"I'm old!"

My friend Mark has been uttering this phrase quite a bit of late. He is, of course, my age – we went to high school together. In what was the most ungraceful drunken exit from a hot tub I may have ever witnessed a few weeks ago while at the coast (there was a broken stepstool and a loud 'thump' involved), this was his exclamation. Not “I’m drunk!” or “I’m uncoordinated!” but, “I’m old!”

It’s beginning to catch up to me. I saw a chiropractor yesterday.

“When was your last adjustment?” he asked kindly.
“Let’s see…I think when I was nineteen.”
“And how long ago was that?”
“About nine years.”
“Wow.”
“How often should I be getting adjustments?”
“Generally every four to six weeks.”
“Oh.”


I apparently have something called Upper Cross Syndrome. Otherwise known as Little Old Lady Syndrome – my shoulders hunch forward, my right even more so than my left. This could explain the knitting, the sudden inclination to get a cat.

“Have you ever been in an accident, had any kind of injury?”
“Maybe…” which means ‘No.’ I just naturally have wicked upper back pain and fuckedupedness (totally a word by the way). People don’t believe me, possibly because I ignore it all the time. Massage therapists scoff until they get to my upper back and can’t get the knots out. “Wow, you weren’t kidding!”

No shit. I’m old!

"Were you mauled by a tiger?" "It was a dog...it was a big dog."

“I really didn’t like that Heath Ledger made the Joker so…comical.” – random girl in front of me as I exited my second viewing of Dark Knight on Friday.

Mark: “I don’t know…It didn’t feel very realistic.”
Me: “It’s Batman. Do you really want to argue realism?”
Mark: “I know. I think I’m just not into big blockbuster action flicks. If you took me to an Al Gore movie I’d probably be more excited.”
Me: “You’re the worst boy ever.”

My only complaint (having now seen Dark Knight in both regular and Imax formats – side complaint – don’t ask me what the difference between Imax and regular is. I’ll shoot you some catty reply like “Five dollars.”) is that the Imax screen at Bridgeport Village is pretty weak and not really worth the extra money. Oh well.

Unrelated: it’s China week on the Travel Channel. Thus, I really want a monkey. Or a tiger. Maybe a lion. “So you really want a liger,” my brother pointed out recently. “Yes, a liger would suffice,” I replied. I want a cat that can take up one half of my bed. Maybe this is strange and will cement my status as a bachelor for all time, but it’s still a pleasing idea.

“But a tiger could kill you.”
“So? Pit bulls can kill you. So can children. People have children and pit bulls all the time.”

Your problems make my fee seem insignificant.

I saw one of my therapists today (I always seem to have at least two. Maybe that isn’t normal. I’ll have to talk to one of them about that). I only see this particular therapist every three months or so. Eyes glued to a yellow legal pad, she asked me how I was.

“I’m doing really well,” I replied. Her pen stopped moving. Eyes peering up at me over her glasses, her voice dropped an octave in disbelief.

“Really.”

“Yes…really.”

She smiled. As it turns out, my well-being and pending relocation has conveniently coincided with her six-month sabbatical. They’re always so much happier to write you prescriptions when they’re going on vacation.

Quote of the Week

"I suggest you go to a movie...or a bar." - my mother, in response to both my internet and cable going out due to a car hitting a pole down the street.

"You have to be pretty drunk to lose a shoe."

I really need to go to a tropical island,

OR

I am a complete exhibitionist.

I don’t like wearing clothes in the summer. Which is not the same as being comfortable naked – I wouldn’t say that I am. I balked at a boy’s suggestion that I should become a stripper a few weeks ago – I have flaws. Dubiously, he gave me the once over and begged explanation. “I’m not going to point them out to you – then you’ll see them,” I replied. I’m no fool. (Don’t respond to that)

I went to the Oregon coast with a group of friends this weekend. Despite a near cloudless sky, the temperature on the beach (factoring in a nice old-fashioned Oregon wind-chill) was probably in the 50s. Determined to wear my bikini top, I soldiered on until my friend Sharin actually told me to put my shirt on. Reluctantly, I obeyed.

It’s a little embarrassing when your friends tell you to put your clothes on. I wasn’t even drunk (yet).

All of this could account for my knack at losing articles of clothing as well. Or my early-onset dementia (my father would attribute this to soy products. Thanks for raining on my tofu parade).

It started at the top - two gray, zip-up sweater hoodies, one lost to the streets of LA after a Rasputina concert at the El Rey, the other to a house party in NW Portland. Then, a bra to the insanity that is New York (there’s a longer story here, but I’ll save that for later. Hi mom!) It continued downward: underwear to the Bermuda triangle of exboyfriend’s unkempt bedrooms, socks kicked off in a foreign bed. Two weeks ago, I attended my 10-year high school reunion. Having misplaced both my expensive pair of four-inch stilettos and my cheap pair of back-up flats, I returned home at 9am barefoot and thoroughly amused.

To my credit, I have never lost a pair of pants.