One Thanksgiving about 20 years ago, I made brownies. “They taste like….” my younger brother said, chewing around a piece carefully as he furrowed his brow in concentration, hoping to find just the right word, “…they taste like paint .” I snapped my fingers and nodded because he’d done it. He’d found the right word. Even though I had never actually tasted paint, not even one tiny lick of the wall when I was a little girl, they did. Those brownies tasted like paint. There were a lot of excuses made for me that day from well-meaning members of my extended family: the oil was probably bad; the butter might’ve been salted; maybe the chicken that had laid the particular egg that I’d used in the recipe had been feeling a little “off” that day… “Or maybe she just sucks at baking,” my older sister suggested as she floated through the kitchen to refill people’s drinks. Well, of course she would say that. She was the one hosting Thanksgiving that year...
Growing up, my mom was never on time picking us up. It wasn’t because she was working or otherwise busy. It was because her passions included sleeping a lot, sitting on the couch or the toilet reading magazines, sunbathing by the pool (a metal cattle trough that was admittedly one of her better drunken purchases), talking in hushed whispers to one of her secret boyfriends on the phone when Dad was out of town for work, and eating massive amounts of vanilla ice cream drowning in chocolate syrup with Oreos crumbled on top while screaming at us to “Stay away! The ice cream is mine! Can’t I have anything to myself?!” If anything stood in the way of one of those things, well, it could just wait. I remember one Friday night in 7 th or 8 th grade, my best friend (also named Lisa) and I were going to the mall, and it was my mom’s turn to take us there and then pick us back up later. As Mom swung into the mall’s parking lot to drop us off, I shot a glanc...
The other night I was texting with my older sister when I sent this one around 9:35 PM: Alright, I’m going to bed. I’m not feeling well. She latched onto that pretty quickly. First off, I’m a night owl so going to bed at 9:35 PM, even though I wake up every morning at 5, is unheard of for me. Second, I hardly ever get sick. I attribute that at least in part to my immune system being so strong because I’m like a goat—I’ll eat anything * —and my body has had to learn to overcome the challenges I’ve thrown at it. (For more tips on how to maintain a healthy, balanced existence, subscribe to my life coaching page, linked at the bottom of this post.) What do you mean, not feeling well? What are your symptoms? My sister fancies herself a nurse, so as I began to explain how I’d been feeling lately—light-headedness, shortness of breath, body really heavy, heart pounding hard like it’s working overtime, not being able to finish a workout—she told me, wit...
Comments
Post a Comment