Category Archives: Me me me me me!

All I want for my birthday

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I’m working on my birthday list RIGHT NOW. So, if you’ve been wondering just what your very favorite blogger will be wanting to kick off her 37th year right, look NO further.

Since it looks like I’ll have to obtain financing in order to afford gas until the end of the Bush administration, I’ve decided that I need one of these. Yes, it’s a 2006 Toyota Prius, a hybrid. Blue, please. And, don’t be cheap. I’ll want the leather seats and 6-disc CD player, too.

Clock’s ticking. You have until January 5. They’ll be rolling out the 2007 model by then, so perhaps the waiting list will be shorter than 6 months to get one of these.

Get out of my belly!

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I’m tough. I’ve always been a stronger-than-average type of person, able to carry heavy things, accomplish tasks with an obsessive attention to detail, reach challenging goals. To be honest, I’m rather proud of this personal characteristic. I’ve gotten over a myriad of addictions; I’ve made my way through a heaping pile of emotional tragedies, broken hearts, failed relationships, and loss, keeping my personality mostly intact and maintaining a somewhat healthy sense of self worth. I’ve become even stronger through the years. 

But I have this defect. I’m not very good at abstaining from something I shouldn’t have. Especially if it appeals to my sense of taste.

Like many of my generation, I’ll forever have Nancy Reagan speaking in my ear like the needling voice of my conscience. “Just say no.” Those three little words jump into my head every time I’m about to do something fun or illegal. I usually plow through the reasons NOT to do the particular thing I should be saying no to and justify my doing it anyway. But, really, I’m going to need to do some rethinking here.

And the embarrassing thing is, it’s just about food. Fatty food. I can’t help wishing my kryptonite were something a bit more dramatic and interesting.  Like, a sudden deadly allergy to mechanical pencils. Or a blinding fear of steering wheels.  But no. Fatty foods are my arch nemeses. Oh, and carbonated beverages. It’s all because of a silly little organ that sits below my liver. My gall bladder is teh sux.

It doesn’t want to process the fats anymore. So when I make unwise dietary choices (notice I didn’t say “when I’m being bad”? This is what counseling does! Yay!), I get abdominal pain. Yes, I know I should have the damn thing out, but I have this uncomfortable fear of hospitals. And a desire to stay, ya know, intact. You can read more about this problem here.

I’ve been stubbornly refusing to talk to a surgeon. Instead, I’ve changed my eating habits. But some things are SO hard to ignore.

Bacon.

Give me the crunchy pig fat.  I can live without the dairy. There are substitutes for some of the many things I crave. But there is NO substitute for the fatty goodness that is bacon.

It’s not only bacon that I want. It’s just what I wanted TODAY. I’m supposed to stay away from hydrogenated oils, butter/marg, cheese, milk, animal fats, chocolate, carbonated beverages, and sex.

Just kidding about the sex. Kinda.

My appetities have always run toward the savory. The cream sauces, soft cheeses, marbled meats. Dark chocolates. *drools*. Oh yeah, baby. Slather the bread in butter. Alfredo sauce with heavy whipping cream, please. YES, I’d like whip on my frappucino, thanks!

And this one time, at band camp, on the husband’s birthday, I was an ice cream sundae. Imagine not being able to enjoy such things as BEING an ice cream sundae. You can’t be an ice cream sundae with fat-free sorbet and a no-fat chocolate sauce substitute. What’s the point, really?

I’ve tried to make good choices. I eat granola with soy milk. My dinners lately involve a whole lot of fresh veggies like avocado and purple cabbage, carrots and salads. Plain white rice with some salt. And then today, I made a special breakfast for the husband to celebrate Father’s Day. Scrambled eggs with mozzarella, bacon, and waffles. I only had 2 pieces of the bacon. And doing so almost ruined this special day, because I’ve been in pain all day long. Yet I didn’t let that keep us from having a good day. But I can’t help thinking that it could have been better. I’ll obsess over this guiltily for awhile.

I’m strong. I really am. But this gall bladder problem is starting to take hostages. It’s affecting my family.

Time to call the doctor.

You know, I feel so dirty when they start talking cute

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OK, you are allowed to make endless fun of me for this.

My first rock concert: Picture a skinny, freckled 16-year-old girl wearing faded blue jeans with a double-wrap-around slim white belt hanging down over her hips, and one of those cotton pastel shirts with the snaps and the mesh pull-down shoulder, hair feathered and teased and sprayed to the degree that it no longer moves in any discernible way when the wind blows.

The year is 1986, and I’m rocking out to Rick Springfield in the Pensacola Civic Center in Pensacola, Florida. ‘Til Tuesday opened for him (the only song I even remember from TT is “Voices Carry”). Every boy there is wearing Polo. And — a little bit of weird MotherMirth trivia — somewhere in the throngs of sweaty, Rick-crazy teens is my future husband, whom I didn’t know and wouldn’t have glanced at twice in those years anyway because, well, he wasn’t blonde.

It’s standing room only, and it’s late in the show. A very sweaty Rick Springfield shakes his head around, and the sweat goes flying into the masses of girls-who-wanna-carry-Rick’s-baby crowding the stage. Some sprinkles my way, and I promise never again to wash the shoulder where I felt those magic, sexy sweat drops land.

Go ahead, giggle away. I deserve it.

Yes, I rocked out to Rick Springfield. And now, this evening, 20 years later, VH1 is telling me that I can get “Jessie’s Girl” the acoustic version, along with many of my other 80s favorites, all on one CD. It’s probably $19.95, but I was so flabbergasted I didn’t note the price. One word kept replaying in my head. Acoustic.

Now, I haven’t turned on VHI in probably 6 or 7 years. But tonight, we were too tired for a movie on DVD yet wanted some mindless entertainment before retreating to our respective computers to check email and then drag our sad carcasses to bed. Because a little slumber is nice before the older one wakes up with the inevitable full bladder or nightmare. Thus, Allen was flipping through the channels, and he landed on VH1, where a video was just ending with gyrating scantily clothed dancing women singing something about buttons. We then groaned our way through Rod Stewart’s video “Passion” –which is apparently all about the fact that Rod wasn’t getting enough passion and… uh, wanted more?

But, back to the point: VH1 knows that the kids who rocked out in the 80s are RIGHT NOW sitting on their couches, massaging their tired feet, watching a little TV after putting the kids to bed. There’s a bullseye somewhere on my forehead, and that always freaks me out a little bit when I’m watching TV and being targeted for marketing. It’s also one of the reasons I don’t WATCH TV. But that’s a whole other blog entry.

So. 80s music, acoustic versions. It’s like they’ve hunted down and skinned the fierce tiger that is my rock soul! They’re curing the striped pelt and manufacturing it into cute stripey bunnies and puppies, with pink bows and lace. They’re taking my rock and SUBTRACTING the rock, injecting it with calm, and reprocessing it into neat little packages of folk music.

My current playlist on itunes is much heavier on the Dave Matthews–Ben Harper–Jack Johnson type of music than anything contemporary that might be the parallel to what 80s rock was for me in the 80s. Sure, the 36-year-old self is now attracted to stuff the 16-year old would look at in disgust. But c’mon. I also get laid regularly and own a house. But I still rock, don’t I?

Acoustic 80s rock. Part of me is appalled. The other part of me? Really, is it any surprise that I’m getting out my checkbook?

If I fetishize coffee, does that make me a kinky hot beverage freak?

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I gave up coffee last week. *takes sip of coffee*. Yeah, it didn’t stick.

Every so often, I feel the need to gain some control over my various addictions. None of them are particularly dangerous, unless you consider the side effect of ultra-crankiness to be dangerous. If I’ve had four cups of coffee in a small amount of time, that’s bordering on unsafe. I get dangerously bitchy and twitchy.

But I’ve recently grappled with my psyche for control over caffeine once again by reigning it in and going back to moderating. Damn it. And it makes me think a lot about such things as addiction, and what types of behavior we decide fall into this category.

In grad school, I drank alcohol to excess on regular occasions. But, as my husband argued in a sociology paper once, such behavior isn’t really classified as alcoholic when one is in college. It’s just… being in college. That same behavior, when applied outside the context of college would be called alcoholism. I’m not being clinical here. I’m not in the mood to support my claims with scientific research. Hey, it’s my blog.

I hear a lot of women claim that they are addicted to chocolate, and they always say this with a giggle. Sometimes it’s a nervous giggle, with that junkie glint in their eyes, but usually it’s a harmless way to say “yeah, I LOVE THE HELL out of chocolate.” Few of these women are, I believe, actually suffering from an addiction to chocolate.

It’s also much more politic to say one has an “addiction” to something rather than a “fetish”, because that latter word is taboo! It’s sexy! Here’s a few definitions for fetish, from dictionary.com:

fet·ish also fet·ich Audio pronunciation of "fetish" ( P ) Pronunciation Key (ftsh, ftsh)

n.

  1. An object that is believed to have magical or spiritual powers, especially such an object associated with animistic or shamanistic religious practices.
  2. An object of unreasonably excessive attention or reverence: made a fetish of punctuality.
  3. Something, such as a material object or a nonsexual part of the
    body, that arouses sexual desire and may become necessary for sexual
    gratification.
  4. An abnormally obsessive preoccupation or attachment; a fixation.

See? This word is so much more fun than the word addiction. I could say that I have a stationery fetish, and it could either mean I only get off if there’s a ballpoint pen in the room OR it could be completely innocent, and mean that I simply have a fixation and attachment to fine papers and office supplies. But you don’t know! I could be the queen of stationery kink, or just your average somewhat obsessive compulsive person who likes to hang out at Office Depot.

You just don’t know.

Anyway, TANGENT. Enough about fetishes. Back to addiction.

For me, when I’m feeling dependent on something like coffee, when I feel it’s ruling me and affecting my personality negatively, I need distance. I go cold turkey. I went a full week this last time. In the past I’ve given it up for years, especially while pregnant and nursing. My addiction doesn’t rule me. I am stronger than a Starbucks triple grande two-equal latte.

*looks lustily at empty coffee pot*

Meow?

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EDIT: This was my last post on my ROAR site. -TLH

It’s obvious, isn’t it readers, that my roar has been tamed? My mane, had I one, shorn like Aslan’s in his shameful humility on the stone table. $Gods, I hate meek. Even feigned meek, used to bring down the egomaniacal Jadis, with her barbaric hordes, chic hairdo, and primitive, fecund, raging wardrobe choices….

Errr, tangent. Sorry.

Anyway, PREPARE for change. I’m thinking of combining my vast empires of words! Building bricks upon bricks of words and thoughts until I reach impenetrable heights of vastness or vapidness or whatevah. The ROAR site, combined with my tamer STARS site. No, it won’t be ROARINGSTARS or anything as oxymoronic (or just plain moronic) as that. I’ll have a redirect when I get things up and going.

So. Dare to expect great things. Or expect daring things. OR… just check back soon!