standing up, sitting down

Yesterday, in an effort to encourage me as I waxed ineloquently about laryngitis, singledom, loneliness, fatness, fatigue, needing a humidifier, aging, death, jealousy, selfishness, money, finances et al, my friend Tracy told me again:

"please do stand-up comedy."

"Now, now," I said, "you are just trying to encourage me. Now pass me the cheese ball."

"No, really," said she, "you are so funny."

"I don't have a schtick, you need a schtick. Like punchlines."

"No," she said, you could seriously stand up there and just yammer on."

I don't think so. It's easy to be funny in front of friends, colleagues, at a funeral, etc. but stand-up? Have you ever seen bad stand-up? I have and it is not pretty.

Although I do have the rage and the pain and that is apparently an important part of the whole thing. Look at fellow-anti-depressant users Rosie O'Donnell and Jim Carrey.

I don't know. Of course, you only live once and all of that. Fan base of four, if you have an opinion on this, please let me know. If six people leave comments saying this is a good idea (and these must be genuine, I will check) I will look into it. See, I know that this won't happen so I feel all safe and smug, while still an excellent repository for pain and suffering.

Oh and my voice is still not up to snuff. I worry.

hypochondria, part 800

Alrighty then. As I have mentioned in previous blog entries, I am a hypochondriac. At the moment I am a hypochondriac with a rather persistent case of laryngitis. Because I teach ESL and must talk all day, I am not presently at work and haven't been for a couple of days. I don't feel very sick, it's just mainly my voice.

Too much time to think.

So because I am a hypochondriac I go to the doctor even though I am fully aware that my laryngitis is caused by a virus and will get better on its own. But, hey, we hypos love them doctors.

I have a really good doctor but she is in North Van, where I used to live. I'm too lazy to drive all of the way there, so I book in to another doctor.

I make the appointment for 2 p.m. and go a bit early in order to make it an exciting event. I'm around people! It's like a party! Ok, sure, we are all in a waiting room and not talking to each other, but still. There are many doctors here! Glory, Hallelulah! Or however you spell that. Bear with me, I took a Tylenol PM last night in order to sleep and am still surprisingly zoned out.

Into doctor's office.

"Yeah, it's a virus," says doctor.

"Yes, but, but," say I, "It's the second time I've had laryngitis in 3 months! This must be serious,' I say, expecting pills, blood tests, hospitals, IVS, stuff like that.

"Oh," says doctor, probably thinking to himself, "one of those."

"Well, we do have an ear,nose, and throat specialist who comes in once every few weeks. do you want to make an appointment for that?"

"Yes, father of god, yes!"

"Yeah, he'll check for you know, cysts."

Excellent, cyst-checking.

"Cancer, things like that."

The sound of the air going out of a million balloons can be heard in my head.

"Cancer?""

"Yes, he checks for all of that. How's Nov. 22?"

He shoes me out of the room. This doctor does not know me. Never, ever use those types of words with me.

"In the meantime," he says, "you know, gargle, just relax with a couple of days off."

Relax?

Back to the internet I go. "Symptoms of larynx cancer" I google. And I also find out that the ear,nose and throat specialist, in order to check out the larynx, STICKS A TUBE DOWN THE NOSE PAST THE THROAT.

Um - no. It's just a virus, geez. I will cancel that appointment and go back to work tomorrow, croaky voice and all. although I did that on Monday and then lost my voice completely. But there can be no more sitting around!

apologies

Dear wee fan base:

Sorry I've been absent during the last week. I have been battling a recurring case of laryngitis and just feeling crappy. Therefore (hence?), nothing even vaguely creative, sarcastic or serious is coming into my head to write about.

Sorry, but I will return once my voice and hopefully brain does.

Karen

more things i'm learning

Home sick again. Craziness. But hey, any environment can be a learning one. I'm sure i learned that years ago on Sesame Street. Some things I've learned today and/or thinking about:

1. If you have a swollen gland on the left side of your neck, say halfway down, what does that mean? If you touch it every few seconds, does that help?

2. Oprah tells us that it is very brave of this NFL Football Player to come forward on her show with his story of sexual abuse.

3. Martha Stewart makes a nice pie and makes silly little jokes about her incarceration.

4. Martha Stewart must be having trouble getting guests as she appears to have a male soap star on. Never heard of him. So he musn't be on the soaps I follow - Days of Our Lives, Young and Restless, As the World Turns, General Hospital, All My Children

5. Austin is back on Days of Our Lives

6. There is a new Victoria on Young and Restless and she reminds me of Denise Richards.

7. Swollen gland.

8. Sleeping all day makes a person to awake to sleep at night.

9. Doesn't mono result in swollen glands?

10. I am going outlet mall shopping in less than 96 hours if it kills me.

11. If a person is, say, a hypochondriac and say that person gets a bit sick. Do they become sicker because they are a hypochondriac or is there no correlation?

That's all I got.

addiction

Addiction is (to me, all are different, of course) -

Stream of consciousness thing, so beware. Maybe skip it if you like. Although I will still censor myself, too self-conscious, really.

I could be doing so many other things, or even watching other things on tv. But I watch that. I need that. Doesn't matter what that is, just that show. Feels like it fills me but then I'm left with nothing less and more than before. How poetic.

Internet. More interesting sites to look at. I could be using my intellect that is somewhere up there in my brain, under or around my addictions, my addictions to people, to things, to their words. These people are just blown-up Hollywood, not real in their stories. Pop, goes the balloon. Maybe this doesn't make much sense but neither does addiction.

Why write all of this? Hell, my fan base is small and I think they can handle it. Sorry, former sub-boss for the seriousness of this one. I know it makes you squirm. I do still like outlet malls, former subboss, but they just don't fill the need, you know. Maybe one day.

People, addiction to (some) people. Not all, of course not, god that would be too damn draining. Well, not really addiction. That sounds sick, like really mental. i don't want to sound really mental. The fan base will go for sure. There are lighter blogs out there, have a visit of those while I finish this one. Then back to light, I promise.

People. Chasing them after 40 will make me tired. Heck, my knees are already going although i'd like to run (jog) that 10-kilometre seawall race coming up at the end of the month. Fill me up, people.

I'm still chewing ice. I stopped for a month - remember, I have the teeth of a 50-year-old, says the dentist. I started again on my vacation in the United States but it carried on across the border.

I'm done. Remember, the (nearly?) mentally - um - disturbed can often be geniuses. Didn't the great ones cut off their ears and such?

Oh and a tip: don't go watching the show Nip/Tuck when you are in an odd (mental) mood. Disturbing that show is.

a few random thoughts about New York City

New York City. I'd always wanted to go to NYC. You hear so much about it and see it everywhere - films, tv, the newspaper. So I had a chance recently to visit friends in Virginia so I thought a stop in NYC made sense.

So I spent a week in NYC in a hostel, as I think I mentioned in an earlier blog. Bear with me, I'm always tired and vaguely confused.

After about 8 hours, an early-morning flight and a plane change in Las Vegas (you really can play the slots in the airport there), I found myself at JFK Airport at about 7:30 p.m. It was already dark but still really, really warm outside. I'd heard that you could take a shared shuttle to Manhattan for $17US. Sure enough you can, but first you have to wait about 45 minutes and then you are loaded onto a mini-van type thing with 10 other people. The driver was typical New York I guess, in that he honked, swerved and swore his way around the city. Two hours later I was dropped off in front of my hostel on the Upper West Side. Phew! I thought.

I don't mind hostels. They certainly are the cheapest way to travel and if you are a lone traveller like I was, you have a good chance of meeting people. Having been to a few scary ones in Europe, I wasn't too nervous about what I would find. And sure enough, pillows, sheets, a blanket and even a towel! were provided. I was on the top bunk of an 8-bed female dorm. The top bunk. Whenever I am on the top bunk I find that I must go to the bathroom six or seven times a night. It was a shared bathroom and mainly clean except for persistent hairs in the sink. Ugh.

Oops - this blog is about NYC, not hostels. Ok, fair enough. Random NYC thoughts.

Hot - 90F most of the week. So - um - hot.

Crowded - I was lucky enough to be there for Broadway on Broadway, an event where various Broadway shows are promoted with live snippets of each. Off I went around 10:30 a.m. the day after I got there to check it out. It started at 11:30 a.m. By the time I got off the subway at Times Square, thousands of people had gathered. 90F, thousands of people, lit-up neon billboards and music. Eeek. I stayed for a few minutes, snapped a few photos of the crowd, and left.

Cool indoor stuff - I found the Museum of International Photography I think it is called. An excellent show of the U.S.-backed mass murders in El Salvador of the 1980s. All black and white.

The Museum of Television and Radio - Like outlet malls, I worship this place. Apparently there is one in Beverly Hills as well. Basically you can pick almost any tv show or radio clip that you remember. You are allowed to pick four shows - or two hours - to view. I'll have to go back to see more.

2nd Avenue Deli - this was written about in the Lonely Planet guide. One of the few genuine Jewish delis left in NYC they say. Off I went and in I went to sit at the corner and listen to all the Jewish accents and eat my pickle, coleslaw and meatloaf sandwich. I love meatloaf and it was the cheapest on the menu ($12). Next time, pastrami.

Strand's Bookstore - over a million titles, lots at 1/2 off. No air conditioning but the suffering was worth it.

Off off-Broadway - saw a play for $10 called Vivien, about the life of Vivien Leigh. A one-woman play. Excellent.

Air-conditioning window boxes - seem to be the thing here. Central air is not so common.

Fire escapes - now that looks like New York City.

Central Park - about a 10-minute walk from my hostel. Calm, relaxing, calm, gentle, etc. etc. etc.

World Trade Center site - not ostentatious, simply-stated. thank god for that. Shivers down the spine.

The Museum of Modern Art - free on Friday evenings from 4 p.m.-9 p.m. Sponsored by Target, I kid you not.

K-mart - right in the middle of the East Village. Went in, tried on some Jaclyn Smith clothes. Didn't buy anything.

The restaurant you see in the external shots on Seinfeld when they are in the diner - Tom's Restaurant at 116 and Broadway. Excellent magazine store across the street with awesome and some not-available-in-Canada literary magazines! Another bookstore around the corner. Tom's itself in some kind of classic NYC diner experience. Where a cup of coffee is a cup of coffee and Tom sits at the cash register himself.

Sylvia's Soul Food Restaurant, Harlem - apparently Sylvia's been cooking there for 40 years. She wasn't in when I got there but her co-workers were.

More later

porters and other thoughts

There is a porter at the Jefferson Hotel in Richmond, Virginia. His name is Michael. If you happen to be passing through Richmond, pop in to see him.
The Jefferson Hotel is an historic, beautiful hotel. Lots of ornate beauty and stairs that were rumoured to have been used in the filming of the Titanic movie. They were not, says Michael, that is just a rumour. My Richmond friend was showing me this hotel, across the street from where his wife works. Michael sees us looking and comes on over.

He has an album of photos and things of the Jefferson and he has been working on a book about it for 14 years, he tells us. His accent is Southern and he speaks even faster than me. I catch a few words like "promenading" as women used to do back in the old days. He talks about those stairs a lot, and a feeling of floating and dropping off of a cliff. Matthew and I catch each other's eye and smile. I'm loving this. This feels like a great cultural thing I will remember.

Michael is in a few bands, he tells us when we go back again so I can get my picture taken with him. Unfortunately, the picture does not turn out. There is a song by a Virginia folk band, Eddie from Ohio, that talks about a porter in an historic Virginia hotel. We tell Michael about this. "Is it you," we ask. "No, couldn't be." But he looks pleased and asks again for the name of the band. I wish the photo had turned out, I would have sent him a copy.

Thousands dead in South Asia. Thousands more in Guatemala. How is that related to my nice little story about the porter and the Jefferson? It's not. It's my apathy that astounds me.

Going on vacation is always good, even staying on the top bunk of an 8-dorm hostel. I decide there that I want to get out of my head more, live less in fear and self-dislike and blah blah. Travel, even my wee little trip to the wee little east coast of those United States, does that. Perspective and all of that.

Staying in Richmond with my friends Matthew and Sarah has certainly been an amazing thing. They are Christians but liberal and have an understanding of The Exodus and of Christ that makes sense to me. We talk about Bob Dylan, Eddie from Ohio and evolution. It gives me hope and so I am going to go to a liberal church in Vancouver that they have recommended. I'll see how it goes. Community is important.

I'm blathering on, but that's okay I think. For some reason I feel stripped more raw today, although with my usual sense of quick impatience. Travel is good. Thanks for reading.

outlet malls = epiphany

Apparently I live in a vacuum or under a rock. Or in a vacuum under a rock.

The outlet mall. I live in Vancouver, B.C., um - Canada and apparently there are some of these about 2 hours from me, across the border to those great States. For some reason, I've never gone or even thought about them.

I'm still in rural Virginia with the chickens, etc. On a sad side note, two of my friends' new peacocks died yesterday. Apparently it is too cold for them (70F or something like that). They do have a lovely one though, still alive and kicking and wondering through the yard. Yesterday, it was a lovely 85F or so and I went to sit in their backyard farm on a swing chair thingy that borders the fence to the area where the animals roam. (got all of that?) Reading Patricia Cornwell (never read her before but she uses Virginia as her locales and since I'm so Virginian now . . .) and swinging I was. Suddenly, every animal on the farm came prancing over. Goats, chickens, peacocks, roosters. Right up to me. Looking for food I guess. One goat even tugged my ponytail. It was like they had heard there was to be an Animal Farm meeting or something. By the time I went upstairs to get my camera and came back, they had lost interest and moved on.

Sorry, tangent there. Anyway, outlet malls. My rural Virginian friends picked me up on Saturday morning from my vegetarian friends' house. After a lovely breakfast at my veggie friends' house of homemade biscuits, eggs, fried apples and fake sausage, we headed out to Williamsburg. Me, my two women friends and their two youngins, Brady and Frances. Pardon my newly acquired southern accent. Williamsburg was pretty and quaint and we saw a couple of reenactments of the time period. Horses were seen. All very nice. Pictures were taken.

Then, as per my request, we headed off to a nearby outlet mall. I was dropped off and we split up, a meeting time set. I am using the passive tense a lot here I notice.

Good lord in his good lord heaven. Lordy lordy lordy. How can I express this hallelujah moment? This life-changing situation? I have found the lord and his name is the outlet mall.

This was an outdoor outlet mall. Hundreds of stores on several acres (hectares for my Canadian fans). Geoffrey Bean I think its name is. I found many things there. Prices are reduced! by like 40% there! Everything in the store! And the prices are good to begin with! Normally, I find the exclamation point far overused but my god it is deserved here (!). Amazing clothes. I was in NYC for a week and only found a top. I could have spent thousands of dollars at this outlet mall.

But I held myself back. Now normally shopping makes me exhausted after about half an hour and I begin to feel bored, fat and unloved. I shopped for 2.5 hours straight at this outlet mall. For some reason the theme of this mall was cows and there were several (fake) cows, painted up in something or other, at various spots. I worship the fake cow! I took a few pictures of the cow(s)!

Why would anyone ever shop at a regular store when the outlet mall has it all? Especially with the American dollar not doing so well, it is all so worth it.

My veggie-Richmond friend e-mailed me recently with the address and location of an outlet mall nearer to me in Washington State. I may take my unreliable 1986 Honda Civic Hatchback across the border soon. I need shoes and I couldn't buy any at the Williamsburg outlet mall. Shoes scare me and I need a few shoe experts to come with me.

The outlet mall!

Live from rural Virginia, it's Sunday night!

Yee haw. Thank you for your patience my fan base of 4.
I am on the tail end of my trip, it is Oct. 2 and I will be leaving for Vancouver on Oct. 5. It is a long, long trip home. DC to Arizona to Vancouver, all in about 14 hours or so. Crazy, really.
Oh well.
This trip has taken me along a bit of the East Coast of these United States. I started in New York City, home of the $12 deli meatloaf sandwich. I stayed there for a week in a hostel on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. NYC, not with the deli sandwich. Forgive my grammar errors, I think I'm in mild anaphalytic shock.

NYC is amazing, crowded, hot, crazy, hot, overwhelming, incredible, hot and worthy of its own blog later. Ditto the hostel. I've decided that at almost 40-years-old that I am a tad too old to enjoy the upper bunk in an 8-bed dorm with shared showers and toilets and everything else. That hampered my enjoyment and my sleep somewhat. But for hostels, this was a good one. If you need one, pick the IYH hostel at 103 and Amsterdam. They had some cool things - including free standup comedy at the hostel on Monday evenings - comics practiced their stuff there before playing before a bigger audience.

NYC as I said was hot, hot, hot. It's fall but it's a hot one - 90F in the shade. And humid. I'm originally from the prairies but it was even too hot for me.

Once I got more used to the hostel and NYC, things got much better. There are a ton of people in NYC, too many really. Perhaps some could be moved to Alaska or Medicine Hat or the Yukon to free up space.

Oddly and surprisingly, NYC felt very, very safe to me. I get the impression that it is simply a very, very controlled city now, with police at every corner. Nonetheless, walking around at night felt fine and I never felt nervous about being robbed.

I explored lots of neighbourhoods - the East Village, Greenwich Village, the Upper West Side, Harlem, Central Park, Times Square, etc. Greenwich Village I think is the funkiest in my humble opinion. Central Park, only a 10-minute walk from my jail, I mean hostel, was beautiful and an oasis from the madness. Peaceful, peaceful. Lots of young, black women, nannying or daycaring for lots of rich white kids.

Suddenly, I'm feeling tired and should go visit with my rural Virginian hosts (esses). I stayed in Richmond, Virginia for a week and am now in the more countryish part of Virginia in Ashland with pigs, geese, goats, peacocks, dogs, cats, guinea pigs, two women and their two kids. Richmond is also interesting and I've learned a lot about Virginia that I never knew.

Next blog: the true glory of outlet malls and why did no one ever tell me before.