My therapist is very tall.

Today I watched from my couch vantage point as she looked for a book on a lower shelf in her office and was struck again by how tall she seems. She’s also thin, which makes her seem taller.

The book she was looking for concerns itself with a subject I struggle with mightily. By looking for it, she was essentially diagnosing someone else. “Why Dr. C (I used her whole name) are you doing a remote diagnosis on someone you’ve never met?” In her very therapist way, she neither confirmed nor denied that she was.

She offered to loan me the book. I demurred, figuring my uni’s library would have it. Turns out they don’t. I see her one more time before the end of the year. I could borrow it then. I could order it from interlibrary loan. I could buy it from Amazon who are offering free 2-day shipping upgrades today.

The Amazon thing is pretty funny. “Here, we’ll rush you a book on psychiatric disorders just in time for holiday gift giving!” Or at least that’s how it seems to me.

Honey offered to buy it for me if I’d read it in the presence of the person who was semi-diagnosed today by my therapist. Again, I demurred.

I wonder sometimes if I believe in my therapist, in part at least, because she is so tall and so calm. We all need something to believe in, after all.

Honey says I lead with my emotions and she’s probably right. We were cataloging my car decisions yesterday for reasons that will become obvious. I asked her if she would do what I was thinking about doing.

“We have to back up. I never would have done what you did three years ago.”

So, let’s back up shall we? Some years ago I bought I car that I really liked. It was a Volkswagen Passat. Honey and I name our cars. The Passat’s name was Otto. Some years after I bought Otto, my mother, who was living rather miserably in Chicago at the time, offered to sell me her Audi A6 for whatever I could get for the Passat. Sounded good to me. The Audi was a year older but had fewer miles on it. Because it was my mother’s car, it had many of bells and whistles. It was also a lemon. My dad even admitted that to me after the fact. However much you love them, my advice to you is to not buy a car from your relatives. That Audi cost me thousands of dollars in the year I owned it in repair bills. Plus, with both the Audi and VW, there was the whole, “ju must use ze hi test gas because zese are Deutsch ottos” thing. Anyway…I was sick of how much the Audi was costing me and during the heady days of 0% financing (that would be 2003, for those of you who lost track), I acted emotionally and bought a Saturn Vue. It was bright blue and Honey and I called it Butchy. Ironically, you understand.

Butchy never suited me. It had REALLY uncomfortable seats and an uber plasticy interior. It was comfortable enough for four people (I guess–I never rode in the back seat). I kept doing things to it to make myself like it better. Roof rails, aftermarket stereo, rubber floor mats. The blue was a bad choice, too. I thought I would think it was fun. After a while, though, I would walk out to get in it and think to myself, “you’re a grown woman getting into a bright blue car.” This is not to slam anyone else’s car color choice, by the way. The car and I didn’t get along. I think I probably would have liked the color had the rest of the car been satisfying.

Anyway, emotions have led me hither and yon to car desires since. I lusted after the Nissan Murano for a while and then soured on the egg car thing. I then decided that the Audi A3 was just the thing for me until I read reviews of its “narrow cockpit.” Since I am less than narrow, that seemed like a bad fit.

And, then…

And, then…

Well, Toyota came out with the new FJ cruiser. Oh, it was just the thing. Not too big, not too small. Cute AND tough all at the same time. I have the “big car” for Honey and I. I read reviews. I watched MotorWeek on PBS hoping to see the review of it. I checked ebay to see what the slightly used ones were going for. I downloaded a plugin so I could build my own. Once I built my virtual one, I spun it around and around.

Honey and I talked about it some. I was at one of those moments. I still owed money on the Vue, but because it was three years old and didn’t have much mileage on it, it had value. I could drive it for two more years. Or…

I tried to resist wanting to go to a Toyota dealer. I didn’t ask for a free quote on the internet. I was going to be good. Then, Honey and I were meeting some friends yesterday at the Museum of Jurassic Technology. Never heard of it? Weird place. Totally worth a visit if you’re ever in L.A.

Anyway…there’s a Toyota dealer near the MJT that I knew had been a good dealer once upon a time. I asked Honey if we could stop by after the museum.

Here’s what I thought would happen: they would have a couple of FJs. They would be blue, yellow, or black 4×4s. They would have a sticker price I could not afford. I would drive one. I would like it. I would go home and obsess about it and maybe, in a moment of weakness, ask for some free price quotes on the one I had virtually built from edmunds.

The one I built virtually? Oh, it was a silver 4×2 with alloy wheels and the basic upgrade package. And floor mats. I wanted floor mats.

We walk onto the lot and are greeted. Nicely. There’s an FJ sitting up front. It’s silver. It’s a 4×2. Features? Why, yes, yes indeed. The basic upgrade package, alloy wheels and—you’re never going to guess–floor mats.

We test drive it. Honey says, “this is everything you wanted to Vue to be and it isn’t.”

Oh, I know, there are a million reasons to NOT buy the car. It’s an SUV. It doesn’t improve gas mileage over the Vue. Shouldn’t I get a hybrid? There’s nothing wrong with the Vue other than my emergent searing hatred of it. And then…

Then, we get into negotiations. Honey has wandered away and is sitting in the waiting room for the service department watching (despite her total lack of interest) the USC/Notre Dame football game. The entire sales staff seems to be actively rooting for USC. Honey and I went to UCLA. Honey doesn’t like football anyway. It’s a thing.

They show up with their first offer. It’s not even close to what I imagined. Not even. I’ll spare you the back and forth. I had to go get Honey and she was amazing. She yelled and stood up and I yelled and demanded the keys to the Vue back. Then they switched guys. It was a good move, because guy number 1 was the king of fuzzy math. Finally, they got to showing us the actual price of the car with the actual “value” of the trade in. After the Saturn experience, where the get out the blue book and figure out the value of the trade with you, this was very different. It was hostile and antagonistic.

Finally, we got to a price I could afford and there were no random charges. I wasn’t giving them any money down, just the Vue. I still hemmed and fretted.

They’re just things, cars. Big, expensive things.

It’s awfully pretty, my new FJ. The process was less than fun. But like all pain, the memory of it will fade and I will be left with a car I really like. Emotions win, after all. That happens when you follow them around.

When I was in my early twenties, I lived in the D.C. suburbs of Maryland. I had just graduated from college and had a job working at my University’s library. One night, about a month into working the job, I began to feel very sick. I hurt like I had never hurt before. The pain started and then got worse and worse.

I drove myself home and to the hospital (stopping off for a change of clothes just in case–my momma always said to change your underwear before going to the hospital). Fourteen hours later, I no longer had an appendix. I’ll spare you the details of my grabbing the nurse and demanding more demerol.

The one thing that really bothered me after the surgery was that I kept smelling this smell I had never smelled before. While convalescing some days after the surgery, I happened to touch the stapled wound. A few minutes later, I had my hand near my nose. Lo and behold, I smelled the smell. I decided that I was smelling the inside of me.

I didn’t mind the way it smelled, actually. But it did smell foreign. And (believe me if you want) it gradually went away as the surgery incision healed. This was in the days before laproscopic surgery, so the incision was several inches long. I have not had surgery since and I have not smelled that smell.

For the past few months, however, things have smelled different to me. Not all the time. But some of the time. I can’t put my finger (or my olfactory senses on, if you’d like me to be precise) on it. I can say that I think my nose is either picking up something different or has had a sea change in the way it smells. Sometimes it smells a little like garlic, sometimes it just smells funny.

At first my (considerable) paranoia made me ask Honey to smell me over and over to make sure I wasn’t the one who smelled funny. She said it wasn’t me.

I don’t know if my sense of smell will return to normal. I miss trusting it.

Smell, “they” say, is the strongest memory trigger of the senses. I believe that to be true. Smelling a certain kind of sewage makes me think of Rome, which, in turn, makes me happy. I think if I ever smelled the “inside of me” smell again, I would remember what it was like to be young and scared and excited. Appendectomy as adventure, I guess.

This past weekend, I was on the east coast (more on that later). The leaves had changed and when it rained Sunday, I went out on the famous bloggers‘ back porch and smelled the fresh morning. It smelled right and lovely and not like the inside of anything.

Honey and I have a tendency to personify things that ought not to be personified. We speak in the voices of the inanimate.

Yesterday I bought a new cell phone on Amazon. When we got in the car to go to lunch, she asked (as if she were the cell phone charger cord), “Um, excuse me? What’s going to happen to me when the new cell phone comes?” I felt bad. For a cord.

I told Honey that it was too easy to make me feel bad about these kinds of things. She allowed as how it wasn’t as much fun because it was too easy. She then thought for a minute and said, “it’s still fun, though.”

This morning, when I put my coffee (which I later spilled–sigh) in the cup holder, I saw the phone charger…and felt guilty about replacing it.

My therapist looked at me today with that therapist head-cock and asked how I was feeling about her going on vacation.

I had one of those moments when I want to say all the inappropriate non-therapy things like:

Where you going?
Is your girlfriend/partner going too?
Who is you girlfriend/partner?
How long have you been together?
Are you going with friends?
What friends?
Are they all therapists too?

All of which would result in one of those meta-therapy conversations about why I wanted to know. And I do kinda want to know, but I didn’t want to explore why I kinda wanted to know at all today.

The truth is, I think she should go on vacation. I’m more than a little bit in awe of what she does. Given that my patience level is very low and hers must be astronomically high, she’s an impressive person.

(Here’s how I think about it: I know I throw a lot of psycho-bullshit around. If I’m average (or even above average!) and she sees 50 or 60 people (that’s just a guess), that’s A LOT of other people’s bullshit to deal with.)

I saw her get out of her car a couple of weeks ago and she exhaled loudly before getting her bag. It seemed to be an anti-bullshit exhale. But I’m probably projecting.

So I don’t have therapy next Thursday. Should I take “therapy” time and go do something else? Or should I just be a good girl and work?

It just occurred to me that writing about being in therapy could hurt my chances for a cabinet post in the Bailey administration. Shit. (That and saying shit a lot). Shit.

A few things in the past few days I haven’t expected:

I didn’t expect to be able to ride 12 miles. I did on Sunday.

I didn’t expect that if I did ride 12 miles to avoid deep pain. I felt great on Monday.

I didn’t expect my spokes on my rear wheel to go “pling” and lose their spokey integrity on my follow-up “12 miles twice in three days” ride yesterday. Result: Three miles and some tears. Honey rode 19.

I didn’t expect to make a good peach cobbler. I did.

I didn’t expect that the guy at the local bike shop (LBS) where I had never been and to which I took my wheel today would be so nice. Me: “I push the limits of my bike.” Him: “No you don’t. You’re out there having fun and exercising. The new wheel will be fine.” $257 and a kind word. The latter made me feel a lot better about the former. I’ll go back to this bike shop. The new wheel will be ready on Friday. The old one will go up on ebay. Anybody need a 32 spoke Open Pro rear wheel with an Ultegra hub? I’m having it re-trued.

I didn’t expect the Angels to score 14 runs in one game this whole season. Yea Halos.

I didn’t expect to get out of last place in batting average in my fantasy baseball league. Oh wait, I didn’t.

I didn’t expect that an off-hand comment by my Honey would result in a new presidential candidate. Bailey in ‘08!

I didn’t expect Italy to beat Germany in the World Cup. I also didn’t expect the World Cup to be an area of conversation at the “lesbians in academia” barbecue we attended last night. They did and it was.

I didn’t expect Kenneth Lay to die. I wasn’t really thinking about him or anything, but I was surprised this morning when I heard he had.

I didn’t expect Biscuit to make it through the night with any aplomb. She was stressed when we got home. But she went to sleep and didn’t bark or whine at all. To celebrate, I’ve contracted with the Dog Patrol (shameless plug if anyone needs dog walking in L.A.) to walk her on Thursdays. She totally deserves it. She also deserves “total football access” but doesn’t get that because she can’t handle it.

I didn’t expect to so easily dissuade Wendy from calling me “Grits.” : ) Was it the reference to the CIA?

Mostly, despite the tears yesterday, I didn’t expect to feel so good today. Happy Wednesday everybody.

Biscuit (The picture was shamelessly stolen from Honey’s blog. But then this morning Honey said that I shouldn’t sue her because what’s mine is hers and vice versa. I’m not sure she wants to take credit for some of my brighter shirts, but whatever. Anyway, Biscuit…):

went with us to Honey’s parents’ place this weekend. Biscuit LOVES Honey’s parents’ place. We call it the Ranchito and it’s 90 miles east of us in the “high desert.” Biscuit thinks it’s great for a number of reasons. First, there are the really big hooved dogs she likes to sniff. Second, there are gophers. Third, there are no leashes. Fourth, there’s the golden retriever to dominate. Lately her primary love at the ranchito has been aforementioned golden retreiver’s squeaky toys. I gave Biscuit one of the late great Red’s sheepskin squeaky toys. She immediately started to try to disembowel it. I took it back from her, informed her that it was Red’s and that even though he was dead, she couldn’t just destroy it. I may have cried a little. Red’s passing still makes me really sad.

Anyway, Biscuit thinks the rubber squeaky toys at the ranchito are beyond fab. She squeaks them and squeaks them.

I bought her one. This one:

She heard it when I had an accidental squeak bringing it inside. I gave it to her and she really went to town on it. I made it longer than my mother would have, but finally had to put it up high on a shelf. She sat there looking at it. When I went in the other room, she came in, looked at me and then went back in to stare at it. Then she came back in to look at me, then went back in to stare at it. When Honey shut the door to the room with me and the toy in it, she whined and whined. When honey opened the door and I came out, she went in to stare at the toy some more. She had separation anxiety from a rubber football.

And I, I am mean. I bought it and now dole it out. Still, I like that when I get home tonight, I can give it to her and produce the kind of joy only dogs have. And then I can take away the joy and feel bad. Which is so human. The good news is that I can then give her the joy back. And then take it away again. They say baseball is designed to break your heart (and it does). Spaniel mixes are pretty good at it too.

Still, she’s a pretty fantastic creature. Once more for the awww factor:

My mind is a repetitive little bugger. I circle back around to the same crap over and over. It’s like when I was in college and needed something to do to blow off steam and I would go ride my bike around and around and around the big parking lot across from the campus. I knew every inch of that parking lot. From both directions.

Since yesterday, I’ve been listening to the same song over and over. It’s on one of those CDs I lost back when I started this blog (see the “Losing Music” post). I’m sure it’s driving OM crazy. I shut my door for a while today so I could work on a project and listen to the song and sing it softly without making her want to get a gun. “OM got a gun…”

I occasionally teach a course on the intersections of psychology and culture. So I am a dangerous person to be around. Because I know a little too much about psychology to keep my mouth shut when I should. One thing I learned a few years ago while teaching the class is that our minds sabotage us when we try not to think about something. They (bear with the metaphor for a second) put one of those little post-it flags on the thing that we don’t want to think about. Then, when our minds do the kind of scanning they have to do all the time–to answer some question about who the junior senator from California is, or to talk to some random reporter about urban legends, or to remember the cute new way to get home at night–they see the little post-it flag and scan on over to see why the post-it flag is there. And then, there they are thinking about the post-it flag and why it’s there and lo there you are thinking about the one thing you didn’t want to think about.

Once I learned that, I began to wonder whether or not I should just ride around and around in that circle. And if the circle happens to need to include a particular Indigo Girls song from 1992, so be it.

My honey thinks I get into things by rote. I start doing them and can’t stop. I do like order in my life. It’s hard to find order sometimes. Still, when I spend too much time staring at one crack in the parking lot or one post-it flag, I wonder if there are other ways to think.

Or if I could put up enough post-it flags in all different colors to keep me from focusing on one.

As I said to the random reporter, we say what we need to say to make sense of the world. One woman’s brain post-its are another person’s urban legends.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

We live in a marginal neighborhood and there’s been more than a little tagging of late around our house. Our fence invites it, but this week we got tagged on our garage door. Honey wrote about it, so I’ll let her speak on the subject.

I’ve been thinking about behavior of people this week a lot. And animals too. I had a disagreement with a campus department this week. It didn’t make me particularly emotional, as those things often do. I’m good at getting along most of the time, but when tensions get high, I can have trouble keeping my cool. I didn’t have any trouble this week. It may be that the folks with whom I disagreed were either more civilized and didn’t get personal or were too dispassionate by virtue of their field and dispositions to know how to get personal. I found it refreshing, actually. And I think I may have solved the problem already. Everyone seems to like my solution so far.

I’ve been home with Biscuit today. It’s a state holiday and other than going to have lunch with my honey, I wanted to actually take the day off. Biscuit is theoretically a domestic dog. She’s not acting like it. She’s become obsessed with the contents of the office trash can. I have had to interrupt myself twice to go get pieces of paper she took out of it back from her. She shreds them into little teeny pieces and what isn’t shredded is vomited back up. She keep barking at the trash can. I’ve tried to explain to her that today is Friday and that our time together today is special. The prospect of ripping up deposit slips seems more compelling to her.

Honey and I have been talking about finally dealing with our yard. When we bought the house, they had painted and recarpeted, but the yard was a mess and it hasn’t stopped being one. We have solutions we like and can afford for the front yard and the side strip of land beside the tagged fence. We both hate that we’re responsible for that strip, but we are and we’d like it to stop having ice plant and trash. A friend of mine once told me that Italians refer to ice plant as “la miseria.” That about sums up how I feel about the area along the outside of the tagged fence.

Our back yard is a bit more vexing, as it is large, contains Biscuit most of the time and I don’t think suburban lawn is eco-responsible in Southern California. We’ll do something, I don’t know what.

Since we got the house, I’ve been feeding birds in the back yard. I always somewhat despaired of the lack of diversity in the variety of birds that came around. I like the fussy house finches. My friend Sharon says they’re “faculty” finches, lots of noise and disagreement but nobody really gets hurt.

I get mourning doves and house sparrows. My favorite birds to visit are goldfinches. They hang upside down in the nyjer feeder and when you have some, you have a flock. It’s like the yard is full of flying flowers.

H and I have a song for them, based on “Goldfinger” that goes something like, “goldfinches, they’re the finches, the finches with a touch of gold, but not too much, because it’s winter or they’re girls.” The girls are pretty too, as are the boys in their winter coats.

I get scrub jays and even court them. They’re loud and fussy, but what can you do? Corvids are smart and I like smart.

But that was basically it. I had a cowbird wander through once. And some starlings. Anna’s hummingbirds will zip through. I can’t get it together to keep a hummer feeder full. Too many bees. I did see an oriole once. Mockingbirds live in the neighborhood and they’ll stop by sometimes to wag their tails and sing their fantastic songs. There are crows and pigeons, of course, but they don’t come into the back yard.

But it’s nothing like my folk’s feeder I set up in Atlanta. Sit there for a bit and you get cardinals, titmice, chickadees, and the same finches I get.

Because our yard is such a mess, we have more bugs around. It’s a meadow really. And it’s a meadow with bugs. The bugs have attracted a pair of Black Phoebes. I love the Phoebes. They’re fantastic. They like to hang out on the fence and their little peaked heads look so cool. They swoop around looking for flying insects.

We need to fix our yard, and we will. I hope whatever we do meets with the Phoebes’ approval. I’d like them to stay. Maybe I’ll send them a note.

Notes to write:
To the taggers: cease and desist
To Biscuit: cease and desist
To the Phoebes: a welcome note and the offer of a lease

My therapist thinks it’s stupid that I told people I know about my blog. She’s not given to strong opinions generally, but she was firm in her expression of this one. It makes sense that she thinks that from a therapistic point of view. She thinks the blog has the potential to be a good release for my emotions and that in telling people I know about it, I will censor myself. She even suggested that I start another one.

This one is enough, I think. It makes me feel guilty just sitting around being static when there are not new posties.

Still, I see her therapistic point. She, like any good therapist, is my advocate even in my ongoing war against myself. That’s what I pay her for and trust her to do. And she’s certainly right that I censor myself here. See my previous post about truth for more discussion of that issue.

All of this is not to say I told everyone about my blog. My mother, for example=unaware. Ditto the rest of my natal family. I told AD about it, but she’s had the good sense (or lack of interest) not to ask about it.

Still, the blog thing is weird. You put yourself out there in a way that is at once distancing and intimate. I read Dooce’s blog and really like her way of presenting herself. I don’t, however, presume I know her or am her friend. She just posted about some thing she’s going to in Austin and how people (by which she means her fans) can meet her at a coffee shop. How odd, I thought, to reveal intimacies, have people “know” you in that way, and then agree to meet them. When you know nothing about them. People who didn’t live nearby seemed disappointed when she announced it, many of them suggesting other venues for meets and greets.

Fame is fame, I suppose. I know a former minor actress who had a stalker. The biggest role she had was as the third name in a big digit sequel (5 or 6, I forget which) to a horror/slasher movie. We find in others what we want to find.

None of this is to suggest I’m famous (I’m not), but that because my blog is read mostly by people I know, it functions differently than it would if it were read by strangers, Then I could emote in anonymity. Not so in spork world.

So, no rant today, just some musings about the lack of ranting.

And a couple of made up words.

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