Strange Freedom

I've hit the August wall, that time of year when I long for autumn and the end of humidity. It's been particularly bad this year with so much rain, but as my Dad would say "good for the crops."

Still it would be nice to get a full night's sleep and not wake up at 3 am because I'm way too hot or too cold. I'm thankful for A/C but I long for central air.

I think Ben Stein put it nicely:



On the upswing, my gluten free life continues and I am feeling much much better. I'm going to my doctor's this week to request a blood test for celiac disease. Even if it comes back negative, I think I will still stay gluten free because I have been feeling so good.

That's probably why I've been finding work unbearable. Once again, I find myself sitting at a desk wondering how I got there. I'm twitching to do other things. I need to radically change my life.

It's funny. As my physicality improves, there is almost a part of me that doesn't want an answer. In a way, it's easier to always be in pursuit of an answer than to find it and then have another decision to make. A compensatory lifestyle has its own strange comfort.

I recently picked up The Gluten Free Bible by Jax Peters Lowell. She talks about how food is such a primal need that it's vital you go through a mourning period, that yes, this new life means a pasta free Italy and a croissant free Paris. At the least, you can't just grab a bagel when you feel like it.

I find I'm not in mourning for food at all. If avoiding certain foods is all it takes to feel better, then fine. I'm all over it.

I think what I do mourn is the lost opportunity and the sense of isolation. I keep thinking about what I could have accomplished the last 20 years if I'd had the energy of a normal person and the fact that my fatigue issues overall are just one of those things that people don't "get" about me. I don't think people understand how you can be tired all the time if you can't point to some definitive cause of your fatigue. I'm just grateful that I'm feeling better generally these days and I hope it continues so I can focus on making the next 20 years the counterpoint to the first.

Dry As A Bone

Oh the glory of dry air Romanship.

I was finally able to pick up the dehumidifier from my company mail room today, and was able to get it inside without too much effort. The humidity in our basement was an unbelievable 74%!!! The dehumidifier is doing its thing though, and it's getting dried out quickly.

Thank God. Nothing worse than chronic moisture in a house. Nothing.

I'm now in my fourth day of being gluten free. I have to admit that it's far easier than I thought it would be and overall I am really feeling better. I think this may be why my allergy avoidance diet, although generally making me feel good didn't really offer much improvement overall after six weeks of dedication. On that diet, I was still eating things with gluten like spelt bread. After only four days being gluten free, I feel better than I did after six weeks on the anti allergy bandwagon.

But truthfully, the items available at the grocery store have vastly improved. I tried another rather similar restrictive diet about 10 years ago and it was a wasteland in terms of options. Tonight by comparison, I made myself a batch of walnut cranberry muffins. I just added eggs, almond milk and vanilla extract to pre-packaged flour, baked for 16 mins and presto!

I'm also finding I'm much fuller after eating. I'm not having terrible cravings for things and actually feeling like I've had a meal after I eat, versus that vague hungry feeling I would still have even after a big meal.

I'm giving the gluten free life a month. We'll see. So far the results are very positive. Maybe this has been the cause of many of my health issues all along.

U.P.S.? YOU SUCK

How's this for a business model? Imagine that if customers can't meet your expectations, they don't get their product. Yes, I shit you not.

Such was the encounter I had today. I came home for lunch for a much needed break in my day and upon checking the mail, discovered to my joy that U.P.S. had made an attempt to deliver my dehumidifier from Costco. I assumed U.P.S. has a similar model to other couriers in that you can make subsequent arrangements to get your package.

Instead, I called the number provided and a recording informed me that:

I could not pick the parcel up at a depot.
I could not arrange an alternate time when I would actually be home to have the package delivered.
That after three attempts the delivery would be abandoned.

I called U.P.S to confirm the above and unbelievably enough, it was actually true. Adding insult to injury was the fact that I wasn't even in their system when I called, so they told me someone else would call me back at my office number as I could have my dehumidifier delivered to an alternate address.

So let's just recap here....

U.P.S. is not going to let me pick an item up, saving them time, money and gas.

U.P.S. are going to continue to swing by my home address, at least two more times, even if I won't be home wasting time, money and gas.

U.P.S. can deliver to an alternate address [if on the route!] which means I still need to transfer an item to my home myself, that I've already paid to have shipped there directly.

Now having a personal item such as a dehumidifier delivered to my work was precisely what I didn't want to do because frankly, I just didn't think it was appropriate, as if mail room staff don't have enough to do.

But I called the mail room when I got back to the office.

"Hi there. I'm in a bit of a pickle and wondered if you could help me. I'm expecting a personal package via U.P.S. that I was originally having sent to my home -"

"Oh and let me guess. They can't do that can they? They can't actually make a delivery when you'll be there. Have 'em send it here."

Obviously I wasn't the first person who'd encountered this and my mail room at work couldn't have been more helpful.

What can Brown do for you? Sweet F*ck All apparently.

Don't Touch the Red Roostah!

Today has been heavy and sluggish with near constant rain since last night. The humidity has at least loosened its clutches, and I'm able to sit in our office and type without the a/c on. Ragdoll and I had a good day yesterday, our first girly day in absolute ages where we drove around, engaged in unrepentent shopping and had a fabulous lunch out.

We also had a moment of unplanned hilarity at the check out counter at Homesense.

Ragdoll spotted a rather interesting red glass statue in the shape of a round rooster. She said "Hey Zesty, isn't this neat?" at which point a male voice behind me bellowed "I'm buying that." to which Ragdoll, not missing a beat replied "I.Know. I'm just saying it's nice." All said with a smile, of course. Advantage: Ragdoll.

Then we checked out the discount garden kiosk in the parking lot. It was all I could do not to buy the painted wrought iron Rooster that was two feet tall, and march back into the store declaring "F*ck you buddy! We got our own damn rooster!"

Anyway, today's unrelenting agenda has consisted so far of takeaway banana pancakes and general relaxation. I'll be watching a movie later on this afternoon. I love hunkering down on a rainy day, and I need something to keep me occupied while the Marine is out of town. I can't tell you how much I've been missing him; it's like a hole in my heart.

I also need to plan my new gluten free regime. But more on that later

Uh....Huh?

Good Lord. It's Friday? How did that happen?

Well I'm finally back to a saner schedule next week. Hope to be posting more often.

I am well Dear Reader. Hope you are too.

Rising Damp

The amount of work I've gotten through at the office the last two days has been truly staggering. All weekend thoughts of it lay on my brain like a layer of icing I constantly spread around as I tried to imagine getting it all done. And yet bit by bit I have and I am seeing the end of a six week gauntlet run by this Friday.

It's about f*cking time.

So after a very busy and long day, and a run to the vet to pick up medication, I did what any sane person would do. Yes, that's right. I went to Walmart to buy a dehumidifier.

Our old one finally gave up the ghost and with the amount of rain we've gotten this year our damp basement has been particularly unbearable. I found a great one online at Costco, but with seven to ten days shipping to wait through, I figured I'd just go to Walmart and get one. This is all well and good except that I had overlooked two key facts.

One - I had not called ahead to Walmart to confirm they had the model I needed in stock.

Two - I had deluded myself with the notion that despite the fact that The Marine is away working on his cousin's house in the glory that is Eastern Ontario, I was somehow capable of lifting a dehumidifier with a 55 pint capacity in to a shopping cart, out of my car and down the basement steps.

Around 6:10 pm my stomach starts grumbling. "Should I go?" I think. "Maybe I should just go home, get a good dinner and watch some Star Trek Voyager." But then the announcer on the radio declares that we're expecting rain and thunderstorms tonight and I decide on Walmart.

I then battle insane rush hour traffic that is compounded by an inane amount of construction on all the major east/west routes.

Finally arriving at Walmart, I join the acid wash jeaned and polyester prima donnas and grab a cart. Enroute to appliances I stumble across a DVD. It has early movies featuring Marilyn Monroe, Betty Davis, Joan Crawford and Barbara Stanwyck. At $3.88, how can you go wrong? I grab it and chock one up for Great Moments in Bargain History.

Heading over to the "Home Comfort" section or whatever the hell it is that they call it, an earnest sounding woman comes on the announcement system declaring not once, but three times that in one minute, ONE MINUTE YOU MUST ACT NOW, there would be a free gift giveaway in the back right of the store where there is a flashing orange light, A FLASHING ORANGE LIGHT, where there would be an exclusive giveaway of an item not yet available in Walmart stores for weeks. WEEKS!"

As I'm never one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I figured WTF and went over to the back right corner of the store that featured the flashing orange light. A woman about as thin as a door appeared in grey slacks and a rather stylish [I thought] purple top.

"How you all doing tonight? You doin' good? I'm doin' good because we have got a fabulous giveaway tonight everybody, an EXCLUSIVE item for you to take home as a gift before it's available in this store. Anybody got cameras? Who's got cameras?"

We all raise our hands like we're in kindergarten.

Please keep in mind that while she's talking, I've got a kiosk directly behind me running an ad loop for Pampers.

"And you know how dust gets on your lens right? We all know this. How about a computer? You got a computer?"

Hands up.

Well actually that last part sounded more like:

"And Explore you know our entire how dust gets on your range of diapers, lens including right? We all know Swaddlers Sensitive Diapers, this. How about a computer?

"Well that screen gets pretty dusty too doesn't it."

It's at this point I began to think, "Jesus H. Roosevelt. Did I seriously walk all the way over here for a ---"

"GLASSES! Can we talk about glasses and how smudged they get??? Well we have got the most amazing dust cloth for you to try!"

No you didn't misread that. Dustcloth.

"Who's got a plasma TV?"

Two women, who looked they'd left the iron on in the trailer raised their hands.

"I'm giving these away tonight, an 8 dollar value, TEN! WITH TAXES! absolutely free to you this evening! Now gather round."

As the crowd stormed the mini stage featuring its solitary flashing orange light show, I took full opportunity of this moment to swing my cart around and head back to the "Cool ma damn house" section. I admired that woman though. It takes guts to be in the front line marketing trenches.

In the end, Walmart had dehumidifiers, but not the capacity we needed. They appeared to be the only ones in stock, a fact a Walmart employee later confirmed, and I inwardly smacked myself for wasting my own time.

As I returned my cart another employee pulled out the DVD. "Did you mean to get this?"

I thanked her profusely, bought it and left. I hopped in the car and gunned it for home, relishing the prospect of a pre-iconic Monroe movie to enjoy on a rainy Sunday afternoon.

I had dinner. Then I ordered that dehumidifier with UPS direct delivery from Costco online.

Poo poo pee doo.

Random Thoughts

I am at pilates class. Somehow, despite a job that is working me into the ground and [then] undiagnosed anemia, I've been able to keep up with things. I'm lying on the mat, doing the structured breathing, reaching up, then forward until my clenching stomach muscles just barely manage to sit me up. I turn to my teacher. I must look surprised because she says "You know Zesty, you're much stronger than you think you are." A month later my mother is diagnosed with leukemia and my world as I know it momentarily comes to a stand still. I haven't been back to pilates since.

* * * * *

I'm heading to a coffee shop in Yorkville to meet a friend on a summer's afternoon off. I find free street parking, and walk briskly, passing the houses and their perfectly constructed gardens and well cleaned brick faces. Nothing is flippant here. Nothing is out of place. Nothing is allowed to be out of place. I turn on to a main street, passing the requisite contingent of skinny, older, men with frantic grey hair and bony wristed blondes with over tanned and over stretched facial skin. Shaking from a lack of food, I order a sandwich, pay and go to my table where it will be brought to me. I catch my sideways reflection in the mirror. I feel out of place.

* * * * *

It's early in the morning and I am thinking of theatre school in New York City, and the fact that I was there fifteen years ago. Where did fifteen years go? Where are all my best laid plans and how do I find them again? Then I realize I could be crawling out of some hut to walk 40 miles to get my child to a doctor. I hate my own ungratefulness and wish I could see the reason behind things.

* * * * *
I am looking out the upstairs window into our backyard. I miss Frick and Frack, the cats we fostered last year. I wish I could have done more to help them. Frack is now in a good home and Frick eventually had to be put down due to kidney failure. I wonder how the neighbours could have just moved away and left them behind. I wonder how hopeless you need to be to live your life with such a lack of responsibility. Frick and Frack had been in the neighbourhood since we moved here. This summer they are gone and have been replaced by two gingers who are well cared for and visit regularly.

* * * * *

The Marine and I arrive at the restaurant before my family. It is empty save for another couple. Perhaps if you shot a canon ball through it, somebody might notice. The owner actually has the balls to ask if we have reservations.

We do.

We sit and peruse the menu. I note that there are "no substitutions" and "only one bill per table will be provided." I wonder what unapologetic prick runs this place. I genuinely don't know whether to roll my eyes or shake his hand. Eventually my family arrives and Rosy comes bounding up to me, declaring that she really likes my hair. She confirms that if we can't go to the beach, we'll definitely do mini golf instead if it's raining. By the end of dinner she's declared that the Marine's new job description is Super Duper Handy Dandy Fixer Upper, and that Granda better behave himself this year because she'll be listening in this time on the call from Robert, Santa's assistant, who has had to give him a talking to about his bad behavior every year for the past two years.

I wish I could bottle up whatever Rosy's got and dab it on like a perfume.