a tasty brunch for all

This is the kind of spider that nightmares are made of. There were not one, but three, such spiders at our brunch date on the homestead yesterday morning (don't worry dear neighbor, it was far, far away from our dusty building).

We ate breakfast on the other side of the screened in porch from the venom trifecta. Jo tried to convince me that they were completely harmless, but really, when they're that large, boldly marked (poison!), and have a web that's at least 2 feet tall, it doesn't matter how many factoids you throw at me.

The other brunch-goers decided to lure an insect into the web of the largest spider (pictured everywhere in this post) while I went to the bathroom. I opened the porch door to find Jo standing in the yard holding a glass and waving a piece of cardboard around. There was cheering (by all but me) when she succeeded in whisking a honeybee into the web. The spider immediately swooped over and wrapped the bee in a thick husk of silk and returned to its perch in the middle of the web.

The peanut gallery was sufficiently repulsed, but they were sad that the show ended so quickly. What about the blood sucking?? We didn't have to wait very long before the she-dracula retrieved its victim and took it back to the middle of the net for a nice long drink (larger version here).

eat 2 cupcakes and call me in the morning

I went to see my orthopedist, Dr. Payne, this morning (the irony just flew up your nose didn't it) because the wrist pain I've experienced for many months has been more intense than usual. My stance on doctor's visits for pain that I consider chronic is to just avoid them at all cost. Do I really need to pay $30 to have someone tell me to rest and wait it out? No thanks. I'd rather spend that money on other priorities:


But I felt like I should at least warrant all of my complaining that the Sauce has been putting up with by getting checked out. I ask you, why (why) does a doctor specializing in hand pain think that I want to shake his hand when he walks into the exam room? If I felt like walking around shaking people's hands (i.e. using my gripping muscles), I probably wouldn't be in his office.

Now there are two words that I'm never especially eager to hear from an orthopedist: PHYSICAL THERAPY. I've spent countless hours in physical therapy for one reason or another. What all those hours (and dollars) taught me is that my body is naturally immune to physical therapy. I've even gone into physical therapy for one injury (ITB syndrome) and come out with another (generalized inner knee pain that turned out to be infected tissue). I've cried in physical therapy. I've been burnt by the analgesic they put on a certain kind of E-Stem pad. I've put my hand into a machine that whirls around corn husk (which was pretty damn nice).

What it boils down to is I view physical therapy as a purgatory for my injuries, and I don't mean that in the positive "soul purification before running off to heaven" sense. I'm referring to the more modern definition of "suffering short of everlasting damnation." But I have to give it a chance because it was basically all that blue-eyed Dr. Payne had to offer besides his handshake.

I'm also going to see an acupuncturist and potentially a rheumatologist, but it could take months to get that kind of appointment. For now, I'm hoping a little Eastern medicine will do me some good. It's been too long since I meditated about cupcakes for an hour with needles dotting my limbs.

In an attempt to reduce computer time to a bare minimum, I may strip down to a photoblog style. We'll see if I can resist the urge to purge (blog vomit is so much easier to clean up than cat puke).

one stop slop

Come to Atlanta! We have turkey bugers and Obama graffiti on the same block!

speaking of age...

It's my birthday. These sunflowers came yesterday and they caused quite a stir in the local hairball community. After much inspection, tweedle-dee and tweedle-fat left the flowers alone.

Or so I thought. Today I came home from work to find 2 separate yak-splats with suspicious yellow and green debris that could only be my birthday flowers in a semi-solid state.

Now that the oversized bouquet has proven to be a close relative of ipecac, maybe it'll be saved from the gnawing death that many other plants have suffered in this apartment.

It didn't take long to forget about the puddles of cheery bile because the sauce brought me a surprise birthday cookie from Alons Bakery. What more could a peanut butter fiend ask for?

some things don't get better with age

I've been stared at by a broad range of individuals in several regions of the country. It could be my hair (even my friends make fun of it). It could be my facial piercing. It could be my androgynous features and way of dressing. Maybe people are trying to answer questions like "is that a dead squirrel on her head? or his head? or wait, her head (his head?)??" Wherever the confusion originates, my point is, I've had many an eyeball boring into the back of my head.

And that's usually where it ends. Very rarely does anyone verbalize their inner debate or disagreement, with the exception of small to medium sized children who haven't learned the social grace of waiting until you get out of ear shot. Today was a rare day.

The sauce and I were in line at the grocery store, and as the register dinged through our items, I could feel the man behind us staring at me. I tried to get a bead on just how much he was staring by casually turning back towards the magazine rack. We're not talking about a sideways glance here. I'm talking about shoulders facing forward, full on gawking. I made very brief eye contact with the man (white male, early 70s) as I turned back towards the clerk. This apparently made him feel like we'd bonded because a second later he said, "You know your thing there looks a little infected." At first I thought he was genuinely concerned or possibly making a joke. I've had older men take paltry stabs at piercing humor that involved fishing lines jokes and "did you know there's something on your chin?" So I muttered something about how it was fine, but thanks, and turned away from him, but he wasn't finished.

"My son's a doctor and he's had to remove half of someone's face before! You could lose your face!" and he made a dramatic swipe of his right cheek. (The exclamation points are because he was on the verge of yelling) Now more people are staring, although I was comforted by the fact that half of them were staring at the old coot raising his voice.

"You know, you feel good about yourself by earning things. You work hard and you earn things. THAT's what makes you feel good." He may have leaned in for emphasis at this point, but I lost all ability to see anything except the canned goods directly in front of me, so I can't say for sure.

"Oh look, she has some too [looking at charrow as she bagged our groceries]. Oh and there's one in her nose. What about your tongue? You got one in your tongue too??" He may have been gesticulating at this point, but all I could focus on was punching in my PIN and waiting for the "Approved" to show up so I could get my receipt and run.

"You need to ask yourself where you're going in life!"

To which Charrow replied "You need to ask yourself if this is any of your business!" And then we left, seething and wobbly from the overdose of ignorance. We got home and went to our respective corners, her to the kitchen to make gazpacho, and me to the couch to finish my writing assignment. Thirty minutes later, Charrow said, "I'm still really angry." (even as she's proofreading this, there's no laughter)

After today, I may have to add elderly white males to the list of populations that hasn't advanced past the "You think it, you say it" mentality. I know it would be more fair (and valid) of me to wait for further evidence, but it's not the kind of research I care to conduct. I'll stick with the cold hard stares of 12 year old girls in the pool locker room. At least they're easy to forget.

enough is enough

It's been so long since my beach post that the sunburn I got (despite regular applications of sunscreen) has finished peeling. I've also sold a motorcycle, purchased a motorcycle, started 2 evening classes at Emory, and written the first 3 pages of my "novel." In between all of that, I've had several major breakdowns, gone to see a head smasher (charrow's term for psychologist), and started taking crazy pills that come in the shape of a shield. Perhaps the shape helps to ward off the evil mood swing monster. Time (and an escalating dose) will tell.

I also finally got my hands on a copy of Your Money or Your Life. It's a book that comes highly recommended by several personal finance bloggers. I've been interested in reading it for quite awhile now, but the Fulton County Library search engine made the book impossible to find. I persevered one day and found it on page 13 of my search. I usually pride myself on my google skills (a co-worker and I used to have races to see who could find something faster), but the library system bamboozled me multiple times. So beware, my recommendation could be biased by the amount of effort it took to get the book.

A major theme of the book is "enoughness." Basically, you don't need to have everything to be happy and studies show that the people who do "have it all" are far from happy. The American Dream of richness and material wealth mutates faster than the flu virus. People think their happiness depends on that flat screen tv or their next big vacation, but as soon as they get the behemoth mounted on the wall or they finish their poolside daiquiris, they realize the high they were expecting has fizzled out and a shiny new want mirage has popped up on the horizon.

I was expecting Your Money or Your Life to be a finance laden book, and it does have some concrete money-saving advice (much more concrete than good ole Mr. Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover), but it also explores the idea of happiness and economizing your "life energy" (a hokey term, but I've gotten past the wombiness of it).

Brave your library catalogue and give it a shot. As for me, I'm moving on to an unpublished novel by my number one friend crush.

sand between my toes

Here's a pictoral summary of our weekend trip to Emerald Isle. Oh the gluttony and the search for cheap gas prices.