funny bone of the knee

So did you know that if you do a switch-kick at the same time as your sparring partner does a round kick, your knees will slam together and it will feel like you've hit the funny bone of your leg?

Yeah, me neither,  until yesterday.

I hopped around for a minute, and then grabbed a shelf to stay upright.

"It feels like I hit my funny bone, only on my leg," I said. "I can't feel my foot."

"That always makes me feel like I'm going to throw up," the coach said. 

"Yeah, that, too."

But when the feeling died down, I was back in the ring.

I iced it last night, and today the bruise is dripping down under the skin below the extra bulge in my knee. It hurts to bend my knee, but I'm operating under the assumption that this is the kind of wound that benefits from forcing it to move while riding my bike rather than the kind that gets worse with use.

Sometimes I'm tempted not to ice things so that I can have a wicked bruise to show off, until I remember that I need to be able to kick things again by tomorrow night, and I dig out the ice pack (the one I can find; it's amazing how much I cannot find after moving). I would rather fight again immediately than have a grislier wound to display to the world at large.

taste

WARNING: this post mentions gluten and the eating or non-eating thereof. Proceed at your own risk.

...

A friend of mine hosted a Blindfolded Tasting Dinner Saturday night. It was a warm, clear night, and we gathered along a long table in her yard. We each got a blindfold, a pen, a napkin, and a bingo sheet with various ingredient combinations in different boxes.

I love eating outside. I especially love eating outside in a backyard at night in the summer, with a big group of people. It reminds me of holidays in Liberia, or Rwanda, or Honduras.

The rule for the dinner was that you couldn't have any food allergies. There are a lot of things I seldom eat (meat, gluten, shellfish), but I decided to risk it because none of those are eat-and-die  allergies for me. I just don't like them and/or feel better without them.

We began.

For each of the 15 courses, we all put our blindfolds on at the same time and sat with our hands out in front of us. The servers came by and put something into our hands. "I'm giving you a cup," they would say, over and over, moving down the table.

Once we had the cup/plate/bowl, we could touch the contents, smell them, and taste them. When we were finished with our sensory experience, we held the cup/plate/bowl in the air for the server to come and remove it. Then we all waited until everyone's dish had been taken away before removing our blindfolds and checking the box on the bingo card that contained what we thought was in the food.

Some of them were easy to guess (blueberry soup! corn ice cream with blackberries!). Some of them were harder to guess (cucumber and zucchini, maybe?). Some of them were nearly impossible to guess (pickled watermelon rind with ginger). Some of them I would never have touched if I'd known what was in them (pulled beef tongue with cilantro cabbage slaw). 

Actually, that last one was amazingly good. They were all amazingly good.

pannier

We have discussed before - and by we have discussed I mean I have soliloquized* - about how money doesn't buy happiness but sometimes a new thing that you buy can make your life so much easier that you don't know how you ever lived without it.

Case in point: 

My parents bought me my bike for college graduation. (I distinctly remember my mom asking me what I wanted for college graduation, and I said, "A bike," and she literally went, "Awwww," as if it was the cutest thing she'd ever heard. That was before she had grandkids. They have trumped all cutenesses.) 

We went down to the Schwinn store and bought one, and we tricked it out. For some reason, I thought it was sexist to have a women's bike with the lower bar in the middle because I CAN SWING MY LEG OVER THANK YOU (I regret this now in my dress-wearing days), so I got a bike with the higher bar and we put fenders on it and a rack on the back - even then I was thinking that I wanted to live in a city where I could commute to work by bike.

This worked for a while. When I first lived in Gone West, I had a huge purse that I would put under the bungee net on the rack and all was fine, but eventually I wanted a new purse, which was not as large or as structured, and it got more complicated.

My old friend S. gave me a milk crate, the red plastic kind, and I belted that onto the rack with a few bungee cords. With the bungee net over the top, it could handle most of my daily commuting needs - I could even carry a gallon of milk plus other groceries in there. 

The only real downside was that the bike got really top-heavy when the crate was full, and it sat right against the seat, so if I put anything in the crate that stood up tall - a binder, a box of cereal - I couldn't sit back in the seat. Another minor issue was that I couldn't put the bike right up against a lot of bike parking spots, so my locking mechanism didn't work as well. 

It was fine, though. It worked for a long time.

A couple of weeks ago, when I was in the bike store waiting for them to replace the tire that was shredding, I bought a pannier on a whim. One can very easily spend $200 on one pannier, but I bought the $50 kind.

Life = changed. 

I cannot even explain how much easier it is just to throw things into a pannier and ride off, with no worries about whether my purse is zipped completely closed or something small is going to fall through the cracks of the crate. I can just grab it off the bike when I get to work, carry it into my office, and have what I need right there. It isn't in my way when I ride. And best of all, it lowers the center of gravity of my bike and makes it much easier to ride.

Money cannot buy happiness, but the money spent on that pannier has made me much happier for several weeks now.

* I spelled this right on the first try, which... whoa.

espanol

Friday morning, I had to explain dates and times to someone in Spanish. I felt clumsy and halting. I can understand much if not most of what I hear in Spanish (I am that person answering the question in English before the interpreter starts talking), but the words slip out of my head when I try to speak, and sometimes they come out with French pronunciation.

I was annoyed with how far gone my Spanish felt, and I decided, finally, to do something about it. 

I have a friend here who has been bugging me to come to his Spanish conversation group, but I know myself and my twinge of perfectionism, and I know that if I go to a conversation group with my Spanish as rusty as it is, I will just sit back and avoid talking for fear of making mistakes.

Instead, I called his Spanish school, and by Saturday afternoon I was meeting with the teacher in a bright room in a refurbished firehouse. He gave me a book and an introductory lesson, and he set me up for 1.5 hour lessons every week for the next ten weeks. 

I left and sat outside at the tea place, working on the next lesson, whispering the words out loud. Even in a few hours of saying the words, things are coming back to me, and television is sounding less like the French -see-oh and more like the Spanish -see-yown.

"Your pronunciation is very good," the teacher said, "except when you start to pronounce things like the French." Yeah, about that. The French I crammed in Montreal in 2002 pretty much killed off the Spanish c. 1993-2000, but somewhere in there are the words I once knew, and I'm going to get them back. I have vowed to stop worrying about whether I'm making mistakes. I'm just going to start talking, and writing, and trying. My goal is not to need an interpreter.

dancing wall

There was a festival in the square downtown, yesterday, and I headed over there after work. Three of my friends were a bottle deep into the wine.

One person left and two more arrived. 

There was more wine. I don't like wine much, but the next three bottles were prosecco, and I can do sparkly wine.

"I'm so excited to see you out having fun!" V. said. (I have been mayyyy-be a little stressed since I moved back here. Also I don't often drink, and I think by having fun she really meant partaking of the vino.) 

The one guy in the group had stepped away when a middle-aged man came by and said, "My band is going to be on at nine, and you girls have to come dance down by the stage. Here, let me take a photo with you to send to my friends to show them the beautiful ladies so they will hurry up and get here."

We weren't quite sure what to expect of the band, but when they came on, they played danceable Italian songs and danceable American classics and danceable Euro-pop and we did, in fact, go down into the middle of the square and dance for over an hour. 

Every now and again one of us would get drawn into the conga line, or a random person would grab our arm and prance in a circle, or a Saudi student would leave his friends to show us a footwork pattern that we never could quite replicate.

Every now and again we would all stop to watch one of those couples who really know what they are doing as they sashayed across the bricks.

From across the floor, I watched a girl dance with a man. She seemed to be done, but he wouldn't let her go. He pulled her back again and again.

"I don't like what's going on with that guy in the pink shirt," I told V. "He won't let go of the girl in the green dress."

I wasn't sure what to do, but V. is a dance floor expert. We went over just as the girl's friends were prying her out of the guy's grasp, and V. and I turned our backs to him and made a dancing wall between him and the girl. "Are you okay?" V. asked, and the girl said, "That was scary!"

Once the girl's group had moved away from the guy, we went back to our own people, to dance until the music ended.

easy

I wrapped my ankle for two days, until I read on Dr. Google that compression diminishes circulation and circulation promotes healing. Then I unwrapped it and gingerly took my first steps outside the safety of the wrap, like a colt that is afraid that its legs won't hold it up. 

My ankle holds me up, and if I am a little more worried than usual about the risks of turning it at any given moment, well, I think that is only fair.

I bought a little wrap thing that billed itself as moderate support, for workouts, because I want to keep my ankle strong by forcing it to move, rather than putting it into one of those lace-up things that hold it stiff. 

Then I went off to fighting class.

I know.

My excuse is that I thought we were doing a belt test, and usually during belt tests we just watch while the person getting the belt rolls with everyone in the gym until the testee is exhausted and looks like he (they've all been hes so far, that I've seen) wants to die. I figured I could watch and baby my ankle at the same time.

Only there were so many people there that they sent the stand-up people to do stand-up (this included me) and the white and yellow belts BJJ people had class on the other mat and only the orange and up belts watched the rolling.

I wrapped my ankle in the little wrap thing and told myself I would take it easy.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

It's like I don't even know myself when it comes to fighting. Look, I am totally a person who knows how to chill. I can turn off work mode in an instant. I can spend entire weekend days lazing about. I can leave the bathroom uncleaned until I begin to worry that there might be new species evolving in there.

I cannot go half-in at fighting.

So I worked hard, and it was fantastic. My ankle held up. 

At the end, at the sparring time, one of the owners came over and sparred with us. This guy is tall, maybe 6'4" or so, and he has these incredibly long arms. He doesn't even bother to hold his gloves up near his face to protect it, he just sort of swings these lazy, looping punches that reach you only because his arms are so long. As they came in, I kept thinking there was no way, he was too far away, but then there they came.

I haven't sparred in months, and I've never sparred with someone with so much reach. I'm used to being able to hang back and just jab at people, because I have pretty long arms myself, but I was forced to cover up and move in close, where I could pummel him for a while. 

I only realized afterwards how nervous I had been. Sparring with someone so big is intimidating.

ankle

I was having a day that vacillated between below-average and mediocre, just due to everything going wrong (although I wasn't really feeling below-average to mediocre; I was feeling fine) and so I was excited to go to fighting class, because fighting makes everything better.

And it did.

We were doing jabs today. I expected to be back to that place where I have to lift my left hand onto the steering wheel, because that is just how wimpy my left arm is, plus I took some time off to go to the Mitten and I've been sick. I am not in top form. 

Well! It turns out that we are all too good at jabs, so we got to add crosses for a while, and all was well. I didn't even feel that excessively tired.

At the end, we do conditioning for five or ten minutes. I don't mind conditioning. I like the fact that I am working my body hard, which is not something I get to do in my work day. And I'm there for the exercise, after all.

If given a choice, I always start with the burpees. Mostly because I hate burpees, and I'd rather get them out of the way at the beginning.

So I started with the burpees, and then I did the kicks and the punches and the lifting the heavy bag and then the stair-step where you go side to side, stepping up in the middle. I was halfway through the rotation.

When the buzzer went off, I took an elegant little sideways leap off the stair-step, excited to start the station where you throw down the weight ball as hard as you can, and I landed directly on the outside front part of my ankle and collapsed onto the floor. 

The guys in the cage with me (the class was all guys today except me) crowded around and asked if I was okay, and I said I was fine except maybe I wasn't going to get up yet.

I wasn't really fine. I was talking to prevent the involuntary tears. 

I sprained my ankle really badly about 13 years ago, working with kids. One of the kids ran away, and I ran out to the street looking for him. When I didn't see him in either direction, I went sprinting back toward the workplace, hit the edge of a pothole in a parking lot, and went down hard. I don't think my ankle ever returned to its previous un-swollen size, and it's been vulnerable ever since.

But it hasn't been this bad since, either.

So I'm thinking it might have been a mistake to ride my bike to work after a couple of weeks off and being sick in between and go all out in fighting class after a couple of weeks off and being sick in between. It could have happened anyway, I know, but I can't help but feel that exhaustion contributed.  

I stood up and did the weight ball station, but the rest of the stations involved putting weight on both feet, and I couldn't.

I skipped out on what would have been my first sparring class, because it just hurt too much. 

"If it were anyone else, I would have thought they were just trying to get out of conditioning," my coach said, but he knows me better than that. 

The walk to the car had me in tears. Putting weight on my foot was unbearable. 

I sat in the car for a minute, trying to figure out how I would possibly use that foot to push the gas and brake pedals. If I didn't drive a stick, I would have considered trying to use my left foot for those pedals, but I needed my left foot for the clutch.

At least it wasn't my left foot, I consoled myself. I don't know if I could have driven home if it was my left foot. The clutch needs more pressure than the gas or brake.

My driving might have been a bit erratic. It's very difficult to apply steady pressure to a gas pedal when any motion but a 90 degree angle hurts your ankle so much that you cannot tolerate it.

I am icing it right now, but the current status is that I can stand on it as long as the pressure is applied straight down. Any turning or twisting or extending causes gasps of pain.

I am displeased with myself and also with this below-average to mediocre day.

what I saw

I took the train home yesterday, because the Prime Number Bus pulled away as I was walking up the block to the stop. (I could have looked up when it was arriving online, but instead I just meandered over there when I was ready, and the timing was bad.) It would have been half an hour for the next Prime Number Bus, and the other bus that runs close to my house was 15 minutes away.

It's only a 0.6 mile walk from the train to my house (the Prime Number Bus runs 0.2 miles from my house), and I was in a hurry to get home, so I hopped on a train. 

I love the train. It's even more interesting than the bus, because there are more people on it and no conductor and people stand all around leaning against the windows and holding onto the posts. 

There was a woman whose little son was in a stroller. He was about 18 months old, and he was fully adorable. I kept looking at him and smiling. He was clearly getting annoyed with the world, though, and his mom looked stressed. When he started crying, she gave up trying to calm him and buried herself in texting. I don't mind crying babies. He was still awfully cute, even in tears.

An older woman came down the few stairs from the only-seating area. She complemented my dress, and I smiled and said thank you around my ear buds. As she got off at the next stop, she pointed over at the adorable baby. I smiled, thinking she was noticing his cuteness, too, but instead she said, as she got off the train, "Pay attention to your baby, bitch," and I realized that she wasn't pointing at the cute baby but at his stressed out and very young mom. I couldn't even respond, because she was already gone.

A group of teenagers got on, all bluff and bravado. We were getting off at the same stop, and they were closer to the door, so I looked at the one nearest the door and smiled, expecting him to step out the door, and he smiled in return and stepped back into his friends and let me off first.

I thought about two things, walking the 0.6 miles home. 

First, I love living in a city, where you see and interact with people so much more than you can in the suburbs where everyone hides behind the windshield of their car.

And second, you do sometimes get out of the world what you see in it. The older woman expected bad things from a young mom with a crying baby, and that's what she got. I expected an adorable baby and his stressed out mom, and that's what I got. I've watched negative interactions between teenagers and adults on the train in the past, when the adults expected the teenagers to be hoodlums. I expected nice kids hiding behind bravado, and that's what I got. 

It doesn't always work out that way, but it's pretty great when it does.

higher grade ish

Traveling seems not to be good for one's health, much as I love it.

I got back Monday night, and by Wednesday afternoon I was thinking, "I am even more allergic to Gone West than I remember! This place is trying to kill me!"

Or, you know, I could have just picked up a cold on the plane. Or from the munchkins. (As I was leaving their house, my niece clung to me and said, over and over, "You CAN'T go! You CAN'T go!" My heart, it is broken.)

I knew it was a cold when I kept waking up last night because all the snot in my body had settled on whatever side of my head that was facing the pillow. My allergies are always better inside at night. 

There is something vaguely satisfying about having a cold as opposed to allergies. I mean, I feel awful, but I know it will pass. I can take things for it. It isn't just the forever-and-ever low-grade ish.

Now I am off to happily take some ibuprofen and children's dimetapp and go to bed.

light x 2

I flew overnight to the Mitten, yet again. (I am a sucker for the cheap flight and maximizing my time there, regardless of the discomfort involved in getting there.)

I flew first class, courtesy of that practically round-the-world trip to the Netherlands last year, and the fact that united was practically the only airline that flew into/out of Universe City. And yet, I did not get that much sleep. I finally figured out why, which is that the first class seats on united are placed juuuuust far enough away from the side of the plane that you cannot lean against the window, ruining my whole general plane plan of just keeling over against the slope of the interior wall and sleeping. Harrumph.

It was fine. Somehow I managed to be That Person, which I rarely am on planes. I have flown enough that I usually just tuck myself into my corner and sit there, accepting drinks when offered. And I wasn't That Jerk-Face Person. I was just That Incompetent Person. My headrest was always in the wrong place when it was supposed to be stowed for take-off and landing (it was really hard to move it up and down). I didn't know where to find my tray table (in the armrest). I woke my seatmate up when I got up to go to the bathroom. You know, That Person, the mild version.

But as I sat there, unable to sleep, the eastern horizon began to glow. There were thunderstorms off to the north, and so the pale light of the day glowed above the dark clouds and the warm light of the lightning glowed in the dark clouds, and I spent quite some time trying to capture it on camera.

This is the best I got, and I think it's pretty awesome for an iPhone* photo taken from a plane window:

* I put my phone in airplane mode before I turned it off for take-off. I am skeptical that a phone in the plane would actually be close enough to interfere with navigation systems (even though I have heard them interfere with sound systems), but I still follow the rules just in case, unlike the girl in my row on my last trip back to Gone West, who was texting as the plane was taking off and landing. If only I were the tattling sort.

colors

GUYS! 

I got my first stripe on my glove in stand-up fighting, and I got promoted to the non-beginner class.

My instructor used the words, "good all-around fighter" in his little promotion speech.

It's funny, because when I first started fighting stuff, the belt/promotion concept terrified me. There is a reason I started with a program that has no belt but black. I didn't want to have to test. I didn't want to be judged and found lacking, I suppose.

Now I love the rankings. I don't love them because they prove one person better than another. I love them because they give you something to mark your progress. 

I don't need to have a black belt right this second, or even a blue belt, but it feels good to be able to say, "I worked hard, and I got better, and I earned the color I"m wearing around my waist."

cat fight (literal)

I think I mentioned that my roommate got a new cat. The intention was that the new cat and the old cat would become friends and keep one another company.

This has not happened. The old cat was kind of a jerk to the new cat at the beginning (there was hissing and chasing) while the new cat was sick, and now the new cat is full of hatred.

The old cat keeps sidling up to the new cat, hoping for friendship, and the new cat hisses and drives him off.

I was not particularly paying attention to the cats until, a few moments ago, suddenly a full-on cat fight broke out in the middle of my room. The two cats were tearing at one another, snarling, up on their back legs, not three feet from my bed. 

What do you do when cats are fighting? It was very alarming.

I didn't dare try to get in between them lest I should end up scratched. I just yelled at them and watched, worried.

They stopped after half a minute or so, but now my floor is littered with tufts of cat fur in both of their colors, and the cats are still pouting on opposite ends of the hallway.

efficiency

I have never before owned a car in a place that cared about my car's emissions. The Mitten does not care (it is Car Central). Rwanda does not care. Universe City might care if it were bigger. And I didn't have a car in New York or last time around in Gone West.

Now I do have a car, and I live in Gone West again. They care about emissions here.

My vehicle registration expires this month. I had to look at the last registration to be sure of the date, because I'm used to the Mitten method of having the registration expire on your birthday. Not so here. Here it expires on the date that the first owner originally bought the car, which happens to be August 16 for my car.

I didn't get the paperwork for my registration in the mail, presumably because I forgot to change my address with DMV until a month or so ago, so I had no reminder of this registration expiration thing. I just vaguely remembered that it expires in August and got paranoid about driving it on any date beginning with August, and vaguely remembered that I had heard people talk about the emissions testing here.

My car needs a new muffler and probably some vacuum system thing replaced, so I figured I ought to get those things fixed in order to have a hope of passing. Only, well, my bike is also broken, so I need my car. And I am leaving for the Mitten on Tuesday, so I don't have much time. And I don't have a mechanic here yet. I asked the K.s and a friend at work and everyone said they knew someone but no one ever got me the info. So.

I read up online on how to pass the test. They suggested nonsense like fixing any problems with the car, but again: no time!

They don't charge you if your car fails the test. I had nothing but a couple of hours to lose by trying it.

Instead of actually fixing my car, I drove around in circles for about 20 minutes, and then got on the highway and drove about ten miles north and back, all to get the engine properly warmed up and lubricated, and then I got lost getting off the highway trying to find the place. 

By the time I made it to the testing center, it was 12:40. It closes at 1 on Saturday. I held my breath and hoped for no line.

Brilliance: there was no line, and my car passed. How? I have no idea. I can only assume that the standards are lower than I expected. (All vehicles from 1996 on have the same standards.)

Now I just have to take an afternoon off work to go wait at the DMV to renew my registration. I can't do it by mail or online, thanks to the lost-in-transit renewal form. It's just me and the take a number system. Yippee.

student

On the train, riding out of downtown toward my martial arts studio, I thought about how much I love this city.

I love the blunt, graffiti-ed back sides of buildings against the train tracks.

I love the way the clouds hang over the bridges.

I love the crowds on the train.

I love the familiar smell of my martial arts studio.

For the first time, waiting for class to start, I looked around the studio and felt at home.

It isn't the same as my Universe City studio. That was my introduction to martial arts, and it cannot be replaced. I feel a fierce loyalty to the people there that goes beyond just a gym. And there is something special about it, too: the kung fu bow when you step onto the floor and when you leave, the counting in unison, the instant focus when the instructor starts talking, the cheering each other on, the way the whole class yells responses. ("Ready?" "READY!")

But this one is starting to feel like me, too, in a different way. This gym is younger, on the whole, and more casual, and the people in it go out to watch fights together. They have a permanent table at the Mexican restaurant around the corner. They feel like people I might end up keeping as friends outside the world of martial arts.

BJJ class was good, and afterwards we lined up again. We only really line up at the end of class when there is something to be given out - a belt, a stripe, something, and I look forward to seeing who gets something. Someday I even hope it will be me! (Okay, it was me a few weeks ago when I got promoted to the non-beginner class in bjj. Someday I hope it will be me again!)

Okay, it was me.

Remember how I was all embarrassed when I got student of the month in Universe City?

I am student of the month here now, and I feel almost more embarrassed. Student of the month is for kiiiids. Give it to a kiiiiid.

And it feels a little excessive to be student of the month in two studios in two different cities, albeit two years apart.

At the same time, as I tried to explain to my roommate, I work hard at martial arts. It's kind of my thing. I am there every single time I am allowed to be. School may have always come easily to me. You may find me surfing the internet on the weekend when I should be cleaning the house. But when I go to fight, I am all focus. I watch carefully and I imitate and I practice and I get better. I am that annoying person who shushes other students when they try to keep talking over the instructor, who dances around cheering people on at the end of class when we are all exhausted, who is told to start at the second step, or the third step, because I clearly need to work harder.

It's nice to have other people recognize how hard you work. Apparently both the stand up and jiu jitsu coaches agreed.

I got a bumper sticker, and a set of patches to put on my gi, and there is a plaque in the studio with my picture on it.

All of this gave me the courage to ask a coach to roll with me. I haven't dared before, because no one looked available, but I really wanted to try it, so I finally braved it, and it was so fun! She went easy on me, of course, but I wasn't instantly defeated. It was fantastic. I love this stuff.

The Month of the Bad Tire(s)

Bad news: I'm back on the bus.

My bike tire went soft on the way to work today. It didn't go all the way flat, so I sort of limped along to work, checking it every block or two, trying not to run over anything too bumpy that might hurt the rim.

There is a tire pump in the bicycle room at work, and when I got to work I pumped the tire.

At the end of the day, the tire was still full, so I got on the bike and rode home.

I was a little more cautious than usual: I took main roads instead of the waterfront, in case I had to get on a bus, and I checked the tire a lot.

I made it home just fine, but my bike made a scraping noise, like something was rubbing against the tire, all the way home. 

It wasn't until one of the last stoplights that I noticed something odd with the tire. 

When I got home, I looked more closely. Sure enough: the tire is fraying off the rim. 

The tire was literally falling apart underneath me as I rode. In fairness to the tire, it is fully possible that it came with the bike when my parents bought it for me twelve years ago, which might just be beyond the normal lifespan of rubber.

I don't have time to bring the bike into the shop before Friday night, so I'm back to the bus.

This is an expensive month.

endorphin

Riding a bicycle is addicting. 

My mom knows this; she rides her bicycle almost every day unless stymied by snow or heavy rain.

Last week, when someone had intentionally punctured my tire, it made sense to take the bus to work. I could drop my car off five blocks from my house, at the tire store, and get on the bus on that very corner. I could pick my car up on the way home, right next to the bus stop.

But I'm addicted now, as long as the weather is fair, and so I rode my bike to work, took the bus home over lunch, took the bus back to work, and rode my bike home at the end of the day. 

I ride my bike even when it is cool in the morning and I"m covered in goosebumps as I ride down the hill into the wind.

I ride my bike even though allergies + wind in my eyes makes me cry off all my mascara and I have to wipe off my face and reapply the mascara if I forget and put it on before I leave the house.

I ride my bike even though the park maintenance people today aimed one of the sprinklers directly at my path, at thigh level, soaking me through on my way to work.

I ride my bike even though I arrive at work sweaty and I arrive home sweaty. 

I love it. The endorphins have snagged me.

I even inspired my Aunt Lisa to ride her bike home from work a couple of weeks ago, and I'm hoping the endorphins have snagged her, too. Let them snag everyone!

huh.

Girl at martial arts studio, to me, after the seminar on Saturday: "Look at you in that dress! You look just like a little angel!"

Little.

Angel.

Two words that have probably not been used to describe me since I passed the age of 7.

seminar

We had a bjj seminar today, to learn guard-passing. The guard is where the person on the bottom has their legs between them and the person on top. Basically, if you are on top, you are trying to get to the person's side, past their legs. 

I did not actually know how long this seminar would be. I arrived stocked with snacks and drinks, just in case, only we never got a break long enough to do more than snarf a few nuts or gulp some water.

The seminar was three hours long, on a warm sunny day, inside the hot warehouse, wearing thick cotton gis.

By the last half hour, my drilling partner, a woman whose age I will not hazard to guess (I am bad at this, but she is older than me and probably younger than my mom) gave up. I went and drilled with her husband instead. His partner had to leave early.

I ended up with that sick dehydration feeling. If you don't know that feeling, you either don't work out much, you know your limits, or you are significantly better than I am at staying hydrated. 

I drank two glasses of club soda with raspberry at the Mexican restaurant a block over, and then I went for 24 ounces of iced tea at my tea place, and still I am dehydrated.

Mid-dehydration, I stopped at 1ke@ to check out their damaged section. I needed a chair for my office, and I needed one on the cheap, due to being (constantly) broke. I sat for a while in a rocking chair that I quite liked, but I ended up buying a bright blue cloth chair that is probably intended for a kid's room. It is less hard on my still-damaged tailbone, and it was cheaper. 

I also bought a footrest. Now I shall be able to lounge in my office, should I have time for lounging, ever.

plus

I forgot to add the part where the g@p had a neon pink brocade jacket that I wanted to buy so very badly, because it was bright and a tall and brocade-I-love-brocade, but it was a size or two too big for me and even I could not justify spending the, um, $9 on a jacket that doesn't fit and won't unless I gain some quality weight or learn how to sew. Even if I learn how to sew, taking that jacket in is probably going to be beyond me at least until the fashion for neon has once again faded into the distant past.

inevitable

What no one tells you is that wearing a gi on a 90 degree day inside an old warehouse (and not the big old barn-like warehouse filled with cool air but the small, stuffy city kind of warehouse) is deathly hot. My face is instantly sweat-covered upon beginning class.

In an effort to fix that, I went and bought some short spandex shorts (which shall not see the light of day outside of class) and a spandex tank top to wear instead of the capris and tshirt. Said shorts and tank top were on the clearance rack, and cheap. 

Together with another tank top, I almost escaped the mall with a $20.95 total.

Except not, because then I saw that sleepwear was on sale, too, and then I found a scarf that was not even on sale, but I bought it anyway. (It is, however, on sale online, I now see. Is it worth $6 to return it and get it anew?)

They made this scarf for me, okay? Someone, somewhere in the world, designed and produced it for me.

It is cotton (= not itchy on my neck) and has green bicycles all over it. Green. And bicycles. 

Inevitable.

Then I went off to return my cans and bottles and buy some new bottles of sparkling water from the one Gone West branch of my favorite Universe City grocery store, and my new tires saved my life when the entire highway full of cars came to a dead stop in the span of a few seconds.

Well, they saved my car, at least. It would have been bad for the little Honda to run into the back of that Sequoia. 

letting go

I never learned to ride my bike with no hands when I was a kid. 

I'm not sure if this was because it scared me - it did - or because I wasn't the most coordinated of children - I wasn't - or because I grew up riding bikes on bumpy, sandy dirt roads in Liberia - I did - but I just never could let go with the second hand. 

One hand, fine. I could do one hand. Two was just scary.

It wasn't until the summer after college, or maybe the summer after law school, some summer when I was living in the basement of my parents' current house, that I learned to ride no-handed.

My parents' neighborhood is full of flat streets with very few cars. It is basically perfect for riding a bike no-handed, and whichever summer it was, I finally learned to let go of both handlebars.

But now that I use my bike for commuting, I have a milk crate attached to the back of it. The milk crate is full of books (heavy) and a gi (heavy) and my daily snacks (heavy), and so the bike is more top-heavy that it would otherwise be. That, and I'm always riding next to cars, so letting go of the handlebars seems ill-considered.

Today I rode my bike home from bjj, 32 blocks down our beautiful street (we live on a bike route street and my martial arts studio is two blocks off it), and I found myself, despite the top-heavy milk crate, sitting back and letting go of the handlebars and reveling in the letting go.

irresistible

I stopped at the farmers market for a pint of brilliant red plump raspberries and a pint of glowing orange cherry tomatoes. 

Then I cheated on my no sugar deal and bought a sweet treat. There are a number of bakeries there, but only one has gluten-free French macaroons. Today's flavor was almond-chocolate shells with vanilla bean filling. I bought one and ate it slowly as I left the farmers market.

Then I turned around and went back and said, "I have $7. How many more of those macaroons can I get?" 

The answer was 8, but she gave me 9. 

(Don't worry, I am not eating them all today. Into the freezer they will go, for a time of need.)

slash-stab*

Well, the suspicion I placed on my car for ruining yet another tire has been alleviated. The car cannot be blamed. The car was, in fact, the victim.

On the way out of the office on the lunch hour, my coworker told me that there has been a rash of tire slashings in our neighborhood. His car's tire has been slashed twice, and he finally called the cops, which is saying something, since I think of him as probably the last person on the planet who would call the cops other than, say, a mob boss.

He thought that they might be targeting bigger cars, though, SUVs and Subarus, that it might be an environmentalist thing.

 Apparently not.

My car gets almost 40 miles to the gallon on the highway. It is small and light. It is an environmentalist's happy car, if an environmentalist were to have a happy car.

The tire place called me not ten minutes after I dropped the car off to tell me that the tire had been intentionally punctured by a sharp object. (I think the difference is the location: accidental punctures happen on part of the tire that runs on the road. Intentional punctures go into the side-wall.)

Also, the tire that had been vandalized was the newest, best tire on the car, and the others were basically illegally tread-less, and did I want to buy four new tires?

I did not want to buy four new tires, but I didn't seem to have much of a choice.

(Just to fend off any aspersions on the name of the tire shop: I have used this PNW chain of tire shops multiple times, and I have universally found them to be honest and helpful. They are known for those qualities. Almost every time I have gone in, they have fixed my tire without charging me anything. The only times I have paid a dime are when 1. my tire - the predecessor to the one with the puncture today - got a hernia on the highway and pretty much burst through its interior wire caging and was not salvageable, and 2. today.)

While I waited for my tires to be replaced, I called the non-emergency police line, and some detective person called me back.

"You came very close to being our 1000th caller about this," he said. "You almost won the t-shirt."

The tire slashings turn out to be more of tire... stabbings, with a leather awl or an ice pick or some undetermined sharp pointed object that does not have edges like a knife. They have been going on for months.

I mostly called the police to help them establish the pattern and maybe make this stop. I don't ever expect to get reimbursed the $90 for my newest, best tire, but it would be nice to not have to worry every time I go out to my car that my tire will have again been stabbed, costing yet another $90. I only have so many multiples of $90. The multiples of $90 in my bank account are not unlimited.

* The title of this is funny to me because it is what we used to say when practicing knifework at my martial arts studio in Universe City. Slash-stab. Slash-slash-slash. Stab-slash. Stab-slash-stab.

ongoing tire saga

I was all excited tonight about the littlest of things: my fighting class gets done at 8:30, and I had nothing to do but go to bed afterward. I didn't even need to stop at the store for milk! This never happens to me.

(That was foreshadowing.)

(This never happens to me.)

Remember how, when I bought my car almost three years ago, I kept having problems with the tires? Remember how one would be flat and then another?

It's happening again. 

I suppose one flat tire is too early to call a pattern. I'm just saying: it has happened again.

Fortunately, my dad walked me through changing the tire a couple of years ago, on the phone, and I'm pretty okay at figuring things out. That, and three people from my martial arts studio stopped to help. 

Mostly they put the flat tire into the trunk while I put the donut on the axle. 

"Just maybe move the sword out of the way," I called. "I don't want the satin scarf to get dirty." 

That's what everyone says when they put a tire in their trunk. 

Now my pleasant planned evening tomorrow of getting a few groceries from the one local branch of a Universe City store that has a couple of brands I can't resist looks more like an evening of waiting around at the tire place. This tire is one they sold me a few years ago, and I really hope it's under warranty still.

wake up

On my bike last night, the air felt like Rwanda. It was cool but not cold. Perfect.

I was on my bike, and for a block or two, the air smelled like burning, the very smell of most of the continent of Africa, and I was homesick.

If you had told me in 2008, when I flew out of Addis Ababa, that it would be my last trip to Africa for more than five years, I would have laughed at you, and then I would have wept.

It is impossible. Once I went back to Africa in 2000, to Kenya and then back to Liberia, I couldn't imagine that I would ever again have a life that did not involve significant time on the continent.

When I was 26, I'd spent half my life there.

Now it feels so far away.

I don't know this person who hasn't been to Africa in five years, who has let lack of money and vacation time keep her stuck in one place.

I think I need to find myself again. Those years in Universe City were soporific, but I've escaped now, and I'm waking up. The world is waiting for me.

race

A couple of years ago, an acquaintance told me that I needed to be more like him, and be colorblind, and I almost lost it. (See also, this article: Colorblind Ideology is a Form of Racism.)

I sputtered for a minute, because what the f*ck? Yes, I know. Swearing. But I feel like this situation deserves it. (Sorry, Aunt Lisa. And Momma.)

I had just come back from the Mitten, from the D., in fact, and someone asked me how it was, and I said, "It was really nice to be in the Mitten, where not everyone is white. And I feel like white people and black people interact more comfortably there."*

Later he said to me, "I couldn't believe that racist thing you said," and I had literally no idea what he was talking about.

It turned out that he believed that my statement about it being nice to be in a place that was not all-white was racist against white people.

I was irate. 

On the inside.

On the outside, I told him that I disagree. I told him that I think that diversity is an objective good, and we all need the perspectives of people with different backgrounds than ourselves. 

I told him that racism is fundamentally a structural issue, and even if a person had negative feelings about white people as a whole, that is not the same thing as the structure of racism that has given benefits to white people at the expense of people of color for centuries. 

I told him that no one wants you not to see the color of their skin, they just want you to value and respect them for who they are, including the color of their skin.

He laughed at me and pointed at me (literally) and said, "Yeah, yeah, you are racist against white people."

And look, this is NOTHING. I know that. I am white, and I live in the privilege of that. I am comfortable in Gone West, in Universe City, in these almost all-white cities, because of the color of my skin. I don't have to think about it.
 

But what scared me the most about that conversation, what still makes me feel sick to my stomach, is that there are white people in this country who still feel that way. Even one of my friends, when we talked about it later, essentially told me that I should back down to keep the peace.

I won't.

It is a lie to say that the real racism is seeing race and appreciating diversity.

It is a lie to say that we should be colorblind.

It is a lie to say that we are past racism.

As long as a white man who considers himself liberal and accepting believes that to see race is to be the problem, we are not past racism.

As long as all the loss prevention officers in a store are white while most of the shoppers are black, we are not past racism.

As long as we assume that affirmative action means that an unqualified person gets a job because of their race rather than the truth that sometimes the racist structure of our society has taken away opportunities to such a degree that a perfectly qualified person of color hasn't been able to prove their qualifications quite like a white person has, we are not past racism.

As long as a prosecutor offers a long prison sentence to a black man involved in a DUI where someone got hurt when we all know that he would have offered probation to a white man with the same lack of criminal history, we are not past racism.

As long as we have stereotypes of the "angry black woman" and the "welfare queen", and use the phrases "ghetto" (to mean black and bad) and "white trash" (because people of color are assumed to be trash? or because white people have to be a special breed in order to be trash?), we are not past racism.

As long as nearly every young black man in New York City is stopped and frisked at some point while young white men go about their business, we are not past racism.

As long as 17 year old black young men can't walk home with a hoody over their heads against the rain without being stalked and killed** by men who carry white privilege based on their appearance, name, and language (whatever their parentage), we are not past racism. 

We are right in the middle of it. We all of us are right in the middle of it. To deny that is to deny the truth.

It's time we stopped denying the truth.

(Someone asked me what I think, as a lawyer, about the case itself. This post from the Atlantic pretty much says it all: Trayvon Martin and the Irony of American Justice.)

* It may or may not be true that black people and white people interact more comfortably in the Mitten. There are problems there, too. I guess what I was trying to say that it felt really good and familiar to be in a place where a black woman walking into the train station said to me, "I love your dress!" and I said, "I was just going to say the same thing to you!" I don't think that would happen in a place as white as Universe City, or even Gone West, because people of color just can't be as comfortable when there are so few of them amidst the sea of white people. Then on the train, the conductor was an older black man who gently flirted with me in that way that I specifically associate with older black men, and it made me happy. I don't think that would have happened in Universe City, either, although I think it's slightly more common in Gone West, being a bigger city.

** Even if you believe George Zimmerman's story in its entirety, this is still true.

rip

The other day, I grabbed my suit jacket off the coat rack to head off to some lawyer-like thing, and my coworker, who was standing in the doorway, said, "Uh, your dress has a hole in the back."

I pulled my skirt around, and there it was: the back seam had started to come apart. Just a little, but enough that I handed her the information for my afternoon lawyerly situation because I could not possibly stand in front of a group of people with a hole in the back seam of my dress. 

Instead, I put my workout pants on under my dress and went shopping.

Because I had to, you see. I couldn't remain in the dress with the steadily-growing hole in the back. It looked odd with capri yoga pants underneath. And I didn't want to put on my tank top and yoga pants at work. 

Shopping was basically a requirement. I was forced to shop. Circumstances forced me into shopping.

Okay, look: I bought a dress off the clearance rack at the G@P. It's not like I went crazy. They let me wear it out of the store - I leaned over and the clerk cut the tag out of the neck while the dress was on my body - and I managed to resist that other cute blazer there and the dress and blazer at @nn T@ylor. I was practically practical.

Then I went next door to the not-my-favorite tea place that I did not know had a branch in the mall, and I got tea, and the woman working there told me that she loved my dress, first thing, before anything else, and we talked about dresses and how she has trouble wearing them over her 8 month pregnant belly because they get too short in front, but then the line built up and she had to actually work.

I used to never be able to shop for clothes on my own. There was the third culture kid thing and the nerd kid thing. I didn't trust myself. 

But then someone said to me today, "I was so glad when you and [colleague] started coming around, because I thought, "Finally! Other girls who care about looking nice!"

Oh, Gone West, you casual town. I love you, but I refuse to dress like you. Not anymore. Not since I have found my own style.

Now I face the dilemma of what to do with the $12.99 at goodwill dress that split up the back seam. It's a cute dress, if only a cheap knit from t@rget that probably cost less to buy in the first place than I paid at goodwill. But all the seams are coming apart. My roommate has a sewing machine, but there is no predicting when I'll get to it.

I am going to sew my own dresses some day, but I may need to live closer to my mom before I risk it.

gi clad

Since I got promoted in BJJ last week, I needed a gi. You need a gi to be able to officially roll, which is the not-rehearsed, see-what-happens version of grappling.

I ordered a gi online on Saturday night, and then I fretted. It was in Plano, TX. What if it didn't make it in time?

I stalked the USPS tracking site.

Fortunately, it arrived right on time yesterday. I washed it and shrunk it a little in the dryer (it cannot be too long on your hands and feet because you don't want it covering your hands and feet when someone has a grip on the cuff), and I am ready to go tonight. Rolling here I come.

The gi I bought is a women's gi, so it has pink embroidery on it (because women = pink, apparently), but I bought it in black because fighting colors are black, grey, and red, in my mind, with occasional exceptions made for blue. (When I joined this gym, I got a free white t-shirt, which I will never wear. Not only do I look terrible in white, which is the most important factor, but a white shirt? For rolling around on the floor? I can't keep a white shirt white while sitting in my office. Wearing it for fighting is a bad joke.)

Then last night I watched a guy roll with 30 people in a row, and as his gi top basically came off, I realized that I need a rash guard to wear underneath, so I stopped at the nearest everything store and dithered over the horrible colors. I ended up with a purple one shot through with stripes of pink and black. "This one is more feminine," the cashier said, than the blue and green one that was the alternative.

That is the problem. I am fighting here. Girly is nonsense. I want tough.

Whatever. It goes with the pink embroidery and I can always buy another one in a better color later. For now, I just need to get rolling.

i am a little nervous, not going to lie.

little victories

For years, I have been trying blueberries every summer in an effort to like them. (I read that if you try something 12 times, you will learn to like it.)

Good news! Today I discovered that my efforts have been successful.

There is a piece of Gone West that is rural, all berry fields and beaches, and my roommates and my friend D. and I went out there today. We started with blueberries, and when D. and I were done but J. as still picking, we sat down at the edge of the field and talked. I had eaten half the amount I picked before I realized that I was eating blueberries and I was liking them.

Victory.

Then we went to the beach and fell asleep in the warm dappled shade, moving as the sun moved. I need more weekends like this.

yellow x 2

Let's put it this way: last night, I fell asleep at 8 pm, and after I got up at 10:30 and washed my face and brushed my teeth, I fell immediately right back to sleep and slept until almost 9 am. I feel like I could do the same tonight.

Something has to give.

The one thing I don't want to be the thing to give is my fighting classes, which are still at four days a week (soon to go to three longer classes).

Oh! This week, I got promoted in Brazilian jiu jitsu. I am now allowed (as soon as I procure myself a gi - I just ordered the black one from this page) to attend the non-intro class. And I believe that when I get a belt (I haven't needed one yet, due to not having a gi, and they were out of them on Thursday when I got promoted), it will have color on it. 

I realize that it's not that impressive to have yellow belts in two martial arts (kung fu and BJJ), but it feels impressive to me. It's funny how I am somehow more proud of my accomplishments in martial arts than pretty much anything else in life. 

I think it's partly because I have always been that tall, clumsy girl. If there is a thing to run into, I will run into it. I warmed the bench for three years in high school soccer. When I tried zumba, I was that overly-tall person out of sync in the back row. Coordination has never been my thing.

Then I found martial arts, and suddenly I can do a sport. Part of it is sheer stubbornness. If you are willing to keep slugging a heavy bag and holding a piece of paper between your elbows to train your muscles to keep them in tight against your body and being corrected over and over, you will get better. 

I am willing to do all that, and I love it.

BJJ is a little bit different. I started BJJ because I loved the ground survival section of my fighting class in Universe City. BJJ is rolling around on the floor, trying to be the person on top. One of my grappling partners one day said, "I think this is the move we did the first class I took, and all I could think was, "I don't even know this person, and here I am in a baby-making position with them.""

Which is true. If you are the sort of person who is going to be bothered by the fact that you are kneeling on the ground with a stranger's hips up against yours and their feet locked behind you, you will hate BJJ. I am pretty unperturbed by that situation, so it suits me. 

The reason why I think I'm going to be decent at BJJ is that same sheer stubbornness. I'll tap if my bone is going to break from an arm bar or I'm going to go unconscious from a choke, but if there is a way to squirm my way out of a situation, I will do it. It might not be the way we learned in class, but I will persist until I have gotten out. I may never win competitions (competitions are not my goal, anyway), but I find fighting my way out incredibly fun.

secret to happiness

I have found the secret to happiness, and it's really quite simple.

The secret to happiness is riding your bike to work every morning, in the sunshine, along the water. 

This week I pretty much just decided that the bike riding was going to happen, regardless of what kind of work event was going to require me to be professionally groomed and attired by 8:30 am, and so I am on the bike every day. 

It's pretty fantastic. Every morning, pedaling along in the cool morning air, I think to myself, "This is how every day should start!" (Yes, with the exclamation mark. I see the exclamation mark hanging in the air as I think it.)

So there you have it: the definitive secret to happiness.

The only minor problems with implementing the secret to happiness are:

1. Sunshine is so fickle.
2. Some places may not have the waterfront option (sad for them).

cat (not mine)

My roommate got a new cat last week, to be company for her old cat, and the new cat has been sick. Apparently this is unavoidable when a cat comes from the Humane Society, it's in the air there, and they just have to get over it.

He spent Friday night curled up at the bottom of my bed, sneezing. When he finally left in the morning, the old cat came and curled up in exactly that spot, presumably to mark it as his once again.

The new cat is mostly white with faint orange stripes all over. He is cuddly and quiet, so much so that M. said she hopes he grows a personality when he feels better and gets comfortable. He seems to be feeling worse, though.

Last night, the new cat came into my room and sniffed about in the very same place where he and the old cat had both been laying a day or two before.

I didn't have my contacts in, but something looked odd. 

Very odd. 

I leaned forward and, yup. He was peeing on my bed.

Fortunately, he mostly peed on the two throws that usually keep my feet warm, which I had tossed off to the side in this warm weather. 

Still. 

I could smell his pee as we carried the layers down to the basement to the washing machine, and M. added some special cat-pee-smell remover to the laundry.

It's hard to get too mad, though, at a cat who is so clearly miserable. He spent the night on the rug in the bathroom (not because everyone had banned him from their rooms; only I had done that), and when I went in there this morning, he was sort of shivering every few seconds. I think he has a fever.

It's hard to get too mad at the patheticness of a shivering, feverish cat curled up almost unmoving on the bathroom floor. It's probably going to be a while before I let him back in my room, though.

fairy falls

Last Saturday, my friend D. and I did a hike in the shadow of the big mountain, the one you can see from the city. I hiked to this waterfall once before, with S. and N., back when they had to ask me if seven miles was going to be okay, and I wasn't sure. (I was fine that time, even back then when I was new to hiking, and now seven miles is just a nice afternoon hike.)

I had just made the gluten free decision that morning, so I snarfed some rice/beans/roasted peppers concoction at the trailhead, and we started off. 

Half a mile down the trail, I realized that I'd left my iPhone in the car. Not just in the car, but I'd left it right between the two front seats, where it was 1. visible to anyone passing (and this trailhead comes with a warning of car break-ins) and 2. in direct sunlight (and this was a 95+ degree day). 

We turned around. And sure enough, there in the very hot direct sunlight was my roasting phone. 

I put it in my backpack, and off we went, again, over the same ground. 

We took the longer way to the falls, because it promised to be prettier, and it was very pretty. We strode through woods. We meandered along creeks. We passed under a high cliff of white rock.

The waterfall was as fairy-ish as I remembered, all silvery sparkles down a rock wall. We sat in the cool shade with snacks (the only ones I could eat were nuts, so I ate a lot of almonds and walnuts). A woman took a picture of us in front of the falls, but she knelt down to get the whole falls in, and we looked like chipmunks from that angle. (I did, at least. I will not speak for D.)

As always, I forgot to drink enough water, and by the time we got back to the city and went on a quest for cold drinkables (it took four stops before we found a coffee place open on a Saturday night), I could feel the dehydration kicking in. Someday I will learn to drink enough water, but that day is clearly not now.

string

So here is the problem: there is no time for anything but working, fighting, and sleeping in my life right now. 

I cannot get a full night of sleep to save my life, because by the time I come home from fighting, it is already 9 pm, and once I wind down and get ready for bed, it is late.

I'm trying to go hiking as much as I can, but today I finally had to say no. I had to sleep in, and run a few errands, and just be.

This pace is killing me.

It's summer. The sky is still blue when I leave work, even when I leave it late. The streets are still full of people. The air is still warm. 

We sweated through our shirts in fighting class last week. (I held pads for a guy who was sweating so hard that droplets of his sweat flew at me every time he hit a pad. Ew.)

I took my bike to a nearby bike shop today, because a fender bolt had come loose, and the pedal has been making a funny noise for, oh, four years. It took about 10 minutes and $5 for the guy to fix it right up. I bought a water bottle holder for my bike in the shape of a bird, because that is so completely this town. On the way back home, the bike ran more smoothly than I can remember it running.

I need a whole string of these lazy, empty days, but I can't imagine when I'll ever get them.

gluten free

Warning: this post is about going gluten free. Do not read if that topic will bother you.

I went gluten-free.

It was Saturday when I made the decision. I had yet another last minute appointment with my doctor because my throat/sinus cavities/headache situation was intolerable but not strep throat or a sinus infection, and she was sort of like, "Yeah, well. You are allergic to a lot of stuff. What do you want from me?"

"I've been thinking I may have to go gluten free." I said. "My dad and sister are."

"You might want to eliminate dairy, too," she said.

Not what I was hoping to hear.

"The more allergens you can eliminate, the easier it will be on your body," she continued.

"But I'm Dutch!" I said. "We live on milk and cheese!"

"Human beings have only been eating dairy for a very short time, evolutionarily," she said. "We haven't developed to tolerate it."

I decided to start by giving up gluten. I will give this six to eight weeks before I decide on the dairy. One can only handle so much at a time. 

Immediately after the doctor, I was meeting my friend D. for a hike. I meant to pick up a sandwich in the shopping center before we left, but since I was now gluten free (although I'd eaten wheat for breakfast), I went to Chipotle instead and got a bowl rather than a wrap.

On the way home, after an 8 mile hike, I picked up hippie corn flakes and some gorilla munch (corn balls) to swap out for my hippie wheat flakes and bites. That was my beginning. 

Monday at work, two days into the freedom from gluten, I noticed something very curious. 

My intestines weren't all cramped up.

Is this normal? Do most people spend their days with just a total absence of sensation in their intestines? Because, not to get too graphic, it's been a while since I didn't feel crampy and gassy every day. The whole hike on Saturday was fairly miserable due to cramping and gassing. 

(If you've ever traveled to a non-sterilized part of the world, you'll be familiar with this sort of discussion being had right out in public among your traveling friends. After a group of us got back from Nicaragua while we were in college, we conversed for weeks on whether things were solid yet.)

I know how extremely privileged I am in the gluten free realm. I can eat at restaurants that don't use separate utensils. I can eat gluten in a pinch. I can eat gluten if I can't resist. (It's just that it's pretty easy to resist when your digestive processes feel so very much better.)

It helps to live in the fad diet center of the universe, Gone West. There are gluten free bakeries here. Many restaurants are sensitive to the gluten issue.

Today I accidentally bit into a pretzel m&m (I thought it was peanut), and I went and spit it out, but I did get some pretzel stuck in my teeth that I didn't think was worth fighting about. 

Then I had coffee. 

Between the two, my intestines were a little off again.

Tomorrow, I am back on the wagon.

Look, it isn't that I thought people were faking when they said they felt better gluten free. For a year or so, whenever people mentioned the gluten free thing, I said, "I would try it, but gluten doesn't seem to bother my stomach, so it doesn't feel worth it, even for all the other benefits."

Ha! Ha, oh ha! I scoff at myself.

Apparently all the other times I tried going gluten free, I lied to myself and believed that those wheat flakes I had for breakfast didn't count. I think I thought that cutting back on gluten should have the same effects. Not so.

It's just that I didn't expect such a dramatic difference so quickly. It's mind-boggling. I didn't know how bad I felt until I felt good again.

Life is not all a slow slog toward physical misery, it seems.

Now if only I could get a few good nights of sleep, I might really believe that.