“Living” with Endometriosis

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Before you go running for the antibacterial wipes I just want to let you know that I’m not contagious. What I have is not catching. What I’m about to relay will not travel through your computer’s innards as a deadly Trojan virus or spread through the air like an uncovered sneeze. It’s called stage IV endometriosis and according to the information traffic jam, over 70 million women around the world live with it every day and, I’m guessing another 50 million or so women don’t even know they have it. Those women are probably lying on the bathroom floor right now, gritting their teeth, clutching their wombs while saying, “What the Fuck!?” and praying for the strength to live through the next couple of days.

So what is endometriosis?

I usually tell people, strictly out of exhaustion, that it’s a “girlie” disease. This comes from being raised in a household where you don’t talk about stuff like this. If by some circumstance of extreme horror a particularly cute boy asks, I worry that he thinks I have funky bacteria of the hoo-ha and imagine him running home to Google. A medical professional might say something resembling a foreign language like, “endometriosis is a disease in which the lining of the uterus grows outside of the uterus so that when one menstruates this displaced tissue bleeds as well, but has nowhere to go, thereby causing pain, infertility and various other problems.” Read more

IMHO, FML is WACK

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This morning, just like every morning, I stumbled to my coffee pot to prepare a large carafe of caffeine.  I laid my head on the counter for seven minutes as it brewed, poured myself a large cup, threw in a couple heaping spoons of hot cocoa mix, and walked back to my computer to peruse my social media – the only thing I can handle before at least two cups of my brown solace.  The first thing I read went something like this, “I was late for work again, FML.”

“FML.”  Really?  Over being late you’re going to tell the universe to F*)# your life?  I’ve been seeing this phrase a lot lately and I have to say I take serious issue with it.  I’m just fine with a bit of WTF? I WTF? all over the place.  But IMHO saying FML is causing some serious damage when our thoughts create our reality. Read more

Bestseller or Bargain Bin: The Stories We Tell About Ourselves

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I’m a storyteller.  I tell stories.  Recently, however, I’ve been thinking about a different type of tale; the one I’m telling myself daily about me and my life.  This got me to thinking.  Am I in a comedy or a tragedy; a fairy tale or a mystery?  And like my fiction writing, do I have some semblance of control over setting, plot, characterization, pacing, and theme?

First of all, let’s meet the protagonist of my story: me.  After the required number of years of self-doubt I’m finally coming into myself and have discovered that I’m a pretty great character.  I’m compassionate and caring.  I’m fiercely loyal.  I’m an avid listener.  While a bit of a loner, I do shower every so often and leave my apartment to forage for food.  I try to pay attention to the universe, and when attacked by a red-winged blackbird I try to figure out what it’s trying to tell me.  I can be selfish when it comes to living my best life and I’ve learned to say no –  to disappoint others in an effort to be true to myself.  I’m a girl who will leave her home and her family to move three thousand miles away when I feel the nudge from my Creator.  I hate broccoli.  I enjoyed diving out of a plane. Read more

Steer Pizzle: The Initiation of a Kennel Mom

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I don’t know if I’m prepared for motherhood.  In fact, I think it’s safe to say I’m fairly freaked out.  It’s been thirteen years since I’ve had a wee one romping around the house and let me tell you, it’s a whole new world in the realm of puppy parenting.

My first indication of unpreparedness came when I visited PetSmart for the first time in a decade.  I walked into the fluorescent lit store, the white tiles stained yellow from those pups that came before me, and went in search of dog food.  It was insane – three thousand  square feet of choice.  Never before had I seen so many varieties, sizes, and flavors of pup food:  organic, all natural, made with real chicken, real beef, real liver, hormone-free, gluten-free.  I was overwhelmed.  I don’t have this many options when I go to my local grocer looking for a frozen pizza or a bag of lettuce.  What would I buy?  Things had definitely changed from the days when I went in to a pet store and had the one choice of Purina Puppy Chow.  Four hundred dollars later I left the store with “all-natural” kibble, organic pet treats, gluten free chews, and toys made out of “safe plastic”, whatever that is.   I had no idea what I was doing or what I was buying. Read more

You Won’t Find Your Inner Child on a Milk Carton

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Dedicated to Jen Lyman – May you find your Selves and gather them together in love and safety and may you wholly heal, both inside and out.

I was told recently that part of me is missing.  I wondered, what exactly does that mean?  I have all of my limbs, my digits, my hair, though I am short a few internal organs.  So hey, perhaps I am a bit disjointed.  Aren’t we all?  Apparently I misunderstood.  I was told instead to imagine that we each have a number of different selves within us determined by how long we’ve lived and depending on our life experiences.  Say, for me, I have five selves.  (God forbid I’ve left any out.)  For example, I have myself as a child, a teenager, a married self, a divorced self, and my current self.  Well, unbeknownst to me, my inner child is on the lamb. Read more

meh. A Quest for Mojo

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I recently lost my mojo.   I don’t know what else to call it but, as I’ve been devouring the contents of the Owning Pink website recently, I’ve decided that they are on to something BIG.  Mojo means different things to different people.  According to Owning Pink, for some, mojo is sexual, for some, mojo is being present in the now.  For me mojo is that inner glow, the one you often see on pregnant ladies.  Mojo is that smile inside of you that shows on the outside.  It’s that inner spark, that feeling of connection to everything and everyone around you.  It’s feeling truly alive.  When you’ve lost it, things feel gray and dingy and it’s as if that tinge of hope within has buried itself somewhere and is too busy licking its wounds to present itself.

After days of blah and meh, I wasn’t sure what to do and, damned if it isn’t superficial, I dashed to my black Beetle and raced to the salon.  Once there I hobbled up to the counter, my pasty skin stretched into a grimace, with hair that looked like the end of a Q-tip that’s been hanging out in the bottom of my travel case since a European vacation in 2004.  I asked for my stylist Nicolette.  The receptionist’s pink and tan glow hid what I imagined was her own grimace at my pallid state and said, “Have a seat, she’ll be right with you.”  As I looked around the salon I saw smiling faces, heard endless chatter, I saw hot pink highlights with streaks of robin egg blue, I saw people glowing, and not from some radioactive hair gel. Read more

How to Date That Elusive Man

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It’s often said that we are wise when we’re able to learn from the mistakes of others.   So, in that vein, let’s be on with it… you’ve met that guy who expresses pretty intense interest, you’ve been on a few dates, he calls, you want to be proactive, to reciprocate, and to reach out to him, but whenever you do, you don’t hear back for weeks.  In this day and age you have to be hip. I would suggest perhaps an e-mail such as this one:

Date: Sometime in December
Subject: Cheeto-Chompin-Communication-Cruncher (a.k.a. Your Answering Machine)

Tried to call you this eventide, but couldn’t bring
myself to leave a message. Could only imagine an obese
answering machine monster (akin to Pizza the Hut from
*Spaceballs* fame) sitting on your couch watching
re-runs of Seinfeld and garbling my scattered words like so
many crunchy Cheeto’s, chuckling at his own genius and
spewing forth bits of my orange dialogue onto your
brand new television, wiping my stained expression on
the sofa. That just wouldn’t do. Read more

54 Miles to Empty

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It seemed I’d been driving down the proverbial highway of my life; eighty-five miles per hour, conditions were fair, my windshield was devoid of mashed gnats and the freshly laundered air traveled through my window in gusts that pelted the top of my seatbelt. One hand on the wheel, the other fumbling for a station on my Pioneer, I just drove. That is, until recently. Now my windshield is smeared with innards, my stereo is playing fuzz, and my engine is in dire need of an overhaul.

I’ve always been passionate about the open road and I like to travel alone. Just me with my stereo cranked up, my timber off-key, perhaps a bag of sunflower seeds, a cup of java, and three or more packs of cigarettes (to give me that Joan Jett effect.) However, I noticed a few months ago that my treks were becoming less and less enjoyable. I can’t really blame the Pioneer, my am/fm CD player has been trustworthy for the last 163,742 miles. It is what’s coming out of those 50 watt speakers that’s vexing me and lately those same melodies have followed me into the grocery store, my place of employment, even the gas station. I’m talking about love songs and they’ve made me question such utterly deep issues that it’s as if I’ve moved from merely checking my oil to taking apart the most detailed part of my engine. Read more

Flushed

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According to my personal psychologist, priest, and physician Google, I am not a germophobe.    I know this without a doubt because Google has informed me that to be diagnosed with an anxiety disorder it has to be intense, it has to last a long time, and it has to severely interfere with daily living.  I don’t have vats of anti-bacterial hand sanitizer strategically placed throughout my apartment.  I don’t wear a SARS mask to the grocery store, though I received one for Christmas.  I only take Airborne once per day before school and each time I enter an airport.

I do wash my hands after every bathroom visit because I learned in kindergarten that this is basic hygiene.  Washing my hands seven times during the process of handling raw chicken is a different phobia called Alektorophobia.  I will cop to that, but I am definitely not suffering from a fear of germs, otherwise known as Mysophobia.  Aside from my admitted phobia in relation to fleshy naked fowl I also endure an almost crippling case of Coprophobia, a fear of toilets.  It’s the closest term Google can find to describe my crushing anxiety over self-flushing toilets. This does not mean that I have an anxiety disorder, however, as my most recent trek to a public restroom will clearly demonstrate.  While this experience was indeed intense it only took a half an hour of my day, therefore it doesn’t qualify for duration, nor did it severely affect my daily living as I was only at school for two hours that day. Read more