Saturday, February 23, 2013

MORSELS

• I’m not the kind of person who clings to quotes, especially not the inspirational kind. But since I write, I have to believe that sometimes the job of other folks’ words is to say what we wish we could say ourselves. I ran across a simple Henry Ford quotation last month that stuck with me: Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success. When I’m feeling like designing prints again, someone remind me that I want to do one of that.

• In the dressing room after yoga today, my friend asked how class went for me. “I’m surprised to be alive,” I replied. Sometimes it feels like a miracle that I can walk out of that studio and drive myself home without passing out.  

• Haley was a cute baby. And, in an evil episode of early childhood photobombing, I look like I'm trying to kill something with my stare:


My Sophie-girl is a major pest, but she’s also, well, sort of my best friend. In June, when I learned that The Wasband was packing up to move out, I was in Boston for school. With disturbing abruptness—just ask my school friends and teachers—I left and flew home to Nevada to see what I could do to save the marriage. To say I was a mess doesn’t do me justice. Wasband and his brother were filling a U-Haul so that he could leave. I curled up on the daybed in my office and sobbed in a way I didn’t know my body could. I called my mom and wailed something unintelligible. “Where’s Sophie?” she asked me. From my reply, she somehow deciphered that the puppy was at camp. “Go get your critter,” Mom said, “You need her.” I don’t know where I found the wherewithal to locate shoes. I don’t know how I found a set of keys. I don’t remember driving to the daycare place. But I’m so glad I listened to my mom. I think it was healthy for me to have something around that I could love and care for that could love me back. That rat-beast has been an incredible comfort. I talk to her. I snuggle her. She smiles when I get home. She sleeps under my covers, squashed up against me, and when she wakes up, she puts her front paws on my back and does Upward-facing Soph. That dog’s a hassle. Over the years she’s cost me a lot. I know she’ll always be pesky and expensive. But since this beastie’s been my bestie, she’ll always be totally worth it.

• The Microsoft Surface commercials are killer. I mean, they don't come close to making me want to use that crummy technology by choice, but I love watching them. I especially love it when I'm watching a show on Food Network online and the same Surface commercial plays twice, back to back, during the one commercial break.

I downloaded a dog breed quiz app. Yeah, and I totally paid for it. On my first run through I got 67 out of 70 correct. I was more excited about that than I was about finding out that my April work meeting is going to be four days instead of five. It's nutsy that something could one-up my pleasure in spending one less day out of town.

• As part of my drug-pedaling job, I schedule lunches with doctors. My work partner and I only schedule lunches in offices where we know we'll get time with the physicians, where the time and fiscal investment is valuable for all parties. But there's this one office where we kinda just schedule lunch so we can learn stuff. We kick off the lunch doing our diabetes song and dance and then we sit back while the three super-smart doctors talk to one another. I always leave with new information of some kind. Data on fish oil. Stuff about Vitamin D. Just enough details about hyper/hypothyroidism to scare the shit out of me. And this last week: a new word—anhedonia. As soon as the doc said it I asked him to spell it so that I could write it down. Anhedonia’s an inability to experience pleasure, and here’s how he explained it in relation to his practice: when a patient is suicidal they will step in front of a bus. If a patient is anhedonic and they see a bus jump the sidewalk and head for them, they won’t get out of the way. An anhedonic patient is a tough patient to treat. Though they’re not motivated to kill themselves, they’re not motivated to live. They don’t follow treatment plans. They just wait to die.

• My sister, Cat, sometimes calls me Megini. It's a clever portmanteau of Megan and yogini (a female yogi).

• Words I always seem spell wrong on the first try: their, exercise, license, incorporate, and masturbate. Yup, apparently I’ve typed out the word masturbate with enough frequency to know that I always seem to fail on my first try.

• Speaking of masturbation—hey, I spelled it right this time!—I get a kick out of watching Ina Garten take a bite of her own cooking. Sometimes her face looks like she’s getting off, and, oddly, it doesn’t send me into my faux dry heaving; it just makes me happy for her.

3 comments:

Audrey said...

I feel like you should go ahead and copyright "Wasband." Soon. Get on that.

Anonymous said...

I totally feel you on exercise and license! But instead of masturbate, mine's penis. I'm always like: wait, is THAT how it's spelled??

Also, since you're asking for design reminders (and because I like to give unsolicited suggestions), I would totally buy the following quote I saw floating around the interwebs:

Money can't buy happiness. But it can buy books, which is sort of the same thing.

Megan said...

Lacy, you can't spell Penis because you don't have sons. I'll bet you can spell vagina and it's many euphemisms in your sleep, right?

I'll add that adage to the list. Damn, it's long. So laaazy . . .