Annabelle Speaks

Inspired By True Events

Family weekends always seem to be too full of stories to wrap up in an entry of any reasonable length.  I try to make notes to write about later, but my lists end up being far more entertaining than any recount of the actual stories could be.  This is my list from Friday afternoon/evening:

1.  Headphones – tune out unwanted spousal rumination
2. T making Meth
3. Claymation play-dough colors
4. CHEEEEEEEEEEEEEP
5. Lexicon, phone charger, nostrils
6. Flower sound-effects

What it boils down to is that weekends with my family are more fun than anything else I do, ever, yet they make poor blog entries.  They are completely unintelligible to people who weren't ther, not to mention half the people who were there.  Picture my parents and I laughing so hard we are all but falling out of our chairs, gasping out words that seem to make no sense (CHEEEEEP!  Pork chops!  Weather Channel!), tears streaming down our faces as we gesture wildly with our hands and add in strange sound effects for no apparent purpose; that'll give you a general idea of what my weekend looked like.

Oh, we also had a metric ton of bread on hand, just in case. 

(Not pictured: the TEN BOXES of dairy digestive supplement living on the window shelf by my mom’s carnival glass.  When did my parents start aging?  I call full stop on that, thanks.)

The massive amounts of bread were accompanied by massive amounts of all sorts of food, as this weekend was the (high school) graduation party for one of my cousins.  We’ve moved into the land of family graduations where I start to feel old.  I look at my baby cousins and their friends and baffle at the fact that they somehow turned into teenagers when I wasn’t looking.  I remember how grown up and adult I felt when I graduated high school, and I just want to run over and hug those kids and shield them from the real adulthood that is barreling down on them faster than any of them realize. 

Nearly all of my cousin’s graduating class was there, joking and play volleyball and basketball and generally horsing around.  My dad leaned over and said if I was bored I should go and explain to the lot of them that they were going to spend the next ten years trying very hard to avoid most of the people they were clinging to today; that most of them have nothing in common with each other besides the small town they grew up in.  Likely most of them will look back on 2009 with a mixture of nostalgia and horror, the same way I look back on my days in high school.  But at least they were still enjoying each other this weekend, before they all move onto the next stage in life and try very hard to be more than they are in their yearbooks: “class clown”, “best eyes”, “most likely to save the world”.

And in closing, before I wander off to page through my high school yearbooks and cringe and shudder at the pegged jeans and other dubious fashion choices, I bring you some poor quality pictures of me from high school, just because.

See, pegged jeans.  Paired with high-tops, just to complete the look I was going for.  You thought I was kidding.

 I am particularly fond of the silver high-tops in this picture.  From the background I would suspect that this dance had a theme of “space” or some such thing, but still…silver high-tops.

And to top it off, we have awkward teenager cheerleader Anne.  I can’t even look at this picture without cringing inside at what it felt like to be fifteen.  Man, you couldn’t pay me enough to do that again.

Go Bears!

So There's This...Bear

I never thought my fifteen minutes of Internet fame would come from impersonating a bear wandering the Seattle suburbs on Twitter, but really, who could predict that?

 

Yesterday I learned (via Twitter) that Seattle news outlets had been overrun with stories about a bear sighted in several places around the city/suburbs over the last four days.  It seemed the media there had latched onto the story as their Amusing Light Story of the Week.  We've all seen those stories and rolled our eyes at them, yes?  Later that afternoon I saw Sundry, who lives in the Seattle area, tweet:  "I can't believe the Elusive Seattle Bear doesn't have a Twitter account yet. Someone get on this."

 

Because I was bored, I did.  And @TheSeattleBear was born.

 

I followed Sundry on my new Twitter account and started my life as a virtual bear.  I didn't really think beyond my first tweet when I did this.  "Gave the police the slip again! Considering sponsor offers/selling ad space on my fur. Would wearing bear stickers make my butt look big?"  But much to my surprise, Sundry followed me back and promptly tweeted "God bless Twitter: @TheSeattleBear"

 

That's when my followers started to gather, the retweets started popping up, and other Seattle resident tweeters started commenting on the bear showing up on Twitter.  Another account, @seattlebear, was created by someone, and the battle was on. 

 

@seattlebear:  "@TheSeattleBear meet at Ballard Locks Fish Ladder at 5pm. Winner take all (all the fish). Loser move to Chicago (me heard they have Cubs)." 

 

At this point I began to doubt the wisdom behind creating a Twitter account of a Seattle-wandering bear, being as the closest I've ever been to Seattle is...Mount Rushmore in South Dakota when I was thirteen.  But I had nothing to lose in the battle since I already live in Chicago (go Cubs!), so I stuck with it.

 

"Went running today. Aiming for spokesbear gig for Kid Fitness. Going to be the Smokey of 2009. http://tinyurl.com/p7skuq"

 

"Working on an "on the run" playlist per @brianseitz suggestion. Anyone have any good song suggestions?"

 

"Possible joint advert campaign theme: Smokey and the Bandit. Y/N? I'd love to work with someone like Smokey. Admired him since I was a cub."

 

Then the radio stations, news stations, and Seattle blogs started following me.  My tweets even showed up in a blog entry on The Seattle Post-Intelligencer and on My Northwest.com.

I had more followers and came out victorious in the twitterduel when @seattlebear admitted to being @bostonsteamer and NOT a real bear.  As of this morning my account has 144 followers and I've been re-tweeted and mentioned by dozens more.  I have not yet admitted on my Twitter stream that I'm @annabelle_me, a woman living in Chicago and tweeting from her iPhone, and not a Real Bear.  I'm not sure I will.  I sort of like hanging with @Fremont_Troll and other Seattleites.  Maybe I'll take a vacation out that way someday soon.  I've certainly got enough offers of places to crash!

 

God bless Twitter.  Thanks for the fifteen minutes of Internet fame.

Stop and Smell the Roses. Or Look at the Tulips; Whichever.

If I were to write an entry about what I did this weekend it would read something like this: "Insomnia, nauseous, nauseous, nauseous, nauseous, tired, insomnia, still nauseous."  Since no one really wants to read that entry, and since my to-do list is long enough without adding "write something interesting on blog" to it, I'm taking a shortcut and putting up some pictures of flowers.  Because who couldn't use a break to look at flowers on a Monday afternoon?

These are all pictures of flowers I see on my walk to and from the train each day.  I'm lucky that people along my street take pride in their front gardens so I can enjoy flowers without having to put in the time to grow them myself.  I don't have a very "green thumb"; I even failed at keeping a cactus alive.

I love that I can live in the middle of a huge city, within easy walking distance of everything from framing shops to ice cream parlors to gyms to dentist offices, and yet the area around me is also green enough to let me get in a little city-nature time.

And anytime I'm having a Monday, all I have to do is look at pictures like this and remember that in a few hours I'll get to see these (and other) beautiful flowers on my way home, and that will make the day a little bit better.

Adventures in Hospital Billing

Yesterday I had an internal temper-tantrum over the fact that the hospital AGAIN billed my insurance for my appointments that are supposed to be self-pay.  It saves me thousands of dollars a month to use their self-pay discount vs run the charges through my insurance, thanks to my insurance sucking very much, thank you. 

So, anyway, I left two messages for the hospital billing person.  The first was regarding the fact that for the month of March they sent me a bill for cash-pay (which I paid) and for my co-insurance amount after they ran the same charges through my insurance.  I left the second message after I learned from my insurance company that they had also been sent charges for the month of April, even though I had been assured by the hospital that this was taken care of last month and that mistake would not happen again, at which point my head exploded.  Despite said exploded-head, my voice mail messages to them were quite reasonable and calm-but-firm in a friendly tone.  I imitate my mom whenever I have to deal with people over the phone, because my mom is possibly the world's most friendly and like-able person, and it tends to get me what I need without having to be crabby at people.  (Side-note: As an example, my mom is so friendly and love-able that she once got our family invited to the wedding of someone she met in the line for the bathroom at a comedy club.  Honestly.  I can't make that stuff up.)

What was I talking about?  Right, hospital billing.  So this morning I get into work and find that I have a voice mail from the hospital.  Our voice mail system is set up so that voice mails are automatically emailed, as well as available through the phone lines.  When I opened my email I noticed that the file size for the voice mail was strangely large, but didn't think much of it and hit play as I was getting other stuff set up for my day.  The message, it turns out, was so full of apologies and promises and lists of ways that this will be fixed and more apologies that the message went on for a full three and a half minutes.  A three and a half minute apology is almost enough to make me forget the billing mistake entirely.  This is what calm, well-reasoned, voice mail gets you.  It gets things done! 

Or maybe it has something to do with the fact that my diagnosis of "major depressive affective disorder, recurrent episode, severe degree, specified as with psychotic behavior" is probably written in bold at the top of my chart.  Either one.

This is What a Panic Attack Looks Like

It starts with a sort of buzzing, vibrating feeling in my skin.  I'm not actually shaking.  I repeatedly hold my hand out to prove this fact to myself, as if as long as I am not really physically shaking, then everything is just fine.  Somehow feeling it without being able to see it is more comfortable.  Safer.  I'm not really losing it; it's all in my head.  Ha.  As if that phrase holds any comfort to me anymore.  It is things "only in my head" that have caused me the most trouble and pain.

 

Emotionally I feel fine.  The sun is shining, it is warm outside, and my week is full of scheduling wonders like dinner with friends on Wednesday and a massage on Tuesday.  And yet, something is off, and it is starting to make me nervous.  I check again to see if I can hold my hand out steady.  I wonder why every nerve ending in my arms and hands is tingling and firing at once, and how this is not showing on my outside.  I'm positive this is what it would feel like to have a thousand ants marching on the inside of my skin.

 

I wish I could crawl into bed and wrap myself tightly in a blanket and take a short nap.  I know that would help, but I can't because I'm at work.  I take some papers to the scanner to try and get some easy mindless work done while I pull myself together.  Standing at the scanner I alternately feel like fainting or running laps around the floor.  I feel like the world is twisting my top half one way and my bottom half the other way, like a cosmic "snake bite".  I want to scream, or run, or cry, or hit something, or just do something, anything, to get rid of this energy.  I see it in my mind as an electric charge building up in my body, making me glow-in-the-dark bright.  If someone told me the energy buildup could be seen from space I would only be surprised that it took them this long to notice.

 

I close my office door, turn on my calming play list on my iPhone, and take a series of deep breaths as I press the heals of my hands over my eyes.  I will my heart to please, please, please slow down.  I bounce my legs up and down, trying unsuccessfully to lower the volume of the buzzing in my body.  Tears leak out around my hands, still covering my eyes.  I notice that I'm nearly hyperventilating and again concentrate on slowing my breathing.  I know I should take my panic meds, but I'm just so sick of needing pills to stop this.  I just got myself off having to take the panic medication every day, and currently view every "as needed" dose as a slip towards returning to that level of reliance, that level of numbness.  I don't want that.

 

But I don't want this either.

Siiiiiiiiinging in the Rain

I love that we get to have spring in Chicago this year.  So many years it seems like the weather jumps right from winter into the sweltering heat of summer.  Don't get me wrong, I like summer a lot, too.  But spring and fall have always been my favorite seasons; I love the changes. 

 

As long as it isn't too cold the smell and the sound and the feel of spring rain is just so refreshing.  I used to love to play outside in the rain when I was a kid.  Trees and flowers are coming back to life drinking in the rain and it's just so exciting and beautiful and alive to see color come back to the city after the long, gray winter.

 

Color comes back to the city in more ways than flowers and trees, too.  The other day I was watching a river of colorful umbrellas parading down the sidewalks of Michigan Avenue on my way home from work.  My contribution to the color parade is a red umbrella so bright I suspect it can be seen from space.  As I was watching people and their umbrellas navigate the evening rush hour, it got me thinking.  Why do people wait until spring to break out the umbrellas?  We certainly have more than our share of snow here in Chicago (and in my prior homes of Minnesota and Wisconsin), and snow does melt and one can end up as cold and wet from snow as from rain.  And yet I see umbrellas used in the winter months only very rarely.

 

Maybe umbrellas are like flowers - blooming only when the spring rains come back and the mercury pushes up above freezing; bringing color back to the streets as the rest of the city is waking up from a long winter rest.  Maybe they are smart enough to hide in the back of the closet for the frozen months of the year because they are simply smarter than we are and understand that one should not leave the house when the temperature in Fahrenheit is a negative number.  Or maybe I just need to anthropomorphize umbrellas a little less.

 

Either way, I'm enjoying the spring colors, be they housed in trees, flowers, grass, clothing, fresh paint, or the metal and waterproof fabric of a river of umbrellas.

Much Too Young to Feel This Damn Old

It would be helpful if someone could inform my right hip that I am in fact 28 years old, not 82.  I don't know what is up with it today, but I'm pretty sure I need either a hip replacement or a professional massage.  Thankfully I have the later scheduled for next Tuesday, because I don't particularly like hospitals and don't want to start replacing body parts and becoming the Bionic Woman just yet.

 

I think I might finally be coming out the good end of the heinous mold-allergy-reaction-of-doom that has had me in its grips for a couple of weeks.  I only woke myself up coughing TWICE each of the last two nights, which is something of a minor miracle.  I'm still sleeping in the spare bedroom so that T can at least get some sleep, and so we can have completely different room temperature/fan/blanket arrangements without annoying each other.

 

In other night-disrupting news, Maddy has learned how to open the closet door, a skill she only demonstrates just as I'm about to fall asleep.  I'd leave the door open and just let her in the closet, but that particular closet is full of far too many things to rustle around and play with, and I suspect that noise level wouldn't help my sleep any.

 

Last night all three cats ganged up on me to make sure I didn't get to sleep until late.  T was out seeing a play with a coworker and wasn't supposed to be back until after I was asleep.  So I spent the evening reading, then went to bed early and snuggled in and was just about to fall asleep when I heard Maddy opening the closet door...tap, tap, sliiiiide...tap, tap, sliiiiide.  I hate her.  So I got up and she flew out of the room, knowing she would be turned into a fuzzy set of mittens if I caught her.  I crawled back in bed and was pounced on by Piper, who gets very needy when T is out of the house.  She pranced around the bed, climbing on and over me 37,000 times before FINALLY settling in to lay down, at which point Ricky jumped on the bed, startling Piper into a fluffy hissing fit, and they ran off down the hall together.  Again, I was just about to fall asleep and I hear it...tap, tap, sliiiiiide...tap, tap, sliiiiiide.  Lather, rinse, repeat.  I very nearly sent T a text message that I was going to lock all the cats in their cat carriers and leave them outside the front door and she could bring them in when she got home.

 

Does anyone want a free cat or three?  They're cute!  At least during daylight hours.

A Post About Clothes That Ends With Fringe (the TV show). A.K.A. How Clever Am I?

I went clothing shopping this past weekend and bought rather a lot of new work clothes.  I didn't particularly want to go as I seem to be missing whatever gene is supposed to make me love shopping, but I was quickly running out of clothes that were anywhere near the right size, and one can only get away with wearing pants three sizes too big for so long.  (I know, I know, LIFE IS HARD.)

 

The first two days this week I wore skirts and high heals.  Nothing about this is particularly noteworthy or interesting other than the facts that 1) I do not wear skirts often and I enjoyed surprising everyone I know with my new outfits, 2) I had a very classy Marilyn Monroe moment walking down to the (windy)subway on Monday night that was surprisingly not too embarrassing and quite hilarious to watch, I'm sure. 

 

Anyway, I chose to wear skirts partly because spring has finally made its way to Chicago (yay!), and partly because I haven't gotten around to hemming the new pants I bought.  By the way, am I getting shorter, or are pants getting longer?  I used to be fine in "average" length pants, but now I'm finding I either have to hem quite a bit, or move into "petite" lengths.  I'm somewhere in the 5'6"-5'7" range, depending on which doctor/nurse is measuring me, and it seems wrong that I should be in "petite" length pants at my height.  What do people who are shorter than I wear?  Kids sizes?  I do not understand.  Perhaps I am expecting too much of womens' clothing sizes.  The actual size given a particular number has always varied from store to store and brand to brand, so why should length be any different? 

 

I think they're all just messing with me.

 

Either that or you should watch for me in the next episode of Fringe, where someone unleashes a Leg Shrinking Poison in the greater Chicago area, Olivia climbs into the salt water bath of creepiness in her bra and underwear, Walter makes a dirty joke and then wanders off in search of good pizza, and Peter comments sarcastically about it all.  Astrid, meanwhile, hangs out in the background looking hot.