Today feels like an after school special

I am amazed at how often I take simple things like mental stability for granted.

Generally, my more severe bouts of mental instability occur when I wake up at 2:30 am and can’t go back to sleep. The worst part of this predicament is the more and more tactics I employ to fall back asleep, make me more and more anxious. The cycle begins and, like a spiral, I get crazier as each hour of the day passes.

The formula that creates an Amie Golden Spiral:

sleep deprivation = foodblitz times rhythmic episodes of mental hysteria. (I am not mathematically inclined, but I reckon it would look like this: SxFH=Fuck-It-Bucket)

Here are the details:

3:30 am Blake tried to lull me back to sleep by reading aloud a short story by Truman Capote about a sad pathetic guy in prison that thought he had true friendship with a blue-eyed boy with a bedazzled guitar.

Obviously this didn’t work because Capote is an amazing writer and this made my eyes wide awake with terrifying envy. I don’t think he slept either, look at the bags under his eyes.















So, I went to work early. Check out these amazing pictures from my commute. So, this is what it looks like before the sun comes up?

Finally feeling tired, I got hungry and started to eat peanut butter with a spoon, but figured this wasn’t healthy, so I used apple slices as spoons and ate half a jar of Adam’s All Natural Crunchy Peanut butter

Let’s do the math:
1 jar has 14 servings
1 serving has:
- 16 grams of fat
- 210 calories
- 6 carbs

Amie ate 7 servings
- 112 grams of fat
- 1,470 calories
- 42 carbs

This kind of episode is what the Sedaris family calls a “Fuck-It Bucket.”

This happened at 7:30 am. So, I’m just getting started.

Friday, 9:00 am is donut hour at the office. I rarely go. I don’t really like donuts. So I went. Got in trouble for touching two or three donuts before selecting the only chocolate one in the box and it didn’t even have frosting so I split in half with my bare hands, ate a bite from one of the halves, spit it in the trash and put the other half back in the box. Coworkers make it clear i need to leave donut hour.

Instead, found bagels in the kitchen brought by the outsourced, very clean-cut, accounting auditors that visit every year for two weeks to make sure we pay tithing. I’m sure we’ll pay tithing on the bagels too, so I toasted two. TWO bagels. Then loaded each slice (that would be 4 slices, cause I cut them in half to toast) with ½ inch of cream cheese.

Let’s do the math:
1 bite of shitty donut
- 113 calories
- 6.6 grams of fat
- 12 carbs

2 bagels with lotsa cream cheese
- 518 calories
- 20 grams of fat
- 65 carbs

10:30am - raid coworker's drawer for a mini snickers. While doing so, interrupt very important discussion on “how to Pirate Bay.” Chastise coworker for not stalking the drawer with KingSizeSnickers.

Mini Snickers
- 80 calories
- 6 grams of fat
- 10 carbs

11:30am. It’s Friday, the IT kids want to go to the Chicken Coop for lunch. I, being bi-polar eater (mostly pristine, but when it's bad, it's BAD), always decline these invitations. But today, I think, “what the hell, you can’t kill the rooster.”


Chicken Coop – Actually, it’s the Wing Coop. I like Chicken Coop better. It’s visually disturbing.

Today is sunny. So, the kids are stylin in whatever sunglasses they could find in my car. Ivan is missing a lense, Scott should get a modeling contract with Donna Karan, those are fab!


Here’s what I had:
- 5 Canonero chicken wings (with some feathers)
- Boat-o-fries
- 2 bites of corn bread
- 1 pat of butter
- A few tablespoons of blue cheese dressing

Math:
- 1,600 calories
- 60 grams of fat
- 73 carbs

Couldn’t end lunch with weird wing aftertaste. Need a treat. Not just ice-cream. Need a malt.

Hires Big H with car hop service!

- Peanut Butter and Banana Malt
- Cherry Lime Ricky

Note: I was double-fisting it!

Math:
- 867 calories
- 140 carbs
- 20 grams of fat


½ hour after finishing my malt. I tried to get Kristin to go with me into the bathroom to throw up my food.

Just like an after school special.

I couldn’t do this alone. I needed company with my painful misery. I needed reassurance that her chocolate malt was not sitting well with her either. She threw hers away! I almost grabbed it out of the garbage to finish it. Oh the pain, and the shame. Please! Kristin, purge with me!

She won’t.

It’s been two hours. I still want to blow beads on my keyboard.

But, I decided not to regret this strange sequence of hysterical episodes. Apparently, I’m not the only one that needed a fuck-it-bucket today. One fourth of the company needs to reimburse my next door cube mate for all of the candy, pop tarts, licorice and M&Ms we’ve eaten today. The power went out in the kitchen so someone even relocated the toaster into our little corner so we could finish off the pop tarts and bagels.

What is it? This being out-of-sorts. So much anxiety and gluttonous torture. Over what? The bliss I felt when I saw the sky on my commute? The fits of laughter sparked by the bizarre stories told at the Chicken Coop? The delight in the ongoing banter between my coworkers over why it is pop tarts and Snickers somehow soothe a stressful day?

It all just feels like I did after school. From overstimulation and sheer fatigue, me and my girlfriend would eat 5 bowls of Cocoa Pebbles and talk about how lame everyone at school is, meanwhile secretly knowing that we kinda like going to school.

The Grand Total (unpurged) so far today. 4:45 pm

- 4,858 Calories
- 240.6 grams of fat
- 345 carbs

The tiger can't change his spots. No, wait, he did! Good for him!

So far, 2008 has delivered a lot of changes, including many for my co-workers. So, we celebrated with a fabulous party and toasted to new jobs, promotions, birthdays and well, just being happy we actually like the peeps we work with.

Here are a few photos. I'm no Ansel Adams, that's for sure. I was trying to take Bob's advice and NOT use my flash, but the outcome was more blur than chiaroscuro.

Trading the most spectacular card to complete the perfect set

Almost every baseball card collector I’ve met takes the hobby very seriously. At home, our tax files, titles, the marriage license, passports etc. are in some box on the floor of the basement. However, the box of baseball cards is on the highest shelf in the basement, “in case we have a flood.”

The value of a card depends on its scarcity, popularity and condition. I’ve noticed the art of trading cards is primarily focused on:

1. Obtaining one-off spectacular cards like this 1933 Goudey #53 Babe Ruth of the Yankees worth $5,000.

Side note: my great grandpa Spence Adams played for the Yankees. I never met him. But I loved my grandma’s stories. She said Babe Ruth was a mean fart that would pick up kids, smile sweetly for the camera, then drop them.

And once, when on the road, one of the girlfriends of a player showed her how to put silk stockings on so they wouldn’t run and so the seam at the back of the leg was straight.

2. Another reason to trade cards is to assemble a perfect set.


Tonia is right, we are baseball cards. We are always evaluating, categorizing, and commoditizing ourselves. We try to keep ourselves fit, and in prime condition, we work hard to maintain good stats, and we’re always surrounding ourselves with friends and family because, together, we make a perfect set.

BUT, I’m sorry my friend. I choose to read through the lines on your post. I see a company that knows they have a one-off, spectacular card that they will never trade away because you have stellar stats and it so happens trading you to another department completes a perfect set.

You’re nothing less than a Cal Ripken Jr. my friend.

End of Daze

It's snowing today.
Micquelle says it means the end of days.
But I thought she meant end of daze.
I think this is much more profound because anyone from Utah knows that a good snowstorm always ends the atmospheric haze that keeps me in a daze of general malaise.







The view of snow from the neighborhood coffee shop.

Phrenyl Chondomyalegia

It is very good fortune if you have a healthy relationship with your parents. Our relationship spans beyond the perfunctory "honor thy father and thy mother," formality. I relish every moment spent with my mom and dad. They live an hour from my home so, while I don't visit as often as I'd like, I make it worthwhile when I do. This means camping out all day, opening the fridge many times to eat the good food I don't indulge in buying, and talking endlessly about jobs, family, relationships, life and what it's all supposed to mean.

Here is a perfect example of what I'm trying to say. I get these great e-mails from my Dad every so often. They are nice to hold onto in case i need a pick-me-up. Like today:

***

From: Amie's Dad
Sent: Thursday, April 19, 2007 5:24 PM
To: Amie
Subject: Phrenyl Chondomyalegia

Yes it is a disease we should all be careful of.

I like a good subject in an email to baffle the hell out of the corporate email sniffers. Who would want Phrenyl Chondomyalegia?

Just checking to make sure your work life is improving, that every days is better and better, and you are looking forward to trying to find a way to get people to come to your conference in Barcelona instead of the OTHER one.

Works sucks so bad sometimes we are forced to remember this whole thing is an illusion. I mean, look at the worst time you ever had five years past. Can you remember your feelings about it? We have intellectual assent to it, but we really live in the NOW. And I guess we just have to find ways to accept that it is as good as we make it.

I've been making mine pretty bad. I don't own a Glock though. :)

The cult of Santa

My favorite Dr. Seuss book is the Cat in the Hat. Other childhood characters I related to are Cinderella, Little Orphan Annie, and basically anyone that had to clean. I was always perplexed at how Gidget could surf all day and not get stuck with chores.

Growing up, I had a list of household chores that rivaled Cinderella’s. We were a family of six and the Cat in the Hat made think a lot about the residue left behind from our daily living. That ring around the tub goes somewhere when scrubbed, that dirty laundry water goes somewhere, the sink disposal makes food disappear, where does it go?

Thinking about residual household goo metastasizing for eternity is overwhelming. It has to end somewhere. Dr. Seuss knew this so he invented Thing One and Thing Two. The famous whatsits that made the mess disappear with comforting finality.

If non eradicable goo exists in a household, so it exists in the soul. And, just like the book, it requires closure, which often leads to the search for a mythical savior to cleanse our shameful messes. It’s human nature to seek a Thing One and Thing Two. The Buddha, Jesus, Brahman, Muhammad, the Tao, Mr. Clean, etc. all respectable choices.

Picking the right product for the job is a personal journey. Do I need Spring cleaning, light maintenance, a garage sale or a Hazmat crew and a breather. Exposing this process to the pious judgments of peers is deflating. I’m not sure when this happened, but letting the dishes in the sink grow mold has become unacceptable behavior.

Ugh. Enough! I can’t live up to today’s meticulous standards. I’m joining the kid table. I’m joining the mess makers.

Enter Santa Clause. A perfect Thing One and Thing Two solution. I think Dr. Seuss would approve of the Cult of Santa. Santa’s chief cause is kid happiness. Santa wants us to be good, but knows we probably won’t. This is okay because he knows “we didn’t mean to.” Santa threatens us with coal, but has anyone actually received coal? The best part of the Cult of Santa are the followers. Kids are EXPECTED to make messes and NOT EXPECTED to do a good job cleaning up. Kids don’t have agendas, they don’t care who has the biggest mess, or who’s a better cleaner, or whether one cleaning product is superior to another.

I’d like to worship at the alter inside a gingerbread house filled with elves that make gifts of shoes, stereos and candy. I’ll call upon the patron saints Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Dunder and Blixem to help me through my days. And Santa will eat my fresh baked cookies with milk instead of me having to eat his flesh and blood.

The cake topper: Santa’s preferred method for penance via the US postal service. Feeling bad about bouncing that check? Send an apology letter to Santa. Feeling like you’ve been working hard and deserve a few toys? Send a letter to Santa.

North Pole Christmas Cancellation
Postmaster
5400 Mail Trail
Fairbanks AK 99709-9998

Good Night LA!

Something is because it just feels like it should be. In David Lynch's book Catching The Big Fish, Lynch says life is filled with abstractions and the only way we make heads or tails of it is intuition. He says sometimes a piece of music, or a sound just marries to the picture and is so important to the feeling of his films. These things don’t need to be explained. We intuit what we need to in order to get what we want out of the experience.

So, try this:

1. When you feel like a bold exit is in order (after a boring meeting, after you’ve just plunked $175 for jeans, after you’ve had a shot of tequila, after you finally got all of the formulas in a monster Excel spreadsheet working…. you get the idea)

2. raise your fist in the air

3. pretend your other fist is holding a microphone and yell

“Good Night LA!”

don’t substitute any other city and don’t deviate from the prescribed rock star pose. The louder the better.

This feels so right.

Thanks Micquelle! Good luck with the new job!