Karma Is My Bitch

Where I left you.

The minutes turned to hours, the hours to days...

What do you say after you've Batmanned off the cliff and found that he really can't fly?  Life is not a comic book, much as I'd love that.  Comic books kept me company during the long stretches in the hospital as a kid and I still love them today.  But in a nostalgic way, not an "I can be a superhero too and kick ass" kind of way.  My ass got kicked and it still hurts.  And I kind of hate Batman now.

I disappeared because I could not deal with anything beyond what was right in front of me.  My soulmate, life partner and heart of my heart suffered two major brain insults in the span of two years. After the first incident, we lived like two shadows in the semi-darkness and silence. The last, he was dying in my arms like in a bad police procedural drama with me screaming at him"Don't die on me, don't you die on me!! Breathe!!! Breathe!!!"  It was not made for TV, it was us covered in blood and guacamole and smashed bread on the dining room floor. 

He lived and healed.  He has a new normal and I am grateful every day for that, no matter what it entails.

My body was not made to live in panic mode for that long.  My body, already damaged by the stress of traveling to research a book I was in the process of writing, rapidly deteriorated.  After the second incident, I had PTSD so badly I didn't sleep for months.  My nerves started dying faster than they ever had and all the ground I was able to keep level suddenly turned into a crumbling cliff.  And Batman could not fucking fly.  Asshole.

So back to Karma.  It was the ultimate joke - I had to buy a wheelchair for myself and after much research, this was the one that I ended up with:

She's my bitch now

Wandering the Desert

“‎That's when you know you've found somebody really special. When you can just shut the fuck up for a minute and comfortably share silence.”  Mia Wallace to Vincent Vega  in Pulp Fiction written by Quentin Tarantino

Because you all are really special to me, I know you will understand.  I am going to shut the fuck up for awhile and comfortably share silence with you.   

When I find the sound of my own heartbeat again and differentiate it from the multitudes of others, I will be back, but right now I'm having too much fun as Batman...

Brains and Assholes

So this week I found myself cooling my heels at the neurologist's office once again for a follow up appointment. There I was, just sitting there minding my own business and trying not to choke on the miasma of mixed perfumes, colognes and room air fresheners in the tiny space.

I was reaching into my purse for a cough lozenge for my insulted breathing passages when the door burst open and a rather large woman with a walker made her way in.  Before she had gotten half way to the glass window that housed the medical assistant, she bellowed her name at full volume.  Then she shouted her doctor's name.  She turned and addressed the room stating loudly "I HAVE MS!!" All of us, who had been quietly not sharing our various diseases and complaints, sat in wide-eyed and shocked silence, staring at her like a group of stuffed owls.  Everyone deployed their best "I'm really embarrassed for you and I have to suddenly look at that amazing art that matches the sofa or hastily rearrange the blanket on my husband's legs" moves.

Just my luck, she worked her way over to the empty chair next to mine and sat down.  She was still loudly addressing the room about her trials with Multiple Sclerosis and so I furiously searched for new meaning in Dave Hickey's paragraph on beauty that I'd already read 50 times while shrinking down in my chair and trying to become invisible.

She was staring at me.  I could feel the hair on my head starting to smolder under the intensity of her gaze.  I looked up at her, bracing myself for another loud blast.

"IS THAT GUM??"
I raised quizzical eyebrows in confusion.

"AROUND YOUR NECK, IS THAT GUM???"

"Oh, no, no it's not.  It's a brain made of glass in a jar.  I wear it to my appointments." (I have an exquisite pink glass brain in a jar I bought from the glassblower Kiva Ford and wear it to every neuro appointment to the delight of the office staff.)

"OH!!" she said.  I tried with desperate politeness to go back to my book, but no dice.  She was not having it.  "DO YOU WORK IN A BEAD STORE??" she yelled into my poor ringing ear.

"No?" I squeaked.  "Oh, you mean my Beads of Courage shirt?" I inquired sotto voce, "No, it's a children's charity."

"OH!"
The silence in the waiting room had become palpable.

"SO WHAT ARE YOU HERE FOR??" I think I winced visibly at this one.  There is only so much a girl can take.  I leaned over in her direction and said quietly:

"I'm here because my brain is being an asshole."

You could have heard a pin drop.  The lady on my other side snorted surprised laughter through her nose.

And then, like a miracle, the door to the inner sanctum opened with its blessed light streaming out, the angelic nurse called my name and I fled like a chicken-stealing fox from the farmer.

Being a T-rex means never having to say you're sorry.

D'OH!! <whap> <clunk> <thud>

Me: <sigh>Well, there goes another one...

I turn around and look at my husband after dropping a coffee mug in the sink and breaking it.  The look on his face is what I would expect if I had run over his puppy with a monster truck, gunned the engine and driven off cackling with glee while I squealed the tires.

Me: What's wrong?

Him: Well, you should at least show some remorse!

Me: What??  It's a ceramic coffee mug!  It's old, stained and boring.

Now I'm starting to feel weird.  Am I a kitchenware sociopath?  Am I going to start sneaking out of bed in the middle of the night to mutilate and murder the dishes?  Will I stand by entranced and watch stainless steel flatware slowly rust in baths of salt and acid while I rub my hands together in delight? After a dinner party, will I put the crystal and grandma's silver in the dishwasher and stand with my ear to the door listening to the screams of despair?

This is distinctly unsettling.

Then I glance over at the cupboard and see my High Desert Flameworks T-rex Girl glass.  Rashan didn't give it that name, I did, because it was made perfectly for my spastic, fumbly T-rex hands.  When I took it out of the box and placed it in my hand for the first time, my fingers slipped perfectly into the delicate pink bumpy pattern and it was love at first grip.  A glass I could love and trust not to slip out of my hand and crash on the floor like the rest of my treacherous, betraying glassware.

I understood the attachment my husband had to his ugly old plain white ceramic travel mug that had accompanied him for many years like a faithful pet and felt some remorse.

Me: I'm sorry honey bun.  Let's dig it out of the trash and bury it next to Fred Gutierrez (our hamster that died of heart failure in 1997).

Check out the T-rex friendly and other wonderful glass created by Rashan O Jones at High Desert Flameworks

Surfing the Big Dirt Wave

Our first big dirt wave of the monsoon season arrived like an unwanted relative for a stressful holiday weekend leaving dust, tree parts and shingles everywhere instead of wet bath towels on the floor, used Kleenexes tucked furtively under the couch cushions and various disgusting things in the bathroom.

I went out for a bike ride the next morning, and as usual, the thoughts started buzzing in my head like a hive of Africanized bees who'd just had their nest whapped by an errant baseball from the neighbor's yard.

This is how I write - with angry bee thoughts that eventually form that big cartoon arrow aimed at some hapless passerby.  Which would be you if you are reading this.

The bees settled down and started to form some kind of Shakespearian soliloquy about the leaden gray skies and the indiscretions of my youth weighing heavily upon my body like a sodden woolen mantle. I think I stuck some thorns or nails in there somewhere for extra effect.  And something about the price of that youthful joyride being worth every penny.

And then the hysterical cackling of my inner fifty-something critic ( I think her name is Marge) started. She was laughing so hard she must've peed herself a little.  You know how that sphincter thing goes when you're over 50.  After the last chorus, my chagrined bee thoughts gave up their aspirations for flowery creative writing and gave me this...

"So I am out riding my bike this morning, collecting dust all over my sweaty body like a giant cornmeal crusted slab of pasty white catfish, and it feels like a pack of rabid badgers is using my body for an amusement park."

I don't think there were any sphincters or rabid badgers in Hamlet.

Brain Pajamas

At one point or another in our lives, we've had that 9 to 5 day job that requires some sort of work clothing - be it the head to toe brown uniform of UPS (I've always wondered, do they have brown underwear too?) or the business attire complete with the ugly closed toe pumps that squish your toes or the hideously boring tie that feels like it's going to choke the life out of you any second.

So you crawl home on the freeway during rush hour traffic, sweating, itching, squirming in your uncomfortable and restrictive clothing that reeks of the spent adrenaline and disappointment of the day's struggle.  You pull into the driveway, accidentally drop your coffee mug and have to chase it with the dregs now dribbling down the driveway, grab your briefcase/tote/purse and bolt into the house.  The door slams and you start ripping off your restrictive, stale, chafing work clothes - practically running out of your shoes and draping a bra or a tie over the back of a chair as you head for the bedroom.  You throw on your pajamas, so soft and comfy, a cotton cocoon of pleasure, and step into your plushy slippers and scuff out into the kitchen to grab a beer or a pudding cup and throw yourself onto the couch with a collapsing groan of pleasure.

Pajamas, that universal uniform of "I'm not doing anything but disengaging and slothing about now".

And just like that act of coming home from the daily grind and putting on your pajamas, sometimes, when things get unbearable, your brain puts on its pajamas.  My brain has a ridiculous pair of Hello Kitty pajamas and matching pink plush slippers on right now.  It got tired of dealing with too much pain, disappointment and anxiety and one day just quietly pulled the PJs out of the drawer, relishing the feel of the soft flannel and the way its feet just sank into the foam soles of the slippers, and wandered into the kitchen to mix a martini.  And it has been on the couch watching life go by for quite a few months.

At one point, it actually dozed off and when it awoke with a startled "Wha...?" it realized that it stunk, there was an olive stuck on its cheek and it really needed a shower.  You can't go back to work in stinky Hello Kitty pajamas and fuzzy pink slippers with scary hair and an olive stuck on your face and expect them to take you seriously.

It's time to go back to work....

Dog Days and Possum Juice

My cats want it to be noted that they didn't name this time of year "The Cat Days of Summer" because cats are totally awesome, Yo.  Nope, it's dog. D.O.G. because dogs suck and so does the weather.  (I actually like dogs but don't tell them because I don't want to wake up with a hairball in my shoe.)

It is so hard to get up at 5 a.m. to ride my bike in this miserableness.  My head is a hurty little resentment filled balloon floating on top of my achy, spiteful body and is going to explode any minute - like after I go over that big bump.  My right eye has a big red rash around it and I look like I've been punched by a slightly melty raspberry gummy bear.  Probably because he cut me off while texting in his car and I yelled something really rude at him that had the word douchenozzle in it and also something about who his mother had relations with last night in the alley behind the gummy bear factory.  Yeah, call the Wahmbulance so they can bring a shovel and a hefty bag to scrape my self pitying ass off the bubbling asphalt.

So yesterday I went out and it was eleventy hundred percent humidity, yucky and hot and sticky.  It started raining which actually was kind of nice and I was humming along when I saw a puddle ahead.  It looked like there was something in the puddle - kind of gray and tattered like an old grocery bag.  It was not until I was splashing my wheels through the puddle that I noticed that it was not a nice, old innocent grocery bag.  Nuh Uh, Nossiree Bob, it was a mother humping DEAD POSSUM!!   Sweet Golden Brown Cinnamon Toasted Baby Jesus and all the Assorted Toaster Pastry Saints save us.  I had just splashed dead possum water all over my bike, my legs and in a nice stripe up my back.  I tried not to self destruct with disgust and battled the urge to just stop, lie down in the grass next to Walmart Super Center and die of an aneurism.

So after my stomach did a few somersaults I managed to calm myself a little.  You can wash this off when you get home.  It's really okay.  Then I realized I was thirsty, ten miles from home in the heat and I had dead possum juice splashed all over my water bottles.  I reasoned with myself that the water probably hadn't hit the nipples of the bottles and if I wiped them off on my jersey I be okay.  Um, no, my germophobe brain said.  Right now there are itty bitty dead possum molecules migrating up the sides of your bottles and crawling inside.  Game over.  You'll just have to die of thirst.

I did make it home, drank a gallon of water and had to fight the urge to throw my bike, bike clothes and water bottles onto a flaming funeral pyre and douse my body in a gallon of bleach.  But I'm still twitching like a fly bitten horse's rump at the memory. Ugh.  I am so done with Dog Days.

Overheard at the dinner table

Oh Shit! <crash>

Me: Hunter S. Thomson has hummus and a little baba ghanoush on his face and it's detracting from his gonzo image.  Can you hand me some napkins?

Him: <sigh> <rustling sounds>

Me: I may need that helper monkey sooner than I thought.

Him: I wonder what the cats would think about living with a monkey.

Me: We could probably get two and write them off as medical expenses.  You do have that nasty thumb arthritis.  Then we could get tiny saddles for the cats and have races with monkey jockeys.

Did you know that Hunter S. Thompson once had a drunk monkey in his pocket?

Him: No, I wasn't aware of that particular fact.

Me: Yeah, he actually did.  It threw up in there too.  Poor Hunter now has to endure eternity smelling like monkey vomit, charred eggplant, feta cheese and pureed garbanzo beans.

Why I don't Skype

I work at home, far away from the niceties of civilization where one must be showered, dressed, primped and proper.  Where food must be chewed with one's mouth closed and where the strategic application of a napkin is called for if you don't want to attract undue attention and frantic wiping gestures from your dining partner who looks like they've just had a sudden attack of Tourette's.

In my kingdom, if you call me on the phone, you will be eternally grateful that you cannot see me as part of our social transaction.  Because I most likely am...

...running naked through the house chewing on a piece of toast slathered with peanut butter because I'm late for something and I forgot that all of my clean underwear is still in the dryer.  And I also have a large blob of peanut butter on my chest because when I grabbed the phone I dropped the toast and with a desperate spastic flailing gesture managed to mash it against my body before it hit the floor.

...sporting a chest pelt more impressive than Mike Myers in Austin Powers because I've just brushed all four cats while wearing a tank top.  At first glance, it looks like I've been sired by an international delegation and the hormone part of my sex change operation has yet to kick in.

...in need of a shower and if you look closely into the Skype window, you can see visible stink lines wavering up from my unwashed body.  Also, my hair is a frightful Jenga tower built with an assortment of small clips, sticks and possibly duct tape, the frizziness and sticky-outiness of which would make Elsa Lanchester's Bride of Frankenstein updo look positively glamourous.

...back from a bike ride in 90 degree heat with the remnants of my SPF 750 clown makeup sunblock slowly sliding off my salt crusted, sweat dripping visage.  Oh, and there is probably a small assortment of small dead flying bugs stuck on there as well.

So I recommend you just print out and paste this photo above your thankfully blind telephone and give me a call sometime.

A letter from my slightly disgusted self.

Dear Carol,

Please, please do not smoke cigars right before bedtime. Cigars should only be enjoyed after a fine meal with a glass of good scotch, not at 9:30 pm on a weeknight after a greasy pub sandwich and fries and a glass of Jim Beam from the bottle left behind when your in-laws came to visit.

I truly hope that after spending the night in the bathroom turning yourself inside out from the giant nicotine hit, cheap booze and greasy meal and waking up with a mouth that tastes like someone put a dirty cat box in it and lit a slowly smoldering fire, you will have learned your lesson.

May I remind you that you are not Hunter S. Thompson? 

Now go take a shower, you stink.

Love,
Your Inner T-rex

Inspired by my lovely friend Nikki "The Nock Out" who loves me even when I'm disgusting.

It's One of Those Days

You know, the kind where you forget to zip the little mesh lingerie bag and your bras escape into the general population and try to kill the rest of your clothes by strangling them.  Apparently they didn't have time to fashion shivs out of their underwire.

I so pissed I'm going to put them in solitary confinement.

You can confidently diagnose yourself with OCD when...

Early yesterday morning, for the first time,  I had that procedure that makes every 50 year old cringe when the doctor says "So, you're 50 now...".  I graduated with flying colors and even got some nice souvenir photos of my colon which will be posted on FaceBook with the caption "Ample Fanny's Sigmoid Safari".  (that's real colon humor)

I came home flying and all smiley on a leftover poof of anesthetic, ate some breakfast which consisted of a fried egg sandwich with Sriracha mayo, giant cup of coffee and a fistful of cheddar goldfish crackers.  Hey, they said I could eat a normal meal.  My insulted and outraged insides were still insulated in that happy little cloud as I dumped this offense on them.

Dave went out for a bike ride and of course it was then that my body chose to have some kind of high magnitude Richter Scale event which started as a 4.5 and quickly broke the needle off the meter.  I was shaking so hard I could hear the windows shattering in my neighbor's house.

Okay, I can feel your look.  It's a slight exaggeration.  Only a little.

I could barely walk as I stumbled into the kitchen to find my phone  but I couldn't pick it up.  I had to bend over the table and lie on my puny T-rex arms to hold them still and tried to dial my doctor.  Nope, she closed at lunch.  Shit.  Okay, where was that piece of paper with the Endoscopy Center on it?  Found it and held my eyeballs still enough to read the number.  Misdialed 3 times and finally got a recording - everyone is at lunch.  Shit again. Tried calling Dave on his bike and got his voicemail. Shit, shit, shit!!!!  (I'm sensing a theme here)  Called the doctor back and got the emergency Dr. paging number after the recorded voice read me the entire story of Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day and the weather report and offered me a 50% off coupon for my next visit.  I finally got through to a human.  I could not speak at that point beyond huh-uh-huh-colonoscopy this morning-huh-huh-huh-can't stop shuh-shuh-shaking-huh-huh-huh...." I burst into tears of frustration as I huffed my way through the story between my chattering teeth.

Stumbled back into bed waiting for the Doctor to call back.  Uh oh.  The formerly sleepy villagers were awake now and not happy.  Not at all.  The Egg Sandwich/Coffee/Goldfish Cracker Express Train from Hell was coming up the big pink pipe and I'm frantically looking for my shoes so I can put them on to go throw up.  Nope, those are suede.  No those don't match my red yoga pants and cute red t-shirt with the squirrel on it....."HEY, YOU, YES YOU IDIOT, YOU ARE THROWING UP!!  WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU????  YOU DON"T NEED SHOES ON TO THROW UP MUCH LESS SHOES THAT MATCH!!??!!  My shaking, contorting body was screaming at me and I finally broke the spell and raced for the loo.

I'm fine.  Turns out I was having a bad reaction to the anesthesia.

And the moral of this story is: OCD is not always rational but it can save your suede shoes.

FUPA!

Last weekend, we had our Fabulous, adorable and dear friends over for dinner.  During the conversation, cat anatomy came up - specifically that little pouch of hanging skin and fat in the lower abdominal area. So we shared that we called it a "wag bag" because it wags back and forth like a demented bag filled with jello when kitty runs toward you.  Our old deceased kitty Doris had an epic wag bag that could have accommodated a regulation size basketball and we'd often regretted not capturing the grandiosity of its undulations on camera.  Mrs. Fabulous said she thought that was better than calling it a foopa.  That's what it sounded like to me anyway.  So I just thought that was their little term of endearment for the wagging bag of fat and left it at that.  Then she explained that it meant Floppy Upper Penis Area (because their foopa'd feline is a boy).  Ah, a new acronym.

After the Fabulous family went home,  the absolutely shagged and slightly tipsy me started repeating "foopa....foooooopaaaaa..." over and over and giggling like an idiot.  So Google whore that I am, I looked up FUPA.  Sure enough, it was there in the Urban Dictionary, my scholarly source for all that is hip and streetwise.

Now I see Arigato trotting across the tile with his furry little man bag wagging and shout "FUPA!" like some crazed cheese igniting waitress at the local Greek Restaurant.  Seriously, I think he just rolled his eyes at me.

The first definition on the Urban Dictionary page when I linked it was MeDD.  I think the internet is trying to tell me something.

ETA:  Here is a painting of the best FUPA ever by my friend Karolina Sussland

Because It's not The Cat Stabber

I could've called this blog by my other, kind of horrifying nickname, The Cat Stabber!  That would be huge with PITA and all my animal loving friends.  I could have also called this blog The Expensive Beer Dropping Lady's Adventures at Whole Foods or Five Stitches in the Foot Bitches!, or The Girl with Half a Thyroid but T-Rex Arms just sums my life up so succinctly.  No, I don't have actual, tiny, stubby T-rex arms so don't ask me to send you photos for your circus freak scrapbook.  It is such a great metaphor for having a weak, ineffectual and humorous body.  My dysfunction chose to really mess me up by targeting my arms and hands and the name T-rex arms sums it up so well.  If I had to name everything I have in my fabulous gift basket of disorders, diseases, jellies, jams and rashes it would get boring and technical.  And like that adorable little puppy who followed you home, if you name it, you own it.  But I guess in my case it's more like a lost cow because sometimes I milk it for all it's worth and then send it on it's way.

All those titles have a traumatic, embarrassing back story that narrate the story of my life with neuromuscular dysfunction.  It's like having my own private three ring circus but since the cat stabbing, my husband has told me I'm fired as the Knife Juggler.  If he had his way, I'd be rolling around the house in a giant clear plastic hamster ball.  But I know I would find a way to mangle myself and bleed all over the place in there just to spite him.  He'd come home and find the ball gently bumping up against the front door leaking blood and a few sunflower seeds out of the little breathing vents.  He'd unscrew the top and there would be a severed limb still twitching a weak cry for help at him.

So, before you go, I need to tell you the backstory on The Cat Stabber so you don't go away thinking I'm some kind of animal torturing psychopath on the way to becoming a full fledged serial killer.

The Story of The Cat Stabber

No, this is not a kissing book. 



I have been living with a couple of neurological illnesses that are progressively stealing my coordination and fine motor control. And sometimes I have a fabulous spastic maneuver where I unintentionally fling whatever is in my hand. Which means I am a disaster in the kitchen with my brain surgery sharp set of Wusthof knives I made my hubby buy me because I still insist I can cook like Eric Ripert when in all reality I am Dan Aykroyd's version of Julia Child on SNL spurting bright red arterial blood all over the kitchen screaming "SAVE THE LIVER!!" Usually I only damage myself and thus the 9 finger jokes.

One fine day, I was chopping something and my spazz hand manifested itself and the chef's knife I was using flew in a perfect arc up into the air and back down right next to the sleeping cat at my feet. Said sleeping cat, sleepy no more fled the room with nary a peep. No blood or gore was apparent and I thought to myself "That was TOO CLOSE!! WHEW!!" So back to cooking dinner. 45 minutes later, my hubby yelled at me from the bedroom "ARIGATO (sleeping cat) HAS A BIG HOLE IN HIS LEG!! Uh, oh. I ran into the bedroom and saw my poor boy lying there with a hole in his leg the size of a quarter. Strangely, there was no blood but I could see tendon and muscle and my heart stopped. I had stabbed my poor cat! He never even made a peep this whole time. What kind of fiend would do that to their poor defenseless kitty? So we raced him to the vet and it took 3 staples to close the wound.

I called one of my best friends the next day and was telling her the story and weeping and feeling like some kind of monster and through the phone I hear (sung to the tune of "The Back Stabbers" by the O'Jays):

The Cat Stabbers
(What they do)
(They smile in your face)
All the time they want to take your place
The cat stabbers (cat stabbers)
(They smile in your face)
All the time they want to take your place
The cat stabbers (cat stabbers)

It is now my theme song. 

And in the dark of night in the Saker kitchen you can still hear Arigato whispering the dread legend of THE CAT STABBER. 

This tale was typed using all nine of my currently functioning fingers. #10 should be back on line any day now when it is finished growing back.