Kicking the habit ain't easy

Like a smoker who doesn't realize they've taken another cigarette out of the pack, I notice I've slid down in my chair. My shoes are off before I know it -- this addiction is strong. I'm sitting cross-legged or, worse, with my chin resting on one or both of my knees. Hunching forward to type. It makes me think of how I heard that some old people are hunched over permanently because of tiny fractures in their bones that healed with them increasingly hunched over. They're fused that way. It makes me think of a man I saw crossing the street a few weeks ago who couldn't even look up. His whole view of the world at that moment consisted of his feet and the lines of the crosswalk. Pavement.

I straighten up for awhile, but then I begin to concentrate on work. I catch myself leaning my chin on my hand, slumped forward. I'm an alcoholic on her tenth drink without even registering drinks two through nine. I catch myself with my legs crossed, leaning over sideways -- typing with a gangsta lean. If I could, I'd probably hang upside down like a bat to do my job, which would probably be better for my posture. Because good posture, at least in this stage of the game, kind of hurts.

My name is Rebecca and I'm a slouchaholic. I've been slouch-free for at least half of a paragraph. It's making me grumpy.

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Dizzy Yoga

Yolanda already posted about this, but I feel the need to add a few of my own observations about hot yoga (or Bikram yoga). Before I went yesterday, I was a little nervous about getting dizzy, passing out, throwing up, or getting heat stroke. I managed to avoid four of those things.

The problem with hot yoga for a girl like me is the fact that they ask you to go from a position where your hands and feet are both on the floor straight up to a standing position with your hands over your head. If you're not the dizzy type, you might not have immediately grasped that this can make all the blood in your body leave your head in an instant and cause the room to start moving. Me, I get dizzy standing up from a chair while sitting in a nice cool breeze. Turning my body upside down in a matter of seconds in 105° heat is a recipe for disaster. Fortunately, although I swayed a bit and sat down rather quickly a few times, nobody yelled "Timber!" and I did not actually pass out. I then got into the routine of standing up by degrees. Hands on knees, breathe, hands on hips, still bent at the waist, breathe... etc. By the time I stood up and put my hands over my head, everybody was on to the next set of contortions, but at least I was standing.

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And close

This will hopefully be my final post about the goings on with my headache, unless I have amusing anecdotes that go along with having a headache for more than three weeks. Frankly, the topic is beginning to bore me.

My doctor called today to tell me that the MRI results look fine. No brain swelling, extra fluid, blocked sinuses, or tumors. I told him about my newest theory with the tumbling off the bike, the rear-ending, and the two monitors at work. He thinks the two monitors is the most likely answer and suggested a month in Tahiti. "Your insurance company would've been better off paying for that than an MRI," he told me. Failing that, physical therapy might be in order.

There was something over by my right ear that might possibly, slightly, eventually prove to be an indication that the likelihood of me having chronic mastoiditis exists. Or it might just be an indication that I had approximately 8,000 ear infections growing up, including a perforation, and that every doctor who has looked into my ear has said, "Wow, there's a lot of scar tissue in there."

So, to sum up: I'm fine. I need better posture probably, but I already knew that. I should take more task breaks at work, and not stay late as often. I should sip mai tais and wear fuzzy slippers and buy a chaise lounge. I'll work on it.

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My head

Just a quick update for the curious: I had an MRI yesterday. It's very much like in the movies, except there was no dramatic music, no tears, and I still have all my hair. But there's a big white machine and you lay down on a table. The table slides into a cylindrical opening where even the least claustrophobic person in the world will experience an accelerated heartbeat. The only thing I didn't know from the movies was how loud it is. It says, "GNRR! GNRR! GNNNNNNRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!" There was a spate of five loud ticks followed by five GNRRs, and then some really long GNRRs, plus some beeps at the end.

Also, I was surprised that they let me wear the ring on my right hand and my bellybutton ring. During what I assume were magnetic pulses (accompanied by the beeps), it felt like something was just ever-so-slightly touching my right hand. It took me awhile to figure out that my ring was probably jumping a bit toward the magnets. So the magnets aren't as strong or as funny as they make them out to be on TV and in the movies, but they definitely pack a punch.

I will not know anything about the results from the MRI until Thursday, but I'm pretty sure it won't turn up anything. My current theory is that I screwed up my neck. It's been hurting in addition to my head, although I'm fairly certain that the headache started first. Or it could be that I just noticed the headache first. At any rate, in the last two months, I've fallen off my bike, been very mildly rear-ended, and had a bad ergonomic setup at work. Any one of these things might have contributed to some out-of-whackedness with my neck. I'm running with that.

My head still hurts, though it ebbs and flows. It might be on the same schedule as the tides.

So, aside from the regular inanities and insanities, that's the state of my head.

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Japanese Rube Goldberg machines

I want to go home and make Rube Goldberg machines now.

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Dillweed

I just read on Urban Dictionary that the word dillweed was popularized by Beavis and Butthead. Since I remember kids in my 3 or 4th grade class using the term, I don't think I'll cede the popularizing of the term to Mike Judge. Or maybe it was just a Bay Area or California term that B/B made popular around the world? Does it really fall under the definition of popular?

On that note, I've heard that Paris Hilton takes credit for coining the phrase, "that's hot." What a dillweed.

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And several hours later...

... you feel like an idiot for getting so carried away about things. Because it's obvious that there's nothing seriously wrong. You've been riding your bike to work and carrying on a normal life; the left side of your head has just been hurting a little, especially above your left eye. You console yourself with the thought that a two week headache would make anybody a little crazy.

You wonder if some day you'll actually manage to be graceful about the events in your life, or if you'll always be this much of a spaz.

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How long is too long?

In the grand scheme of things, two weeks isn't very long. I think back to the Christmas vacations I had as a kid. Those were two weeks long, and I don't remember very much about them. I mean, I have Christmas memories and wintry memories, and I know we visited my grandparents a lot, but none of those two week windows stand out as being altogether significant.

On the other hand, when you have a headache for two weeks, it seems like a really significant thing. "TWO WEEKS!" you start thinking. "This is some effed up shi-- er, I mean... sugar.*" And then you start thinking of things like brain swelling and tumors and remembering the look on your high school English teacher's face after you had a big argument with her right before she had an aneurism. You think about how she wouldn't let go of her pencil.

When you cancel your trip to Phoenix and schedule an MRI, things start to seem like they might not be going your way. The word "serious" comes up a lot more frequently in your internal dialog. You tell yourself, "I'm just being cautious." But the thing is, you know that you are going to die. You might not die from whatever's causing the headache, and it might not be for another 50 years, but that's the whole point. You just don't know. Somebody has to be the person who dies of a brain tumor, why not you?

But then there's the whole logical part of your brain that says, "Oh jeez, cut it out already! It's only been two weeks. It's a little too soon to start planning your funeral." And then the build you were working on finishes and it's time to divert your attention to work again and you wonder how this episode will end, and whether working was a waste of time or not, in the end. But it stops you from worrying and, assuming you'll live at least a few years longer, is essential as far as the whole food/clothing/shelter thing is concerned.

And of course, by "you," I mean "me."

* I'm trying to clean up my language a bit.

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Ouch + yay

One thing that isn't fun is having a headache. For a week. Perhaps there's a sort of masochism, or even machismo that exists whereby one might find this sort of thing pleasant. Unfortunately, I lack that perversion. Or maybe it's fortunate, I don't know. I can't think straight; my head hurts.

One thing that is fun is going to see Morrissey croon, which Ransom and I did last weekend. I long ago decided that the larynx is my favorite musical instrument, and it was partially because of Morrissey. I've done a lot of driving in my day and wouldn't be surprised if I'd racked up more than 20K miles singing along with him. On second thought, if we count The Smiths – and we do – that at least has to be doubled. There were whole months where a Morrissey tape didn't make it out of my car's tape deck.

Here are some things I love about the Moz:

• His talent for singing the word, "oooohhhh."
• Lyrics that people interpret as depressing but are actually funny. To wit: "I don't have any skin, but that's just the way it goes."
• Bona Drag, my first ever Morrissey album, purchased because Live 105 in the Bay Area used to play "The Last of the Famous International Playboys" all the time.
• Melodic temper tantrums ("I will not change and I will not be nice!")
• Self-deprecating sense of humor. He prefaced one of his songs by saying, "As you all know, I live in a world of childish fantasy. As a direct result, I write songs entitled 'All You Need is Me.'"

The concert was actually a tad disappointing. The sound was terrible and I forgot ear plugs. Plus, I had a headache. However, there was one major highlight. I was thinking to myself that the song I most wanted him to sing was Lucky Lisp, but I figured there was no chance of him playing it because... I'm not sure why I was so convinced. I guess it's because I'm the only one I know about who really likes that song (surely other people like it; I just don't know about it). As I was composing a blog post in my head about how I was disappointed that he didn't play Lucky Lisp (well before the concert was over, mind you), he said something to the effect of, "Out of the wreckage of the past, we managed to salvage this," and launched into it. That was awesome.

In short, my head hurts and I heart Morrissey.

The end.

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Blog? What blog?

I'll confess: for a little while there, I forgot I had a blog. My brain has been very work-centric lately, which is kind of a nice change from house-centric. At any rate, it has been not at all blog-centric. I hope to get back to house-centric for at least long enough to build a new deck at the end of May. I'm trying to keep reminding myself that tearing down the old deck is going to be way more fun than building the new one, but I expect it to be pretty satisfying work, especially if it's not raining while we work.

I've also failed to keep up with everyone else's blogs over the last few weeks. My main form of entertainment recently has involved watching Long Way Round on DVD with Ransom. It's about Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman's motorcycle ride around the world -- their goal was to ride from London to New York in 115 days. It's pretty fascinating stuff. My favorite bit so far was when they were in the Ukraine. They were mostly staying with random strangers, and somehow ended up staying with a man who said he ran an electronics shop (which is apparently code for "I'm in the Ukranian mafia"). At one point, their host came down stairs with a machine gun in one hand and a guitar in the other and proceeded to sing a song. Very impressive, although he did put the gun down first. I highly recommend watching the series if you have any interest in traveling. The places they go and the things they see are truly amazing. I keep punching Ransom in the arm (a terrible habit, I know, but they're love punches) and saying, "I want to go there!"

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