Getting Your Arm Gnawed Off by a Shark

Back in 2007-2009 ish, I kept a blog, The Oxygen Chronicles. The Oxygen Chronicles was about breathing in all forms -- physically, psychologically, philosophically...on and on. It talked a lot about American Idol, too; this one won't.

At essence, it was about how we all are just trying to breathe. As it says in the header, I popped into the world back in 1971. I came out backwards, and no doctor had prepared my mother for a breech birth.

Right away I was a pain in the ass, but you really can't blame me:

First, imagine coming feet first out of a scary 1970's vagina. Secondly, I was like a plane on a clogged runway, waiting for permission to lift off and head for... Worcester, Massachusetts. Worcester aside, being stuck must have been horrible, plus no one dropped an oxygen mask.

I got back at all of them by being dead silent and the color of a plum. Then, I disappeared.

My mother cried, and cried. My father paced and fumed. My mother thought I was deformed. That was her worst-case scenario - not that my organs were rotting away in my mucus clogged chicken body, but that I was a cyclops or elf-eared.

Eventually, a nurse strolled into the hospital room, cradling my lilac-hued self and presented me to my mother. I was starry-eyed and gurgling with reflux. Same as today.

Then, I coded, but at least I had a nose.

Breathing has never been intuitive to me. Aside from a lifetime of asthma, when I become anxious, I hold my breath and stiffen my muscles.  I stop myself from breathing. (Do you do that, too? Next time you feel anxious, check your breathing. Exhale for a little relief.)

But, so many of us are struggling to breathe. We don't want to get out of bed; not only that, but we wonder how anyone else does. Who are these alien life forms - these people who actually want to pull from bed, put their corny feet on the floor and get out of their fuzzy pj pants?

On my worst days, during the most challenging periods in my life, I view people through my high school eyes. I see human beings as happy or miserable. Winners or losers. Popular or unwanted.

But, when I'm feeling more rational or challenge my thinking, I know that's not true.

My unhealthy self sees a fixed caste.  Some folks are just perfect. Their lives are a song. When I measure myself with that kind of yardstick, of course I feel like a failure. There is no grey area. But, being static is not a natural state for anything. There's the old adage that "The only constant is change." Something like that. But, it's true.

People's lives exist on a continuum. There are wonderful years when their marriages are working well, life is prosperous, jobs are well-paid -- all is doing well. But, all it takes is a minute, or an event and everything changes.

As a teenager, I listened to America's Top Forty with Dick Clark every Sunday. One Sunday, Whitesnake was sailing high at #1 with "Here I Go Again." Weeks flew by at number one, and Tawny Kitaen kept twerking on Jaguars. One day, she fell off the hood. Then, she noticed David Coverdale's acne pits. She realized they both had severely damaged hair.

If that song didn't stay at number one, what chance do you and I have?

If we want to stay fixed, we'll live fixed. But, we're not meant to. Change is our true nature.


I'm sure you can come up with incredible boundaries that get pushed every day. Animals that transcend abuse to ride on Zoombas. People whose arms are bitten off by a shark, yet they still find a way to surf. Two months later, they either win the world surfing championship or are carried away like a hoagie into the deep sea.


**The documentary about the blond chick who got her arm bitten off my a tiger shark was on today, so I had a healthy shift in my thinking. Tomorrow, my back pain will be raging or my hormones will be swinging, and I'll see myself as a forever loser living in a cruel, brutal world.

Stay tuned.

Merry- Thinking and Happy Yanking.

Next year if I am still alive (questionable -- serious asthma, often exercised induced, and I'm in training as a Willy-legged Mountaineering Water Bottle Cyclist, the fiercest athlete there is), I will make a really great wish and yank the merrythought.


Today, I came across a new word. Merrythought. Yes, it's antiquated. It's British: It's the furcula of a fowl.

It's the wishbone.

The whole wishbone deal is pretty gross if you think about it. Like a lot of Thanksgiving-celebrating kids, I'd stalk the kitchen windowsill for days, waiting for that nasty bone to dry and get all brittle so I could snap the bigger piece, pack my bags and head for Disney, leaving my sister heartbroken with the tinier shard just a splinter in her palm.

I took the wishbone thing seriously. Very seriously.

It was a symbol of hope, a sign of thanksgiving, not the actual meal or day, but the wonder of opening your home and hearth to others and nourishing souls.

But, it was also a power-struggle. Struggling over that jagged grey bird bone is a primal contest, something I could see Dwight Shrute and Cousin Mose fighting over to the very end, marking the days of harvest at Shrute Beet Farms.

And I get that. On a day meant to cherish your beloveds, I'd be up in my bedroom running in place doing thigh slaps getting ready to watch my  sister's dreams plummet like dying stars.

The wishbone-breaking game has been around since the days of Plymouth Rock. Birds were believed to carry the gift of foresight under their wings. Modernfarmer.com says, "Whenever the Etruscans slaughtered a chicken, they would harvest its wishbone and set it out in the sun to dry (in hopes of preserving the chicken’s divine powers). Passerby would then pick up the bone in order to hold it in their hands and softly stroke it while making wishes upon it. This is where the wishbone gets its modern-day name."

(No matter how many times I read that passage, I can't get past "softly stroke." Beautifully lliterative, and so grossly perverse. Nice work.)

Anyhow, the wishbone...it's such a homely little tool -- hideous, unstable, and rotting with mystery.

Does it have a rival? Does it have an ugly-twin - like a tossup between Kristen Bell's sloth-cry, Farrah Abraham's everything about being an ungrateful teenage slut-cry, and Kim K.'s painful looking attempt at emotion?

Perhaps a turkey's talon found underfoot in a dark, moss-covered forest, then left in someone's pocket for a week until it's put through the washer and dryer, on the hottest cycle, then had a string attached and hung on the Christmas Tree

Anyway, Thanksgiving, or any other holiday, doesn't have to suck. Just find the madness in it.



Yank that bone!

Leave that Asswipe: a Poem

Bending in the heat,
you've picked me like fruit,
tossed me into a wicker basket
and sold me at a roadside stand.

If I were as fortunate
to have hawk eyes like yours,
legs like yours to run, and
hands to grasp and
pull from the root
with a mind to sell for profit,
I would set up an awning of green
park a chair on the seam of a country road
and wait for the first taker.

Exchanging you for cash, I'd zip
my wallet, hearing the song of the
cash drawer turning the day into dusk.
Shielding my eyes, I'd watch
the wheels of that poor sucker's car spin,
kicking all that red dust into the sky.

Just a Bunch of Desperados (or Dumping a Dude in a Pirate Vest)

I think every single one of us relates to Desperado in one way or another. With the recent loss of Glenn Frey, the song is certainly worth a revisit. I like the version posted above.

Gender, age, status are of no consequence in the face of such gentle lyrics. Like all great songs, Desperado's appeal is timeless; it's just as relevant to the public and private heart today -- and perhaps even more so -- than back in 1973, the year of its release.

At each stage of life we're "not getting any younger," but the older we get, the more painful it is to search our personal inventories. Our actions, our mistakes haunt us, and our souls keep us restless. If we try and look away, we grow emotionally frail. We feel increasingly hollow.  We grow bitter.

Over the past few years, I've learned that some pain is never meant to go away. To be human means that we don't recover from a major loss like it's a stomach bug. It's not possible to walk away without wounds. And rather than feel the pain, we often jump into the next relationship, usually with our eyes closed. We add nothing to our toolbox before we meet the next tool.


I've wasted a lot of time over the past 30 years looking for someone to think I'm awesome when awesome would be the last word I'd use to describe myself. I forewent personal growth for the personal ads and wound up causing myself a ridiculous amount of heartbreak. During a particularly fragile period in my mid-20s, instead of going to ...I don't know...a meditation group...swimming....therapy, I met a guy "Randy" who wore pirate vests, and actually dated him for a couple of weeks. It didn't last long due to the vests distance. Also, as far as I could tell, Randy had an anger problem. Recently, I Googled him out of curiosity and found that he had been arrested for setting fire to his fiance's wedding dress. When the cops asked for his ID, he came back out toting a rifle. Upon arresting him, the other cop went into his apartment and found guns and ammo everywhere. Clearly, Randy didn't go swimming either.


It should come as no surprise, then, when our relationships crumble, we can't get out of bed. We're still hungry. We don't care for ourselves any more than we had before. Unless we take a look at ourselves and admit we've got some work to do (and stop focusing on every else's behavior), we will find ourselves with fresh wounds when we hadn't even put Neosporin on the one before.

Same shit, different day and different person. Same box of Ding Dongs, different Circle K.


When we choose denial, we also choose to keep repeating the same crappy experiences. How can we not loose hope? How can we not feel depressed? At this point, we grab a bottle to excess. We cut ourselves. We abuse others due to our frustration. We stay involved in abusive relationships. We shirk our individuality and  attach ourselves to an ideology  or idea, and let it consume our individuality. We desperately want to belong to someone or something. How many rejections can we take?

Anyhow, I'm so tired, but I wanted to share some thoughts. Nothing hurts worse than not liking yourself. Just like the IRS, you will follow you everywhere.



(Interestingly enough, Don Henley regrets his vocal performance on Desperado. He isn't happy with his performance, which shows his own battle with "never enoughness." Perhaps his own vulnerability adds to the song's particular longings.)

Moving When You're a Hot Mess of Disorganization, Asthma & Depression

Everything feels impossible to understand these days -- from how a reality TV star Donald Trump has ascended this far in the GOP polls, to how the term "affluenza" has become part of our vernacular...

What I do understand is that I am moving at the end of the month and I am terrified.

I'm pretty stumped about how I'm going to execute the move. For anyone who has issues with disorganization (something that is characteristic of  people with mood disorders/depression/chronic illness), a move is exceptionally terrifying.

A hot mess of an apartment becomes an even a bigger hot mess while in transit and upon arrival it expands like a sea monkey.


I dread all of it. If you're broke as a joke, the fear quadruples because you feel so vulnerable.

 If you have an animal(s), you dread if for them. I have one 17 pound orange tabby cat named He Who Will Not Be Named. This time, I have had him for 13 years. Altogether, we have spent three lifetimes together, soaring hand and paw through ice-covered sparkly tunnels while eating powdered donuts.

He has never had a urinary or fecal oops -- unless we move. As soon as the poor guy is loaded in the car he pees everywhere. Yes, I bring towels, but it's a pain in the ass because I then have to pull over to clean the the carrier, and of course his paws and belly are all pee-soaked, and he's anxious and wide-eyed and desperate to escape. Of course, he has no idea that escaping the warm jalopy would be a poor choice when it's 8 degrees outside and coyotes like cats.

Once his bladder empties, the horrible howling echos through the car. He sounds like a cat who is in her first heat, and happens to still live right up the road from her perverted father and brother, both who like her, like her. I don't know if the familial bond made the lovemaking worse for this particular female cat (this story is obviously from personal experience), but seeing the coitus certainly screwed with my head for a few days. Slipping on an icy driveway wearing a nightgown and slippers, I attempted a fierce tug of war, but learned that cat penis is a mighty opponent.

So, she was knocked up and on the run. I felt like shit about the whole escapade, so took her home and named her Bertha. This story has a great ending. Bertha had two adorable kittens in a box in my living room. They both have heads and legs. I wasn't sure if the kittens would be properly assembled, but cuteness transcended incest and wah lah...two adorable babies.

All three have good homes and none are sluts.

So, I'm procrastinating about the move, which stems from fear, which makes everything worse.

Currently, my life is as scary as one of those dungeons where witches were kept during the Salem Witch Trials, and are now used as museums and scary, expensive haunted venues. This is also from personal experience. It was Halloween. I have no idea how I ended up in a freaking witch museum by myself. I froze and cried. They had to turn on the emergency lights (which ruined things for everyone), then backed me up like a bus  - beeeep, beeeep, beeeep.

Everyone behind me was pissed or laughing. I mean, little kids were skipping through the thing like it was Disney's Clubhouse and I was pissing myself.

I am similarly anxious about this move. I'm really scared and stumped, which just edges out being a scared stump.

IN ADDITION, I've had lifelong cold-induced asthma and am not supposed to do anything in sub-30 degree weather but walk from warm building to warm building with a scarf wrapped around my mouth to keep my respiratory system all moist (I HATE THAT WORD!). Since steroid and rescue inhalers don't help enough to keep me from dying in 3 minutes or less, I have to now buy a 100.00 portable nebulizer so I'm not found face down in yellow snow, which would just be my luck.

Even better, I'll be face first in a pile of snow and no one will notice except for the neighbor's dog who will trot over and lift his leg over my head.

This all just sucks and I'm freaking myself out writing this, so me and my frog pjs will go collapse in a ball of horror.