After nearly a month of being ill in some form or another, I’m back to normal. Except for one thing. I’ll get to that later. In the meantime:
1. In the process of Christmas shopping for Scott’s niece, I discovered that jeans from a particular teenager store look really, really good on me. (I have to go up a size or two, of course.) It’s a little embarrassing to shop there and not have a real, honest-to-god teenager with me so I can pretend I’m buying stuff for her. But the jeans look really good, and they’re cheap. Some of the sweatshirts are nice too and would be great for yoga, except that they have logos all over them, being from a teenager store. As is the fashion of the day, the ones that don’t have logos have a year across the chest, in this case “1987.” Really, 1987 just wasn’t that great a year for me. That should probably be my signal right there: if I can remember the year on the clothes, I have no business wearing them. But if some one came out with a series of sweatshirts that said “second half of 1995″ on them, I might buy.
2. The yoga teacher training experience is said to be transformative. As far as fears go, I’ve had little to face. I’m generally comfortable in front of a group, the Sanskrit comes easily to me, and after the first two weekends, I got over my nerves about teaching in front of (the mighty!) Kim. Tonight I recognized exactly which fear it is that I’ve been set up to face here. That would be the fear of germs. Not just any old germs. Big capital B barfing germs. I am completely phobic about throwing up. Like, seriously, totally paranoid about it. I start to get queasy and become convinced that I am on the threshold of an unfortunate gastric event when, say, an old friend who now lives in Ohio posts on facebook that her kid is pukey. My god, maybe barf germs can be transmitted through facebook! So, some one has had some kind of quease every weekend we’ve met, and of course everyone is touching and sweating. Also, it seemed that everyone affiliated with the studio got a two day barfing illness in December, and tonight some one left early because she was, as Kim put it, “violently regurgitating.”
I was feeling fine up until that point. Now I’m afraid to eat.
Of course, this is not the weirdest phobia I’ve manifested. There was the great ten year toilet terror of 1978-1988, and my enduring issue with things that look like things. (cookie jars in the shape of pigs, chocolate santas, etc.. My former co-workers knew me well enough that everytime we got seasonal chocolates, they would see my sour expression while I was counting inventory, and say, “It’s a thing that looks like a thing?” And indeed it was.)
Now that I think of it, my toilet terror was grounded in causing a toilet to overflow during a dinner party at age three. Perhaps this is all related – the fear of stuff coming up?
Anyway, the big bad barfy went through the studios in December, and I spent most of December with raging indigestion, nausea, and headaches. Did I make that up?
I’ve decided that until I evolve some more, when I have my next yearly physical I am going to ask if I can get a perscription for an anti-nausea drug. The last time I had a major gastric ailment, it was immediately after Scott had the same thing; he had been perscribed a barf supressant, which I took during my illness. I was still down for a week, but at least I didn’t barf. I don’t like taking drugs at all, but just knowing I had it would probably set my mind at ease.
3. Football! Between the baseball postseason, college football, bowl games, and the NFL postseason, I feel like I haven’t slept normally in three and half months.
4. On Thursday I discovered that the staff at Towson Hot Bagels don’t wear gloves when they reach into the bagel bins. The bagels are delicious, but I believe I have bought my last half dozen.
5. Hi mom. I updated my blog.
