Human Zoo

This weekend was a flurry of physical activity.  I started on Friday after work by running C25K Week 1, Day 3 to the bike shop to pick up my newly tubed-and-shiftered bike.  Unfortunately the bike shop isn’t that far away and I only got halfway through my run.  I biked back home where Husband and Lily were waiting for me to go for a walk to the playground and the liquor store. 

My bike.  She is glorious now.  It’s an older bike (I’m thinking 60’s, maybe?) and its shifters were previously located on the crossbar because clearly the Italians who designed it were completely insane.  Every time I had to shift I had to reach down and fumble around and I felt like I was going to just fall right over.  Now I have fancy—well, not fancy – but real thumb shifters on the handlebars where nature intended them to be.

Funny thing is that I’m so used to riding my scooter that I spooked myself twice on the ride back home because there was no turn signal switch for my left thumb.  Also I left my helmet at home and had to carry my change back in my shoe because of poor planning.

Saturday was another walk to the park to play tennis with S & H.  There was tennis for hours.  I had to take Lily over to the playground a couple of times because she got bored watching us and chasing tennis balls.

Sunday was a repeat of Saturday, only I didn’t play tennis at all.  Lily and I spent quite some time at the playground and I did some serious peoplewatching.

It’s still strange to see all these people who are my age and also have kids around Lily’s age.  What really irritated me was the amount of helicopter parenting going on.  Parents!  Let your children play in the playground!  It was like these people had some kind of invisible tether connecting them with their children like an unbreakable 5-foot rope.  I actually saw a mother start to walk away from her daughter but stop suddenly, like she had reached the end of her umbilical rope and couldn’t physically move any father.

Me, I sat on the benches, moseying around when I had to as Lily worked her way around the playground equipment and my sight lines were lost.  I stepped a little closer a couple of times to remind her to take turns on the slides.  I watched her explore all the equipment and I could see the gears turning in her head as she discovered what everything did.  All on her own she conquered the big metal slide she had been afraid of only days before.  She came running over to me, beaming with pride, shouting, “Mama!  Mama!  Yaaaaay!  I did it!”  I gave her a huge hug, told her how proud of her I was, and watched her go down the big slide over and over again.  From the bench.

There were three different kids, ranging in age from around 2 to maybe 4, playing on one of the playground structures.  This particular structure had a wooden ramp that was barely an incline – more of a short boardwalk -- that led to a platform where the kids could take sand and send it down a tube.  This is not exactly a high-risk piece of equipment.  Maybe if a kid were to run blindfolded up the walkway they could possibly run headlong into the little shelf thing on the edge, but said kid would have to be incredibly derpy and/or mentally ill for any sort of injury to occur.  And yet three different parents for the three different kids all stood around the thing, eyes glued to their child, at regularly spaced intervals in a 3-foot radius from the kids.  Lily occasionally dropped in to assist with the sand dropping and I’m pretty sure one of the moms looked back at me as though she were expecting me to leave my seat and also hover around like some kind of parental electron to the offspring nucleus.

I offered a small smile in her direction.  Why would I need to, when there were three other hyper-alert adults within arm’s reach already?

In other news, my pants and coat are already fitting better.

This is why I married him

Me:  Argh... trying to find a song and I have no way to search for it because it's an instrumental.

It's that one... from the 70's or early 80's....

There's horns....

 

Husband:  Herbie Hancock?

 

Me:  Nope... kinda funky disco.

 

Husband:  Oh. Pick up the Pieces

Average White Band...

I believe.

 

Me:  OH SHIT.

Shenanigans

We got a real sitter (Thanks, Alicia!) and went out for a real grown-up night out last Saturday.  We ended up at The Public House after unsuccessfully trying to drink at Club Jager when they weren't open even though the sign said they were.  We had originally intended to barhop around the North Loop area, grab a couple of pizzas at Black Sheep, and get over to Acme in time for Marc Maron's show.

Black Sheep was a madhouse so we just kept ordering more and more appetizers at The Public House.  The pork belly sliders, hillbilly spring rolls, and frito pie were absolutely amazing.  If you're looking for food that's both highbrow and lowbrow and completely casual, get over there.  They've also got a great beer selection.

Maron killed it with his story of his experience in Minneapolis 12 years ago.  I wasn't sure what to expect at Acme.  It's a lot smaller and more intimate than I ever expected.  It's got kind of a rustic interior going on.  Low ceilings, huge drinks, red curtain.  I had a gin and tonic and two martinis before I left so by the end of the show I was pretty good to go.  I got all drunk-shy and didn't talk to Marc after the show or get my picture taken, but I did leave him a present -- a blue Duplo block Lily had inexplicably given to me earlier that day.  Don't ask -- I don't know why I did that.

A drunken stumble (on my part) and a short car ride later we arrived at Donny Dirk's Zombie Den.  It's a classy joint in a horrible neighborhood and if you go there you should be aware that cabs will not pick you up after about 1:00 AM.  S and I started off with a drink involving absinthe.  It was really strong.  I'm not much of a drinker but I was on some kind of fucked up mission that night to get fucked up.  Husband stuck with beer and H was drinking something called a Kali Ma, which had chai-infused rum and... I have no idea what else, but it was amazing.  So amazing, in fact, that I had four of them.  It wasn't necessarily my idea to have four expensive-as-shit, strong-as-hell specialty drinks -- S kept feeding them to me.  They were so good that at one point I asked the bartender to give me change just so I could give her a second tip.  At the end of the evening we were all pretty trashed and the conversation turned political (I railed off about Ron Paul for what seemed like forever) so we tried calling for a cab.  That's when the sympathetic doorman informed us that cab drivers really, really don't like this neighborhood.  An hour and a short but adventurous walk down to Broadway later we flagged a passing cab down and finally made it back to the sweet embracing cradle of South Minneapolis.

Forgot about the daylight savings time change, woke up at 9:00 AM when I was supposed to be picking Lily up, and drove like a champ to retrieve the child.  I came back home and proceeded to sleep for three or four hours.  As hangovers go, it was a damn cakewalk.  My last hangover was several years ago where I drank much less (demon Jamison), woke up wanting to die, and puked about 10 times over the course of a day.  Interestingly, that evening also ended in the North Loop neighborhood.

All this to say that I am going to be 32 tomorrow and I probably shouldn't do this sort of thing anymore.  Not that I won't.

Paging Dr. House

It’s hard not to feel like a hypochondriac sometimes.

I’ve always had what I assume is a small, dried out turd where whatever controls my immune system is supposed to be.  Every minor bug that wafts my way infects my system like GIs at a cheap eastern European whorehouse.  I’ve had strep throat dozens of times, ear infections, sinus infections, bronchitis, giardia, and one time I even had the norovirus.

I also grew up being told constantly that I was never sick, that it was all in my head, that there was nothing the matter with me.  Never mind the low-grade fever I often had, or the white spots that appeared on my throat, or the seemingly constant battle with nausea.  My stomach issues got marginally better once I figured out I was lactose intolerant but I was still frequently plagued with problems.  Later in my junior high and high school years this was all compounded by my crippling depression and mental issues.

So now whenever I get sick I always doubt myself first.  If it gets to the point where I have to go to the doctor I feel positively crazy.  I’ve had some terrible doctors in the past that haven’t helped.  Hello, guy who didn’t take my joint problems seriously and caused me to permanently screw up my stomach with Aleve.  Caught a horrible case of H. Pylori after that little episode and I’ve had IBS ever since.

So now I’m having problems again and I’m having a hard time.  Again.  I’ve been dealing with dizzy spells for years.  No big deal, I’m usually dehydrated.  But recently they’ve gotten much, much worse.  Like, almost-passing-out worse.  I’ve been drinking fluids like a horse and eating protein like a champion to no avail.  And what’s even more awesome is that my heart will randomly start beating out of my chest for no good reason when I’m just walking around or standing there.  My anxiety has been almost completely in check and it always happens when I’m not exerting myself.  Cardio and strength training at the gym has been going fine.  So that’s worrisome enough for me that I went to the doctor.

I need you. For, um, medical reasons.

My EKG at the doctor’s office was fine but that only means that it was fine at that particular moment.  Everything else checked out.  My doctor had no explanation for me but told me if my heart does its palpitation dance again I should go to urgent care or an ER and that I should call him so he can send me to a heart specialist.  Greeeeaaaat.  He prescribed me something for my dizzy thing and said to me, no kidding, “This is used for dizziness. It’s an antihistamine but it helps.  We have no idea why but we use it anyway.”

I’m not thrilled about taking pills for this (up to 3 a day!), especially when they can make me drowsy, and especially especially when nobody can come up with a good reason for why they work.

But yesterday, when I spent a good portion of my afternoon being constantly dizzy, I was forced to reconsider my stance.  I guess the mystery will continue until I have a heart attack or pass out.

Some technical difficulties

You may have noticed (probably not) that betweengirl.com has been down for a few days.  This is because GoDaddy is balls and makes it as difficult as humanly possible to transfer your domain away from them.

I actually started the process back in December in the midst of the big SOPA/PIPA dustup.  I got so frustrated I had to walk away until my domain was about to expire and I had no choice but to act or lose it.

So I had to change all my settings in Blogger and at my new registrar and now I wait until everything talks to each other and all my forwarding and DNS and stuff is caught up. 

I mentioned a while ago that I was considering moving to WordPress but I discovered today you have to pay $99/year for domain mapping.  So unless I want to dick around with forwarding my domain from my registrar's side and have my blog at betweengirl.wordpress.com, I'll just stay here at Blogger.  Mama's too busy for all of this.

On the bright and non-technical side of life, I've been writing somewhat regularly.  Just not here.  And not for anything public (yet [maybe]).  I won't say anything else for fear of jinxing my writing streak.

So what's new in the life of the In-Between Girl?  Nothing.  Work, Skyrim, D&D, family.  Too broke to fix or replace anything, so I'm just waiting for the truck to die, in which case we will be well and thoroughly fucked unless we can sell the rotting, useless husk and get something cheap on Craigslist.  We are still without a washing machine.  I am trying to stay positive.