A WEIGHT OFF MY SHOULDERS, AND EVERYTHING ELSE

It was a year ago, on December 8th, that I had my weight loss surgery! 

To date, I have lost 86 pounds, which is the equivalent of a whole ass middle school kid.

All along, I planned on doing a thoughtful, formal, yearly wrap up with insightful thoughts about the surgery itself; about how my body has changed, and the good and the bad of having a surgery like the one I had.

I'm not gonna do that after all. Well, not in the way that I had originally planned, at least. Instead, I'm going to talk about the things I've learned in this past year as I've gone through the changes that I have, because a lot of things that I've experienced weren't what I was expecting.  

First off - eating sucks. Look, my body may have changed, but my brain has not. I'm sure I've mentioned that before, and I'm certain that it can't be that much of a surprise, but reducing the size of my stomach did not, in fact, reduce my want for food. Not on an emotional level at least. If I had ever doubted that my eating habits were tied to how I was feeling, then having this surgery removed all of those doubts. There have been days when I've been very unhappy, and my first thought is to shove food in my mouth until I feel better. The trouble is, I don't have a lot of room for that food anymore, and the amount of food I can physically stand does not soothe whatever mental thing that eating did before. Plus, if I eat the wrong things (some of which I can eat more of than others) it just makes me feel sick and sometimes puts me in physical pain. I've got a long way to go before I can recognize being full and also not emotional eating. Also, don't even talk to me about if something tastes good. I want to eat more of that thing, just like everyone else, and I can't. It's frustrating in the worst kind of way. If I can't get this under control, I'm going to gain a considerable amount of weight back, which I never, ever, ever want to do. Keep your fingers crossed for me, please.

Secondly - Shopping is awesome now! Do you know what it's like to have maybe one store within driving distance that carries your size? It sucks. Especially when the things in that store are not necessarily your style? All grandma clothes with big sequined birds all over them, cheap fabrics and awkward lengths? That's what it was like before. Apparently, when you weight 230 pounds, you're also supposed to be 70 years old, not care what you look like, and be 6' 6" tall. One of the nicest parts about losing weight has been that if I need clothes, I don't have to go online, or pay extra for extended sizes, or cross my fingers that when I order the size I need, it won't be in Vietnamese infant measurements. I can literally go into a regular store and buy something. I haven't been able to do that in years. Unfortunately, due to my new enthusiasm for clothes shopping, I have purchased some questionable choices that probably don't fit my age or my personality, but I like to have them around, just in case.

Thirdly - Men treat me differently now than they did a year ago. In some ways that's ok, in some ways it's very much not ok, and in all ways it kind of pisses me off. I'm well aware that a lot of dudes look at a fat girl and see them as a joke or maybe don't really see them at all. I'm not here to judge anyone's personal physical preferences. Truly. BUT. BUT. Because I have changed so rapidly, the changes in people's behavior are really obvious to me. It didn't change gradually, so it isn't like any of this feels normal at all. Now I get some unwanted, creepy attention from people who would have used me as a joke before. Not always, and not from every guy, but stray randoms feel like they can send me DMs and make weird comments, or say borderline inappropriate things, or - God help me - just touch me for no reason. I was chatting with a man I didn't know at a work-related thing recently - and he was being perfectly normal - and then he ran his hand down my back to my hip. I genuinely don't know if he meant to be creepy, but I certainly don't think I did anything to signal "please, stranger, rub me!" I had to have a co-worker run interference between me and a much older man who wouldn't leave me alone at the same event. These men don't work with me, so I couldn't report them, but damn. No matter what size I have been, I know that I've always been the same person. I'm cute, charming, and probably more inappropriate than I need to be at times, so in all, I'm a freaking delight. All of that and I was invisible before, but the fact that just having a smaller body suddenly gets me attention? That's bull. I mean, I know those guys who suddenly "see me" aren't looking for a charming conversation companion, but still...it's bull. 

Fourthly - The touching. Good lord, the touching. It isn't just men who do it. I've had all kinds of people literally say "OMG, you look so good!" and run their hands all over me, like they are trying to find out if I've just folded the fat away in secret compartments and they want to find the release switch. I know they don't mean to make things weird, but who does that? If I came up to you and just rubbed your sides like I thought a genie would pop out of your butt, you'd think it was weird too, right? I believe it must be the same thing that pregnant women go through when people rub their bellies. Maybe people can't help themselves? I don't mind hugs and things like that (usually...see above paragraph) but I didn't know people were going to pat me down like rogue TSA agents for no reason.

Fifthly - that word looks weird, but fifthly - for the most part my health is a lot better, number wise. I'm still very tired and weak a lot of times, and in dire need of finding a type of exercise that I can do on a regular basis to build up strength, but all of the numbers that were edging on the border of being dangerous, are now normal. That is a huge relief. It's one of the main reasons I had this surgery. I knew I was killing myself slowly and I couldn't make myself stop. I couldn't overcome whatever mental issues caused the overeating and emotional eating on willpower alone, so taking this extreme measure has actually done good things. 

I could probably go on and on, but this is enough for now. Things have changed so much in such a short time that I'm still adjusting to everything, but I'm very glad I took the step I did. The fact that I can undo all of the good if I'm not careful hangs over my head every day, but I'm trying very hard to change my attitudes and ways so that I don't end up in the same boat as I was before. Is it easy? No, not really. It's a struggle every day, not just to keep myself fed and heathy, but to not put myself into a position where I sabotage myself. I'm naturally a self-saboteur, I think. But for now, and I hope for the future and beyond, I'm making progress in a positive way and I hope I can keep on doing that.

WELL THAT WAS WEIRD

Yesterday was the first day of the work week for us, since Monday was Columbus Day and our offices were closed.

One of the first things I always do is to open the church's email to see if there is anything important that came in over the weekend. So I opened Outlook and the emails began to load.  One of the first ones I noticed was from last Friday, and it stuck out because it was from a real person and not an organization. It was an inquiry from a local mom about our yearly Fall Festival, which, modest as it is, it is kind of a big deal for some of the kids in the neighborhood.

I was just about to answer the message when I saw a second message from the same sender, which had arrived on Monday when the offices were closed, and in the preview line for the message, it said "Are you sure?"

I opened the second message and read it, and it said "Are you sure? The website said it would be on the 29th." I looked down a little further, and saw that I had written something along the lines of "Hi! It will be on November 1st."  I was completely confused, because A) I had not received or sent a message to/from this woman at any point last week, B) clearly I had written this woman back, because the evidence was right there, and C) That isn't the right date at all.

You know how sometimes a thing will happen, and you start questioning your own sanity?  Well, I sat there reading my own words and began to wonder if I actually had been at work on Monday and just didn't remember.  I remembered sleeping in, I remembered Steve making breakfast, and I remembered going to Best Buy on Monday, but maybe that was all a weird hallucination! I got that weird feeling in my stomach like I was about to find out the world was fake and I was nothing more than a brain in a jar hooked up to a battery or something.

I finally decided to re-read the entire message and saw that, yes, the woman had written the original email last Friday, October 5th. My reply was written on October 9th...but in 2015.  I have no idea what happened, but the lady had apparently written me the same question and message two years before, and had actually replied to a 2 year old response.  I don't know if I was more confused at that, or that she apparently still had my 2015 message in her inbox to reply to.

Anyway, I thought that was weird.  I deleted her messages and didn't write back, just in case there was some type of time warp thing and by sending her another email, I'd tear a hole in the space-time continuum.  Safety first!

THE EYES HAVE IT!

You want to see something weird?  Of course you do, what am I asking?  But first, some background.

Last week I had to go for my annual eye exam.  Thankfully, the last few times I've been to see the optometrist, my eyes haven't gotten worse and my prescription has stayed pretty consistent.  Since there wasn't any hullaballoo about getting new glasses this year, I decided to ask about possibly getting some colored contacts in addition to my regular ones.  If you've ever seen me up close, you know my eyes are a dark, chocolate brown.  Actually, it's kind of weird, because my dad had light blue eyes and my mom has greenish, hazel eyes. My brother and sister both have blue eyes. I am the family abberation (in more ways than one, probably. ) So let's give it up for whatever recessive trait I inherited!

I've been told I have nice eyes, and I'm glad some people think so, but still...I've had brown ones all my life.  I wanted a little change and this was the least permanent thing I could think of.  The contacts lady at the eye doc was super helpful and she ordered me 4 boxes of non-prescription colored contacts to try out to see which color I would want.  While I was hoping for a big change, the colored contacts didn't make a huge difference because my eyes are so dark.  You could see a bit of difference, but on the whole, it was subtle.  I tried to take a picture of my eyes to see which one I liked the best, but the pictures were a bit blurry.  Apparently my iPhone doesn't like close ups.  Sorry about the quality, but here is what I got:

Here are the blue ones.  They are only blue around the edges and they aren't that noticeable.

Ignore the black circles under my eye, friend. I haven't been sleeping well.

These are the green ones.  I really like them because they make my eyes look like my mom's.  :) 

Still not that different, but different enough.

These are the gray ones.  I actually have two of them in one eye so that the color would show up better, so this is not what my eyes would look like if I wore the gray contacts, but I thought it was neat looking anyway.

I'm staring into your soul right now.

None of these are the weird thing I wanted you to see, though.  Since I was having so much trouble getting a picture of my eye in focus, I got out my macro lens and asked Steve to take a picture of my eye.  He obliged and this was the result:

Borg? Cylon? From Westworld? You pick.

You may have to embiggen the picture to see what is so weird about it, but the macro lens picked up the dot matrix coloring of the contact and you can even see the word "demo" that is stamped onto it.  It looks like I have cyborg eyes!  It freaked me out a little.  I'd never seen what a colored contact on an eyeball looked like up close. Now we both have!  Haha!  

Look into my eyes!  RESISTANCE IS FUTILE!

Sorry about all the eye closeups, if eyes freak you out.  Just know that these eyes have a lot of love, laughter and compassion in them.  Well, usually.  In light of full disclosure I've been told there is a bit of devilry in them, too.  :)

POSTAL

 I got the weirdest thing in the mail the other day.  I've been kind of hesitant to talk about it because I had to check it out first, but as far as I can tell it's nothing nefarious, just strange. 
I got home from work the other day and saw a package sitting on our stoop.  I had been waiting on a package, so I was expecting to open it and find a bunch of art supplies I had ordered.  Instead, the box was full of packing peanuts and a wooden box that had an envelope sitting on top. I had never seen anything packaged like that before, but I'd never ordered anything from this particular company before, either.  I opened the envelope, thinking it would contain a packing slip, but it was a letter that started out "Dear Kelly." OK, then, maybe it was a very friendly art supply company. 

The letter was long and kind of hard to read because the handwriting was very cramped, but I figured out right away it wasn't a packing slip of any kind.  It was from a guy named Tom, and it said he didn't know me, but he needed to warn me, and he'd been given my name.  He said he needed to relieve himself of a terrible burden and turn away from his memories of "this terrible woman." It also said that fate had its reasons for wanted me to hear the story.  It didn't make a lot of sense, but it sounded like a warning.  I thought I'd been the recipient of some kind of chain mail, but it didn't tell me to pass anything on.  Like I said, it was weird. 

 I immediately started to document everything I did from that point on for Twitter, because if I'm going to wind up with a human organ, a box of bees, or anthrax I want people who know me to know how it went down.  There are too many people who'd think I was up to shenanigans were I to be found dead with something like that on me.  The next step was to actually open the box, which I was hesitant to do.  I was home alone!  The box look like it had been left over from some kind of old industrial use and it didn't give me a clue of what it was and it could have had anything in it! 

 I managed to pry it open (and it wasn't bees, thank goodness) and it was full of old newspaper packing.  Underneath that was an old book with a burn or stain on the cover, a metal thing with symbols on it, and a missing poster of some kid I'd never heard of. 

I was grateful it wasn't anything disgusting or dangerous in there, but still...WTF?  The newspapers didn't give any info away, because it was just classified ads that didn't seem to be specific to one place, and the book was all scribbled in and full of newspaper clippings.

I didn't really know what to do with all this.  I mean, I've always wanted to get a package in the mail that had some kind of mystery in it, but I had always thought it would be something Indiana Jones-esque where I'd have to grab my passport and fly to some other place to solve a mystery.  This was more like someone with a weird nephew who had gone nuts needed to get rid of evidence!  Still, though, I was intrigued.  Tom had evidently known someone I knew, so why not send it to me, right?  I still got my cool mystery box from an unknown sender, so I was kind of digging it, creepy or not!

I finally managed to read the book, which turned out to be a journal of some kid who evidently thought he was either haunted by a ghost, or possessed by something.  The newspaper clippings were obits, apparently from the same family of people, but I still haven't put it all together yet.  I guess it could be a joke of some kind, but it's really freaking elaborate, and I don't know anyone who'd go to that much trouble to play a prank on me.  I'm still trying to go through everything and see if I can figure out what's going on.  I haven't gotten anything else from Tom, so maybe this is it?  We'll see!

I'll let you know if I figure anything else out about this! 

I HAVE A THEORY

Bear with me.

Last night as I was falling asleep, I was thinking about the people that I've met during my life so far that I immediately felt a connection with.  You know what I mean, right?  You meet someone, and it doesn't feel like you are strangers getting to know each other, but like you are old friends that are just catching up? You get that feeling of "Oh, there you are! I've been waiting on you!"  That has happened to me a wonderful few times, as well as the opposite where I've met people and immediately disliked them for no discernible reason. 

So I have this theory...

What if, sometime in the future, someone has developed a type of non-corporeal time travel.  You can't physically travel in time, but you can contact yourself mentally (or maybe someone else can connect to you mentally for whatever reason) and although you don't get completely clear messages, you can at least get feelings about stuff if you have the right kind of psyche.  So, let's say, my future self wants to go back to experience being a kid or teenager again and in the inexact science that time travel would be (of course) the day that I land on happens to be the day I meet a certain person.  Obviously, my future self would know this person and have warm (or icky) feelings about them from the experience of knowing them, and since I can't get clear thoughts, I only get that feeling of either happiness or disgust! Maybe some people can "hear" more clearly than others and so that's why you never question certain situations. Why do I like and trust this person immediately? I don't know, it's just the way it is!  Why do you want to punch this person in the neck even though you just met them? Who knows?  Just go with it!

That would also explain why sometimes you might do stuff that makes perfect since at the time, but completely confuses you later on when you think about it! You aren't being controlled by someone, exactly, but something just seems like a good idea at the moment and you make a decision based on that idea. Since the person time traveling in your head can't stay there forever, when they're gone, you don't know why you felt that way to begin with.  It makes sense.

Of course, that opens up the idea that people are mentally time traveling for important reasons, like, certain people have to meet because the butterfly effect of their meeting and being friends causes certain things to happen that are important in the future.  Maybe there are bad guys who mentally time travel, too, and they get people to do bad things, and then good guys have to mentally time travel to get people to do good things so that the future isn't destroyed!

So I tell Steve about this when he comes to bed and he pointed out that the fact that I have come up with this theory out of nowhere, I may be accidentally getting a message too clearly and understanding the whole time travel thing could cause irreparable damage to the future. Or....or..maybe since I'm writing about it here, some random person (hello, future time travel pioneer!) will take this idea and create the technology to actually make it happen!  (Name it after me!)

So, if I have accidentally created a rift in the space time continuum, I apologize.  If I've given someone the idea of non-corporeal, mental time travel, you're welcome. :)

You know...I like my going-to-sleep thoughts much better than my suddenly-waking-up thoughts.

A QUICKIE

I woke up in the wee hours of the morning with the absolute worst feeling. I don't know what I was dreaming, but it must have been awful to wake up feeling like that.  It was all muzzy and unformed and I couldn't protect my brain from it because I wasn't all the way awake.

It was like my family leaving me at the airport on purpose with no way home and no way to call anyone to come and get me and no money for a cab, and even if I could get someone to let me borrow a phone, no matter who I called, no one would admit to leaving me at the airport.  It's the way I feel when I have the panic dreams where no one will give me a straight answer to my questions. Bleh.  It was irrational and panicky and I literally started picking apart everything I'd done and said in the past week or two to try and figure out what I'd done to make everyone hate me. I felt completely abandoned, and it didn't help that Steve had gotten up to get a drink, so when I did wake up I actually was alone. I even started composing apology letters to people in my head, just in case.

I even made Steve talk to me about what I could have done when he finally came back to bed, and trust me, he hates my irrational fears and the fact that I need to talk about them sometimes!

I know that none of this makes sense.

I'm not the only person I know that this happens to. It's a weird thing and I hate it!  I wonder why it never happens that we wake up in the middle of the night and think "Hey, remember that time you did this awesome thing? Oh, and think of all the people who love you and think you're great! You were really funny the other day. Your friends would never in a million years abandon you without closure or even get angry without explaining why! Bask in the warmth and safety of your life! You've never once made a truly bad decision, and even if you had, it won't ruin everything!"  Heh. That would be nice!

No, it's always the worst things that pop into my head.

Buuuuuut....at least I was sufficiently awake to decide to go to the gym super early.  So, silver lining?

Haha, I hate morning brain!




Just in case, though... please still love me! I didn't do it, whatever it was, on purpose! Probably. :)

YOU CALL HIM DR. JONES, DOLL...

So...Saturday morning I woke up in a great amount of pain.  I won't elaborate too much, because when it comes to pain, elaboration isn't altogether necessary. Let's just say that it was somewhere in between "Wow, this is kind of bad" and "This is appendicitis and I need to go to the hospital."

I thought I could tough it out, honestly, because what are the chances that I'd wake up with appendicitis out of nowhere, really?  I figured that the pain would stop and I'd go about my day.  Only, it didn't stop.  It got a bit more bearable, but it didn't go away.  I think I've mentioned that I'm not the kind of person who goes to the emergency room for just anything (and the fact that I went to a walk-in clinic for what I thought was a heart attack should be proof enough) but this time I decided that I should probably go and get checked out.  I couldn't stand up straight and it felt like I was slowly being stabbed in my right side.  Granted, as the pain had lessened a bit, I knew I wasn't in immediate danger or anything, but if something inside of me is getting ready to explode, I thought it might be best to see about getting ahead of any unpleasantness.  I was determined to take a shower and put on clean clothes before going, so I (quickly) did that and we drove to the hospital.

We were taken back to a room impressively quickly, and I was immediately given an IV and had blood drawn.  Then I was given pain meds and everything got so shiny and bright.  They x-rayed me, gave me a CT scan, and then the doctor came in to talk to me.  The pain had quietened down a bit, so I wasn't in agony, but when the starting pressing down on my side, I felt like a water balloon on the brink of popping.  It was a weird feeling, but it wasn't terrible.  The doctor left us to wait until they could run tests and see what was going on, and that is how we were for several hours.  I kept thinking how embarrassed I was that I was at the hospital and wasn't hurting anymore, but Steve kept reminding me that I'd been given pain meds, so I shouldn't be hurting.

I have this fear, or if not a fear, a concern, that I'm going to end up being the kind of person who goes to the emergency room for absolutely no reason and waste everyone's time.  That is the main reason I always usually go to the walk-in clinic when something's wrong.  I know a lot of nurses, so I don't want to be an unnecessary burden on them in case someone who needs them more comes in.  I kept apologizing on the off chance that there was nothing wrong with me.  I'm sure they were annoyed, but they all assured me that it was better that I came in, just in case.  I just don't want to bother people.  That's pretty much the crux of the matter.

I'll be honest, though, I was expecting to be operated on that day.  Steve and I discussed all of the things that we might need to discuss in the event I needed surgery, my DNR preference, the go ahead to take out anything that needed to be taken out, and if I died, donate everything salvageable.  You know, the normal stuff.  I even gave him the info on how to implement my zombie apocalypse plan in case it happened while I was unconscious (I should have never watched the first episode of The Walking Dead. Also, pain meds are fun.)  We waited and waited, but no one came in to tell us anything.  We noticed that the ER doc who had seen me was Dr. Jones (unfortunately, his first name was not Indiana) and Steve started cracking Indiana Jones jokes that made me laugh, which didn't feel good, but it was good to laugh.  I'm not sure how long we were there, but the nurse came back in to tell me all of my tests were OK and I could leave.  They didn't explain the angry wolverine that had been trying to claw itself out of my abdomen earlier that day, which was disappointing.  I would have liked to know why that was happening.  They gave me  prescriptions for pain and anti-nausea medicine, I apologized again for any inconvenience, and we left.  So, I have no idea what happened to me Saturday morning, but I was pretty much OK by noon. I didn't hurt, but it felt like a balloon slowly inflating inside of me getting bigger and bigger. 

We went to Target to get the medicine, just in case, and I was still kind of high from the pain medicine they'd given me at the hospital. That was fun.  It wasn't too bad, because I think it had mostly worn off, but I know I texted a bit and maybe didn't make a lot of sense. I don't know, really.  Maybe no one else noticed!  I went home and slept a lot.  I didn't take a pain pill because I wasn't hurting, but I took one of the other ones.  Then I ate, which was a big mistake.  I spent the rest of the evening really, very unpleasantly.  I think it could have been a reaction to the medicine I'd taken, but I have no idea.

Sunday I woke up feeling like death on a stick, but I had to go to church and run the sound for the choir's Christmas cantata.  I was the only one who knew how to adjust the music, so I did that.  It wasn't terrible.  I wasn't in the same kind of pain I'd been in the day before, but mainly the "balloon" was still in there.  I decided that I wouldn't go to lunch with Steve and his dad, and instead went home where I slept for several more hours.  I'd even decided I wouldn't go back to church that night, because of the way I was feeling.  The balloon had been replaced by a feeling like I had been punched in the side and was having a pencil driven into me quite slowly, so I decided to take a pain pill.  I don't know what the pills are, but I know they aren't the really powerful ones.  I don't know what they are, but they WORK.  By the time Steve came home, I was not feeling any pain at all.  I also wasn't blinking, and with a bit of persuasion, I probably would have been convinced that I could have flown to church if I'd flapped my arms hard enough.  Apparently, I'm sensitive to this kind of stuff.  I told Steve that I was going to be fine, so he took me to church.

I don't think I have to tell you that I was only in the initial stages of feeling the effects of that pill when we got there.  I was cheerful, and not hurting, but I still wasn't blinking and the lights were so pretty.  I got steadily more "involved" with whatever I had taken as church went on.  I was running the sound and video system, which went OK at first, but the computer decided to switch off in the middle of things, and I slumped to the ground and scrabbled around with wires until I could make it work again. I had no idea what I was doing.  I also decided upgrading the computer to Windows 10 in the middle of service seemed like a great idea, even though I had no idea if our software was compatible.  By the time preaching got started, I was full on stoned.  I don't know how else to explain it.  All I could do is stare at the lights, and I had no idea what the pastor was talking about. I couldn't follow the music and I STILL wasn't blinking.  I got to the point where, had this been tequila instead of pain medicine, I would have had my top off and been sending rude Snapchats to everyone I knew.  I'm not kidding, I actually started thinking about doing just that, but thank the Lord and whatever pharmaceutical company that made my pills, it didn't disable my Jiminy Cricket voice.  That voice kept telling me "No, no, let's not do that, OK? This is neither the time nor the place."  I listened to that voice.

THANK GOD.

Today the balloon is back and it feels like I swallowed some staples, but I can't take anything until I get home because I have to drive.  I hope that I don't have to go back to the hospital.  Maybe not!  So that was my weekend!  Hope yours was as much fun! :)

WEIRD

For the past several days I have had a very weird feeling.  It worries me.

There are many of you who have little patience with my "weird feelings" and think they're silly, but you don't have to believe they are real. I know they are. I don't know what it's about and I don't know who it's about, but I feel like something has happened to someone important to me and I can't do anything about it.  That probably doesn't make much sense, I know.

The closest example I can come up with is this, and it might not be universal enough to make anyone else understand:  If you've ever had anyone close to you pass away, there is a point when you are trying to wrap your head around what happened and you want to fix it, but know you can't.  It's incredibly frustrating, because you know the situation is completely out of your hands, but you keep trying to think of ways it could have been avoided, or reasons it happened, or ways you can change it, but you know that there is nothing you can do. You realize that everything in your life has changed somehow and it wasn't a change you wanted.  It's a bad feeling, but one that eventually fades because your rational mind takes over and helps you to work through it.

Only in this case I do not know what is happening or to whom it is happening to, and the feeling isn't going away!  I do know how crazy this whole thing sounds, because I have no reasons to think anything is seriously wrong with anyone important to me. Everyone seems fine, or acting as if they are. That doesn't mean stuff isn't going on that I don't know about, of course, but I'd like to think anyone felt they could talk to me if they were having a problem. I'd also normally worry that maybe I'd done something to someone that hurt them or made them mad, but I know that isn't the case.

Maybe it's all the craziness going on in the world and I just want to keep everyone close and make sure they are safe and happy. Who knows?  I just want everyone to be OK, and if you aren't, I can try to help or maybe point you in the direction of someone who can.

I know I can be annoyingly huggy, and sometimes I can be a bit judgy (but I promise once that's out of the way I can be full-on sympathetic) but if you are out there reading this and something has happened, or even if you've done something stupid and think you are beyond sympathy/help, it'll be OK.  Even if you think it won't be.  You can talk to me, or if you don't want to do that, please talk to someone at least.

Anyway...so...weird or not, I hope everyone is OK, and if you aren't, I hope you will be.

Of course, if everyone is fine and no one is having any problems, the feeling may be caused by the bad Red Rope licorice I ate on Monday.  Either way...

WEIRD THINGS

This is going to sound crazy.  It really is.  I'm sorry about that. 

Yesterday two very weird things happened to me and they both kind of freaked me out.

I finally forced myself to go and get a haircut yesterday, which necessitated a trip to the local mall.  I didn't realize that the place had opened an hour earlier than normal due to holiday shopping, so instead of going in the door I usually do (which goes directly into a department store) I walked through the parking garage to go to the main entrance.  To get to that entrance, I had to walk past a service parking area, which has some landscaping around it.  There is a small tree planted near the building, and when I walked by it, it sneezed. 

The tree sneezed.

It was loud enough to stop me in my tracks and look around, because at that moment, I was nowhere near anyone else in the parking garage. I know what you're thinking: that there was someone standing beside the tree who sneezed.  There wasn't, though! I looked!  I even looked up to see if anyone was in the tree or on an upper level of the parking garage looking down at the tree.  There wasn't anyone else there!  I'm ashamed to say that it scared me and I just noped my way as quickly as possible to the entrance to get away from it. 

There may be a rational explanation, but I'll never accept it.  The tree sneezed.

The second thing I saw wasn't as funny as that, but it still startled me.  I was at church helping to set up for the choir's Christmas dinner.  I'd been left alone while the other hostess went to pick up some of the food we'd ordered and after I'd checked everything, I sat down to check my phone.  While I was doing that, I saw a bright flash out of the corner of my eye, like someone had walked in and taken a picture with a proper camera.  I hadn't hear anyone walk into the kitchen, and I hadn't heard a camera sound, but the ice maker was kind of loud so I thought I just hadn't heard them come in.  I turned around to see who was taking pictures and there was no one there!  I'd seen the flash, there was no mistaking that, but I have no idea where it came from.  I was very uncomfortable until she came back!

That is all.

**AWKWARD CRINGE FACE**

I'm beginning to wonder if I'm not deeply and irrevocably flawed, or maybe just an enormous jerk or something.

I go onto Facebook every day.  I'm pretty sure that the cool kids don't do that, but I'm not going to lie about it.  I get bored and I want to pretend I'm hanging out with other human beings, so I go on Facebook and see what everyone is doing. Most of the time I see the requisite "Oh, my kids are awesome" or "Look at this place I visited! My vacations are fantastic!"  I'm OK with that.  That's what Facebook is for: mostly living vicariously through people we barely remember from high school and pretending like we talk to our actual IRL friends more than we really do.  That's OK! It's good we have at least that little bit of communication with people these days! 

Occasionally, though, I come across these...I dunno...odes (for want of a better word) to people from their family members/significant others in the status updates and sometimes it makes me incredibly uncomfortable.  Now, let me be specific: It isn't across the board uncomfortable. Like when someone dies, or is born, or if there is some kind of really special/significant thing that happens, I'm fine.  There is a time and place for holding someone up, and I recognize those things.  Mostly it's just the over the top birthday wishes, or mother's and father's day essays, or (and this one is the absolute worst to me) the husbands or wives getting on there and just, oh dear God, gooping the place up with their anniversary wishes, or birthday wishes, or *shudder* just the "oh how wonderful you are" mess that people do. You know, feeeeeeeeeeeelings.  It's gross.  It makes me feel gross.  I actually have to scroll past those things really fast because I become physically uncomfortable knowing that it is just out there for everyone to read.  It's like when you're watching a movie with your parents and a particularly graphic sex scene pops up, and you know that you want to run screaming from the room, but you can't because that would mean acknowledging it, and the last thing you want to do is react, so you just sit there until the scene is over, wishing you were dead instead of watching this movie with your parents?  That feeling.

Now, before anyone accuses me of jealousy or sour grapes, I assure you, that isn't true.  If Steve, or anyone else (you know, one of my various secret admirers), got on Facebook and said goopy, personal things about me in such a public forum, I might actually die of embarrassment. I'd feel my face catch on fire and I'd probably fall into a puddle of boiling, writhing, discomfort. I don't want that.  If you love me and want me to know, just tell me.  Do it in person, over the phone, or in a letter. I even accept YouTube videos set on Private.  I'll probably still be embarrassed (pleased, but embarrassed because I have a very hard time taking compliments) but I'd be OK with that.  Of course, if I die or something like that, you have my permission to say whatever you want about me on Facebook.  Heck, take out a billboard.

I know this is kind of weird and out of nowhere, but I just saw something so personal on Facebook from one spouse to another that I feel like I need a bath. It also bothered me enough that it made me write this.

That is all.  Carry on with your day.

MORE RANDOM ACTS OF BLOGGING

1) Today I had to go have blood drawn as another step towards saving money on our insurance.  The blood draw went fine and I didn't scream or faint, even though they used a needle the size of a boba straw. (That may be a slight exaggeration, but still...)  The lady who did the work taped my arm, and per usual, told me to leave it on for about 10 minutes.  Usually I wind up taking the tape off before the 10 minutes are up, if for no other reason than I don't like people looking at the bandage and wondering what sort of medical test I just had done.  I've never had a problem with it before, so when I stopped for coffee on my way in to work and the tape began pulling loose, I didn't think anything of just taking the whole thing off and throwing it away. It had been close to 10 minutes by that time, I thought.  However, today I must have been having a clotting issue, because while I was walking away from the garbage to pick up my drink, my arm started bleeding!  Gross much?  Ugh, I was embarrassed.  No one wants to see your blood while they're enjoying their breakfast!  Well, I wouldn't think so, anyways.  I had to grab a napkin and hold it against my arm until it stopped.  Now I have learned a valuable lesson: I'd rather have people looking at my bandage and wondering about my medical issues than looking at a bleeding appendage and wondering if I'm going to give them Hep C while they're eating. 

Sorry, people at Starbucks! No Hepatitis here, I promise, just bad judgement!

2) I've realized something about myself in the past month or so, but I'm not sure if it's really an unusual thing or if everyone feels this way.  Bear with me because it's a little hard to explain.

One of my Facebook friends sent me a message with a picture attached and said something like "Saw this and it made me think of you."  This guy IS someone I consider a friend, although we haven't seen each other in person in a long time, but I immediately felt odd that he was telling me that he saw something that made him think of me.  Now, it wasn't an odd, creepy-stalker-this-man-is-freaking-me-out feeling, it was more of a why-would-he-think-of-me? feeling.  It wasn't the first time I've felt like that.  I had to actually sit back and think of why hearing that made me feel so strange, and I finally came to the conclusion that it was because I genuinely never thought that anyone, with exception of my family, ever thought of me at all.  Like, I cease to exist to people unless I somehow initiate contact between us.  I'm also usually surprised when I get unsolicited contact from other people.  That probably puts me on the Autism scale somewhere, but it's the truth!  I hope you don't take that as me just being pitiful, but I've almost always felt like that.  I think that's why I always have such a hard time inviting people to do things with me, calling, texting or even sending an e-mail, because I'm afraid that I'm bothering them by reintroducing myself into their everyday lives!  I've even realized that's why I'm sometimes very surprised when I get gifts and cards, even on my birthday.  I know, I know, it's weird.  I've apparently convinced myself I'm a Silence (if you get that, you're cool). 

Honestly, though, is that how other people feel? 

3) I am wearing an orange and blue dress today, and have already gotten a comment about how they are Auburn colors. Sigh.  I...I just like the colors together.  It's not that hard!

PARTY DOWN! I REPEAT, THE PARTY IS DOWN!

Do you remember last year when one of Steve's more influential co-workers threw a Christmas party and I had a small, but powerful come-apart about being worried that I'd been strange and awkward the whole time?  No?  Well, you should follow that link and read about it. Geez.

Anyways, the man had another Christmas party this year, and believe it or not, I wasn't the least bit nervous about going.  Part of it was that I knew what a lovely couple the host and hostess were, and I guess the other part was that, at the time, I was still on medication for whatever mystery illness I was being treated for and it made me feel too terrible to think about all the things I could do wrong.  Who knew feeling like death was good for the self esteem?  The only thing that had been worrying me about this party was the fact that I wasn't sure if I'd done the right thing for a host/hostess gift.  See, I know I could have gone to that party empty handed and it would have been OK.  Had they been good friends of ours, I wouldn't have felt it necessary to give a gift, but it just seemed like good manners to take something to this party. 

Well, everything started off better than I could have expected.  I was feeling a bit better by the time we got there, and our gift was a huge hit.  Seriously, they weren't just being polite.  I mean, they seemed genuinely thrilled about the towels I'd embroidered the name of their farm on.  (Yeah, they live in a place with a frickin' name! Awesome, huh?)  So I relaxed and figured that the rest of the party would be a piece of cake!

That's when God punished me for my hubris.

The host gathered us all together, prayed over the food, and we filled our plates with various little nibbles. Steve and I found out of the way seats where he could tell me who everyone was without them hearing us talking about them.  Things were going well, and we were laughing and talking, when someone came over to tell us goodbye.  We were sitting and the man was standing in front of Steve.  He shook Steve's hand, and I leaned forward - plate in hand -  to say goodbye.  I didn't realize how close to Steve I'd apparently leaned, but when the man released Steve's hand, Steve's elbow went into my plate.  Hard.  It was like a wrestling move.  Almost in slow motion, a jumbo shrimp, covered in sauce, sailed across the room.  The rest of the sauce, which had puddled on my plate, immediately fell onto Steve's lap. Crumbs fell, napkins fluttered, Steve froze in place and the crunch of my plastic dinnerware hitting the floor echoed around the room.  Now, of course, it probably wasn't really like that. It all happened so fast, but it felt like time had slowed to a crawl.  Steve's face had a look of panic on it that I rarely see, and of course, I lost it.  I started laughing so hard all I could do was sit there as Steve retrieved the shrimp and started piling the trash into my plate.  The man who had been shaking Steve's hand made a "yikes" face and fled, and I still sat there laughing like a lunatic.  Apparently the medicine I was on made me not care how loud I was laughing either.  Poor Steve was so embarrassed, and he couldn't even stand up because of all the sauce on his pants!  One of the caterers (the one I hugged last year was back, and I'm fairly certain he recognized me) quickly walked over and took the plate from me.  I sat and snort-giggled until Steve was able to get up and find a bathroom to clean himself up in.

When he finally got back, I was calm enough to go back to the food and get some dessert.  Now, what they were serving were these tiny little chocolate shells filled with various and sundry flavors of whipped cream, or something like that.  I got two, and walked back to the seats.  I sat down, picked up my first little dessert thingie, when my plate - which was sitting on my knee - tilted sideways.  I managed to catch the plate before my food went into the floor, but not before almost crushing my chocolate thing.  It startled me into saying "SON OF A WHORE!" a little bit louder than I meant to.  Of course, that set me laughing again.  Then Steve started laughing, and we were like two little kids in church trying not to laugh too loudly.  Once again, the caterer was at my elbow, taking away the plate.  It was then that I knew they had noted the frequency of my messes and had targeted me so that they could keep everything around me clean!

At that point I felt that Steve and I should walk around and talk to some people, so that we wouldn't have to hold plates anymore.  While we were doing this, I started feeling very ill indeed, so I walked outside on the deck to get some air and there were the dogs!  Of course, I immediately started petting them and talking to them.  When I started feeling better, I was getting ready to go inside when I noticed the sweet dog faces looking at me.  I could tell that they really wanted to go inside, and dummy me thought I remembered that they were trained only to go as far as the screened in porch, so when they followed me back into that porch I didn't think anything of it. I walked back into the house, and the dogs followed me!!  I don't think this would have been a problem, had they been small dogs, but the 110 pound lab decided that not only should it visit as many people as possible, probably to see if they had food, she was also just the right height to pretty much stick her face into the chafing dishes.  Luckily, very luckily, I managed to stop her before she did that.  The woman caterer walked over to me and said "I don't think they're supposed to be in here!" and she chased out the smaller of the two dogs.  It took longer, but the man caterer managed to shoo the giant lab.  By that point, I was fairly sure the catering staff was very tired of me!

After getting the dog out, I somehow managed to lose Steve.  Now, this house is big, but not so big that I could lose my husband in, but I swear he just disappeared!  I stood in the middle of the room kind of non-plussed, looking towards all the different groups of people and not seeing him. I finally had to start asking people if they'd seen him.  Of course, no one knew where he was, and I had a very bad moment of wondering if I'd embarrassed him to the point of just leaving me at this party to find my own way home!  After some searching, and more than a few more moments of panic, I discovered him, wedged into a hidden corner of the living room (seriously, I hadn't found him that whole time because of a stupid bend in the room) talking to some of his coworkers.  Yeesh.  As I made my way over, I stopped at the bar to get a cup of apple cider.  It was in one of those silver, heated coffee dispensers that you have to press a black flipper thing on the spout on its front.  Since I'd pretty much spilled everything I'd had in my hands that night, I only planned to fill my cup half-way, and as I was doing that, the fricking catering lady jumped over to my elbow to make sure I was doing it right.  Seriously.  I was starting to feel stalked.  I got away and made it over to Steve without spilling it, so IN YOUR FACE, CATERING STAFF!

After sitting there for a while, the yuck feeling came back fairly badly.  I had to surreptitiously tug on Steve's sweater and let him know I was feeling bad again and wanted to leave.  Although I'm sure he would have liked to have stayed longer, he was gracious enough to realize I honestly didn't feel well, so we got up and made our goodbyes to the host.  I'd like to say that we managed to get away without any further embarrassment, but no.   Because of where we parked, and because people had pulled in behind us, we couldn't get out of the driveway without some fancy maneuvering.  In fact, in our attempt to figure out how to get out, we had to drive up and reverse pass a giant picture window that looked directly into the party about 37 times.  We had to drive past and reverse so many times that it got stupid and we started laughing again.  Big Ben...Parliament.   I had to get out and direct Steve in what was probably a 42 point turn, one in which he drove a tiny way into the flower garden and almost hit one the dogs.  We finally managed to get turned around and we left the party, our dignity in tatters and flaps, but everything else luckily all in one piece.

I think there's a part of me that would love to think that my antics (for want of a better word, I guess) were adorable and that possibly I could pull off being seen as sort of a poor man's (or in my case a very poor, homeless, and possibly meth addled) man's Zoe Deschanel: a precious, elfin creature that can't help but be awkward and freakishly cute while knocking things over and spilling everything, but I don't think that's the case. Instead, I'm fairly certain I'm more like that kid your mother made you invite to things and they were always the one to spill the red punch on the couch and break your new birthday toys. 

I wonder if we'll be invited back next year?

ANOTHER QUICKY

Today I knocked a bunch of stuff off of my desk. Not on purpose, of course.  It was cluttered and I wasn't paying attention to what I was doing.

Don't judge me.

Anyways, as I was picking things up, I found one of the bright pink Post-Its that I use to make random notes to myself with while I'm doing things on the computer.  Normally I use these notes when I'm working on graphic design stuff so that I don't forget colors or files or whatever, but the one I found today was apparently some sort of list.  It read:

VBS
Cabinets
YouTube Videos
Spanish
Peaches

I have no idea what any of those things have in common, nor why they'd all be on the same list.

My life confuses me sometimes.

EDIT:  The really odd thing is that everything on this list is marked off.  I must have obviously finished whatever it was.