Delicate Flower

When it comes to food at my work, I’m the office crank. I don’t eat wheat and I don’t eat dairy, and most of what my co-workers eat is comprised of at least one, if not both, of those things. They’re very nice about about my predilections, my co-workers.

A few weeks before we left, the conference manager asked me if there was anything she could do for me. I asked her if she knew if there was going to be a fridge in our office. She didn’t know, but she would ask. “All I need,” I said, “is a place to put a carton of soy milk and some granola. Maybe some nuts and fruit. A bar fridge would solve all my problems.”

She came back a few days later. "We got your fridge!" She was triumphant.

This is what was delivered.


Mortified would not be too strong a word for what I felt.

If you look to the right, you can see that I have placed all my purchased items in the frigo: soy milk, granola, larabar, almonds. Most of them don’t really belong in the fridge, I know that, but when I placed one item on each shelf, at least half of the shelves were taken. I then took the juice provided by the conference and spread it out over the other half. It mollified me somewhat, but I still felt like an ass. A delicate flower asshole.

Iron With Dinner

For a smart person, I am very stupid about some things. Iron, for instance. I am prone to low iron stores. While this definitely goes on the list of Ridiculous Ailments, it still needs treating. The Goob put me on iron supplements. A few times. The same thing always happens.

I start taking my iron. With food, like dinner.

I feel better. More alert. Less groggy. It's like a revelation.

Feeling better starts to feel normal. I stop thinking about how tired I used to be.

I start forgetting to take pills.

I stop taking my iron. With anything.

For a while, normal is still pretty alert.

I start feeling a little tired every so often. Probably not enough sleep.

I feel kind of weirdly tired every so often. It's not a didn't-get-enough-sleep tired, or a pushed-myself-too-hard-in-yoga tired. It's a tired I feel in my bones. Like a dense liquid is seeping out of them.

I feel weirdly tired sometimes.

I feel weirdly tired whenever I am not ignoring how tired I am.

I complain about being tired to one of my friends. They say are you taking your iron? And I say, no, I am not taking my iron.

Sheesh.

Today, there was going to be grocery shopping and yoga. But I started bleeding this morning, and I am crampy and hot flashy. I am bone tired, though I slept for at least 9 hours last night. The grocery shopping happened, but it's like it happened to someone else, to an old lady who had to stop moving every 5 minutes so she could catch her breath and fan herself. I decided that yoga was not going to happen.

Instead, I'm about to crawl into bed with my laptop, watch an episode or two of Freaks and Geeks, and possibly nap, or possibly just stare and the ceiling and moan.

After, that is, I take my iron.

What's Biting Me

Still with the bites on my ass. And shoulders. And calves. And forearms. Two nights ago, I had two bites so itchy that they woke me up in the middle of the night and I lay there trying not to scratch them. Doing three part breath and letting the thought of scratching them come into my head and then trying to let it go.

Eventually, matter won over mind and I gave those fuckers a good going over. Of course it didn't help in the long run. It never does. But the first moments of relief were on the orgasmic continuum.

After the scratching that didn't help for long I got up and put toothpaste on them, which is what we did with mosquito bites when I was a kid. It helped and I got back to sleep. But I woke up still itchy and not a little frustrated.

I have performed approximately one hundred internet searches in an attempt to figure out what is biting me, all to no avail. So while I cleaned up after breakfast yesterday morning, Eric poked around the interweb on my laptop, looking for more information. As far as we can tell, they're not spider bites, because bites are hardly ever spider bites. They're not bed bugs, because other than me getting a series of bites every couple weeks there is not one whit of hard bed bug evidence. It seems likely to me that after 8 or so weeks of bites, I would have not a dearth of evidence but an infestation.

We narrowed it down to some kind of mite other than scabies* to which we both may be allergic, since Eric gets the occasional bite too. It may also be urticaria, which is a fancy word for hives. Which I know I am already prone to getting, because they pop up after I pet Freya sometimes. And also sometimes on my face after I eat. They can also be caused by microscopic things that cry tiny battle cries while you sleep: slavering dust mites or mold shooting off its spores. Huzzah.

Last night I vacuumed my mattress and emptied the dehumidifier in the basement and we'll see if that stops the whatever it is.

Owing to the pet and food hives, I have already added urticaria to Megan's List of Ridiculous Ailments. If it's going to make your life uncomfortable but not kill you, there's a pretty likely chance I either have, have had, or will have it. Scratch scratch.





*I actually got nauseous when Eric explained that they live and breed under your skin. That is not something I knew about scabies. As an aside to Grace, the thought makes me want to scratch my palm with my middle finger to ward off the queasiness.

Ridiculous Ailment #1

I hardly ever get sick. Don’t know if it’s the genes or the clean living or what, but it’s been over a year since I’ve had even a bad cold. The last time I had a flu was probably 4 or 5 years ago.

I am, however, the reigning queen of Ridiculous Ailments. I’ve compiled a list, and it will become an ongoing series here. Because what would you rather read about, world politics or my cysts?

This rash that had me all in a swearing fluster on Friday night? Runs in the family.

I was washing my hair after running on Saturday morning, and when I went to rinse, noticed that the rash had spread all over my arms. I had a sudden vision of my mother standing in her kitchen beside the fridge and holding her forearm out to me, pressing a thumb into the small red dots. “See, I’ve been sick,” she’s saying.

Out of the shower and onto the phone.

“So, Mom, you know that rash you get after you’ve been sick? What happens?”

“Well, it starts on my stomach, and then spreads up under my breasts and over my back and down to the tops of my legs and then when it's peaking it goes down my arms and up my neck and in behind my ears, but not much on my face.”

“Is it itchy?”

“Not so you want to scratch your skin off, but a little. Why? You have it?”

“I dunno, it sounds the same, but I haven’t been sick.”

“Okay, so press your thumb into it. Does it blanch for a second and then come back? You know, the first time I got it, I hadn’t really been sick, just fighting something off for a couple weeks.”

Check, check, check, check. I got the “Told You I Was Sick Rash.” After not even being sick.

Cold Feet

I have Raynaud's Syndrome, and today is the day it came out in full force for the first time this season.

Mostly, I get it in my toes. and it is definitely a smallie. I didn't even realize that occasionally having fingers or toes look like they're dead wasn't normal until I met someone else who had it in their nipples. It doesn't hurt and I don't have it very badly. I just have to be careful about my hands and feet getting cold, or else put up with not being able to tell if my extremities are still attached. And then feeling all weird and pins-and-needly as I rub whatever's disappeared and the blood flows back in. Two pairs of socks for me, from here till April.

Tomorrow is the first of my two tattoo appointments. That's right, today is the last day for bare skin on my ribs. Now that it's here, I'm a little trepidatious. What if I don't like the squid and whale? What if it hurts too much and I wiggle around and fuck up his work? What if he figures out that his ex is dating my ex and that makes him irritable and distracted?

Pshaw, I say to that inner nagging voice, pshaw. These tattoos are going to be great. I have a high pain tolerance. He's a great tattoo artist. The squid and whale is a great idea.

Am I convinced yet? Well, at least the blood is flowing back in.

Hopefully, photos to follow. Though I haven't delivered on the Nova Scotia/Montreal photos yet, have I? No, I have not.