Riding the Rollercoaster

I've been sick lately. I don't know what's up with that, but for a solid month, maybe even a month and a half, I've been unable to eat hardly anything. My stomach is constantly doing flip-flops, I feel nauseous, and the smell of most food is enough to make me sit and push it around my plate rather than consuming it.

This has been great for my appearance. I'm down to 128 pounds. Only eight more to go, and I'll have gotten where I've been trying to get for five years. I think this is the first time I've been under 130 since I was just barely pubescent.

And everywhere I go, people ask me, "Have you lost weight? You look fantastic!"

It's very gratifying to my ego.

On the other hand, none of my clothes fit. The jeans I bought less than six month ago? Falling off. The great taffeta party skirt? Requires a belt. My cincher belt? Slips and slides around. And I don't currently have the funds to replace the entirety of my wardrobe. I did just go to Mexico.

Also, I feel ILL all the time.

Every moment of every day is a little battle not to pass out, vomit or just put my head down and cry because it's exhausting to feel so crappy all the time. My head spins, my stomach dances and still, I have to concentrate on what I'm doing and get it done and smile while I do it, because it's now been so long that I just have to function regardless of how I feel.

I hate being sick. Generally, I take to my bed when I don't feel well, and don't get out until I feel good again.

But, I cannot be an invalid schoolgirl forever, and a month and a half in bed would not only be impractical given my life, I'd also probably have lost my mind from the boredom by now.

Who knows what's wrong? I certainly don't. All those ridiculously expensive tests they ran in the ER 5 months ago didn't tell anyone anything. The only way to find out is to subject myself to another battery of ridiculously expensive tests, and really, the upshot is that they might not tell anyone anything this time, either. Unless I'm actually in the grips of the severe cramps and the nausea and the heart palpitations when I go in, and that's hard to schedule. Even I, as German as I can be, know that much about bodily processes.

And, as always, I must consider the possibility that this is all psychosomatic.

More than most people, my mental and emotional state has effects upon my physical being. This is something I've struggled with for more than half my life: being upset makes me ill. Always has. I learned to control my temper as a child mostly so that I wasn't getting sick everywhere, at the drop of a hat. Crying gives me headaches, anger makes me nauseous, bliss leaves me light-headed and dizzy.

There are indications that perhaps this is nothing more than a response to extreme stress. The whole thing started when I was putting myself under a great deal of pressure for having lost Genevieve's father, and since then, it's flared up from time to time. I can correlate most of the major episodes with events that certainly were not pleasant to deal with.

However, this is has been ongoing and constant for some time now. And while I am more emotional than I was six months ago, that's as likely to be a consequence as a cause. Always feeling like I want to sit down and cry has made me more apt to actually sit down and cry.

And lately, there's certainly been a rollercoaster around. The ups and downs of it are unpredictable and numbing. Small wonder my stomach is doing flip-flops: it's being thrown around like a lacrosse ball, up and down and sideways without rhyme or reason. This is the point where I say to myself, "Get a grip and just get off the damn ride."

But I don't want to. Even if it is throwing me willy-nilly and bruising parts of myself that really can't take anymore abuse, rollercoasters are fun, too. The thrill and the danger and yes, even that sick feeling in the pit of your stomach when it drops out are all pleasures of their own, to be savored.

And, I refuse to get off before the ride is over. Even sick, I'm stubborn as a bull.

Love and Mexico

I'm going to Mexico in two days.

This is the highlight of my year, and by "year" I mean the preceding 12-month period, not the short time that 2010 has been around.

There's this man, you see, this man that I'm almost certainly completely in love with, although I would never say that out loud. (Whoops. Did I do that?)

Anyway, there's this man, and he wanted to go somewhere warm. Before he takes off for London for three months. Which is it's own story. So he tells me... "I'm either going to Mexico, or Thailand. I want to go to Thailand by myself."

Then, the next day, he tells me he's going to Mexico. Then I tell him I'd love to come, but I don't want him to take it the wrong way. Because we're not dating, you see. We're both single. We're just friends. And he says ok, he won't, but that I should have my own reasons for going to Mexico.

Which I do. I mean, I haven't left the country since the Snugglebug was conceived, and I have a serious problem with wanderlust. Also, I live in Wisconsin, and I'm being offered a trip to Mexico in motherfucken January.

That right there is a reason to go, man or not.

But he's been down there for a week, now, and he's called me every day. Also, we spent the three days prior to his departure in pretty much constant company.

But we're not dating.

Last night, the idea that I should cancel my hostel reservation and just stay with him in this beach house that his friends have rented was floated.

But we're not dating.

Also we're going to spend the last couple of days of this trip in Cancun together. Alone.

But we're not dating.

Also I was awakened by my phone notifying me of a message yesterday at 5:30 in the morning. The message was, "I can't wait until you're here."

But we're not dating.

I am crawling out of my skin here, though. I had enough to keep me busy for the last week, getting ready to take a week off of work, then Gallery Night debauchery, then my parents' 25th anniversary party. But now I'm just... waiting. Waiting to go to Mexico. Waiting to find out whether being almost certainly completely in love with someone that is playing at being unavailable is going to pay off.

Now I have nothing to do but analyze the last week and wonder to myself whether I'm completely in over my head, and this man is just really good at playing me, or whether perhaps something has healed in him, between the move to London, the sunshine, the patience.

I have nothing to do but pore every word and every expression and every inflection and wonder what is going to happen.

He called me this morning, when he woke up. I am almost certainly completely and hopelessly in love.

Why, why, why do I have to be the kind of person that can't just leave well-enough alone?

Why, why, why do I have to be the kind of person that falls in love at the drop of a fucken hat?

Why, why, why do I have to be the kind of woman that falls in love with men that don't or won't or can't reciprocate?

Why, why, why do I have to crave intimacy so goddamn much?

Seriously.

I suppose I don't actually *have* to be any of these things.

We are all infinitely malleable, and we can alter whatever we'd like to about ourselves if we are willing to work at it. Sometimes the work is hard, and long, and we want to give up and we do give up before we accomplish the change, but that doesn't the change was impossible, just that we were frail and weak.

Which is also human nature, but that's another story.

But I guess what it comes down to is this: despite seemingly endless heartache and hurt that are no one's fault but my own, despite conflicting imperatives from my body and my mind and my heart, I just really, really don't want to change.

Giving up the parts of myself that leave me vulnerable to falling in love, eager to know other people, desperate to be known, would mean giving up the last bits of innocence I've got. I really, truly believe that giving up the optimism and the idealism and the drive that make me so goddamn easy to hurt would leave me so jaded I'd never love anyone ever again. I'd end up dead to the world.

And I don't want to do that.

I don't want to do that because it's not fair to my daughter to leave her with two parents that are both so self-absorbed and hedonistic they can't care about anyone. She's already got one. He took that road; I can't follow. I can't do that to her.

So here I am, stuck between a rock and a hard place, feeling like I'm getting my heart stomped on and the only way I can think to stop it is to kill the damn thing myself.

And it's no one's fault but my own.

And if anyone is nice to me, I'm going to collapse in a puddle at their feet and cry and cry and not stop until I've drowned myself and then I'm going to love them.

So don't be nice to me.

I can't handle it.

I had an epiphany today.

I'm talking on the phone with this man, this man I've been on a date (or two? It's often so hard to tell) with, but haven't yet slept with.

And he lays on me this speech about talking it slow, and getting to know each other before we become intimate. About how he doesn't really know me.

And that he's also sort of, maybe, kind of dating another woman, too.

He is quick to assure me he hasn't slept with her, either.

My first reaction is actually a kind of gut-wrenching dread. I've never, ever been chosen over someone else, not in my entire life. This is my insecurity.

My second reaction is indignation. Why is telling me this? Is this supposed to make whatever he does ok? This is my feminism.

And my third reaction is, "Why on earth am I at all concerned about whether he'll pick me?" This is my epiphany.

Why on earth am I concerned whether he'll want me?

I haven't really decided if I want to pick him.

I don't know him that well, either. I don't know what he believes, or where his politics lie. I don't know if will be disgusted by the fact I spend most of my summer running around barefoot, and that I have to slather myself in sunscreen to be outside for longer than an hour.

I don't know if he cuts his toenails in bed, or refuses to wash dishes.

I don't know how he feels about children.

These are all important things. Some of them are actually monumentally important.

And here I am worrying solely over what he thinks of me.

I really am a pleaser.

And this is not a good thing.

I vowed years ago that I would never again sublimate my identity to someone else's whim, but I have done it over, and over, and over again. I have done it repeatedly and without a second thought. I have not actually learned from my mistakes, as painful as they were. I have not remembered the lessons.

I am, at heart, a silly romantic girl that wants nothing more than True Love. Capital T, Capital L. I have never outgrown that fairy-tale stage of emotional development. And quite frankly, I don't want to. I don't want to give up on that dream. I don't want to develop skin so thick it can't feel when someone touches it or a heart so guarded I can't get out of myself.

I don't want to be bitter. I don't want to be alone. I don't want to give up on the human race as a whole, and it seems to me that giving up on love is the first step on that treacherously slippery road.

But maybe, just maybe, I don't have to.

It must be possible to remain open, without grasping at whatever is put in front of you. It must be possible to love, and still choose to bestow that love where it is wanted and appreciated.

So this is my task then.

This time, I choose.

FoodInc.

Everyone should go see this movie. Run, do not walk, to the nearest theater, and watch it. It's short (only an hour and a half) but well, well-worth the price of admission.

For those of you not hip enough to work for natural and organic food retailers or otherwise inclined to know anything at all about the American food supply business, FoodInc. is a rather disgusting look at the ways we produce food in this country, and all the things that are wrong with that process.






Up front, I will say (because I am a natural skeptic) that I am not convinced that 100% of everything presented in this movie is true. Like other documentaries of recent years (say, everything every done by Michael Moore) I'm sure the filmmakers cherry-picked the footage that made it to the finished version, and that means that the finished version is probably decidedly one-sided.

Still, there are some gems of facts in there.

For example, did you know that there are only 12 slaughterhouse/meatpacking plants left in the country? TWELVE. Forty years ago, there were thousands.

The Smithfield meat packing plant is operated almost exclusively by illegal immigrants... but no more than 15 a day are picked up by immigration officials.

Junk food is cheap on the shelf, because we subsidize the hell out of corn and soybeans. So it isn't actually cheap.

There are fish farms out there that are trying to teach fish to eat corn. Why? Corn is cheap.

Trying to food cows corn is what has produced such lovely fuzzy things as hemorrhagic e.coli backeria.

I told you it was scary.

However, it also got me thinking about a few things, tangentially.

For example, so many people I know say they don't bother to pay for "organic" food because the label is meaningless. That's actually completely false. "Organic" as a food label is very, very strictly monitored by the FDA. In a nutshell, foods labeled organic must be from non-genetically modified seeds that have been grown in fields that have been free of chemical pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers for at least three years. Meat labeled organic must be from animals that have not been genetically modified and that have been fed food that could be sold to consumers as organic under FDA guidelines, and cannot have been exposed to synthetic hormones or antibiotics.

I think that most people think that the organic label is meaningless because they have a romantic vision for organic farms that is very similar to the romantic vision of conventional farms- individual farmers using common-sense, sustainable practices to produce good food without the addition of all the technology that is available to agribusiness farms.




But farming practices are not regulated by the FDA, and quite frankly shouldn't be. Furthermore, organic certification for a farm is expensive. For the kind of small farmer that we envision, it is prohibitively expensive. And it's a yearly expenditure- you have to renew certification every year.

This means that the only people who can afford organic certification, and thus sell their food as organic, are the same kind of large-scale, disgustingly unsustainable agribusiness farms that produce conventional food. It's trucked around the country and around the world before it makes it to your supermarket and then your dinner table.

And so people think the label is meaningless.

It's not meaningless, it just doesn't mean what many people think it ought to mean in their pink-rose-colored-world.

If you really want good food grown well, you should be buying direct from farmers that you can see and talk to and visit. Go to farmer's markets. Sign up for a community supported agriculture share. Can and preserve what you can't eat fresh so that you have food all year round.

It's really that simple.

You don't get to have the wholesomeness we've lost in our food supply and retain the convenience that it's been replaced with. You have to pick one or the other.

Which would you rather have?

Men are from Mars...

There is no space travel here, FYI.

So recently, the Manfriend informed me that one of his friends (not a good friend, but an old one) is getting married later in the summer and that he assumed I wouldn't want to go and that he's taking his mother as his date.

That's actually a very truncated snapshot of the whole picture.

He assumed I wouldn't want to go because his ex is standing up in the wedding, and she and I (or rather, her sister and I?) have already had one completely bizarre and moderately unpleasant run-in in recent months. Looking back, the whole thing makes even less sense than it did at the time. I ran into the two of them at a baby store, and the sister threatened to "punch that bitch in the face." She was looking at me when she said it; I assumed she was talking about me. But, the ex is happily married to another man and has (a really rather adorable) baby boy, so I don't know why any of them would care that I'm dating the Manfriend.

No sense, I'm telling you.

Maybe she wasn't talking to me. Even though she was looking at me.

Anyway, there was this incident a few months ago, so he assumed I wouldn't want to go to a wedding that his ex would be at.

I don't think he should have assumed that.

And if he doesn't want me to be at an event she's at, why doesn't he just say that, instead of couching it in pseudo-considerate and mildly condescending terms?

On the other hand, his mother has known the groom for upwards of 20 years, and didn't actually get her own invitation to the wedding, so maybe he just wanted to take her to be nice to her.

But if that's the case, why not just say that?

And furthermore, I was supposed to attend another friend's wedding with him previously, but he backed out of that one, too.

Which leaves me with this icky idea at the back of my head that I'm like the red-headed-step-child of girlfriends and he's hiding me. I don't think there's anything so wrong with me that I need to be sheltered away from polite society. Really, I'm nothing to be ashamed of. I have the requisite number of limbs and brain cells.

So I'm curious about the full reasoning behind the decision-making process, both assuming I wouldn't want to attend and immediately inviting his mother to be his date.

But I've been informed by several (male) friends that doing so would be "cling" or "controlling" and that I should "pick my battles." I'm not trying to fight a battle. I'm curious. And he is perfectly welcome to go without me, but I would really like to know the why. And have it explained to me.

My female friends tell me to just ask, because there's no harm in satisfying curiousity.

Is this a gender thing? Should I ask, or should I bite my tongue? And if I do inquire, how do I go about it in such a way as to make it clear I'm not picking a fight, not demanding he take me with him, not being clingy or controlling?

Creative juices.

Creativity is a finite resource. Or, at the very least, my creativity is a finite resource. It runs dry. I have none left.

Or, at least, I have none left for blogging. My creativity is being spent in various other pursuits at the moment. I'm decorating a room. Also plotting an installation piece for a hallway. Also helping my mother with her decorating projects. Also helping my father completely remodel a bathroom.

And then there's the baby, who requires ever-more-creative entertainment with each passing day. I swear to god, she gets bored of things more quickly than I do. A thing will engross her completely and utterly for an hour, a day, sometimes a week, but then its over, and something else must be found.

On that note, the current entertainment is walking the block. We must have made 50 trips up and down yesterday. My leg muscles are so fatigued they quiver when I stand.

Dodging the family's questions about the Manfriend is requiring more and more creativity as time goes on, too.

And then there's this fundraiser/clothes swap that I've been designated the organizer for. Does anyone have any creative ideas on where to get 25 or so clothing racks that doesn't involve the outlay of any money?

I think that the difference between an artist and a hobbyist is how the creative juices flow. Hobbyists are like me. There's a finite well, and it can only be routed into so many channels before all of them end up dry. Artists, on the other hand, feed on their own creative energies. The expending of those energies generates more energy which can be used to feed more channels and it just keeps multiplying and multiplying, and never runs dry completely. This branch or that branch might wither away, but the tree as a whole remains healthy and flourishing.

(Did I mix enough metaphors there? Trees, rivers, brain conduits. I could probaby have used a fourth if I weren't so burned out.)

It's kind of depressing to realize one is just a hobbyist.

Then again, I work with spreadsheets all day, keeping books and balancing bank accounts. It shouldn't really come as a surprise to me that I'm not actually an artist.