About the rat’s nest on my head. (My gym pet peeve.)

August 11, 2017That Asian-Looking Chick Leave a comment

Most gym pet peeves have to do with people being rude: hogging the equipment, leaving sweat on the equipment, resting on the equipment between sets, leaving weights lying around instead of re-racking them, talking on the phone or texting while chilling on the equipment, etc.

None of this is cool in my book, either, but I only have one major gym pet peeve, and that is my own hair. My scalp releases loose hairs that sabotage my workout. Who else has this issue? If there’s a solution short of shaving my head, I want to know.

My hair gets on my nerves more than anything else at the gym. It literally gets on my nerves. I try not to let it, but it’s easier said than done. When a hair falls out and lands on me, it hijacks my sensory nervous system so the strand of hair is all I can feel. It’s hard to ignore.

The problem is that my hair is a rat’s nest, more at the gym than anywhere else. Here’s my hair after my workout yesterday morning:

Post-workout, 8/10/2017

If my hair only looked like a rat’s nest, I wouldn’t care, because I don’t care what I look like when I go to the gym in the morning. I put on sunscreen, lip-gloss, and clean clothing, and I’m good.

The problem is that my hair behaves like a rat’s nest. It doesn’t stay together. It gets pulled apart simply by existing. At some point during the workout, people will see me doing stuff with one hand while I’m frantically clawing at my face with the other hand. Usually, the hair lands in my mouth or in one of my eyes. I sometimes find the hair plastered across my sweaty cheek.

This happens every time I work out. Without fail. No matter what I do. I will spend long minutes beforehand sliding my fingers through my hair and removing loose strands. I’ll do up my ponytail and repeat the process, also removing loose hairs from my bangs and the sides that don’t get pulled up.

Nothing works. Headbands? I wish. I’ve tried. They don’t stay on, and then I have two problems.

I know this is petty and ridiculous. I AM grateful to have any hair at all, but having hair doesn’t make me immune to annoyance when the hairs try to blind or choke me!

So my hair is a rat’s nest at the gym. It gives the term “gym rat” a whole new meaning. Fine. I just need for the nest to hold together until I’m done with my workout.

[/shallow rant of the day]

Lopsided eyes and mild panic: A cautionary tale.

February 19, 2016June 11, 2018That Asian-Looking Chick 2 Comments

Life changes and I’m back to a routine of walking to work every morning. I’m loving the extra little workout every day! I also walk home three days a week. The big change in the equation is that on the other two days, I take the bus home so I can get there fast, change my clothes, and drive to Mesa for Body Combat. Why? Callaghan now works on-site full-time, and the site happens to be in BFE (very far away, in case you didn’t know the acronym). This necessitates me taking myself to the gym. Which is fine. As long as I can get there!

(The adjustment to Callaghan’s new schedule and location has been a learn-as-we-go process in many ways. Our lives are very different now. And on Monday, I did NOT make it to the gym, because I literally had no way to get there. That was the last time that was going to happen!)

On Wednesday, I got to the bus stop early and wondered what to do with the spare 15 minutes. People-watching opportunities were oddly nonexistent at University and Mill. What else is there to do while waiting? Take a selfie. Or twenty.

I don’t take selfies very often. It doesn’t occur to me because I’m always looking for interesting, stationary subjects to photograph, or I’m stalking my cats with the camera. There was nothing of interest from my vantage point at the bus stop, and my cats were selfishly sitting at home, so I thought it would be amusing to capture a rare moment of myself being bored in an unusual place.

All that happened in the end was I freaked myself out, though. A little bit. Just a little.

The selfies I took showed my eyes looking lopsided. They were mismatched. One eye looked larger and different than the other. This alarmed me because I thought I remembered reading somewhere that psychopaths often have in common a noticeable difference between their eyes. While no one’s features are perfectly symmetrical, the eyes of a mentally unstable person can be very obviously unlike each other. (I know I read this somewhere, but now I can’t find anything about it, of course.)

Thing is, I do live with mental illness in the form of clinical depression and PTSD, but I never thought I looked mentally ill. The selfies suddenly made me feel paranoid. Then I became paranoid about being paranoid, and that made me feel crazier. I wondered if my mental health situation was really what I thought it was, only. And very quickly, the whole thought process took off on a continuous, self-perpetuating loop inside my brain.

To stop the merciless cycle, I deleted all of the selfies.

I went about the rest of the evening not thinking about it. I went home, went to the gym, and went out to dinner with Callaghan, and I didn’t think about it at all.

Later that night, I went to remove my make-up and saw that my eyeliner was thicker under one eye than the other, and the two lines didn’t match in shape. All along, it was my eyeliner that didn’t match! That would do it. Eyeliner can change your face dramatically. Of course the eye with more liner would look larger, and the two eyes would look different with different liner shapes!

I looked like that before I went and sweated at the gym, so I’d gone around at work with lopsided eyes. How fun.

Either I was in too much of a hurry when I was getting ready that morning, or the eyeliner wore off unevenly during the day. The result was the same, though: I looked like a Picasso painting at work, and I almost drove myself crazy wondering if I was crazier than I actually am.

Yesterday morning, I took extra care with my eyeliner. In the afternoon, I took a selfie in my office:

(February 18, 2016)

I came out looking more normal, though the left eye still had slightly more liner than the right. Probably only I would notice it, now that I’m hyper-aware of the thickness and shape of my eyeliner. I may have to just set the camera down and back slowly away. It’s hard to get the two eyes to look exactly the same, and I only allow myself 15 minutes to do my make-up before going to work. It is what it is.

The lighting was surprisingly flattering, too, though. Also, it was a rare day that I put on e.l.f. primer under my foundation. I think I like it, after all.

And Callaghan loves his new job!

I fall, therefore I am ridiculous.

November 3, 2015That Asian-Looking Chick Leave a comment

I have a new embarrassing story to share. It’s a pretty relatable one, I think.

It happened as I was walking home from work on Thursday. There was this crack in the sidewalk, see, and I stumbled on it and pitched forward. At least a billion people saw it.

Before I could register what was happening, my hands shot out (yay reflexes!), so my upper half landed on my palms. My knees took the fall for my lower half. The heavy backpack on my back slammed forward onto my upper back and lower neck area, adding to the impact of the fall. On the street next to me – University Road, a busy street, to give you an idea of the embarrassment factor – a long line of cars sat waiting at a red light, OF COURSE. As I said, there were a billion of them at least, and everyone was bored and watching me and so they all saw me.

I stumble on sidewalk cracks sometimes. I don’t usually fall.

Is it ever not embarrassing to fall?

I got up quickly and kept walking, resuming my pace. Like, “OH HEY EVERYONE that was no big deal, NOTHING TO SEE HERE.” But in my head, I was thinking OW OW OW OW OW.

My palms stung a little, but my knees. My knees instantly tightened into bands of pain holding my upper and lower legs together, the right side worse than the left. The pain was actually stupid, but I got up quickly and power-walked to my house, which, thankfully, was literally just around the corner. I reached the front door two minutes later.

Why are we so embarrassed when we fall that we’ll sometimes pretend it didn’t happen? Is it simple self-consciousness, or is it more along the lines of how a cat instinctually conceals pain and weakness for self-protection reasons?

I could ditch the stoic act once I got home, because Callaghan is away and I’m the alpha cat so our cats wouldn’t take advantage of my vulnerability.

The first thing I did was I sat down to investigate the aftermath. My palms didn’t hurt anymore, and they looked surprisingly normal – despite landing hard on the pavement, I found no marks, no scratches, and no redness. They looked clean, too, somehow. Okay, fine. Then I looked at my legs, and I was vexed to see that my newest jeans were ripped over the right knee. It couldn’t have happened when I was wearing anything else, I thought. I slid them off and found a colorful strawberry just below my right kneecap, the top layer of skin peeled back from a large spot in shades of deep red and purple.

Who gets road rash from walking? I DO.

I touched the wound to check it out. (No, I didn’t think to wash my hands first.) The skin on top was intact; there was no blood or other fluid. It was perfectly dry. Perfectly smooth. And perfectly excruciating when I touched it.

Having had no experience with wounds that look bloody, but aren’t, I decided to err on the side of DO NOTHING because I’d had a tetanus shot within the last 10 years, so I figured I was covered.

(I wondered where the top layer of skin went, though, because it wasn’t flapping over the strawberry… it was just gone, leaving the wound neatly frayed around the edges in a complete circle. I decided that the missing skin was either stuck to the sidewalk or to the inside of my jeans.)

While the wound looked superficial, the knee itself had inflated in a lumpy non-pattern all the way around. I considered what to do. Place a bag of frozen peas over the swelling? I decided to just elevate my leg.

My right knee took the worst punishment. Left knee was just bruised, but also painful to the touch. Palms got away with the whole thing completely, though I swear they also met the sidewalk with considerable force. A headache had developed – I’m guessing from the heavy backpack landing on the back of my neck – and (spoiler alert!) it lasted for three days.

So that was that, but it didn’t end there. The embarrassing effects extended into the weekend.

On Friday, my head and knees throbbed all day, and I felt useless at work.

On Saturday, I woke up with an intensified headache and almost ate a handful of Advil, but I resisted and went to Body Combat un-ibuprofenized. I’d missed class on Wednesday night… there was no way I was going to miss Saturday morning!

Body Combat mostly went fine. I went easy on the knees. I just got disoriented at some point, almost fell backwards at another point, and couldn’t let my knees touch the floor.

Then I went to do some grocery shopping at Sprouts, where I got disoriented again and nearly drove my shopping cart into one of those cardboard display things piled high with products, but I managed to swerve around it, which worked, but the edge of the cart got caught on the corner of the display, and I almost tore the whole thing down.

Some version of this has happened to most of you, right? Right?

Things have improved a lot at this point. The headache is gone, for one thing. My knee looks a lot better, albeit scabby, and the pain has lessened quite a bit. (I went to Body Combat last night and still couldn’t put pressure on the knees, but it was better than Saturday.)

I’m thinking of writing to the City of Tempe to ask them to either fix the sidewalk cracks or post signs like this in the more cracky areas:

I have to admit, I’m kind of hoping they go with the sign option. I love that tripping cartoon person!

Accidental O.D. (or, I am an airhead). Let’s learn from it.

August 11, 2015That Asian-Looking Chick 4 Comments

One day about two weeks ago, I accidentally took too much of my antidepressant. It was a very mild overdose, and nothing horrible happened. I didn’t go to the E.R. or anything like that. I just felt messed up, a little shaken, and maybe just a tad embarrassed when the incident passed.

Everything was fine the next day, but the experience was enough to startle me into the realization of how stupidly easy it is to take an overdose of a prescription medication by accident.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot since then. Often, when it’s reported that someone died from an “accidental overdose of prescription medication,” or “toxicology reports show the presence of prescription drugs in his/her system,” the jaded public’s reaction is largely, “‘Accidental’… right.” There’s a tendency to immediately categorize the death as either a substance abuse-related accident, or as a suicide. We aren’t so inclined to accept “accidental” without any negative connotation attached. We’re cynical. We assume an underlying moral abberation on the part of the deceased, or, at least, questionable character. We sum up the death as “just another senseless tragedy.”

After my experience, I totally understand how someone can simply, accidentally take too much of a prescription drug. What happened was I screwed up my dosage. I made a mistake.

There was some confusion that led to an oversight that led to the mistake, all on my part. My shrink increased my daily antidepressant dosage to 400 mg. Talking about how he’d send in a new prescription, he explained that I’d take two pills in the morning, and two in the afternoon. Either I mixed up parts of the information, or I just altogether missed the part about the prescription strength being different. I went home and took another pill, adding to the one I’d taken a few hours earlier.

Later that day, I took two more for my newly increased afternoon dose, instead of the one pill I’d normally take in the afternoon.

Two to three hours after that, I wasn’t feeling too well. The discomfort was vague and nondescript at first, so I figured, just ignore it… but once it started, I felt increasingly worse, and pretty rapidly. I remember trying to work and being unable to focus. I remember the inside of my head feeling like pins and needles, the same physical sensation you get when your foot falls asleep. There was nothing I could do to alleviate it, and the sensation didn’t dissipate the way it does when it happens to your foot. At the same time, my head felt like it was being constricted from the outside, like there was a band around my skull being pulled tight.

Then it was evening, and the pins and needles sensation inside my head worsened. My heart raced, which was further disconcerting. I felt strangely out of control under my skin. I couldn’t think. Still, I tried to ignore it all. I called Mom at the usual time, but I had trouble focusing on what she was saying, and when I tried to talk, I felt like I was underwater. Everything was a struggle. My head was a maddening ball of tingling, stinging little points, and I felt like I was lost in the middle of it. My mouth was dry. I did have the mental wherewithal to suppose that I was having a reaction to the increased dosage of my antidepressant. But I only took four pills, I thought. That’s what he prescribed, and it’s not enough to kill me.

I remember trying to pay attention to my breathing, and I remember taking my anti-anxiety medication with a big glass of water. Then I was waking up. I woke up to my alarm, which I’d apparently set. I felt fine! I had no recollection of going to sleep, but I remembered how I’d felt before that. I went to get my medication, and that was when I checked the label and saw that the pills in my current prescription were 150 mg, not 100 mg. It was the new prescription that would be 100 mg! Those were the ones I’d take two of twice a day.

This was me when Armageddon was happening inside my head, only it’s not, because that happened a couple of weeks ago, and this picture was taken in the middle of the night last night. So this is a reenactment of the inside of my head from a couple of weeks before. But at least there’s candlelight.

In this most inopportune moment of airheadedness, I jumped from 300 mg to 600 mg when I was told to increase to 400 mg. I took four 150 mg pills in a 12-hour period because I neglected to read the label to verify the prescription strength (the irony of this being that I diligently read the labels on everything else I consider for consumption), and I did it suddenly, which I now know you’re not supposed to do… any changes made to psych drug dosages should be made gradually. In the case of my particular drug, making abrupt increases can cause seizures, so I’m lucky that this didn’t happen. I’m lucky that the overdose was mild, and I only felt like my brain was scrambled until I fell asleep. I was able to wake up in a normal state, go to work, and function well, as if nothing had happened.

Somehow, Callaghan didn’t notice anything unusual about me or my behavior that evening. He only knew something was wrong because I told him that I wasn’t feeling well. Apparently, I talked about calling my shrink the next day to tell him that the new dosage wasn’t working out for me, which I never did… because, of course, once I realized my mistake, I fixed it. I went back down to 300 mg, then increased in increments over the next two weeks. I’ve been taking the prescribed 400 mg per day for a few days now, and all has been well. I haven’t had any further issues.

My point is that anyone can make this kind of mistake.

To translate my experience into something that might be useful to someone, I just want to throw out a reminder that prescription drugs are a serious matter, no matter what they are. It’s always better to err on the side of caution. It’s always better to double-check the details of our medications, to educate ourselves about what we’re taking and how we’re taking it, and to be aware of any drug interaction risks, including mixing medication(s) with alcohol. Depending on the drug, the individual, and external factors, human error plus one glass of wine could be deadly; it’s safest to avoid alcohol entirely when taking psych meds or pain meds (especially the opioids – the narcotics).

Just one oversight could result in a terrible, potentially irreparable circumstance. In some cases, it doesn’t take much. It would be horrible to accidentally die and leave people shaking their heads, wondering where you went wrong, or where they went wrong, or where your parents went wrong… right? Prescription drug-related tragedies can be avoided. It never hurts to be over-cautious.

Blustery weather and popcorn don’t mix.

October 14, 2014That Asian-Looking Chick Leave a comment

You know that moment you’re sitting outside with a baggie of popcorn, eating it on autopilot, pinching clusters of popcorn from the bag, tilting your head back and dropping the popcorn into your open mouth… and one of those times, when the popcorn is in mid-air between your fingers and your mouth, a gust of wind suddenly whips through and blows the popcorn off-course? And the next thing you know, there’s popcorn in your hair because the wind also blew that everywhere, and then, right at that moment, some people stroll around the corner to find you frantically trying to finger-comb the popcorn out of your hair, and when you realize you’re being watched, you realize you probably look like that gorilla in the zoo you’d observed picking things out of his fur and eating them?

So do I.

But I still ate it all.

“Poor Baby… you’re like a gorilla in the fog,” said Callaghan when I relayed the story to him. Eh. Fog, mist, whatever, it’s all the same when you’re wearing your snacks in your hair.

So, that was yesterday. This mini-edition of Embarrassing Story Tuesday was brought to you by Monday.

La Fin.

Let’s Talk about Texts.

October 7, 2014That Asian-Looking Chick Leave a comment

It’s likely that many college towns in the States have one thing in common: herds of bicyclists under the impression that the normal rules of death don’t apply to them, protected by a force field that deflects danger, an invisible shield under which they can do any number of things at zero risk.

I’m thinking of the guy we often see around downtown Tempe, riding his bike, holding an umbrella – open, over his head! – and texting. No hands on the bike as he wobbles slowly along in oblivion. But hey… at least his umbrella’s protecting him from the harmful rays of the sun! He’s a comical sight, but he’s a disaster waiting to happen, and he makes me nervous. We call him the Umbrella Guy.

People do funny things while operating their various modes of personal transportation. I once saw a woman knitting while driving, and I knew someone who admitted to polishing her toenails while driving. I’ve seen people eating breakfast, drinking coffee and reading newspapers spread out over the steering wheel – on the freeway, no less. During one of several Defensive Driving courses I’d taken (I have a history of lead foot and was caught on camera several times – though one of those was an actual speed trap), the instructor cited a statistic saying that the documented “number one cause” of inattention-related accidents on the road is “(gender) men who are (activity) eating.” Surprise! Not people falling asleep. Not women putting on makeup. Men, eating. The image accompanying that part of the presentation showed a guy behind the wheel holding a big, messy burger in one hand and fries in the other, with a drink between his thighs.

That was something like six-seven years ago, and I’d bet the statistics are different now. I’d bet the number one cause of inattention-related road accidents now is texting, and it’s gender-irrelevant. Every day, I see people all over the place walking across streets, cycling, skateboarding and driving while texting, and I’m surprised that there aren’t more casualties.

Not that I’m above anyone for my own texting behavior, mind you. I sometimes text while walking, and it does happen every once and a while that there’s a street to cross while I’m doing it, though I try to be aware and keep it at a minimum. The biggest hazard I encounter while texting is more to my pride than to my person. I’m that texter who, due to my own carelessness, sends text messages to the wrong people… and this is how we arrive at Embarrassing Story Tuesday. It’s been a while!

Back in May, I helped to coordinate an academic competition at an event showcasing the work of students in our department. During the competition, Callaghan was en route from central Phoenix, contacting me periodically to tell me where he was so I could advise him on where to go, where to park, etc. (This was during commencement, and it was a clusterf*ck all around the campus.) Meanwhile, our faculty coordinator for the competition, who was sitting in the back of the large room – I was at the front of the room – texted me regarding something technical, and with my attention fragmented in the confusion of keeping up with the competitors and the judges and the score sheets and incoming texts and calls from Callaghan, whose goal was to let me know when he’d arrived so I could point him in the right direction, I accidentally sent some texts meant for Callaghan to the professor.

Because Callaghan called, and I couldn’t answer. Because the last text I’d sent was to the professor, and I forgot to switch back to my text exchange with Callaghan before texting him. I was beyond mortified when I saw that I’d sent the messages to the professor, who, incidentally, was the assistant director of my department at the time. I called him “Baby,” and I didn’t realize my gaffe until he sneezed and I went to text “bless you” to him.

I wanted to crawl under the table, I was so embarrassed. Moral of the story: it’s not always a good idea to do personal things while working in certain fast-paced, chaotic situations, even if it’s just trying to communicate logistical information to family members.

On that note, I’m off to get ready for work. Have a great Tuesday, All!

Making my entrance again with my usual flair. (Yes, I’m a clown.)

July 22, 2014That Asian-Looking Chick Leave a comment

I didn’t want to start this post with “Welcome to Embarrassing Confessions Tuesday” because I believe I’ve already started at least one post with those words, which gives you an idea of how often I land myself in embarrassing situations. Anyway. If you’ve been here a while (and even if you haven’t), you might be wondering what happened this time, so let’s dive right in, shall we?

I spent the weekend indoors with a head cold, instead of going out to listen to music (as planned) and hanging out with our friends who are visiting from France (also as planned). Good thing our visitors stayed in a hotel! I opted out of their activities because I needed to rest, and, moreover, I didn’t want to get anyone sick.

On Saturday, Callaghan took them for a trek over to the local ghost town, the Superstition Mountains and the cursed house over there that I used to own and inhabit (that might be a story for another time). Sunday’s plan was to leave early in the morning to go up north and explore Sedona and the Grand Canyon. Our friends were to come to our place in their rental car to pick up Callaghan.

When the alarm went off at 6:30am Sunday, I woke up momentarily, closed my eyes, and opened them again just minutes later, it seemed. Hearing Callaghan muttering to himself in French off in the distance, I called out to him, wanting to know what was wrong. No response. I listened and heard more muttering, though I couldn’t make out any words. I thought he sounded agitated, but maybe my brain superimposed that state of mind over his verbal stream, since the only time he talks to himself is when he’s pissed off. There were other noises, too… a slamming door, things getting thrown around. All the noise woke me up, and I don’t wake up easily! Something must be really wrong, I thought. I called out again, and then a third time. When he still didn’t answer, I got out of bed and went to see what was happening.

Folks, it was not my fault. It was very early, I wasn’t fully awake, I was sick, and I didn’t hear any other voices but Callaghan’s. I stumbled into the living room, which was atypically bright with the overhead light that we rarely use.

And everyone was there.

You know that classic bad dream where you’re standing in your underwear with a bunch of people staring at you? YEAH, THAT HAPPENED. Christophe, Sandrine and their nine-year-old daughter were right there in the middle of our small apartment living room. Christophe was less than three feet away from me. I was wearing panties and nothing else.

There was that painfully suspended moment of eye-popping shock on everyone’s face when we all realized that I was pretty much naked, you know, that longest moment ever where it’s registering that someone in the room is in their underwear… and then I shrieked and apologized at the same time that they gasped and apologized and everyone was awkwardly apologizing as I turned and ran back into the bedroom, Callaghan close behind me. I jumped into the bed and pulled the sheet over my face. I was abjectly mortified. I’d walked into a room full of people wearing only panties! I couldn’t believe it.

Callaghan held me through the covers and said, “Baby! I’m so sorry! I thought you knew they were here!”

He thought I knew? HOW WAS I SUPPOSED TO KNOW? I’d been asleep! When they came to pick him up the previous morning, they didn’t come up to the apartment… he went down to meet them! How was I supposed to know that this time, they were all coming up? How was I supposed to know ANYTHING when I was half-asleep, groggy and disoriented with my head blown up with a cold virus? My brain wasn’t even on yet, much less alert with any clairvoyant knowledge of this sort!

After he apologized (so many apologies all around!) and reassured me, he left me in the bed, saying he’d come back to kiss me good-bye before they left. But in my mind, the only course of action I could take – the only way to remedy the situation and get on top of my mortification – was to go back out there, because facing fire, humiliation, whatever head-on is how I do (to borrow an expression from zfrank1). I was NOT going to lie under the covers and hide. I had to recover my dignity.

So I got out of bed, put on my short gray robe, and marched back out to the living-room, throwing my arms out wide for dramatic effect and saying loudly, “LET’S TRY THIS AGAIN! BONJOUR!” and we all laughed. It was comic relief, and it was effective.

And that’s how you make an entrance after your first entrance is an epic, humiliating FAIL.

But this was how I felt inside, beneath the false cheer:

Stabby.

When the gang got back that night and we all went out to dinner, we engaged in normal conversation as if nothing had happened. But I knew and still know that they know what I look like naked, and that makes me feel, well, naked.

So, what can we learn from this?

–If there’s even a remote possibility that people are coming over at the crack of dawn on a Sunday morning, don’t go to bed naked (or just in your undies).

–If you call out for your partner and get no response, don’t go out there… just call louder, repeatedly.

–If you must sleep in only your undies, at least wear cute ones, because you never know who is going to see them. Fortunately, mine were reasonably cute. I was wearing a Barely There CustomFlex Fit Bikini in the pale blue zebra stripe, and I must say, that was a fortunate circumstance. I wasn’t wearing a thong (thank goodness). I wasn’t wearing granny panties (I don’t own any, anyway). The bikini was the ideal model of underwear to have on if I had to get caught wearing nothing else.

I hope that reading posts like this makes you feel less alone in your own embarrassing moments!

As for me, I’m still sick, but the cold’s progressing toward the end – it’s dropped a little lower and now I’m coughing a lot, as in, constantly. It should be out of my system soon!

My Double Phobia Dilemma

June 10, 2014That Asian-Looking Chick 2 Comments

Good morning, and welcome to Embarrassing Confessions Tuesday on my blog. (Looking through some recent posts, I noticed that such topics are starting to become de rigueur here.)

Snippet of a mock interview:

Interviewer: You went to war, and you were ambushed. Would you say that was the bravest thing you ever did?

Me: No. The bravest thing I ever did was watch Wall-E.

I have two phobias: claustrophobia and roach phobia. Guess which one is more debilitating?

I’m petrified of roaches. I can’t even look at a picture of one without having a physical reaction. When I started writing this, I thought about checking online for an officially recognized medical term for roach phobia, but I couldn’t because I was afraid that the search would pull up roach images, and my eyes do not need to be assaulted by roach images popping up all over my screen. That’s why I’m going to continue calling it “roach phobia,” and that’s also why I took a picture of Ramsey for this post:

Ramsey, the unroachiest thing I could find to photograph for this post.

Scorpions, snakes, spiders, bees and other flying, stinging critters? They don’t bother me. No fear. Tall, rough-looking transient guy wanders off the street past the inattentive front desk person and waltzes into the women’s locker room at the gym? I’m on my feet, furious, in his face, ordering him out. No fear. A sewer roach? Sends me screaming into the hills. Sheer, unadulterated terror.

Dead roaches freak me out almost as much as live ones. The sight of an upside-down roach carcass makes me cringe, hyperventilate and feel phantom sensations of little roach feet skittering up my ankles.

Let’s touch on my other phobia for a second. Since I started working at my job, I’ve more or less conquered my fear of elevators (a sub-phobia of my claustrophobia), because the elevator is the only way up to my department. Once you’re up there, you can use any of several hidden staircases to descend… but going up, the elevator’s your only ticket.

I’m happy to report that I’m now able to ride an elevator without clinging like a fool to other people in there with me (I have been known to fasten myself to strangers in elevators, barnacle-like), but I wouldn’t say that I’m comfortable in elevators. They still make me nervous, and I still don’t trust them. Throw in the fact that I enjoy the exercise provided by stairs, and obviously, I prefer taking the stairs whenever possible.

My point, you ask?

For several weeks, I’d been in the habit of exiting my office building using the hidden stairs… until last week, when I noticed, in the stairwell, on the floor right in front of the door going out to the street, a rather large, dead roach. On its back. Legs in the air. A roach carcass so old, it’s turning pale (maybe from dust) and somewhat blurry around the edges. Let me repeat: In the stairwell. In front of the door. The door that you have to go through in order to exit.

So NOW, every day when it’s time to leave work, I ask myself:

Elevator or dead roach?

And I have to decide. There’s no other way out of the building. Do I take the elevator down every day, increasing my chances of getting stuck? Or do I step over a large dead roach every day (which necessitates looking at it, which is excruciating) as I exit the stairwell? And is it just me with these kinds of ridiculous dilemmas?

Don’t get me wrong – I’m all about self-improvement. While I’ve made tremendous progress with my elevator phobia, the farthest I’d gotten with my fear of roaches was watching Wall-E, and I was proud of it… hella proud of myself, in fact, for getting on top of my visceral reaction to the, um, casting of that movie. It doesn’t matter that it was animation and the roach was widely considered to be “cute.” A roach is a roach, and there’s no such thing as a cute roach. When the roach appeared, obviously a main character who would endure the entire film, I resolved to sit there and watch the entire movie, anyway. Not only did I manage that, but I even ended up finding it brilliant and actually really enjoying it! This was truly a measure of progress for me, I’ll have you know.

After I noticed the dead roach in the stairwell at work, I continued taking the stairs down for the next few days, but I soon decided that the elevator was the lesser of two evils. If something happens and I get trapped in the elevator, chances are high that I’d be rescued in good time. But looking at a roach every day so I can step over it? No, thank you.

Now, the absolute worst thing that could happen would be getting trapped in the elevator with a roach.

Excuse me while I go find some wood to knock.

1:30AM Post. File under “I’m Even a Bigger Dork than I’d Thought.”

May 13, 2014May 13, 2014That Asian-Looking Chick 2 Comments

Hi. You must be here because you wish to read about last week’s Fiasco of the Week, because you know there was one.

This one involved a stench hovering like a putrid cloud near the corner of our bedroom, near my side of the bed. I noticed it as I was falling asleep one night early in the week. It was a distinctively organic smell, so I just assumed that either Ronnie James or Nounours had had an accident or sprayed, neither of which they’d ever done (since we’ve had them, anyway), but it wouldn’t have been surprising; their demeanors had been somewhat off-kilter due to recent, albeit temporary, changes in their routine. You know how cats are about their routines.

We sniffed all around the corner of the bed, trying to identify the odor’s exact location and source – up near my pillow, where it seemed to be the strongest. We stripped the bed of its sheets, mattress cover, pillow cases, bedspread… and threw the whole shebang in the wash. We cleaned the bed’s headboard and side planks. We pulled the bed away from the wall and sprayed pet odor neutralizing carpet cleaner on the carpet, though there was no stain to be seen. Just to be sure, we scrubbed the pristine brick wall behind the bed with soap and warm water, and then went over it again with a “green” all-purpose cleaner.

The smell didn’t go away. In fact, over the next few days, it worsened.

We weren’t angry with Nounours and The Wrah-Wrah, because we understand How Kitties Are. But by Wednesday evening, I became convinced that the kitties weren’t the culprits, after all. The odor seemed to be coming from something that had died. It had that sweet/sharp cloying dead smell. We performed another exhaustive search and found nothing.

On Thursday night, I stood near the bed, utterly perplexed. We’d done absolutely everything, but the odor was stronger than ever! I couldn’t bear the idea of sleeping with my nose in the ghastly fumes another night. There was only one thing left to do. It was drastic, but it had to be done. Obviously, the odor was either coming from the carpet or the wall, and it was being very stubborn. I would have to outsmart it. I would have to move the bed to the opposite wall.

Moving the bed entailed the rearrangement of pretty much all the furniture in the room, which I did by myself, because Callaghan and Chantal had gone out to Rawhide and elsewhere.

Honestly, though, I enjoyed the chance to get more exercise into my day. Because our queen-size bed is a sleigh bed, it’s heavy and ungainly, and I had to get all the other furniture out of the way before I could re-position it. I moved out the chest of drawers, the two night-tables, the long under-the-window table (aka the kitty window seat), my desk and chair, the corner shelving thing (no idea what it’s called), the vanity-less vanity stool (the vanity itself is outside on the balcony, having been re-purposed as a table for plants) and the clothes hamper. I shoved it all into the hallway, the bathroom, Callaghan’s studio and the main room, along with the objects that had been on the floor and on the furniture surfaces. Then I worked on moving the bed, which had to be turned around 180 degrees. I did some dragging and pulling, but I mostly sat on the floor, planted my feet on the bed and used it as a leg press. Great work-out! Once the bed was situated in its new spot, I could move all the furniture and stuff back in.

In the end, I’d basically flipped the room around, putting the bed and one of the night-tables against the wall opposite from where they used to be, and the chest of drawers, my desk and chair, the other night-table (there’s no room for a table on both sides of the bed now that the bed is against the wall with the door) and the vanity stool on the long wall where the bed had been. I returned the long, low table to its spot under the window, so the kitties could keep their window seat… it’s a tight squeeze getting around that side of the bed, but it works. I folded the corner shelving thing, leaning it up against the wall, since there’s no longer an available corner for it.

I stood back in the doorway to examine the new configuration, and I liked it. The room still looked good, and the mysterious awful odor would no longer be next to my head at night. Plus, I’d gotten an amazing impromptu work-out while I was at it. I’d worked quickly for a full hour, taking no breaks, pushing, pulling and carrying furniture, removing the heavy drawers from the dresser and hauling them out and back in, holding each one high up in front of me to get around stuff piled up in the hallway. I’d maneuvered the cumbersome queen-size sleigh bed around to the opposite wall, and moved everything else back in. I’d vacuumed along the way, working up a sweat and getting my heart-rate up (great cardio-respiratory work-out in addition to strength-training)!

I must admit, it was gratifying to discover the extent of the progress I’d made in regaining my strength and endurance since dedicating myself at the gym in Body Combat and Boot Camp classes (and the occasional hour on the treadmill) over the last few months. I was happy to feel more like my old self again while making strenuous physical effort. My fitness levels are getting back up to where they were before I moved to France – check! The bed was no longer against the wall with the horrid odor – check!

I felt quite satisfied and pleased with myself.

I went into the kitchen to wash my hands before going around the apartment to collect the random objects that belonged in the bedroom, and… the dead smell was in the kitchen. It hadn’t been there before.

It hit me the second I got there. I stood still and inhaled the offensive odor as my disbelieving eyes followed it to the counter by the sink. The flowers that Callaghan had given me 10 days ago were sitting there where I’d placed them before moving the bedroom furniture.

The dead flowers. The flowers that I’d set on my night-table back when they were fresh… the night-table next to my side of the bed. The flowers had expired, and they reeked. I cautiously bent my head to smell them. The dead flesh odor was unmistakable. There was no doubt about it. I’d found the source.

I couldn’t believe it. All along, the offending odor had come from a vase of dead flowers!

All I had to do was remove the flowers.

But I do like the new room arrangement, and so does Callaghan (who is still laughing at me for this, by the way). I’m enjoying my new office corner even more than my previous one, as well.

My new office corner in the bedroom!

And I got in a great work-out.

And the room is more in keeping with good feng shui principles now that our feet aren’t facing the open doorway while we’re lying in bed.

And in the end, I did manage to get rid of the odor.

And I learned to be more mindful of flowers that have died and require disposal!

I put the noxious flowers out on the balcony so I could present my discovery to Callaghan when he got home. As Johnny Ringo (Tombstone) would remark in perfectly bad taste, “Smells like someone died.”

They were lovely when they were alive, though.

I’m Getting My Hair Cut.

April 25, 2014That Asian-Looking Chick Leave a comment

(Sub-title: A Hair Elastic is a Good Thing to Have at a Lunch with a Group of People.)

(Sub-title, la deuxième: File Under “Mortifying Incidents of the Sort You Know Could ONLY Happen to You.”)

You know that special type of embarrassment you get to experience when you’re dining out with people from your work, and you’re talking to your boss (who’s sitting directly across from you), and in between bites, your response to his question is interrupted by the sudden appearance of a hair in your mouth? Your own hair, which is below-the-shoulders long? And your first two or three attempts at removing it fail, and the ensuing hair-capturing ordeal unfolds into a drama that overtakes the conversation as you repeatedly grab at the side of your half-open mouth between words, since each time you try to nonchalantly continue your sentence, you realize it’s still there? And when you finally succeed at pinching it between your forefinger and thumb, you start pulling it out to discover, to your horror and disbelief, that it’s all tangled up in the food that was still in your mouth, so the hair is actually resisting removal… forcing you to yank on it? And by the time you manage to extract the hair from your mouth – drawing it out slowly and carefully in all its long splendor (surely it was the very longest hair on your head that somehow got in the way of the food in your chopsticks) – your poor boss and the co-worker sitting next to you are awkwardly looking around everywhere but at you, including at the ceiling, probably because they’re simultaneously grossed out and painfully embarrassed on your behalf? Long after their initial thought of, Oh! OH, well, um, this will pass evolved into the conundrum of oh DEAR, what’s the proper etiquette for this situation? Should I act like I don’t see what’s going on? as your struggles seemed to never cease?

Well, I sympathize with you. It happened to me on Wednesday.

The wayward hair originated from this.

So, yeah, the expression “foot in mouth” has a new counterpart for a different kind of embarrassing conversation kerfuffle: “hair in mouth” (while eating in a restaurant with people from work).

At least I could laugh when I described the scenario to Callaghan a few hours later. He laughed, too.

“Haha! That would NEVER happen to me,” gloated my bald husband.

“You’d better hope it never happens to you. If it did, it would be someone else’s hair,” I said.

It was almost as funny as the Great Toilet Paper Incident of 1999, which happened while I was actually at work at the University Registrar’s Office. I’m not ready to share that one just yet.

In all seriousness, though, I really am going to have my hair cut an inch or two, just up to my shoulders, I think. I’d been going back and forth on this for the last few weeks, and then this incident happened, and it kind of made up my mind for me. Funny how that happens!