So, I get these headaches, right? I started getting them a little over a year ago. Since then, there have been a small handful of times when I have hit a bad streak and they won’t let up for an extended period which, I would argue not surprisingly, drives me absolutely mad. And when this happens, I become unconditionally desperate to find any kind of solution. Take these supplements? Fine. Lie on this special pillow? Okay. Climb the nearest tree and yodel? Consider it done. Rub newt testicle on my eyeballs? I started last week.

I recently found myself in one of these ruts. The constant, mild undercurrent was stubbornly unending and so I started trying some new avenues. (It turned out that the second I finished my last pre-vacation day at work, this dissipated, which brings some interesting things to light, but encompasses a whole other story under a whole other rock which is currently being left unturned for practical reasons). I ended up seeing a naturopath who recommended, among other things, that I take a food sensitivity blood test which would test for antibodies built up against certain foods. Basically, an unofficial allergy test.

I was given a list of foods to have in my system come test time, and off I went. The list included several dairy items, and a long list of vegetables, fruits, and grains/legumes. Some were knocked off in the normal course of things, and others I tabled for after vacation. I wasn’t going to spend my precious days off stressing about finding a restaurant that offered lima bean pâté or amaranth crackers. Sounds reasonable, no?

And suddenly, somehow, it was already Sunday. Test is Tuesday. My neurotic brain wheels start gliding with ease – doing what they do best – and I decide I have to have eaten all these things by Monday night so I have at least 12 hours for my body to process the food and get it into my blood. I run to Whole Foods and attempt to find as many compound foods as possible to knock down the increasingly heavy basket. I get home and hack into a thousand vegetables and fruits to get just a few bites worth, relegating the bleeding corpse remnants to the fridge to be dealt with later. I now have the nut cup, the bean/grain cup, four various cheese sandwiches, a fruit salad, and a vegetable salad. It is an exceedingly daunting sight.

I am so not even hungry.

I select the salad bowl for the evening as it is the most intimidating item and stare it down like an arm wrestling rival. I WILL win, dammit.

I sit down with a book and force feed myself, little by little, the whole everloving thing. I am supposed to be trying to catch up on sleep, but I’m still eating at one a.m. If the literal jokes boys over at SNL need a new skit, they should try this one: I’m literally CRAMMING. Guffaw. Get it? Cramming my mouth with food to prepare for a test? Guffaw guffaw.

::sigh:: Ridiculous. And the worst part? When I still can’t sleep at 3 a.m. because I’m so uncomfortably full, the only thing I can think is:

For fuck’s sake…if I throw all of this up, I just have to eat it again tomorrow…

It’s been an unusual few days. My arms are still outstretched and grasping for something to steady on and my eyes are still jittering back and forth in the wake of being spun up and down and all around.

On Friday we had an opening brief due. We were running down to the wire, or really more like down PAST the wire, and I could do nothing but wait for my part of the job. Do I even need to bother noting how maddeningly stressful that is for a worrier like me? I couldn’t DO anything to make it go faster, I could just pace up and down the hall uselessly waiting for pages to be shoved out the crack in the office door for proofreading much like an expectant father must wait for a pair of scissors to be shoved into his hand so he can finally be useful. Then exhibits, copies to code with proper weight and type and color of paper for each different section, binding, packaging, certifying, et cetera.

It was one of those tornadoes that, when finished, but a few minutes hence, already seems decades ago.

Saturday we went to Costco just exactly when they opened for an eye appointment. I had never been to a Costco for opening before. Have you?

No?

Well, then let me ask you this: Have you seen Shawn of the Dead? You know the opening credits when they have all the shots of real, ‘live’ people going through the motions of their daily lives with slack jaws and deadened eyes? That’s the joke, right? That we’re all already zombies anyway?

That’s what Costco opening is like. I don’t think there was some specific sale or special item on sale. I get the feeling this is a normal weekend opening. And we were a few minutes early, sitting in the car waiting. We’re out in the boondocks of nowhere, some industrial-ish street on which is some random car garage, a little farm, and little else. Suddenly, cars start showing up. They park randomly, sprinkled throughout the parking lot, and the boy comments that he would bet his life that Oprah has recommended parking far from the entrance of stores to increase daily exercise. The people emerge from their cars and walk towards the still-closed doors. Literally. Tens of people zombie-ing slowly toward a closed door from all different directions. Most grab carts. And they form a hoard of people at the entrance, still-sleep-crusted eyes fixed on the doorway. It was utterly horrifying. I know, I know, if you had a dollar for every time I said, “utterly horrifying” but people, I am not kidding. It had none of crazed energy of a crowd waiting for Christmas sales (its own breed of horro). People just shuffled to the door and stood there, waiting for the blood fest to commence. God I wish I’d had my camera.

After witnessing that atrocity, we went to our favorite breakfast spot, which I have already explained has great food, but is mostly great because it’s tiny AND the only place in the whole city that doesn’t feature an hour-long wait during any remotely breakfasty or lunchy hours on a weekend. It’s routinely empty, which means not only personalized and prompt service, but a lack of the normal restaurant din that requires shouting to be heard by the person next to you.

But guess what? Some asshole decided to grant them Restaurant of the Year and now…well, now the damn cat is out of the bag. So our breakfast spot is now overrun by all these green-behind-the-ear patrons who are stumbling in and gazing around and wreaking havoc on our peaceful weekend brunches. ::Sigh::

So, then, we went to see Up. Have you seen it yet? Great movie. Adorable and wonderfully done. And so hellsof sad. I haven’t been that emotional in months. I’m not exaggerating either. ::SPOILER ALERT:: Even after the happy ending, my lower lip was inadvertently pouting with every word I tried to utter and the lump in my throat remained, cracking my voice as I tried to talk about the happy parts to recover, “Haha…Squirrel! Haha…Point! Haha…::squeak::” The opening montage took enough of a toll, but then at one point, when Kevin was being dragged off in the net, the little boy behind me asked his mom, very alarmed, “What’s happening!? Why are they doing that to him?!” and then after she shushed him he announced, “I don’t like it! I want to go!” I was right there with him. And I wanted to turn around and say, “Hey kid, let’s go get a coke and wait out this scene…I can’t handle it either.” ::SPOILER END::

These stories are neither here nor there.

But they don’t even cover the birthday and funeral. Or two birthdays and two funerals if you count tangentially related ones. Plus a wedding if you reach back but a week.

Too much rollercoaster.

Good thing Spring is chugging along and tying me back to the ground with bands of vibrant color every time I threaten to float away.

I was pleasantly surprised at how painful my first day back at work post-vacation was not…until it came back. The music. It’s back.

Oh dear lord in Heaven have mercy. It’s a conspiracy to kill us all.

We’re not supposed to discuss work in the interweb world, so I will say this much: Today I am back at work. I was [see title].

Having some time away from the daily grind was frighteningly glorious. Frighteningly glorious because now I am left wondering exactly what the heck I am doing with my life. But hey. The price you pay.

So to reminisce for a moment, our office holiday party one year was in a private wine cellar in the basement of an upscale supermarket owned by a friend of my boss. It was a fun one, but the best part was that the bathrooms for us were the same bathrooms for use by customers and employees – i.e. the bathroom in the back of the frozen food section behind the dangling strips of clear plastic that keep the cold in. Which meant that we were making regular post-seal-breaking trips to said bathroom in our dresses and high heels, a tad bit of the tipsy. Ascending the stairs, we would emerge from the middle of the snack aisle as if by magic, and then stumble past dumbfounded housewives pushing shopping carts while we giggled at the ridiculousness of it all and weaved to the back of the building.

The wedding I attended this past weekend was similar in that it was held at the train station in downtown Los Angeles. This was an acutely adorable choice because my friend and her now-husband met while living on a train and working for the circus.

best party favor ever:

Though the inside of the train station itself is beautiful, it turns out it also has a lovely little courtyard.

The ceremony was beautiful, and the party was great, and seeing people I love is fabulous. But the best part might have been the clickety-clack of heels echoing in the hall as we walked past the rabble-rousers, cane-bearing old men, and tired parents laden with luggage and sleeping infants allllll the way to the public restrooms where those without homes come to shower their pits in the sink.

I live for these types of delicious juxtapositions. It is not entirely unlike the time we stopped at the Whole Foods down the street from where my grandma used to live, which is also down the street from where Scrubs shoots, to grab something to eat before her funeral. I was waiting in line for a measley little tamale behind a paper-scrubs costumed actor, tired and stressed as one is wont to be before a funeral, eyes a-roll, for him to settle on a meal from the deli that would satisfy his finicky needs. There is something wholly lovely and calming to me about the clashing of worlds and moods that jar us out of our moment and into to the larger picture that all kinds of things are happening everywhere all the time; at your happiest, someone is sad; on the most mundane day of your life, down the street is a life-changing event; at your fanciest, someone else is down and out. It’s fascinating, no?

At any rate, cheers to the happy couple. I couldn’t have been happier to be there. I know they will do well.

Ms. Moot is unable to come to the computer right now. She is vacationing. It is glorious. Please leave a message and she will get back to you as soon as she can…SUCKERS!