megfowler.com

(really in no particular order)

1. Hockey
2. Oprah
3. The length of men’s pants
4. How women talk about other women’s bodies
5. Mainstream media vs. new media
6. Celebrity gossip culture
7. Mac vs. PC
8. US Politics
9. How totally pissed off I am by cliffhanger endings
10. Financial priorities
11. Activism
12. Ethics in sports
13. My arguing skills
14. Journalistic bias
15. The weather in Vancouver
16. Chatspeak
17. The relative talent of Justin Timberlake
18. Music
19. How men and women are neither from Mars nor Venus
20. Gun control

And you?

I will write a book. Of essays. About stuff. And also things. And I may publish it myself here. Would you buy it?

I will actually stop being an emotional hermit crab.

I will re-do my bedroom based on a bed like this.

I will buy this pair of boots in Chesnut and make a mockery of everything I have said about them in the past year.

I will start buying fresh flowers once a week.

I will learn to bake bread that is edible.

I will buy this lamp.

I will let go of resenting that bastard.

I will keep sleeping soundly. But go to bed earlier (!)

It’s really hard to say either way.

(To find all the other lists, just click on “listy” in my categories, or search on the term “Friday” right over there —->)

Well, it’s Friday, and I woke up with a dent in my head. I feel like a golf ball. If golf balls only had one dent.

It’s really sore, too, which makes me think I bonked it on something in my sleep, and don’t remember.

That is totally the kind of thing I do. In fact, I’ve done it before. More than once.

I’m not sure why I’m fussing about it so much, then. There always seems to be someone who can tie head dents into the presence of brain tumours or radical mental illness or aliens on the cerebellum. To them I say: STOP TYING THINGS IN. I really can’t do it, not with my OCD brain. I’m already freaking out that it seems to be getting wider.

I’m going to end up in the “As Is” section at Ikea.

AAA!

So, rather than continuing to Google variations on this theme, I’m going with a new mantra: when life hands you dents, make dentmonade!

Without further delay or head-feeling…

THINGS I LOVE

Undented heads
Concord grapes
Kitten heels
The photos that come up on my phone when someone calls me
The way my roommate gets excited about TV show premieres
Deck door open, fireplace ON
Hoity-toity grocery stores
The New Haven boys and Montelongos on Flip This House
Arugula (or maybe just saying it)
Hair bands (both the kind that sing and the kind that hold your locks back)
Stephen Colbert
Cheese parties
Car dancing
Good mergers
Blue skies on a Friday
Bacon Salt
Sleeping! Because I’ve been doing it for two weeks now!
Beanbag shipments by Fedex
Boot weather… and plans to buy some!
The smell of woodsmoke
Men who make me laugh instead of argue
Men who make me laugh WHILE we’re arguing
California tan, just hanging on

And you? Love it up on your blog, or in comments here.

Dude.

Life is complex.

There are many details.

I seem to be wading through approximately 14,000 of them right now.

And drinking coffee.

Because coffee makes it all make sense.

WHY IS THIS PHOTO SHOWING UP ON IMAGE SEARCHES FOR SAN DIEGO?

I totally plan to do that when we’re there.

Tomorrow evening, we’re dancing off into a Californian sunset, and I cannot TELL you how EXCITING this is.

Dry air. Sunshine. Beaches. Palm trees. Peet’s coffee. A new shift key for my iBook at a Genius Bar.

MAGIC, I say. MAGIC.

But before this can happen, I have to:

Finish a ton of work
Do something to my hair to fix it
Answer 89,000 emails
Do my laundry
Pack my suitcase and carry-on
Clean my house
Run errands
Pay bills

WHEW.

I’m a tad scatterish.

If you have any:

packing advice
news on international flying regulation changes
haiku about busyness
questions for the universe
lottery windfalls to share

… just let me know!

Back at it!

1. Juice (how much I love it, how it can change your life, what kind I bought today, do you want some?)

2. My gray hairs (how many there are, how horrifying they appear to me, how I can no longer date 22 year-olds as a result)

3. Windows XP (how much I loathe it, how often it crashes)

4. Blogging (how funny my commenters are, what I’m going to write about next, who I wish I could write like…)

5. Insomnia (how fun sleep would be if I only knew how, what I got done instead of sleeping)

6. My total physical disrepair (how it appears my ear is falling off, what is that rash on my leg, is one eye larger than the other?)

7. Things I should be saving for (everything I don’t have, what do you mean, stop buying coffee?)

8. The weather (why is it raining? why is it only sunny on weekdays? what is it like in san diego right now?)

What do you talk about so often that you drive everyone nuts?

From Chris, who already totally made me smile with this:

“My daughter Mandy (who you might remember did a Meg Fowler CHOOSE bulletin board at Radford University) has now turned it into an ice breaker game!

They asked Mandy “what do you call this game?” and she said “Meg’s Choose Game”. And thus you continue to be immortalized!”

HOW FREAKIN’ COOL IS THAT!

Just click “either or” on my categories over there to see more Choose Ye fun.

Gosh, you’re quiet out there.

Like, super quiet.

I mean, I can see you reading, but you’re all shhhhhh.

Everyone keeps telling me you’re running around doing athletic endeavours in the sunshine or taking a vacation somewhere exotic — anything but reading blogs — but I know better.

You’ve just been at work and reading Perez Hilton — isn’t that right? You’ve been watching Big Brother, haven’t you? And emailing your friends about celebrity jail time? And going to end-of-season sales at T.J. Maxx? And Twittering your every move? And skipping barbeques to play Scrabble on Facebook? And chasing the ice cream man down the street with a 20-dollar bill?

Yeah.

I know you’re not horseback riding on the beach or doing yoga on cliffs or playing frisbee in the lake with your dog.

Let’s just be real here.

I want to know three things:

1. How you’re doing…

and

2. How you spent that summer vacation…

and

3. What you WISH you’d been doing all summer.

Okay! GO!

Yours lovingly and also from indoors,

Meg

I spent the entirety of yesterday feeling really, really dizzy and nauseous.

This is a pretty lame sensation as far as sensations go.

Sensations I enjoy include:

hot showers
footrubs
back scratching
getting my hair washed at the salon
sun on my face
bobbing around in the waves

Sensations I don’t enjoy include:

yesterday

As you can see, unpopular.

I’m not totally sure what’s causing the problem. It could be my latest dose of hormones, since that’s a fairly typical reaction to a new force for good in my system (if not a bit aggrandized.)

It could also be the shock of going cold turkey off my antihistamines, since my major sneeze season is over, and I try and take as little in the way of drugs as possible.

It could ALSO be that my labrynthitis is acting up. I developed labrynthitis after a bout with pneumonia in the early 2000’s, but the symptoms are generally kept at bay by drinking enough water and not letting respiratory infections get out of hand.

So I have no idea, really.

What I do know is that the bus is TORTURE when my head is all swirly and that staring at a computer screen all day is only slightly less wonky. Yesterday, I had to fight off tears at the grossness of it all, until finally my mother volunteered to drive halfway across the earth to bring me home early from work. Which is awesome, and unshockingly so, because my mother?

Awesome.

She also fixed cupboards in my kitchen (non-closers), hung a picture in my room (that she painted), and brought me treats (peanut butter ice cream thingies, pistachios, gingerale, nectarines… and much, much more!)

Give it up for the Judy, if you will. And for the Reid, my dad, just because. He was a part of the fun via MSN when my mom disappeared to the hardware store and is the soul of jolly.

I’m off to a much better start today. I don’t feel sick, per se… just dizzy with some major tension in my head, neck and back. I think that comes from trying to find the best angle to hold myself at/overcompensating for lack of balance. Woo!

I’m making sure that I don’t dehydrate or put off eating and make it worse… and that’s a challenge, seeing as I usually subsist on coffee at work.

Anyway.

THANK YOU so much for your responses to the WORLD’S LONGEST BLOG POST yesterday. It encourages me so much to know that a lot of us have been on the same page and faced the same struggles. I honestly believe being honest about it is a big part of moving forward (not to sound all Dr. Phil, because EW!)

And we all know how good I’ve been at moving forward. So.

Love to all of you from my dizzy brain and my un-dizzy heart.

ALSO:

1. How are you doing this morning?
2. Any good weekend plans?
3. If you could spend the day with anyone right now, doing anything, what would you be up to?
4. Name four famous people or historical figures you wish you could have dinner with tonight…
5. Any lists in particular you wish I’d write?

I’m having one of those weeks where dealing with my health is like dealing with an overtired three year-old.

In other words? You can’t deal with it.

You just want to put it to bed where tears will ensue, and then? Sleep.

Ahhh, sleep.

Sleep would be awesome if sleeping was something I did with any facility, but you can bet I’d be far more skilled at the whole process if I were an overtired three year-old.

And that, my friends, is what we call talking in circles. Thank you. Now I’m dizzy.

But.

I’ve had to come up with things to do instead of sleeping that make life bearable when I’m tripping out on migraines, getting “haha! no baby for you, but how about THIS!” morning nausea, dealing with see-saw mood swings (which I can look at with eerie objectivity, even as I threaten the entire produce section with a loaded banana, weeping for my youth), and indulging in “magic internal sauna” hot flashes.

My current favourite coping mechanism is to focus on things that make me HAPPY. Not that I’m unhappy right now — mostly just mildly irked and impatient with myself and my body. But the more you focus on the things that make you happy, the more you realize just how much capacity for happiness you have and LO! Life is better.

I know what you’re thinking: “Meg, Pollyanna totally invented that. And Maria from Sound of Music.”

Yes, yes. I know. But we’re not going to talk blue satin sashes or chandelier crystals right now, people. That stuff is for nuns and little girls and I am neither (AM NOT! SHUT UP!)

We’re talking about this…

THINGS THAT MAKE ME HAPPY JUST TO LOOK UPON THEM. WHICH IS DIFFERENT FROM THINGS I LOVE BECAUSE THINGS I LOVE DON’T ALWAYS MAKE ME HAPPY (HELLO MEN!) AND YES, THEY ARE PRIMARILY SHALLOW.

Mrs. John L. Strong Red Purse Cards.

This literally made me laugh until I cried at work. Especially the other passengers questioning him.

The Lipstick Mini Calla bouquet. here

This man’s extraordinary eye for style and personality in a photo.

The magical power this could have over my face.

This. Come ON NOW. My future husband is fully a Beaker/Paul Bettany/John Cusack/Jacques Pepin/Tom Brady hybrid (Don’t even try and imagine it, it will BLOW YOUR MIND.)

This mirror. I need a mirror. Not to look at myself in (gah!) but to reflect jolly light about my room.

The entire contents of this website.

I TOLD YOU I NEEDED ONE.

One day, mon cher. One day.

I used to be a camp director. I remain impossibly evil.

A vision of my distant future, as incited by my dear friend and torturer, Eric. He brought his into my home. I swear I found Martin weeping in a corner from insecurity. As much as an iBook can weep. It looks like he’s just sitting there not doing anything, but you can feel his hurt every time the little breathing light sighs.

This t-shirt.

Ahhh, happy.