Archive for the 'Vanity' Category

It gets worse

Published at May 15, 2011 in Health and Vanity. 2 Comments

So, the dehydration? Has fucked up my liver.

I was doing okay until Thursday, when I woke up at 4 am in agony.  I felt nauseous and was doubled over in pain; though I got to the brink of vomiting, nothing came out.  I had to take Junebug to the vet that morning, and had several meetings lined up, so I had to go into work.  But I felt completely poleaxed.  It wasn’t just that I was in pain and nauseous; I wasn’t really functioning mentally.  But I got through the morning by clutching a bottle of sports drink (fortunately, I’d just bought some hydration/electrolyte tablets at the running store, and they helped immensely) and left early to go to my doctor.

Which I have, now.  A doctor.  Because I have insurance.

Anyway, my doctor was actually on vacation, so I got his cranky partner, who seemed skeptical that I had identified my internal organs correctly (he asked me to show him where my kidneys were when I said my kidneys hurt, and didn’t seem to take my self-diagnosis of liver pain seriously until he palpated me and discovered that one edge of my liver was unusually firm.  He sent me off to the lab to get some blood drawn and advised me to keep hydrating and make sure I ate.  The next day, he called me with the results: my kidneys, urine, salts and potassium were all fine, but my liver enzymes were elevated.  I should come in to the lab again for a liver panel, and the ultrasound people would be calling me for an appointment, after which I should go see my doctor again.

My brother, who’s a fire-rescue EMT, sees a lot of dehydration on his crews, especially during wildfire season.  He tells me this is pretty typical, given the beating my system just took with the dehydration, and will pass.  I just need to rest, keep taking in fluids, and eat whether I want to or not.

And in the meantime, I can’t exercise.  Which means no half-marathon next Saturday.  I’m still picking up my t-shirt.

How do you know?

Published at April 24, 2011 in Cali and Vanity. 9 Comments

Not “if he’s the one,” but how do you know when you’ve given a place enough of a chance and you still don’t want to live there?

I’ll put it out there: I’m homesick for New York.  Really, really homesick.  I miss the noise, and the energy, and the subway, and the LIFE.  I miss having stuff to do within easy reach at all hours.   I miss culture. I miss neighbors who can live with a certain amount of noise without running to the landlord to complain; if they did have a problem, they let you know directly.  I miss not feeling like I’m missing out because I don’t own a car.  I miss not having tweakers on every other corner.  I miss having a peer group of single people in their 40s without kids.  I miss not feeling overdressed when I wear a dress and tights to work.  I miss seeing people out on the streets.  I miss restaurants that stay open past 9 pm. I miss accessible movie theaters. I miss wearing red.

I’m having a hard time adjusting to my new city, if that’s not obvious.  I’m struggling with building any kind of a social life.  I don’t have friends or family here (the closest relative is more than 2 hours away), I’m single, no kids, and I don’t have any sort of obvious community, like my boss (who’s gay) did when he came here.   There are colleges here, but it’s not a college town that has late-night cafes and bookstores and events.  Even in the happening part of town, shops and gyms close at 7, restaurants at 9.  Bars stay open later, but I don’t drink anymore, and even if I did, I wouldn’t be hanging out by myself at a bar.  The buses aren’t that frequent, are expensive (no free transfers) and stop at 9 as well.  I do yoga, but while I’ve gotten friendly with several people there, I haven’t yet made friends.  I had to stop wearing red because I apparently work in Crips territory.

And while my job is going great, it’s been very difficult to build any kind of social life there.  The library is full of cliques, and to the extent I’ve managed to connect with people, it’s been limited because either they have families and kids or — as in the case of my boss and the writing faculty, of which I am at least nominally a part — I’ve been discounted as a social person because I don’t drink.  So nobody even thinks to ask me to things that have anything to do with alcohol.  And you can’t exactly invite yourself along to things if no one tells you about them in the first place.

I’ve tried to get people to go to lunch with me, but they’re always too busy, or they say they will and then they just forget to put it on their calendars.  But they’ll go with each other, all the time, and they socialize after work.  It’s probably time to stop trying.

I’m beginning to feel like Col. Brandon from Sense & Sensibility: the kind of person that everyone thinks well of, but no one remembers to talk to.

It’s that time of year again

Published at January 2, 2011 in Domesticity, Health, Home improvement, Money, Library stuff, Sports, Clotheshorsery, Vanity, Frivolity, Food, work work work and Travel. 5 Comments

Time for resolutions I won’t keep!

I’m going to try something different this year and set some concrete goals that will be easier to reach than something vague like “Eat better.”  Many of these goals are craft-related, since I inherited my mother’s propensity for starting projects and not finishing them.

1. Speaking of Mom and projects she never finished, finish the sweater she started knitting for me, oh, ten years ago (she died just over eight years ago).  Finishing this sweater was the reason I took knitting lessons in the first place, but I kept putting the bag with the unfinished sweater aside, or in a closet.  Part of that was due to it being kind of painful to look at the thing after she died, part of it was that I gained a lot of weight after she died and wasn’t going to fit in the sweater even if I did finish it.  But now I can look at the thing without getting teary, and I’ve lost enough weight over the years that I can wear it.  Plus, it’s motherfucking cold in my apartment and I NEED a big fuzzy sweater.  I’ve now got the skills to do it, too.

2.  Quilting projects: I’m making a quilt for my sister, and I also want to finish a quilt that my great-grandmother pieced and never finished, both because it would be a great way to honor Babushka and also because of the aforementioned state of motherfucking cold.

3. Home decorating: I need to locate my stud finder, so I can hang the pictures I already have, and then I need to go out and get my other pictures framed and hung.  I have a desk to paint, chairs to paint and re-cover, and at some point I should get a few more chairs and a vase or two.  Plus mirrors.  I also need a filing cabinet, badly.  This may not be a year in which I do anything with my bedroom, but I’m okay with that for now since I don’t really have a vision for it like I do with the rest of the place.

4. Sports: I haven’t lifted weights since last July, when I fell on the sidewalk and injured my shoulder, and then re-injured it in September.  I’ve decided to go a slightly different direction, doing a combination of yoga, running, and eventually some scaled-back weightlifting.  Running has gone very well; unlike in years past, I seem to have resolved some of the issues with my knees so that I’m not wearing my patella in some strange place after only a few weeks of the C25K plan.  I’m on Week 7 now (actually for the second time — I’d reached it in September, right before my second fall, which also rolled my ankle) and so far, so good.  My knee’s a little tender, but the exercise is actually doing it good.  I’d like to do a half-marathon and marathon this year, using the Jeff Galloway run/walk program.  Brooklyn Half-Marathon is in May, with the particular day yet to be announced, and I’ve signed up for the lottery for the NYC Marathon.  I’m also planning on doing the Bay to Breakers 12K in San Francisco in May, which will probably be the week before the Brooklyn Half.  If I don’t get into the NYC Marathon, I’m going to try for Chicago or Marine Corps.  All of these will be not only goals in and of themselves, but also opportunities for travel to places where friends and/or family are.

5. Food: I’m back to being mostly vegan, which is pretty easy since it’s a little hard for me to eat out much here if I have to walk everywhere I go; I also work in a place where the lunch options are very very limited.  I’ve got access to a really great food co-op and live around the corner from a grocery store, so I can easily get good, fresh ingredients and do a lot of cooking.  I’ve got a freezer packed full of individually-portioned meals I can just grab and go, and I’m working hard on using my cookbooks for more than just the old standbys.  My big goal this year is to stop eating mindlessly and to pay attention to and enjoy what I eat.  I’ve also made a special effort to clean off the dining room table, now that I have a dining room, and to have dinner AT my table with napkins and placemat and candles.  Bonus: the dining room is the only room that really gets heat.

6. Appearance: I managed to weed a lot of crap out of my wardrobe just before I moved, so I do wear a lot of what I have.  But I’m not wearing all of it, so I need to figure out why not and make any necessary adjustments.  For example, if I’m not wearing something because it doesn’t fit, I can make it fit or get rid of it; if I’m not wearing something because I don’t really like it after all, it has to go.  It *is* pretty nice having a lot of closet space free.  I also want to figure out this year what my style is, so that I can have some kind of consistent look.

7. Financial: I’ve started using Mint to track my money, and my new job has TIAA-CREF, so I’ve gotten started on a retirement plan (matching doesn’t happen until I’ve been employed a year).  I’ve identified several areas where I spend disproportionate amounts of money, so I can work on cutting that back. I’m also saving for a car; I plan on spending less than $2500 for a mid-90s Honda or similar that will run for a while.   Just like with the eating out, living here has curtailed my spending because I’m not passing stores and places to spend money all the time.  I’m also not reading like I used to, so my book habit is not being fed. My book habit really is shameful; I’m a librarian, after all, and I should be borrowing books rather than buying them.  And I should be selling off what I have; I see Amazon keeps asking me if I’d like to sell some of the books I’ve bought through them, so I may just take them up on that.

8. Personal: I’m still not into the idea of dating, but I want to make some friends here outside of work.  The yoga studio I attend seems to be a good place to meet people, especially since you’re asked to introduce yourself to the people on adjoining mats before class starts.  I’m also a member of the food co-op, and that seems like a good way to meet people as well; working there is optional, so I plan on signing up soon.  There are also extension classes to take and the local running shop organizes group runs every week, which will help with my half/marathon training and get me out a bit.  I’m also planning on taking advantage of the first paid time off I’ve had in about 10 years to do some travel, including a horsepacking trip through backcountry out here as part of the extension classes.

9. Professional: I’ll start teaching legal skills in the fall, which will give me some great experience.  I’ve also committed to writing a couple of articles, I’m involved with some committees and caucuses in my professional association, and I also have opportunities to do some outside work for pay and recognition.  I’m doing all this partly because I’m positioning myself for a return to New York or a move to another big city for my next job, and partly because I really do like my new career.  I made a good choice.

Culture shock

Published at October 7, 2010 in Vanity. 4 Comments

Lord, everything in this town shuts down at 9.

Not in Kansas New York anymore, are we, Toto?

I’ll give it three years, and then I’m looking for work in New York or Chicago.  At least the houses in my neighborhood are pretty little Craftsman bungalows, and the weather’s really nice.

Almost there

Published at September 29, 2010 in Kitties, Life with pets, Vanity and Travel. 4 Comments

Just 185 miles to go until we reach my new hometown.   Won’t be able to get into my new apartment until Friday morning, so we’ll be waiting at the current hotel until nearly checkout time, then taking our time to reach the new town and checking in to another hotel.  I’ve picked one that will allow me to get on and off the highway easily, and won’t require me to take very many local streets to get to the apartment (which is pretty close to the highway).

Zuzu has a moment every day when she suddenly realizes she’s in a cage and starts trying to get out, meowing loudly the whole time.  I call it her “Cattica! Cattica!” moment.  And then she goes to sleep.

Never try to collect on a bet until the game’s over

Published at September 11, 2010 in work work work, Vanity and Travel. 2 Comments

I was out on a househunting trip this week to my new town — found a gorgeous, huge vintage place with three exposures, a garage, laundry, fireplace (working!), wood floors, formal dining room, built-in china cabinet and linen cabinet, etc., etc., etc., all in a really great neighborhood about two miles from work for almost $500 less than I pay for my studio in the worst part of a good neighborhood in Brooklyn, cut off by the expressway and a real haul from the subway.

I also visited the library and shot the shit with my new coworkers.  Apparently, they’ve had a betting pool on whether I’d break down and get a car.  When I mentioned I was considering it, the guy who’d bet that I would started acting like he’d won.

Except the car’s not bought yet, and after driving around town for a couple of days, I’m not entirely sure I really do need one.  I have laundry right in my apartment, and there’s a big Safeway two blocks away; I walk farther to the grocery store now.  There are bike lanes all over, and most of the nightlife is about 12 blocks right down the street from where I’ll be living, so very easy to walk (and reasonably safe as well).  There are car rental places right downtown, and lots of bike and motorcycle/scooter parking areas.  Even the rain isn’t that bad; it rained while I was there, and my boss* said it was fairly typical of the winter rain — cold, but not very hard.  And then it doesn’t rain all summer.

To be honest, what I probably have been balking at is having a car loan, rather than having a car.  If I don’t buy one and save my money, I could get a good used car — and it’s dry in the west, so rust won’t be as big a factor in a used car as it is in the Northeast — and pay cash for it.

____

* I don’t think I’ve mentioned this, but I just love my new boss.  It certainly helps that he was recruiting me hard and has moved mountains to get my needs accommodated.  But everyone I spoke to during my interview volunteered that he was a great guy.  Even the people who were acting as my references told me so after speaking with him, and they’d never met him.  And I certainly saw that during this trip — he took me out to dinner and then drove me around trying to see if there were any houses for rent in his neighborhood, which is adorable.  I also love that when I met up with him for dinner, he had me meet him at a gay bar and introduced me to his friends.

Hunh.

Published at September 5, 2010 in Vanity. 4 Comments

I might actually wind up spending about the same to send my stuff via moving van as to drive a U-Haul.  That is, if I can get myself a car for little down.

I’m selling off or just abandoning a great deal of my furniture and clothes, which means I’ll pay fairly little with some of the major national moving companies who charge by weight (others wanted to charge me $3K and up, which is one reason I avoided using them).  But if my stuff comes in at less than 1000 or 2000 pounds,  I might be able to bring it in under $2K.  The van rental is $1500, and that doesn’t include gas or insurance, which will probably add $1000 to that.  And then there are movers to hire to help me load and unload.

I’m getting reimbursed for my allowable moving expenses, which is great, but I still have to upfront the money.   Fortunately, I’ll get a paycheck at the end of my first week at work, so I won’t have to white-knuckle it until my reimbursement check arrives.

The big thing I’m not happy about is the having to get a car thing.  But I have to bow to reality — I’m leaving New York, and that means I’m gonna need a car.  Now I just have to figure out which Honda to get, a Fit or an Element.

Well, hello there

Published at July 24, 2010 in Iron, Library stuff, Kitties, Health, New York Fugging City, work work work and Vanity. 0 Comments

Been some time since I dropped by this place.  I’m still alive.  I can’t even say I’ve been terribly busy lately, what with having graduated library school and gotten laid off sometime in May.  I *can* say that I’ve been wiped out by the heat and not really all that interested in writing.  I don’t even read many blogs anymore, just a handful, and a lot of them are design blogs.

I’ve spent the summer looking for a permanent library gig, and it’s going well so far.  I had nothing, nothing at all for months, but this month everything’s started happening.  I’ve got some local interviews, and some on the West Coast; any of them would require me to move from my current apartment, if not from New York, so I’ve started packing up. All things being equal, I’d rather not have to change cities and buy a car.  I like my life here.

From what I’ve been hearing from some of my references, the potential employers who’ve been checking up on me don’t seem to really understand what it is I’ve been doing for the past ten years since I jumped off the partnership track — even though I’ve told them in the interview, and on my resume, etc.  It’s like they don’t understand that you can practice law even if you’re not employed by a law firm as a full-time associate on a traditional path.  Well, at least a couple of them have now been educated by my references.  This won’t really be a concern when I go for the next job, because I’ll have a track record as a law librarian, which is something they’ll understand.

Personally?  I’ve been using my time off to focus on fitness.  I looked back over my logbook, which I started in January, and I haven’t really been going to the gym as often as I’d like to think I do.  A lot of that had to do with injury, but a lot of it was just mismanaged time — I’d get a late start to the day, and then didn’t want to start a workout at 8pm when I had to go to work in the morning.  But now I have not a whole lot else to do, since it’s been so hot that a lot of the outdoor stuff I’d like to do seems unappealing.  The gym, however, is air-conditioned (though the weight room’s unit’s been out).  I’ve also just — like, this week — started running again.  It’s going well so far, though I know from experience it’s not until week 5 or so on the Couch to 5K plan that things start really going haywire with my ITB.  My plan is to do each week twice, and hope that’s enough time for my body to adapt, and to foam-roll the living fuck out of my lower body.

Dating’s sort of not been happening.  I’ve gone on a couple, but reluctantly since I don’t know if I’ll be here in a month.  Nothing’s come of them, but they were pleasant enough ways to pass the time.

The pets are both bad and good.  They’re all currently in good health, but Sugarplum had cancer surgery in April and just wasn’t healing, and wasn’t healing, and wasn’t healing.  Every time it looked like her wound was closing, I’d go to check on it and there would be A GIANT HOLE IN MY CAT.  The vet even did a second surgery to clean up the edges, but it still wasn’t healing, and he started taking it personally.  Finally, they decided she has really poor circulation and needed to be treated as if she’s diabetic.  So she spent three weeks at the vet’s office in a sterile cage, getting compresses and wound care and mainlining antibiotics and — strangest of all — snuggling up to the staff.   Amazingly, when I picked her up, the giant hole was down to nothing, and she was indeed all cuddly, for about a week.  Then she became the crankypants I know and love.

Notes from a broad

Published at December 7, 2009 in Vanity. 0 Comments

Still here.  Things are busy.  I’ve got my final papers and presentations due, I’m back at work (at least for the time being), I’m still going to the gym when I’m not nursing an injury (I’ve managed to tweak my rotator cuff, my quad, my lower ab, and my hip all in the past two weeks), I’m kindasorta seeing someone (though that’s a barrel of neurotic monkeys).

Oh, and I had the swine flu!  It was less than epic.  I was disappointed, what with it being a global pandemic and all.

I was not expecting the odor

Published at October 16, 2009 in Aging gracefully or not, Health, Vanity, Travel and Uncategorized. 13 Comments

I just got back, as I said in the last post, from Montreal. The primary reason I went there was to get Lasik (Canada has more advanced technology than the US, and even when the FDA approves certain equipment, such as the particular laser I was treated with, the earlier approval means that Canadian eye surgeons have more experience with the equipment than their American counterparts. Plus, it’s cheaper. And it’s Montreal). I was tired of being extremely nearsighted, and what with the onset of reading glasses* and all, it was looking like I’d be in very expensive and unworkable progressive lenses before too long. Why not get the nearsightedness fixed, and then worry about the aging-related reading glasses as a single prescription?

So I biffed off up North, where the many public wi-fi networks refused to speak to my netbook. And after a few days of sightseeing and wonderful meals and lovely chocolat chaud, I went to the clinic for my surgery. The pre-op and post-op is being done locally, but I went to Montreal for the actual surgery.

I knew there would be Clockwork Orange eyelid clamps. I probably should have guessed that, yes, everyone makes the same Clockwork Orange joke when the clamps are put in. I knew there would be some “pressure,” though I hadn’t really been clear on what it was for (apparently, to make you go temporarily blind so you don’t see the blade that’s cutting the flap in your cornea) or how much it would hurt when my orbital bone was pushed on.

I did not, however, know that there was going to be an odor — specifically, the odor of burning hair. It was apparently just the laser burning some carbon in the air, not my eyeball getting vaporized. But disconcerting, nonetheless.

It was over in minutes. The first half-hour afterwards was just fine, if things were blurry and I had the world’s goofiest-looking eye shields on my face. Then the anaesthetic wore off, and the burning and itching and feeling of sand-in-the-eyes started. That lasted four hours or so, during which time I was instructed to rest but not sleep — as if I could fall asleep with my eyes burning like that — and to blink at least every five minutes to keep things lubricated. I got very familiar with the limitations of my hotel room, which featured not a separate bathroom, but a sink, shower stall and toilet closet right in the room. As a concept, not terribly objectionable — until you realize that the legroom in the toilet nook leaves a little something to be desired, and it’s not possible to both take the wide stance necessary to position yourself correctly AND pull your pants down. Others before me had similar issues, or at least that’s how I interpret the fact that the seat was forever popping out of place.

After four hours or so, things started feeling much better, but I had to leave the shields on nonetheless until the following morning. Whereupon I removed them and went back to the clinic for my first-day checkup. My vision was 20/15, which is right about where it should be, since they overcorrect due to the fact that as the eyes heal, they naturally settle out a little, so I should end up with 20/20. I had a little inflammation in one eye, so they had me use the antibiotic drops more frequently for the first two days; I also have dryness, which is normal, so I have drops for that as well.

I’m quite pleased.  Things are kind of foggy, I’ll need to use reading glasses for a few weeks until the overcorrection settles out, I have haloes at night, and my eyes are dry, but that’s all normal and should go away within a few days or weeks.   But for the first time since fourth grade, I can fucking SEE without glasses or contacts.  Yay!

____

* About those expensive progressive lenses that optometrist tried to push on me:  turns out I NEVER ACTUALLY NEEDED THEM AT ALL.  The doctor who did my pre-op for surgery figured that my contacts were overcorrecting my vision, which made reading a little difficult.  So he put me into weaker contacts, and that solved the reading problem while still enabling me to see distances.  Boy, am I glad I pushed back on those instead of spending almost $500 to solve a problem I didn’t even have.