Dandelions were so pretty to my five-year-old eyes. Vibrant yellow, poking persistantly from green (or brown...) grass, they never failed to perk up an otherwise plain, boring lawn. Twisting them into crowns, and smooshing them against my hands made my fingers glow yellow.
Fast-forward twenty-three years, and dandelions are no longer beautiful. They are a menace, a menace akin to meth in our neighborhoods. Perhaps not that bad. But I bet under a bridge somewhere, someone who can't afford meth is smoking dandelions.
I took my dog on a walk this evening. My cigar-smoking neighbor, who I am slighly afraid of, was out washing his car. "Evening," I said. He nodded at me. "Looks like the dandelion crop is nice and fertile this year," I said, gesturing to the neighbor on the other side of his house.
"Ugh," he grumbled. "I can't keep the damn things out of my yard!"
I smiled in commaraderie and brought the dog inside.
When did this happen? This invasion? I'm not talking about the invasion of dandelions in my yard, but rather...the invasion of adulthood into my worldview.
I went out front and spent an hour digging the dandelions from my front yard. Lest my cigar-smoking neighbor start to have it in for me.
Back in my kitchen, I drank a glass of 7up and rubbed the ache from my digging shoulder. I looked out the back slider at my yard, and noticed a few dandelions poking their heads up.
We've got to make a lot of concessions to adulthood. Conform to societal expectations. That's the way it should be; that's what keeps civility and order in the world.
If I leave a few dandelions in my backyard, just for a little color, I don't see the harm. My dog will probably eat them anyway.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Breathe, Grasshopper
I'm afraid of chemical smells. Not Weed-B-Gone or fertilizer smells or interior wall paint or Elmer’s glue-type smells, but rather industrial solvent smells.
I have an…interesting history with chemical solvent smells. There is an outside possibility that industrial chemicals caused my bone marrow failure.
Given that I had to have a bone marrow transplant in order to remain among the living, I’m a little leery of things that might cause a need for another transplant. Rational? Yeah, about as rational as people who install unsightly lightning rods to the side of their houses, attracting the lighting toward their house to save…their house.
Today, someone at work used Goop-off or some other chemical to get something off of their desk. Within five minutes, the smell permeated the entire building, the harsh chemically scent driving straight to people’s temples. Driving fear straight to my heart.
While coworkers complained of the stink and the headache, I sat at my desk, willing myself not to breathe. Understandably, this method of avoidance did not work in the long run.
I was forced to breathe the minute quantities of a commercially available cleaner. My heart raced. My palms sweated. (They always sweat, so I suppose that doesn’t prove anything). My mind fuzzed, awash in the possible harm the smell was doing to me – invading my nostrils, tearing down my esophagus, slowly killing me from my innards to my hair follicles.
A door was opened, and relief flooded into my workspace in the form of 34 degree air.
I am pleased to report that I survived. I met a fear head-on, I maintained my sanity at all times, I kept things in perspective, and I am a stronger person for it. I didn’t even put on the sweater hanging from the back of my desk chair.
I can handle anything.
(PS – I work at a computer all day. As do my coworkers. I kind of want to know what it was that got so stuck to a desk in the first place to require Goop-Off. A lunch of leftover casserole?)
I have an…interesting history with chemical solvent smells. There is an outside possibility that industrial chemicals caused my bone marrow failure.
Given that I had to have a bone marrow transplant in order to remain among the living, I’m a little leery of things that might cause a need for another transplant. Rational? Yeah, about as rational as people who install unsightly lightning rods to the side of their houses, attracting the lighting toward their house to save…their house.
Today, someone at work used Goop-off or some other chemical to get something off of their desk. Within five minutes, the smell permeated the entire building, the harsh chemically scent driving straight to people’s temples. Driving fear straight to my heart.
While coworkers complained of the stink and the headache, I sat at my desk, willing myself not to breathe. Understandably, this method of avoidance did not work in the long run.
I was forced to breathe the minute quantities of a commercially available cleaner. My heart raced. My palms sweated. (They always sweat, so I suppose that doesn’t prove anything). My mind fuzzed, awash in the possible harm the smell was doing to me – invading my nostrils, tearing down my esophagus, slowly killing me from my innards to my hair follicles.
A door was opened, and relief flooded into my workspace in the form of 34 degree air.
I am pleased to report that I survived. I met a fear head-on, I maintained my sanity at all times, I kept things in perspective, and I am a stronger person for it. I didn’t even put on the sweater hanging from the back of my desk chair.
I can handle anything.
(PS – I work at a computer all day. As do my coworkers. I kind of want to know what it was that got so stuck to a desk in the first place to require Goop-Off. A lunch of leftover casserole?)
Friday, March 12, 2010
Just save it, would you?
Just when I think TV shows can’t get any more stupid, network executives surprise me with offerings such as “Undercover Boss.” The premise was interesting enough – the CEO of a major company goes undercover as an entry-level within his own operation, ostensibly to discover the things that are going wrong with his company, and the things his company is doing right.
I watched the first episode for want of anything better on TV. And I watched the second episode. The second episode was almost a verbatim copy of the first, only the company was different and the front-line employees were different. At the end of both shows, the CEO “revealed” his true identity to the few employees he worked alongside, and awarded them with various surprises. One of the employees was a young man wanting to be a chef. So the CEO awarded him a $5,000 scholarship.
Five thousand dollars. The CEO of Whitecastle Hamburgers couldn’t afford more than a $5,000 scholarship? It was a token gift of appreciation that I found insulting to entry-level workers everywhere. This CEO is spouting off concerns that employees don’t see a future for themselves at the company, and yet all he can find in his deep, vast pockets is $5,000?
You know how sometimes you don’t know what to say to someone, and you end up saying the wrong thing? Like, two years after you accidently back over your neighbor’s cat in the driveway, you see them coming out their door and you holler, “Hey, sorry about that one thing awhile back”? That’s what this scholarship offer was. “Sorry about all the hours we make you work in stressful conditions for crappy pay and no benefits.” (I wonder how much extra cost would truly need to be added to a McBurger in order to partially fund health insurance for the employees? Would you be willing to spend an extra 50c?)
If you can’t offer someone enough to acknowledge their humanity, their dignity, sometimes it’s better to offer nothing at all.
Five thousand dollars. The CEO of Whitecastle Hamburgers couldn’t afford more than a $5,000 scholarship? It was a token gift of appreciation that I found insulting to entry-level workers everywhere. This CEO is spouting off concerns that employees don’t see a future for themselves at the company, and yet all he can find in his deep, vast pockets is $5,000?
You know how sometimes you don’t know what to say to someone, and you end up saying the wrong thing? Like, two years after you accidently back over your neighbor’s cat in the driveway, you see them coming out their door and you holler, “Hey, sorry about that one thing awhile back”? That’s what this scholarship offer was. “Sorry about all the hours we make you work in stressful conditions for crappy pay and no benefits.” (I wonder how much extra cost would truly need to be added to a McBurger in order to partially fund health insurance for the employees? Would you be willing to spend an extra 50c?)
If you can’t offer someone enough to acknowledge their humanity, their dignity, sometimes it’s better to offer nothing at all.
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
You're Fired.
My medical history is kind of scary. Not to me. To me, it’s kind of boring. I’ve had enough occasion to talk about it with family, friends, and in speeches for this or that so now, frankly, the story bores me.
But looking at a list of my medical history on paper, yeah, I can see how that would be overwhelming for a normal family doctor. Thus, most of my medical problems that aren’t flu-, cold-, or prescription refill-related have gone through my oncologist.
My oncologist has changed a couple of times in the past ten years, but for five years or so, it has been the same guy. We never really saw eye-to-eye on most stuff, but we tolerated each other. As if in a bad relationship, I was too aware of the risk I ran if I decided to look for greener pastures.
He didn’t push me on the stuff most important to me, and I yielded on the stuff I could tell I was going to lose on anyway. It wasn’t a symbiotic relationship by any means, but I made do. All of a sudden, he has decided he no longer wants to be my “point man” for medical issues. He only wants to deal with Aplastic Anemia issues. Not even issues directly related to the Aplastic Anemia or the bone marrow transplant fallout.
Well, that’s lovely, I say. What do I tell the regular doctors who see my history, see that I’ve got an ongoing upset stomach for the past month, and they freak, telling me to talk to my oncologist? I am a medical orphan. After feeling powerless and frustrated for several days, I came to a conclusion. Actually, the oncologist’s office helped me come to this conclusion when they called me with blood test results, and proceeded to read the results to me backwards – X value meant my prescription should be lowered, when in real-life medicine, X value means my prescription should be increased.
I took back the power. I harnessed my inner Donald Trump and told the nurse to please tell my oncologist that I will no longer be in need of his services. As he obviously only wants to deal with my blood disorder, a disorder that I’ve technically been cured of for the past NINE YEARS, I’ll look him up if there’s ever a blood problem. But in the meantime, he can cut me from his patient roster.
I thought I’d feel like I was tempting fate to fire him. I mean, Murphy’s Law, right? In reality, I feel in control again. I no longer have to sit in an office once a year with a room full of bald old people staring at me, wondering how sick I am, what with my full head of hair. Am I waiting for a diagnosis? Am I at the beginning of my treatment? Wow, that poor girl doesn’t have a clue what’s coming.
They don’t see the bald patches at my scalp, the thin spots above my ears. They don’t see the scars, real and emotional. I’ve been there, and I’ve had the blessed fortune to come back from there. I hope all the bald old people in the office have the occasion to one day fire the oncologist.
But looking at a list of my medical history on paper, yeah, I can see how that would be overwhelming for a normal family doctor. Thus, most of my medical problems that aren’t flu-, cold-, or prescription refill-related have gone through my oncologist.
My oncologist has changed a couple of times in the past ten years, but for five years or so, it has been the same guy. We never really saw eye-to-eye on most stuff, but we tolerated each other. As if in a bad relationship, I was too aware of the risk I ran if I decided to look for greener pastures.
He didn’t push me on the stuff most important to me, and I yielded on the stuff I could tell I was going to lose on anyway. It wasn’t a symbiotic relationship by any means, but I made do. All of a sudden, he has decided he no longer wants to be my “point man” for medical issues. He only wants to deal with Aplastic Anemia issues. Not even issues directly related to the Aplastic Anemia or the bone marrow transplant fallout.
Well, that’s lovely, I say. What do I tell the regular doctors who see my history, see that I’ve got an ongoing upset stomach for the past month, and they freak, telling me to talk to my oncologist? I am a medical orphan. After feeling powerless and frustrated for several days, I came to a conclusion. Actually, the oncologist’s office helped me come to this conclusion when they called me with blood test results, and proceeded to read the results to me backwards – X value meant my prescription should be lowered, when in real-life medicine, X value means my prescription should be increased.
I took back the power. I harnessed my inner Donald Trump and told the nurse to please tell my oncologist that I will no longer be in need of his services. As he obviously only wants to deal with my blood disorder, a disorder that I’ve technically been cured of for the past NINE YEARS, I’ll look him up if there’s ever a blood problem. But in the meantime, he can cut me from his patient roster.
I thought I’d feel like I was tempting fate to fire him. I mean, Murphy’s Law, right? In reality, I feel in control again. I no longer have to sit in an office once a year with a room full of bald old people staring at me, wondering how sick I am, what with my full head of hair. Am I waiting for a diagnosis? Am I at the beginning of my treatment? Wow, that poor girl doesn’t have a clue what’s coming.
They don’t see the bald patches at my scalp, the thin spots above my ears. They don’t see the scars, real and emotional. I’ve been there, and I’ve had the blessed fortune to come back from there. I hope all the bald old people in the office have the occasion to one day fire the oncologist.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
All in.
I love watching the Olympics. All that skill, dedication, exhilaration...seemingly normal people doing extraordinary things. But it's the "seemingly" part of the athletes that tends to get overlooked.
These young people dedicate every waking moment to the sport they love, for better or for worse, like when your sport involves hurling yourself down an icy shute while balancing precariously on a toboggan.
I could never be an Olympic athlete. Yes, I own a mirror and can plainly see that my lack of muscle definition would probably ban me from being a spectator let alone a competitor. But I couldn't forsake all other things in my life in the pursuit of one thing. I don't find that healthy. So do I find it admirable?
Life is about hope. About chances. About redemption. These are common themes throughout the Olympic stories as well. Bode Miller blows his chances at Torino, and seeks redemption at the Vancouver Olympics. That means Bode Miller has dedicated the past four years, FOUR YEARS, striving mindfully (mindlessly?) toward a state that will be achieved, or denied, in thirty seconds. Thirty seconds. Not to be a complete skeptic, but his achievement or denial of redemption/his dream might be forgotten by the majority of the public in the ensuing thirty seconds.
So what makes "it" worth it? I really want to know. I want to know what the elusive "it" is that will make me lay my head on my pillow each night and say, "I did good."
These young people dedicate every waking moment to the sport they love, for better or for worse, like when your sport involves hurling yourself down an icy shute while balancing precariously on a toboggan.
I could never be an Olympic athlete. Yes, I own a mirror and can plainly see that my lack of muscle definition would probably ban me from being a spectator let alone a competitor. But I couldn't forsake all other things in my life in the pursuit of one thing. I don't find that healthy. So do I find it admirable?
Life is about hope. About chances. About redemption. These are common themes throughout the Olympic stories as well. Bode Miller blows his chances at Torino, and seeks redemption at the Vancouver Olympics. That means Bode Miller has dedicated the past four years, FOUR YEARS, striving mindfully (mindlessly?) toward a state that will be achieved, or denied, in thirty seconds. Thirty seconds. Not to be a complete skeptic, but his achievement or denial of redemption/his dream might be forgotten by the majority of the public in the ensuing thirty seconds.
So what makes "it" worth it? I really want to know. I want to know what the elusive "it" is that will make me lay my head on my pillow each night and say, "I did good."
Friday, February 12, 2010
Usefulness
I work in a medical setting, poring through patient charts day after day after day after day after...where was I.
Sometimes the transcriptions for the chart notes gets outsourced to other countries, such as India. This can make for some entertaining malapropisms.
One caught my eye this week. The doctor surely meant to say, "The patient has outlived the influence of their genetic history." The transcription report that I read said:
Patient has outlived their genetic usefulness.
That made me think. Is there a point where we outlive our usefulness? Does it matter?
Sometimes the transcriptions for the chart notes gets outsourced to other countries, such as India. This can make for some entertaining malapropisms.
One caught my eye this week. The doctor surely meant to say, "The patient has outlived the influence of their genetic history." The transcription report that I read said:
Patient has outlived their genetic usefulness.
That made me think. Is there a point where we outlive our usefulness? Does it matter?
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Love in all the wrong places
Last night, I went on yet another first-and-last date. This one actually scared the crap out of me, and I'm pretty lucky to be sitting here writing about it, and not recouperating from injuries on the hospital, or worse, adding to the nitrogen content of a cemetery's soil.
I'm going to abridge this as, judging by my mom's reaction to the entire story, it's not something that should be posted for public digestion. So why am I posting at all. I can't believe that I am the only person stupid enough to find myself in situations such as this, and if another girl (or guy, for that matter) can learn something from me, then this awful experience was worthwhile.
Long story short, a dinner date gets extended into a date to go see a movie, and I allow near-stranger into my car. My car. Oh well, I figure, we're going to the mall to see a movie, right? No, he wants to go to his cousin's house to watch movies that the cousin rented. I made sure the cousin and cousin's girlfriend would be there. Okay, can't be too bad, right? Only later did I remember that the murdered girl in the "Foxy Knoxy" murder had another girl present, too, and that didn't turn out too well for her.
We get to the cousin's house, and let's just say I should have turned around on my heels and left. I didn't. Why not? What the hell was I thinking?
I know exactly what I was thinking. I got stuck in between two societal norms: Be unfailingly polite, and be true to yourself. Sometimes, like last night, those two go head-to-head. Why was I so quick to sacrifice myself in the name of politeness, then?
My upbringing actually played a role in my wrong decisions. (When I say "wrong decisions", please don't let your mind go there, because that's not the case. The "wrong decisions" are all about hanging out with and spending time with people that are just absolute scum of the earth and were very, very disrespectful toward me.)
I in no way, shape, or form am blaming this on my parents or my brother. But my brother, being who he is, has sort of desensitized me to things that would normally be red flags to other people. There's a big, serious difference, however: for all the outside accoutrements that made my brother and his posse appear dangerous and menacing, there were always good souls in these people. Probably better souls than my own, as if I had a dollar left, I would keep it for myself, and my brother and the people he associates with would rush to give it to someone who needed it more than they did. I think I stuck around so long and allowed myself to be pulled into increasingly dangerous situations with this date because I was waiting for the revelation of the good, true soul that I've been taught to assume is in every human being.
As I pulled into my driveway at the end of the night, I almost started to cry. I've come too far. Too, too far. Society tells us we are nothing if we have no one to share life with. Everyone, myself included, assumes that "someone" to share life with is a romantic connection, husband, wife, etc. We put a lot of pressure on ourselves to find the perfect someone, and when that someone is the wrong someone, we feel like failures in the eyes of our friends, family, and society.
I actually did find someone last night to spend the rest of my life with. This person is smart, cute, funny as hell, entertaining, original, and full of hope and optimism for the future.
And I was right here the whole time.
I'm going to abridge this as, judging by my mom's reaction to the entire story, it's not something that should be posted for public digestion. So why am I posting at all. I can't believe that I am the only person stupid enough to find myself in situations such as this, and if another girl (or guy, for that matter) can learn something from me, then this awful experience was worthwhile.
Long story short, a dinner date gets extended into a date to go see a movie, and I allow near-stranger into my car. My car. Oh well, I figure, we're going to the mall to see a movie, right? No, he wants to go to his cousin's house to watch movies that the cousin rented. I made sure the cousin and cousin's girlfriend would be there. Okay, can't be too bad, right? Only later did I remember that the murdered girl in the "Foxy Knoxy" murder had another girl present, too, and that didn't turn out too well for her.
We get to the cousin's house, and let's just say I should have turned around on my heels and left. I didn't. Why not? What the hell was I thinking?
I know exactly what I was thinking. I got stuck in between two societal norms: Be unfailingly polite, and be true to yourself. Sometimes, like last night, those two go head-to-head. Why was I so quick to sacrifice myself in the name of politeness, then?
My upbringing actually played a role in my wrong decisions. (When I say "wrong decisions", please don't let your mind go there, because that's not the case. The "wrong decisions" are all about hanging out with and spending time with people that are just absolute scum of the earth and were very, very disrespectful toward me.)
I in no way, shape, or form am blaming this on my parents or my brother. But my brother, being who he is, has sort of desensitized me to things that would normally be red flags to other people. There's a big, serious difference, however: for all the outside accoutrements that made my brother and his posse appear dangerous and menacing, there were always good souls in these people. Probably better souls than my own, as if I had a dollar left, I would keep it for myself, and my brother and the people he associates with would rush to give it to someone who needed it more than they did. I think I stuck around so long and allowed myself to be pulled into increasingly dangerous situations with this date because I was waiting for the revelation of the good, true soul that I've been taught to assume is in every human being.
As I pulled into my driveway at the end of the night, I almost started to cry. I've come too far. Too, too far. Society tells us we are nothing if we have no one to share life with. Everyone, myself included, assumes that "someone" to share life with is a romantic connection, husband, wife, etc. We put a lot of pressure on ourselves to find the perfect someone, and when that someone is the wrong someone, we feel like failures in the eyes of our friends, family, and society.
I actually did find someone last night to spend the rest of my life with. This person is smart, cute, funny as hell, entertaining, original, and full of hope and optimism for the future.
And I was right here the whole time.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
