besides the fact that the home computer died a week ago...

This has not been the best few weeks.  First off, soon (I think) after my last entry, I think a couple of Tuesday ago, I had a terrible reaction to the meds my new psychiatrist had troubled, and became disoriented and basically really fucked up, and Barry had to come to work and haul me off to the ER.  No fun and really embarrassing.  I've gone back down to the old dose and am looking for my fourth psychiatrist.

Also going to intake for a new therapist on Wednesday.  "New" is not a replacement -- I haven't seen one for around 22 years, although I went on and off from the time I was 9 until I was around 30.

But I've been really crazy lately.  Lots of weeping, the kind of daily weeping I experienced when I worked at Penguin (except that I had a seriously horrible boss there -- hi Shanta Small! -- and I have seriously wonderful bosses here).  My job here gets busy and complicated, but that's not it.  I cry at home, too.  I worry lots and lots about money.  Supporting two people on one salary is really difficult, especially when it's the lowest salary I've earned since around 1995 (with the exception of Dweck).

So then our home computer breaks.  Not just needs-the-disc-wiped-and-Windows-reinstalled kind of break, the motherboard-is-fried-so-bury-it-at-sea break.  This was a week ago.  And so we had to wait until payday (today) to get a new one, which is irritating and embarrassing and just plain made me sad.  Everything makes me feel poor and less-than. 

I really suffer at times like this -- I feel like almost everything shows me how poor and dead-ended I am.  I got a very perky message on Facebook from a nice woman who is the older sister of someone who was a close friend.  My friend, the younger brother, used to feel like shit in comparison to his sister, who was tall (he wasn't), got into Yale (he didn't), and became a doctor (guess).  Anyway, I got this lovely note from her, asking about my career and my kids and so on.  Oops!  forgot to have a normal life!

Also on Facebook, I heard from M., who had been my lover some years back, when he was married and I wasn't.  (That was back in the days when I wasn't perfect -- oh, wait, I'm still not.)  M. was very full of himself and a lot of people didn't like him, but I couldn't get enough of the way he was fixated on me.  Plus the sex was great.  M. is now divorced and remarried, but I'm itching to talk over old times with him.  He really was a pal, at a very lonely time.

All times feel lonely now.  Barry has been an absolute rock, don't get me wrong, but I don't seem to have much except for him and work.

Can't seem to settle down with a book, either.  Can't seem to settle down much at all. 

We're supposed to go see Felix play tonight, but I may back out.  I love Felix to pieces but can't seem to go more than a few hours without crying.  It would be nice to get my chemicals in balance and my mind right.

Do you ever feel too poor to have friends?  Can't afford to get to where they live, or to go out to dinner, or to maintain a nice enough home so that people can visit?  I tried to get Robin and Ernie to come out to Felix' gig tonight, and she said, "I can hardly get Ernie to leave Brooklyn any more."  Leslie can't get Darin to leave New Jersey.  I don't suppose I need a lot of face time with people for them to be my friends, but it does leave me home alone a lot.

So, at least I got paid, and we can go out to Compustar and have them build us a new machine tomorrow.  I love Compustar -- they've been our repair guys for years, and built our first computer around 1999.  Of course, this means we'll be even more desperately poor coming into August 15, but what can I do?  At least we don't have to buy a monitor, keyboard, speakers or mouse.  And a dear new friend is going to provide me with a b**tleg of MSOff*ce.

It just makes me feel kind of sad that getting paid is such a huge event, and that the week before getting paid makes me feel like I'm living in the Great Depression.  Last Monday, I gave Barry around $25, and said, "Buy two pounds of ground meat and two packages of tofu, and a dozen eggs, I have a big bag of frozen broccoli, and buy a small bag of brown rice, a small bag of white rice, oatmeal, and onions."  Once or twice during the week we pick up half a pound of muenster cheese.  This is how we eat the last week before pay.  Barry has to do without soda, chips, ice cream.  He eats oatmeal for breakfast and I barely eat breakfast or lunch.  Maybe a cup of Greek yogurt in the morning and an apple at lunch.  It's seriously pathetic.  And this is without dropping $300-400 on a new computer.

I want to strangle every 18- or 19-year-old who talks about going to Berlin, Paris and Israel.  I want to strangle everyone who can afford a new skirt or a hat or even a manicure.  I can't figure out how they do it -- rather, I can't figure out how to live decently on what I earn.  (Forget about figuring out how to get Barry working.  I've thrown out every idea I can muster, but his heart doesn't seem to be in it, or maybe he's still frozen in fear after two years.)

I am so, so, so not a happy camper.  I'm happy about having a good job and good bosses, and also about having bought a nice summer wardrobe last year. 

bad health shit

What I really would like to be writing about is Sexy Jewish Men -- and that was before re-watching Catfish, whose subject, Nev Schulman, is a prime example.

But Sexy Jewish Men will have to wait a bit, since they're rather eternal and Bad Health Shit happened last
week.

Basically, I'd gone to see a new psychiatrist, since my old one took no insurance.  I felt that my lamotrigine (Lamictal) was working really well except for a few days every couple of months, when I would experience a depressive "dip."  So he increased my lamotrigine -- doubled it.  After about four days, I felt a little dizzy, but I looked it up and found it was a common but harmless side effect.  Then, a few days after, I started to feel extremely dizzy and disoriented, couldn't type straight, couldn't talk straight...bad.  This was exactly a week ago, and my husband met me downstairs and took me to the ER at Maimonides (we could have gone nearby to Beth Israel, but we're both pretty attached to Maimonides and my general doctor is also attached there).  They did tests and it didn't seem to be anything more wrong than the higher dose of meds, so I was told to reduce it to the old level and sent home.  I was told an appointment had been made for me with my psychiatrist for the next day, but when Barry called the psychiatrist's office, it seemed the appointment was for Friday, not Wednesday, and I made a huge fuss, etc etc.  I mostly recovered on Wednesday, and on Thursday decided to see my regular doctor , partly because I had what seemed to be a rash, which can be a serious side effect of lamotrigine.  So he sent me to a dermatologist, who said it was bug bites.  Back to work Friday.

It doesn't really sound so bad now, but it was horrendous on me and on Barry.  I'm not used to that sort of loss of control, or being on the receiving end of hospital care.  (The hospital thing actually went pretty well until there was some discussion of keeping me overnight, and the idea of being kept overnight in psych scared the hell out of me.)  But the whole thing also made me feel pretty leery about medications, especially psych meds.  No one even really knows exactly why or how most of them work, which is why they always try out different ones on different patients. 

My plan now is to see a new doctor and perhaps go back on Prozac, which "pooped out" on me after around nine years (believe it or not, that's the actual term psychiatrists use), but worked well until then and never had any bad side effects.  I'm taking the low dose of lamotrigine now, but I'm not happy about it.  It's some dangerous shit.  And considering that I take something like 10 prescription meds (antidepressives, antianxiety, blood pressure, diabetes), I'm not liking the whole prescription meds thing at all.

We'll get to Sexy Jewish Men soon, I promise.  Meanwhile, look at some of the pictures of Yaniv Schulman at IMDB.  And look up Oded Fehr, while you're at it.  That should get you all ready for that topic.

publicly assisted 2: electric boogaloo

I got a little lucky last week.  On Thursday, I (finally) saw my job counselor and job developer.  Since those titles are very confusing, I'll expound:  the job counselor helps with "life problems":  childcare, health issues, etc.  The job developer actually helps in your job search, one-on-one.  So I got to see my job counselor the other day, mainly because I wanted to ask about emergency Medicaid and emergency food stamps.  I wanted the Medicaid so I could get Januvia right away (more about this in a moment), and the food stamps so we could begin conserving our limited amount of cash.  No go on either, but the counselor was so impressed with my resume and my person that she grabbed my developer and I got to spend a few minutes with her.

The developer said that I ought to focus a little more on a career and not just on a job.  She said I should shoot for a creative company where I can learn and move up.  She's very sold on Google.

Later that say, I was grabbed by a second job developer, although each person is only supposed to have one.



Let me back up and explain about FEGS:  FEGS is a Jewish non-profit that has a number of programs, including a career development program called Connect to Care.  Barry's gone there some for job-hunting and resume workshops. I went to their orientation before we got into the public assistance stuff.  FEGS also administers (for the NYC Human Resources Administration, the HRA) the Back to Work program we're attending as part of the public assistance process.

So this second job developer works two days at BTW and three days at CTC, and basically wanted to hijack me, at least in part, to CTC.  (Let me be super-nice about this:  BTW is geared to less skilled, often blue-collar folk, and CTC is a lot more white-collar.)  So Ms. Garber "calendared" me for "independent job search" on Friday and I went to see her at CTC. 

CTC is way closer to where I live, nothing close to the overcrowding they have at BTW, and a lot more civilized overall.  Ms. Garber signed me up for seven software classes at CTC in March (she assured me they were much better than the ones at BTW), and will see me again at BTW tomorrow afternoon.

Januvia:  my doctor recently took me off of one of my diabetic meds, Metformin, since it seemed to be causing "elevated liver enzyme readings."  Unfortunately, the replacement, Januvia, costs over $200 a month, even with our pharmacy insurance  The pharmacy insurance, which runs us $55 a month, makes our generics very cheap, and is all of the health insurance we have.  My dad, in fact, sent me a check for $250 for the Januvia, but I am embarrassed to say that we had to spend it on rent.

My doctor didn't like the idea of my going without Januvia, but said that for the time being, I should be careful with diet and monitoring.  I being being OK but not great with diet and monitoring, and the weekend I was at Jannah's, I started to have dreadful foot pain.  This basically scared the shit out of me.  (It was partly because I've been in the habit of creaming and massaging my feet nightly, and I missed a couple of days, plus I was walking quite a big with a heavy overnight bag.)

So I put myself on a *really* strict diet and doing more testing, and finally got my numbers where they should be, plus I lost several pounds.  The reason I wanted Medicaid right away (we're due to get it through our regular application in about a month) is I wanted to start right away seeing my doctor once a month, my podiatrist once a month, and getting an eye checkup and getting the Januvia etc etc. 

Apparently there's no emergency Medicaid unless you end up in the emergency room, so I contacted Merck, which does indeed have a problem to supply meds if you can't afford them.  I'm seeing the doctor today and I'll have him complete his portion of the application.  My doctor is good about waiting for his money (plus he only charges $40 for a visit with no insurance coverage).

Another mitzvah (Yiddish for good deed) -- my wife-in-law Harriet had a pile of test strips and lancets that she got for free, and sent them to me -- nearly a years' supply.  (Those test strips cost a mint.)  They don't fit the meter I have now, but luckily, I found an online deal to get the correct meter for free.

Right before I got the materials from Harriet, I had reordered strips for my current meter from an online place where I'd bought my last meter -- I'd particularly chosen a meter that takes relatively inexpensive strips ($18 for 50, as opposed to the $40-60 per 50 that others cost).  I had run out of strips pretty suddenly, since I'd been testing a lot more, and had to have them overnighted at a truly stupid cost.  So they arrived...except instead of a box of 50 strips, they sent me a whole new starter unit, which includes 10 strips.  I sent a scathing e-mail, and told them that they WOULD overnight me the proper order at no cost to me, and if they wanted the starter pack back, they had to send me a prepaid mailer, but what I would prefer is that they let me keep the starter kit so I could use the ten strips there until the new ones arrived.  The squeaky wheel got her way.

We have our "home visit" today, which I understand is simply a formality and they just glance into the apartment.  But it excuses us for the whole day, which is why I'm seeing the doctor later.  I used my excused time on Friday (Ms. Garber only kept me 20 minutes) applying for jobs from home.  Then I had a call from another developer at FEGS who wanted me to interview tomorrow morning for one of two HR jobs at Luna Park in Coney Island.  I'm a little underqualified for one (it involves a lot of accounting), and the other pays crap ($12-14 an hour), but I'm taking the interview anyway.  After all...well, I guess we know how I feel about Coney Island.  And I do indeed love the new Luna Park, although I'm having my doubts about what Zamperla's doing with some of the other spaces it's developing.

I've now applied to Google, of course, and also to a few more universities.  I'm still looking at Craigslist but I'm being a little pickier; I'm actually looking for a job I'd like to keep.  Also, I've taken the advice of my classroom instructor, the wonderful Ms. Munchez, and have been writing much peppier cover letters (I had been using a very formal letter which was essential a form letter tinkered for each instance).

I also seem to have volunteered myself to edit Rafael's novel.  I will certainly start, and then see how much work it is and how much time it will take, since I hope I'll be employed before it's done.

I'm certainly feeling less depressed and more hopeful...honestly, I was feeling a bit like a sheep after a couple of weeks at BTW.

Well, on to job-hunting!

nature's most perfect food?

I was making falafel for dinner tonight, so Barry stopped into one of our local kosher mideast grocery stores for some pita. There's one local kosher grocery where they're okay to Barry and very cold to me, but the one he went into today is run by a very sweet guy named Moishe who is lovely to both of us. Apparently when Barry was in there, Moishe gave him a couple of containers of foodstuffs from his mysterious fridge, all things he made himself, for free, to try. One was some small pickled peppers, but the other was truly amazing. They were these spicy pickled lemon slices, and those suckers are like a party in your mouth. They must be cooked a bit because they're very soft, even the peel. They're probably made with a bit of sugar, but I'll let that pass. These things are sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and juicy all at once, and then the hot peppers kick in, just a touch. (I mean, isn't that basically every taste except umami?) They're also deeply lemony because you get to eat the zest, which is perhaps more intensely lemon flavored than the pulp. I dunno, they're just outrageous. Barry was a little scared of them, even after I ate one, but he also thought it was fabulous when he finally tried it.

Perfect food aside, I had a great weekend at Jannah's (it ended up just being me), and even sold some jewelry. Since I got back, I've made some more very nice pieces, but haven't wanted to write at all. The weather's been very hot and sticky, and even though we have a/c, we live on the top (third) floor and it's often not freezing in here (the living room and kitchen are open to each other, so it's an impossible space to cool entirely). Plus, our living room air conditioner seems somewhat ill. It keeps icing up.

Tuesday night we went to see Conan O'Brien at Radio City (the "Legally Prohibited From Being Funny on Television Tour"). I missed the on-sale and ended up paying stoopid money to one of them-there legal scalpers they have now. (They call them "ticket brokers.") I did get awesome seats, though, and as I had figured, they had a raft of awesome guest stars: Vampire Weekend, Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart, Paul Rudd and Bill Hader (I think I may be forgetting one). And the band was featured prominently, which made Barry happy. But I think the funniest thing was when Andy Richter strolled out singing the Trololo song. (And if you've never seen the Trololo guy before, isn't he trippy?)

My foot got a clean bill of health on Friday, hooray! My feet are happy once again.

Money has suddenly gotten a little tight, so I've had to keep a close rein on my lovely spouse, and I've made quite a few cutbacks myself. I've now cooked dinner six nights running, which is the longest streak in quite a while. After I saw the podiatrist on Friday, I took the Q train one stop to Avenue U, a different part of Avenue U than where I live now -- the part with all the Chinese stores. So I went to my favorite Chinese supermarket and bought a pound of salmon fillet, a pound of red snapper fillet, a pound of jumbo shrimp and a box of tofu -- all for $22. The salmon was poached and cold Friday, the shrimp were sauteed with olive oil, garlic, cumin and hot paprika (thanks, Mark Bittman) last night, and tonight I made falafel from a mix. I made gazpacho with the salmon and tossed salad last night and tonight. We're eating decently well. I feel good in a lot of ways.

Oh, here's a necklace I just made, labradorite on silver, and I hand-made the centerpiece, the clasp, and the hooks on the matching earrings.

Guess what? they've tweaked the interface here and I CAN'T FIGURE OUT HOW TO POST A PHOTO. So, no freakin' photo of my new necklace.

the mysterious foot boo-boo

Early this morning, I remember shift in bed and sliding my foot down a little, and then -- terrible pain and a bleeding foot. Very scary. I have a small gash right on the edge of my heel. We got the bleeding to stop and Barry cleaned it with witch hazel and foot on neosporin and a bandage. But it hurts like hell to put any pressure on the heel, and I have a feeling I'll be more or less off my feet for a few days. My best theory now is that when I stretched my leg down the bed, I inadvertently kicked a cat (all three of them, at times, sleep at our feet), and she swatted out and a claw accidentally caught my foot. None of our cats would scratch us hard enough to cause this injury; our cats, at their angriest (with each other or us), might hiss and air-swat in our direction, and they rarely get angry unless, for instance, we rub a belly that doesn't want to be rubbed.

Anyway, this is freaking me out a bit, and I'm watching very closely to see if the pain lessens or if there's any sign of infection. For me, the absolute scariest thing about diabetes is the possibility of losing my personal mobility, my ability to get around on my own, which is why, ironically, I'm always ultra-careful about my feet. Even when I've been lax with blood testing or diet, I've always been extremely good with my foot care, though not 100%. What I'm supposed to do on a daily basis is wash, dry, examine, and moisturize my feet. I do examine and moisturize daily most of the time, and probably do the extra washing (besides showers) three or four times a week.

I've had some kind of skin problem on the ball of my right foot for over three years. I had thought it might be a recurrence of the psoriasis I'd had some years earlier on the side of my heel, because it looked and acted like psoriasis (hard dry skin that cracked). But when I was diagnosed with Type II, my doctor said that it was an opportunistic fungal infection that develops when blood sugar is high, but I have lowered my sugar, seen two podiatrists and one dermatologist, and three years later, it was still there. Recently, I started treating it more intensively with an over-the-counter diabetic foot cream, and it finally seems to be going away. This was part of the reason that I went all summer without wearing sandals last summer, which was murder for me even though I didn't go out much. I look forward to wearing sandals all year, though I know that these days it requires being extra-attentive about my foot care. So, after walking all over the place in sandals for two days this week with no problem at all, I cut the hell out of my foot in my own bed. Shows you how much I'm in control of my own life.

A new friend of mine, whom I met through my blog and then hers, has been making me think a little more about the lack of spirituality in my life over the past number of years. It's not so much anything my friend has said about me but the example she's shown me. And it doesn't necessarily mean that I'm going to be involved in any organized religion. Actually, another friend, Jannah, belongs to a Reconstructionist Jewish shul in New Hope, PA, and that's the only organized religion that's appealed to me in years. It's kind of like Reform Reform Judiaism: very gender-neutral, and very inclusive (for instance, they don't really embrace the "chosen people" concept). It's also very, very community-oriented; when there was terrible flooding in the area, the congregation was really, really there for anyone who needed help.

Unfortunately, although you'd think we have every possible kind of Jew in Brooklyn -- no Reconstructionists. There are only two Reconstructionist congregations in New York City, and they're both on the upper west side of Manhattan. I've been in e-mail contact with someone who's trying to start something in Brooklyn, which might initially be a group that floats to different shuls with Recon. rabbis guest-conducting services. But it looks like this activity will probably center around the Park Slope neighborhood, which is not that far away, but is in no way my neighborhood. Unless something is a little closer by, it's not my community; Brooklyn is not solidly car-culture, like some other places. A lot of people have cars, but a lot can and do do without (like us). It does shrink the "neighborhood" a bit, to the size of what's accessible by walking, or a short bus or subway ride. If I have to ride the bus 45 minutes to have coffee with someone from my shul, that's nice but it's also not a nearby network for me. And quite frankly, Park Slope is a little on the yuppified side for my taste. (I did live there for about nine years, in an area that was then a little iffy but is now cleaned up, but the more "desirable" part of the Slope was always too rich for me.)

Barry and I had a great day yesterday -- went to see a matinee of A Behanding in Spokane with Christopher Walken, Sam Rockwell, and Anthony Mackie (I had scored some ultra-cheap and really excellent seats). It was my second time seeing Walken on the stage, which was a real treat. It was a beautiful day, so I decided to wear one of my new Mission Canyon getups, my new sandals and more of my jewelry than I generally do (meaning earrings, a necklace *and* an anklet). After the show, we went down the the Village and had a bite at our favorite Italian cafe, then smoked a j*int and strolled around. Poked our head into a favorite jewelry store, C'est Magnifique on MacDougal Street (also home to one of our favorite store cats, a tiny three-legged tortoiseshell named Fazool who is well over 20 -- the store guy thinks 23-plus).

Somehow, we ended up putting deposits on two pieces of jewelry, for no particular occasion. (Given that I have made some 95% of the jewelry I wear over the past 8 years or so, I'm trying desperately to feel entitled to my new ring.) I spotted a 14K ring with a really lovely sapphire cab set in a high pronged setting, with three one-point diamonds on either side of the shank, very simply. It's a much higher setting than I usually wear, meaning that I like rings which are closer to my finger, but what's so beautiful about this ring is that the high setting allows the light to really get around the stone and show it off, and it's a lovely Ceylon blue color, not one of those navy-blue sapphires that's so dark it's practically opaque. Barry is actually more of a jewelry-wearer than most men (for which I am truly grateful, since he understood when I began spending so much time and money on making jewelry), and he favors silver, turquoise, and Native American. He spotted a bear-claw and turquoise cuff that was too small for him, but then chose a stamped sterling cuff made by a well-known Native American jeweler (last name is Bill, I can't remember the first, but he's the son of a slightly more famous Native American jeweler).

So he's going to have lunch with his friend Felix tomorrow at the Italian cafe (we go there together, and also separately with other friends), and is going to go pay off the balance on our jewelry and I'll get my ring tomorrow (his cuff actually needs to be made slightly smaller). I actually think this is the first gold ring I've gotten since my wedding band, which was from The Clay Pot (which is in Park Slope, and is very famous for artisan-made jewelry and wedding bands in particular. (I took a quick look, and they no longer sell either of the rings we wear -- his is white gold in a Celtic design, and mine is simple connected leaves in 14K). I'm not a metalsmith so I don't really make rings, though I know a lot of people are making wire-wrapped rings now and I'll probably learn that at some point. So I have a beautiful new ring which was not horrendously expensive ($275). We're going to call the new jewelry "a gift from Poppy," meaning that we'll pay for it with some of the money Barry's dad left him. His folks were always generous with us, and did things like bought us a new bed when we moved out of our original apartment, and paid for the catering at our wedding, and it's kind of nice to feel that they're still doing it. I think they're also buying us a new air conditioner for the bedroom this summer.

OK, here's some truly good and amazing news: I've lost 10 pounds, in a little over a month. (The first ten always goes fast, and after that, I can lose around 7-9 pounds a month if I behave myself with food.) This puts me down to 170, after a few years of being around 180-185. I know numbers are just numbers, but it's one of a number of ways that I can measure how well I'm taking care of myself. I'm trying to test my blood three days a week (I was getting sore fingers from testing every day, and the doctor said I didn't have to test that often). This morning's fasting number was 97, and unfortunately, I fell asleep after breakfast (I woke up with my foot injury only 3 hours after I'd gone to bed), and so I slept through the two-hour post-prandial test time. But I tested anyway, four hours after breakfast, and it was 117, which looked good to me for a double-post-prandial. (Had to order breakfast in, since I couldn't stand up to cook, and had a white-Western-with-cheese omelet wrap -- I asked for cheddar, but ended up with American somehow. And then a navel orange.) I don't mind eating a certain amount of fat in the morning because I know it keeps me feeling full. And there's healthy stuff we can order in for dinner around here -- there are a couple of good kosher vegetarian places (we're neither kosher or vegetarian, but their meals are clean and fresh and wholesome).

My sister-in-law Elise forwarded me some info about a crafts sale in Chelsea next weekend that's looking for vendors. I'm checking to see if they provide tables; if they do, I think I'll cough up the $50 fee and see what I can sell. I was looking through some of my work last night, because I'm sending some earrings with Barry for our favorite waitress at the cafe, and also was going to bring some to my GYN today, before I had to cancel the appointment due to the malady known as Boo-Boo Foot.

My last couple of sales were not successful. I did one last year at the Hudson Guild; after taking a quick peek at my jewelry, the supervisor there was glad to take my table fee, and so I tried to sell hand-crafted jewelry in a room full of people selling old crap from their closets. I had some friends come down, and *still* didn't make back my $25 table price (I would have made a profit if I had sold even three pair of my cheapest earrings). Last summer, I did some outdoor selling In Pennsylvania, at a benefit for the Israeli Red Cross (I had met the folks who do the local fundraising for Magan David Odom at one of their fundraisers at my friend Jannah's shul). This was a cool event because it was a Jewish motorcycle rally. Jews on hogs! rabbis in leathers! "Hillel's Angels"! But the only vendors who really got much traffic were the food vendors; none of the rest of us did much of anything. Also, Barry and I had been staying with Jannah, and in the rush to get to the shul on time, had neglected to put on sunscreen, and this was an outdoor event, and there were no canopies on the tables, no shade. As a result, I got roasted to a fare-thee-well. (Recently, I was shopping at our local Rite-Aid drug store, and grabbed up an impulse item at the checkout counter: a key chain with a little bottle of SPF 30 attached to it. Don't leave home without it. It might prove to be the best $2.25 I've spent in quite a while.)

I got my hair cut on Tuesday, my first venture away from long grey old-hippie hair in about a dozen years (though once in all that time, I went to a very pricey salon and got it nicely layered, though mostly I just trimmed my own ends). There are a bunch of hair cutters and salons around here that all charge about the same, $35 for a wash and cut, so I picked the one that looked the most modern. And oy vey, what a nasty stylist I got! If there's such a thing as good "chairside manner," she don't got it. Instead of saying something like, "I know you wanted to have a very short top, but I'd like to try something a little longer on top first and see if you like it. I think it might be more flattering", what she said was (and imagine the brusque and heavy Russian accent), "Your hair too thin on top, I cut short, you see scalp." I let her cut the sides and back short and leave the top longer, but I felt like she hated my guts for wanting something wash-and-wear, low maintenance, and not dyed. She let me know that she believed women should not wear their hair grey until age 60, and gave the distinct impression that there was something wrong with *me* for not wanted a hairstyle that required a blowdryer or straightening iron or curling iron. I mostly got the short, messy style I wanted, but the beyotch insisted on plastering it down with gel before I left, which was way ugly. When I got home, I immediately got into the shower, washed out the gel, then toweled it and put in a dab of a much gentler styling product, and worked it with my fingers. Nicer.

It got me to thinking about the *good* experiences I've had with hairdressers and haircutting, having worn short hair for most of my life. I really love to hair a hairdresser who will cut for my face and my lifestyle (LOW MAINTENANCE HAIR), and really listen to what I want, and really talk to me, and make suggestions based on his or her eye and experience. It made me think that I might want to learn to cut hair, and I actually made inquiries at a few cosmetology schools. I have an appointment to tour one on Monday, which I now think I'll cancel. Unfortunately, the mysterious foot boo-boo made me think hard about any job that would require me to be on my feet a lot; even if I lose more weight, I'm not sure I can stand for hours and hours the way I used to. (I've learned this the hard way at some standing-room concerts over the past bunch of years.) If I were a haircutter now, I could easily lose four or five days of work over something like the foot boo-boo.

I'm thinking more now about making a new effort to show and sell my jewelry. If I do the consignment route, at least it would be full-time and I could keep up with the shops a little better (it is often hard to collect money from stores in a consignment arrangement). Or else I'll find a couple of good an appropriate indoor flea/crafts markets (not having a car, I can't really provide my own table), so I can only work events where there is access via public transportation and I don't need to carry more than my wares, a hand mirror, a calculator, etc. I think I do good work and haven't yet found the right outlet. I'm also feeling very motivated to start working again. I packed away my jewelry stuff a few months back after our landlord bitched about the clutter in our living room; I had been working at a bridge table with materials spread all over the top, and plastic shoeboxes of beads stacked all around and under. I always have insane amounts of materials, I guess the same way any artist would want as many color and medium options as possible. I just hate the idea of wanting to make something and not having what I need. So we packed it up to show a fairly empty table top, and still need some storage solutions so I can work without cluttering things up. For instance, I could use some shelving behind the table to store materials, and maybe some drawers for finished work. And a file cabinet for the cartons of bottlecaps that are also in this area. Basically, I don't want to unpack anything until the clutter is a little more under control and I actually have places to put things away, rather than just leaving them on the tabletop. But I really do miss making jewelry.

Betty White & doctors (mine, not hers)

I am stupidly excited about seeing Betty White host SNL on May 8. I didn't watch The Golden Girls, but just from The Mary Tyler Moore Show and the movie Lake Placid, I absolutely adore her. And I'm not the only one: there is an adorable fan video that captures many of her memorable lines, and even has some images of an extremely lovely young Betty. For those who first encountered her on MTM or Golden Girls, her extreme naughtiness was a shock simply because of her age. For me, it goes back farther, because I remember her first as the wife of Allen Ludden, the host of the game show Password, who was at the time considered a kind of uber-square, and I always thought of her as Mrs. Uber-Square. This is why my favorite Betty White line is from Lake Placid: "This is where, if I had a dick, I would tell you to suck it." Lake Placid is a pretty funny movie; although the leads, Jeff Daniels and Bridget Fonda, and kind of bland, both Betty and Oliver Platt (love him) play pretty off-kilter and funny characters.

Doctors: I saw two of them today, my GYN and my general doctor. Exhausting but I'm glad I did it. I have to do all kinds of follow-up stuff re: the GYN: mammogram, breast sonogram, vaginal sonogram, bone density test, and a consult session at her practice about my stress incontinence, which may lead to a referral to another doctor. Also got three prescriptions from her. Even though this is only the second time I've seen her, and the last time was (yikes) three years ago, I adore her. She's efficient, friendly, clear, and non-judgmental. My general doctor was pleased with my weight loss, still not happy with my pressure (he upped one med), needs bloods, answered questions, finished my Hep B vaccination and maybe there was more, I don't remember, but I have to do blood tests for him and go back in another couple of weeks for a pressure check (at which point he will decide on a new cholesterol med for me and let me know how the blood test results). So things are turning around, I'm turning around, and the healthier eating is not so difficult and is really paying off.