Checking In

Ack! It's been--let's see--three days since my last post! I'm slipping terribly. My apologies to you all...

(Becca says that maybe I just wanted to leave my picture up longer for everyone to see. I said maybe she's right. Ah, vanity, vanity!)

I don't actually have much to say today, except this. Customers can be very frustrating people. I am utterly mystified by them at times. For example, they have this tendency to be aggrieved when you are out of stock on particular items that they want, as if they suspect you did it on purpose, to spite them. Or they act like they suspect you of not telling the truth, that in fact you have HUNDREDS of whatever it is they want in the back, and you are just telling them you don't have it so you can go into the breakroom later and laugh at them maniacally behind their backs with all your mean-spirited co-workers.

Let me assure everyone right now that this is not the case. If we don't have it, we don't have it, and all the moaning, groaning, questioning, and angry gesticulation will do absolutely nothing to make it appear. Trust me on this, ok? Please. if not for the sake of my sanity, then for the sake of your blood pressure. Your health is a precious thing; don't break it over not getting an iPod Nano or something like that before everyone else on your block does. For the love...!

On another note entirely: I noticed finally that the days are growing very short. It is dark already and only 7:30pm. I love the autumn, and am looking forward to it eagerly, even though I live in California where autumn doesn't happen in any sort of spectacular displays. But it does get cooler, and sometimes you smell woodsmoke on the air if you go for a walk in the evening, and that's good enough for me.

Alright, Just This Once!

A rare sighting indeed...I don't usually post pictures of myself here, but I did my hair again and thought you might like to see. And last time I posted a picture of my hair, but not my whole face, there was this to-do about how the picture was really all about my eyes, so to avoid that, here is the real deal!



Coloring my hair has almost always been more a result of boredom than anything else, really. This past weekend was very long, especially since all I did was sit around the house because I was sick. By last night I was feeling a bit stir crazy. I was also having a slight asthma attack and couldn't find my inhaler. I thought I'd go to the pharmacy and get a new one, and then I thought, "Hey while I'm there why don't I get some dye and color my hair! That'll give me something to do tonight!"

And it did!

Hanging' On

I am still alive! I am not sure if that's a good thing, but I have every hope that it is, in spite of the fact that my cold has progressed to the "hacking cough" stage--my favorite. Woo-hoo.

I do hope I feel a thousand times better by tomorrow, though, because my good friend Ben is coming to town and visiting me on his way back to Minnesota from Germany. I don't know yet what we'll do, but I know it's going to be fun. Yay! Well, "yay" if I feel better, otherwise "boo" to lame illnesses that always come at a bad time.

One of the worst things about a cold, for me at least, is that I lose all interest in food (ok, Steve, you can stop looking so shocked!). I know the old adage: "Starve a fever, feed a cold," but I just can't be bothered to eat when everything I put in my mouth tastes like some version of cardboard.

I am a picky eater anyway, an aspect of myself I had never really faced up to until the other day when I was chatting with a friend online, and we started talking about food and what we like, and I kept thinking of all these things I don't like. For example, take pizza. I eat meat, but not on pizza at all, UNLESS it's ham, because I think ham and pineapple is great. But sausage and pepperoni--gross. Also I don't like olives, so if I get a veggie pizza (which I like), it has to not have olives, or I'll be picking them off, every one.

Or let's talk about eggs. I like hard-boiled eggs, and I like fried eggs. Scrambled I will eat occasionally, but it's very rare. I refuse to eat deviled eggs; the very thought is making me stick out my tongue and wrinkle my nose as I say "Bleah" right now. I also hate egg salad, and eggs IN salad (even though those would be hard-boiled which I actually do like, by themselves). During my time in New Zealand, I was horrified at the kiwi tendency to put eggs in--of all things--BURGERS. Absolute travesty. (They also put beets in burgers, which is equally horrible to me.)

Then there's guacamole: I must be the only living Californian who doesn't care for it, and actually makes a point of not eating the stuff. I don't like its nuclear-green color, which always makes me think of kryptonite, and we all know how bad that was for poor Superman. Anything that looks like something that could be the undoing of a Man of Steel superhero is a little suspect in my book.

Other things I won't eat, or only under duress: strawberries or any sort of strawberry-flavored concoction (due to the fact that a strawberry milkshake from McDonald's made me throw up when I was about 5); bananas (I can't even stand the smell of bananas), and cusheri (an Egyptian dish made of of elbow macaroni and lentils, and I am really not a fan).

So I guess I am a picky eater after all, although in my defense I did eat cow brains once. Granted, it was only because I didn't know they were cow brains, but still it has to count for something. I also tried a bite of alligator sausage several years ago. Hated it, but I did try.

All this talk of food is making me--well, not hungry because I still have the same cold I had ten minutes ago when I started writing and I still don't feel like eating. Sigh...

Possibly Dying

Ok, not really, at least I hope not. But I'm definitely sickest today. Death seems awfully attractive, if for no other reason than that at least my head wouldn't feel so cottony and my nose would stop running and I would stop feeling like I've forgotten how to walk.

Today my nose dripped without warning right in front of a customer. Talk about gross.

Now that I'm home, I am feeling a little more cheerful, but mostly because I'm listening to the Barenaked Ladies sing "If I Had A Million Dollars." That song really makes me laugh, and laughter, they say, is the best medicine. Although come to think of it, I don't know if anyone has ever specificied what, exactly, laughter is good medicine for. Maybe it's only good for cat allergies, or splinters, or stubbed toes. In which case, it won't actually be all that helpful for my current state. Hmm.

Oh well, I am too sick to try and figure it out. If you know, you can tell me. In the meantime, I hope everyone has a better weekend than I'm predicting I'm going to. Enjoy the holiday, and do something fun, and then tell me about it so I can live vicariously through you, because I'll tell you right now what I'm going to be doing: nothing. I am going to lie in front of the TV on the couch all day, feeling sorry for myself and blowing my stupid nose.

And if you don't write something, I will feel worse. You wouldn't want that, now, would you?

Thinking

Red wine and Blarney cheese are probably not a recipe for health, especially late at night, but I am having some anyway. I am in a pensive sort of mood; I meant to go to bed early, but I couldn't, because I started thinking.

And what am I thinking about? Oh, the little things: God, life, me. Why I (and several of my close friends) feel hostile toward church lately. Why I haven't felt like reading my Bible in months, when there was a time that I couldn't get enough of it. Why I don't feel like praying--and yet can't help myself here and there, throughout the day, when I am thinking of certain things or people.

I think it was in June when I decided I wanted God out of my life for awhile. I don't know why. I was tired, I suppose. I'd been doing the "Christian thing" so long, it had all become meaningless. I was (and am) bored by church; bored and hostile toward the unending, apparently meaningless repeitions of songs, sermons, and programs. I began to hate the routine. And I was hurt, too, by a relationship that ended before it even began, when I had had hopes. That wouldn't have been so bad, except that it was just the last one in a long line of unrequited loves, and I just had had enough. Somehow I felt like it was God's fault, all of it, and I didn't want to deal with it, or Him, anymore.

So I tried to be someone else for awhile. I tried very hard. I thought it might be nice to be just like everyone, because then maybe I wouldn't have to think about everything so much. And I didn't want to feel guilty about anything, because I have always felt guilty about everything, and I was so tired of that most of all.

But I couldn't seem to manage the transformation, for some reason. Not really. I did my best to fake it, but I couldn't believe in myself as really being that other person I was trying to be. And besides, I started to see I was doing what I hated most: living two lives, and being hypocritical to both of them. It was a strange game that I had made, where I was the only player, and I was still losing!

I suppose I shouldn't talk about it like it's all in the distant past, because it isn't. I'm still caught in it, tangled. But I hope I'm finally starting to snap out of it.

I don't want to be like everyone else.

As I've thought about all this, it occurs to me that the problem with God is that He really does get inside you--under your skin, in a way that no one else does. I can't stop thinking about Him. I catch myself praying, and I make myself stop because it seems wrong when I have been so against Him lately, but at the same time I want to pray. I want to talk to HIm, very much. I miss that most of all.

Lately I hear myself when I talk to others about God, and it's like listening to an echo of myself. The sound is there, but the sense...something is lacking. There is a vague hollowness that haunts my words, and hurts my heart.

Do I mean what I say, anymore? Do I believe it?

I do. God help me, I do.

Set up signposts,
Make landmarks;
Set your heart toward the highway,
The way in which you went...
--Jeremiah 31:21

I have chosen the way of truth...
--Psalm 119: 30

And I am resolved to love you
With whatever means are mine.
--five o' clock people

Sicker

Well, the sore throat is nearly gone, but I am a little light-headed and now my ears are stopped up. I keep yawning to try and unstop them and it doesn't work.

I went to work today and spent the entire time wishing I hadn't, when I wasn't wandering around aimlessly, forgetting what I was meant to be doing because I was so out of it. If someone had asked me what my name was, I think I would have given them a blank look. In fact, I'm not sure I know now. Who am I?

I remember at one point asking a customer if the information on their zip code was current. Of course, I meant to say "driver's license." I also found myself trailing off and leaving sentences half-finished a lot. Well, I do that anyway, but today was certainly worse than usual.

I hate being sick.

Sick

Not feeling well today. Mostly I have a sore throat. I hate sore throats. They put me in a bad temper, especially when I have to talk to people a lot, as I do for my job. I don't want to talk to anyone when my throat hurts. I just want to curl up in my bed, with some Sprite or 7Up within easy reach on the side table, and ignore the world. I also crave ice cream.

Sigh.

(In the process of writing this, I seem to be developing a cough as well. That will not improve my mood.)

I'm tired. And I was going to straighten my hair before work, because yesterday I went in with it really wild (one of my co-workers was kind enough to call it the wind-blown look, which made me laugh--it was more like the I-just-jumped-out-of-an-airplane-and-fell-thousands-of-feet-at-high-speeds look), but I can't seem to get myself out of bed.

On the other hand, maybe I'll feel better if I make myself look really hot. Or not, come to think of it, because I'm reminded of a conversation I had with one of my guy friends last night, in which I was informed (not for the first time, mind you) that my looks probably intimidate guys. In other words, I'm so good-looking that I'm scary! If only I looked less good I'd get more dates!

Gah. l hate the world. It's stupid.

Did I mention I have a sore throat and feel miserable? I do.