There's a joke about "packages" in here somewhere

I'm not very good about these things, but I have a sneaking suspicion that the guy who works at the USPS distribution center is conspiring to flirt with me.

See, there's a gate outside my apartment - a small complex of 3 duplexes (just 6 units total) - and that gate is great for keeping out riff-raff, but my carrier won't leave packages outside the gate, which is good, because they would likely be stolen, but it means I end up with a lot of those little package pick-up slips.

About six months ago, they closed my local post office. Now I have to drive past two other post offices to the distribution center to retrieve my packages. Which is irksome, but not really the point of this story. They also transferred much of the staff to the distribution center, including one particular postal clerk who used to work at my local post office. And now he seems to be behaving as if he thinks I am foxy.

About six weeks ago, I went to retrieve a package on a particularly busy day. He brought it out from the warehouse, and handed it off to another clerk to scan and have me sign for it. She asked him if he'd already checked my ID, and he told her that he didn't need to, because we went to high school together. Which I thought was a little odd, but also hilarious, since he's easily 8 or 10 years my senior.

Then, about a month ago, I was there again for another package. This time, he did indeed ask to check my ID, and as he took a long, hard look at it, I noticed him point directly at my date of birth. I forget exactly what he said, but then he made some sort of comment about my age in relation to his.

Just before the holidays, upon checking the mail I realized that not only is he flirting, but he is conspiring to create opportunities for these flirtations. See, there was a USPS-delivered package, addressed to my neighbor, sitting politely inside the gate. And in my mailbox, there was a package slip. Just a regular package slip, not for any required signature or delivery confirmation or any of that nonsense which would make it logical for there to be a slip for me yet none for my neighbor.

Last week, I had no mail all week, and then suddenly there were FOUR package notices, all with different dates, and a large clump of mail, in my box. Which meant yet another visit to the flirty postal clerk.

So it seems that my admirer is doing some very specific conspiring with my carrier to make sure that packages delivered to my address are not so much delivered, so that I am forced to go and visit him. I keep waiting for him to ask for my number, but maybe there's some sort of rule that says he can't. In any case, I'm kind of glad, because if he did, it might very well prove disastrous for any future package receiving that might need to happen.

Shiny and new

Lately it feels like my fibro has gotten worse. I didn't think it possible to be MORE fatigued, in MORE pain, with MORE gastric symptoms, but apparently I was wrong, because I have been. Part of that is my own fault - the holidays were a time of indulgence, and I ate and drank celebratory quantities of things that are normally very well moderated. Since the new year, I've been behaving myself pretty well, but my symptoms have not abated - it's possible that, despite my best efforts, I've even been feeling worse.

So, it's time for drastic measures. Cutting wheat from my diet last summer proved to be a huge big deal, resulting in tremendous improvements in my symptoms and even caused me to lose about 7 pounds (all while on a steady diet of potato rolled tacos smothered in sour cream). Combined with regular visits to the chiropractic and acupuncture, I've improved from a state of "can't do anything at all" to one of "can sometimes do some of the things" - simple things that a person has to do to get by, like cooking, laundry, grocery shopping.

None of the medications commonly used to treat my condition actually work on me - some make me very, very sick; others have no discernible effect whatsoever. So I'm relegated to "alternative therapies," which is perhaps for the best, since the FDA-approved therapies involve pumping toxic chemicals into my body (no wonder they make me sicker!).

This weekend I'm starting an elimination diet, much like the one described here (links to downloadable 'what to eat' lists can be found here). The goal is to determine which foods are aggravating my condition. Nightshades are a likely culprit, which is tragic, because I LOVE peppers! Of course, I've already slipped up - in last night's dinner of caramelized onions, lentils, and brown rice, I put nutritional yeast in the lentils AND I put 'better than bouillon' in the rice, which also has yeast in it. But otherwise I've been very well-behaved yesterday and this morning, having giant green breakfast smoothies (I never imagined I could eat a giant spinach salad, a big handful of collards, a whole apple, half an avocado, a cup of blueberries, and a cup of coconut water for breakfast, but it's much easier when it's all blended together!), and my fridge is FULL of beautiful, green leafy veggies. Tonight I have plans to cook and eat a tasty dinner with C who is vegan all the time and H who is currently on a very similar elimination diet.

I'm excited, and hopeful for some relief. Eliminating all the delicious things from my diet is difficult, but not so difficult as living the way I've been living.

Rearranged!

I spent yesterday rearranging ALL THE FURNITURE. Nothing stayed in the same place. Even the pictures moved! I even put up new curtain rods!

See, I have a ridiculously tiny and weirdly-shaped apartment. An awesomely weird 435 square feet that could be far better managed with a bit of major overhaul - but I'm not about to move load-bearing walls, especially not in a rental. So, I deal and cope with what I have: an apartment that has three tiny, narrow rooms that are not conducive to any furniture rearranging whatsoever. Which is a problem, because I have a condition in which I am compelled to CONSTANTLY REARRANGE FURNITURE.

In college, I lived in a dormitory with two roommates for nine months, and I rearranged the furniture every two weeks. They'd come back from class and everything would be in a different place. I was convinced that I'd find a "better way" to make the most of cramming 3 people and all our belongings into a space that must've been less than half as big as the space I have now. Thankfully, they found my compulsion charming, or helpful, since every time we did indeed seem to have a few square inches more space.

But this space? Really awkward, and not terribly good for rearranging, since each of my 3 rooms has only two functional walls, and two of them also function as hallways.

Last May I discovered an awesome website, Floor Planner, that lets you create a virtual tiny apartment to rearrange ad nauseum without having to spend an entire day dusting off bookshelves and piling ALL THE YARN in various odd places and making the cat angry. Let me just say, I'M IN LOVE with this website. This website is like methadone for someone like me, keeping me clean and straight and managing my addiction in a way that's a little less weird and unhealthy. So for the past seven months I've managed to stick to minor real-world adjustments: relocating tables and chairs; keeping the major overhauls to the internets. And let me just say, seven months is a LONG ASS TIME.

But yesterday, I couldn't take it any more. So I moved shit around in a BIG WAY. And I'm so pleased with the results. Here's my new layout (screenshot from Floor Planner):



But that hardly begins to really explain it, since this was more than just pushing couches and bookcases around. It was a full reorganization of ALL THE THINGS. This was MAJOR. I'm making far better use of at least five pieces of furniture, and that makes me happy.

Most notably, I relocated all the books, and put the "tv" in a new place:



That bookcase used to live just around the corner (to the right, past the broom) in the "dining room" (which is actually my crafting room), and it was filled mostly with junk. Now it sits across from the couch (this here is the view from the couch). I don't have cable, I just use Netflix and Hulu and other such internet sources for my entertainment, so the iMac provides that. I got it on clearance almost four years ago now when the new versions were released, so instead of costing the usual arm-and-leg it was only an arm! No but seriously, I think I spent $900 on the 24" iMac (which at the time was priced at about $2200).

In any case, the new setup is lovely, if still a bit cluttered (my sewing/crafting table - just past the broom - is piled high with stuff that needs to find a new home). But the part that I stare at as I internet from the couch is quite lovely and tidy and modern, and that makes me very happy.

Christmas, or as I like to call it, Sunday

Christmas has always been my very least favourite holiday. Even as a very small child, Christmas makes parents fight over which grandparents we will visit, over how much everything cost and how we have no money, over how much work goes into all the cooking. And parents try to hide this from the kids, but it's impossible to miss the tension and anger that fills the room. With divorced parents, it's a fight every year about who gets to have the kids. Even with a court order in place, somehow there is always a fight, and so many under-breath mumblings about how the other parent is treating this parent and can't that parent just be nice because, Jesus Christ, it's fucking Christmas!

I also grew up with a batch of adult step-siblings, who were constantly on and off drugs, and would randomly show up for Christmas, or not. Sometimes sober, sometimes not. But we always had to watch them like hawks, because if they were allowed to wander the house alone, they were likely to sneak into my bedroom and steal all my babysitting money out of my piggy bank.

After I left home, it grew into a holiday where I had to first spend a lot of money and then spend time with these crazy people and their crazy drama. And sure, there were good moments, but even those were spent waiting for the other shoe to drop.

After several years of this, I finally just gave up. First I instituted a strict "handmade gifts only" policy, to take a huge chunk of the stress out of the whole situation. As a knitter, this often included cozy yarn-based things, but not always. My favourite holiday gift is to make a giant batch of jam or marinara sauce (or both!), can it properly in jars, and give everyone a jar or two. It's handmade, it's delicious, it costs about a dollar, it lives in the cupboard until they want to use it to make dinner super super easy. If you can get the jars back, then  the project becomes even cheaper.

But even this got to be too much. So my "handmade gifts only" policy morphed into a "no gifts at all" policy, and holy crap, that was amazing. All the shopping stress and knitting stress and making stuff stress was extracted from the holiday. THIS was sure to save Christmas.

Except it didn't. Because the fighting and the drama and the stress of a lifetime of terrible Christmasses was still there, was still very, very apparent in every motion of the event.

So I quit Christmas altogether. And it is absolutely the best decision I have ever made. I'll be spending the afternoon with friends, drinking too much and eating too much. There is a strict no-gifts policy. And I'm positively giddy with excitement about Christmas for the first time in decades.

--

In all this time of hating Christmas, I grew to hate one thing even more than I hate Christmas: Christmas MUSIC. How is it acceptable to spend two months out of every year listening to the same 40 or so songs? I have never understood that and I never will. But I make a very small handful of exceptions to my Christmas-Music-is-Hell policy, and I feel it's important to share those with you. In no particular order, I present, the only Christmas music that doesn't make me want to slit my wrists:


Blue Christmas, by Elvis Presley.
Maybe it's because my Christmasses were so often Blue, but boy do I love a depressing Christmas song.




Christmastime is Here, by Vince Guaraldi Trio.
I'm pretty sure my reasoning on this one is the same as for Blue Christmas - the lyrics are about happy things, but the song itself is so very sad. Plus the movie stars a Christmas-hater. Even as a small child, I could really empathize with Charlie.




Baby Please Come Home, by U2.
Maybe it's because I fantasize about Bono singing this to me, or maybe it's because, once again, we're working on the unhappy Christmas theme.




God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, by Barenaked Ladies and Sarah McLachlan.
The bluegrassy arrangement, the minor chords, the lyrics juxtaposing fear of Satan with 'tidings of comfort and joy" - and the odd yet delightful combination of Sarah McLachlan's voice with BNL. This is one that doesn't quite fit my stereotype.




Little Drummer Boy/Peace on Earth, by David Bowie and Bing Crosby.
Perhaps the world's most bizarre and amazing duet (the singing starts about halfway through if you want to skip ahead).




Santa Clause Go Straight to the Ghetto, by Belle and Sebastien.
This last one is a new addition - I only just discovered it yesterday, but it's one that actually puts a smile on my face.