Unexpected Redemption

I'm a fairly adventurous eater, as has been established in these posts.  But I do have to "draw the line" when it comes to food in a few places.  If you can draw a line in multiple places and still retain the analogy.  Anyway, one of those places is green gelatin.  And banana-flavored popsicles.  I won't touch them.  I was traumatized as a child by green Jell-O and banana popsicles.  "Oh, do tell," I hear you say.  And thus the woeful tale . . .

I was barely seven years old and visiting my biological father two or more thousand miles away from my home over the summer.  I got a huge pain in my stomach while hanging out with another family at a pool.  It was really hot.  And it hurt a lot.  And then I was in a hospital on the nearby military base.  And then I was stranded there for a week recovering from an emergency appendectomy.

I was a skinny kid, which would come as a shock to anyone who has known me lately.  I ate like a fiend nearly anything put in front of me, other than an odd aversion to creamy things like salad dressing, sour cream, whipped cream, and mayonnaise.  This was in part because my father never liked salad dressing and I mistakenly put all of those foods into one category and marked a large red slash through them until I was in college, when I got over it.  I also wouldn't eat olives.  I never had them as a child because my mother didn't care for them so they were strange to me.  I'm cautious of them to this day.

So picture skinny little seven-year-old me in a hospital bed far from home and on a liquid diet.  Broth.  Ew.   Tea.  Ew.  And green Jell-O and banana-flavored popsicles.  For a week that was all I ate--green Jell-O and banana popsicles.  And when I escaped, I vowed never again would I have to eat either one. 

And I kept that vow.  With a religious fervor.  Until yesterday.

My youngest, the bonus baby, Peter Parker, offered me a taste of the green Jell-O she had made and I couldn't bring myself to disappoint her and not taste it.  So I did.  And it was delicious.  And then she showed me that she had substituted organic limeade for water in the recipe.  Brilliant.  I'm over the aversion. 

Don't try me on the banana popsicles.  That's just not going to happen.

I Love New York

Today I got to go to the top of a tall building in midtown Manhattan from which I could see my street corner across the river; eat a delightful lunch under an umbrella with Clark Kent (see previous post if you're confused by the reference); talk about the US Open (tennis, people--I don't understand golf) with the random guy from Arizona who is a security specialist sitting next to us on the sidewalk; never run out of things to talk about with Clark so that I always want to delay parting company even though I've known her all her life; listen to witty podcasts on my commute (on the way in it was Greg Proops doing "The Smartest Man" and on the way home it was this past weekend's episode of "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me" with Henry Winkler as the guest for those of you who are curious as to what's on my iPod these days); form a bond with a new colleague (now making it maybe nine people out of the company of 250,000 where I currently work that I truly like and would hang out with by choice and invite over to my house and I have to say here that I'm not sure I'm ready to do the math on having been there for 14 months and being only on person #9 especially since I'm something of an extrovert and perpetually talk to strangers in elevators and on lines and in the grocery store and on public transit); make it home effortlessly, stopping for just a moment to look back at the building where I had been from my street corner (see above); wake up my middle child (let's just call him Bruce Wayne) who had fallen asleep already, to scratch his back and ask about his day and find out it had gone beautifully which is a lot to say for a high school junior; catch up on a few episodes of "The Daily Show" on the DVR with my husband (Sandman) for whom I still have the hots after a lot of years, although admittedly he does occasionally get on my nerves, but lately it's been a lot more hots than nerves; catch a few rounds of Snood; help my little tiny baby girl, Peter Parker, who just turned 14 last week to set up a blog of her own; pet my cat and both dogs and ignore the hamster; think about how to do more writing and less work; plan for tomorrow which might involve meeting 3 of the 9 of the 250,000 (see above--and are you not paying attention?) after work for some socializing mayhaps; all of which can be done within walking distance with a little help from a subway or a bus or a light rail at one of a hundred of my favorite places to go in town or ten thousand others I can try if I want to be adventurous.

Was that a run-on sentence?

Headache

I have a headache.  I have had a headache almost continuously for over a month now and I'm beginning to lose hope.  I've tried switching from contact lenses to glasses and from one strength of reading glasses to another, to say nothing of moving my computer screen both closer and further away, and to a different angle.  I've taken vitamins and blood pressure medicine; I've not taken vitamins and blood pressure medicine.  I've eaten carbs, sweets, salad, apples, grapes, pasta, grains, and cheese.  I've avoided dairy, raw vegetables, fruits, meat, and carbs.  I've hydrated, dehydrated, had caffeine, had no caffeine, had carbonated beverages, had no carbonated beverages, had vodka, had no vodka, had beer, had no beer.  I even had some Captain Morgan for the first time in case that might be the magic cure.  Tasty, but I digress.

Suddenly it occurs to me that cause and effect are not what they used to be.

I once learned a lesson about how limited human perspective is when it comes to cause and effect.  If there is a line of fifty people I can see from end to end and I shove the guy on one end and all the people fall over like dominoes, I can safely assume that the cause is me.  I can also assume that all fifty of those people are going to come after me and beat me up for being an ass. 

And the corollary is that if the line of fifty people winds around the hallway and into the room where I stand and I'm looking at only the last ten people in the line, and suddenly they all fall over like dominoes, I know that I don't know what caused the fall.  And I know it's definitely not my fault this time.  I'm just watching.

But the headache.  Is it sinuses?  Allergies?  An injury?  Stress?  A response to noise?  The arrival of the tenth anniversary of 9/11?  My youngest daughter's birthday?  A natural reaction to life?  A spiritual breakthrough?  A brain tumor?  TMJ?  Too much computer?  Too little breathing?  Urban life?  Paranoia?  Political ennui?  Hopelessness?  Not enough tennis to watch?  Anxiety about the NFL strike?  Inorganic matter in my drinking water?  Lack of time to read good books?  Separation from my favorite past-times?  Money concerns?  Career misery?  Fluorescent lighting?  Fear?  Exhaustion?  All of the above?  None of the above? 

Trying to figure out what causes stuff is what keeps me from sleeping.  Or is it?