All I Want Is A Normal Life

It’s coming to that time again… when I take care of the arduous task of working on my New Year’s Resolutions.

Last year’s were as follows:

1. Live in a place where Diva can run free – done
2. Find a hike in the SoCal area with miner’s cabins -OR- go up to Jorstead’s cabin
3. Read Jorstead’s book – no longer available
4. Go camping once per month – started well, but stopped
5. Write in Journal several times per week – started late, but in progress
6. Be in awesome shape for 4 consecutive month
7. Prioritize backpacking!
8. Do yoga for a few months – have started recently
9. Prepare to hike the Pacific Crest Trail in 2010
10. Take the Wilderness Travel Course – tried, but broke my arm. have re-enrolled
11. Be mayor of Gigsville – done
12. Go kayaking
13. Don’t get pneumonia – done!!
14. Don’t get tuberculosis – done

So, I did moderately ok, but still had epic fail on many levels of this. I’ll post my new resolutions here.

So, my car broke today. It was fine, working totally fine, and then when Edie Babe and I were heading out to the Theory Labs “Oh Come, All Ye A-Holes” party, my car would not start. Just click-click-click and nothing. All the lights were getting power and everything, just no starter turn-over. So we were basically stranded… and Isa, bless her heart, offered to have someone come fetch us and drive me back tomorrow, but I still feel kind of sick and I didn’t really want to spend much time at the party, so we ended up just deciding to finish the cheap blush wine that Edie bought and watching The Party with Peter Sellers (classic 60s movie). And honestly, I’m a little relieved that I didn’t have to go to the party… am I really becoming a shut-in? I guess so. I really was looking forward to seeing certain folks like Buck and Noosha, and maybe Vanessa if she came, and definitely MattShaw, whom I haven’t seen since –geeze, I dunno, maybe August?– a long time ago. But I don’t know that I was really in the mood to be at a huge crazy party bonanza.

I hardly go to parties anymore or even do much of anything. If David and I break up, I’m going to be seriously fucked for friends. He and I basically just spend all our leisure time together, which I guess is what most people experience as a committed relationship, but I’ve always been more independent… for exactly the reason that I kind of freak out if I don’t have a fairly wide circle of life outside of my boyfriend. I just don’t like being dependent on someone to complete my social life. It seems a little sick to me that someone would just spin off with someone into this silly couplelandia. But I guess that’s kind of where David and I are.

And I think I figured out what’s wrong with my car: it’s probably just a fuse for the starter. The weather’s a bit crazy and this kind of thing plays a bit of a number on fuses. I’ve got spares, so I’m not too worried. If it’s not that, then it may be the starter motor or the connection to the starter… but I’m starting with a fuse.

I was talking with my old friend, Jessica (whom I don’t talk with nearly enough), about how sick I’ve been, and how I’ve been sick for so long and how, well, sick of being sick I am. As I was talking with her, I realized that several things happened about exactly two months ago (pretty much within a week of me getting really sick):

1. I got a promotion. At work, we changed my role of one from just being concerned with the blog entries and managing the moderators, my job role expanded to include dictating the voice and tone of the whole site. All editorial requests now go through me, both coming in and before they go out. I also now manage Mario (who is super-awesome and needs almost no management at all, thank God… but still). I’ve always managed our writers and an editor, as well as our moderation vendor, but now I manage someone in-house, full time. And it’s awesome that he needs little to no management, but it’s kind of un-awesome that I am ultimately responsible/accountable for the output of his work.
   In addition, my role has expanded to also include a project lead component, which means that I write specifications for approval and contribution from the whole team (which sometimes has its own layer of political drama and intrigue), and then managing the phases of that project to see it through to completion. Now, again, I’m only surviving in this because of someone else. Thuy, on the Producer side, is like Ms. Follow-through. She makes sure everything is running along perfectly and checks with me frequently on the status and my preferences of stuff. So, she makes it not as big of a thing, but still, it’s quite a bit. And again, I’m still responsible/accountable for the finished product, so I still have to stay on top of it.
   And, like the antagonist in a Disney movie, I’ve got a guy who … well, for lack of a better word, acts like my nemesis. I have no idea why he wants to do this, but he is often very combative in meetings and avoids me the rest of the time, except to come in and correct or hound on something. Everyone else at work loves me, but this one guy seems to delight in tormenting anyone he’s at the same level with. If I didn’t know better, I would say he was trying to take my job, but I know he doesn’t want it. He’s been promoted so he’s got a bunch of people under him, so my job would be a step-down for him. But he just behaves so sarcastically and back-stabby. To me, Ms. I-Don’t-Have-Time-Fo-Yo-Drama, it just seems so insane. I look at it and just think, “doesn’t he have anything better to do?”. And it would be easier to write him off if a) he wasn’t the darling of the VP, and b) he didn’t occasionally switch and become Mr. Charming and Supportive. If he was consistently evil, I’d just go about my day and stuff, but he sometimes comes into my office and is super sweet and funny. It’s dizzying. Oh, and before you think this is about some unrequited inter-office romantic thing on his end, he’s gay as a Macy’s Christmas tree.
2. I don’t get enough sleep. We’ve already been over this one, and it’s directly related to item 1, but I really don’t get enough sleep. Last weekend, I tried to make up for it, and this week, I’m going to get at least 9 hours a night since it’s an easy week at work. We’ll see how that does.
3. I changed my diet dramatically. Yep, it’s been about the whole time that I’ve been sick that I’ve also been a vegan. I refuse to believe that I’m dependent on meat or animal products to stay well, but it may be something more like I’m allergic to something I’ve added to my diet that I didn’t consume that much of before: soy. I’ve added an incredible amount of soy to my diet, and I never really was much on soy before. It’s possible that my immune system has taken a hit by being allergic all the time. I’m going to phase soy out of my diet in the next couple weeks and see if that helps.
4. The Cold Snap. Oh, SNAP. (I love saying that) The weather here has been hot and cold, with very little in between. These rapid fluctuations are sometimes hard for my body to adjust to. Thanks, Global Warming!

Anyways, I think the first one is probably among the top causes of me getting sick. It’s just a lot of stress, and I’m not really coping with it all that well. I don’t feel stressed out at work most of the time — it’s just a list of tasks that I go through every day — but I know that I’m internalizing the stress. So I got a yoga video to do in the mornings to see if I can do some classic stress-reduction techniques. We’re going to see if that helps this week. I’ll keep you posted, of course.

Nick, I’ll respond to your email later, but this is about sleep. You’re right. I don’t get enough sleep or rest. It’s a tough situation, because you see how busy I am (well, you don’t technically see it, but you see how little I get to blog during certain times of the month, and then how sick I am around that time). And yet I still have all these things I want to do and things to finish, and now, of course, I’m all hooked on Twilight, which is really only going to last another 24 hours. But what should I do? There’s just too much stuff to get done… an easy 50 hours of work per week, dog walking, feeding myself, driving to and from work, reading, blogging, and then hobbies. And I want to start doing other projects like the Good Girl’s Guide and whatnot. I mean, I have three million ideas and time to go with zero, unless I cut out of sleep time. I pretty much consider all the other times non-negotiable. I mean, I gotta work the hours I gotta work. I have to walk Diva. I have to feed myself. I enjoy reading but do too little of it. I try to blog, but that’s really the first thing to go. David, friends and hobbies kind of creep in around the edges. I try to ride my bike, but that’s also a quickly-eliminated luxury.

So I cut back on sleep. I really get 6 or 7 hours of sleep per night… usually 6, sometimes 5. It’s not enough. I know this. But what do I do? How do regular people live on this schedule and still have time?

My mom says that I work harder than she worked at Boeing… she really worked 9 – 5. After 5, she was off. She came home. There was no Blackberry. There was no webmail. There was no “I’ll start work early before anyone else is up so no one will bother me while I get the real work done.” There was just 8 hours in a day of work, and 16 hours in a day of other things besides work. There was 8 hours of sleep AND 8 hours of something else. If I had those extra three hours, I’d totally be able to make that work. I’d have three hours per day to do whatever I wanted! Instead, I squander my 5 hours on walking my dog (about an hour a day, sometimes more), cooking (realistically, about 2 hours), and blogging while watching television and socializing with my roommate or hanging out with David. And then the weekends are a swirl of activity trying to fit friends, housekeeping, and bookkeeping into a 48 hour period.

So yeah, Nick. You’re spot on. And I’m a little embarrassed that I haven’t dedicated more time to taking care of myself. I sacrifice my health –like, my real health– for extra reading and TV time. And I’ve kind of taken up recreational cooking, since I can’t feed myself as a vegan in regular ways without getting sick of tofu or super-gassy from beans. Mmm. Gassy.

As long as I’m home sick watching Survivorman (I love Survivorman!), I might as well catch up on the bloggage.

I worked super late last night, despite getting sicker and sicker. Now, I’m all achy and my tonsils are impassable boulders. I’m going to go to sleep after this episode, even though “Twilight” (book, not movie) is getting interesting.

So, last night, when I got off work, I figured I should call my mom, since she called a few days ago. She called to talk about Grandma, who is sick and probably not going to be around much longer. A little bit of background on G’ma: she’s pretty much been my favorite relative, at least until she started getting more confused and my own direct parents started getting more like friends and less like parents. I have had years to get used to her aging. None of this is a surprise. But still, hearing the details of what seems to be kind of a confused depression (loss of interest in thing that used to interest her, general lethargy, refusal to eat) was really hard. I love her and I don’t want her life to be sitting around in a bed waiting to die. And she’s not aware enough to be depressed about the futility of her situation, which is kind of good and kind of bad. For her, it’s good. She’s not aware of this plight, even if she’s kind of deep-level depressed about it. For me, it’s sad. I’m sad on her behalf, and I’m sad because I miss the friend I used to have in G’ma.

My mom and I talked about it for a while, and then I talked with David about it for a long time, since he’s had a lot of experience with death.

And really, the thing is, I don’t know how to deal with this. First, she’s not dead. No matter how not there she is, she’s still with us and some part of her is in her head. She’s still mentally aware enough to be concerned with politeness and kindness, which is something that’s in her most basic make-up. She sometimes remembered me when I visited last time, and the rest of the time, she pretended to. Because, hey, that’s the way she is. Second, it’s not certain how close to dying she is. My mom thinks she’s really close, but the hospice people don’t think she is, and David said that even in this state, people can continue on for years and years. And part of me wants her to stop suffering, but part of me also feels guilty for feeling like she should die. And also, there’s some desperate part of me that wants more than nothing in the world for her to live forever, even if she’s a shell of her old self. But she’s not herself. It’s a little like pet cemetery… it’s just not right to wish for someone to be alive for so long that you’re willing to sacrifice who they are to achieve it.

But basically, I just don’t know how to react. I’m dealing. In many ways, I’ve had to deal with this for years.

And then, at 4:00 in the fucking MORNING, I woke up in my footy pajamas in a pool of URINE. No, I’m not kidding. Diva has been getting older (seems to be a common theme around me) and in the past year or so, she occasionally (really occasionally) has incontinence. If it wasn’t infrequent, I wouldn’t let her sleep with me, obviously. But this morning, I woke up in my fleece footy pajamas (which wick moisture, both conveniently and inconveniently) and I was soaking wet.

So I had to get out and change, take a shower, change the sheets, and check the blankets (it wasn’t actually that much when I turned the light on, but it’s sure enough to make me spring up and shower). And it’s not that easy to get back to sleep at 4:30 in the morning after a freezing shower (my shower heats up verrrry slowly) and a lot of jumping around (if you’ve ever been soaked in urine that isn’t your own, you know the kind of jumping around I’m talking about).

And keep in mind that I’m still super sick and all I want to do is sleep for days.

After about an hour of laying in dry pajamas and fresh sheets, thinking about G’ma and how depressed she must be, I finally got to sleep.

And then at 6:00, Diva woke me up and wanted me to go feed her and let her out to pee… and you better believe that I jumped up to let her out to pee.

Ok, this entry is getting long and probably tedious, but there was one super-awesome cherry on the shitty sundae of that 12 hour span: the hydrogen peroxide gargle. My doctor advised that I mix 50% water and 50% hydrogen peroxide and gargle with it to fight the infection in my tonsils. I hesitantly tried to gargle with the mixture this morning, holding the foul-tasting stuff in my throat for as long as I could, and then spitting it out. But anyone who knows anything about hydrogen peroxide knows what it does when it hits infection: it foams. And when your whole mouth is a cesspool of infection, it foams A LOT. And it doesn’t just foam forward, it foams backward, down your throat, which causes a gag reflex, which causes whatever you ate to fly forward with great velocity, which leaves you puking in your own sink and foaming at the mouth like a sick, rabid animal.

And then I went to work.

And then I realized I was too sick to be at work, so I came home. And now here I am. So, yeah, that’s how my day went.

On a day-to-day basis, I complain about my throat hurting. Last month, I had strep throat. After that, I got a cold which was accompanied by a sore throat… and the cold went away, but the sore throat didn’t. This morning, when I did my now-routine “what on earth could be going on in my throat?” check, I noticed the white spots of strep are back on the right tonsil (but strangely, the left tonsil is unaffected). I think it’s time to make yet another appointment with my doctor. Feh.

I feel like I’m just seeing a best friend after months of not talking. There was SO much stuff I wanted to write about… everything from the cyber-bullying case (briefly: It’s awful that the girl killed herself after being bullied by the mother… that woman -the mother- is a sick individual who should be in a mental institution. It’s people like this who make our society bad in the ways it’s bad. But at the same time, there’s no *explicit* law that if someone harassed someone else into killing themselves, that the harasser is a murderer. I mean, I could call you every day and tell you that everyone hated you and you should die, but you are ultimately responsible for if you kill yourself as a result of that… and, for whatever is right or wrong here, that’s the way our society is put together -or should be-. I can’t sue McDonalds for seducing me with trashy food that ultimately will kill me) to Mary Poppins (briefly: watched it last night for the first time, and OH MY GOSH that’s the best movie ever. I want to watch it every day. STEP IN TIME! hahahaha… awesome) to Beyonce (briefly: I love her. I don’t care what you say. She’s great).

But this morning, I’m eating the most amazing meal I’ve cooked since going vegan: a soyrizo burrito with sauteed mushrooms, peppers, garlic, scallions, onions, and jalapenos, topped with some fresh avocado and wrapped in a fresh and delicious flour tortilla. YUM! I’m watching Survivorman, one of my favorite shows (Les Stroud is my television crush). At 1pm, Santacon (Lord knows where that website came from… Santacon’s always been kind of an underground event), which I’ve managed to talk David into coming on. After watching Mary Poppins last night, I realize that Dick Van Dyke’s character, Bert, would be an awesome boyfriend. But no one is like that, and the fact is, David and I get along really well. We laugh at the same stuff and we laugh pretty constantly. No, he’s not goofy or larger-than-life like Bert, and I had to do a little convincing to get him to come to Santacon, and he doesn’t really like camping or hiking, but I love being with him, I love talking with him, I love laughing with him… I love HIM. So much so that I don’t really care if he doesn’t want to do all those other things that used to be most important to me in a relationship — things I thought I’d never compromise on. So I’m sticking with David and trying to find the motivation to do all these other things (hiking, camping, karaoke, etc) without him. He’s not a vegan and doesn’t even eat organic/sustainable meats or vegetables/fruit. He’d never even had real peanut butter until he met me… it had always been that sugar and lard concoction that they market as nutritional paste. Bleh. And he loved the real peanut butter! I warned him that he’d probably not like it, since it just tastes like peanuts, but he likes peanuts and loved the peanut butter! And he at least plays along when I make vegan food.

It’s a beautiful day and I’ve got a lot of stuff to do today, so I have to get moving. I’ve set myself up for a vigorous training program to ensure I’m in shape for the Wilderness Travel Course. Even though the “Girlfriends” episode of “Flight of the Conchords” is on, I’ve got to peel myself off this couch.

Seriously.

Off the couch.

OH and props to WordPress on the new look. Um, now you just have to get mobile uploads, hey?

I mean no badness towards my mom or anything, but it’s pretty hard to wake up, converse with my mom, converse on my way to work, then talk with people all day, running from meeting to meeting where I have tons of deliverables and such, and then come home and entertain my mom. She’d say that I don’t have to entertain her, but really, it’s entertaining. Right now, she’s down in Long Beach visiting Sheena, which is kind of a relief, since I get to sit around at home and watch Kung Fu Panda and pretend like it’s a normal night where I have a calm night and go to bed at 9:00.

It turns out that I don’t require the social interaction 24 hours per day. I need quiet time to watch dumb movies and read books on mountaineering.

But these days I don’t get much of that time… so I guess I should appreciate the moments I get it.

A full report of the weekend through photos is coming next.

Also, it’s pouring rain, thank God.

My mom is visiting this week and will be here until next Friday, which is awesome. My mom is one of my best friends. I feel really lucky to have been raised by someone so compassionate and cool.

This morning as I was walking Diva, I saw some kids throwing rocks at a dog in a yard. The dog started barking and they ran off, but if they had been there continuing to throw rocks, I would have started throwing rocks at them. And it got me thinking about my mom and how she always raised me not to needlessly maim stuff, to tenderly carry out spiders (in fact, the other night I found I had laid down on a spider in my bed and I felt its little spidery legs all flailing in a panic and after executing several rapid, panic-filled shrieks, I picked up the pillow it was on and helped the poor terrified thing to the door), and to take care of the animals we had as if they were our own children. When I was in kindergarten, our class had a bunch of eggs that hatched in an incubator and my mom valiantly allowed me to bring them home and mature into adolescent chickens in our kitchen. She just put a bunch of paper down and the little chicks ran in chick circles until they started getting their adult feathers… and then they kind of got too big to live in the tiny kitchen, so we had to give them to 4H. We’ve always had cats, or rats, or dogs — sometimes all at the same time.

And so the idea of throwing rocks at a dog would have never occurred to me. I mean, really, who the fuck does that? Where are their parents? Why would humans tease a poor, defenseless animal who lives his life behind a fence? Who says that’s ok? Of that, my opinion is definitely “eye for an eye.” People who throw rocks at dogs should have rocks thrown at them.

But I’ve got to assume that has something to do with how I was raised. I think it’s because my mom and I always had another species living with us, be it feline, rodent, or canine (or once, for a short bird-sitting experience, avian). I’ve always felt a kind of symbiotic relationship with the pets. We’re different but equal (this has driven every boyfriend I’ve ever had completely crazy). Every pet has had its own personality, thoughts, desires, interests, and goals (albeit in a short-sighted kind of way). Diva, my dalmatian, for example, is the kind of dog who would high four* you all the time for how awesome you are. She has all the faith in the world that whatever you’re doing, it’s the best possible thing you could be doing at that moment. “Somehow,” she thinks, “this is all leading to a walk, some food, or some petting.” She’s all fun and games — completely goofball. Layla, our german shepherd on the other hand, was always focused on getting everyone in the same room — keeping the pack together. She was serious a lot of the time, even serious about having a good time scouting ahead on walks or fetching balls… all of this was very focused. And Gray, our little old lady cat, was always very tender and caring, while Yellow, her son, was always super macho. And then there was the completely batshit crazy cat, Spot. Spot would have been institutionalized if he was a human. There was not one single normal brain cell in that cat’s head.

Anyways, it’s late and I’m done reminiscing about my pets of yore. Right now, Diva is all snoozypants waiting for me to stop typing so we can get to some serious log-sawing.

* no dew claw