At any rate, she discusses how having this “label” to apply to herself is a bit of a relief to her, inasmuch as it helps her in her interactions with other people. She gives an example of a good friend asking her to watch her children on short notice, and how her instinct is to say no because she holds rigidly to her previously decided-upon schedule (being upset at the schedule being messed with is apparently one of the hallmarks of such a “disorder”). In the end, she works through her reasons for having the instinct to say no to her friend, and decides they are not valid, and says yes. (See, this is why I wish I could find the actual post and link, I am probably getting something wrong.) ANYWAY, long story short (too late), she is grateful that she can ascribe some of her social awkwardness to something organic and inherent, but that she can work on through awareness.

It has been suggested to me by a well-meaning individual that I too have some variant of Asperger’s syndrome. I am shy, I don’t always especially enjoy social situations, and I do prefer to know what’s going to happen rather than being wildly spontaneous. However, I have spent a great deal of time looking into autism spectrum disorders, curious whether I do in fact fall under that umbrella.

I don’t. I have brought this up with therapists, who have laughed and said, “Heh heh heh, NOPE.” I’ve also taken every online assessment tool I can find and I come up stone-cold average in all but one of them (and that one had questions almost entirely about liking to spend time alone, which I do, because I am an INTROVERT). Yes, I do have some of the markers, but with the exception of the introversion, only mildly and some I don’t have AT ALL (like a propensity for putting things in order — I have the opposite of that).

So I have to come to the inescapable conclusion: I am just selfish. I don’t like my schedule messed with because it is MY SCHEDULE, not because of some unusual wiring in my brain. I like to be by myself because I am an introvert and alone time recharges me. BUT I do like time with friends and sometimes I love parties, even!

This is somewhat sobering, I suppose; I think that the well-meaning individual who suggested this diagnosis for me was perhaps being a little more charitable than I deserve. I need to work on being a nicer person, not to work around something that makes me a little different. (Well, there are a lot of things that make me a little different, but not this particular thing.) Well, life is a practice (kind of like yoga! everything comes back to yoga these days), and I will never attain the full expression of perfect selflessness in my time, but I can keep making incremental progress. (One millimeter is a huge achievement!) So that is what I will try to do.

***

p.s. I don’t have strep. I have some sort of variation of a canker sore, and I have all sorts of topical rinses to apply to it. It should get better in five to seven days; if not, it needs to be cultured (for what, I am not sure, hope I won’t find out).

(Mine was “allouette”. Not expecting any closure on that particular circle.) (Also, for the sake of completeness, Rhett’s first word was “cookie” — now that’s my boy! — and Jasper’s was “trash truck”. I suppose that trash was the actual first word, but we treated it as basically one entity. And he is fascinated by trash trucks.)

***

In other news, I have a horrible canker sore at the back of my mouth, near the tonsil (kind of on the tonsil flap, if you know what I mean?) I’ve had it for a week and it is really painful. I immediately googled “mouth cancer” and “tonsil cancer” (I KNOW) but it didn’t really seem like the symptoms were correct. Plus I don’t dip snuff, so there’s good news — my risk is WAY down, right there.

(How do people with REAL pain do it?? How?? I HOPE for their sakes that they have real good painkillers.)

Seriously, I have a decent level of pain tolerance, although I suspect it is better tolerant of self-inflicted pain than of involuntary pain, if you know what I mean. But this is really, really painful, as in unable to sleep at night painful. I am at the point that I am contemplating a visit to the doctor, but for what? I suppose she might tell me that it is mouth cancer… nah, unlikely. What would a doctor do, anyway? Tell me, “It’s a canker sore, it will go away”? Check for strep, just in case? (This is something that concerns me. I have had this pain for a week now and I had a fever last week, and Nathan said after looking down my throat with a flashlight, that it seemed like there was “more gunk on my tonsils now”. Bleeeeeech. I have no time to drag small children to the doctor’s office.)

So: Diagnose me, internet (and not with tonsil cancer, PLEASE). Ignore it and it will go away? Any amazing homeopathic remedies? I just need to do more yoga? (Had to throw that one in there, right?)

***

My husband has been bugging me about food, lately. As in, he thinks I eat insufficiently, which I definitely do. I figure running made me hungry in a way that cycling and Bikram yoga just don’t. He looked at me while I was getting ready for my shower and he said, “You need to gain some LBs (his silly way of saying “pounds”), I’ve never known you this thin.” (I was actually pretty skinny my second year in Texas, but we weren’t really involved yet, and then when we did start courting it mostly consisted of epic cooking sessions, lubricated by delicious craft beers. You can imagine the super skinny didn’t last then! I suspect it is a combination of the fact that I eat significantly less sugar than I did before (gone is my three-cookie-a-night habit — never thought I’d manage that one) and also I just don’t have much appetite most of the time. I’m not sure, yet, if this is a problem, but it could become one, especially in light of my past. I don’t know. I guess I am saying it just to put it out there. I don’t think I have a problem problem, but I am not exactly the best judge of that. FYI, my current weight and height are 5’4″ and 112#, which is slim but hardly anorexic territory. I can ALSO blame Miriam and the fact that she sucks the life out of me with her heavily-represented-by-breastmilk diet.

***

So, I am writing this while consuming an epic salad. If you have had dinner with us in the past few years, you have likely had one of these salads. The funny thing about them is that they are best prepared individually (which is actually a lot easier than you might imagine). Anyway: take a large salad bowl. Fill it with a large-ish serving of raw spinach. Top with the following: One chopped Roma tomato, two sliced green onions (or cebollitas, if you can get them), one-half an avocado, 8-10 sliced olives, and some chopped cilantro (optional – we just happen to be cilantro lovers – but we ate this salad for years without it and it was still super yummy) (honestly, the olives are optional too if you hate olives, but why would you?). Toss with a large spoon of creamy garlic dressing. We make it at home and a batch lasts a couple weeks. You want to peel the cloves of a whole head of garlic, chop them in the food processor, and add 5 parts mayonnaise to 3 parts mustard to 2 parts balsamic vinegar to one part olive oil and blend. You can adjust for taste by upping various ingredients — very forgiving.

So this is what I am eating tonight. I will have a tuna sandwich too, I think.

***

I have a little notepad of prompts to write about and one of them was “Dooce split”. I can’t remember what I was going to say about it, but I do want to point out that THEY ARE NOT DIVORCED OR EVEN DIVORCING! The whole ‘net seems to be talking about the “Dooce divorce”, but her HUSBAND even said they were in a “trial separation”. So I wish people would quit saying Dooce is getting divorced. It’s false information. Perhaps they will reunite. It DOES happen, I know people it has happened to.

***

Did y’all see all that stuff about SOPA earlier this week? I’m not going to say anything about the laws themselves, and lord knows especially in light of my vanishing post that I am NOT a huge fan of government intervention, but I shall admit: While reading some of these doom and gloom scenarios, like “If SOPA passes, Facebook will shut down! No more social networking! The internet as we know it would cease to exist!” I had this rogue thought that if the internet actually, factually, CEASED TO EXIST, I feel like my quality of life might just improve a whole lot. Which really got me thinking — I spend a lot of time reading blogs and on Facebook and stuff, and it’s so hard to disconnect because I do get to hear from people I wouldn’t normally, and it is nice. But if it were all gone? I think that my quality of life might be better.

While experiencing that revelation of sorts, this year’s Lenten sacrifice became obvious (besides the meatless one, which we are doing again). The only internet activity I shall partake in is: (1) checking the weather, totally innocuous; (2) checking my email, occasionally necessary; (3) listening to Pandora which isn’t exactly internet; and (4) my favourite food blog, because without her I wouldn’t be able to come up with delectable meatless meals for 4 days! (I might actually blog MY OWN blog, but it will definitely be protected over Lent if I do it at all.) This sounds like a lot, but ponder all that I have left out.

***

I had a post prepared about how Bikram yoga (“hot” yoga — 105* and 40% humidity in the studio) changed my life, but I feel like a footnote at the end of a post isn’t enough to do it justice. Since my injury I’ve been in the studio a lot and I just feel like I am learning SO MUCH. I have a whole new fixed firm pose, a whole new and kind of amazing standing bow pose, and in only 6 weeks, a significantly strengthened spine. I was just focusing so hard on one thing — running — that I forgot that I was running myself into the ground. This yoga is amazing; it is a really good workout (JUST TRY IT!) and it is healing me, not only physically but also emotionally. It’s not making me more relaxed, like so many yogis will say, but holy moly, I think that it is making me nicer. As you know, I am not only an introvert, but I am also shy, which creates the impression to others that I kind of have a “F you” attitude. But this yoga! I love it so much, I want to talk to the new people and encourage them to come back, I talk to the others who are doing the 60-day-challenge and ask them how it is going… I am borderline friendly. This is amazing. Anyway. Bikram Yoga. It’s AMAZING. More on this later, I imagine.

Much love, y’all.