Category: First-World Problems
This would be the category in which I bitch about my ridiculously privileged life.
Retrobruxist Friday 11/30/12, or Everything Something Nobody
Hey, visually-oriented Bruxistists, what do you think about the link color? I tried purple, but it didn’t pop. My graphic designer suggested hot pink, but it looked a little too Miami Vice for me. Burnt orange? Does it go with the other colors? If not, what does?
The Mexican braised beef that I cooked(!) is delicioso. I’m eating it in lettuce wraps with radishes and cilantro. The only sad thing is there’s all this nom-nom sauce left over, and it’s begging for a big hunk of bread to sop it up. Drinking it would be frowned-upon, right?
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I missed 12% by six-thousandths of a point three years ago. Got it a year later, but what a crock. Getting my National Boards didn’t make me a better teacher. You know what has made me a better teacher? (1) Wanting to become a better teacher, and (2) working with good people who also want to become better teachers. That’s it.
Now I feel kind of trapped by the 12% (#FWP). I can’t move out of my Middle Child Generalist certification area (3rd-6th grades) and keep the salary bump. And I don’t know if I really want to teach Middle Children anymore. Middle Earth Children would be fun.
I’m certified to teach high school English, but 12%! Ducks, but water. Wah, wah, wah.
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About three times a month, somebody tells me I’ve lost weight, like they did two years ago. And five, ten, and twenty years ago. Now I just say, “Huh. I wouldn’t know. I don’t weigh myself.” They usually try to reassure me that their assessment is correct. Then I just look at them and shrug and look baffled. Then they awkwardly walk away. It’s fun.
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A year ago, I participated in a CrossFit competition against my cousin. Except that the whole thing happened inside my skull because I’m very crazy. She posted on Facebook recently that she’d gotten her first muscle-up…
Yeah. I’m not ever, ever, ever, ever going to be able to do a muscle-up.
And I’m actually OK with that. I was telling a friend recently that I grew up feeling inferior because my elder siblings were smarter than I was. After therapy and transformational seminars and inspirational quote-of-the-day calendars, I decided that was untrue! I had made it up! Empowerment!!1!
But later, I realized, it is true, and that’s OK.
Because the fact is I’m smart enough AND — they’d tell you this too — neither of my siblings could/would get up and host the Monti StorySLAM, and I can/do. I’d love to be intellectually brilliant like my brother and sister, but I have other talents. So it is with my cousin. Nobody’s good at everything, but everybody’s good at something. Or as my buddy Phil said recently, everything something nobody.
OK me, fine also you, both.
Happy Retrobruxist Friday, y’all.
Hodge Podge
I’m too busy tonight to write a post with a — what-do-you-call-it? — a central idea, that’s it. But who needs a central idea anyway?
First, I made oven-braised Mexican beef!!!!
I haven’t exactly tasted it yet, because it’s quarter past eleven and it just got done cooking (not so great on the timing of things yet), but it looks like the picture! And I only had to call my sister with two Cooking for Dumbs questions: (1) How important is a half-teaspoon of fish sauce in a recipe that uses 2.5 lbs of beef? [She said not terribly but that I should’ve just come over because she has some. Of course she does.] (2) It’s not a good idea to leave the oven on while I go to the gym, right? [Right.]
Second, I was this close to calling the cops to report the screaming domestic dispute next door when I looked outside and Durham’s Finest were already there. Nice work, guys!
Third, HOW GREAT IS THE BLOG’S NEW LOOK? Big thanks to Angie at Lime Tiger, who is not only talented but funny and fun to work with, and Phil, to whom I emailed the documentation for the theme and said, “Wah. You do it.” And he did. What a gem, that guy.
I Know Somewhere You Can Insert Your Shortcode
You guys, I bought this new WordPress theme for the blog and hired a graphic designer to make a little banner image for me. Now I’m trying to, you know, put it all on here, and I’m doing some crying.
Not weeping. Just tearing up a little every time I try (five times so far) because before I email the theme people, I’m supposed to post in the tech help forum, and before I post in the tech help form, I’m supposed to read the threads that are already there, and before I read those threads, I’m supposed to read the documentation for the theme, and I can’t read the documentation for the theme, you guys. I can’t read the documentation for the theme.
You guys.
I teach English, but I can’t read this stuff.
It’s all “.zip file” and “FTP client”, and “make sure your host is running the latest version of PHP and MySQL”. The fuck.
And it’s telling me to activate the theme, but in the live preview, my shit is jacked up. I don’t want to activate it if it’s going to look like that.
So I skipped the forum and emailed. Not only that, I emailed to ask if they could call me.
They said no.
So I’m just crying a little bit. Boo hoo.
¡Pura Vida!
You may recall that, back in September, I vacated Durham for a week in Costa Rica with my super-friend Shiv (a.k.a. my sister-wife). You’re most likely saying to yourself, “Well, that must’ve been pretty dope,” and if so, YOU ARE A GENIUS AND TOTALLY CORRECT.
Evidence:
- We stayed at the base of a volcano for a coupla/three nights.
- We went to a hot spring spa and sat in 100-degree waterfalls that came off that volcano.
- There was a parrot named Estefanía who lived at/around our hotel, and
- All breakfasts included fried plantains. All breakfasts everywhere should include fried plantains.
- We ziplined over the jungle.
- We went on a gorgeous hike.
Also,
- We met a baby sloth named Cheu, and
- We had two fantastic beach days.
(I know. I need to cut that shit out.)
The only obstacles we had to overcome, other than the torrential rains for the first few days, were the incorrigible scavenger animals. To wit, the raccoons and coatis:
But also one morning, a band of capuchin monkeys terrorized/delighted (tomato/tomahto) the restaurant where we had our breakfast. I had wondered why the waitstaff didn’t put boxes of sugar packets on the tables — you had to ask for them — but it’s because the capuchins are junkie-monkeys. They will run through the restaurant, snatch the sugar packets right off your table (sometimes the whole box), and
The funniest part was that if they happened in their caper to grab any packets of artificial sweetener, they would throw them on the ground. (“Pump that garbage in another monkey’s face,” said the capuchins.)
[Side note: I told my 10-year-old niece this story, and she wrote the following poem.
Monkeys Don’t Like Splenda
I was sitting in the restaurant, (I was on vacation,)
I was taking lots of pictures I would send to my relations.
I got a big white envelope; it didn’t say the sender,
All it said upon its face was; MONKEYS DON’T LIKE SPLENDA.
I sat eating bananas, pondering those words,
I was in Costa Rica, but it did seem quite absurd.
Maybe they were picky eaters, or didn’t like the food,
Either way, this or that, I thought it was just rude.
I asked the waitress, bout the note, the manager’s the sender,
Each table gets one, and it’s true, that MONKEYS DON’T LIKE SPLENDA.
Then a monkey raced down and grabbed the sugar packets,
Dumped the Splenda, dumped the box, and just made quite a racket.
I learned a quite good lesson; that healthy isn’t ALWAYS good,
Cause if monkeys don’t like Splenda, I don’t think that I should!
I’m not biased or anything, but I’m pretty sure my niece is a genius?
End side note.]
Shiv and I sat on the beach late in the afternoon of our last day. Pieces of the navy blue mountains across the bay, which itself turned slowly from aqua to slate, chipped off and floated skyward. A lone trawler chugged its way toward the open Pacific. The branches of the guayaba tree stirred above us, and every time we stood up to leave, the yaw-kish of the waves hitting the beach lulled us back to our chairs,
The common Costa Rican expression pura vida means a lot of things, including hello and goodbye. If you say it about a person, it means s/he’s good people. But it also translates loosely as “Life is good”.
Which, in Costa Rica, it certainly was.
Pura vida.
Protected: The Old College Do or Do Not There Is No Try
Retrobruxist Friday 11/2/12
Three years ago, I responded to the negging incident. Awwwww, I was such an online-dating newbie, with my adorable disappointment in dudes’ profiles and emails. Now I’m all jaded and cranky and resigned to spinsterhood.
Progress.
My battle with acne started decades back. I wrote about it two years ago. I do eat way less sugar nowadays, but I also use
My sister looked at the bottle recently and was like, “That bottle…”
And I said, “Looks like it’ll punch your zits in the face?”
“Yes, that’s it,” she said.
It does punch my zits in the face, for the most part. The dermatologist prescribed Retin-A too, and so far, when I apply only a pea-sized amount, rather than the circus peanut-sized amount I used to apply as a teen, it doesn’t seem to make my face
in the sun.
I was just thinking about the genesis a year ago of the great martial art abdo-shindo because I seem to have given myself some abdo this week. There’s something sexy about sore abs. Makes you feel like they’re all hard and tight and ripply.
Sore abs are liars.
Speaking of which, I already gave you the Embarrassing Photo of the Week, but I’m nothing if not generous, so here you go:
Happy Retrobruxist Friday, y’all.
One Tough Mudder, Part 2
Continued from One Tough Mudder, Part 1…
Where were we? Ah yes, I was freezing my cheeks off. Moving on!
Scariest: About halfway through, we had to Walk the Plank. As a kid, I jumped off the high-dive at the pool once in a while, and I can swim just fine, but I don’t know, faced with a drop three times my height all of a sudden, my heart started throbbing in my limbs. It didn’t help that the lifeguards had to save a drowning guy while I was standing there at the edge looking down on the scene.
I couldn’t contemplate my fate for very long though because a bitch with a bullhorn was up there screaming at everybody to jump, so I did, and I plunged down, down, down—the fifteen feet seemed like a mile, and the water went all the way to the center of the earth—and I felt like I might never reach the surface again. But I did, and I swam out of there, and yeah. I did it. Go, me!
Hurtiest: They actually have two different electrocution obstacles, Electric Eel, where you belly-crawl under a bunch of dangling live wires, and then there’s the Electroshock Therapy at the end.
During the former, I got zapped three times, once on my left shoulder and twice on my right butt-cheek. (Looking at our team “before” photo, I’m kind of surprised that my ass didn’t get more of a jangling.) Running through the latter, I hit no fewer than five zappy strings.
And I don’t even know what to say about how it felt. It fucking hurt? It felt like I was getting electrocuted? I don’t know. It wasn’t like anything I’d ever felt. It hurt a lot.
Worst, Runner-up: By far, the worst physical part of the Mudder was the running. First and foremost, I hate running. I hate running. I hate running.
I don’t think I can say it enough times or with enough emphasis to get across my vitriolic hate for running. My body doesn’t like to move fast in a forwardly direction. (And “fast” should probably be in quotation marks. Let’s say “faster than an amble”.) The impact makes my hips, knees, and shoulders hurt. And even though I can walk a marathon and dance/hula hoop for HOURS, my cardiovascular system mistakes running for imminent death every time.
Also, it’s so BORING.
And, as I mentioned in my post about the thwarted Tough Mudder Mid-Atlantic, keeping up with my teammates was going to be a real challenge. I solved that problem by scrambling through the obstacles and taking off, so I’d get a little ahead of the group. They would inevitably catch up, pass me, and wait at the next obstacle, but I didn’t get too far behind that way.
But! In addition to my loathing for the sport of quickly covering distance by foot, I’ve been experiencing some Old Lady Problems lately. A couple months ago, my right heel started feeling bruised, particularly after double-unders, but it wasn’t actually bruised, and why pay $70 for a specialist copay when you can ask Facebook about these things? Dr. Facebook diagnosed me as having plantar fasciitis.
I’ve been doing stretches and rolling my foot on a lacrosse ball and whatnot, which has helped. However, the heel was tender at the very start of the Mudder, so I knew it would be an issue, and I worried about what problems might arise if I favored that foot for 11 miles.
Z told me to take tiny steps and lift with my quads, in essence to favor both feet, and to keep them relaxed, making sure my heel touched the ground with every step so it had a split second to rest. When I concentrated, I was able to do that, but you know, there were people to watch and call-and-response cheers (One of us: “Hercu-!” The rest: “‘Lisa!” [Repeat]) to do, so it’s possible I got distracted one or two times.
About mile 8, three Team ‘Lisa members were up ahead; Hammer was just behind me because her knee had gotten totally jacked up somewhere in there. And my right leg crumpled. Just crumpled underneath me. I stopped and looked at the back of my leg, and there in the middle of my calf was a crater about three inches in diameter and an inch deep. Hammer came up beside me.
“WHAT IS THAT?” I said, pointing at the alien that was backflipping inside my leg.
“Oh! You have a Charley horse! Quick, put your foot back and stretch the calf out,” she said. So I did, and whew!, it totally helped. Hammer to the rescue.
Thanks to her, when Charley came galloping by again at mile 10 and then again when I was reaching up for the monkey bars, I knew what to do, and later in the car, Z lent me his
to roll out my calf, and it was magically hurty and helpy. (Shiv insists on calling it The Stick, even when there’s another article or possessive pronoun in front.)
[Note to everyone: you should buy a The Stick and use your The Stick every day because it will make your life betterer.]
Now those of you who know me will say, “What could possibly be a Worse Part for Amy than running?” And it’s true, there wasn’t anything else that was so physically taxing (and BORING).
But there was one part that was, spiritually and emotionally, the Super-Worstest of All the Parts, and that was what Shiv likes to call Shitter Village, i.e., the giant bank of port-a-potties at the start line.
Of course, nobody likes a port-a-potty (except maybe Flukie), especially ones that have been enthusiastically used for pre-event lightening of loads, as it were.
And I’m not going to say, after a sausage & egg breakfast and a soy latte, that I left Shitter Village better than I found it or anything, but the first port-a-potty I tried to use, but ran out of screaming—
Actually, let me address the previous occupant directly.
Dear Sir or Madam,
I understand your impulse to squat. I really do. Nobody wants to put his ass directly on the seat of any public toilet, much less a portable one that doesn’t flush. But since you, in your crouched position, managed to miss the hole entirely and shit directly on the back of the seat, I feel like it’s your duty to wrap your hands, wrists, and forearms—whatever you need to do—in toilet paper, and sweep that pile into the space where it’s meant to go.
Sincerely,
EVERYONE ELSE THAT HAD TO GO IN THERE AND WITNESS THAT, THUS LIVE WITH THAT IMAGE FOR THE REST OF THEIR LIVES
I guess you could say that the Most Worstest of All the Parts, Much Worserer Than Everything Else By Far was the shit show.
And we’ve come full circle.
One Tough Mudder, Part 1
[Before we begin, a note for my mother and any other worried parties: A friend of mine suggested I solve my ragey eye infection problem by wearing goggles during the Tough Mudder, so I dug through some stuff in my shed and found a pair of ten-year-old swim goggles. They more or less did the trick. ‘Course, they were real squeezy on my head and always opaque with condensation and I looked real cute, you guys. But between them and the drops, which have been actually landing on my eyeballs, thanks to Shiv’s steady hand, it looks like we might be able to save the eye. Onward!]
There were so many Worst Parts of the Tough Mudder Carolinas, I don’t really know where to begin.
We’ll get to them in a minute, but I should start with this: it was SO RIDICULOUSLY FUN. After the Shit Show known as Tough Mudder Mid-Atlantic, TM management was clearly back on their game for this one, and Team ‘Lisa
had SUCH a good time, y’all. People kept asking, “Are you all really named Lisa?” and we would explain that we were all Herculisas! Ha!
The fifth member of our team, Z, is not pictured, as he was behind the camera. Also, this counts as the Embarrassing Photo of the Week, considering that my “booming system”, as Dan NJ calls it, makes everyone else’s systems look like subwoofers.
Anyway, there was laughter and camaraderie. There was psyching each other up, cheering each other on, and hoisting each other over walls. There were inspiring athletes: one dude carried a pumpkin the entire course (you know, for Halloween!); a guy with a prosthetic leg ran our heat.
Some Mudders dressed in costumes: a caveman, a couple bumblebees, a bunch of superheroes, folks in interview suits, some jailbirds, and two guys who wore nothing but sneakers and pink lamé thongs. With their race numbers written in Sharpie on their ass cheeks.
It was hilarious and awesome and inspiring.
But the Mudder is supposed to be hard. When it’s hard, it’s good, and the good is bad, and the bad is good, because you’re doing it; you’re really doing this ridiculous thing. And so I present to you:
The Worst Parts of the Tough Mudder Carolinas, Ranked from Least Worst to Most Worstest of All the Things Ever
Least Worst: I’m actually kind of impressed that I didn’t have a panic attack in any of the tubes and tunnels we had to crawl through. My knees and elbows got scrapey and bruised, but apparently my theoretical claustrophobia is worse than my practical claustrophobia.
Worse: The upper body obstacles. Not the walls or the haystacks—those were fun because people let me climb on them and/or they shoved me over by my legs, feet, and ass—but the Hangin’ Tough and the Funky Monkey.
To be honest, I didn’t even really try on those because I knew I would be dropping into the water at some point, so I figured I’d just go ahead and put myself there. I KNOW, NOT THE MUDDER SPIRIT. Next time.
Also maybe for next time… Everest. (Z did it!)
Worser: Remember how I was worried about falling into the series of trenches full of water? Well, I didn’t fall in, but I did fuck up some other Mudders’ rhythm because, even though they say not to stop in between, I stopped. Sorry, people!
Kinda Bad: It wasn’t the carrying of logs that was bad. It was carrying the logs a long fucking way that was bad.
Definitely Bad: At one point, you had to fireman’s-carry a partner up a hill. I called dibs on Hammer, threw her over my shoulders, and started trudging. And even though she was the smallest person in our group, I still had to stop mid-way and take a break. She piggy-backed my ass from the switch-off point to the end. Beast!
Goddamn Terrible: The very first obstacle is called the Arctic Enema, a dumpster full of ice water with a board in the middle that you have to swim under. And when I say “ice water”, I don’t mean “really cold water”, I mean, water, but with a shit-ton of ice in it. As someone who grew up swimming summers in
I liked to consider myself a person who knew something about submersing oneself in cold water, but after experiencing the Arctic Enema, I imagine it’s more akin to winter-swimming in
And even if I’d had the upper-body strength to hoist myself out, which I didn’t, being in that water for eight seconds made all my systems go beeeeeeeeeew brrrwwww booooo, and I was functionally dysfunctional. Fortunately, Z scooped me out by my arms.
Coming soon: One Tough Mudder, Part 2
Tweedly Tweedly Dee
Hey, do you follow me on Twitter?
If you don’t, you’re missing so, so much. For example, this insightful analysis of the third presidential debate:
While you’re at it, Like my Facebook page too. For crying out loud, Tulip has more Facebook Likers than I do, and I’ve been hammering away at this shit for years.
(I will try to put up a real post tomorrow, friends. All my words for the week got syphoned off into a piece of thinly veiled fiction about a river tubing trip that I barfed out [the story, not the trip] for my writing workshop. But it’s not even good yet, so I can’t post it here. Plus, I’ve been staying up past my bedtime again because the subject matter of the short story is making me all agitated. I need to go to bed now.)