Month: June 2007

… I get the look of love. Except, there’s still a bit of the devil in that face, isn’t there? I’ve asked my friend Jackie to modify the blog banner to say: Satan’s Fur Puppets. That’s one of my favorite nicknames for Buddy and Finney.

The MRI was unnerving, I have to say. Two things made it okay. 1. They didn’t put me all the way in. From the knees down I was sticking out and that was enormously comforting. 2. I’m teeny. That space inside is VERY small. A lot smaller than it looks on TV. I got through the unnerving bits using MBSR which I have learned and I really have to post about.

Most people are braver than me, it seems. Life would be so much easier, I can’t help thinking, if I wasn’t afraid of EVERYTHING. (I saved a baby spider yesterday, but then later killed a big one because it was too scary. Felt terrible about it.)

Afterwards, I asked the MRI guy to show me the part of my arm where it hurts, because where it hurts is different from where the doctors says I’m injured. They say it’s my shoulder, I say it’s my arm. They say I feel it lower because pain radiates, but for me it hurts in a line across the top third of my arm.

Sure enough, all is darkness in the MRI until you get to spot where I say it hurts, and then there are two bright white lines going around the front of my arm, surrounded by a cloud of white and white spidery-looking veins. The guy says he isn’t really qualified to interpret and I say, “Could you just tell me, does everyone have two white lines there,” and he said no.

I’m worried that the people reading the MRI won’t look there. The prescription said to do the shoulder, and when I expressed my concerns about the location to the MRI guy he said, well, you’re so small we’re going to get that part in any case. But they might not look there.

In other news: The moth I photographed the other day is now dead. I felt terrible. (Again.) Maybe I should have tried to catch it and release it outside.

Poor monster moth. Tomorrow I’m getting an MRI for my hurt arm. I’ve never done this before. They always make MRIs look so scary on TV, and everytime I think, ‘but that doesn’t look particularly scary.’ Tomorrow I will know firsthand. Scary or no?

I came across this walking downtown. You can’t really see it in my picture here, but there’s a picture of Eric holding a bike over his head with this joyful expression on his face. Every day there seems to be a story of a hit and run. I don’t know if Eric’s killing was also a hit and run, but the hit and run aspect just takes these things into a whole other category of evil, doesn’t it? Someone can’t even be bothered to stop and help the person they just hit?? What if stopping could have saved them?

There is a tolerance for lawlessness from drivers in the city that is criminal. I know how insane and assholish pedestrians can be. I’ve been in cars in the city and I see how they just walk in front of cars, and then not only do they cross when they don’t have the light they take their freaking time about it, and so many bike riders act like the rules don’t apply to them period, but bottomline, the corresponding assholishness from drivers kills people. I walk all the time everywhere, and therefore have almost been hit by cars more than most. I’m not surprised by the number of hit and runs at all.

I would be happy with a general crackdown on all sides, but I wish something would be done about it already. It doesn’t have to be like this. I’ve been in other cities where everyone follows the traffic rules.

This is my nephew Christopher who is graduating from high school. Yesterday I noticed he’s like, a guy. To me, he’s always been a really cute kid, but to girls his age, I mean, look at him. He’s got a bit of a Prince William thing going on there, don’t you think? Same with my other nephew Greg. All of a sudden not cute kid, but cute GUY.

I only talked to him for two seconds, and I’m so mad. I meant to ask him what he planned to study in college and what he thought he was going to do with his life. (I’m so easily distracted.) Karen, what does he think he will be?

I recently asked people on Echo what their dreams/plans/goals were back when they were 18 and just starting out. Then I added a part 2: what happened to that dream/plan/goal, what changed your mind? (IE, I decided I liked X better, or working in Hollywood wasn’t as fun as I thought it would be.)

I made up my mind to be a writer when I was 9, but I knew that making a living that way was going to be a longshot. As to what I might do in the meantime however, I didn’t have a clue. I only went to college because the alternatives without it were so grim. Picking my major was only a little more planned than picking a number out of a hat. I picked oceanography because I had grown up not far from the water, and had watched a bunch of Jacques Cousteau specials and going to the work out on a boat instead of an office looked like fun.

Then I was introduced to reality. Endless science classes! What the hell? Plus, it was the seventies and I learned that Jacques Cousteau wouldn’t hire women for the fun jobs.

So what does Christopher think his future might look like?

I handed in a completed first draft of my book to my agent this week. It’s missing the epilogue, but the narrative ends with the final chapter so the heart of the book, the story part is done. I’m way ahead of schedule. By the time my editor sees it, it will be six months ahead. I’m sitting pretty and should be happy, but here’s what’s going on inside my head:

They’re going to just cancel the book it’s that bad, no one will ever pay me to write a book again, no one else will hire me, pretty soon I will be homeless, my cats will die, I will die, but not before realizing that I’ve let everyone who helped me write this book down. I’m an idiot. I did a bad job. I suck. Etc.

Because of my MBSR classes, I’m freaking out, but I’m freaking out mindfully. Big difference. (Kill me now.) Here’s a list of things I want to talk about when I’m not freaking out:

– MBSR.
– So You Think You Can Dance.
– The guy who slammed into me on the street today. (Jerk. No, jerk to the infinity power.)
– My Stupid Un-Healing Arm.
– The Echo financial stuff that’s stressing me out.
– Chihuahuas, as in “I want one.”

Tomorrow I’ve got an MBSR thing from 9 – 1, then I’m going out to Long Island for my nephew Christopher’s graduation party. Hopefully I will be feeling better by then. (It’s almost guaranteed that I will.)

(That picture above is of Travis Wall, the guy I wanted to win So You Think You Can Dance last year.)