What's in a Blog?

That which we call a blog by any other name would still clutter up the internet with self-important monologues. However, that is not what I intended when I started Braids and Broken Clocks.

I can't even begin to count the number of times I've found myself surrounded by a group of hysterically laughing people who often guiltily turn to me and say, "I'm so sorry for laughing. I know it isn't funny, but somehow the way you talk about your misfortune makes it impossible not to." If you are one of the people who has said this to me, then don't worry. I was trying to make you laugh. I was also probably trying to make me laugh. This has been a coping technique of mine for a long time. On the whole, my life has been privileged, yet somehow it has also been filled with enough small misfortune to make me seem like one of the unluckiest people you'll ever meet. Making fun of the little things helps me to deal with frustration, as well as to help me gain a healthy perspective about the more serious problems life has to throw at me. This blog was supposed to be a place for me to tell these funny stories, but instead turned out to be more of a receptacle for my more depressed moods. So I guess it does kind of fit the criteria for a self-important internet monologue. If you don't find yourself discouraged, however, I fully intend to eventually entertain you with the most bizarre and outlandish stories a person with a life as typical as mine could possibly ever tell.

It's been several months since my last post, so I'll try to bring everyone up to date. Of my myriad disorders, I've only gone into depth about Trichotillomania and ADHD, and I haven't really given enough history or examples for you to know how the other disorders affect my life, but for now I'll treat them all as a whole for the sake of brevity.

Over the summer I went to see some doctors. I was sick of being sad and of pulling out my hair and of basically not being motivated in any way to live my life. I've never been suicidal, but I at least know what it's like to despise being awake and conscious, to just wish you could lie in bed day after day, dreaming forever. And after all that struggle I finally did get help. I saw a therapist for several months and finally, FINALLY got to see a psychiatrist, right before my fall semester started. I started taking two medications: an SSRI called Lexapro (escitalopram) for the depression, OCD, anxiety, and TTM, and a stimulant called Focalin XR (dexmethylphenidate) for the ADHD. There are some long, hilarious stories about the next few months of getting used to my medications, but ultimately they helped. A lot. My life mostly went back to normal. There continued to be plenty of struggles, but for the most part I was able to keep a handle on things. Or at least not panic when I didn't keep a handle on things. I didn't realize how much I owed to the medications until these past couple days. For some very, very stupid reasons, I missed taking my meds several days in a row, and I can honestly say I feel like emotional shit. Everything is overwhelming in the worst ways. People talking on my hall are even more annoying. Boredom is extra boring. Homework is extra intimidating and painful. My relaxation music is too loud and not at all relaxing. My lights are too bright. My stomach hurts when I'm hungry but it also hurts when I eat. I'm just generally upset with life right now. Maybe that's why I needed to write a blog post. Not funny, I know. This is not one of those times when I'm trying to make you laugh. It's one of those times when I'm trying to let you know why I can laugh at those other little things. Nothing can make being mugged at a nude beach sound funnier better than depression can. Pretty much every obnoxious thing that ever happened to me sounds hilarious when compared with the shitty way I feel right now. And the worst part is the realization that this version of me is the real one. How independent can you feel when you know that your autonomy is tied to downing half a dozen pills every morning? How successful can I expect to be when I wake up after sleeping 16 hours and instead of using the extra time given to me by the cancellations caused by Hurricane Sandy to complete late work, I just want to go back to sleep? I know that I'll feel better in the next few days as I start absorbing my meds, but I can't help but feel this is like a revelation. If I was getting so behind in my work this semester while getting the proper help, how much of that was really my success? Was it success at all? I've missed more classes than I can count this semester, and have a pile of late work lying next to me that I could have been doing over this long, four-day weekend, yet I've done pretty much nothing other than sleep since Thursday. The hypochondriac in me thinks maybe sleeping disorder? But even if I had an actual excuse for sleeping through my life, it wouldn't make it any easier to live. There are things I really want to do, but I truly am getting in my own way. As much as I thought this semester would be a new start for me, I know my professors have already started to think of me as that student who'll show up half an hour late if she shows up at all. Or that girl who always has an excuse. Usually my excuses are entirely valid, but they don't throw me any less off track. I'm not failing my classes or anything, but I can honestly say that things aren't going like I thought they would. I've missed lectures I really wanted to go to, and cut several deadlines stressfully close when the work was really easy and laid back. Basically, I can see that everything was set up for me perfectly this year. I got a good dorm room (single!), great classes (with the best profs), a good support team of doctors and therapists, and a great balance of meds that's made me feel like I was on top of the world. And I still can't get my homework in on time? And my body forces me to sleep 10 hours a day, even if that means turning off my alarm in my sleep and missing all my classes. What gives, body? I thought we were cooperating here. It's still an uphill battle as far as I can see.

As I wrap up my self-important monologue, I would like to assure any friends and readers of mine that this depression is probably my own fault, self-inflicted by being lazy with my meds. I hope to start writing again regularly, and hopefully in the future it will be because I have great stories to share, and not because I'm too depressed to leave my room and seek comfort in an actual, living human being.

Have a happy Halloween, everyone! Eat lots of candy. And good luck to any of those who were affected by Hurricane Sandy.

ADHD!

So! I have about four half-written blog posts that I never got to finishing because I'm completely unable to maintain a train of thought for any period of time, so I thought maybe I should try writing about ADHD instead!

Several months ago I wrote that my therapist suspected that I had ADHD, but eventually the results of my psychological evaluation came back and "didn't support a diagnosis of ADHD." So then I went home for the summer and started seeing a psychologist here at home, and she completely disagrees. Let me tell you why. While it may be true that every uncontrollable child with an attitude problem has been diagnosed with ADHD whether or not it's actually there, there are some people (like me) that haven't ever been diagnosed because they don't fit the stereotype. As a kid I was as far from the image of ADHD as I could get. I got magnificent grades, I was quiet, respectful, I loved learning, and I never forgot my homework. No one ever thought I could possibly have a learning problem, including me, until I was put into a higher pressure environment like college. Now it is perfectly clear that I have serious concentration issues. Even with this knowledge, however, my psych eval showed that I didn't meet the criteria for ADHD. This is because ADHD covers a wide range of problems, and a general test like the one I took wasn't specific enough to show what was really going on.

There are several types of ADHD, some of which are more widely recognized than others, but there are at least three that are widely accepted. There is the Predominantly Hyperactive-Impulsive Type that everyone notices because affected children are usually running around non-stop, talking loudly and at inappropriate times, and generally not listening to anyone. Then there is the Predominantly Inattentive Type which is much harder to spot because it often appears in low-energy children. Sufferers have a hard time staying on task because they are easily distracted and have short attention spans. They are prone to daydreaming and procrastination and tend to avoid tasks that involve even small amounts of effort. For obvious reasons, this type is often mistaken for laziness. The third type is the Combined Type, which is pretty self explanatory. General tests are often geared toward this last type, so if even if you have Inattentive Type, your lack of Hyperactive-Impulsive symptoms will lower the chances of being diagnosed. I'm pretty sure this is what happened to me.

Considering the state I'm in right now, I'm not sure how I managed to survive my whole life without realizing that I had attention problems, but I think it might be because my symptoms were being canceled out by other symptoms, namely those of OCD. Sure I daydreamed a lot, but elementary school homework doesn't exactly involve strenuous hours of concentration, plus I was compelled to make sure that every assignment was absolutely perfect. No teacher would suspect that the student with alphabetically arranged folders could have issues with organization, or that the thorough poster with perfectly straight lines could have been accomplished by a child who couldn't pay attention. So I raised no flags, other than spending too much time completing assignments, which could be attributed to being thorough instead of inattentive. High school was a bit rough, but while I didn't always feel that I was performing to my potential, I still came in ninth in my class and no one had any reason to worry about me. But then college happened (I'm pretty sure this exact line was in my last post, too).

By itself the attention problems might not have been so bad, but add it to OCD, Trichotillomania, and Depression and you've got yourself a person who cannot accomplish even the simplest task. The homework that I managed to do took far too long, and then there were the assignments that were so intimidating that every time I tried to just sit down and do them I would get anxious and start pacing or cleaning. I started losing sleep from staying up late, not because I was doing homework, but because I would get too distracted to go to bed. At my very, very worst this spring, it got so bad that I would start getting ready for bed at around 1:00am, and by the time I actually crawled under my covers, the sun would be rising. Let me just say that there are few things scarier than knowing the sun is rising and not remembering what you've been doing for the past five hours. For weeks I had nightmares about it. Every night in my dreams, regardless of when I'd actually gone to sleep, I would dream of running through the streets trying to find a bed, but I would never find one before the sun rose. Even as I'm typing this (at 1:45am) I'm starting to feel panicky. Just remembering that time makes me feel scared. I keep glancing at the window, hoping that it's just as dark as it should be. I've been home for a while, with no pressure of school work or places to go, but I haven't been to bed before 2:00am for weeks. I feel so powerless (not tonight, just in general). I feel like normal people can definitely choose to go to bed whenever they want. Don't people usually just go, "Hey, I'm tired. Time to turn in," and then just do it? When people want to go for a walk, are they able to just go outside? When they want to write a blog post, do they stare at the screen and then think better of it, or do they sit down and type? I know everyone has motivational trouble from time to time, but for two months I've been lying around thinking of all the things I want to do and doing none of them. I feel guilty about it, like I'm wasting my life, and I'm paranoid whenever I hear someone say something that might confirm my feelings of worthlessness. "How do you live with yourself when you sleep in all day? Don't you feel like you've wasted all of it?" Yes. Yes, I do. "How come you haven't cleaned your room? You said you wanted to do that weeks ago." Yes, I do want to clean my room, but I can't. I wish I could, but it hasn't really been working out. "How come you didn't do your homework? You had plenty of time." Yes, I had all the time in the world, and it slipped by me.  Time wasted. I will never be able to get it back, and I don't even remember what I was doing. Probably daydreaming unimportant thoughts. Obsessive, distracted, depressed thoughts. People act like I should just be able to fix these things, like determination is the cure for all my issues. If that were true, they wouldn't be psychological illnesses, they would be weakness and laziness. Sometimes it's even hard for me to tell the difference. How can I be sure that I'm not just lazy? How can I validate doing nothing? I can't, so for me this is even harder to deal with than OCD, Trichotillomania, and Sensory Defensiveness combined. OCD makes me more organized. Trichotillomania may be embarrassing, but it doesn't make me feel useless, just a bit weird. Sensory Defensiveness is like having super powers in all of my senses, as annoying as that can be. But ADHD and Depression make you feel like it's all your fault.

For a while I thought I might try to get through this with determination and therapy, but determination is useless if you have none, and therapy can't cure you, it can only help you realize things. It helped me to realize that I need more help than what I'm getting. Medication may be that help that I need. What's the point of being really smart if you can't do anything with it? If I'm not learning, or thinking, or writing, then what am I doing? Wasting time and my own talents. I've done a couple of test runs, and the results are promising. Caffeine is a stimulant drug very similar to the ones given to people with ADHD. Unfortunately, I'm slightly allergic to caffeine and have terrible stomach cramps every time I consume anything containing it. However, every now and then I use it for emergencies, like exams. I can say for sure that it works wonders. My brain works so much faster, like the cobwebs have been cleared away. I feel smarter and happier, and I can get things done that I would never be able to do without it, even if that's just forcing myself to clean dishes or wash my clothes. Then I get sick, of course, but for that one successful day it's completely worth it. At one point last year I was prescribed Focalin, but the semester ended before I could figure out a dosage that worked. Now, finally, I have managed to get an appointment for a medication consultation with an MD next week. Just so that I had more information to tell him, I tried taking another Focalin today, at a different dosage than before. Miraculously, I answered all the emails I'd been avoiding, studied Japanese for a hour, started planning for a new hobby, cleaned up my room a little, and then actually sat down to write this blog post, which I'm still doing because I'm completely wired. Note to self: don't take meds at night next time.

Well, it felt good getting all that off my chest. I started feeling pretty hopeless in the middle there, but I think I was able to leave it on a pretty positive note. Meds = optimism. However, it is now 2:15am, and I'm terrified of the sun, so I'm going to actually try going to sleep. After I wash my face. And floss. And brush my teeth. And brush my hair. And maybe check facebook again. Oh god, I'm doomed. And I have a headache. Hope that's not a side effect....

TRICHOTILLOMANIA

So, I said a bajillion years ago (in my last post) that I was going to maybe describe one or more of my issues in depth, so here's the scoop on trichotillomania. Sorry it's super long and a bit on the serious side.

Trichotillomania, also known as TTM or Trich, is an impulse control disorder that causes a person to be compelled to pull out their own hair. It is literally read as hair (trich-) pull (till-) obsession (mania). It is also closely related to OCD and manifests like you would expect an addiction to. It has unique effects on every individual, but there are a few things you would expect to see in most trichotillomaniacs.

One factor that can vary among people is the pull site. Some people pull from only their eyelashes and eyebrows, and some only from the crown of the head. Many people pull from pretty much everywhere, and there are even those that pull from rare sites like the armpits. It is also common for trichotillomaniacs to follow a specific ritual after pulling a hair, like rubbing the root on their lips or running the hair through their fingers before dropping it. In severe cases, trichotillophagia may also be present, compelling the person to ingest the hair. Excessive consumption of hair can be dangerous and even deadly if it results in a trichobezoar  (hair ball) that can block the digestive tract.

Because it is not often discussed, trichotillomania and the people who suffer from it are often misunderstood. It can be mistaken for a bad habit or a method of self-harm, but it is neither. The truth is that hair pulling is normally not painful for people with this condition. Pulling can be done consciously or subconsciously, but there is usually a sensation that brings attention to the pull site, like an itch or a tingle that demands action, and which is commonly accompanied by mounting anxiety about a particular hair. Once the hair has been pulled, there is an immediate rush of satisfaction, like the follicle has been cleansed and the problem eliminated. Unfortunately, this satisfaction is short-lived and quickly replaced by guilt and shame. Whether or not shame is a symptom of TTM or just a result of the visible changes it causes, it is probably one of the most unbearable things about the condition.

Unfortunately, just knowing the mechanics of trich does not always help people understand the effects of it on a human being. Comparatively, my case is not so severe. I have seen people whose lives are completely ruled by it, and I cannot image how they manage because I am in a constant struggle. As is common for TTM, I started showing symptoms when I was young, probably around eight years old.

I can't remember the precise moment when it started, but I remember some of the thoughts I was beginning to have around that time. I remember the fascination I had with the superstition of blowing on fallen eyelashes to get a wish granted. I thought that if eyelashes fell on their own, then some of them must be loose, so I started tugging on them lightly to see if I had any loose ones to wish on. I also remember the itch. Of course it was probably an early symptom, but I didn't know anything about that. I just figured that an itch probably meant that a hair was about to fall out, so I should start tugging there just to make sure. I even remember why I started putting the roots to my lips. I'd read in a book that the lips are one of the most sensitive parts of the body, and when I put my fingers to my lips after pulling I could feel whether or not I had managed to get hold of a hair. Then it would be in the perfect place to blow on it. It's possible that these thoughts and memories are completely fake justifications that my mind made up and started believing long ago, but they feel as real as anything else. The escalation must have been gradual, because everything from around that time is such a blur. There are some specific events that stick out, where I got all defensive and jumpy just at the mention of eyelashes, but it hadn't occurred to me yet that it was a habit, addiction, or anything else. It was just a secret. I didn't have a good reason why it should be a secret, but I guess I felt embarrassed about it even then.

There is one thing that I remember with perfect clarity, and I'm sure that these memories are real. I was on vacation with my family in the Virgin Islands. It was one of our most eventful (and awful) vacations ever. I believe I was in fifth grade by then. I can see everything that happened in my mind in perfect detail. I remember eating the fruit that the motel was named after (which I didn't like at all), and the scrambled eggs for breakfast that I tried to avoid every day. I remember being traumatized by a snail coming out of a shell that I thought was empty, and the ants that got into my mom's drink. I remember driving around the town and visiting a dingy deli, and then going to a restaurant where my dad gave a waitress inspiration to invent a new drink. I think I even remember seeing the green flash, although it's possible that I just imagined it so many times that I feel like I saw it, because I'm pretty sure I had my head under the table when my parents got all excited about seeing it. What I remember best is getting sick. My parents were scuba diving and they wanted me to come see the moray eel they found, but I didn't want to because the water was cold. They actually got fairly mad at me. They went on and on about how the water was 85 degrees, and how this was a once in a lifetime opportunity that I was wasting, and how much money they had spent on the trip. They felt pretty sorry though, once they realized that I thought the water was cold because I had a 103.6 degree fever.  Not long after my little sister got sick too. We tried to go to the hospital but all the locals warned us not to. After I was prescribed some pretty dangerous drugs, my parents realized why. We ended up having to stay an extra week because we were too sick to fly, but it wasn't fun like extra-long vacations should be. Maybe it was the stress, or the fact that the mattress was super uncomfortable (turns out it was upside-down and we were just lying on the box springs with a sheet over it), but my pulling reached a turning point then. I was lying awake at night, pulling on my eyelashes and putting my fingers to my lips because I couldn't see if I had pulled a hair in the dark. There was one thick hair that I was sure I'd managed to get, but when I put it to my lips the root was cold and wet and gooey, which really freaked me out. That obviously wasn't a loose hair; the root was still alive. I dropped it quickly and put my hand back to my face to survey the damage. I must have been pulling more than I thought, because there was a gap in my eyelashes. The skin was completely smooth under my finger where part of my eyelash should have been. I was so anxious that I ran to the mirror the first thing next morning. I panicked when I saw the gap, but it was kind of to the outside, not over my pupil, so I figured no one would see it if I was careful. However, I obviously didn't spend enough of my time looking down, because my mother saw it the very next day. She grabbed my chin and turned my head and demanded an explanation from me. I was completely mortified. It was definitely one of the top five most embarrassing things to ever happen to me. I was so ashamed that I done that to myself that I started making up ridiculous lies. I mean, truly unbelievable. I'm pretty sure I wound up blaming it on my fourth grade teacher, which obviously no adult would believe but I didn't really have much to work with. Anyway, that was the first time that my hair loss was visible, which is one of the main qualifications for a diagnosis.

Over the years, I was mostly able to forget about pulling out my hair. Every now and then I'd realize that my eyebrows were getting to thin, or that I had a bunch of short hairs stick out of the top of my head that looked  conspicuous, but mostly I just figured it was a weird habit. I blamed by eyebrow problems on plucking, which some girl in elementary school had insisted that I start doing or else people would make fun of me for my unibrow. Yes, people, by all means pressure young girls to start removing their body hair as soon as possible. They might not have enough self-image problems yet. If you're lucky, they'll develop a devastating disorder. But all sarcasm aside, I really have a problem with people who police others on their image. As someone who's struggled with showing my face in public for something I can't control, I have to say that I would be glad to have my unibrow back, and I would laugh at anyone who tried to tell me I should clean it up. Okay, maybe I wouldn't, but I'd like to imagine that I'm not so compliant to social constructs. Overall, though, I have to say that the fear of how others saw me definitely drove my obsession with my hair. I remember going home from gym in middle school, embarrassed that all the other girls had shaved their legs and I hadn't. I was so desperate to fit in that I made my mom show me where the razors were, though she thought I was too young to be worrying about shaving. And if I ever thought that the short hairs on the top of my head were too visible, I would wear the scarf I made my mom for Mother's Day on my head to hide it. She thought I was wearing it because it reminded me of her, which made me feel even guiltier. Aside from the occasional gap in my eyelashes, middle and high school were pretty normal. Then I went to college. *insert dramatic music here*

You'd think that I'd remember something really important and life-changing, like learning that trichotillomania was actually a real and fairly common condition, but I don't remember it at all. All I know is that by the time I was in college, I knew what I had and I wasn't really all that concerned about it. But college is stressful and by the start of my second semester, I had a pretty sizable hole in one of my eyebrows. I'd never had a gap there before, but I figured that I could just cover it up with some eyebrow pencil for a few weeks and it would grow back in. Sadly, I haven't gone a day since then without drawing my eyebrows in. The hole just got bigger and bigger. Then there was one on the other side. Then they were both barely there. Instead of just filling my eyebrows in, I was drawing them on completely. And can I just say that it might seem easy, but you don't realize until you have to create eyebrows out of nothing that you have absolutely no idea what shape an eyebrow is supposed to be. I've gotten pretty good at it. My Art Major friends are impressed. 

Eventually, I realized that the worst part of not having eyebrows was not the fact that my face looked a bit alien (because people seriously look weird without eyebrows) but that the embarrassment was causing so much stress. I started telling people that I had trichotillomania, and the reactions I've received have restored my faith in humanity. I don't have a problem with letting my friends see me without my eyebrows penciled on, which is a huge weight off my shoulders. I often discuss it in public, and if people ask me what I'm talking about, I let them look at my eyebrows really closely and they almost always tell me that I'd done such a good job that they couldn't tell they weren't real. I still feel nervous around strangers when I'm not in make up, and can't just go outside without making sure that they look perfectly full and symmetrical, but as soon as I let go of the stress of keeping such a huge secret, I started on the road to recovery. My eyebrows and eyelashes both are looking a bit worse for the wear, but they all exist at least, even if they don't quite look right.

If I'm ever doing really badly, I wear a head scarf and lab goggles so that I simply can't reach the hair to pull it. Lab goggles look stupid, so I don't wear them in public, but they're great for when I'm reading or working at home. I've been told the head scarf makes me look like I have cancer, but I figure my three-foot braid makes it pretty clear that I have plenty of hair on my head. (Am I compensating? Maybe.)

As I said before, the fact that I even have hair on my head and eyebrows and eyelashes is a luxury that many trichotillomaniacs don't have. My case is mild. I don't have huge bald spots. I haven't had to shave my head (I think I would die without my braid) or get a wig. I don't get infections in my follicles. I don't eat my hair. And if I manage to keep my hands away long enough, my hair always grows back. Not everyone is so lucky. But if people with worse trich problems can overcome it, then I certainly can. : )

I hope I have given you (if anyone managed to finish this small book I wrote) some food for thought. Next time I'll try to write something a little shorter and funnier.

POTASSIUM!

So, everybody knows that it's important for you to get your vitamins and minerals and all those other healthy things that human beings are supposed to ingest. What I never realized was exactly how crucial these things are.

First, I need to point out that my mental health situation is seriously lacking. If you can name it, I've got it. Since I was a child I've had such dramatic and impressive sounding disorders as Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Sensory Defensiveness, and Trichotillomania. Maybe I'll write some posts about them some day, but for now you're going to have to deal with Googling them if you don't know what they are. As you can imagine, these unwanted intruders in my mind caused a lot of anxiety, mostly when my life started to get more stressful. High school, for example, was particularly stressing, and that was when I developed Irritable Bowel Syndrome. More fun for me. Also, I dislocated the cartilage disks in my jaw while chewing on a Twizzler, which has nothing to do with my mental health, it was just stupid. And then there was college. A pretty good college, if I do say so myself, which may be the reason I got that much more stressed out. By the time I realized I wasn't actually a straight A student anymore, I was on academic probation. Oops. And then I thought, Gee, maybe something's wrong. Good thing my school has free psychological counseling! It was there that I learned I almost definitely had Clinical Depression, and probably also had adult Attention Deficit Disorder. It's like I'm a collector of horrible things. (If you're wondering why I'm capitalizing all my disorders, it's because I'm telling you that they're legit. I don't think you're actually supposed to capitalize all of them.) Now, all this personal information I just threw at you, whether you wanted it or not, is all intended to lead up to the moment that I decided it was time to end at least some of my discomfort. This particular discomfort came from what I had assumed for years was a potassium deficiency. That's what everyone assumes when you say you have terrible muscle cramps for no apparent reason.

So, one day I was at the pharmacy getting probiotics (for the Irritable Bowel Syndrome) and I saw some potassium! Buy one get one free! So I did! Now, apparently you're supposed to ingest about 4g of potassium every day. I believe this is specific to Americans because we need to balance out the massive amounts of sodium in our food. The legal limit for potassium in a pill is 99mg (about 3% of your ideal daily value, so not a lot). I started taking one pill a day like it said to on the bottle. That was a couple of weeks ago. In the meantime, I started to feel content. Every day, I just felt more and more calm. The sky became more beautiful. The wind felt better. I managed to stop going to bed at sunrise. My nightmares went away. So did my muscle cramps. I'm not sure what exactly ignited my suspicion, but all of the sudden I decided to look up the side effects of potassium deficiency. I found a bunch of lists, some more helpful than others. Muscle cramps, check. Restlessness, check. Fatigue, check (could be caused by college). Depression ... check? Wait, potassium deficiency can cause depression? What?! If I've been depressed all year just because I haven't been eating enough bananas, I will seriously be upset with life! Of course, that might just mean that I'm on the road to recovery from at least one disorder. But still! How frustrating is that!

Boys and girls, especially Americans (because we like our salty foods), consider this a plea from me to you to watch your diet. Not to watch your weight or your figure, or even to try to live longer, but because if not eating bananas can make you hate yourself, what else could you be enjoying that you're not? Seriously, think about it. Also, read my blog more. It's good for your health and mine, even if this is only my third post. ;D
Please note: bananas are not the only source of potassium; they're just the funniest to talk about as a life-saving food.

Short and Barefoot

I am short. Not too short. Not midget-sized short or anything like that. Just 5'2", which is not short enough to justify the behavior of the postmaster of my local post office. There are actually no characteristics that justify his behavior, but it is possible that he disagrees. This is how it went:

I was walking home at around 4:30 and thought I would drop by the post office because it closes at 5:00. The weather was lovely, thanks to the early spring that climate change decided to give us in order to placate us, so I wasn't wearing shoes. It's possible that shoes might have given me the half-inch necessary to earn some respect from the postmaster, but probably not. So I went in ... and I had a package! I love packages. And this package was special. It was ceramic teabowls shipped from Japan. Some were antiques! And despite the fact that the box quite clearly had "FRAGILE" written all over it, the postmaster was handling it in the rough sort of way that would get you arrested, but only if the package were actually a baby. I decided not to confront him about it, but only because it wasn't a baby. I'm also sure that the half-squished state of the box happened somewhere between here and Japan, so I didn't push that either. What did bother me was that the package had been shipped to a destination approximately four hundred miles away from where it was supposed to go. Alas, they were my dad's teabowls. Not sure how they got to my post office.

So I told the postmaster in my most assertive (not at all assertive) voice, "Um, this package was shipped to the wrong address. Is there any way to forward it or something?"

He looked at me in a way that suggested that he was either high or sleepwalking. "Um ... "

"You know, because it's not supposed to be here."

"You'll have to take it with you," he told me, blinking slowly. "Write a new address."

"Can't I do that here?" I asked.

"Sign here," he said, giving me a pen. Before I could argue he called, "Next!" and started speaking to the woman behind me over my head, because I'm apparently that short.

Don't let this happen to you, folks. Wear shoes in your post office.

(Not wearing shoes is also not an excuse for rude behavior. Remember kids, don't discriminate against short or barefoot people. They're human too.)

Update: always wear shoes in restaurants, though. I'm pretty sure that's a law.

Why I Wear My Hair in a Braid, and Other Important Tidbits

There are two things you need to know about me. First, I always wear my hair in a braid. Second, I'm always late. The first is intentional, and the second is not, unless of course I really feel like standing someone up, because then it is. People have asked me before why I don't wear my hair down more often, so let me inform you that three feet of hair is rather hard to manage. If you had three feet of hair, which you were convinced had a mind of its own, you would also try to control it before it became too powerful and tried to control you. It can do that, you know. Just the other day I decided to be adventurous and went out with my hair unsecured. I should have known better. My hair was plotting against me the whole time, obviously, because it decided to grab onto the front door of the very first building I tried to enter. While it might have looked at that time like I was making a respectful, sweeping bow to the door, or perhaps just whipping my hair back and forth at it in an inexplicable rage, I was actually stuck, which seemed to escape the notice of the many people shoving past me in a desperate attempt to fill their stomachs with breakfast foods. However, after a bit of making loud gibberish sounds at confused and upset passerby, and even a bit of embarrassing head thrashing, I was able to let myself loose. The hair was temporarily defeated, but its next attack could come at any time. I took the precaution of tying it in a knot, but it has a habit of escaping, and when it does, I have to watch my back. I would use the eyes in the back of my head, but my hair seems to have conspired to hang in front of them so I can't see what's behind me. It thinks it's so clever. I have often been asked after situations like this why I don't just cut it all off. No one understands. That's what the hair wants. It wants to be free of me so I can't keep it in line. If it escapes, there's no telling what it will do. Beware the braid, my friends. Beware.