Friday, November 13, 2009

Daily Photos: November 13, 2009

Oh Diabetik, how I love your marshmallow Peep street art. You make my walks in D.C. such a delight.

Thursday, November 12, 2009

A Little Nut Holding Its Ground

I have noticed a trend in my posting lately, most of it having to do with The Crazy and the way I deal (or not deal) with The Crazy. I don't really like this trend as I'm afraid it makes me look like a ginormous whine-o loser who can't handle her poop like a grown-up. But if the shoe fits...

Also, it fills my heart with fear that you fine people will start to get tired of my whining and will tell me, "Shut the bunk up, Canary, you're boring the whites off of our friggin' eyeballs."

But since I think I'm on the verge of a mini nervous breakdown (the kind that requires an entire gallon of Edy's and some Pillsbury cookie dough but not forced institutionalization) and since I need to spill the words out of my body the same way an enema spills the poop out of your chute, I'm saying, "To hell with it," and am now telling you that I am FREAKING OUT LOSING MY SHIT OMG. I'm also telling you a lot about poop, it seems, though I could tell you a WHOLE LOT MORE. Right Mr. Mystery? Right? I could tell them a whole lot about poop. (He knows. I talk about poop a lot.)

Okay, that's a bit of an exaggeration. Not the poop part because I really do talk a lot about poop, but rather the part about losing my poop. That part is a wee stretch of the truth. The truth is that while I am LOSING MY SHIT OMG it's not happening all at once. Rather, I feel a small puncture in my inner lining and the shit is oozing out of me in miniscule increments - sort of like diverticulitis - and no one but me, God, a CT scan and a colonoscopy can see it. So if I were to run up to you, waving my arms and shouting, "I AM LOSING MY SHIT OMG!" you would likely look me up and down, see that I haven't lost a limb, and then say, "Oh Canary! How you joke!"

And yet I am not joking. Instead I am yelling, "The shit! It's a-leakin' out!" But the primary response I get to this is, "Canary-girl! But aren't you a funny one!" Mrs. Lady called me "scintillating" today. SCINTILLATING. My, but I love that woman. The only thing? She told me this after I put my head on the arm of her couch and wailed, "But I've got a blister on my heel! ON! MY! HEEEEEEEEL!"

You may be wondering what the heel blister has to do with poop and my LOSING MY MIND and also how can wailing about blisters make one "scintillating." I wondered the same thing.

So here's the whole blister scenario, but be warned because its story is buried underneath a lot of other stuff and my brain isn't functioning well enough to put the story into a logical sequence.

I joined Weight Watchers about seven weeks ago and was doing pretty well. Lost 15 pounds. I kept this mostly to myself because I wanted it to be something I did for me and also? I tend to fail at things like this and I didn't want to see the "yeah, right" look on people's faces when I announced that I wasn't eating that second cupcake because I was trying to loooooooose weeeeeeeeeeeight. So "mum" was my word and I just did my thing. A few close (non-judgmental) friends knew and I leaned on them for support.

But after losing 15 pounds, people start to notice that your ass is smaller and they start to ask you where your ass went and you start to feel pretty good about losing your ass so you tell them about Weight Watchers. And then you go to your meeting and for the first time since starting seven weeks prior YOU GAIN WEIGHT.

And you immediately think that you jinxed yourself by telling people that you were trying to lose weight.

And you get discouraged because your f'ed up brain, the one with The Crazy, starts in on its pre-recorded soundtrack of "Failure, Failure" set to the tune of "Sunrise, Sunset" from Fiddler.

So you wallow for a day or two and then try to get some perspective. You reframe your thoughts. You tell yourself, "Self! Stop wallowing and get some perspective! Reframe! REFRAME!" So you go walking during lunchtime to 1) burn calories and 2) get some fresh air and 3) hopefully also get some perspective.

And you get a big-ass blister on your heel.

And then you tell your therapist that you believe the blister to be the physical manifestation of your belief that you ultimately will fail, that all of your efforts will be in vain and will also hurt like mothafucker and that the blister is just trying to help that failure along. Speed it up a little. You tell your therapist that you believe the blister to be sentient, and that it is transmitting little failure messages to your brain. You mention Fiddler. You may even mention to her how Caroline Ingalls almost cut off her leg and you think that perhaps lancing the blister might silence the failure lambs.

And that's when your therapist would lean forward in her chair, fix you with an uncomfortably intense stare, and tell you that you're "scintillating."

And you start to wonder if she was really listening to the story, because the story was far from scintillating. In fact, it was sort of the opposite of scintillating. It was gnitallitnics (which is "scintillating" spelled backwards and also super fun to say.)

The story was, to be blunt, MANIC.

And you realize that perhaps the decrease in your head meds has had a bigger effect on you than you think. But you say, "SCREW THAT!" because you SO WANT TO NOT BE ON MEDS even though you know the meds keep you from ingesting an entire bottle of Tylenol PM and/or a gallon of Edy's and a roll of cookie dough. So you choose instead to be SCINTILLATING instead of MANIC. Because really, can't they really be one and the same? Those crazy people on the bus that mutter to themselves, they're not INSANE, they're just really good conversationalists.

And that, my good people, is what they call REFRAMING.

Wait... what was I talking about? Poop?

Damn it. I lost my train of thought. Oh wells. The end.

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Daily Photo: Saturday, November 7, 2009

"Who lives in a pineapple under the sea?!" Friendly faces in the strangest of places.

Friday, November 06, 2009

Chili Update: And The Winner Is...

WOOO! My chili was well-received by my colleagues! Though I did not win a ribbon, I did have the 4th highest number of votes.

That was some tough competition, let me tell you. The winner duped us all by LYING and telling us that his chili contained spicy pork sausage and ground beef. We all ooh'ed and aah'ed over the lively flavor of his chili, wondering aloud what ingredients he used to give it its sweetness and tangy zip. Once the winner was announced and Mr. Chili Liar was bedecked in his ribbon, he revealed the truth: that WASN'T sausage and ground beef in the chili.

It was wild boar and venison.

I pantomimed hurling into the nearest trash bin.

"I knew if I told you that it was venison, you wouldn't try it," he explained.

And he was right. We all feared Mr. Chili Liar, aka: Mr. Hunting Man, would try to slip some deer into our food and he knew it. Had we known that deer was in there, none of us would have eaten it. (I'm not all that bothered by the wild boar, as I consider that to be fancy bacon. With tusks.) So lie he did and win he did because venison and wild boar aside, that was some damn good chili.

And Now You're Telling Me You're All Out?

Today is my office's first-ever chili cook-off. The event is our effort to boost morale and give everyone a chance to show off their culinary skills. With everyone working their asses off like they have been, chili and cornbread are deserved.

My role in this, in addition to being a chili-cooker, was to create the awards and decor. Seeing as how we're chillin' in one of our conference rooms, there isn't much one can do about decor. There are only so many solutions one can provide in a room with flourescent lighting and furnished with a marbled formica conference table. But I did my best, ladies and gents, and in an hour my coworkers and I will sit down to 967,421 gallons of chili, 13 batches of cornbread, 6 tubs of sour cream, 37 bags of Tostitos, and 26 bags of cheddar cheese.

Mr. Mystery has already been informed that we are having chili for dinner tonight.

And for breakfast tomorrow.

And for the rest of our lives.

Some photos for you, my lovelies. I have to admit that I am particularly in love with my first, second, and third place ribbons (crafted with love and an ass-load of hot glue), and hope that I win one so that I get to hang it on my office wall and use it to mock the inferior chili-making skills of my colleagues.And here is my chili, contestant #2, all 4 gallons of it. My secret ingredients? Cumin and curry. Oh! And also sage-flavored sausage. No recipe is complete without sausage. Delicioso, mis amigos. Delicioso.

Thursday, November 05, 2009

Shows Us What We Are

Greetings, my fine feathered friends. As you may have noticed, things have been rather dull over here in GreenCanary Land. I could give you some great excuses, like the End of the World or Bubonic Plague, but the truth is that I've been lacking creativity. Even now as I type this, I find the words to be coming out a bit mucky and thick, like tar or molasses. Tarlasses, if you will. But once again I started to worry about losing you, my lovelies, and also my lover-ly Kate of South Dakota sent me an email that was the virtual equivalent of a bitch slap delivered by kid gloves. In other words, a loving bitch slap, which I enjoyed more than I should have. Gave me a thrill *wink wink* So here I am, posting a butt-load of crap for your reading non-pleasure.

Hee hee... I said "butt-load of crap." *snort*

So anyhoo, I got all sick and shit and was out of work almost two weeks. Through a thick layer of phlegm and snot, I informed all and sundry that I had Swine Flu. I was pretty certain for I felt downright swine-ish. But the doctor informed me that I did not have Swine Flu. Hell, I didn't even have the REGULAR flu. What ailed me? Sickness. Yep, that was the diagnosis. Sick-to-the-ness. Let me tell you, when you're about to expel your lungs through your mouth by sheer force of will, the last person you want diagnosing you is a doctor with a proclivity for being vague.

So there I was, perched precariously on the papered exam table, working hard to keep my lungs from coughing, my nose from running, my chills from shaking, and my body from fevering, when the perky doctor sing-songed, "Good news! No flu! But you ARE sick."

*crickets chirping*

I waited for her to say something more but nothing else was forthcoming, so I caved and asked, "Whad?" (That's the stuffy nose equivalent of, "What?")

"You're sick," she repeated. "I don't know for certain what it is... maybe it's bacterial, maybe it's viral. You want some antibiotics?"

I politely declined the antibiotics unless, you know, she - THE DOCTOR - thought I needed them.

"Hard to say, hard to say..." she said. "They might work. They might not. You never know until you try, right?"

I had many answers to this question but lacking the will to live, I remained silent.

I took my Sick and went home where I hibernated in my bed for 6 days. On the 7th day I emerged from my bedroom and pretended to be a normal, functioning adult.

The next day I was right back in bed. Damn undiagnosable sickness.

The good news is that I'm now sorta better, though my general tolerance for people's crap is ultra low and my teary-eyed finger is trigger happy. (<-- That's my fancy way of telling you that I keep crying over stupid things, like commercials, The Biggest Loser, clipping Bixby's wings, and bad meetings with my boss. That last one was sort of legitimate in that it wasn't a happy-go-lucky discussion but rather a painful pick-apart of my department's shortcomings, though what she said didn't warrant the waterworks. Those I threw in for free. Because of the Sick. I blame the Sick.)

So there you have it, friends! Me, sick and crazy! Like always! Aren't you glad that you're protected by that there monitor? Goodness knows what sort of germs I could spread should we ever conversate face-to-face. Woo.

Monday, October 26, 2009

Beat Some Crap Out Of It And Demand Some Florida Oranges As Well

Oh lovely people, my lovely lovely people. Mah brain? It is on meltdown. Meltdown, with a capital M. It is convinced that my body is sick and thus is giving me a low-grade fever and an earache when the only thing *actually* wrong with me is that my head-med dosage has been reduced.* The reduction in head-meds has kicked my brain into a crap slump of epic proportions, the solution to which is just to muddle through. If I can make it through the Effexor withdrawals, I can do anything. I'm pretty sure. This will be my litmus test.

*Okay, I wrote that first paragraph days ago. Turns out that the Effexor withdrawal was just a wee part of my sickness. The earache turned into a full-blown ear infection and one of my glands became so swollen that you could actually see it protruding from my neck. I kid you not. It was gross. I regret not taking pictures for your viewing pleasure.

Sadly I must confess that I tried to drag Mr. Mystery into my epicly proportioned meltdown. Many months have gone by since I brought up the B word with him. Really, it's been a long while since I've even THOUGHT about the B word. But then my head went berserk and ran off naked into the fray. Suddenly I was all BABIES and EX-GIRLFRIENDS and DO YOU LOOOOOOOOOVE ME? and man! Can we just say, "C-c-c-crazy?!" because seriously, I went absolutely bonkers.

When my ass finally made its way to Mrs. Lady Doctor, it was tired from all of the self-kicking it had undergone. Because no meltdown is complete without the instaneous REGRET and DAMAGE CONTROL. You lose your mind and are then instantly, "I'M SORRY! I DIDN'T MEAN IT! PLEASE DON'T LEEEEEEEEEEEEEAVE MEEEEEEEEE!" One's ass gets tired from the self-flagellation.

Mrs. Lady Doctor took one look at my baggy, deadpan eyes and asked about my mental state. "Oh, um..." I hedged. "I'm good! Great, even. I'm all PERFECT and HAPPY!" She stared. I repeated, "PERFECT! And HAPPY!" She continued to stare and me until I crumbled under the weight of her gaze. I collapsed into a weepy sopping mess and told her about my naked fraying insanity. I tried to explain the craziness by saying that I was physically sick, that the ear infection was making me nuts, that the penicillan was the cause of my lunacy. I hem'ed and haw'ed until I had talked myself full circle and was forced to admit that my mental state was not the cause of therapeutic mold, but rather the lack of an anti-depressant. "God dammit," I muttered.

I God dammit'ed because here's the thing: I don't want to take anti-depressants to function normally. In the same way, I don't want to need an allergy medication to pet my cat. Or iron supplements because I'm iron deficient. I want to function optimally in an unaltered, unmedicated state. P.S. For me? This is impossible.

U
pon receiving Mrs. Lady Doctor's call, the Harvard-Educated Psychiatrist put my medication dosage back to normal and things seem to be righting themselves. I haven't cried today, which I take to be a positive sign. I don't know if I'm completely back to normal because Mr. Mystery has been in Kansas so I haven't had the opportunity to go hog-wild crazy on his cute lil' tush. If upon his return I throw myself into his arms in glorious, rapturous adoration, we'll know I'm okay. If instead I slap him and demand that he procreate, we'll know that there's still some work to be done.

Only time will tell. Stay tuned.

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

My Heart is a Gypsy

So I started sleuthing around, all Nancy Drew-like. And what was I investigating, you, my lovely lovelies, ask? Why, my newest blog follower, of course. I couldn't help but be tickled by the names of his blogs. I am neither hot nor gay, so I rather enjoy having some hot gayness infused into my blog. Since I can't do that hot gay infusing myself, I gladly accept the hot gayness infusing from others. That being said, I got to sleuthing.

I clicked on the hot gayness and what did I discover? Girls. In compromising (and drafty) positions, performing various acts that are, by and large, hetero. Sure, there's an occasional lesbian kiss or canoodle, but not so much as to account for the DAILY in the name of Follower 15's blog.

Confused, I IM'ed Mr. Mystery: "One of my blog followers is a porn site. What does that say about me?" He answered kindly, "That you've got great bosoms?" (Only he didn't use the word bosoms.)

"But how would they know that?" I asked, wordlessly accepting Mr. Mystery's praise of my bosoms. He loquaciously replied, "Dunno."

"But is it weird that a porn site is my blog friend?" I continued, totally caught up in the fact that words like "twat" and "cum" are now forever tied to my virginally pure blog.

"Maybe they (meaning Hot Gayness) followed you home for the same reason I did: you're cute."

Aw. How sweet is that? My boyfriend told me that my cuteness (and great bosoms) caused a rathy extensive catalog of amateur porn to follow and befriend me. If that's not a compliment, then I don't know what is.

But questions remain. First, where is all of the daily hot gayness? There was barely enough gay to last a week, nevermind daily. Your blog is a misnomer, my newest blog follower. Second, are you even a real person? The suggestion has been made that you are, perhaps, a spam bot, sent here from the depths of outer space to glean page views from my readers. If this is true, oh evil spam bot, I hereby banish you from my blog. Begone! And you, my lovely readers, steer clear of Follower 15 and his blogs. Thou shalt not give fuel to the spam bot's fire and move him up Google's hit list.

But if you are a real person, Follower 15, then tell me this: how did you come about finding me, lil' ol' GreenCanary, in the great expanse of the Internets? Was it my love of the movie Striptease that enticed you? Or perhaps my lust for Cate Blanchett? Or maybe you were wrangled by my obsession with Willy Wonka, as performed by Gene Wilder. Because I know it isn't my off-key singing voice or poorly formed poetry that captured your fancy.

Porn follows my blog. I am followed by porn. I really don't know what to think about that. So for the time being, until answers are offered, I choose to believe it's because I'm sporting an impressive rack.

Fin.

The Cockroaches of the Ocean


A-goggling the shrimp at the Marian Koshland Science Museum of the National Academies. In addition to the a-goggling, you can also hypothetically kill hundreds of thousands of hypothetical patients who have hypothetically been infected with the hypothetical flu. Hypothetically, I enjoyed that part immensely.