In the late 90’s, I lived at my grandparents’ house for six or seven months. It was wonderful – I’d never really grokked them before then, not really. But living with them as an adult showed me that they weren’t unemotional but subtle, they weren’t grouchy but outspoken, they weren’t scary but fun.
I learned a lot about myself and my family during that time. It gave me perspective; I hadn’t sprung whole from the ether. I was the product and result of a family in addition to being what I’d made of myself. A lot of my faults and strengths came out of my genotype… and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
I developed opinions I wouldn’t have had otherwise. For instance, I realized that I myself value a certain amount of emotional privacy and I don’t really think people need to spend untold hours in therapy delving through every single time they’d ever had their feelings hurt. I learned that I felt this way after my own mom came to the Hall’s house for a weekend, and left early on Sunday. When I asked her why she and her husband weren’t staying for dinner, she told me that she didn’t feel comfortable in her own mother’s house, that she felt her parents were both intolerant of emotionality and quite controlling.
I think that’s the day I realized that my mother had a relationship with her mother exactly the same way I had a relationship with my mother. It seems obvious, but I’d never really understood that before – I remembered childhood with my mom’s probably slightly synthetic rapture about “going to the grandparents’ for Christmas! Aren’t you excited?”. My mother had her own opinions and feelings about her mom! Wow.
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Ten PM. A roaring fire. A great book. A glass of Radiance Dairy whole milk, and two chocolate graham crackers.
Mmm!
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I redesigned my blog today; now it’s all blue-grey and lovely. I like it. I also made a steal-this-button button for a friend’s blog (in six iterations). I dispatched some DSL installations, I interacted with some customers, I went to lunch at the silver bullet with Mr. Brett (who grabbed my boobs on the drive back), and now it’s four and I’m not entirely sure what to do with the final hour of my work day.
Hmm. Guess I’ll check my database… and then go limewire.
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Every time I go to ThinkGeek, I discover frivolous crap I adore the moment I lay eyes on it. I mean, really, it’s amazing the fun and useless crap they sell there every single day of the year.
For instance: I want this keyboard now, please.
It glows in the damn dark, people! IN THE DARK! How do they always know what I want? First the Zippo digicam, and now this!
Oh what I would give to work at ThinkGeek!
Today the ‘box is green, in honor of what I hope will soon be an early spring. (There’s snow on the ground outside, but hope springs eternal.)
I used a fixed wallpaper backgroud, and edited a stylesheet from movablestyle.org. I think it’s pretty busy, but it’s less boring than the white terror I’ve had up since moving to this server.
It’s greeny! Do ya like it?
After the flu and protracted anxiety, my neck and ribs were FUBAR. I mean, totally FUBAR. As in, I couldn’t turn my head far enough to change lanes while driving the Jeep.
Yesterday I drove to town and went to see Dr. Crossland. I’d taken Brett there before, but had never been myself. It was AWESOME!
I walked in the door, the lobby was empty, and the good doctor himself was in the office. He had me fill out a little card and took me straight back. No waiting!
The exam room had a chair, a table, and a… contraption. I sat first in the chair, and he discovered my many misalignments by gently poking and prodding with his thumbs. Then onto the contraption I went. It was a tilting chiropractic table – you’d walk up to it, lean forward and put your arms on a couple of rests, and then the whole thing would tilt down. (It felt cool, there was some mild low back stretch from the tilt. I dug it.)
The doc was an old guy, white haired and bright eyed, and you could tell he’d been doing this forEVER. He was totally comfortable, assured, and thorough. I’d only ever been to one chiropractor in my life – the wonderful and flaky Dr. Deb Peters – so I’d never been crunched before, and after every loud noise I steeled myself for it to hurt… but it never did! The man made my back, neck, and hips make THE most insane crunching noises but it felt great!
Honestly, I had no idea. I’m the kind of person who will walk away from people who crack their knuckles or necks – I hate it. Ewh!
But this guy was amazing. After a few minutes on the contraption, he put me on the other table, where I had my lower back popped through some wonderful contortion involving the patient on her side with the upper leg bent, and the good doctor pulling the hip and pushing the shoulder. Yum!
Then back to the contraption to get my back and hips pushed on, then back in the chair for some neck release, then back on the contraption to learn that my legs were now the same length again. The man’s neck un-fucking procedure was freaky: he just took hold of my head, twisted and pulled! And it did not hurt! It sounded totally freaky, but when he was done I could feel blood rushing back into my shoulder muscles for the first time in probably two or three weeks.!
THE MAN IS AWESOME. He showed me a few stretches to do, told me that my bronchia and sinuses might let loose a little after the adjustment, and then only charged me 36 bucks!
He was right, too – last night I coughed pretty determinedly for about an hour after dinner, and I think I pretty much got up the remaining flu garbage that had been stuck in there. (My ribs were all crooked and I guess I hadn’t been able to produce a decent cough.) I love Dr. Crossland! Yay!
$32.67… that’s how much money I’ve given the iTunes music store. Aside from the occasional audiobook, I doubt they’ll be getting much more… it’s so much better to just buy the CDs. But here it is, my list: iTunes XHTML Playlist: Purchased Music. Sigh.
Around 10:30, Stella and Bindu went nuts at something out the window. So we all went outside, and the ‘something’ turned out to be two somethings: two shorthaired yellow labs.
One was young, male, friendly, enthusiasic, and cute as hell. The other was female and I think she was older; maybe even his mom – also very cute.
They hung out around the farm all day, sniffing and peeing and sniffing and wiggling and being really friendly. Both would come when called, both were healthy and well-mannered… well, there was an incident with the puppy putting muddy footprints on my left shoulder, but he was off as soon as I hollered “Down!” at him. Then he smiled and wiggled ALL OVER… and didn’t do it again.
He did sit wagging next to the Jeep, and I had to say, “No way, boy, we ain’t goin’ anywhere!”
I wondered if I should take a digital pic of them to post at the Batavia Conoco (er, sorry, I guess it’s a BP now) when walking them down to the road didn’t get rid of them. They were both clean and healthy and wearing collars with rabies tags dangling, so I knew they were supposed to be somewhere.
I slept most of the afternoon, but went back out with the girls around four and the visiting labs were still here. When I called, “Hey, puppy! Hey, momma!” they both galloped over for a sniff.
When Brett got home at six-ish, I told him about the visitors and he said he’d seen them almost by Chicken’s, so apparently they were on their way home somewhere.
I think they’re the first all-day canine visitors sans humans of their own to visit since we’ve lived here!
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This is how screwed up I am. The day before yesterday, I was pretty badly amped. Had to do a bunch of yoga and japa when I got home from work, and I was pretty sweaty-palmed and geeked out much of the day, but it was tolerable.
Last night was pretty rough too but it eased off and I crashed around eight, only to wake up when Brett came to bed and be unable to get back to sleep.
I was up and pretty miserable most of the night, and finally fell asleep around six or seven. Yes, this made me incredibly late to work.
Now it’s 1:15 and I’m having another panic attack. A bad one. It’s like way too much really-really-really bad speed, but I haven’t even had so much as a cup of tea for the past 48 hours.
This shit is basically daily now. I AM SO UNCOMFORTABLE. I HATE IT.
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