Starting the long, hard, boring search for a new vehicle

My car, Eddy, will be ten years old next month.  I just spent lots and lots of money getting his 90,000 mile tuneup on the theory that I would have him several more years.  But small problems are creeping up.  The "multifunction switch", i.e. the stick on the steering wheel that controls the various lights, started malfunctioning this weekend.  The dents where he got shot are growing larger and ever more rusty.  The seatbelt doesn't retract like it used to.  The driver's seat wore through to metal several years ago.  Also I am reminded that maybe he has started going through oil, and I need to check the level now.

Basically I need to start thinking about a new vehicle, because at some point Eddy will either to be too expensive to maintain, or too annoying to continue driving.  Or both.

I would buy an identical replacement, except of course they quit making them.

It's hard for me to shop for a new car because there are so many of them, and none of the sites have an option for "not awful", "comfortable", or "good for back pain".  Also "cheap to have work done".  I used to have a requirement that I be able to transport a ladder in it, but now I can use JD's truck so it doesn't really matter.  My car seldom gets used to ship large object anymore.

Do they have an option for "doesn't make my dog carsick"?

Oh for the love of Mike

 

You know what this means, don't you?  I have to do it AGAIN.  At the next level of contest.  And this time I have to wear a costume, because it's Halloween.

Dear District 36:  Please field somebody funnier than me.  I'm pretty sure this contest doesn't go to the regional level, but if it does I definitely don't want to go there.  I realize that I'm not that great of a speaker, but Trouble was a really funny cat.  I can't help it.  And I don't want to win.  (The next level involves karaoke.) So get your A game going.

What on earth am I supposed to do with a trophy?  Put it with my best GPA award from 8th grade?  It doesn't look like it would even be good for killing crickets.

JD suffered through today's contest but didn't enjoy the incessant clapping and congratulating, so I'll suffer through the next one alone.

How do you feel about savasana? Do you feel that it's essential?

My yoga teacher was sick tonight.  Class was cancelled.  The backup yoga teacher is taking a cake decorating class with her daughter this session (and let me tell you, she is super super pleased to be doing so.)  So I just came home and ate leftover pizza, and now I'm having some kind of bad-food-no-yoga guilt.  The pizza was pretty good though.

I love my yoga teacher.  Seriously.  She is fantastic, and I am lucky that I blundered into her class.  But she's not going to last forever.  She's had cancer the whole time I've known her, and she's spent the last year getting chemo.  She feels like crap a lot of the time.  At some point, she is going to decide it's time to retire.  She is not a young woman.

So, I feel that it would behoove me to start looking around.  I'm going to have to interview some yoga teachers.  What do I say?  I'm coming up with some questions even now.

• How do you feel about plank?  Do you feel that it is essential?  How about side plank?
• Do you adjust the poses to fit the decrepitude of the students in your class?  Do you ask your class about their disabilities?  Like, every single time you teach a class?  Because people feel different on different days, you know.
• Do you insist on inversions?  Do you provide alternate poses for your students who are fond of their various arteries?
• Do you have a good backup instructor?  Does her daughter insist on mother daughter time?  Or anything having to do with baking?
• Are you okay with groans?  
• How about jokes?

And so on.  I don't think it's going to be so easy to replace her.

In which Pluto is unhelpful

I tried an experiment this morning.  Pluto has been taking his antibiotic/apple juice /karo syrup  solution by syringe quite nicely, so I had hope that he would eat food soaked in it.  But it was not to be.  I mixed the solution with some pellets, and doused the mass in still more karo syrup.  Not only did he not eat it, he never even tasted it.  He just sniffed it and then gave me a look.  And that was that.

I gave in the inevitable and prepared another syringe on the spot.  He gracefully submitted to me haltering him and putting the medication in his mouth.  He just wasn't going to do it on his own.

I worried about how I would get his medicine into him on the last day of the course of medication.  I have found a solution, fortunately.  I asked one of the other horse owners if she would do it.  She's in college right now, and on winter break so she has the time to drive out to the farm.  She agreed.  That takes a load off of my mind.  I will still medicate him morning and evening for the next several days, which is an annoyance.  Not so much the medicating as the driving.  I went through a tank of gas last week because of driving back and forth to the farm.  Normally a tank of gas lasts me two or three weeks.  But beside the expense, I miss the time given up to commuting between the farm and home and work.  I most keenly feel the loss of two hours a day from my free time.

Although I have been medicating him religiously on schedule, I haven't been able to check to see if it's helping.  I plan to bring him out of the field tomorrow and try to convince him to let me look.  He is at times oddly shy about his wiener.

I wouldn't piss off a sysadmin, if I were you. Certainly not electronically.

I am not one to act out in public, usually.  I find it embarrassing.  But I am so fed up that I am about to do so anyway.

JEN WALCZAK will not leave me alone.  She started emailing me out of the blue several years ago about her Pampered Chef something or other.  I asked her to take me off her mailing list, and JEN WALCZAK agreed.  But she didn't.  She keeps sending me her damn monthly email about chefs in pampers.  I have no interest in chefs OR pampers.  I set up an email filter to move JEN WALCZAK's email directly to my trash, but sometimes I see it on my phone first and it pisses me off all over again.

So, if any of you have a chance to do business with JEN WALCZAK, otherwise known as jenwalczak@yahoo.com, I suggest you pass up the opportunity or you will never be rid of her again.  If you see her on the street, turn aside.  Do not let her get hold of your business card.  She is relentless.  You don't need to be interested in cooking, or pots, or in fact know who she is or what she does to be hounded by this woman for years on end.

Just so you know, JEN WALCZAK, I've never been to a Pampered Chef party.  I have no interest in them.  I have no interest in you, and I wish you had never darkened my email server's doorway.  I'll be trying to get off the list again, JEN WALCZAK, for all the good it will do me.

Oh dear god stop looking at me

So, you may not know this but I am not super outgoing.  Online, yes.  I will tell total strangers about every incident in my day.  I will do so at length, and occasionally with good spelling.  I organize my thoughts .(... ish)  I start somewhere and end somewhere.  No problemo.

I have no problem with small groups, either.  Small groups of friends, small groups of strangers, whatever.  I can talk to you.  I can smile and laugh and make conversation and track what is being said.  I can make a funny.  Perhaps I occasionally lose my train of thought, but who doesn't?  Plus I've had many head injuries so some occasional loss of trains is to be expected.

However, if we increase that small group to small crowd level?  Everything quits working.  As soon as my hindbrain processes that all attention is on me, my autonomic nervous system goes to hell.  My ears buzz, my face flushes, my heartbeat races, and very shortly after that my mind goes blank.  I lose my command of English.  I actually have a somewhat easier time speaking to groups in Spanish because all of my being is concentrating on vocabulary and conjugations.  But in English, my first language, the language of my heart?  I am an idiot.  Shortly, a silent idiot, as my mouth runs out of pre-planned words and my brain gives me that hands-upraised, "I got nothin' " look.  I am lucky if my brain retains the ability to guide me back to my seat.

And it's not that I'm scared of public speaking. The idea does not give me the heeby jeebies.  I found out the hard way that my brain had seceded, one day, when I went up to the conference room as the Nerd in Residence to explain to all the scientists how to use the X-Terms for their meeting.  No big, right?  I had given the same talk forty or fifty times to individual users.  And, I knew most of the people in the conference room.  So no one was more surprised than I when my brain went blank.  Luckily, people never follow directions anyway so it didn't really matter what I said.

Hand in hand with my brain problem, I have become less comfortable with crowds on every level.  Crowded restaurants, movie theaters, conventions, shopping malls.. hate 'em.  I couldn't swear to you that there is a link, but it sort of walks like a duck doesn't it?

All of that was a really long introduction.  Which I could not have said out loud to you if we were sitting in a room together.

This year, during my annual review, my manager asked me about professional goals.  I told him that I was long past the time when I should have been writing and presenting papers in my field (i.e. nerdism.)  I don't think he had realized the extent of my disability before.  I filled him in on the heart, ears, face, brain thing.  And it turns out that he had a solution.  Toastmasters.  (He didn't mention the whole "I was president of Toastmasters" thing.)  He (being really good, by now, at persuasive speaking) persuaded me to join Toastmasters to overcome my issues with public speaking.  Much as I wanted to, I couldn't disagree with it being a good idea.  It is completely obvious that I need to solve my problem.  So, I agreed.  I said that I wanted to wait until after my hike this year, and then also after some huge changes that had to happen at work.  But I set a definite starting date - the first meeting in November.

Today, I went to my first Toastmasters meeting.  It was awful.  For one thing, I *hate* anything resembling parliamentary procedure thanks to my early introduction to it through youth groups.  (I am aware that the early introduction was supposed to prepare me for competent use of the parliamentary procedure in adulthood rather than imbue me with a lifelong distaste for the stuff.  It didn't work.)  Also, thanks to Three's Company I have an instinctive cringe-and-avoid response to other incompetent public speakers.  And nobody is at Toastmasters because they lo-o-ove the public speaking.  Just sitting there while nervous people gave presentations made me want to run away.  But I didn't.  I clapped on cue, mostly, and when they pushed me to join the group in giving a one minute speech on a topic which they handed to me, I did it.  Because that's why I went.  You have to suffer to achieve some goals.  And I suffered.  I did okay for thirty seconds, and then my brain seized up, and then I had to just stand there and say (out loud) "I guess I'm done."  My manager, who was judging grammar and vocal pauses, if I recall the phrase correctly, said that at least I didn't use any "um er ah" type words.  So that was good.

At the end of the meeting I had to introduce myself.  Which I did willingly.  I have no problem with standing up and getting started. But again, thirty seconds in, I had no idea what I was talking about and I just trailed to a stop.  Oh god.  I have got to get better at this stat because I can't stand the torture.

Afterward, I walked back to my office.  My heartrate was still increased.  My chest was tight.  I felt jittery.  And it all STAYED THAT WAY FOR HOURS.  I could seriously have used some xanax.

I'll be going back to the next meeting in two weeks.  And I will keep doing this, hammering my brain on its thumb, until it gives up and lets me talk in public.