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Seems like fun. Swiped from Cheeky Prof.
I want to open this post with a disclosure. The paternal side of my family has been involved in rodeo for several generations. I learned to rope a calf when I was young, and I helped my uncle "break" horses. While I now find most rodeo events unpleasant at best, I have just learned of an event that makes rodeo look like, well, horseplay.
The Omak Stampede in Eastern Washington features each year a "Suicide Race" in which horses are driven off a cliff into a raging river from which they must swim and then sprint uphill. Every year, horses are injured and die. While I can see the element of "sport" in rodeo, I must say there is absolutly no point to and no sport in the barbarity of this so-called "race." Now, normally, I wouldn't use my blog for political purposes, but I find this "Suicide Race" so reprehensible that I have to spread the word as best I can.
PAWS, a northwest animal welfare organization, has a page with a great deal of information about the "race." If you are interested in helping to stop this, PAWS also provides a number of ways to help including contacting sponsors of the event to ask them to pull their support.
1) I am pregnant and I am talking to a doctor about my desire to abort. He says, "The spine has already formed, but for some reason, the fetus has stopped growing." After we chat about that for a while, he informs me that I will not be able to have the abortion for another month and a half. I am very frustrated.
2) I want to go swimming and I put on my old swimming suit. It is all stretched out and misshapen and falling off in the weirdest ways. But, I really want to go swimming. Really really bad. But, there's no way I can go swimmming in this suit; it would drag me down and drown me. Then, I remember, I just got a new beautiful TYR reversible black and red swimsuit that fits perfectly and makes me feel good about myself. I go to the shelf, and there it is, neatly folded, pristine, waiting for me to slide into it.
Dream interpretation cheat sheet:
I move from here, land of grad school, PhD in hand, in a month and a half.
I have been thinking seriously/eagerly about abandoning, or at least entirely reshaping, my academic career.
I really did just get a new beautiful TYR reversible black and red swimsuit that fits perfectly and makes me feel good about myself.
Not all water dreams are about sex . . . er, exclusively.
Akin to my food cravings (eggs this week), I have scent cravings. When this happens, which is not always, I want my bath or my person to release a warm and subtle vapor of ________________ (fill in the blank). Unlike with food cravings, I am not always adept at knowing what my scent craving is. The most recent one took me about a week to figure out. It was vanilla and almond, and I went right to the store and got the appropriate bath items, using them daily for two weeks. Then, I was sated enough that I could start playing around with scent a bit more. My current favorite (although vanilla and almond is the backup) is vanilla, cedar, and orange. I really like citrus and woods, especially together, and sometimes, I just want some combination of those and I'll have lemon and evergreen, and then cedar and orange, then bergamot (which already smells like a blend of the two to me anyhow).
My food cravings work similarly to this. I'll crave, say rice and beans, and I'll eat rice and beans for days, barely varying the way I prepare it. Then, I'll get creative again. Sometimes, I just need eggs, and when I finally have some eggs, the craving is over. Other times, it's a single note, like tomatoes, and I'll eat tomato-something for days, preparing different things every day but always with tomatoes.
Sometimes, it feels overly indulgent to indulge my cravings, but mainly I feel fine about it because my mother taught me to follow my food cravings. She'd say, "Your body knows what you need, and it's asking you for it." But, I wonder, does this apply to scent. Is my body craving vanilla and almond smells? I know that when I am experiencing a hormonal surge, I become very aware of scent and I smell things more intensely and sometimes notice scents I wouldn't otherwise. A friend of ours during her pregnancy had such hyperactive olfactory function that she could smell what her husband had for lunch that day and couldn't have certain things in the house because the smell was too strong or unpleasant. I never asked if there were things she wanted to smell.
Smelt has been the scent person in my life, who first made me aware of how scent affected me, who always knows about any scent-related anything, and who is helpful in determing scent cravings. Smelt, do you have scent cravings?
Side note: Several people (agents?) have come through our house wearing god-awful amounts of god-awful perfume, which is really horrible to come home to (although I admit it could be worse). The dogs freak out on it too because they recognize it as an intrusion, and run all around barking and trying to find the stink-monger. I wonder if dogs, those ultimate sniffers, have scent cravings? I know mine will nuzzle their little snouts into my pants leg or my sweater when they want to curl up and relax.
A few nights ago, when our house was listed on the real estate market, I had a very bad dream. I was lying in bed and awakened by the noise of someone in the house. At first I was just listening in terror, trying to wake up and decide what to do. I could hear the person rummaging around in the kitchen, opening cabinets, and I tried to yell "Hey!" but had a hard time opening my mouth or getting any volume. As the person came closer to the bedroom, I became more panicked, and kept trying to yell, "Hey!" to scare them away. When I heard the person in the bathroom, checking the taps, I managed to finally yell loudly, which woke me up.
It was one of those dreams that feels like you're in a hypnagogic state, and when I woke up everything was exactly as I had dreamed it, except for the person in the house of course. Clonk was awake and said I had been making increasingly louder "oooo" sounds. He also noted that, in the nine years we've been together, he's never heard me talk or "ooo" in my sleep. Ghostly indeed.
We have since then experienced the real nightmare of having 20-25 people per day traipsing through the house. We have to stay away from 9 am - 8 or 9 pm, with the dogs, and yesterday in a thunderstorm. It's truly exhausting, and moreso for the dogs than for us. Last night, when we finally got to settle in at home, at 9, the dogs just went straight to bed. We did pretty much the same. This sense of not having a home is intensified by the fact that we've completely pared down to declutter this small space and make it more appealing to buyers. It really looks great, and people are responding well. But, it's an idealized house, not our home.
Fortunately, underneath the itchy layer of frustration, I have a smooth, warm feeling of relief that we will have no problem selling this house and that we will soon be off on our fresh, new adventure.
It is common knowledge that the most important member of every household is the beloved chihuahua. The surest way to a happy home is providing extra-special care for your dear chihuahua.
It is easy to care for your chihuahua when you simply take the time to notice his or her needs. Remember your chihuahua's south-of-the-border origins, and you will always remember his love of a warm climate. It is best to reside in a warm sunny region, but when work or other such foolish commitments make this impossible, you must do your best to provide for your chihuahua's happiness by supplying other forms of warmth.
A cozy bed in a sunny window is a favorite resting spot for chihuahuas. In overcast or rainy weather, placing a bed by a heating vent is highly recommended. Every chihuahua should be encouraged to snuggle in bed or under blankets on a comfy chair at every opportunity.
A special treat of warmth for your chihuahua comes on laundry day. He can ride in the laundry basket full of clothes hot from the dryer, and rest there as you pull items one by one from the basket to fold. If he prefers to wait on the bed, you can make a pillow for him of a stack of folded shirts, and place a fresh hot shirt or towel over his body. He will rest comfortably, happily watching you folding laundry until he falls into a peaceful warm slumber. It takes little effort, and his joy makes your labor more pleasant.
Iron deficiency. At least everything else was ruled out and the iron is low, so that's probably it, along with some respiratory allergies troubling the waters. So, I'm on the heavy doses of iron and back on the allergy herbs. Now, if only I would just eat cows or bivalves . . . blech! Well, maybe scallops. Nope, iron supplements it is.
Well, I'm still spacing out and haunting my regular haunts . . . wooOOooo . . . except the brewpub. I can't drink beer. I don't even really want to drink beer. I mean, I want to drink it, but I don't want to feel its effects. You know there's something seriously amiss if I'm not drinking beer. I hope this gets resolved soon so I can start drinking beer again. Beer. Beer. Beer! Beer! BEER!
One thing that is kind of interesting is that I am enjoying my food in a new way; I taste things a bit differently perhaps because I'm eating solely for flavor and texture rather than appetite. It's nice. I've had a few sips of beer just to enjoy the flavor, and that has been nice too. I wonder if this is a frame of mind I can maintain or if it's too physiologically bound.
woooOOOooooo . . . .
I feel like a ghost.
My friend T thinks it's my thyroid. I got a slew of blood tests to figure out what is up and will know next week. In the meantime, I have lost my appetite (ghosts don't eat), have a hard time concentrating (ghosts don't think), and just feel utterly ethereal. T said I seem stoned. I feel stoned only lighter, clearer, almost disembodied but more like I'm just sort of vaguely tethered here. Like a ghost.
Wooooo . . . . .
So, I am having what is known in the world of teenaged girls as a fit of anemia. I spent about ten years of my life fighting anemia. My hatred of red meat never helped matters, but my anemia came from "excessive blood loss." No, I've not injured myself on the new bike or taken a razor to my wrists as you might deduce from previous entries; it's a simple matter of "monthlies." [I like this euphemism because it sounds like I'm referring to a old periodical, which in a sense I am, but safer perhaps not to draw out that comparison too far.]
After many years of no anemia, and despite my careful dosing of B vitamins and iron, I am surprised to find myself with the strangely still familiar symptoms. Fatigue -- check. Dizziness -- che . . . whoa almost fell of my chair there . . . uh, check. Irritability -- checkeroo. Easy bruising -- always, but yeah, check. Clonk, who always has more energy than me, seems from my anemic vantage to have recently come across a stash of cocaine. An always chatty friend I chatted with yesterday seemed likewise on hyperdrive while I was having trouble sitting upright in my chair. I have a ton of work to do, and am slogging through vertiginously, which can't be great for my writing. Or, who knows, maybe it slows me down enough to write more carefully.
Anyway, its been a bad few days as you can imagine. Not awful, but not great for productivity or cheerful mood either. Still, I probably shouldn't complain. After all, I feel 16 again.
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