Fluid Pudding

Lately, I’ve had the feeling that I need to smell more like Patchouli, and I know it’s said that one either loves Patchouli or HATES Patchouli, but I’m here to tell you: That’s just not true. A few years ago I hated Patchouli. A few months ago I smelled some fresh Patchouli in an herb garden, and it’s been on my mind ever since. Did you know that Patchouli has been proven to prevent female moths from adhering to male moths?! I have no idea what that means for me!

Anyway, a little over a week ago, I decided to jump on Etsy and search out Patchouli. After spending nearly an hour searching for scents, I came across Modern Ritual. Holistic Products for Modern Hippies. Perfection.

Three days later, Sexy Hippie arrived in my mailbox.

It is amazing and I smell like I should be at Burning Man, and I really SHOULD be at Burning Man this week, so the timing couldn’t be more perfect. (AND, just so you know, the scents Social Butterfly and Optimism are on the way to my house right now. The timing of THIS arrival is sort of crazy because less than four hours ago I met with my migraine doctor, and she put me on a new headache preventative which doubles as an anti-anxiety drug. (Don’t even get me started on how much I hate the idea of taking a daily pill. I’m not a daily pill taker. Um, until tonight. When I take my first daily pill.) ANYWAY, when this pill officially kicks in, I may or may not lose the sharp edge that tends to make me flinchy in social situations, and if I DO lose the edge, I will have no idea if it’s the pill working or the Social Butterfly perfume. Please Be My Friend: If I suddenly start posting that I’m hugging people enthusiastically and/or considering hooking up with a burlesque troupe, please talk me down. (Or don’t. Perhaps it’s time to stop going gentle into that good night. Maybe I’ve been going gentle for entirely too long. Social Butterfly to the rescue!)

Anyway, I smell good. Really good. Maybe even TOO good because I’m not sure how much is too much of a good thing.

Speaking of which, I ate an entire package of these on Saturday.

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Before we get started with anything, please know that Fluid Pudding Dot Com is a safe place. I will NOT be talking about Miley Cyrus here. (I WILL be talking about my gynecological issues in a few minutes, and that’s SORT of related, but I see no purpose in trying to link my stuff to the stuff of a twenty year old girl. We all do weird things. Once, when I was twenty, my best friend and I took a midnight stroll from a friend’s house back to my dormitory. It was a super hot night, so we used the heat as an opportunity to be FEMINISTS and why can BOYS walk around without shirts but WE CAN’T?! Suddenly (SUDDENLY!), we each took off our shirts and walked down that back road wearing nothing but our bras and shorts (and shoes, as feet freak me out and feet on streets? stop it.). Because crazy things always happened to us, even though it was the middle of the night, a car pulled up beside us, and the car held two or three of our friends, and they sat there and talked to us for a few minutes as if nothing was out of the ordinary—as if they didn’t even notice that our shirts were wadded up and tucked into our shorts. Anyway, we didn’t have cameras on our phones back then. And thank God for that.

I’ve been wanting to talk to you about endometrial ablation for over a week now. Every time I sit at the computer, I think, “I really want to draw a picture of my uterus being ablated.” And then I grab some paper and draw a tube (my uterus) with something that looks like a curling iron stuck inside of it (the ABLATOR) and something’s not quite right, so I sit back down on the rocking chair and think about life and dinner and how this cardigan is absolutely perfect.

It occurred to me that I’ve ALREADY drawn pictures of my insides, and despite what I’ve been reading from The Bloggers Who Know How to Blog (I hate the word Blog. HATE it.), not every idea needs an accompanying image. I like to think that you are all smart and creative and can see things in your heads with absolutely no Sharpie prompts from me! Anyway. No drawings. Just a lot of words.

(The following few paragraphs are related to the monthly adventures of my insides in regard to the tossing of eggs and the stripping of linings. Proceed gently.)

When I was 18 (here I go again with the stories!), I was in the university marching band. I loved it more than I loved just about anything—not because of the actual MARCHING (I was pretty terrible at marching) but because of my fellow marchers. (I’m in touch with very few people from my university days. All of those people were in the band with me.) Anyway! My uterus! One afternoon I was in a friend’s dorm room after rehearsal, and I was complaining about how miserable I was feeling.

Friend, who was a male, so let’s call him Jason, because that’s his name: What on earth is wrong with you?!

Me: I can’t find it in me to march. I can’t run. Can you please turn down that music?!

Jason: Talk about your troubles.

Me: I don’t want to talk about it. Let me just say that it’s the hottest week of the year and I’m on Day 12 of my monthly lady thing and I’m cramping and…

Jason: YOU’RE ON DAY 12?! Isn’t that supposed to last for just a day or two?

Me: Mine sometimes lasts for more than two weeks. I want ice cream for dinner.

Jason then jumped up, ran to the bathroom, and came back with a lovely toilet paper pageant sash on which he had written Queen of Day 12. And I wore it to dinner, but never told anyone what it meant.

Let’s jump forward 15 years. I’m now 33 and I’m pregnant with Meredith and as much as I didn’t love that pregnancy (I had to have my appendix out at the end of my first trimester, and that really sucked.), I DID love not having my extended monthly adventures. When Meredith was born, I nursed her (which made my periods much lighter because of SCIENCE), and when I stopped nursing her we decided to have a Harper and then Harper was born and she nursed FOREVER, and suddenly I had experienced five years with little to no cramps/migraines/et cetera. I’m now at 773 words. Are you still with me?

Anyway, now that I’m 43 and it’s time to put on some yoga pants and Chaka Khan my way through the rest of my days, I really don’t feel the need to be “forced” into staying at home two days out of the month because of heaviness and cramping and CRAMPING and HEAVINESS. Also, if I still had the banner, I could have worn it earlier this week if you know what I’m saying. And you do. Because you’re smart!

Last week I visited my gynecologist and she said the following words: “I’ve been wanting to do an ablation on you for a long time.” Who am I to stomp on her dreams?! (Although I wasn’t really expecting it, she also asked me to remove my pants. After examining my color, streak, hardness, cleavage, specific gravity, and crystal form like a thorough geologist would, she said, “Your endometriosis is back. I can feel it up in your cul-de-sac. We can take care of that during the ablation.”)

The ablation will take place during the holiday season. And that’s pretty great because although I know it’s a quick and easy outpatient procedure, I’m now picturing myself like Deborah Kerr on Christmas Eve in An Affair to Remember. I’m in a red robe (I already have one!) on the couch (I have one of those, too!) and Cary Grant lets himself in and I do not move from the couch and suddenly Mr. Grant realizes that I’ve been ablated and THAT’S what has prevented me from meeting him on the top of a building somewhere and we embrace and I say something like, “If you can paint, I can walk; anything can happen, don’t you think?”

And I Will Not Move From The Couch. (Christmas is less than four months away. In other words, less than four Queen of Day 12 banners to go!) ‘ ‘ ‘text/javascript’>

This morning after I dropped the girls off at school, I headed straight over to the lake for my third run of this run of running. I parked where I park and I walked to the paved path while fidgeting with my arm thing that holds my iPod, my tissues (because my nose runs when I run), and my keys. Finally, the GPS was on and the START button was pressed, and off we go.

About fifty feet in front of me was an older man hunched over the trail. He was picking up rocks and putting them into a bucket, and he seemed to be concentrating pretty hard on the whole Picking Up Rocks And Putting Them Into a Bucket thing.

As I walked past him, he threw his arms up into the air.

Bucket Man (burning out his fuse out here alone): BOO!!! Ha!!! I scared you, didn’t I, Sweetie?!

Me (scared, and fidgeting with my wires to turn down the volume on You, Sailor, which is my current favorite walking tune): Yes! You did!

Bucket Man: That’s what I WANTED to do!!!

Me (speeding up because Guy With a Bucket of Rocks!): Success!

Bucket Man: Have a nice day!!! BE NICE TO GRANDPAS!!!

Me (slowing down because NICE Guy With a Bucket of Rocks!): YOU TOO AND I WILL!!!

I then clocked my fastest run in eight months, which means absolutely nothing because I’ve run only four times in the past eight months, and the one in January doesn’t count because my heel was broken.

One more thing. I promise that I’ll never be the type of lady who laughs like a maniac at a comedian who’s joking about menopause. Similarly, if a guy with a bucket of rocks ever tells me that I have to either eat an entire cow (cooked or uncooked) or sit through a 90-minute play devoted to funny lady menopause, I will ask him to take that bucket of rocks and call me Tessie Hutchinson, because I can’t make that decision. On a related note, I sort of want to talk about uterine ablation, but I’m not sure this is the time or the place. ‘ ‘ ‘text/javascript’>

I’ve been listening to a lot of Roderick on the Line. I can’t name more than four people in my life who would enjoy this podcast, but I (mostly) enjoy it a LOT. I’m currently listening to episode 77, and as I drove home from purchasing 272 popsicles at the store this afternoon, I heard John Roderick mention the scene from The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo during which Lisbeth Salander tattoos the sentence “I am a sadist pig and a rapist.” onto Nils Bjurman’s body to warn others of his crimes against her. Roderick goes on to explore the idea of Yelping and/or tattooing people to warn others of their shoddy driving skills and/or character flaws. I LOVE THIS IDEA. (Sort of. Obviously, history has proven that forced tattoos are never a good thing.)

Wouldn’t life be (sort of) easier if, at age 18 and every five to ten years thereafter, we could have descriptive words or phrases UV-tattooed onto our arms/legs/abdomen to allow others to see (if they are willing to haul around a blacklight) what they’re up against? The phrases, obviously, would be submitted by peers (or a public tribunal. I haven’t ironed out the details, because I don’t really believe anyone will make this happen. Please know that I’m willing to toss twenty bucks into a Kickstarter campaign…) and would serve as a warning and/or recommendation to possible employers and/or life partners and/or friends. Think of all the games we would no longer have to play!

In the past few years, I’ve met people who I’m SURE would have phrases such as “champion at lying” and “acts incompetent, but is actually just lazy” placed somewhere on their bodies. I’ve also met folks who should have “selfless” or “drops everything to bring you a pie” or “sacrifices vacations to bottle-feed orphaned puppies” as their character trait tattoo (or CTT, as I will refer to it if *I* start the Kickstarter campaign).

I’ve been thinking about my own CTTs for the past hour, and I’m afraid they’re not all good. (I wonder if we would live our lives differently if CTTs were a thing. I know for a fact that I wouldn’t have indulged in the Pluot PLU Scandal of 1999 if there was a chance that my crap dishonesty would have been documented forever on my abdomen.)

(In case it’s not clear, my CTTs: Isn’t the best driver, Keeps opinions to self to avoid fights, Pluot PLU scandal 1999, Once pried open a live clam and it probably died 1986, Unhealthy self-image, Gives money to charity, Took standardized test in exchange for money, Adopted sick orphan cat/is allergic to cats, Doesn’t always refrain from gossip, Curses a lot, Raised money for stranger 2012, Not the greatest friend 1989.)

Any idea what your CTT would say? (If the tattooing consortium (or TC) would show up at my house right now, they would add “Throws stink eye to anyone blasting Bruno Mars songs in the elementary school pick-up line” to the left side of my neck, and balance it with “Helped lady who knocked shoestring display to the floor pick up ALL of the shoestrings” on the right.) ‘ ‘ ‘text/javascript’>

The following things happened in the period of time between the last time we spoke and right now.

Inspired by Karen (as always), I attended a henna party at my cousin’s house.

As a result, I now have a tree growing on my left arm.

I waved goodbye to my kids as they jumped out of the car to embark on the types of adventures that third and fifth graders tend to embark on. (You know, the types on which they tend to embark? On which! And Onward!)

After spending the summer not going to the lake and not running, this morning I went to the lake and ran.

I then went to the grocery store and purchased green onions, avocados, graham crackers, and chocolate icing. I have no photo to prove this to you, so please enjoy Meredith’s new shoes. It’s her final year in elementary school, and anything goes.

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Please be warned that I’ve once again been looking at myself from the inside out. Are you wearing a slicker? You might want to put on a slicker. (I’m not completely sure what a slicker is, but I know a few people who fit the description.)

My self-evaluation always happens in August when the summer is winding down and school activities are starting to pop up and I’m faced with having weekdays filled with silence that is broken only by dogs who have learned to knock on the door when they want in or out.

Do you remember when I was talking/fretting about getting a job outside of the house? After sitting down with a notebook and pen, I’ve finally ironed out a plan which is more of a non-plan than an actual plan. For now, I’m NOT going to work outside of the home. For now, I’m going to try my damndest to turn up the freelance so that I’m working at least four hours each day. I’m also going to try to volunteer a little at the girls’ school if anyone will have me. (Some teachers dig having volunteers and some don’t. Some people play soccer and some people run. Jeff doesn’t like tacos. I don’t like seeing dead armadillos on the side of the road. We all have our stuff, and that’s what makes the world what it is.)

Anyway. Yes. I will be working from home. Still. And the good thing? After making this decision, I scored two freelance jobs with the possibility of two more BIGGER jobs coming my way soon. I’m manifesting my dream board and building it so they will come.

Okay. That covers the career. What about the other stuff on my wheel of life? (Seven people just clicked away because I said Wheel of Life. Quitters.)

Friends and Family: The girls and my mom and I visited my sister and her family last weekend, and it was the best weekend I’ve had in quite some time. I have no complaints about my family. The girls are gems. I enjoy spending time with my parents. My sister is my hero. Friends? I’ve got them, and the good ones understand my quirks and still choose to hang out with me. I’m currently on the (seemingly neverending) path of eliminating drama and gossip and similarly toxic behaviors. Bonus: I used to have to do a toxic flush of friends every decade or so. Lately, the toxic people are flushing ME instead of me having to flush them. It’s a good feeling that I’m sure is akin to wearing purple when I am an old woman.

Health: I still have my headaches, and they pretty much suck. I won’t bore you. When the kids go back to school, I’m going back to the J for Pilates.

Finances: Well, that’s not really any of your business, is it? (I always Prefer Not to Answer when I’m filling out questionnaires, which isn’t often.) We’re fine.

Core Relationships: Jeff is the greatest person on this planet, so I’ll be keeping him for as long as he’ll have me, which I hope is DEATH.

Personal and Spiritual Growth: I’m not at 100% with living the life that I want to be living, but I’m working on it. My latest thing? Meditation. Mainly for health reasons at this point, but I also feel like it’s the start of something bigger. I’m hoping it will eventually force my ears to let go of my shoulders. Also, God and I are cool.

Fun, Recreation, and Creativity: I knit, I spin, I write in a journal with a fountain pen. I read, I see my friends fairly often, and I hug my dogs at least three times a day. I wish I had a creative project, but I can’t really put my finger on what I mean by that.

Physical Environment: While we were gone last weekend, Jeff painted the house yellow, and it makes me happy every time I pull up the driveway. Next week I’m going to start tackling little projects to get our house ready to sell. Our goal? Sell in three years. Having more than 1,000 days is a good thing, unless it’s a bad thing.

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On Saturday night (which is alright for fighting)
I drove to a place where mosquitos were biting
my ankles. The itching! For all that is holy!
Thank God for Dos Equis and fresh guacamole.

(I’m not thanking God for Dos Equis at all.
Drinking ONE made me consider finding a pall
bearer for carrying me dressed up and boxed up and dead.
Cause of demise? A beer-induced pain in the head.)

But back to the story! Mexican food with friends!
I’ve known them for decades! I’ve used a few pens
to write stories about them in my old high school journal.
My core group. My favorites. Dare I say my diurnal?

(Please forgive my rhyming. I don’t try it often.
Evidence? Line seven. Reference to my coffin.)

Hacienda in Rock Hill. A table for six.
We’re so different now, but we know how to mix.
Speak of kids, not of politics. Mention food from your kitchen!
And if you can help it, please avoid religion.

(A shout out to Linda, for my beer she did pay,
She helped me find the bathroom when I lost my way.)
I learned many things that night before offering Goodbyes.
Did you know someone’s job is to blow horses’ eyes?!

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The morning temperatures have been amazing lately, so I’ve been looking up towards the right and picturing myself running again.

(Quick recap: My legs break when I run. Four stress fractures in less than a year. Vitamin D deficiency. Squishy knee condition. Physical therapy. Wearing of the big boot. Sports medicine doc planning a hedonistic (wifeless) trip to Florida with a colleague instead of looking at my x-ray. Doctor switch. I haven’t REALLY run since October, when I broke my right heel during a 5K with Meredith, but I *did* do a lot of spinning (the stationary bike kind) as well as Pilates over the winter and spring. Sadly, I’ve done nothing since April when I had the flu. This is not really a quick recap, is it? Are you still with me? I’m wearing a skirt right now, but I think it might actually be a tube top dress, and that’s sort of funny because it’s not really socially acceptable to pull your tube top dress down around your waist before dinner, is it?)

This morning I woke up and thought, “Yes. This is the day.”

I then remembered that I had plans to eat pie with friends at 10:30.

I then thought, “Well, good. Today is NOT the day.”

(Pie is always a good excuse to NOT run. Put that in your toolbox.)

In a few more weeks, I’ll have no more excuses. This both excites and spooks me, and that’s a fun road to be on. (A fun road on which to be.) And then I’ll hopefully be back on THIS road. (It’s less than five miles from my house, and I share it with deer.)

It’s my favorite place to be, unless airplanes are falling from the sky or the mom with the triple-wide running stroller shows up. (She straps a laptop to the stroller so her kids can watch movies while she runs. Movies over deer. Honestly.) ((I run faster than her, which really isn’t a thing when you remember that she’s running while pushing the stroller equivalent to a Cutlass Supreme. Regardless: I run faster than her.)) ‘ ‘ ‘text/javascript’>

This morning I took Meredith to the pediatric ophthalmologist, and that’s a really difficult word to spell. Since we were able to stop patching back in 2011, we see the ophthalmologist only once each year, and every visit is a bit of an adventure—mainly because he shares his office with six other doctors, none of whom are ophthalmologists. This morning the office was full of adults and tiny people and we didn’t have many chair choices. I went with the fabric chair next to the sweaty man and his cranky wife so that my kids could sit next to each other by the television.

I won’t go into Sweaty Man’s family details because I signed a HIPAA form many years ago, and the last thing I need right now is a police car hauling me off to God knows where simply because I’m not following a rule that appeared somewhere in the fine print of that form. (I was pulled over two weeks ago today because although my license plate sticker is on the license plate, it’s actually in the wrong place. I hate the fact that I’m driving around potentially creating work for police officers, but with that said, it really *did* seem that this particular university officer didn’t have much else going on. (I freaked out a little when he turned his lights on, and to get off the road I chose to pull the wrong way onto a one way street—giving him a bonus ticketing opportunity. Thank God I didn’t have beer in the car, or I probably would have cracked one open before telling him about the dead guy in my trunk who I just prostituted and murdered (in that order, obviously), if “prostituted” can be considered a verb. I’m breaking Every Single Rule over here.))

Anyway. The sweaty man was sweaty (as they say), and as the perspiration dripped from his face, I noticed that he began smelling more and more like cigarettes. It was the most disgusting yet fascinating thing I’ve smelled/seen in years. This guy has smoked so many cigarettes that he has actually BECOME a cigarette. Because the doctor was running late, I was given the opportunity to sit and wonder what has gone into my mouth more than anything else in the past few years. The answer? Delhi’s Chaat! Have I eaten so much of it that it drips from my temples after a run? Sadly, no. My sweaty self smells more like salty lavender disappointment, thanks to Tom’s of Maine.

(The guy running behind me in this photo actually caught up with me five seconds after the photo was taken. He begged me to lower my arms because although my scent was oddly soothing, he found that it was also leaving him feeling very disappointed. I just nodded and whispered, “What you are smelling is my truth.”)

What do I smell like right now? Bath and Body Works Sensual Body Wash and Lotion. (The Jasmine Vanilla scent. Don’t even try to talk me into the Black Currant Vanilla scent. I Will Not Have It.)

Talk to me about your smell. (I hope I’m not weirding you out right now. Wait. Do you hear that siren?!) I once told a friend of mine that without any lotion or deodorant, I sort of smell like toast. She smelled my arm and agreed. Jeff recently told me that people don’t really know themselves as well as they think and that it’s too easy to make your world smaller just because you believe you know your own limitations, when in actuality, you should be challenging yourself to break down those perceived walls. All I know is this:  A not-sweaty me smells like toast, but after a shower? Sensual Toast.

All of this to say, if I ever need a stage name? Sensual Toast it is. Enjoy your weekend. ‘ ‘ ‘text/javascript’>

It is Monday, July 14 and I did NOT go to my high school reunion on Saturday evening and because so many photos have been posted of the people with whom I shared a big cubical building a quarter of a century ago, today I’m feeling a hint of what I normally feel the weekend after BlogHer—comfort knowing that I lived in my nearly dead jeans all weekend sprinkled with a tiny bit of “Because of my own goofiness, I’ll now have to wait five more years (or a lifetime, because who’s the boss?) to speak with a horse whisperer.” Actually, to my knowledge, there has never been a horse whisperer at BlogHer. Such a long sentence, such a weak comparison. (One of my favorite people in high school later spent some time horse whispering. Isn’t it crap that life is so short? If only there was more time to do All Things. I’m 43 years old, and if I try to do a cartwheel, both of my legs will shatter. So many missed opportunities.)

Do I wear the jeans in public? I do. Because I’m David Lee Roth in a yellow floral tunic and Panama-aw-aw-aw-aw-aw.

Earlier this morning I read a Brain Pickings article about the passage of time and why it seems to get screwy during vacations and faster in old age yet slower when one is waiting for a train. Apparently, Nabokov was into the proportionality theory which says something like, “When judged in the context of your life, time seems faster when you’re an adult because a year is 1/43rd of your life rather than 1/6th of your life, and you can eat 1/43rd of a pie in two bites but I’m sure you would rather have 1/6th of the pie, unless it is a mincemeat pie, unless you are my grandpa who loved mincemeat pie.” (I’ve elaborated a bit with the pie thing, as I do.)

Some people believe that the proportionality theory is complete crap. Other people (so many people!), who refer to themselves as nostalgia psychologists, mention the reminiscence bump (a time during the late teens and early twenties) during which memories are so much clearer because it’s a time of milestones. (Streaking around an apartment building in the middle of the night! Eating a turkey on the roof of a house in the dead of winter! Line dancing during a snowstorm in the middle of a street on Groundhog Day! My reminiscence bump goes on for miles!) I can’t really remember when East Timor became a nation, but I can spout out every word of Licensed to Ill by the Beastie Boys. I can remember certain outfits that people wore in high school, yet I have no idea when I received my most recent tetanus shot. (I once met a man who had polio because he accidentally received two polio vaccinations. This information haunts me.)

I’m going to start referring to myself as a nostalgia psychologist Right Now.

Today will find us at a doctor appointment and at piano lessons. I’m also going to clean a bathroom and bake strawberry bread and practice writing some words—knowing that I won’t remember this day in 2018. (Or next week if we’re really being honest over here.) I hope your Monday is a good one.

I mean what I say,
Angela D.
Nostalgia Psychologist

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