Weird Science
Here's an addendum to my previous post, which I like to call The Lardass Diaries (or: Another Example of People Who Are Too Stupid to Live):
Stephanie's birthday is tomorrow. So at work today, she was gifted with some of her favorite things (office supplies and makeup; and yes, she spends an inordinate amount of time color-coding both). Her boss, who is not a particularly demonstrative woman, gave her a perfectly lovely card. As she presented it, she said this:
"We didn't get you a cake, but you probably appreciate that."
!!!
ME: What does that even MEAN?
STEPHANIE: Oh, that I'm a fatty-fatty-two-by-four!
ME: !!!
STEPHANIE: So put that on your blog and smoke it!
ME: !!!
STEPHANIE: I don't even take offense to it because it's so hilarious. How can you be in the profession you're in and be so supportive of people's appearances and just totally miss the mark?
Have I mentioned that Stephanie is a nurse? In the plastics clinic of a children's hospital? Plastics, meaning cleft palates and deformities and burns and babies who need multiple surgeries to correct painful and unsightly birth defects? In other words, these are not infants getting boob jobs (and yes, Stephanie has been asked if she provides breast augmentations to children ... multiple times).
STEPHANIE: You can go back to work now! [giggles] She rocks! I'm going home to my husband who accepts me.
Gah!
My friend Lisa studies astrology. It's something I've always felt pretty skeptical of in the past, but truth be told, when she tells me that a planet has gone into retrograde, I notice that the potholes in my life have gotten deeper and craggier and they puncture my tires and dent my car and wrestle the exhaust pipe from its underpinnings.
Okay, so I don't have a car. Whatever. You get my point.
Anyhoo, at the moment, we're experiencing Venus retrograde, which is said to provoke us to reevaluate our interactions with the people in our lives. Astrologists say not to make any major decisions during this time, to financial-plan but to withhold from purchasing big, to consider and think about what's bugging us but to restrain ourselves from doing anything monumental or path-altering, as we're all pretty testy at the moment. It's also said to negatively affect aesthetics and people's response to them, which is making me reconsider the appointment I just made to (finally!) get my eyebrows done. I can just see myself walking into the salon for my de–Matt Dillonation and walking out with conjoined twin myslexia. It's a good thing my sister is a nurse in a children's plastics clinic!
So maybe that shift in energy, the hellfire and damnation of Venus, which I'm certainly feeling (it's as if I'm hermetically sealed in bubble wrap, so detached have I become to survive it), is dumbing everyone down, making seemingly intelligent people sixth-grade-regressive and making otherwise seemingly unflappable people that much more sensitive (or, reversely, numb). I know that the past two weeks of unrest have gotten so under my skin that, for the first time in three years of working at this office, I looked down at my pile of work today and said to myself, "I. cannot. do. one. more. thing. I. cannot. talk. to. one. more. person."
So I'm going to go home for the weekend and wait Venus out. (Appropriately, I almost typed weight Venus out.) I'm going to raise a glass to Stephanie, who lives in the one city where we found the perfect chocolate cake, and I'll hope she enjoys a slice for her birthday. I'm going to think happy thoughts about my eyebrows, and devise a plan for how to gingerly ask the Facial Hair Professional to clean up my visage without adding a conjoined fetus to my forehead. I'm going to regroup a bit, foster a healthy relationship with the planets, however skeptical I may be, maybe reevaluate some relationships, and take Stephanie's advice:
I've put it on my blog, and now I'm just gonna smoke it.
In the meantime: Is weirdness happening to you right now, too? Tell me about it!
Stephanie's birthday is tomorrow. So at work today, she was gifted with some of her favorite things (office supplies and makeup; and yes, she spends an inordinate amount of time color-coding both). Her boss, who is not a particularly demonstrative woman, gave her a perfectly lovely card. As she presented it, she said this:
"We didn't get you a cake, but you probably appreciate that."
!!!
ME: What does that even MEAN?
STEPHANIE: Oh, that I'm a fatty-fatty-two-by-four!
ME: !!!
STEPHANIE: So put that on your blog and smoke it!
ME: !!!
STEPHANIE: I don't even take offense to it because it's so hilarious. How can you be in the profession you're in and be so supportive of people's appearances and just totally miss the mark?
Have I mentioned that Stephanie is a nurse? In the plastics clinic of a children's hospital? Plastics, meaning cleft palates and deformities and burns and babies who need multiple surgeries to correct painful and unsightly birth defects? In other words, these are not infants getting boob jobs (and yes, Stephanie has been asked if she provides breast augmentations to children ... multiple times).
STEPHANIE: You can go back to work now! [giggles] She rocks! I'm going home to my husband who accepts me.
Gah!
My friend Lisa studies astrology. It's something I've always felt pretty skeptical of in the past, but truth be told, when she tells me that a planet has gone into retrograde, I notice that the potholes in my life have gotten deeper and craggier and they puncture my tires and dent my car and wrestle the exhaust pipe from its underpinnings.
Okay, so I don't have a car. Whatever. You get my point.
Anyhoo, at the moment, we're experiencing Venus retrograde, which is said to provoke us to reevaluate our interactions with the people in our lives. Astrologists say not to make any major decisions during this time, to financial-plan but to withhold from purchasing big, to consider and think about what's bugging us but to restrain ourselves from doing anything monumental or path-altering, as we're all pretty testy at the moment. It's also said to negatively affect aesthetics and people's response to them, which is making me reconsider the appointment I just made to (finally!) get my eyebrows done. I can just see myself walking into the salon for my de–Matt Dillonation and walking out with conjoined twin myslexia. It's a good thing my sister is a nurse in a children's plastics clinic!
So maybe that shift in energy, the hellfire and damnation of Venus, which I'm certainly feeling (it's as if I'm hermetically sealed in bubble wrap, so detached have I become to survive it), is dumbing everyone down, making seemingly intelligent people sixth-grade-regressive and making otherwise seemingly unflappable people that much more sensitive (or, reversely, numb). I know that the past two weeks of unrest have gotten so under my skin that, for the first time in three years of working at this office, I looked down at my pile of work today and said to myself, "I. cannot. do. one. more. thing. I. cannot. talk. to. one. more. person."
So I'm going to go home for the weekend and wait Venus out. (Appropriately, I almost typed weight Venus out.) I'm going to raise a glass to Stephanie, who lives in the one city where we found the perfect chocolate cake, and I'll hope she enjoys a slice for her birthday. I'm going to think happy thoughts about my eyebrows, and devise a plan for how to gingerly ask the Facial Hair Professional to clean up my visage without adding a conjoined fetus to my forehead. I'm going to regroup a bit, foster a healthy relationship with the planets, however skeptical I may be, maybe reevaluate some relationships, and take Stephanie's advice:
I've put it on my blog, and now I'm just gonna smoke it.
In the meantime: Is weirdness happening to you right now, too? Tell me about it!
Labels: family, friends, philosophical whatnots, pop culture, weight, work
posted by Marla at 4:53 PM
15 Comments:
hoo-wee. an homage to troubled venus retrograde indeedy. i'd like to add that old loves often come out of the woodwork (all of mine have, practically; both the long-losts and the why-did-i-evers) during this period, and there exists an opportunity to examine emotional/romantic patterns that deserve a look-see.
also, officially venus went direct on sept 8 after two uncomfortable months, but the retrograde period doesn't entirely end (ie the planet doesn't go back into position) until Oct. 11. which means: I'm with Marla. i'm heading out this weekend. I can't take any more soul-searching, let alone any more mishegos.
happy birthday, miss stephanie!
do you consider a complete and utter disinterest in every facet of my life wierdness? or is it clinical depression? for real.
What do you mean? Explain please. Do you feel other people have a complete and utter disinterest in every facet of your life?
no, i have a complete an utter (udder?) disinterest in every facet of my life.
Who is this Anonymous person who posts unanswerable questions? If we knew who you were we could then tell whether or not you were inneresting.
Man, I've been there. It's a horrible feeling. When you can't even open a book, when it's too much energy to move off the couch. When you not only can't find the energy to, but you don't even WANT to.
Is that what you mean?
Here's a for-what-it's-worth, from what I've learned (and I take this VERY seriously, so please forgive my earnest-ness):
If you're suffering a malaise, where this doesn't happen very often but maybe it's happened a few times but you haven't really done anything about it because you seem to come out of it eventually, it might not be clinical and you could be helped by therapy (and possibly light antidepressants, if you're having trouble).
If you have felt this way for a long time, you're finding it difficult to function and you can't seem to get out of your own head, if you feel detached from everything around you and you're in physical and mental pain, it could be clinical. The best thing for you to do would be to find a good therapist, who could work with you and team with a psychopharmacologist to find the right meds and get you back on track. Clinical depression can rarely be helped without meds, and therapy is essential. It's a chemical imbalance in the brain and it should be approached like you would any other disease. It's a horrible thing to have to go through, and it's difficult because so little is known so there's a lot of trial and error, but there have been major strides in the mental health community, and with the help of a therapist and a psychopharmacologist, your life could improve so much. There are great books out there about it. Just know that, just like any other disease, there is no shame in having it. It's horribly crappy, but it's just the luck of the draw. If you have it, you can find treatment. You can feel better. I think it's all about arming yourself with information and the support of people you trust.
Every Wednesday night, I go to a support group for friends and family of people who suffer from mood disorders (depression, bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, OCD, etc.). Those diseases affect an awful lot of people in my life and I wanted to learn more about how to help them (and how to cope when it gets to me). It's very common for caregivers to get depressed themselves and to have to take antidepressants, even though their depression isn't clinical. Meds just suck them out of the rut so they can cope better and move forward. So what I mean by all this is that it's just as useful for those who don't have the disease but experience depressive episodes (which I have) as it is for people who are diagnosed with the disease itself.
I'm certainly not a doctor, but I can say that you don't have to feel like crap. There are resources out there to help you. I found a terrific therapist myself just over a year ago, and with her help, and with my support group, I feel like a much stronger, more focused person, and I can't believe all the changes I've made in my life (including starting this blog, which was done to help me gain perspective because I had forgotten how to have conversations that weren't totally miserable). So even if you don't think it's clinical but you can't seem to get out of your current rut, you can get help. I would recommend for absolutely anybody to seek therapy, just because I think it's important anyway, but especially when you feel like shit and don't know why you feel like shit.
Please let me know if you have questions. Or think I'm a douchebag for writing all this. Good luck ...
hey, thanks. i think i have the first kind. it never seems to last for more than a day or two and it never really registers as more than a malaise. i just look around sometimes and wonder if every single choice i have made was wrong. and i spiral from there. but eventually a healthy dose of a chocolate or cheese based someting-or-other reminds me what is really important in life. getting back into my size 4 jeans from 1988.
I find that burritos help as well, but they're not at their optimum effectiveness if you don't sploosh a giant heap of guacamole in them. The guac is key, especially when it congeals with the cheese to make a sort of Paste of Love.
I'm glad your rut is not as bad as I rambled it on to possibly be, and I apologize for going a little overboard. Depression is something that's very prevalent in my life, and I get damn serious about it. It's always hard to guage where a person is with it because it's so hard to talk about, so I thought it might be better to say too much than not enough.
In any case, I think that if you didn't wonder about your choices, you'd be in that happy Britney Palace of Noninvolvement and you'd have to share whatever it is you're having with the rest of us. Because I think we all wonder and shoot straight for the worst-case scenario. It's totally normal. Annoying, but normal.
I really hope your size-4 jeans from 1988 were acid-washed. Because they're from 1988. And acid-washed, at least in my high school, was the only way to go.
No, no. Definitely not acid wash. Just plain old dark blue Levis 501's. The whole acid wash craze didn't really make it to the suburbs of Albuquerque. But I've heard of acid wash. Oh have I heard of acid wash. Anyway, kisses to you.
yo yo yo, dawg.
You like burritos?
See, the fact that acid-washed jeans never made it to Albuquerque is yet another very strong argument for why I'm dying to go to New Mexico. People in your state are so EVOLVED. My life would have been so different without acid-washed jeans. And I can't help but wonder: Without acid-washed jeans, what would A.C. Slater have worn on Saved by the Bell?
Steph, you never knew about my burrito thing? It's fairly new, relatively speaking. The first meal I had the day I moved to Cobble Hill was at Buddy's Burritos, and I've been hooked ever since ... even when I was off Mexican food after the Chicken Quesadilla Salmonella Incident of 2001. Hey! Buddy's Burritos is right down the block from the Himalayan art store we're going to when you come here in November, with the necklaces! I have an idea ...
whats up sluts, its me your favorite rubble rouser. gonna continue to consor a person or has freedom of speech returned to this (at one time) most forward thinking of blogs? just curious. let the ho know, you know? L8-R Dayz, Babe-z.
MarlaGarla, are you going to continue to, I believe the word is, "consor" people or let all of us "rubble" rousers run free and wild on your blog? I must know.
Acid-washed jeans must have made it to New Mexico, I mean, they totally rocked the bolo ties... what else goes better with a bolo tie than a pair of acid washed jeans?
Mmmm, burritos. Burritos and Himalayan necklaces... I'm so there. New Yawk in November is going to be hawt!
Do you know the way to Santa Fe? I mean, tumbleweeds... prairie dogs... yeah! (Get it, a semi-obscure Rent reference tied in with your speaking of New Mexico. Pretty clever, huh?)
I think I've told you before but for your readers ears/eyes: there are 2 burrito chains in greater Boston that are huge competitors with each other. As it turns out they are separately owned by feuding siblings. And they're both Asian. Pretty cool, huh?
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