When in Doubt, Turn to Narcissism

The post I keep meaning to write this week is about skin breakdowns, because the issue was recently brought up by esteemed correspondent Jana over at PilgrimSteps.  However, I keep getting myself all tired out and unable to string coherent sentences together, or at least coherent sentences about things that might actually matter to someone besides me.  Fortunately, one of my sister Saras has handed me a silly meme.  Thank you, Sara Louise!  I was truly at a loss for something I could write today without undue intellectual strain.

I was going to just take another kitty picture.  I was.

Clearly, the fact that I love our new (used) cat is not something you don't know about me.

It's not like I'm reticent or secretive.  It's not like I'm not narcissistic and don't talk about myself way too much already.  So what on earth don't you know?  Well, here's one thing:

1.  I am apparently susceptible to contact migraines.  Doesn't that suck?  I used to work for the Epilepsy Service at Massachusetts General Hospital, and I used to run the Friday morning clinics for it and the Headache Service.  Since I am not a neurologist, it's not like the patients would sit with me and describe their symptoms or anything, not usually, not unless they were making their first appointments over the phone and I needed to make a note why.  However, before or after their appointments, all the patients would see me to get checked in, make sure their insurance crap was in order, or when they checked out, to make follow-up appointments, schedule nasty tests, and whatnot.  Very, very often, I would be talking to someone who might have just had a seizure that morning or who had a migraine at the moment, and I wouldn't know that, but suddenly, within minutes, I would have a blinding, stabbing migraine of my own.  The migraine would not recede when the person went away, but sometimes it would get worse if I had to interact with more people in similar conditions.  Sometimes I would be so ill I would have to leave.

Power of suggestion?  Maybe.  However, when I worked at Whole Foods, occasionally the same thing would happen to me while I was serving one or another customer.  Sometimes I would find out afterward that this person had chronic headaches.  Sometimes, of course, it was just because the person was a right pain in the...never mind.

2.  I had the third-largest head in my senior class in high school.  We're talking measurements, not vanity.  I had the third-largest cranial circumference.  I only found this out because I worked in the student store where the cap and gown measurements were taken, sorted, and kept for graduation day.

3.  I have never had a speeding ticket in my entire life.  Never.  I have had two parking tickets, both of them since moving to Massachusetts.  (I think it must be something in the air.)  Also, when I was very poor, I got stopped twice for failing to get my car timely registered, but the adorable California Highway Patrolmen (and I really do think they all have to pass some sort of cuteness test before they are given their motorcycles) let me off with a warning each time.

4.  I don't believe in god(s), but I believe in ghosts.  Sort of.  I don't know what ghosts are, or whether they are sentient, but I have experienced many, many spooky things that really felt like ghostage.  Sometimes I think ghosts must be electrical traces left behind by extreme emotion or simply a certain amount of living in a given space.  Sometimes I think they really are parts of individual people's spirits.  I think you can haunt a space without having died yet.

I have lived in more than one place I believed to be haunted, though I don't think every place I've lived was.  I sincerely believe the house I live in right now is haunted, but by friendly spirits, and that some of the ghosts may even be ghosts of my cats, which I admit is also something I kind of hope for, as long as their little spirits are happy, if in fact any part of their little spirits still exists outside my heart.

I do hear the sound of cats jumping down from windows onto chairs in my living room all the time, every day, several times a day, even during the year when no cats lived here.  I also see funny things out of the corner of my eye all the time here, and shadows of things that aren't traceable to any objects in broad daylight, like this weird almost but not really sparkly thing that made its way across my living room ceiling one afternoon, then shimmered and vanished.  Doors open and close with the vagaries of heat and architecture, and my landlord jokes about two ladies who used to live here whom he pretends to believe still live here in some way or other.  At least, I think he's joking.  I'm not sure he is, or whether he himself knows whether or not he is.

I'm pretty sure someone is here, regardless.  Whoever they are, they seem nice.

5.  As long as it doesn't contain avocado, natto, sea urchin roe, or pickled yellow weirdness and hasn't gone off, I can eat almost unlimited amounts of sushi.  This can be very, very expensive.   The truth is, though, I get bored with it before I get full on it.  And it takes me about $50.00 worth to get bored with it.

Okay!  Now I'm supposed to tag five other people.  I have no idea whom to tag.  So I'm doing the cop-out tag.  If you are doing NaBloPoMo '07 and are stumped for something mindless to write about, go for it!  Consider yourself tagged!  Otherwise, just watch and point and laugh at everyone else revealing their unknown tics for your amusement.

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Don't forget!  You only have until midnight tonight at the International Date Line (GMT -12) , that's 10 hours and four minutes (approximately),  to enter my Second Annual NaBloPoMo Midway Contest!

Comments

[alphabitch]

Yeah, I've lived in a couple of houses with ghost cats. I've also never encountered ghosts that don't seem perfectly ordinary and nice. If ghosts is what they are.

Contact migraines? That sounds awful.

[Penny]

Hey, I had the biggest girl head in my senior class--I know that for similar reasons (I was assigned to write down the sizes when they measured for graduation caps). I still have a head too big for "one-size" hats--gotta get hats made for large heads, or hats made with flexible bands (berets work okay). I don't think it looks disproportionate, maybe it's just in the shape?

Then I married a guy with a big head, and birthed a kid with... a very small head. Whew!

Come eat sushi with me sometime--I'm always looking for a sushi buddy. And I'll eat all the avocado bits.

[Sara]

Alphabitch, I also once lived in a place that had a haunted closet. My friend L didn't believe me when I told her the apartment was haunted, until I said, "Go stand in that closet." And she did, and then I shut the door for a minute. Then I opened it again and said, "See?"

And she said, "Yes. I didn't believe you until you closed the door. I thought, 'Oh, big deal, it's just a closet full of clothes.' And then I remembered that you don't actually keep anything in this closet.

"I was really glad when you opened the door."

(This was a long time ago. The idea of an empty closet now makes me laugh, a little hysterically.)

Penny, you're on. This same friend L and I used to have massive sushi pig-outs in the mid-'80s wherever and whenever we could afford it. There was this place in Westwood called Sushi Boat. The chefs would put whatever they made on these little wooden boats that would go around the enormous, oval-shaped bar in a little Disneyland-style miniature river, and customers would just take whatever they wanted. At the end of the meal, the waiter would simply count the empty boats piled up and charge accordingly.

The last time we went, which I think was in about 1985, we racked up a bill of about $90. I don't even think we had sake.

Mmmm, it was sooooooo yummy.

There's also great sushi around here, you know, should you find yourself in the area. So I extend the same invitation to you, anytime. :)

[elizabeth]

So if I understand this correctly, you have the worst psychic ability ever - you can sense and replicate migranes, without being told someone has one. Well, it IS a superpower, just not one I can concievably think of a use for.

I too have a "big head" but I don't know if I can make a specific claim about exactly where I rank in big head world, sorry, but I am glad you STILL remember your senior head size ranking (cause there is no insecurity about THAT obviously).

As for ghosts, I believe in "other" though I don't believe they are people because I find the thought that I would spend a hundred years after life making hallways chilly just too depressing; like I wouldn't want to hang out in a library? It would be that all our knowledge and intellegence is turned into a three year old trickster. Which I find too sad to believe - but I still believe in "other" meaning, wierd stuff happens, I can't explain it, but I don't believe it is grandmother - unless my shoes start mysteriously wiping themselves and lining up up in rows only a Edwardian anal rententive person might do - then I'll believe it's grandmother.

[Sara]

Just for the record, my true love has a far bigger head than I do. Not that size matters or anything. Of course it doesn't -- right? ;)

Maybe ghosts don't stay in just one place. Maybe grandmother only drops by to rearrange the shoes in between other things that she's doing in her rather full afterlife. I don't actually believe in a structured afterlife, but it might be true.

I always thought the idea of haunted graveyards was really preposterously sad, for much the same reasons that you mention. Seriously, the graveyard? Not the library or, er, the pantry? Tragic ghosts, graveyard ghosts must be. Or extremely mischievous, getting larks spooking the "tourists."

[TheAmpuT]

"I think you can haunt a space without having died yet."
Oooooo...now THAT should be your next mad science experiment ;-)

[Sara]

See, I think I already am. If only I had the equipment and staff to prove it.

I may have to get me one of them there grant thingies after all. ;)