My dysfunctional relationship

It's true....there is a dysfunctional relationship present in my life.

It's with food. I have a love/hate (I love it; it hates me) thing with food. Food nourishes us, allowing us to grow and thrive. Food can be pleasurable or utilitarian; it can be pedestrian or avant-garde; in my case, it's usually the enemy.

There are specific foods I really enjoy, much to the detriment of my waistline--cheese and candy are two that come immediately to mind. Other foods I love are pasta and pork, also not so healthy. But on the other side of the plate, I also love fresh green salads, vegetables (especially artichokes and broccoli), beans, and most fruits. The dysfunction? I can't eat them. Pasta, cheese, pork and candy--no problem!  But the healthy things I like? More often than not, they cause me pain.

The past two days I've had lots of pain, I think due to a stomach virus, but I can never be sure. I have an autoimmune disorder called Crohn's Disease; I was diagnosed with it when I was 12. The long-term effects of having Crohn's for more than half my life are not pleasant (what diseases are pleasant?): much higher colon, stomach, rectal and other cancer rates; lots of intestinal scar tissue built up from years upon years of inflammation, which creates blockages; arthritis; eye inflammations...the list goes on and on.

But getting back to the dysfunctional relationship I have with food. When I'm feeling good, I can eat mostly anything in moderation without incident. There are some "trigger foods" that I have to stay away from all the time, like broccoli and cauliflower, popcorn, and nuts. In any quantity, these foods make me sick. And I miss them, like you can't imagine. Sometimes I "cheat" and will have a tiny piece of broccoli if it's in something I've heated up or one piece of popcorn if someone makes it at work, but any more than that and I know I'm headed for disaster.

When I'm not feeling good, my food choices are severely limited, if not completely taken away. I'm a big proponent of Ensure drinks when I can't tolerate anything solid. Also, Extra Noodle Soup by Lipton/Knorr is good, if I feel like I can "eat". But when I bounce back from a bout of stomach virus or Crohn's flare, I want to eat everything I've missed. And this is where the dysfunction comes into play.

I've often said that I think that my health history has resulted in a type of reverse eating disorder. When it comes to something that I love, like macaroni and cheese or pork tenderloin, I will continue eating even after I'm full--I will eat everything there until nothing remains. I theorize that I do this not out of simple gluttony but because there have been so many times when I wasn't able to eat anything at all.

[When I was in high school, to prevent a surgery that would cause me to miss weeks of school and to lose part of my small intestine, I was put on a no-solid-food diet for about 6 months. I drank 6 cans of Ensure a day, and supplemented those with jello, hard candies, Ensure pudding (as disgusting as it sounds), and pickle juice. Yes, pickle juice. I think I needed the sodium. You know what I missed most during those hellish months? The simple act of chewing. And the food I wanted with all my heart was bread.

I ended up having the surgery anyway.]

I have missed Thanksgivings due to either not feeling well or being on asinine diets like the no-solid-food one, or the low-residue diet. For that Thanksgiving dinner, I was able to have 2 oz roasted turkey and some cranberry sauce of the canned, jellified variety. No gravy (too much fat). No mashed potatoes or green beans or pumpkin pie (too much fiber; fiber creates residue). No stuffing because the kind my family eats is made from wheat bread (again, too much fiber). No rolls because my family doesn't do rolls on Turkey Day--but I think I might have had a piece of soft white bread with some low-fat spread on it as a "treat."

Right now, I am craving some mac n' cheese, the boxed Kraft kind. And I know if I made it, I would shove the entire thing in my mouth, more than making up for not eating anything both today and yesterday with the calorie, fat and sodium counts. Now, as a nod to my health, I would make it with fatfree milk, but I would add a generous pat of butter to each bowl along with some Parmesan cheese and garlic powder. Yum.

So, food, the thing that we all need to live, is my enemy. For lack of more eloquent phrasing, it sucks. 

Giant Fuzzy Spiders!!!

I fed two out of my four tarantulas this evening. I find that as someone who is completely skeeved out by palmetto bugs (because they have spiky legs and weird things poking out of their rears AND the fact that whenever there is one near me, it flies or runs towards me instead of acting like the bug it is and running the other way! This is a well-known fact in my house. When the palmetto bugs get in, which thankfully is not that often, they will invariably get to the bathroom and in the middle of the night when I am in there, half asleep and without my glasses so I can't see them, I end up squealing so loud that it wakes up my husband because he thinks someone is messily murdering me in bed). Yuck. I now have the creepy-crawlies.

Where was I? Oh yes, feeding the spiders. Even though palmetto bugs frighten me, the crickets that I feed to the tarantulas do not. Okay, they do, but I've learned to tolerate them. In fact, last fall I even bred some crickets and the babies were so cute!  [But aren't most baby things cute? Yeah. Except baby roaches. Gross.] But as the food source for happy, healthy spiders, crickets are okay in my book. Even with their spiky legs and weird things poking out of their rears.

I love the way the tarantulas pounce on the crickets. As pets that don't really do much except sit around looking like rocks, it's fun to watch them move quickly when they realize prey is nearby. Tarantulas are nicknamed "pet rocks" because it seems like they don't move for days. My spiders are in the family room where the dogs' beds are so I am constantly checking on them, and all but one move around quite a bit. It's especially fun to watch them climbing the walls of their enclosures. They move very deliberately and slowly.

I have one tarantula--it's my most venomous and one of the scarier, old world tarantulas--and he is affectionately known as a "pet hole." Spidey (imaginative, huh?) has a burrow and we never see him. He (I call him a he even though I'm not sure of his sex) has spun a lot of webbing in his tank and that's neat to see also. One night I was conscious enough to check on him after getting up in the middle of the night and sure enough, he was hanging out on one of the glass walls. That was the first time I'd seen him in months. He is a cobalt blue tarantula, scientific name Haplopelma lividum. Old world tarantulas are from Europe and Asia and are the most venomous spiders in the world for their size. Of course, everyone knows about the very toxic Black Widow and Brown Widow spiders. All tarantulas have venom--it's how they eat, by injecting their prey through their fangs with a neurotoxin that slowly pre-digests the insect so that the spider can just slurp up the good stuff. Yuck, huh? I find it fascinating! This is how all spiders eat, even tiny house spiders. You can just see the tarantulas' fangs because they're so big.

I have two Chilean rosehair tarantulas, scientific name Grammostola rosea. My smaller one, Rosie (again with the creative names!) has a lovely copper-sheened carapace (the main part of the body from which the legs stick out). Her hair almost looks metallic. Beautiful. I am reasonably sure she's a girl--the pet store had her labeled as such. My other Chilean rosehair is Ella, named for the old-fashioned dance, the Tarantella. From what I've read, the Tarantella was based on the St. Vitus-like dance that tarantula bite victims go through before they die. That's the romantic, and untrue, story. The real story is that it's a dance from the Apulio region in Italy (a region near the boot-heel) whose capital is Taranto.

My last spider is a Brazilian black, scientific name Grammostola pulchra. Despite his name, he is more dark brown than black, but in another couple molts, he'll get more jet-colored. G. pulchras are docile and can be handled; I have not tried with him because as a youngster, he is VERY quick and he has "attacked" the water dropper when I'm filling his water dish. He is what is termed a sling: a spiderling, a baby spider. He is about the width of a half-dollar. Again, I'm not sure of his real sex; it's easier to call him a him. This kind of tarantula takes a good five years at the very least to mature. His full-grown size will be up to 8 inches from leg to diagonal leg. G. pulchras are big tarantulas in the spider world. There are bigger ones--the Brazilian bird eater (Theraphosa blondii) can get up to 10 inches from leg to diagonal leg! For their huge size, T. blondiis are docile spiders. And no, they don't [regularly] eat birds!

The Orient Non-Express

Today was my Monday as yesterday was spent at the university in orientation. An entire day, wasted. The only thing I gleaned from 8 hours of nothing was that I enjoy my college's advisor's humor. He has a droll wit and I made him laugh (always a high for me).

The day started with my husband dropping me off by the student union where the orientees are to meet. He parked the car and walked me about halfway to my final destination and when I knew where I was going, I left him without a backwards glance, saying, "Bye! Don't embarrass me!" as if he were a parent dropping off his child on the first day of school.

Let me talk about my husband for a bit. When we met, I was attending my current university's arch rival university.  This did not truly bother him but I have endured the digs through the years, especially during football season. I simply roll my eyes and ignore him. When we moved from Central Florida to this city, it was like a dream-come-true for him. He enjoyed his college years here and while this wasn't a career goal for him, moving here was like coming home (to him). [I had a very rough time adapting when we moved, but that's another post.] So for me to attend his alma mater is yet another dream-come-true for him. He couldn't be more pleased for me to earn my degree(s) from this school.

Needless to say, he was more excited for my orientation than I was. As he walked me around the student union, I could practically feel the contentment rolling off him.Any minute I felt like I was going to be caught in the way-back machine with him as he remembered hanging out with his friends at the Union. My being blithe about leaving him was more about bringing the focus back to me than it was about being snippy towards him. So I left him in my dust as I beat feet to check-in.

After I was greeted by overly chipper children wearing gaudy vertically-striped polo colors in the school colors, I was told to "Go stand in that line" because I was missing my health form.*

(*The health form was still at my doctor's office because last Wednesday, I spent the most horrible lunch break of my life there. I received 4 vaccinations, one in each upper arm and one in each buttock (heh, heh). I am still sore from the Tdap (that would be tetanus, diptheria and pertussis to you non-medically-inclined people) injection! Because I have a weakened immune system, my doctors decided to torture me by saying "Sure! Go ahead and get vaccinated against Hepatitis A, Hepatitis B, and meningitis! Oh, and throw in the tetanus shot for good measure!" At first, I was aghast--why the hell did I need to get immunized against a disease that teenagers get who live in close quarters [i.e. dorms] as well as a sexually transmitted liver destroyer? Oh, right, because I'll be attending school with promiscuous children who live 4 to a room and have festering illnesses and I have no immune system. Whose idea was this going to school thing, anyway?!?!)

So my health form was still at the torturer's (I mean doctor's) office and I had to explain this to the young woman who checked me in and she told me to get in line with the 73 other kids who didn't have their health forms so I could explain my lack of health form to yet another perky young woman after I stood in line for 30 minutes.

Luckily I had the forethought to pack my Nook in my tote bag. I read a lot yesterday. A lot.

Then the orientation began in earnest. The happy young folks sang the school's fight song which we, the newest university students, were invited to sing along with. And from there, the day went downhill. I learned how to fill out my financial aid forms (I don't need financial aid because I am employed fulltime with my own pocket money to spend on trivialities like tuition);  how to be safe on campus (I went to college during the infamous serial murders of the early 90s; I know about the buddy system and to be aware of my surroundings); and how to study (I got here, didn't I? Doesn't that count for something?). I sat there, actually wishing I was at work, swamped with all my tasks. I wished they had a program for mature students. I thought I might design one when I get to be a big name on campus. I texted my husband and friends. I wanted to pull out my Nook but thought that might be a tad rude.

The afternoon eventually rolled around. We all split off into our little groups, lead by our frisky orientation (read: camp) counselors. We trouped to an older building and the trio of kids showed us how to register for our classes. Then, we were split up further into groups based on our majors and told to walk to the colleges' main buildings.

Have I mentioned the hilliness of this campus? And the fact that I am not in shape? Add those two things to the group I was walking with--all children in their earliest 20s who thought that the faster we got to the English building, the better. I have shinsplints today from walking 9 miles uphill the whole way [really it was less than half a mile; I am just really out of shape and almost 40, for chrissakes!].

After I cooled down and visited the restroom, we sat through a PowerPoint hosted by the droll advisor mentioned above and then, THEN, we were able to actually talk to said advisor. I now have my classes planned out for Summer, Fall and Spring, and they're all classes I am excited about!

(*Picked up my health form from the doctor's office on the way home yesterday. Did not open the envelope until this morning at work. The health form is NOT SIGNED. Spent my lunch hour driving back to the doctor's office to get the damned form signed. Grr.)

Newsy

Without giving too much personal detail away, this week I was asked to pull data for Florida's legislators that was like comparing apples to chimpanzees. These men (and women, but mostly men) don't know the specifics of the program I work with and request information that makes no sense if one looks at it side-by-side. Hence, the title of this blog. I'm not sure what I want to make of this new endeavor; I only know that I want to write each day, provide a little snapshot into my daily goings-ons.

Something inside me seems to be stretching and reaching with changes. I was accepted as a junior one week ago into the local university's Creative Writing program. I received a promotion at work two weeks ago and my responsibilities seem to have tripled. Other, smaller changes are being made and it feels like I'm not an active participant in my life, but yet I adapt. Am adapting. It's incongruous with my old self. I am morphing into a new me and kind of like it!

Change is inherently scary and I used to not handle it well--anything new might throw me into a tailspin, make me shut down and curl into a metaphoric ball. But lately, change has been welcome and I embrace it. Sure, I embrace it with shaky arms and trembling hands, but embrace it just the same.

Comparisons can be made with similar objects--like apples to oranges. They're both round, both fruits, both have seeds inside, both taste sweet and are juicy. But comparisons sometimes work if you have two disparate objects--apples and say, chimpanzees. Trying to find their similarities instead can highlight how different they are. How unique.And if I strive to be anything, it's unique. Me. Only one of 'em in the whole universe. (Well, that I know of.)