but not directly.

the agent and i shared a final laugh as i turned to wave at the departing flight and break the bad news to aaron. he'd managed his own stealthy miracle by sneaking on an aircraft and hiding behind a seat ... i'm not one to accuse, but i'm pretty sure threats were made about other people's jobs. he would certainly land before i left the ground. "i hope you have a book." i had two.

when i was sure flight 2194 wasn't going to come back to exchange a drunken troublemaker, stowaway criminal, or whiny executive for me, i turned to face the bright, bustling abyss of concourse C. my spirits were immediately lifted when a grumpy "sky cab" tried to run down a group of milling teenagers. like, OMG ... chill, dude.

what to do? i knew exactly where i was, but i felt lost. i knew my mission was simply to wait, but i felt purposeless ... probably like most people who hang out in airports.

not thirty minutes ago, a speed walk with luggage had gotten me from D to C in 12 minutes. i needed to stretch that to 240, so i took a seat at C8 to strategize. it didn't take me long to develop, detect and diagnose a mental illness i immediately named Peron Paranoia. it's the defensiveness you exhibit when you're loitering in an airport and catch the eye of random travelers (who have a purpose) and whose gaze you assume is pity.

you know, "don't cry for me argentina." the rest of that goes, "and don't look at me like that." picking up your bags? follow the signs. heading for a connection? do i look like a monitor? maybe i did. my sweater had a couple stripes on it. i guess text might eventually scroll through them.

just then, i knew what i needed to do. i needed to get in the way. how often have you been on your way to a gate when you encounter the guy who thinks he's at the mall? or the other guy who's standing so close to the departure/arrival screens that no one can see anything? or the woman who doesn't seem to understand "walk left, stand right?"

apparently i had a lot of airport aggression to release. i didn't go so far as to stand left, but i was ignorant enough to set my bag down beside me. i admired rock and roll capital souvenirs from a three-foot distance, making it uncomfortable for people to pass me on the right. so they didn't.

i strolled. i gawked. i turned to see what was going on behind me. i took my time reading the pizza hut express menu when it was my turn. sure, i already had a pizza in-hand, but i still needed to choose a beverage ... and then get napkins.

i stopped. a lot. to take my coat off. to put it back on. to balance it atop my bag and discover that it was too bulky to wrap the handles around. i sat in the polite seat, which people leave between themselves and other travelers, and stayed long enough to scribble something in my notebook, make a phone call, or hear the initial boarding call.

i considered going down the slide with the seven-year-olds and striking up a conversation with the jewish guy who was clearly a wanderer like myself ... but i didn't have time for airport prison, and that guy was clearly unstable.

i stayed in cleveland long enough to see not only the scattered showers of late afternoon, but also the dry pavement of early evening. around 7:30 p.m., another passenger who'd been booted to the later flight greeted me at D11, and i momentarily wondered how he'd passed the time. probably where it would have gone faster: the sports bar immediately across from the gate. but my way was more fun.

sitting in a confirmed seat and tired from my escapades, i dialed aaron to tell him the good news.

"hurry!" he said from my expected arrival gate.

"i’m going as fast as i can."

a bruise and tight jeans

as the the temporary scarring and the memory of the trauma fade, i'm regaining trust in my slippers and i'm carrying my cell phone with me at [almost] all times.
a few weeks ago, i was surprised to discover that my house has so many stairs. tho i'd only gone careening down six or seven of them, it felt more like 45 or 50. i also discovered that at the precise moment i found myself in more physical danger than i had in nearly 30 years, there wasn't a light of any kind, there were no happy memory flashbacks, nor was there a mental slideshow of my loved ones. there was darkness and i remember thinking, "how many fucking steps can there possibly be?"

and they're all wooden. the majority of the house is carpeted while the minority is made up of the kitchen, bathrooms, and, yes, staircase. even the landing (no pun intended) is naught but a square of linoleum. the house was built in '91, so that part makes sense.

at the journey's end, i decided to rest. i took five minutes to determine whether i was alive or dead, and the next five to speculate about whether i was ever going to walk again. then the phone rang, but i let it go to voicemail. i was sure i'd never walk again and, therefore, in no big hurry. i wouldn't know the full extent of my injuries until two days later when i realized i was bruised from my ankle to my elbow.

after the 10 minutes of assessing and cussing, i miraculously stood and walked in a small circle. testing. then i looked to the top of the staircase where zoey stood, barely wagging her tail. she typically associates loud noises and lots of swearing with something she's done wrong. however, i only had myself to blame ... and my aptly named slippers.

the good news is that most of the shattered glass stayed where it landed, choosing not to follow me ... and if you're looking to purchase tableware that can be thrown down flights of stairs, i recommend corel. yard sale corel if at all possible.

oh, don't worry about me. it was hard to walk and lay down, sit, and stand back up and get in and out of the car for about a week, and the bruise rainbow was particularly spectacular, but all is back to normal. not only can i walk, but i can also rest my elbow on a pillow without the shooting pain. there are a dozen stairs and now i count them every time.

many thanks to alicia for scaring me into taking aspirin whether i thought i needed it or not ... the fall may not have killed me but the clot certainly could have.

life lesson

last nite i had an epic dream. after a morning of running thru it over and over again, i learned its lesson, which is this: when all signs point to the end of the world, remember that the world has a way of enduring through even the seemingly impossible. when you stop making the world's worries your own, you'll also find a way to endure. but it's a lot easier if you take the e-brake off.

seriously, it took me all morning to come to that conclusion. then i watched donnie darko and realized that i had just wasted the morning.

i think the dream wanted me to watch the movie ... and now i feel like i should watch it again.

you're gonna live forever

know how you can say a word over and over and over and over again until it doesn't really make sense anymore? for example, if i were to say bologna a hundred times ... like this ...

bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna bologna

... it loses all of it's meaning. as if "bologna" had a lot of it in the first place. there used to be a store in erie called "loblaws" that got a lot of ridicule among students. there's a word you don't even have to say in order to render it meaningless. here's another: celebrity.

i fear that our nation's definition of celebrity is in grave danger and a commercial i saw for "skating with celebrities" drove it home. did you know that dave coulier is a celebrity? i had no idea full house was still so popular. maybe i 'm wrong. maybe any lesson you can learn from a show co-written or produced by bob saget is timeless ... and maybe every former child star/anorexic crack addict is worthy of our praise and respect whether or not she's in rehab. the truth is dave can make funny voices and the twins now have long hair and high credit limits.

we all know about our 15-minute fame allotment, but that hasn't been accurate since our society became one in which portion sizes became four times larger than what's healthy and we multi-tasked ourselves into perpetual states of ADHD. despite our attention spans, our 15 minutes have somehow grown exponentially into weeks and months. did you know that a goldfish's memory is only as long as its trip around the bowl?

i said, "goldfish." still with me?

thanks in part to reality TV, we have an ocean brimming with infinite "star" potential. since it doesn't take much to make a star anymore, there are few requirements for longevity. to get the most out of your stint as sand in the public eye, all you have to do is pick a fight, take off your clothes, get engaged, fail miserably, or eat something totally disgusting on camera. if watchers are still talking about you a month later, which they will if your spectacle reappears sporadically in People and on Inside Edition, which it will b/c they love to remind us of stuff we should have forgotten months ago (or shouldn't have known in the first place), you'll be invited to participate in a reunion or "best of" show - thereby hurtled closer to the walk of fame for no reason other than your adventure in idiocy didn't wind up at the level of mark burnett's feet.

don't get me wrong. i love reality TV. besides Days of our Lives (zack didn't have to die! he was just a kid! stupid show.) it's really all i watch and all my perpetually short-term memory can handle. just ask denise ... if it's not a movie, i can't devote more than about 80 minutes to it.

anyway! it's fluff and i doubt (hope?) it was ever intended to produce any kind of quality star power ... not that it has. what it has produced is a new segment of popular americans ... that's fine. please, tho ... let's not call everyone a celebrity. a celebrity should be someone of note, a hero, and award winner who is for example theatrical, philosophical, musical; it's someone who's contirubed something (preferably positive) to the world. not trista, dave coulier, or omarosa. they're just goofballs ... regardless of how well they dance.

this year i will ...

... stop worrying so much about absolutely everything because, really, it has nothing to do with me anyway.

... eat more vegetables even tho i'm allergic.

... act without waiting for permission, a "sign," or a chance to change my mind.

... make at least one life-altering decision. (wouldn't you like to know.)

... do everything i can to not sneeze while driving.

... cook a little something every now and then. you know ... in the kitchen. using kitchen stuff.

... lose some patience.

... get a passport.

... convince myself that the strange marks that suddenly appeared on my index finger have nothing to do with aliens or evil. they're freckles. everyone has freckles there.

... string more words together.