Well, damnit, I no longer have a condition. This is good because I don't have to watch what I eat and drink, but bad because I don't get to garner sympathy from my family members and indulge in the perverse pleasure of annoying my spouse with daily updates on said condition.
I'm not exactly sure why the problem went away. Two weeks of terrible indigestion pretty much every time I ate, and then all of a sudden, gone. If my dad was right about stress being the cause, I get that means I'm feeling better. If he was wrong, I guess we'll never know.
Things have gotten a lot better at work, which is partly the result of just settling into a new environment and getting used to new tasks, and partly the result of my daily reminders to myself to keep perspective. If I waste several hours trying to get Apache configured properly, what does it really matter? I mean, it's frustrating, sure, but it hardly Affects the World, does it?
I have to be carefuly not to become a basement-dwelling superhacker that squints in sunlight and jumps five feet in the air when someone talks to her.
So my condition is gone, but I did get something out of it: Mary Magdalene. Mary Magdalene is the nickname of a painting by local artist and family friend Carol Frank. I can't remember it's real name, but I think the full title contains the words Mary Magdalene. Anyway, the painting belongs to my dad, but has been living at my mom's for a long while. When we lived in Marg's basement it was in our kitchen.
After one week in my sparse, unattractive office, I came up with the idea of installing Mary there, to keep me company, and fill space. I asked my mom if she would consider a lend, but she was not keen. She said it would leave a massive blank space on her living room wall. Fair enough.
A week later, I was telling my mom about my condition - I now completely understand people who talks about their health woes incessantly, by the way. It's an absolutely captivating topic from their point of view - and she felt so bad about it that she insisted on lending me the painting after all. She even arranged for her friend The Other Guy (christened thus by Sahsez) to drop it off in his van. Mary happens to be about as tall as I am so she can't be transported by car.
As an added bonus, my dad has lent us his other very large Carol Frank painting, which Tobias loves, in exchange for our tv, which has been living at the Golden Gulliver's since August anyway. But my dad's not friends with The Other Guy, so Tobias had to borrow Brandy's van and go out to Sidney and get the picture, which we call Tents.
We also got a call from the place where we ordered our new living room furniture from and they said we could come pick up our couch if we wanted to, but the ottoman and chair would be another couple weeks. Tobias decided to get the couch early, so he asked to borrow the van.
We ALSO sold our old living room furniture to the Golden Gulliver so we had to drop that stuff off at his house. And The Golden Gulliver's girlfriend was to get his old futon so that had to be delivered. And since we won't have the chair to match the couch for two weeks Tobias decided to pick up an old Lazyboy chair that we have been storing at his uncle's a for a few years. And my dad mentioned that Pink's mom had a couch she was giving to them, so could Tobias pick that up in the van too?
Tobias had a long, hard Saturday playing moving man with the Golden Gulliver and couches galore. I, on the other hand, took out the garbage and the recycling in a leisurely manner, then spent some time reading my book, and went for a bike ride while Sahsez was playing at a friend's house.
At the end of it, we both got to sit on our old Lazyboy and our beautiful new chocolate brown leather couch and look at Tents. Being a girl is great.
Reading: What Fresh Hell is This? by Marion Meade. My dad got it for me for my birthday because I love Dorothy Parker. It is very good.
Listening to: "Bec's 2004 Birthday Mix" cd that Tobias burned for me. So far I've been listening to The Books, M83, and Four Tet. Also The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler.
Eating: creamcheese brownies - have I mentioned I love my new mixer?
