confessions of a phlegmatic

pain can make you (by 'you' i mean 'me') do strange things. similar to what i like to call 'pee panic,' when you (me) really have to pee and, being a girl, cannot simply unzip and turn your back and relieve yourself in all manner of convenient alleys or shrubbery in view of the general public. so you walk/drive/ride around with increasing anxiety with no appropriate place to go, and get jittery and distracted and uncoordinated as all of your mental power is concentrated on not. peeing. your pants. or maybe that's just me.

anyhoo, i think i have a decently high threshold of pain, but the malingering cold that thoughtfully went away before i hied me to yosemite decided to swoop back down with a vengeance once i got home, and it settled excruciatingly heavily in my sinuses. i wouldn't say it compared to a migraine (which i used to get frequently from junior high through my early twenties), but when every slight tip of your head causes the pressurized contents inside your skull to suddenly feel like they're seizing on themselves like a vacuum, then perhaps that is the time to consider medication.

all i had in the house that first night was a foil packet of expired sudafed and a couple of expired vicodin. i took both in desperation, and it helped a little, but not enough for me to feel OK enough to go out to buy new drugs at the fluorescent-lit hell of a supermarket. instead i consulted the interweb, with the contrast on the screen way low, and looked up jala neti, a yogic practice i'd learned about in passing at various hippie-love health food stores. this practice involves irrigating the nasal passages or even the sinus cavity with a saline solution balanced to blood salinity.

couldn't hurt, i thought, especially since i was almost ready to bang myself in the foot with a ball-peen hammer to detract from the pain in my head.* i measured out the salt, boiled some water, swished in some filtered cold water, and then shuffled into the bathroom to irrigate my head. after resting the nape of my neck on the smooth rim of the tub, i started to carefully pour the solution into one nostril from my tiny tin teapot – then basically just poured it up my nose and all over my face. (and shirt.) undaunted, i leaned my head farther back and sort of slowly shook my head back and forth (as if in disbelief that i had just poured salt water into my breathing holes). this was actually a messed-up combination of the two stages of jala neti that i had misremembered from my foggy consultation of the web minutes before. i was attempting stage two, in which you (me) introduce the saline solution via the nose and then spit it out via the mouth – without drowning yourself – but, tripped out by the odd sensation of water sloshing around in there, i drained the water out my nose into the tub.

so to finish it all off with the appropriate flourish of ridiculousness, i did some kundalini-style snort-exhaling to get all the water out of my nose, and along with it went some of the gunk that i am still in the process of eliminating from the cavernous recesses of my not-currently-empty head. i did feel a little better afterwards, but ultimately i have sudafed to thank for saving me from the ball-peen hammer alternative.

and though i had to cancel the little birthday brewery gathering i'd thrown together, i felt well enough by saturday evening for dos equis to take me to the park chalet to meet the friends and brother he'd rounded up to surprise me there. there was lounging in adirondack chairs, and lots of small plates, excellent wine and beer, and homemade chocolate cake composed mostly of chocolate, heavy cream, chocolate, butter and chocolate (my favorite!).

in sum, thus far, 33 is feeling quite OK.



* good thing i don't own a ball-peen hammer.

siete de mayo

best part about sunday: dancing horses at the oakland cinco de mayo festival! dos equis and i walked over to international blvd in the sparkly sunshine, stopping to check out the horse show happening in the guadalajara restaurant parking lot. there was a live ranchera band playing songs while cowboys dressed up in shiny chaps and vests spun their crimp-tailed horses in tight circles or had them bobbing their heads and dancing merengue steps alongside one another. there was also a blasé little 6- or 7-year-old caballero with blue popsicle-mouth sitting on his miniature horse and letting moms put their frilly-dressed infants in the saddle with him as he posed for pictures.

nerve-racking part about sunday: you know that scene in napoleon dynamite where he draws a picture of one of the popular girls to ask her to the dance, and he writes something like, 'there's more of where this came from, if you'll go to the dance with me,' and she opens it up and is horrified by the, uh, neo-primitif stylings of the drawing? miss J had kindly agreed to sit for me this weekend so i could get back in the painting groove (though for me it is more like a muddy track i keep veering off of). having not painted anyone's portrait for years, i wasn't expecting anything stunning to appear on the canvas, but i wanted to get a good enough likeness that she wouldn't have one of those freaked out moments of 'oh my god i don't really look like that do i do i' – and, well, it's an OK start but her twin sister said it looked like she was about to kick someone's ass. and she also has a manly strong jawline. she did not, however, look upon it in dismay, and we still have one or two more sittings lined up for me to get it straight.

last night: improvisational jazz/noise performance at 21 grand. eh. V's sunday sessions here in studio four make much more sense to my brain. but it was interesting, and the three of us who went enjoyed a good chat over drinks and belgian frites at luka's taproom both beforehand and afterwards.

tonight: i'm going to yosemite! yesssss.

ultra violent skin block *

cryptic conversation openers from V, my wonderful but eccentric housemate:
'bougainvillea – inside!'
'more space!'
'chest.'
'good day to be under a house.'

V joined us for dinner friday night when i made japanese food – glazed salmon, hijiki (a type of seaweed) with carrots and sesame seeds, cucumbers with lemon zest and ginger, and miso eggplant. my friend gameboy, who sublet my loft while i was in indonesia, also came over to feast before meeting up with friends at lucky 13...where he never arrived. but not because we plied him with lots of good shiraz, predictably rambling conversation, and because V had 1 giant leap on DVD. he lowered the projection screen and turned the surround sound up loud. a beautiful piece of work.

saturday night my neighbor across the hall had her master's thesis performance at mills. she's an incredibly busy experimental cellist – inadequate as that descriptor is – who plays with everyone from moe!kestra! to fred frith. unfortunately, i opted not to attend, as this cold has progressed to the obnoxious-barking-cough-and-phlegm-in-the-diaphragm stage. gross.

though loath to pollute that noise with my noise, i had no problem politely hacking over (not on) brunch with our friend M and G, her ex. M won four tickets at a work raffle for a sunday brunch cruise on the bay. sunday was yet another unexpectedly spectacular, sunny day after months of pouring rain. as everyone else descended on the buffet just being laid out, we sipped champagne on the deck and chatted about such happy topics as GG bridge suicides (this documentary is currently being screened at the SF international film fest), G nearly capsizing just outside the golden gate when a swell smacked their boat down, and how you only really have 20 minutes to swim from alcatraz to SF before hypothermia sets in.

once we'd stuffed ourselves with mussels (on the boat they are called 'muscles'), bread pudding, beef wellington and whatever other artery-clogging items we'd piled on our various plates, we disembarked and stood blinking in the sun, contemplating a tag-team act of very petty theft. since we'd spent our first productive hours of the day being completely lazy and decadent while others were responsibly demonstrating for darfur, we spent the rest of the day continuing our slide downhill. we walked up to north beach for beers at caffe trieste, poked around a musty music/junk shop and then city lights, and then stopped for a wine and bread break at enrico's. then we went all the way out to ocean beach for a pre-dinner beer at the park chalet, before dinner at a secret spot in the richmond. and another bottle of wine. i think my liver is about to expire.

but i have some good color in my face again. my legs, sadly, are another matter.



* from a fake diesel t-shirt B gave me last summer, emblazoned with katakana and the words 'ultra violent skin block'. i gave it to dos equis last week, who looks 100 times better in it than i do.