Welcome To Welcome

20 July 2002

Can somebody get me a new body for my birthday? I'd settle for a new back if you can't afford the whole thing, but this one is really driving me nuts. Hungry! Not Hungry! Hungry! Tired! Not Tired! Not Hungry! Tired! Do Something! Stop Doing That! That Too! That Too! Hungry! Not Hungry! Do Something Else!

Aaaaaagh. I have this policy of listening to my body. If I have a craving for tomatoes, I figure my body has a good reason for that. I feed it tomatoes. (I'm distinguishing between cravings and desires to taste something, here.) I eat when I'm hungry and stop when I'm no longer hungry and don't start when I'm not hungry. I try to go to bed when I'm tired and wake up when I'm not tired any more. (I have trouble controlling the last bit, though.) But for the last half of this week, it's like I'm trying to be reasonable with an ill-mannered toddler. "Okay, so what do you think we should do now?" I ask the body, reasonably, and the body says, "Booger." Or "Poopyhead." Or "I know this girl named Katie and she went to Duluth this summer? Because her grandma's in Duluth? But then once they got to Duluth they wouldn't let her go swimming because it was too cold? So she went swimming anyway and it was too cold and she got really cold and her lips were bright blue like a Martian? And she's not my friend any more." And the brain says, "Ummm, okay, but what do you think we should do now?" But the body isn't listening any more, it's wandered off and is trying to stuff a peanut butter sandwich into the VCR.

Figuratively, of course.

I blame my back for this, really. Or else The Pill. Those are my standard things to blame when stuff isn't right with the body, and why stop now? But it doesn't seem fair that the whole thing should mutiny and regress just because of back knots or The Pill. (Yes, Mom, I know you spent most of my childhood on the applications of "Life isn't always fair." But still.)

So yesterday I wandered around outside and danced around the apartment and did the dusting and the mending and cleaned the bathrooms and reread The Silver Chair and ate strawberries and generally attempted to see if any of that would placate the body. It did not. Today I'm probably going to make Mark go with me hiking up in the hills. Then if it's too steep and my legs complain, I will know what they are complaining about. See what I mean? It doesn't mean that my body will stop being weird. It just means that I'll know what it's being weird about. I hope.

If Mark was being weird, I don't think this would work for him. But he isn't, or no more than usual, so I think it's okay.

If I don't get my mental soundtrack switched to something, anything else, the brain is going to be the next to go, though. I have three songs alternating in my head, plus occasionally my friend Christopher's voice saying, "Welcome to Welcome!" (We drove through Welcome, MN, every time we went to and from college on breaks, and Chris would always say that. Then he would pause. Then he would ask if I supposed the police drove a Welcome Wagon. I hope he meets a nice girl soon, because his Daddy Humor skills are obviously at advanced levels.) I've got Billy Joel's "Scenes from an Italian Restaurant" in my head (you know, the one about Brenderanetti). And the Refreshments' one about how she took all my horses when she left me last night. And They Might Be Giants' "Number Three" ("There's just two songs in me, and I just wrote the third...."), sometimes in English and sometimes in Greek. Not that I know Greek. But they did record it in Greek. And in the middle of all of that, Christopher saying, "Welcome to Welcome."

It's going to be a long day.

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