Coolest Girl in the World

I woke up yesterday morning feeling tired and weak, and vaguely disgusted with myself for feeling that way. Then I dragged myself to physical therapy for the first time in two weeks, and vowed that this week, I was going to get back into exercising. So tonight, I got ambitious and decided to try Erin O’Brien’s “Strong Body, Ageless Body” DVD. Holy shit. It thoroughly kicked my ass. Like with clown shoes. And I only did half of what I was supposed to. I thought physical therapy was hard, but no, that was easy compared to this. Note to future self: I’m not saying we could have cakewalked this DVD before, but next time you injure a limb, continue weight training with the remaining limbs. Do not backslide this far. It is not cool.

I just got back from two weeks of vacation. I visited my parents in Houston, and then continued on to New Orleans. I went to Rob’s wedding, which may be the best wedding I’ve ever had the pleasure of attending. I attended my grandmother’s 95th birthday party. I got to hang out with all my various relatives, and Brigette and James. And then, the day before I was supposed to leave, I got food poisoning. I ate some bad hummus at Mona’s, and then spent the next 24 hours being terribly, violently ill. Food poisoning: that which doesn’t kill you, leaves you feeling really, really weak.

In other news, I went to the vet on Friday to pick up Sam’s ashes. So now my cat’s remains are sitting on top of my television in a little pottery urn with her name on it. When I opened the cardboard box the urn came in, I was surprised to find that it came with a little stoneware tile that also has her name on it, and an impression of her paw-prints. On the one hand, I like the tile and I’m glad I have it, but on the other hand, it makes me think that they wrangled my dead cat more than I thought they would, and I’m not sure how I feel about that. And I’m also left wondering about the person whose job it is to press your dead cat’s paws into a clay tile. It seems like such an odd occupation. How does someone get such a job? Is that their only job duty, or do they have to operate the pet crematorium too? What do you tell people at parties when they ask what you do for a living? If I ever write a screenplay for an indie movie, I suspect it will feature the dead pet paw-print tile-maker as a character. It just seems like there’s a lot of potential there.

1994? - July 28, 2008

My heart broke today.

Dear readers,

So it occurs to me that I threw that “CATASTROPHIC INJURY!!!1!!” post out there, and then left you hanging, wondering if I was crippled for life. Sorry about that. Let me give you an update as to what and how I’ve been doing these last three weeks.

So, first, there were the crutches, the leg brace, the pain pills, the bed, and the big stack of pillows I had to keep my leg elevated on. And then I ditched the crutches, followed by the pain pills. And then the stack of pillows got smaller. And then eventually, it was just me, the leg brace, the couch, and my laptop. After a week, I went to the doctor, who asked me to bend my knee (I couldn’t), and then he asked if I could see how much my leg had atrophied (I could).

So now, I’ve been going to physical therapy twice a week, where I do various exercises and practice bending my knee. Today, I could bend it 110 degrees, which I’m really excited about, since two weeks ago, I could barely bend it at all. Unfortunately, the 110 is only after it’s been really warmed up, stretched, massaged, etc., and with no weight on it. Cold, it’s more like 80 degrees. With weight on it, it’s more like 50. But hey, it’s getting there. Right now, my goals are to walk normally;* get my doctor to downgrade me to a smaller, less obtrusive, more bendable brace; and to be able to drive again. I’ve done pretty well getting groceries delivered from Safeway, and getting friends to bring me various other supplies, but it sure would be nice to be able to drive myself to Target.**

Other than that, I’ve been working from my couch. We’ve had a big bug-push going on at work, and I haven’t been able to move around very much, so I’ve been working 10 and 12 hour days, largely because I have nothing better to do. At one point, I actually got my bug queue down to zero, which is an epic achievement for me. So immobility == productivity. Who knew?

*Rather than the “John Wayne, if he was a zombie” gait I’ve been doing
**The happiest place on Earth.

Regan tagged me for The Book Meme, so here we go:

Total number of books I’ve owned:
Ever? Or right now? Because if you want to know how many books I’ve owned since birth, I honestly don’t know. My goal as a child was to have my own private library. Then I grew up, and moved. And moved again. And moved a few more times. And somewhere in there, I decided I didn’t need that many books. I instituted a limit: I’m allowed to own as many books as will fit on my bookshelf. It’s a big bookshelf, but I’m not allowed to exceed it. So total number of books currently owned: one large bookshelf worth.

Last book I bought:
Gentlemen of the Road: A Tale of Adventure by Michael Chabon. It wasn’t a bad book, but it wasn’t a great book. Michael Chabon seems to have some sort of genre fiction axe to grind, and this book is a result of that. Also, I have a pretty expansive vocabulary, I know a lot of words, and if I don’t know a word, I usually have a fair chance of figuring out what it means, but this book made me feel like I needed a dictionary, preferably one from the 19th century. It was a wee bit annoying, since this was a book I bought to read for fun.

Last book I read:
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See. Set in 19th century China, it’s the story of two young girls who are pledged to each other for a lifetime. My mom gave it to me when I saw her over Christmas. As she handed it to me, she said, “I read this, and I thought you would like it. It has a really graphic description of foot binding though. Did you know that they actually break the bones of the foot and reform them? And that they force them to walk on the broken bones? And that…” and more horrible details about foot binding. I’ll be honest, it freaked me out and made me not want to read it. But five months later, I decided to give it a read, since I had run out of Stephanie Plum novels. It’s not a modern classic, but not a bad read, especially if you’re interested in Chinese culture.

Book I’m reading right now: (Okay, so I added this to the meme):
Overclocked by Cory Doctorow. A collection of technorati sci-fi short stories. So far, I feel like the short stories are a bit undercooked at times, but then, I feel that way about most short stories, so I’m trying to reserve judgment on Mr. Doctorow until I read one of his full-length novels.

Five books that mean something to me:
Carter Beats the Devil by Glen David Gold.
The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
These three are amazing to me, because I can pick them up, open them to any page, and instantly become sucked in to reading it until it’s finished, and then I will start again. They are perfect books.

Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
These two books are two sides of the same coin. They are the embodiment of my younger self - Salinger for the bad days, and Adams for the good days. I maintain that when you turn 15, they should hand you a copy of Catcher in the Rye and Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” and send you off to Puberty Island, where you and all the other teenagers will live, Lord of the Flies style, until you are 18 years old, upon which you will be readmitted to polite society.

Five people that should answer these questions:
Rob, Drew, and uh, whoever else wants to. I apparently need more blog friends.

So every year, around my birthday, I start to make a list of new experiences I’d like to try to do in the coming year. Things like “Get my palm read” or “Do karaoke” or “Participate in a 12k race.” My birthday is on Saturday. I got a head start on my new experiences last night, when I dislocated my right knee. I was at dance class, learning a new routine to Madonna’s “Candyshop”, and I was doing “the butterfly,” (also known as “the tootsie roll”) when my right kneecap decided to play Magellan. Take a walkabout. Explore new pastures. Go beyond where any kneecap had gone before. It was not cool.

So my first new experience: dislocation, which was then followed by my first IV*, and then my first ambulance ride, and then my first kneecap relocation. Which really, really hurt. I really advise you to keep your kneecaps where they belong. Because it might hurt when it moves around, but it really hurts when they put it back.

Alan and Lisa had to pick me up from the ER, and then I spent the night at their house, where I’ve been laying in their impressively comfy guest bed with my knee in a brace. If you ever have to go to the ER, I highly recommend Alan and Lisa. They will seriously take good care of you.

*Morphine!

To direct you over to my friend Stacey’s blog, where she’s attempting to get all of her readers to helping Team Ace reach their donation goal for the March of Dimes’ March for Babies. Stacey’s son Ace was born premature, so she’s seen it all, up close and personal. I know finances are tight these days,* but hey, if you have an economic stimulus check coming, maybe you could donate a small portion of it? Or skip going out to lunch next week, and donate the money you saved? Help a sister and some babies out, you know?

*Ask me how much I spend per month on rent or how much a gallon of gas costs in California!

The cake class is done! After Saturday’s fiasco, I spent a large chunk of Sunday preparing another cake, and new batches of frosting. Tonight, it all came together. Behold, the fruit of my labors:

Marvel at its beauty, people, because between the class tuition, supplies, and ingredients, I think this lovely 9-inch cake cost me roughly $190 to make, which a) blows my hobby budget for the next month or three, and b) makes the $15 Costco sheet cake seem like an amazing deal. But considering I didn’t have a design in mind before-hand, and that all the flowers were done directly on the cake instead of prepared in advance like they should have been, I think it’s pretty darn good. So hey, if you need a cake decorated, I could be your girl.

This evening, I embarked on a series of experiments in cake baking/decorating, in preparation for the “final exam” in my cake decorating class on Monday night. Here are my conclusions:

1. You can do the Hungry Girl pumpkin + cake mix trick with a yellow cake mix just as well as a chocolate cake mix, but the yellow cake will be orange. With enough frosting, you might not even notice the slight pumpkin taste.
2. A little bit of food coloring paste goes a long, long, loooooooooong way. You would think they would warn you about that on the packaging, but they don’t.
3. Leveling a cake by garroting it with dental floss does work, but you shouldn’t use mint-flavored dental floss.
4. Ye Gods, do I need a pouring shield for my stand mixer. Thanks to the mixer, I am, once again, covered shoulder to ankle in dry ingredients, and I have to go mop the floor. Also, at one point, I was afraid the smoke alarm was going to go off because there was a visible powdered sugar haze in the air.
5. The Wilton recipe for snow white buttercream icing is total crap. It required twelve cups of powdered sugar, and came out so stiff it only sticks to itself. I ended up throwing away the whole cake, because my attempts at frosting it with the substandard icing ripped it to shreds. Unfortunately, I didn’t really have a plan B for this part of the experiment, so I guess I’ll be going to the grocery tomorrow for more powdered sugar, so I can try a different recipe.
6. I should always give myself twice as much time as I think I’ll need. The whole point of this exercise was to have a real cake to practice the actual decorating techniques on. Even though the rose icing I made came out okay, I didn’t get to use it because of the time wasted on the base icing failure. Sigh.

“Computer games don’t affect kids; I mean if Pac-Man affected us as kids, we’d all be running around in darkened rooms, munching magic pills and listening to repetitive music.” - comedian Marcus Brigstocke

I attended my first jam session on Saturday, and actually played my guitar, albeit very quietly and sporadically, with other people. Although we mostly played Bob Dylan, Neil Young, and other folksy tunes that basically consist of three chords repeated over and over again so that novices like myself could keep up, it rekindled my interest in playing guitar.* I was so inspired, that when I got home from the jam session, I cranked up the amp and started learning the intro to “Sweet Child O’ Mine”. When I got tired of trying to play Slash’s complicated stuff on the 15th fret, I retreated to “Smells Like Teen Spirit” whose intro is really simple (Thanks, Kurt Cobain!). And so, for a little while on Saturday, I was a rock god.

*Which had been recently squashed during my “official” guitar lessons, when my teacher spent almost an hour trying to explain how to derive a “B minor 7 with a flatted 9th” chord. I realize that learning musical theory is a worthwhile investment of my time, but one day, I’d like to learn how to strum upwards without the pick flying out of my hand towards my face. Guitar practice should not require safety goggles.