Coming Up: The fairies frolic with mischief in their minds. Will Adella find and tame her words or will she be left armless against a sea of endless estradiol troubles? Peter Pan pipes a patter of palaver in foreign tongues and tofu steams itself to freedom. Our dauntless couples dare to plunge into the chambers of Narnia, with nary a light to guide them. Will Andrew possibly survive a darkened closet and his mad-wife? Beautiful inside, Adella lets light strobe across her weary bones. Will she find her whisky pants at the end of the diagnostic rainbow, or merely yet another pill to proclaim from mountaintops each morn? The evil Thompson twin lurks online and in office. Will the website warrior fend her off or has he been consumed by the Thompson alma mater?
Dare ye plunge the cavernous spelunk of mysteries abounding, grab your fairy wings and harness and join the excavation of answer that lie below...
Peter's Pipe Plays on the Physio Under Crepitating Crosswords The siren call of collapse
Welcome to the sacred grottoes my afternoon. Between the closing of work and the arrival of the Mistah, I have happened into a wee burble of a bubble of time to myself. Solitary, for certain. Still? Less so, but gradually inching nearer.
My pocket of unemployed single ladydom follows a certain schedule in order of priorities. My first order of business is to put away the groceries and other things in my bag. This is rather a crucial one, since I pick up frozen and otherwise perishable foods often enough, and refrigeration is a task bestaccomplished within a five minute window of entry. After this juncture, I forget entirely about the perishable aliments, surreptitiously stashed as they are in the folds of my back-pack of mysteries.
Should I accomplish this, my next priority is to check the mail, since it requires wearing shoes and I hope to get my darned shoes off ASAP. In fact, although a now-or-never priority, I often forestall retrieving the mail and possibly only do so once or twice a week these days. I really want to take those damned shoes off at the end of the day.
If it's a night we're staying in, I would have changed, but we're going out later. As such, I am begrudgingly still in workish clothing. I would happily endue myself exclusively in pajamas and workout clothes, but there seems to be some standards for being in an office, even if I've more or less bottomed those out on several occasions. Still, baggy kakhis and even jeans seem like more of a head nod towards societal norms (albeit casual Pacific Northwest ones) than a penguin polar fleece and an electric green sports bra. I do admit that nowadays, most of my "work" tops are lycra and have shelf bras. Between the incalescence of our twelfth floor office in the clement months and treadmilling habits, my little nook of Englettlaw can turn into quite the little steam room. So what's a gal to do but banish sleeves and embrace the moisture wick. And really, a separate bra? Two pieces of clothing when I could have one? For shame! The excess! The waste! The sheer profligacy! I do have an overjacket for more "formal" occasions... like leaving the confines of my office when members of the public are present. I'm not saying that my over jacket isn't also a light running jacket... I do also keep a blazer and work pants at hand, but I really love my little blue running jacket for layering.
But back to my priorities and the eventual stillness of a relaxing moment. I am not allowed to alight upon comfort until after I've done my PT. Physical Therapy is like most other exercise regimes: easily built up in my head as truly horrific and daunting until I simply begin. The longer I forestall, the more herculanean the task becomes in my head. Should I wait until after dinner, the commencement is likely to be met with tears and a mild temper tantrum. Quite enough to almost discourage one from continuing on in that obtuse way our brain has of gravitating towards the simple and easy, despite delighting in the challenging and novel. Fortunately, the slight tweak in my foot and those attendant limitations provides sufficient motivation in a way working out rarely does. Stretching? Sure, that would help in the long run, but I'm less viscerally aware of the cause and effect of that benefit. Same with strength training. For most exercise, I still must rely on social pressures or the ever daunting calendar entry. If I have it on my calendar to go to pilates and I know there are people there who expect me to attend... then I will mostly go and only sort of be relieved on the days when class is mysteriously cancelled due. My compliance with PT is significantly improved over most any other home workout, given I can palpably measure its impact on my increasing - though gradual - reintroduction of self to active lifestyle. The same eagerness helps me get out for my little "runs" two or three times a week. I figure at least twice a week is required for me to continue making progress in the rehabilitation of my little arch.
After PT, there may be a snack, as I've no doubt neglected to feed myself quite properly by the end of the work-day. It might also be time to start dinner or finish chores, but tonight... it's sofa time, baby!! Kindle or crosswords... the ultimate decision. I'm reading J.M. Barrie's The Little White Bird, which is famous for being "the first mention of Peter Pan" although in this incarnation, Peter Pan is a seven day old half-bird-half-infant who was stranded on an island in Kensington Gardens after flying away from his mother and forgetting how to fly. Also, it's a story told by the protagonist with a little boy he's become fond of. An endearingly sweet story of a crotchety old man with a begrudging soft spot and a class appropriate horror at his own increasing whimsy and kind-heartedness, all of which is tinged with an overwhelming sense of loss from a prior love and a fear of reaching out too far and disappointing those he loves. It postively delightful and would lend itself to quite the treacly Hallmark adaptation, but is saved from cliche by the deftness of narrative, and the long fancies of fairy worlds and pirate ships, and St. Bernard's.
But crosswords are my brains version of a long deep stretch. And my head's a bit aflutter today and needing to come down.
Choices.... choices...
From the Tip-o-The Toes to the Top-o-the-Tete 'Tis Time! For what, I couldn't say
Yesterday, I had a bit of down time for dithering 'twixt crossword and whimsical fantastical fairyland confections. Certainly, I could have mixed them, but that would have invited a thorough mischief upon my person. I have it on grand authority that fairies are highly disorganized creatures with rules all their own that are only understood by the very young little girls who appear to misbehaving but are simply doing-as-the-fairies.
And so, with a twinkle of the toe, I took a further plunge through The Little White Bird, and left the words to sort themselves out. I suspect it was a rather fine call, even if it filled my head with even more moonshine than previously presaged as possible. Wednesday is a fine day to drip fairy dust and whimsy at any rate. And the jaunt through Kensington Gardens proved to be restorative after a minor estrogen bonk (my term for the feeling of malaise, tinniness, and echoey migrainey dissociation that occasionally accompanies my transition back to just-the-estrogen after a more pronounced PMS bonk from the orange barracuda pills).
Really, feeling bonked is not an ideal state of mind for our weekly date night, so I'm glad to have been shaken from the hibernal recesses of my gelid consciousness before the bike-and-chain arrived with his newly muffled chariot. (and I was reminded by a British friend that "bonk" can have several different connotations depending on context, but let's assume I am using the endurance athlete's argot in describing my full sense of having hit a wall mid-day and requiring the full frolic of the fairies to recover).
Feeling rather grand, we embodied my version of the previously requested "low key" by going to our favorite Chinese Takeout place, Q.Q. Li's. Sadly, the owner and her little piano-playing puck weren't present. The blond surfer dude who runs the ship more tightly than the best bos'n arrived some time after we'd received our meal. The gentleman who speaks a faint degree of English managed to take our orders with far less pantomime than previous attempts, although he did omit the tofu from my order of "steamed tofu and vegetables." A minor oversight and I'm relieved that he at least got the vegetables in. For a small worldly treat, I got to eavesdrop cluelessly on a Mandarin conversation between our clerk and the customer ahead of us. I couldn't make out much more than "here" and "grammatical structure word" and "not" and occasionally "good, good" or "no." But given all the gesturing, I'm not sure that this was solely the shortcomings of my paltry language studies in full remission.
To my multicultural delight, the rest of the evening's eavesdropping was a jaunt through my even weaker Spanish (mostly picked up from travelling, and about a week and a half of study when I was in Argentina to get the most superficial of mid-milonga chatter handled). The only others in the restaurant were speaking exquisitely enunciated Spanish. And of course, my attention had been drawn to the family due to a significant level of sock and leggings envy for the little girl of the trio. Oh small children. If I could dress like you on a daily basis, I might eschew my over-arching preference for pjs and workout clothes.
Upon our return from glamorous gustatory globetrotting, Mr. (W)right and I had a little adventure befitting an evening that begins at the fairy's ball: we went spelunking through our closet in a domestic blend of fort-building hide-and-seek and Seven Minutes in Heaven. I forget that we technically have a walk-in closet with a sliding door, until I've cornered my prey and want to see just how afraid of the dark he might be (answer being "not nearly as afraid of the dark as of his wife in an impish mood")! No passageways to Narnia, but quite a lot of room to explore between giggles and ghostly goosings.
Today reeks of wet pavement, burgeoning blossoms, and a slight musk of work long-neglected. Despite a hot rush from the Monday starting gate, I've had a small bit of time to reconsider our highly out of date office webpage. It currently claims that some weird bespectacled lady named Adella Thompson is the only associate. I've mentioned her before - she's my evil twin. She wears suits, slicks back her hair and pretends to do regular litigation style cases. I'm also pretty sure that she feeds on the souls of young chrysanthemums. Tsk tsk. Those wild single ladies!
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| Don't trust her for a minute - she's quite mad with semi existence |
Of course, our prior web guy no longer maintains his old email address. There's a similarly named fellow working at WWU, but I'm not sure if that means he's out of the business. If I knew enough about the passwords and whatnot, I would contact the lady who did the Whatcom Collaborative Professionals Page, but I have no idea how to do anything with our current site (one of the things I'd like to change - as I have at least limited competence in managing the WCP page in accordance my secretarial duty and occasional caprice). Perhaps time to take a hike through my old outlook emails again.
Which will have to suffice for exercise today, since I'm giving up my lunch-gym run and light pounding to have light flashed at my hips in some kind of soothsaying attempt to predict the calcium contents and strength of the bones therein. In case I want to excuse my very-very-bottom-end-of-a-technically-healthy-body-fat-and-weight as just having dense bones. Or in case all this dalliance with being underweight caused osteopenia or osteoperitonitis or something. Unlike the ultrasound, this is solely a secondary preventative check with no particular diagnostic relevance for the amenorrhea issue.
Speaking of, I received a phone call from my lady-doc (my gyno is male, so when I say "lady-doc" I should clarify that this is my Fagles-esque translation of gynecologist ... who ever said two years of studying Ancient Greek wasn't a boon to my high dudgeon of musty culture?) informing me that the ultrasound came back and everything looked "very good." I'm so flattered! I knew I was pretty on the outside, but to be all purdylike on the inside too?!? I knew that investment on having wall to wall carpeting and a few prints to spruce up the place was a sound one!
Happy Tippee Toe Thursday all! May your pollen be gentle and Friday come nipping at your heels like a peppy puppy!
Strobe Lighting the Bones and the Careening Career Fair Head-ShotThe birds float effortlessly above the anomie
Shiver me cedars. My bones have been densitometried.Unlike the whole internal ultrasound thingy, this was an obstinately simple and easy test. I did not need a full bladder. I didn't need to fast. I did not need to shed an item of clothing, not even my shoes (those I chose to remove my jacket). I simply lay back with my legs propped up on a pad, made some idle chatter about the weather with the technician, and lapsed into a semi-hypnosis staring at styrofoam birds hanging from the ceilings above.
To make it even easier, I'd already been exposed to the existence of several "Mt. Baker Imaging" facilities, and had located my appropriate "women's diagnostics" wing before heading out. Incidentally, how useful that the women's facility is located mostly in the middle of nowhere, but smack dab next to Labels, the best and brightest consignment shop in Bellingham. I can't say that I have actually had a chance to stop by on the way back from my increasingly plentiful diagnostically female jaunts, but if I were winding my way back for the first-date-gone-bad-to-awkward discomfort of your average mammogram, I'd definitely be treating myself to a new pair of shockingly economical designer pants from a style-era that valued "ugly" less obstreperously than these recent years. Not that also having a TCBY or something wouldn't be a doubly-great great investment.
Yes, yes, I am stereotyping like a madwoman (ooop mad women, aren't they all?... surely that's chauvinist too!), but whether nature or nurture, haven't "we" all been so inculcated into these purportedly "feminine" coping mechanisms as to recognize the koine symbols of self-comfort, if not to fully embrace the symbolic tokens that they ultimately are. But really, after most of these "women's diagnostics" procedures, probably a stiff whisky and a snickers bar would do the trick just as well. The pants ideations of fitting acceptable pants are more of an ongoing thing. At least I've grown into my hand-me-down pair of "long and lean" Gap Khakis that made their winding way from my sister to my mom to me in some familial Daughter-Sisterhood of Travelling Enduement pattern that is none too infrequent. Being the tallest lady in the family, my no longer being underweight does limit the amount of clothing I can cadge, but occasionally I stumble into something that just fits a little differently.
Yes, but back to ... ok, forget it, we finished with the bone densitometry escapade before we even began. It was fairly anticlimactic. I'll hear just how clever or dense my bones are some time next week. If they're insufficiently block headed, I may get to add some kind of new pill to proudly announce each morning. I have found that the only way I can reliably remember to take my daily estradiol is to announce to Andrew in as grandiloquent a timbre as possible that I am ingesting my little pill. He responds with his equally triumphant consumption of claritin. Soon, no doubt, we'll be posting daily selfies of ourselves duck-facing our way through the little bottles.
Tonight Andrew and I are attending the Bellingham Tech Expo. Andrew has been at EI(eeeeiiiiiooo) long enough to (1) still love it (if not the commute), but (2) realize he's probably a far more valuable potential employee than he was before his year of work experience, and not see the harm in "seeing what's out there." Mostly he just wants to mix with nerds. Besides, there do seem to be lots of fun little exhibits. And, I need a new head shot of myself that actually looks a bit less like the evil Thompson twin, and more like Ms. (W)right. Don't ask why, but somebody's purportedly offering "free headshots". Let the ugly tired allergy puff and crazy hair begin!
Though if that doesn't work out, I think I've got some good website options:
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