Parking lot puking

Woke up exhausted today. Got an extra coffee in the morning, thinking I'd just slept badly. It wasn't long before I was swept by waves of nausea. I actually got up from my desk a couple times, headed to the ladies room. When I got there, all I wanted to do was puke and get it over with. But then I realized that if I did, there was a good possibility that someone else would come into the bathroom while I was hurling.

And since the only people on my floor are folks that work at my company, they would recognize my feet, and speculate.

Eating disorder?
Hangover?
SARS?

I just couldn't go through with it. So, swallowing hard, I retreated back to my desk, where I considered getting under it and throwing up in my wastepaper basket.

Finally, lunchtime.

I dodged the executives who usually ask me out to lunch and hit the elevator. Down to the lobby, across to the second elevator and down to the parking garage. Finally I arrived at my car door, weak, green, and clammy. I climbed in, reclined the seat, and thought I'd just take a little power nap during my lunch break.

Slept for 30 minutes, then woke up nauseous. And this time, it was for real.

Flug open car door, in a panic. Swallowing frantically, I scoured the garage for an appropriate place to hide and puke. Nothing. Desperate for relief, I finally ran around to front of car, where I hunkered down, squatting (skirt hiked up, mind you -- NOT ladylike) between my bumper and the cement wall of the garage.

And up came the coffee. And water. Relief, at last.

I'm a bad puker. I get all teary and shaky and super self-conscious. I want my mommy.

[Note: I called my mom after this puking episode, and after the obligatory 'ooohhh, sweeetie!!!', she got straight to the point:
Mom: "Oh my God. You're not pregnant, are you? Because that would really..."
Me: "No! God, Mom! That would be entirely impossible. ENTIRELY. Jesus.
Mom: "Well, you can't blame me for asking. But yeah, I guess that would be impossible."
Me: "Wait--what the hell is that supposed to mean? Why would that be impossible? I mean, I'm not a gargoyle, for God sakes!"
Mom, condescendingly: "Oh, no. Of course not, sweetie. You have a winning personality. You just focus on feeling better, now."]

Puking honestly traumatizes me. I fight the whole process. Every heave is painful, and in between them are little hiccups of misery. Like I'm 8 years old.

But afterwards, everything changes. Momentarily, I'm overcome with a rush of euphoria. Afterward, I'm always sure I'm cured of whatever ill got me to the puking part to start with. It's like I'm on a narcotics binge and am manic and superpowerful.

I've been saved! I've once again thwarted death! I'm the queen of the world! I can FLY!

Of course, that's why people do drugs: to escape reality. 35 minutes after the parking lot puke I was back to misery.

And periodic puking.

But I'm the kind of person who never believes other people when they say they're sick and have to leave work. I mean, how many times have you called in sick just to sit in a beer garden all day, or to spend the day on the lake, or to start your weekend early? So because I don't believe anyone when they take sick days, I am held captive at work when I'm actually sick out of some sort of weird reverse psychology guilt complex.

[I should be Catholic, I swear.]

And since I'm leaving on Friday for Philadelphia and will be in NY Sunday and Monday for work, I doubly can't justify taking off early today. So here I sit, queasy, weak, gross, in my skirt and heels (which I thankfully missed in the parking garage squat), waiting for 5:30.

::sob::

[If there is a Mommy in the greater Seattle area who could maybe just stop by my work and give me ginger ale and brush my hair and call me 'sweetie', please comment with your full name, home and cell numbers and location. Or better yet, just come. Here. And make me all better. Please.]

Guilt or die

I just ate a steaming hot plate of guilt and responsibility. The chef? My mother, who is completely committed to being sure I come out of this whole young-adult thing on top, with a clean house and a balanced checkbook.

I've mentioned before how my mother was very involved in, like, everything when I was growing up, right? Local elections, fire district and emergency response plan, her career, my "upbringing", my education, my calcium intake... it was all her domain. And bless her heart, she ruled her kingdom with an iron fist, a clock set 7 minutes ahead, three functional calendars, a strong cup of coffee in the morning and at least one late, disorganized, gasping child/spouse in tow.

It was always cool when I was growing up having a mom who attended everything and knew all my friends by first and last name, driver's license number, address, and political party and stuff. I lucked out, though, because she's actually very cool. And pretty. Which means my guy friends liked her and my girl friends looked up to her.

Yeah, my mom was cooler than me.

Anyway, now that I'm older and she has less direct contact with my peer group/life, I have

a) higher self-esteem
b) a chronic lateness problem
c) more time to fixate on why her being very type A and very involved occasionally sucks for me. Namely, guilt.

You see, two of her greatest passions happen to align with two of my greatest weaknesses: letter-sending and voting.

My mother writes letters with the regularity of clockwork. Though we only live approximately 20 miles apart, I can expect something in the mail on a near-weekly basis. And she makes her own cards, so they're very Martha Stewart (and each letter probably takes her an hour, including labor). I mean, it's actually very awesome to get stuff in the mail - until I consider carefully the time she's invested and the fact that the last time I sent HER mail was... well... never. Then the guilt creeps in.

I'm a taker! All I do is take, take, take! When am I ever going to make time for anyone besides my boss, my cat and myself?! I can't even write a letter to my own mother!

It's pretty bad, this guilt. And it's compounded by the fact that in these letters, she usually includes something she feels I'll find relevant or interesting. Such as a clipping on how to best avoid contracting meningitis (more on this later), or how to make a "Quick And Easy Crockpot Meal" or about how many glasses of milk I should drink per day to avoid osteporosis. (I drink zero glasses of milk per day. She drinks 3. Guilt and self-loathing? OOOh! Another helping, please!!)

And that's not even the worst of it.

My mom's involvement in the voter registration process in our home county means that she is almost as inflamed about voting as P. Diddy himself. She actually mails my absentee ballots on to me -- in a different county, now.

And I'm so threatened by them that I actually fill them out most of the time, because I picture my mom standing there over me, with a "Vote or Die" t-shirt on, wearing it completely without irony:

"Vote or DIE, honey! I mean it! And if I don't kill you, you'll probably wish you were dead! Like how about I come by your office with a sack lunch and ask if somebody forgot something this morning? How about that, Lizzie? Yeah, maybe you should just VOTE, dont you think? Or DIE, remember?"

I'm a bad person. I honestly don't have an opinion about school levees or random referendums. I'm pretty focused on really important issues. Like, paying my car insurance and learning how to apply streak-free self-tanner and determining the most effective abdominal workout and generally being a consumer whore.

And here's my mother, sending mail to everyone she loves on a weekly basis, running a home and working multiple jobs (for fun) and volunteering, and trying to continue to shape me into a responsible, contributing 'adult', even from afar. Poor thing has her work cut out for her.

I'd help her out, but, you know, I've got a lot going on. Like, there's a new "US Weekly" out and the Nordstrom's Half-Yearly Sale is coming up. And another Goddamn absentee ballot to decode, too. So yeah... I'm pretty booked for the next couple weeks.

Elevator Adventure

If I were ever to write a coffee table book, I think it would be about things that have happened to me or in front of me in various elevators throughout the course of my life. Some depraved, hilarious, scintillating stuff happens in elevators, you know?

For example:

Today I got on the elevator on the 25th floor of my building. I was going down. On floor 19, the doors opened and a verrry old man got on. He was basically the embodiment of the color gray. Gray hair, gray skin, gray wrinkles, gray eyes, grayish/bluish clothes. Gray walker.

He was not a fast-moving gentlemen, what with the lifting of the walker and the thrusting of it forward and the slow stepping. (Rinse, repeat. Rinse, repeat.) He was slow enough, in fact, that the doors nearly shut on him twice in the amount of time it took him to cross the "threshold". Once he was (finally) in, he stepped to the back of the elevator and leaned against the handrails, exhaling heavily.

I zoned out on the little flat screen that displays today's headlines in the elevator, awaiting our arrival at the lobby. I heard the *ding* signaling our approaching floor, and as the doors opened (I was still reading headlines), I heard a second sound. The old man. Saying the following, with true horror in his raspy old voice:

"OH. MY. GOOOODDD."

As you can imagine, this was a bit unsettling. I looked up, and followed his slack-jawed stare beyond the elevator doors, where our next passenger was waiting. You see, we hadn't arrived to the lobby. We were on the 13th floor. And our newest passenger was a giant.

Well, a giant woman, anyway. She easily tipped the 400 lb mark. In fact, standing outside the elevator, she almost seemed too wide to fit through the double doors.

The old man was near apoplectic about this development. He wheezed, and, still wide-eyed and grimacing in revulsion, took his hand off his walker and clamped a death grip on the handrail inside the elevator. He then spread his legs, as if bracing for the elevator cables to snap under the weight of our new companion, sending the whole box hurtling through space. This man was honest to God afraid the woman was going to break the elevator and kill us all.

As you can imagine, this was both terrible and incredibly funny. So much so that I had to remind myself to shut my own mouth and wipe the look of gleeful horror from my own face.

As the large woman stepped onto the elevator, the old man shrunk back into his corner, still gripping the handrails and "getting low", with his legs spread wide as if he were in a defensive basketball stance.

The large woman then turned around to press the "door close" button, and it just got better. She was one of those HouseSpiders. By which I mean she had the shape of those spiders you find in your house that have huge, disproportionate backs full of tiny baby spiders, which spill out and scatter when you squish the mother. In other words, this woman had a heinie the size of a second normal human being.

She adjusted, backing further into the elevator as the doors shut, and I had to again close my own mouth and stifle a snort as the old man reached out his right hand (the one holding his walker), and gave her rear end a little nudge with his closed fist, just to let her know he was there.

It was priceless. This old man was so frightened that he'd be crushed by this large woman's sizeable behind that he actually gave her a little bump for good measure. I nearly peed.

I swear to God if a book called "The Life of an Elevator" comes out now I'm going to just totally lose it. The only good news if this happens is that no one reads coffee table books, (particularly when comprised of short stories) so it will probably flop, right?

The Gasping Girl and the Mountain

Let me just say that while climbing that mountain this weekend, I vehemently committed myself to never doing the downhill skiing leg of Ski to Sea again. But somehow between then and now, I've practically already signed up again, and have spent a good part of this morning marveling at that.

But before I go there, let me describe the experience:

I had prepared myself to for it to be hard, but honestly, even in my worst nightmares I had no concept of just how grisly it would get up there. It was like I stepped into my own private version of The Old Man And the Sea. I was Hemmingway. The mountain was the fish.

We were at war.
And it was kicking my ass.

Clearly, in the end, I prevailed, but let me just say this: the downhill ski leg of the race has got to be the hardest. First, it's the only leg where you get timed while you carry your equipment to the starting point. Second, it's the only leg outside of the cross-country ski leg that isn't entirely downhill or flat. And third, because it's named alarmingly poorly, which leads the novice to think they've got it handled. To wit: though I knew there was going to be a climb, I basically just kept telling myself "Yeah, but it's the Downhill Ski leg! How hard can it be? You've been skiing for DECADES!"

Right. Most (like, 90 percent) of the time spent on that mountain is you, heavy-ass ski boots on, heavy, awkward skis and poles resting across shoulders, climbing as fast as you can up a snowy, wet mountain face that is so steep that if you look down behind you, you get vertigo and almost pass out. Downhill ski my ass.

Were I to name this leg of the event, I might choose something a bit more descriptive and/or accurate. For example, some fitting names include but aren't limited to:

1. Climb to the Summit of Mt. Baker in Ski Shit Ill-Adapted To the Purpose
2. The Only Way It Gets Worse is if You're Trapped in an Avalanche With A Live, Hungry Bear
3. Wanna Vomit, Cry And/Or Wish You Were Dead?


But I made it! Take that, Mount Baker! And my team finished squarely in the middle of the pack - decent showing for a first-time mixed rec team. I did slightly better than average for my leg -- they estimate it will take 25 minutes for the first place finisher, and between 30 and 50 minutes for the rest. I came up near 35 minutes. (If I hadn't stopped once to curse my own existance and watch two of my competitors stop to puke, I might have done slightly better, but what can you do?)

Interestingly, my legs aren't sore at all -- they're in pretty good shape from the volleyball I play a couple times a week. My right shoulder is on fire from carrying my skis up the damn mountain, but the worst part was just the cardiovascular endurance. I was working so hard that it was pretty much anaerobic - and my lungs are in moderate shape, at best. So I'm recommitted to running a couple times a week. I'm convinced by the time I get suckered into doing this again next year, (which is inevitable) I'll be able to significantly improve my time, if I train right.

It's amazing how soon after such a horrible, painful event you can be willing to put yourself right back there. Something like childbirth, I guess. Honestly, in the middle of the climb, it occurred to me that I actually paid to be there, and I was so incredulous that I would have laughed out loud, if I hadn't been suffocating and struggling to remain conscious. It was, as I've said to anyone who will listen over the past 48 hours, probably the hardest thing I've ever done.

And yet here I am, two days later, glowing with accomplishment, ready to do it all again -- but better next time.

Wish me luck.

I'm doing this this weekend.
This is my leg.

I am quite entirely serious when I say that this may very well kill me. If the getting up at 5 a.m. part doesn't take care of it first, the 1,000 foot clim up the face of a snow-covered mountain in unwieldy ski boots most certainly will end my existence on this planet. But, always the optimist, I've compiled a list of pros and cons.

Upside 1. If I just have a minor stroke but still make it to the top of the mountain, the odds are good that a hunky ski patrol guy will have to ski me down to the bottom on one of those stretchers, giving me plenty time to look at his ass

The downside: Stroke=drool. Drool does not=sex appeal times one million. Also, stroke=paralysis. Paralysis does not=responsive to advances, even if I do manage to not drool.

Upside 2. If I drink enough the night before, I may well be able to do the whole race while still blacked out (though it's been probably 4 years since I've gotten that intoxicated, so the odds are probably better that I win the race or the lottery, but...), thus erasing all the horrific pain from my memory

The downside: nausea. No one likes a crying puker calling for her mommy on a snowy mountain at an athletic event. Major morale-buster.

Upside 3. I will possibly be the best looking woman there for two reasons: first, this thing is mostly done by men. Second, this thing is mostly done by hippies. Hell-lloo, self-esteem booster!!

Me, panting and entering cardiac arrest but still attempting to muster a come-hither for the tall drink of water passing me: "Heee--gasp--eeey!"

Tall drink of water, head down, fixated on conquering the mountain like a real competitor: "Mmmph".

Me: "I shave!"

TDOW, perking up a bit, still focused on winning the God-forsaken race: "Mmm?"

Me, in one breath: "I don't even know what patchouli IS!! And I've never taken a feminism class! And I don't think strip clubs are offensive!!"

TDOW, giving up on the race and lurching at me: "Bushes!! NOW!"

Downside: I'm pretty sure most of the men there will be hippies. Which means a few bad things, including but not limited to extreme sensitivity, a fatal attraction to their guitars and the sound of their own voices singing bad Dave Matthews cover songs (OR, worse, sappy fucking songs they WROTE... oh my God, if that isn't a dealbreaker...), smelliness, an irritating fixation on politics, cutting plastic six-pack rings, and washing and re-using ziploc baggies, and terrible superiority complexes. None of these are good things.


I'll let you know how it goes.

Evolving

So I'm now officially 25 and two days. And, although I'm now fighting obsession with the tiny laugh lines around my mouth and am pretty sure I spotted a spider vein in the shower this morning, I'm still, for all intents and purposes, perky in all the right places and have muscle tone in my upper arms, which is nice.

Also, I hear I'm still climbing to my "sexual peak", whatever that is, and won't start the hideous descent down the other side of this mysterious mountain until sometime after 30, so I guess I have that to look forward to.

________________________

Last night, the girls took me out to dinner (Mexican and Mojitos) in my new city of residence, which is Kirkland (more on this later -- please don't send a lynch mob out for me before I have a chance to explain).

The meal was nice. The Mojitos were incredible, and all of the girls present were at least one year younger than me, which sounds demoralizing, but turned out not to be. I mean, yes, they totally kept insisting they'd heard from reputable sources that 25 was the "best year" of a young, single woman's life, which is the most obnoxious thing I've ever heard out of the mouth of a 23 year old with legs like a baby girraffe. But, after one Mojito they were shrill and shrieky and the center of everyone at the restaraunt's attention (in a bad way). We were THOSE girls. You know, the noisy, obnoxious ones who occasionally let the F word slip out just loud enough for the buttoned-up family across the restaraunt to hear. The herd of girls who are so engrossed with themselves and each other that they have utter disregard for everyone around them.

We were the irreverent representation of all that is fun about being young, kissed by summer and vodka, and every old person in that place actively hated us for it. Except the waiter, who spent most of his time fluttering around our table, clumsily filling up our water glasses, stuttering and blushing (when he wasn't trying to peer down the fronts of our shirts).

It was a good evening.
There was cake and a mishap with a lighter.
There were a handfull of cellphone photos taken, and even one accidental video (my phone is actually smarter than I am, which is terrifying).
There were a number of off-color jokes, old memories re-told, and something about the difference between a bolo and a bolero.

We were silly and free and ignored the few annoyed patrons around us. And when we stumbled out into the warm night, I was full of the abandon of youth. But after the air kisses and well-wishes and on my short walk home (gifts in tow and mint still on my breath), something changed:

I found myself looking forward to my quiet home, a glass of wine on my deck, and a chapter of my current book. I considered my job, which I love, and was thankful that I've found something that turns me on from 8 to 6 on weekdays, and I thought about re-potting my wilting Jasmine plant. And changing my oil. And what I wanted to do with the rest of the year.

And I realized that this transformation from child to something distincly more sophisticated isn't as abrupt or unnatural as I feared. It's gentle, and empowering. And I like it.

So, though I may be a year older, I've decided I've got at least two things going for me:

1. very immature friends who encourage me to just let go, and
2. the recognition that while youth is certainly a ball, there's nothing wrong with being happy to be right where I am; in the present, evolving.

May Mixtape and geeky linkage

We're only four days into May, but in those four days, I've essentially lived on eight songs by a grand total of six artists:

1. "Breathe Me" -- Sia: I don't know. Just like it's breathy neediness. I'm having a real girly month, I guess. I can't explain it.

2. "Here I Am" and "Nobody Knows Me (Like My Baby)" -- Lyle Lovett: Dude, I just really love this guy. He's the asymmetrical equivalent of my crush on pretty much every nerd. He's smart, and a little sensitive, and dry, and funny, plus funny looking. All that, I'm pretty sure, equals gangbusters in bed. Also, sometimes he sings imagery that I carry in my head: Reading newspapers over people's shoulders, warm yellow mornings, lonely breakfasts, riding horses on boats on oceans, cream in my coffee, etc. I don't expect you to understand it, of course.

3. "Sleeps With Butterflies" and "A Sorta Fairytale" -- Tori Amos: I was recently told that Tori Amos was entirely unlikeable by men. This I cannot understand. Men like/lust Fiona Apple (and so do I), and I consider Tori Amos to be Fiona's predecessor -- a little offbeat, darkish with a twist of hopefulness and humor; a generally incredible musician exploring obvious but semi-twisted themes, etc. Though these two songs in particular are sweeter than she was in her early years, I still think they're lovable by both sexes. Unless you're incredibly insecure, that is. I mean, she uses words like "butterfly" and "fairytale", so...

4. "I Could Hold You In My Arms" -- Ray Lamontagne: I've pimped R. L. before, but that is because he is just awesome. This song, in particular, has been high on my playlist this month. A note: the very best part of the song starts at 3:35. It's the best verse, and he sings the last chorus in a way that makes me replay it about 13 times before I finally let it end and go on to the next song on the playlist. I'm serious. Listen to the way he sings "I could hold you..." at the beginning of the last verse. It almost brings me to either tears or orgasm. I can't decide.

5. "Come Pick Me Up" -- Ryan Adams: Um, because I wish you would, and there's a little bit of wonderfullness in that kind of willing abandon, if that's not too much of an oxymoron to even exist. Obviously.

6. "Long Ride Home" -- Patti Griffin: Reminds me of my mother. And, by extension, also of me. For different, but probably related, reasons.

________________________________________

Check this out. Any site that compares me to Kirstin Dunst, Keri Russell, and Audrey Hepburn is just fine by me, thanks! (Let it be said, though, that when I ran a photo of a friend of mine who will remain nameless, Robert Downey Jr. came up. My friend is female. So perhaps ego boosts don't come standard...)

Find other cool Flickr mashups in this list of wonderfulness. God, I'm a geek. I totally used the word "mashup". I guess I should maybe consider retiring the pocket protecter, huh?
________________________________________

I've had this real-time Abe Vigoda alive/dead status icon on my desktop for months and it just occurred to me to share it with you perverse souls. So there you go. I think I might actually care now if Mr. Vigoda really DID die. He's my little (tiny) (virtual) buddy now, sitting there at the bottom right corner of my toolbar, staring morosely off into the distance, with his too-dark eyebrows and convincing mobster persona radiating all over his corner of my computer screen every morning, afternoon and night...
_______________________________________

And, finally, LOST -- streaming! So you don't need to have a Tivo or cancel your plans every Wednesday night simply so you don't miss the single most addictive television show ever created (outside P. Diddy's "Making the Band" and VH1: Behind the Music, of course)!!