Am I going crazy?

or has blogger done something very weird with all my images?

I'm coming off a lot of meds, so I could be wrong.

ps: I'm starting to feel better. Knock on wood and stuff.

pps: Okay, just to weird me out as SOON as I posted this, they were FIXED. But I swear they were weird and messed up. I haven't even taken my morning medicine yet.

Morning Conversation... With a Chipmunk

[Time: yesterday morning]
[Setting: the middle of friggin nowhere.]
[We're camping in the Nevada mountains with my huge paternal extended family. They are very good campers. Me? not so much.]

me: [sleeping]

Kamikaze Chipmunk (KC): [hurls himself from the roof of our 10 ft. tall cabin.]

me: [scream as something that feels like a rubber ball whacks my face and wakes me up.]

my sister, Kate: [laughs]

me: [sit up, glare at Kate.] "What did you do that for?"

Kate: [innocently] "Do what?"

me: "Throw that ball or whatever at me."

Kate: "I didn't throw anything at you."

me: "What hit me in the face then?"

Kate: [shrugs]

me: [look at my pillow.]

Kamikaze Chipmunk (KC): [gives me a look as innocent as Kate's]

me: [scream]

KC: [cocks his head like humans are very amusing.]

me: [talking to chipmunk] "OMG, are you not even going to run away as I scream at you? Have you no fear of humans at ALL?"

KC: [thinks humans are very amusing indeed.]

me: "I could totally kill you, you know. You really should get off of my pillow! And for heaven's sake, develop more fear of humans!"

KC: [looks like he may be laughing at me.]

Steve: [wakes up] "What's going on?"

me: [point to chipmunk]

Steve: "OMG that's a chipmunk."

me: "Do something already!"

Steve: [tries to grab chipmunk]

KC: [casually flicks his tail out of the way]

Everyone in the WHOLE CABIN: [starts to laugh hysterically]

me: "OMG it's like a mouse but bigger."

Steve: "And with tattoos."

me: "Chipmunk, why don't you RUN AWAY?!"

KC: [looks at me like he's laughing again]

Steve: [manages to grasp tail of KC and tries to fling him out the window, but KC squirms free and stares at us from window sill.]

KC: [totally laughing at us again.]

Everyone in the WHOLE CABIN: [squealing and laughing]

me: "OMG he probably has fleas and tics and diseases and now they're all over my pillow!!"

Steve: [grasps tail again and is finally able to toss KC out of the window.]

KC: [laughs the whole way down.]

me: "I need a bath. There is too much nature all over me."

[I get up and stare at my contaminated bed.]

me: "And also, my face hurts."

[I hobble out of the cabin and spend the rest of the morning yelling at random chipmunks.]

Memorial Day Assurances: Brought to you by SAM

me: [just waking up]

Sam: [shaking me, hence the reason I'm waking up.]

me: "Hi, Sam."

Sam: "Oh, good. You're awake."

me: "Yup."

Sam: "Okay, well, I just wanted you to know something."

me: "Mmhmm?"

Sam: "In case you, you know. Don't make it."

me: ???

Sam: "And that's just that I love you. I'll love you even if you're dead."

me: "Thanks, baby." (I think...)

Drug-induced hallucination week! Day Two: The Demon of Milton Abbey

Doctors told us couldn't have babies the "normal" way, so we had to do IVF. (I've written other essays about this. Here's one.) But back then, we were poor. Like, poorer than we are now. I was in grad school, Steve was working as a reporter for NPR ($24,000/year! woot!), IVF--$15,000 a cycle back then--was not really an option.

Until, miracle of miracles, John Bennion (who I didn't know) asked me to teach a writing class on a study abroad class in England. In England, IVF was $3000. Which was what I'd get paid for teaching.

But the catch:

This was not an ordinary writing class. It was a *wilderness* writing class. We wrote while hiking more than 200 miles, over seven mountains, in the space of six weeks.

And I did it while on IVF hormones.

I don't know about y'all, but my reactions to hormones are... extreme. So I was puking, fantasizing about killing people, generally feeling miserable, suicidal most days, and, of course!, I was hallucinating.

Well, one day we were hiking in the forest in the hills above Milton Abbey. It was a twenty mile hike that day (I think), and I was exhausted. I was so exhausted that I started to feel like my spirit had floated outside my body, connected only to my toes.

I hiked for awhile, staring at my disembodied spirit.

But then the spirit-that-looked-like-me started talking:

"You could be rich, you know," she said.

I had never really cared about being rich. But suddenly, it seemed like a really, really fantastic idea.

"And you could be famous." She was smiling. "People will adore you. There will be throngs of them. Cheering. Just because you're there."

She went on and on like this. And it was all seeming more and more appealing, everything she was saying. My insides were starting to churn with something I'd call... lust, maybe.

Just then one of the other hiking students accidentally bumped into me. (It could have been Jamie. It could have been Jessie or Elise, I actually don't remember who it was.)

The spirit who looked like me said, "When you're famous, no one will bump into you."

And I started to get really angry.

The spirit said, "You can make it all happen you know. It's simple. Watch."

Then I saw her standing at the edge of a cliff. Her face was filled with bloodlust and I felt the same thing, spinning around in my stomach. And she took that girl that had bumped into me and pushed her over the edge. And smiled.

I stopped.

"Who ARE you?" I said (in my head)(this whole thing was happening in my head, I promise no one really got pushed over a cliff). "Because you are NOT me."

And then the spirit snapped back and I felt almost like myself again.

But when we finally got to Milton Abbey, there was a pamphlet about how it was built.

A man named Athelstan was walking in the forested hills above the future Milton Abbey. When suddenly, he started to hear his own voice talking back to him.

"You could be great," said his voice.

"You could be the greatest king that ever lived."

Athelstan really liked the idea of being the greatest king that ever lived.

"It'd be easy," said his voice. "All you'd have to do..."

Athelstan believed his voice, though.

He went down and burned an entire village--with its people--to the ground.

Milton Abbey was erected in the empty space left by the destruction.

When I sat inside the abbey, sitting on its cold stones and reading that pamphlet, I wondered: was it a real demon who talked to me in the forest? One whispering bloodlust to kings and kerrys?

I couldn't tell you for sure.

But if I were you, I wouldn't hike in those hills while on hallucination-inducing drugs.

ps: Sam was conceived during that round of IVF. Just so you know. :)

Gosh, yeah! If you got a boob job and lost fifty pounds, you know who you'd look just like?!

Someone said I looked like a celebrity today, but it weirded me out because, well, what does that mean?! Granted, famous people are generally pretty good looking. But anyone who's gone to a Marilyn look-alike contest knows that you can look a lot like someone without actually being good looking. It's a conundrum. So is it a compliment when someone says you look like a celebrity? or not?


And as long as we're doing polls, there are three people that people tell me I look like. Which one do you think is the most accurate?







(Bonus points for correctly naming the person the physical therapist said I looked like today.)

Where 1989 never ends!

Because we're trying to find somewhere to have Sam's birthday party that ISN'T my house, we went to the roller rink.

One word: Surreal.

From the carpet


to the disco lighting



the bad food, the cheesy tweens, the cheesier teens (in costume, of course; including capes!), and even the gritty smell, the only thing that has changed in the last twenty years is that doodles are now allowed to scoot if they can't skate.



Question:

weird or not weird?

I had to go to the public library today (not the weird part) because although the BYU Faculty Delivery Service is the BEST THING EVER, I've been reading books faster than they can keep up.

Here's the thing:

The manager of the library? Margie Mills.

Not *my* Margie Mills. Just *a* Margie Mills. Which is sort of made even weirder by the fact that *my* Margie Mills is actually named something a little different and I made up that name for the whole blogging privacy thing. And maybe a little weirder because my Margie Mills also works with books. Not in the library, but with books.

So vote:

My microwave is trying to kill me

Every time I open the microwave in my office, it turns on. Like, the door is peacefully closed and the microwave is dark and then just because I decide to *open* the door, it decides to turn on--spewing forth waves of radiation directly at my abdomen.

My boss called to report the problem, but the techs couldn't reproduce it.

Meaning:

The microwave is trying to kill

just

me.