Another voice

So while writing destroys my voice, while writing for a public audience changes the honesty and true emotions of the speaker, it must be done, regardless.

I had an unexpected call from the doctor this week--a test that I figured I'd breeze through came back inconclusive. Twice. I sat on the phone while my nurse said "Well, you seem to be handling this well."
"yes, it's because you're telling me at work, with a bunch of people around, and I can't say what I really am thinking right now, which is HOLY LORD I AM GOING TO DIE."

So instead I said yes, I'll come in early Tuesday, and you can slurp away a 10th vial of blood from my arm and I won't think you're a vampire.

I spent the evening googling for other people who have inconclusive results, found out it's common in my situation, and thought not to worry. Almost everyone comes back with the real result the third time, on the PCR. So don't despair.

Then there's always that nagging voice in the back of the head, that says "no, no, your result will be the bad one. You are going to DIE. You deserve this bad result because earlier this week you mocked someone having a bad week, because you knew their week wasn't really that bad, that they were being dramatic. You deserve this because you should have been nicer. You don't deserve happiness."

Or there's the voice that says "Having this would change your life, not end it. You'd go on and just be a little different."

And then there's logic, which says inconclusive happens all the time, no big deal.

I just wish I knew now and I wish that I didnt have it hanging over my head for the  entire July 4th holiday. It's a little weird pretending everything is OK with something like this hanging over me, but I remember that cancer results are much scarier and much more lethal. I shouldn't complain.

Destruction?

This is an awesome quote I just read in the Times magazine:

Roland Barthes: "Writing is the destruction of every voice, of every point of view," "Literature is a multidimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash.

Is this real life?

I usually say "Is this real life?" when really bad shit is happening.

But not today.

Today, it's because 2 people want to look at the house and it's not even on the market yet. This is in addition to the 5 or so other people who have emailed me asking for information about the house.

GOOD SIGN.

Either the house is priced right or it just looks really pretty because of the new paint job or we are just lucky to see this much action this quickly.

At any rate, I'm almost afraid to post this because it might jinx us in some way, but I'm really excited. 

Fingers crossed.

Peaceful Dream

Sometimes we have dreams entirely comprised of peaceful moments. I magically had one last night--while I'm not superstitious and don't believe in spirits (much), I sometimes think the dead come to visit you in a dream, every once in awhile.

My grandma came to visit last night, or at least, her house did. I was living in the house with 4 friends and got to choose which bedroom I wanted to stay in. All of the bedrooms were full of items belonging to my grandmother and it was a charming moment to determine which one I wanted to stay in, each surrounded by the beautiful artifacts of the person she was. It wasn't sad, though, it was just full of my grandmother's love for us, the fact that she wanted to care for us a great deal.

In the end, I couldn't choose which room was best because I wanted to pick pieces from all of the rooms to combine into one.

And then I woke up, contented. Thanks Grandma, I love you.

Comedy night

I love my coworkers. On ocassion, I forget that somehow the people working at my firm either have more in common with me than expected or we just get along better than expected. At any rate,  we went to happy hour last night at a bar offering comedy club Wednesday. The comedy was pretty funny, the service was good and I was able to catch up on my old department. Sometimes I miss the old department, even though the new job is fun.

So anyway, I skipped my workout to go to happy hour, which isn't a healthy decision by any means at all. I was going to walk and bike outside after HH, but it was raining. BOOOOOOOO, rain.  Instead I napped and read more of "Let the Great World Spin."

I'm about to give up on that book in a few more sessions simply because I don't care about the characters anymore and I am annoyed that present day novelists find it easier to tell 10 character's stories in 200 pages instead of 1. Perhaps storytelling has just evolved this way, because it seems to be everpresent in the literature we see. Perhaps I should just give up on fiction entirely!

The point though, of this blog, is that I didn't do any exercise. I ate junk for happy hour and woke up weighing the same as I did yesterday.  How I wish for explanations.

HOUSE HOUSE HOUSE HOUSE

Kansas City--AGAIN--last weekend. I think we're turning the corner and nearly finished with everything. Of course, the contractor keeps finding more and more and more things that he'd love to fix.

I know it's because he just wants money--but it's also true that the small things need to be fixed and will affect the sale of the house. So yes, we keep adding those things in and in and in because if we don't fix them now, the buyers will be very picky.  My biggest concern is that the buyers will find some crazier things to fix and we'll NEVER BE DONE WITH THE HOUSE.

At some point, it's just going to be easier to let the place foreclose OR just keep renting it out. I'd really prefer to not keep renting it but at the same time, with the amount of repairs we're doing, it almost makes sense to just try to recoup some of the money.

Sadly, our house was too expensive to make it a true "income generator" house. Real income properties go for under 100K--and there's no way in the world we'll get that low on the house.
And so we beat on....

Triathalon Results

Location	Race Time	Time of Day
Run	34:45	11:12:30
TRN2	1:52	10:37:45
Bike	56:12	10:35:54
TRN1	4:33	9:39:42
Swim	12:39	9:35:09
GunStart	00:00	9:22:31

These aren't amazing times, but still well under 2 hours. Tina beat my bike time by almost 10 minutes, which is great. Thus, she beat my overall time, too.  My swim is pretty slow--I was going perpendicular to the course for a bit, but have some plans to do the outdoor free swim in a bit.

This triathalon was pretty hard.  None of it was physical, but it was scary to not know what to expect, to be there mostly alone (Tina's in a different wave and age group and everything) and to be swimming in the water while realizing that I really suck at it.

Another firsttimer in my age group was nearly 15 minutes faster than me. It's pretty easy to do, shave a few minutes off the swim and shave 10 or 15 minutes off the bike, and voila! Next year, I will be much better.

I will not race again on a hybrid bike. I dont want to say it was an entire disaster, but I was 't happy with my gearring--my hardest gear was not hard enough and over half of them are too easy. I hear it's easy to change out the gears on a bike, though, so I look forward to that moment.

There's also a few other things making my tri slower--but not worth going into on this board--just a lot of mental blocks right now.  Or maybe they're physical?