A Sincere Question from an Insincere Person

There is an employee at work that drives me up the wall. When I’m alone in the office, I cringe when he comes in because I know my peace and quiet will be disturbed by his incessant rambling. Even if I don’t answer him – he will continue to talk. It’s like a nervous twitch – he can’t control himself. And he doesn’t ever say anything of importance, he tries to be funny but never is, and he needs so much positive affirmation that he fishes for compliments constantly. At Christmas we were painting mugs for the clients and he held up each and every mug he did to ask if it was ok? Does it look good? I think it looks bad. You think its ok? Really? He is the kid in third grade that shamelessly begs for attention in any way possible. When people pay him a compliment he denies it over and over just so you have to keep going. In short, he is much like myself, so he bugs the crap outta me.

The other day I was in a particularly foul mood when he came in the office. I barely acknowledged him – hoping to send non verbal “don’t talk to me” vibes. He did not pick up on this, of course. Luckily his phone rang so he was distracted for a moment. He said something to the person on the line about being “juvenilely delicious” and I gritted my teeth. Seriously. Who says shit like that?

He hung up the phone and turned to me, “So how are you doing with all this?”

He was referring to my pregnancy – I’m about two weeks away from my due date so I’m used to getting questions about it. Usually the questions are how’s the baby? Or, how are you feeling? I know how to answer these questions – the baby is fine, kicking a lot, getting big. I am tired and big as a house but fine. This question was different, though. It was more sincere, and he wasn’t asking about me or the baby physically – he was asking about how I was feeling. I stopped. “Ummm, I don’t know,” I said.

“Honestly,” he said.

“A little nervous, I guess. Thanks for asking.” And I meant, I wasn’t being sarcastic or anything, it was nice to be asked.

Then he started singing “you and me baby ain’t nothing but mammals so lets do it like they do in the discovery channel,” and I was back to hating him. But maybe not quite as much.

The Reason we Had Kids...

...was so we could torture them and capture it on video.
The first time she tried this salsa I thought her head was going to explode. But! She wanted to do it again so we could tape it and watch it on the computer. Already so willing to suffer for the sake of the camera - I see a reality TV show in this girl's future.

If that Ain't Country...

Earlier this summer my husband and I were driving in Northern Michigan. If you've been there you know it's a whole lotta country. I was thinking about how the country freaks me out more than the city. Maybe it's because I've seen too many horror movies about people who wander out into the country only to be chained up in some remote shack somewhere and tortured to death. I mean, in the city people will shoot you for your sneakers or your car or something logical like that. In the country, someone will chop you into pieces just because they can.
I live in an urban area, it's not a big city and it's really not a scary place, in my opinion. We've had our share of robberies (one in the middle of the day on a Sunday - what the fuck is that about) and some random shootings - but overall I feel safer walker in my neighborhood at night than I do wandering the country side during the day. Too much open space gives me the willies.
So I was sharing all this with my husband who started to take offense to my mostly stereotypical observations. I tried to defend myself and we ended getting into a somewhat heated discussion about city versus country life and which one was actually more dangerous. At the height of this debate we suddenly passed a man, sitting in his front yard with a shot gun slung across his lap for no apparent reason. I REST MY CASE.

Hm.

Sad when you can't figure out if your belly is the pregnancy starting to show or just gas.

Blogging SCANDALS Revealed

This is a crazy story of a blogger stealing someone else's identity. I first found the link in a post by SweetJupiter here:
http://www.sweet-juniper.com/
Which took me here (the victim):
http://www.sweetsalty.com/sweetsalty/2008/7/23/the-sincerest-form-of-flattery-in-coopernico-land.html
To here (a misguided apology):
http://joemygod.blogspot.com/2008/05/apology-to-cooper.html
And finally - to the real scoop here:
http://joemygod.blogspot.com/2008/07/apology-revoked-and-munchausen-by-blog.html

wow.

OK to be...lactose free!

I'm taking a holistic health practitioner class and this is one little nugget of info we got in class that I thought was interesting.
People lose the enzyme that digests at 18 months. It's natures way of getting babies to rely on food instead of mothers milk. So, people who are lactose intolerant are NORMAL. We're not supposed to be able to digest milk, we don't have the enzymes for it. And people who have no problems with milk are those that have MUTATED over time because their ancestors were probably exposed to so much dairy that their bodies adapted.
So all you milk drinkers are WEIRD!

In Whence I talk about Personal Things for the 2 or 3 People that Might Happen to Run Across this Blog

I've dealt with fairly severe anxiety issues since high school, and lately they've been out of control. I'll pretend I'm addressing actual readers here. If YOU (yes you) have ever had anxiety issues, you know what it's like. For those of you (all the rest of you) who haven't; it's like if you were a machine. Imagine with me for a moment. And you have a low, medium, and high gear. And medium is kind of average, low is when you're resting and high is the fight or flight response that kicks in and makes your heart race, and eyes go kind of blurry, and stomach knot all up. Anxiety is like that high gear kicks in and you can't turn it off. Your switch gets jammed. It's bloody exhausting.
I'm not a really religious person, I have my beliefs but I generally question organized religion. More on that later, if you're lucky. But this past week my anxiety was so bad that I prayed for a tool that I could use to decrease it. Some physical or mental thing I could to control it. Here's what I got:
On Sunday, the priest at my church gave a homily on worry. He gave this image of a deep forest. He talked about people who go skiing through forests like this and how they have to look between the tress because whatever you look at is what you hit. This image has been helpful to me when my anxiety kicks on. If trees are fear, than staring at my fear will make me run straight into it. But looking at the spaces between the tress - faith, I suppose - will steer us toward the light.

Are you totally gagging? I know.

In my class today I got another reinforcement. She gave us a little motto to say to ourselves when we get anxious.

-Can you do anything about it?
-Yes? Then do it.
-No? Let it go.

So if you're ever at the store and you see a frazzled person breathing deep and kind of crouching down and ducking to avoid imaginary trees while muttering "no, let it go" to herself - come say hi.