~ December 02, 2003 - 2:07 a.m. ~
Suckity, suck, suck, suck
Today has been supremely sucky, and I will tell you why.When we got back from Tim and pAndi�s cousins� I had the flu, which I�ve had since the day after Thanksgiving, and I hate traveling when I�m sick because it only makes me sicker, but I couldn�t very well stay curled up on the sofa in Connecticut while Tim and pAndi went home, so I sucked it up and sat through two train-rides of misery so I could be miserable in my own bed.
And while I enjoyed Thanksgiving as it was happening, and even got Tim and pAndi�s mother, aunts, and grandmother (and even little cousin, who I let hold down my pattern while I cut it out) helped me with the difficult parts of my Tolkien Gathering Elbereth dress, I still feel in retrospect that it was kinda meh for the sole reason that it wasn�t the way my family does Thanksgiving, particularly when it came to the food. And I know that that�s immature and childish, and as a big, friggin�, loudmouthed advocate of diversity, it makes me a bloody hypocrite to boot, I can�t help but feel this way.
And although yesterday I felt better and spent most of the day working on the dress, all my efforts felt like they were for nothing when I discovered that the dress doesn�t fit in the chest, because apparently this stupid patter doesn�t fecking work if you are more than an A-cup, and I have no idea why the jack-asses at Vogue couldn�t have fucking stated that on the goddamn pattern before I went and bought it and cut it out on expensive crushed velvet, and besides which the rest of my fat stomach barely fits into it, and now all I can think is that this damn dress would look better on my mother than on me, which basically puts it into the category of everything else I own with the sole exception of my prom dress, which actually requires the tits I have.
So now I realize that I am going to have to lose some weight, which is something less than I shock because all the doctors I have seen in the past couple of years have stated and re-stated that I should not weigh very much more than 120, and that is the absolute max for me, because my fragile little (wide-assed) pelvis can�t and shouldn�t support much more than that, but now that I�m injured, I can�t very well continue my regimen of 40 blocks, yoga, carido-abs, and weightlifting every day (which, by the way, knocked me down from a whopping 138 to 130 in only two weeks), so thank god for this bloody flu, which has taken away my appetite and another 5 pounds, but that�s not going to last, goodness knows, and I have got to find another way to kick about 10 pounds in 2 weeks with very little cardiovascular activity, and since taking a dip into the pool of eating disorders is not an option (or shouldn�t be at any rate), I am putting myself on a diet of two small portions of protein a day, with a morning dose of oatmeal to hopefully help out on the side-effective cholesterol that will likely come with such a diet. And I am going to try to do my cardio-abs as well, because that�s all I can think of to do that won�t go ahead and break my fucking hip for once and for all, and I realize that none of this would bother me if I didn�t have all this food and body image issues (which I am really only just admitting to now), and I should really get counseling and not a crash diet, but since I feel like my head must be spinning like in The Exorcist right now, the crash diet seems like the better option, because while someone who weighs 125 pounds should not be freaking about how fat she is, I don�t have time to be counseled now.
And then the other health issues reared their ugly heads today, because apparently I haven�t got enough on my plate, what with getting all my shit together for the Gathering and for Christmas (because I will have a total of 3 days after I get back from the Gathering before I have to high-tail it to Florida for Christmas), not to mention lil� gifts for the Gathering Sisters, and my Sister Secret Santa, and Sister Birthdays, and my Mom�s birthday (which is the same as Ivy�s), and Tim�s birthday, on which I have already scheduled an eye exam because my vision is going again , and my last performance of medieval literature of the year.
So, right the health issues, in addition to the nasty flu, which has me coughing up blood, and I want to fucking pull a Keats and just lie down and let consumption just, well, consume me. I lost my referral for my MRI, which I have to get because they have narrowed my hip problems down to a stress fracture or bursitis, so I had to call NYU and get a new referral, which I had to go down and pick up. And also I am out of the two prescriptions I am on, so I had to call the pharmacy for refills. And I was going to have Tim get these things for me, but in an odd twist of fate, he called me and need me to bring him his checkbook before the end of the day, so I figured I would just schlep down to NYU/Cooper territory and take care of all the crap myself. But then pAndi called and I got distracted translating our names into Elvish, and while hers is all pretty, I unfortunately discovered that my last name does not mean what I thought it mean, which I find upsetting because I�ve based a lot of my writing and poetry on my identity as derived through my name, and to suddenly have that turned on its ear is really shitty. And then the flu came pounding back full force, and I couldn�t do much but stay still for a while so I couldn�t go out, and anyway, I was waiting for my parents� anniversary present to get here via FedEx, two weeks late , which did not come by 4:40, when I finally rallied and left the house to get my pharmacy stuff, my referral, and to bring Tim his fencing gear along with his checkbook.
When I had dropped Tim�s stuff off with him, I ran (hobbled) to the pharmacy to get my stuff, only to learn that they hadn�t been able to fill the prescriptions, weren�t going to, and although they had three hours in which to do so, did not fucking call me to tell me not to come! Turns out my allergy/sinus meds are no longer on the prescription market, but I can buy half the dosage I need for quadruple (I�m not kidding or exaggerating here, the price goes from $10 to $40) the cost over the counter now. And my GYN forgot to tell me that she put an early limit on my birth-control pills because I was having so many PMS problems and she wants to monitor my pill intake, so before the week is out, I have to go and get my third fucking pelvic exam of the year if I want to have the damn pills over the holidays. So that�s me down for 1 eye exam, 1 annual GYN pelvic exam, and 1 MRI, and, so saith my orthopedist, some physical therapy thrown in for good measure. On top of the aforementioned Christmas/Gathering/Birthday/Performance crap. Crap!
So I leave the pharmacy, fruitlessly punching the elevator wall and cursing the pharmacist to the lowest conceivable level of hell, and I finally manage to work him into Ca�na (that�s the lowest there is), because while I don�t know if he has to take a Hippocratic Oath to be a pharmacist, he is definitely betraying some kind of customer service protocol by not filling my goddamn prescriptions and not telling me, and making me drag my flu-y ass out of my nice warm apartment to wait in line for him to tell me I have to pay lots of money and fight in Round Three of Gina Vs. The Speculum , which, I might add, I have spent all year losing.
So I call Tim, and he offers to treat me to chai and dinner at the Mud Spot, which brightens me up a bit, but he wants me to wait for him on the corner of Astor Place, so I do, but they are doing some construction there, and half the sidewalk is closed off and people keep stepping on me, so I press myself flat up against the barricade there, and this old, smelly bum mistakes me for a hooker or something, because he sidles up next to me and asks me if I�m looking for a date, which makes this the second old, smelly bum encounter I�ve had in the past week, because last Monday while I was picking up Tim�s cheesecake at the bakery, an old, smelly, exceedingly drunk bum (I could smell him from the opposite end of the counter, it was so bad) barges in and starts demanding cookies, while sidling up to people and sticking his whole head into one guy�s bag of cannolis and trying to grab all the women�s asses, including mine, but luckily he was too drunk and didn�t even come close.
Now finally Tim shows up, and we get dinner, which is the one, count it, one bright point in my day, and then just like that it�s over and he�s got fencing, and I am trudging up Third Avenue with my runny nose and stuffy head to Duane Reade for more cold and flu meds, and then to Food Emporium to help implement my oatmeal plan, and after trying three registers, I finally got the quarters I needed for the laundry, which is a mixed blessing, because now that means I have no excuse for not dragging a huge bag of clothes to the basement and paying too much money to clean them before dragging them back up.
And then on my way home, I pass this mother and daughter who are on a can and crutches respectively, helping each other home with a big bag of groceries, and I feel like a total shit for complaining, because they have it much harder and they still looker happier than I am.
So I get home, and I call my mom, and she tells me that I shouldn�t go to the Gathering because I somehow managed to get myself under all this stress (and yet am jobless, about which she harped for quite some time) and I told her that that was not an option, and that I didn�t expect her to just wave her magical Mommy-wand and make everything better, I just needed to vent, and this was why I think I should go back to counseling, so I can work things out without the person I�m talking to assuming that I want a magical quick fix and the promise of a Christmas dinner in three weeks. At which point she declared that I needed to think more about making money and less about spending it on Christmas presents and therapists, and dresses and conventions. So I asked her if that�s what she thought I did all day, sit around and think of how to waste money and sew costumes and whatnot, and she said, �Well, that�s all you ever seem to talk about, besides the odd interview or something,� and I told her that I didn�t tell her about every little job I applied for and was rejected or received no notice about because there were so many of them, and it gets depressing after a while, and what was I supposed to do, call her up and be like, �Well, I applied for six jobs this week, haven�t heard back from anyone, same old same old,� and she said she didn�t know how else she was going to know that I was still looking. So I pointed out that she didn�t expect me to do that when I was in school, call her up and go �Yup, classes are still hard, still plugging away, finals are looming,� but in fact told her about more fun and relatable things, like my extra-curriculars, and she never assumed that I wasn�t going to classes because I wasn�t giving her a minute-to-minute update on them, and she said that this was different, though I utterly fail to see how.
Tim and I had a nice chat with our one sociable neighbor, who, naturally, is about to move to D.C. Feck. I don�t know. I think I probably have it good, better than most, but I still feel shitty all over. I am officially writing today off as something that never happened, or perhaps just a learning experience in coping, or something of that nature. Feck. No, fuck. Fuck a lot.
