Safeway etc.

Jeez. Safeway is telling people to not use ground beef they bought a MONTH ago because it may have e-coli. Yikes, this is all turning me off of meat. The news anchor just said, just now, "don't confuse eating rare steak with rare hamburger." That's right. Whatever you do, don't take out the hamburger from the package and eat it that way. The blood dripping down your chin might indicate a problem, but in case it doesn't, don't do it. Phew.

I love my Big Mac, it's true I do.

I know someone whose pet peeve is that her parents say "Safeways." Giggle.

It drives my Toronto friend nuts when his mother says "the e-mail."

My parents, in a restaurant, say to the waiter/waitress, "gimme a . . . " I'm mortified by that so I get extra polite, "please, if it's not too much trouble, when you get a chance, maybe I, humble servant of all and especially you, could have a wee . . ."

Short blog tonight. No one commented on my more intelligent ones, so I'm feeling a bit blah about that. A writer without an audience is like a tree without a forest or something like that.

panic

I have felt a lot of panic this weekend. Panic as in anxiety, as in a mental health issue. I've suffered from panic attacks since about 1990, on and off. It was very on in 1990, in fact I couldn't even eat that much because of it. That was an unfortunate thing, but the weight loss was a nice side effect.

These days I'm usually able to eat through it. If you haven't experienced this kind of feeling, it is rather difficult to describe. I seem to be coming down from it somewhat now - at 7 p.m. on Sunday evening - but it has been rather longlasting. I haven't slept that well the last couple of nights and have gone to bed late (for me.) I am often teased about my, ok, obsession with going to bed by 10 or 10:30 p.m. But for me, it keeps me sane(r). Lack of sleep doesn't always panic me, but this weekend it did. And apparently I'm not ashamed to write about it. Know me, know my panic.

Sometimes when I go to bed late, in the morning hours, I have odd dreams that I can't seem to wake up from and they seem to go on and on and on. I suspect in real time that they do not. I spend the day feeling tired, with a headache that feels overwhelming. I can only really describe it by saying that I feel that I can't really cope and that unknown bad things are waiting for me. It's all very non-specific, very free-floating. If it gets really bad, I go to bed early and take a Tylenol PM or something to bring me down. I feel near to hysteria. Last year, around this time actually, one weekend was really, really bad. I went to the walk-in clinic on Commercial Drive and the doctor said, "you're not seeing people that aren't there, are you?" Now, even in a horribly anxious state my sarcasm still kicks in. "Maybe you are not really here," I think about saying to him but decide against it.

Does this make any sense? I have heard of people being so anxious that they can't sit still, they can't eat and they flap their hands around. Yikes. If I say the word anxious too much I get more anxious. Odd that.

I so desperately want to be normal that I find I try to repress my panic, my anxiety. That actually makes it worse. It's like trying to put the lid on an overflowing pot. It all seeps out. I am and always have been, ashamed of this part of me. I shouldn't be I know because many people suffer from this, so I am told. But anxiety does not come in a neat little package, it explodes out in, well, yucky, yucky ways. I once worked with a woman who was bi-polar and when she was manic, it wasn't happy-happy-joy-joy. It was ugly and angry and intense and odd. Because I am not an altogether kind person (yeah, yeah), I more often than not felt annoyed by her. But then, on my compassionate days, I wanted to buy her something and hug her and tell her that I got it, that I understood.

Anxiety, such as mine is, keeps me on the so-called "normal" side of mental health. I'm able to work and drive and have friends and eat and drink and even be merry sometimes, although I have struggled in each of those areas at one time or another. I have finally landed in a job where there is an awful lot of acceptance for "odd" people and therefore, I am thriving. Thank god because unemployed and anxious sucks.

Blather. I often wonder just what it takes to be on the "other" side of mental health. I've known a few people who have gone in and out of psych. wards and it seems rather awful for them. The stigma alone is a difficult thing to overcome. At risk of being or seeming melodramatic, I've always had a kind of "verklempt" feeling for people whose mental health issues don't allow them to fit in. And that is the one thing, perhaps the only thing that keeps me believing in the god of the bible. There is a verse that talks about how god chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise. The lowly things of this world and the despised things - and the things that are not - to nullify the things that are. So he (she? they? Buddha? Jesus? Big guy?) gets it.

I was at Superstore this morning and really, really feeling the panic. Although really, Superstore could do that to any number of people. "Breathe," I kept telling myself. In panic, in anxiety, breathing gets really shallow and you can be hyperventilating without knowing it. I force myself to take some deep breaths in the Jello pudding aisle. Then a co-worker/friend calls on my cell and wants some advice from me. I am always amazed and thrilled when people seek out my help and she doesn't seem to notice my (what feels like to me) near hysteria. I talk to her for a few minutes until I needed two hands to get some apples.

Phew, breathe.

Again, thanks for reading my meanderings.

writers and intellects

A few random thoughts here.

A comparison. The writer I heard last night, Karen Connelly, is an amazing writer. The Lizard Cage is incredible and I also loved Touch the Dragon, something she wrote and won the Governors General Award for non-fiction for. Great writer. Not such a great speaker, in my opinion. Connelly speaks in a, hmmm, cultured voice. Whether it is acquired or not I don't know, but she speaks as a cliched intellectual would speak, I would say. Her talk was adequate but not really linear (which can be fine, of course) and very, um, "up there in the air." Big words, cultured voice, philosophical.

Joan Didion. Another great writer that I admire. I am on the waiting list at the library for "The Year of Magical Thinking," her book about the death of her husband and her grief. After the book was published, her daughter died as well. Driving home tonight I heard her being interviewed on CBC Radio. She has no cultured voice and doesn't seem to feel the need to use the big words and to speak esoterically. She spoke of the process, of her relationship with her husband, of her grief. She is older than Connelly, which may help to explain things or it may not.

I am not an intellectual by any stretch and admittedly feel uncomfortable around such a group. Maybe it's my own bias then. But I have always found and admired greatly, the "intellectual elite" who are not so caught up in their minds that they can "come down" as it were to more of reality. There is more an an integrity to that in my opinion and an honesty. I can keep up with the big words (unless it's about science in which case I think about other things. Heck, I took biology without the lab in university to cover that necessary course) but don't find them necessary.

Now no offense to Ms. Connelly, not that she will ever read this or would care if she did.

Other thoughts. My friend Irene is a nurse in the E.R. at St. Pauls Hospital. She works lots of 12-hour night shifts that would torture me. I always ask her if she has had to say "clear!" You know, like they do on E.R. all of the time. Rarely, she tells me, although she almost had to the other night. She proceeded to explain to me about electrical currents to the heart, blockages and a healthy 66-year-old patient who kept losing the electrical impulse and crashing.

"I wanted to scream when it happened," she said. But of course she didn't. Instead, she saved his life. Irene, my friend, is a tiny little thing, no more than 100 pounds soaking wet. And yet there she goes, calm and cool and collected, into St. Pauls. St. Pauls is in the heart of the West End of Vancouver and sees more than its fair share of drug overdoses, psychiatric patients and other fun things.

"If it had been me," I tell her, "I would have walked right out of that emergency room. I would have gone and sat down with my head between my knees."

So I admire her. And the heart? Be careful, it can come on just like that, she says. Gulp.

physio, liver pate and such like that there

I went to physio yesterday for the first time in my nearmiddleage life. I have bad knees. Evil knees. Knees that creak and crackle and complain and such like that there. So, after years of putting it off, I head to the physiotherapist. I want to be able to start running and to continue stairmastering, so I figure I need this.

The physio is a lovely little Irish woman who speaks faster than I do. She watches me walk and bend and sing and dance and do a little softshoe. She recommends some stretches, puts tape on my knees and sends me on my little way. Come back in a week or so, says she. No stairmastering, she adds. Oh, and she rubbed some kind of band and told me it was my something femeral (sic) back of the knee and blah blah blah. "Yes," I said, "but is the hip bone actually connected to the thigh bone?" It was all very fast. I appear to have $500 coverage for this type of thing, so I'll carry on with it. Of course, right after I headed to the gym for some biking and elliptical trainer type thing, which did not help, let me tell you. Creak. Creak. Crack. Crackle. Pop. My knees are cereal.

The physio place is across from Oakridge mall so I headed over to Zellers to look for more fun stuff for my 9-year-old niece for Christmas. My god what a mistake. Junk and junk and people and people and poor harried looking Zellers employees making minimum wage having to answer a zillion questions from the zillions of people. Some of them looked like they could snap at any moment. Zellers may have a law about lowest prices, but apparently there is no such law about customers putting back things they pull off of the shelves. Not a thing did I find for the wee niece. I think I'll go back and give coffee or something to those toy-shelves employees. All of that bending can't be good for their knees and I bet they don't have insurance to go across the street to the Irish physio lady.

Last night I went to my lovely co-worker Glenda's for a meal. She lives near UBC where we were going to hear the writer Karen Connelly (The Lizard Cage). Glenda went all out she did. She made - oops I forget the name - this beef thing with a crust. Roast beef and the crust had liver pate embedded in it. "Oops, Glenda, I don't eat fish or liver." Eeek, poor Glenda. She looked downright crestfallen. Her crest fell it did. So out comes the beef thing, and she tries to scrape off the liver part. The roast beef part was lovely though. And pumpkin muffins. I felt bad I did. I like Glenda. She's been married for like 30 years to this physics professor guy and has two grown and awesome-looking children. Her son, Geoff, worked briefly at our ESL school. Well, he is so good looking that neither the students nor some of the teachers could concentrate. He's off in Mexico now but Glenda is still around.

This is an odd blog entry I realize. I've stayed up late two nights in a row so am not all that coherent. Ideally, I need 20 hours of sleep a night.

oy vay

Oy vay - is that the correct spelling? not sure.

Hey, so I had a sort of sex dream (say, soft porn, the kind you might find on a TV show) about a woman that I know the other night. So now I'm giggling because I know that my female fan base is freaking out - "it wasn't me, was it?" or perhaps, "why wasn't it me?" Hee hee. ROTFL.

I find myself, sadly perhaps, mainly heterosexual. But you know the Kinsey scale says we are all on a continuum. Continuum - that was the word I couldn't remember the other day.

Anyway, I keep trying to be bisexual so that I can double my chances, as it were. I find myself (unsubtly, I'm sure) staring at the hardcore lesbians on Commercial Drive, thinking, "am I at all, even vaguely, attracted to that person?" And sadly, I am generally, just not. Now, not to stereotype or anything, but most of the dykes on the Drive are very, very, well butch. I would just get all confused - are you a man or a woman? Etc. So I try to think of lesbians who are more, well, feminine - Portia de Rossi, Jodie Foster, Leisha Hailey. Portia kind of has weird eyebrows though, don't you think? Jodie though - she is very intelligent too. That would be a plus.

So I don't know. I like me them men folk. Although I'm a bit worried - every woman I know finds Jouquain (sic) Phoenix really hot. And to me, he's just, okay. What does that mean? I mean he was hot hot as Johnny Cash but generally, I just don't see it.

As I approach 40 as a chronically single woman, I suspect people are drawing conclusions. "She must be gay and hiding her lover in the furnace area of her basement suite." or "Maybe she is asexual."

Truth be told, I'd love to meet a man, have a relationship. I just suck in that area. And the more I suck the less confidence that I have. Sigh. If I think too much about it, I get more into the abyss than usual. I think you can actually physically die from a lack of physical affection.

Fan base, if you know of a Vancouver single man, any man at all, please set me up. Much appreciated.

mellowed just a tad

Well, I've mellowed a bit since my last post. I hate to worry my fan base of four, sometimes five on a good day. Some people feel all icky after they read such an upfront expression of icky feelings. Me, I say dive in to the muck and play around. Take some of the muck home as a souvenir.

Blather.

Today I am going to see the movie, Water. Should be heart-wrenching, yet good. The Santa Claus Parade is still on at this moment, so I'll have to wade through that. Is Santa Claus (is there an e at the end of his name? I honestly forget) really in town? Does he really see when I've been bad AND good? I do have a chimney and even a fire place in my basement suite, but it is blocked off by a board to try and keep the cold air out. Flump. That is the sound I think Santa will make when he comes crashing down it. Flump. And then bang, bang against the board. Scary really.

Alright off to the movie. As you were.

MRIs, denial, time alone, various blather

My mother, who lives in Winnipeg with my father, called me today. My mother is almost 75 years old. Anyway, she is getting an MRI on her arm to find out why she has so much intense pain. I can tell she is quite worried. "No one ever died from an arm," she tells me. My mother informed me once that she is terrified, absolutely terrified of death. So I am terrified for her.

When do people figure out their mortality? Some people seem to have little trouble with it while others (myself included) are horrified and in some form of denial. I hope for my mom that she works it out in some way. Her mother went kicking and screaming into it. Although I realize that my mom could have a good 10-12 years left, she comes from strong stock.

We are not close, my little family of origin, either geographically (I live in Vancouver, my sister in Ottawa with her husband and daughter and my parents in my hometown of Winnipeg) or emotionally. This makes things more difficult, it seems to me. I'm hoping that my sister and I, when the time inevitably comes, can form some kind of united helpful front. I don't know that this will happen, although it does in the movies. Me, I could talk about issues, philosophy and emotions all day, her, not so much. Not with me anyway. Fair enough.

Alone. So I feel alone really. Although I love Vancouver, I have no relatives here. I do have great friends but I know it is not the same. I couldn't move back to Winnipeg though - that's just a powder keg of loneliness, despair and freezing cold weather for me. Wow, that came out all melodramatic.

I've spent today, Saturday, alone, which I wanted to do. I've been feeling rundown and cranky (ier). I went to the gym, got my new fitness routine. I want to be the fittest I've ever been when I turn 40! in 4 months. Then I napped, went shopping and made a stirfy in my effort to be healthier. Although 40 is the new 30. And, by extension, 10 is the new 0 and 90 is the new 80. So really, my mama is only 65 years old.

Blather. Now it's 6 p.m. and I'm struggling with this aloneness. I think 4 hours is a good enough time for me of that type of thing.

Here's hoping the MRI is okay.

Thanks for reading.

landlord tension and such like that there

Eeek. My lovely, gentle, kind-of-cute landlord yelled at me this afternoon! I really don't like the use of the ! but it is very apropos here.

I live in a nice little (585 square feet) basement suite in East Vancouver, near Trout Lake. It's a fine little suite, other than the lack of windows, but that's a separate issue really. My landlords and owners of the house live upstairs, Scott and Maria. They are probably about my age, late 30s, or a bit older. They get things fixed quickly and are generally quite pleasant. We give each other our space, etc. etc. Never any problems.

Well, well, well. Today, I put out my garbage can to the alley for Monday morning garbage pickup. Admittedly, it was, um, overflowing and the lid wouldn't stay on properly. Then I went to the gym, which I'm trying to do more regularly because I just had a fitness assessment at said gym. It wasn't pretty, let me tell you. But I digress.

I come back from the gym (yes, I drove the two-minute drive) and notice that my garbage can lid is now nicely fitting on it. And then I see my landlord outside. I say hi and ask how his time in Maui was. Very nice, he says and then tells me (well, yells at me) that the crows got into my garbage and the garbage was strewn all over the backyard and alley. And when he proceeded to clean up and then go through my garbage (!,, good thing I didn't throw out any, um, private things, at least I don't think I did although that is the kind of thing that can keep you up at night) he noticed that it was mainly recyclable and compost stuff. You only had a little garbage.

I am so shocked and embarrassed that I'm only saying, "oh." This seems to bother him more and he sputters, "I don't know, I don't know. This cannot happen again!" says he.

Hey, I think to myself, fair enough on the open garbage can mistake but I can put a dead body in my can and it's my business. Luckily, I do not say this. "Okay," I mumble, unlock my door and slam the door.

I suspect we will avoid each other for awhile. I should compost and recycle better. Eeek. I do do odd things like that. But he should not have yelled.

How distressing. I hate embarrassment, it's a yucky feeling. I'm going to look up on the internet "can a landlord yell at you?" After all, it's not like I put a dead body in the garbage can, which I could, by the way, if I wanted.

Harumph.

pivot etc.

Here is a wee suggestion. There is an awesome calendar of the Downtown Eastside, put out by the Pivot Legal Society. Pivot gave 150 disposable black and white cameras to various residents of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. They then judged the 3,000 photo entries and picked 12. One of the 12 is a picture taken by my friend Elisha-May, 11 years old. The calendars are $20, with half of that going to the vendors, most of whom are Downtown Eastsiders. It gives a different and healthier perspective of the community down there.

There's a great article about it in Friday's (Nov. 11) Globe and Mail. Wee Elisha-May is interviewed and quoted. She's a great kid, as are her four sisters. Check it out if you get a chance.

Saw the therapist today. I only see her once every few months. While she appears rather flaky at first, she is the only therapist I've ever had who really, really gets anxiety issues. Boom, she gets 'em. Plus, I can swear in her office and pound the pillow. All very good. And, of course, in what other hour of time can you talk strictly about yourself without feeling selfish or guilty?

I have to go now and write a short story for my writers' group. I haven't written in three months, so this is a challenge. I'd almost rather visit the dentist.

outlet malls etc.

I did indeed go outlet mall shopping yesterday. Prime Outlets, somewhere 30 minutes north of Seattle. My kind friend, Toastmaster Melanie, drove her reliable Subaru in the epic pouring rain. And it was epic. Epic beeping rain.

Now Williamsburg outlet malls are the gold standard for me. Gold, gold, gold. So this outlet mall was fine, not terrible by any means but more bronze you know.

At first I couldn't find a thing and then I, well, did. Mostly things I needed - bras! (2 for $32 (all prices in U.S. dollars unless other indicated), new running shoe runners for $30, I kid you not. A couple of headbands and dry fit socks.

Dry fit, yup, that's the brand name of Nike. Eeek. They had a Nike store down there and in I went. $30 shoes.

"How's that sweatshop problem going for Nike?" I asked the very helpful salesclerk. She was terrific and I mean her no harm.

"I don't really know about that," said young she, "but, you know, it's business. They all do it."

Yes, indeed they do and I used that rationalization to get that these great shoes. I'm vaguely ashamed and more than vaguely a hypocrite.

At Barnes and Noble Bookstore, I bought a magazine called, "The International Socialist Review." Lots of good anti-war, anti-Bush stuff in there. I imagine I'm trying to balance the Nike shoes with a little socialism. My father,odd as he really is, has always proclaimed at opportune and inoppurtune times, "I'm a socialist Jew." I've always strived to be very different from him because he is well, messed up in many ways, but alas, I crawl closer to the paternal it seems.

Then we went to Bellis Fair Mall. Target, was the, well, Target. Because it was raining so hard and because Toastmaster Melanie and I are not that well, smart, we couldn't find Target.

"If you were Target," I said, "Where would you be?"

We drove around aimlessly for awhile and then we pulled up to Costco. With her automatic Subaru thingy, she rolled down my window. "Ask that lady where Target is," she ordered me.

"I can't," I said, "I'm too shy."

Suddenly, Toastmaster Melanie is shouting out my window at the startled woman.

"It's at Bellis Fair Mall," yells startled woman.

Back to Bellis Fair. Target. The mall. Melanie and I agree to meet in an hour by the Target popcorn machine.

I'm shopped out but I wonder aimlessly.

"Hey," said a man with a booth to me, "Y ou know the Dead Sea?"

"Yeah," I said, full of knowledge, "I know the Dead Sea. Salt. You can float."

"That's right," he said vaguely conspiratorally, "Come here."

He tells me he only needs 10 seconds of my time. He shows me a jar of, well, Dead Sea salt goo.

"This is the Dead Sea," he tells me. I am aware i'm switching from past to present time, but oh well. I think the present provides more immediacy.

He puts some on my hand. "Rub it in." I do and it feels, well, like salt.

"This is so good for your skin. So good. It's like soaking in a shower two times."

Soaking in a shower? I really should clean my shower, I think, it' been a while.

"Doesn't it feel good?"

No, I think, it feels like salt. "Yes," I say.

He spritzes water on me to get it all off.

"Um, thanks," I say, and run away.

That was interesting. I go back to Target and buy some popcorn. The popcorn is very, very salty (Dead Sea salt?) and very, very dry. I ask the popcorn salesperson, "Is this just like soaking in two showers?"

Outlet mall shopping.

some consciousness streaming etc.

I will chew ice instead of writing.
I will watch The Apprentice instead of writing.
I will watch Saturday afternoon television instead of writing.
I will read the awesome words of others in literary magazines, books or the New York Times. Sound too snobbish? Ask my boss, I'm addicted to the damn People magazine that I can borrow from her office every week. I have been in there everyday this week looking for it, despite my over-fear of authority.
I am not a perfectionist in the usual sense - I have a messy basement suite, I don't exercise nearly enough and I eat not so great most of the time. I try to try hard at work but I don't stay till all hours.
I am a perfectionist only in the sense that because I cannot do it perfectly, I do not do it. Because I will find out that I am not the funniest person, I will not do standup. Because I cannot write like those who really, really, can, then I will not.
Because I see all of my flaws more than any of my not flaws, I stay mired.
It's a serious blog today, fanbase.
I was lying (laying?) in the bathtub, reading some other people's good writing, when I felt the need to blog this. Go with it, I thought, pulling the plug (sorry for the naked image) and getting out.
I absolutely envy and admire the talents of my friends - cooking, quilting, drawing, painting whole murals on whole walls, an ability to out-funky dress even the funkiest.
When I was a kid I would write and write and write. I don't remember what now and to my still-regret, I once ripped up the pages of my Snoopy diary. Too bad, because it held all of my emotions about my grade 6 teacher, who was a great father figure to a lot of us and an unfortunate child molester to some (not to me). That was when I wrote what I felt, uncensored. It got too scary, I guess, so I tore it up one day.
What the heck am I trying to say? Who knows, stream of consciousness type of thing.
I bought more crayons and more paper for my colouring/drawing soothing experiment type thing but haven't touched it.
I chew ice.
I watch TV.
I perseverate (dig that word, eh) on my singleness, on my only sister on the other side of the country that I will never be close to and my growing stomach. This takes time, this perseverating. It really does.
But I still love shopping, dancing to ABBA and seeing a really good movie. Laughing. My friend and I nearly peed our pants laughing the other night. It was after 8 p.m. so I was punch drunk for some reason. That was awesome, that laughing.
Hmmm.

enough with the rain already

The icky weather in Vancouver has begun. It's November and the clocks have just been turned back. It now starts getting dark at about 4 p.m. Now, fanbase, I am from Winnipeg, Manitoba where it also gets dark at 4 p.m. in November. It is much, much colder there than Vancouver. Say -45C or so sometimes. Tongues freezing to fence posts kind of weather. Plug in your car. Pipes freezing and bursting. So much time spent indoors that even functional families turn to ritalin, atavan and arsenic in tea. I know for cold. I tell you I would walk backwards miles to school . . .
But the sun shines there! Shines and shines and shines.

But in Vancouver, oy vay. The darkness and the rain gets to a person. It seems particularly bad this year for me. All of a sudden, it was dark And I live in a cute little basement suite that has no windows really. Dark, dark dark.

My friend, Tracy, (referenced in an earlier blog) has been given the great gift of one of those S.A.D. lights. Seasonal Affective Disorder. This light, which costs about $500, is a godsend, says she. She sits in front of it for 15 minutes a day and finds herself filled with energy. Well, at least less tired and depressed.

I need me one of them there lights.

Okay, so seven people responded to my stand up comedy thingy. Hmmm. I don't think I have the guts, but I'll check into it.

I'm going to an outlet mall! this weekend near Seattle. Let the ecstasy begin.