Shoes, Ships, and Sealing Wax

Don't think. It can only hurt the ballclub.

It was a low-key birthday, which is fine. I prefer it that way...I'm too shy to be the center of attention. I'm still scarred from the year we had dinner in a Mexican restaurant and they made me wear a giant sombrero when the staff sang "Happy Birthday," although I did get a free flan. And it was a Tuesday, so the restaurant wasn't exactly crowded. But still.

But still, I didn't hear from my parents, which surprised me. That's what I get for forgetting their anniversary every year, I guess. And I was feeling like crap, so we didn't go out to dinner. The feeling like crap has been going on for three days, actually. Sunday night I had wicked, wicked heartburn and then intense pain in my left shoulder. As I was lying there awake (because it hurt too bad to sleep) I was musing...heartburn and pain down the left arm, aren't those signs of a heart attack? But I reasoned: I'm young, my cholesterol is all of 140, even my blood pressure is back to normal. I have zero risk factors for a heart attack. Plus I'd be embarassed to call an ambulance, because it'd wake the neighbors.

When I was still alive on Monday I figured it probably wasn't a heart attack, but the pain was unrelenting. No sleep Monday night. On Tuesday I finally said screw it and took Tylenol PM to knock myself out, but today I have felt hungover and out of sorts. (I at least have a theory, via a vegetarian friend, for the pain...she said that after several months of not eating meat, my body was producing less stomach acid. After a week of eating like I did over the holidays, I'd put my body back in meat-digesting mode, and my "detox" effort is probably confusing things. Oh, and she assured me that left-arm pain goes with indigestion, or so they told her friend in the ER when he thought he was having a heart attack.)

So maybe I should go get a cheeseburger. I did have a Snickers today, which is a bad sign that I'm pms-ing. Normally I'm indifferent to chocolate (Really. I know that's a rare thing in a woman, but it's true.) and for years I was also immune to cravings, but since I've been on the hormone therapy for the endometriosis, I will occasionally be gripped by a need to for Snickers bars, even if it means selling beloved family members. (In a pinch, chocolate-covered pretzels will do.)

So I'm pms-y, and in pain, and I'm another year older with nothing to show for it. And an old buddy of mine called tonight because he'd tracked down a guy we went to school (grade school, junior high, high school) with. I haven't seen guy #2 in eighteen years. Turns out he's a oncologist at a little place in New York called, what was it, oh, Memorial Sloan-Kettering.

Which is awesome, and I'm not surprised...this guy was smart (and was already busting his ass) when we were 12. And he's married with three adorable little girls.

Now, I don't want to be a doctor, nor do I want three kids regardless of cuteness, but somehow this was the final thing today that made me feel like a huge thirty-six-year-old failure. Somehow I don't see myself sending back a picture of my 17 rats and a note that I only loathe my job some of the time.

So I'm thinking depressing things, and pulling out an old yearbook I see the autograph from a friend who didn't make it to 36, successful or otherwise, because he shot himself when we were 20. And imagining him as he should be now (slightly rounder in the face, with three little girls in Christmas dresses) is crushingly sad. And for some reason I remember that January 4 when we were in seventh grade, the year we had every class together except first period, when he got into each class before I did and wrote "Happy birthday Nic" on the chalkboard.

My heartburn and shoulder aren't as bad tonight, but now I'm thinking that if I'm going to sleep tonight I'll need to find a way to stop thinking.

Posted by Nic at January 5, 2005 08:29 PM