Wednesday, February 25, 2009

my, what large eyes you have

i've been feeling really crappy the past week. not "i'm sick and need to rest" crappy, but "i wonder if i should go to the hospital" crappy. i won't tell you the gory details, but suffice it to say my digestive tract has been jacked. clem seems to be involved somehow, and i've been feeling a lot of discomfort. however, last night i had only chicken broth and a probiotic Yakult for dinner (despite serious cravings for a hamburger), and now i'm feeling a LOT better. i'm hopeful it will last. so on a health-high, i'm going to write some more.
i have a wide melodramatic streak which i have mostly overcome, but when i feel vulnerable, especially health-wise, it reasserts itself as my hypochondria shoots into overdrive. welcome to my life the past year. last night, as i prayed for my guts to get a grip, i started imagining simple things i wanted to experience again before i die. you know those old-fashioned knobbly bedspreads from like the 40s? i kept thinking, "i wish i could wrap myself up in one at some nice old lady's house." weird! i think it has more to do with wanting to be comforted and taken care of than anything, but it's still pretty random.
when i was around 15, we went on little family vacation to arizona. we decided to stay at a bed and breakfast. my memories of the whole experience are time-worn, but i do remember our hostess, june, had a pretty literal interpretation of "bed and breakfast." it wasn't private and luxurious, there was no separation from her own living space and ours, it was just a couple of rooms in her house. it was like intruding on someone else's grandma. i slept in her grown daughter's room with all of her stuff staring at me; it was incredibly awkward. mom and i had whispered exclamations of dismay and hilarity as we joked about june-bug. the next morning at breakfast, she had cut the only orange off her cornered orange tree. we would have gladly done without the sacrifice, as the orange was tart and thick-skinned. after breakfast we evacuated as soon as possible, grimacing comically to each other. anyway, i think she had one of those knobbly quilts on my bed. even though the experience was awkward, it's a good memory.
the other thing i thought of was wanting to smell wood chips again. talk about random!

so here's the real story; recently i endeavored to get some new contact lenses. this is always a long, emotionally painful process because my eyes are apparently incredibly difficult to please. then of course, i know none of the technical japanese, so i had to drag someone along with me every time i went. talk about trouble! the first and second pairs were way off. as is always the case, i could see the technicians' faces fall when they spotted me in the waiting room. as if i WANT to come back and bother them that many times. i suggested to the doctor (this is my experience with my own eyes speaking) that slightly larger lenses usually hold my strong prescription better. as this filtered through my translator, the response was "we'll have to customize them, since we japanese have smaller eyeballs." ha! i wasn't saying my eyes were bigger, i was saying the lens is stronger. it seemed a ludicrous statement, but he agreed to try, and the next pair was much closer. at long last, we arrived at pair that seemed decent enough, so me and my giant foreign eyeballs walked happily out the door.

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

2009: sexy and sugar-free

many of you wonder what happened to mr. sugar since i haven't mentioned him in a while. well, i'm not really the new year's resolution type, but i also like the idea of starting fresh, so as the new year dawned, i considered my relationship to him. i knew that i was putting way too much thought into every little interaction we had, which isn't the sign of a healthy balance. i admitted to myself that it didn't seem likely it would go anywhere, so why waste anymore time hoping for it? that's when i decided to earnestly let go of him; stop hoping for anything in the future, cut off the part of me reaching out for his attention.
i did pretty well. it's hard to change your knee-jerk reaction to someone right away, but after that split second every morning, i'd return to not thinking of him.
two weeks later, i looked up to see him standing next to me in the copy room. he made some small talk and then said, "i have news." they should call it "knews," because as soon as he said that, i knew exactly what it was. over winter break he got married. yet another secret-till-it's-a-done-deal japanese romance. that explained a LOT. the invisible elephant, apparently sitting on my head, and the awkwardness that has surrounded our interactions the past several months, evaporated. somewhat giddily, i yammered congratulations, and he seemed truly surprised. i wonder if he expected me to cry. far from it; finally i could relax. finally i knew where he was really coming from.
it still strikes me as odd that not six months ago, he was telling me that everyone was pressuring him to find someone and get married, but he didn't want to...little did i know he was probably already staring down the long barrel of that gun. in japan, if you're past thirty and single, you may as well have a big, fat expiration date on your face. i guess the clock is ticking since i just turned 30!
;)