The Cookie Monster

I am a big fan of the cookie. I consume more than my fair share every week (an amount I might consider disclosing here if I did not think you would be disgusted.....or rather that I would be disgusted and attempt, unsuccessfully, to remedy my sweet-toothed ways). I'm not incredibly picky about cookies but I obviously have my favorites. And I have to admit, as it is season to admit, amidst that top tier is the lovely, purple-adorning, coconut-coated, Samoa from our friends, the Girl Scouts.

Let me let you in on a little known secret about the rest of the Girl Scout Cookies. They're not that good. Oh, I dare say some can hold on to a fight but, on the whole, there's nothing to talk about. Perhaps (I say perhaps because I haven't done the proper research and instead invite you to do my homework) the most popular of the Girl Scout Cookie Flavors is the Thin Mint--the green box, thin, chocolate coated, mint-flavored wafer-like cookies that are a great size for whole-cookie-mouth-popping. But, let's be honest here. Anyone who appreciates the stellar combination of mint with chocolate will run over the Thin Mint box to get to a box of the York cookies. Hellllo!! They're infinitely more minty and infinitely more chocolatey and infinitely more mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. And yet, each year, at that certain time, we flock to our neighborhood Wal-Mart or Target or ........ to get a box of this and a box of that from the somewhat oddly dressed little girls with overpriced goodies. We're more than willing! We're eager. We look forward to it!

((Quick anecdote: this year, my mother was in charge of ordering the cookies. We are a Samoa family. We don't mess around. We want lots and lots of purple, a couple green, a couple red, and who cares what else? But something went wrong with our order (yes, we are pre-orderers). Instead of having lots and lots of purple, we ended up with lots and lots of orange (orange?) and only one purple. It was a travesty! We timed our grocery store runs hoping to hit little Girl Scouts on our way out of the store for their supply of purples.))

It's marketing genius! You always want what you cannot have. And so much of the year, you CANNOT have these cookies. In their paucity....increase craving, increase craving, increase craving.....then supply and increase crazy! Go bezerk! Eat them all! And, remember, they're not very good. If Girl Scout cookies were on the market year round, most of them would never survive (I say most in respect for the Samoa). There are much better cookies in the grocery store aisle. Need I say SoftBatch?? Plus the potential for homemade cookies. Ooooooooooh. But we want the Girl Scout cookies because those cute, little girls have gotten into our minds, and messed with our desires, and manipulated our taste buds so that come the annual release, we stampede them like a massive group of Girl-Scout-cookie-deprived Americans.

Yikes.

Why Are You Making Me Wear Green???

I am not Irish, in any microscopic percentage of being (despite the name that has plagued me since birth). I've never been to Ireland. And although I do generally enjoy the color green (how could you not? leaves, grass, grasshoppers), I resent the need to wear it on St. Patrick's Day. In fact, if I were a St. Patrick purist, I'd insist on blue, which was the actual color of St. Patrick before the day became synonymous with Irish folklore and the green of Ireland. Guess what. I'm not Roman Catholic either, the religion which is supposed to celebrate St. Patrick's Day.

I am an American Christian who is not wearing green but is, coincidentally, wearing blue, and who, when I walk outside today, stands the risk of getting pinched. Pinched! As in, a method often used to discover if one is dreaming or not, an action designed for immediate, significant, though short-lasted pain. Transitively, I am risking pain by going outside and not wearing green today because today is the day that American Christians honor their patron saint by wearing a color unconnected to that saint......ohhhh wait.......that's not right......


So, anyway. Beer, anyone?



Reasons to like St. Patrick's Day:
1) Green. It's my color. I look stunning in it.
2) Beer. You can drink so much beer you think you're Irish and then enjoy St. Patrick's Day because you're Irish.
3) Four-leaf clovers---they're so abundant that you delude yourself (see reason 2) into thinking they're easy to find in reality and that, therefore, good luck is easy to find in reality.
4) Brotherly love (again references to reason 2)
5) Not American. Since you are Irish for the day (or if you actually have some Irish blood in you), you can claim to be un/non-American, which is a very cool American thing to do.

DST Ready for TNT??

So it only took 40 years to discover but apparently Daylight Savings is a bust. The clock-changing effort to save energy, well, doesn't. Instead it's causing Americans to use more energy and therefore pay more for that energy use. Good idea, Mr. Franklin.
Here's a thought: perhaps, just perhaps, we shouldn't focus huge time-altering efforts on the thoughts of a man whose lighting system functioned around candles and wax.

DST is pretty much wretched--all the way down to its name: Day-Light-Savings. The very idea is impossible for, as it turns out, we as people do not control the amount of sunlight given off by (get this) the sun in any given day. We are just a bunch of parasites that live off of it but have no control over it. We don't save daylight---though, the title is convenient for our over-indulgent self-perspectives. (I did it! I saved the daylight! You're welcome, Little People. Worship me like you worship the sun because I control the sun.) Shockingly, the sun rises when it rises and sets when it sets because of the axis tilt, rotation, and revolution of the earth in relation to the sun. Crazy. The season of summer allows for more sunlight automatically. All we did was call it summer. Ta da!

I do understand the hesitancy to give up the whole DST practice, though. I mean, who would want to have to stop saying, "Spring forward; fall back?" It's a very catchy phrase. And very catchy phrases should not be eradicated just because they cost billions of dollars in unnecessary energy use. They're very catchy.

The Wind-Up Arm Chronicle

As I just told a friend and former player, "My arm is not made of normal arm substances." Over a year ago, I got sick of being normal and decided to become a surgical phenomena. So I broke and shattered a handful of bones in my arm. Now I have a part-human, part-robot (okay, just metallic) bone structure. It has planes, chains, and automobiles. ..... ..... .... Okay but the chains part is true! And replacement heads (aka huge long bolts), screws, and plates.

Most of you will not recall (because, hopefully, you never had to see it), but for several weeks after my injury/surgery, my hand blew up to the size of one of those dentist's office gloves that you can inflate and put a toothbrush inside---only my was a bit more purpley-blue. Other than being well-timed for Halloween (and therefore the repeated answering of the question as to my hand's authenticity), it wasn't a helping hand. Puffy balloon. Purpley-blue. And one more thing. Stuck! That's right I said stuck. Here are a couple of pictures. Just keep in mind that I am actually straightening my fingers as much as possible in these photos. When I was first able to sleep flat again, I remember trying to hold my hand palm down on the bed and not being able to do it because my fingers would not straighten that way. Oh, sigh. Jolly good times. We spent a great deal of effort to get those little guys straightened out--bending them backwards and stretching out the tendons and ligaments.

Well, anyone who knows anything about the intricate structure of the arm (and that does not include me) know that, in the forearm, there are three dominant tendons, each serving its own purpose. In my double-dislocation and single-shattering, I messed up all of these tendons. One of which, to use the words of my PT, is "meshed up." No, not messed. Well, yes, messed. But more than messed; it is meshed. That is the one that works the outer fingers. Therefore, if you apply any kind of pressure to my little pinky on my left hand, it will immediately go towards the rest of my fingers despite my effort to fight you. (AKA I'm very weak and now have tons of excercises and a heart shaped ball to squeeze. Which is okay because I like hearts.)

Okay. Meshed up tendon = meshed up fingers. Check.

Now, let's have some interaction. Give yourself an exaggerated wave hello, up and down. Like the stereotypical "I'm gay" hand gesture. Normally, your hand goes about as far back from vertical as it goes forward. Although my left hand in no way matches my right when I attempt this, neither does my left match itself. It goes back to about normal. It seems to get stuck going forward. This is only a problem for me because I actually enjoy playing the guitar....but can't. Although I can actually hold the neck and apply my fingers to the proper frets, I cannot do so without a considerable amount of discomfort. (I now have exercises for this, too....and a left-handed guitar.)

This is the saga of my abnormalities, a chronicle, if you will--which I can wind with my right hand but not with my left (very well). My arm is meshed up. Despite being surgically removed and bolstered, it is not perfect. It can't be perfect. And it continues to disclose it's imperfections as though it were a trickle in a dam, waiting to break. Only it's already been broken. A lot.

My P.T. Rocks---Literally

My presence has been requested this week at my Physical Therapist's (PT) office. She requested that I come in and pay her a visit. I'm quite lovable and therefore....she misses me. She can't live without me---even though I just saw her at her son's basketball game a couple of weeks ago. WARNING WARNING: Kenzie is a legal, addictive stimulant. Taking any amount of her with any regularity or irregularity may cause permanent and possibly excessive use. (She's also very humble.)

So, I have an unofficial (as in, uninsured) appointment this week at a place I used to frequent thrice weekly just to be able to move my left arm and function as a semi-normal two-armed human whose left hand is not in a permanent fist--anymore.

What is so unusual about this, you ask? Of course she wants to see me. Of course she'll figure out a way to get around my uninsured health insurance status. Of course, of course, of course.

Well, yes. Of course. But her final request for said visit: "Bring your guitar."

Excuse me, huh?

After, first, checking to make sure she was, indeed, serious and, second, receiving corroboration that this was not an elaborate hoax to get me to perform at an office birthday party, I agreed.

Me and my guitar will be rockin' out with Julia later this week. Intrigued? Me too......but I know something you don't know.

Uh, I'm Disgusted.

I try to hide the fact that I am a quitter. I'm a great quitter though. Perhaps the best. And I do it so well, that it's rather difficult to tell I'm a quitter. But I've recently decided (kind of sort of or at least in a couple facets or just specific instances of my life) that I'm not going to be a quitter anymore.

Sitting on my desk for the past few weeks has been a book I deserted. It's called Why We Run and I picked it up a few months ago while browsing the aisles at the local book branch because I've enjoyed the two running books I've ever read. Two books; one author. Time to expand the horizon. So I bought it. And I forced myself through the first 40 pages of it and I considered the horizon well ablaze and time to put it aside and let it cool off---or burn up to the remains of ashes....either one, it's not important.

But, as I discovered last week (in a completely different incident that will be discussed in about a week when the resulting impulse purchase arrives on my doorstep), I WILL NOT BE DEFEATED. And so I will defeat this book. And, seeing it resting on my desk, I decided to take it out for a workout---you know, take its pages for a spin. And today I read some 60 pages of it....at the end of which.....I came upon this.....

"....contestants on a race in over 80F heat on the Bowdoin College track in Maine. Every couple of laps, the racers dunked their heads into a barrel of water the race director, Bill Gayton, had set thoughtfully alongside the track. The water evaporating from the contestants' heads and backs kept them cooled and running despite the heat. Surprisingly, bees that have collected nectar have a variation of this approach. They regurgitate their stomach contents from the mouth and spread the liquid all over themselves with their forefeet. Once they are back in the hive, colony mates lick off the residual solids (sugar) that are left after the water has evaporated. However, relying on regurgitation for evaporative cooling is probably not a recommended option for us.
"Some storks and vultures cool themselves by a reverse, yet similar, strategy. They defecate runny feces down their legs. The blood in the bird's legs is cooled by the evaporation, which reduces overall body temperature by as much as 2C. A turkey vulture sitting on a fence post in the sun on a hot day, calmly and deliberately defecating on its naked legs, is behaving in a way that makes sense. Anyone who has ever been running hard on a sweltering day will be able to identify with such behavior."

How does one respond to this??? I mean, obviously beat out the gag reflex and give in to the "EWWWWWW" reflex but other than that....... ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww. And apparently I just can't get past that part.

It disgusts me. It disgusts me. It disgusts me.

I'm disgusted.

But I will not be defeated. I will persevere. I will read this insect-infested, regurgitation-marinated (ewwww), densely defecated book supposedly about what causes man to run but appears to be more about what causes him to regurgitate and defecate himself. What an experiment!