Apparently, TypePad has been having some technical difficulties, and there’s a message reading "you may have lost some data if you posted an entry between 12:30 am and 10:30 am PST." 

JUST MY LUCK.

I swear, last night I posted the BBEE — The Best Blog Entry Ever.  The one that was brutally honest, heart warming, yet inspirational AND hysterically funny.  The one that would clinch that Bloggy Award thing someone does…the one that was sure to lead to a faithful following of avid readers and banner ads out the ass.

What’s that? Oh, you’re not really buying that?  Rats!  I was hoping I could use TypePad as an excuse for actually having…nothing…much…to…..zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Ooops! I fell asleep for a second there I was so bored.

Anyhoo, here’s what’s going on around these parts:

*My crazy mother sent me an e-mail the other day.  Was it about how to integrate Chinese healing into traditional Western medicine, you ask?  No.  Was it to ask how I’m doing, you know — just to check in and say ‘hello’?  No. Was it about how thrilled she is I am her oldest daughter and would I like to join her for tea this weekend?  Definitely no.

The subject heading was:

Spiders that can kill now are hiding under toilet seats! From India!

Now besides the somewhat awkwardly-worded sentence, this is disturbing on many levels.  For one, she sent this in all seriousness, as a WARNING, about these alleged spiders (from India!) that are hiding under toilet seats, just waiting to bite my nether regions. 

The e-mail contains an excruciatingly long discourse about two women who got very, very ill after eating in a well-known chain restaurant.  But not from food poisoning as you might presume.  No, these women suffered from fever, chills, vomiting, paralysis and finally DEATH.  Long story short (not to minimize these poor women’s deaths but people I only have so much time here), the local health department realized that the lethal Two-Striped Telamonia spider was hiding under the toilet seat. 

This spider, according to the e-mail, has immigrated from India to inflict pain, death and destruction on the American people.  They could be anywhere!  So please (and I am quoting here) before you use a public toilet, lift the seat to check for spiders!  It can save your life!  And please pass this on to everyone you care about!!

[Undertone of e-mail:  I used to be sane, until I had you little brats]

*In other news, I have now brewed two more vats of the vomitous Chinese tea since my last post.  I have to change formulas every 3 days or so, depending on where I am in my cycle, so today I started a brand new batch of dragon lips, unicorn horn, scabs and, oddly enough, essence of Two-Striped Telamonia!  Weird, huh?  Anyway, it is still disgusting but I am soldiering on.

*BeBop started his new job at Company A and it’s going pretty well. But, he still hasn’t heard back from Company B.  He interviewed two weeks ago, and when he checked back in with them yesterday, they said they’re still interviewing candidates, so it could be a while before he hears anything. So, I think he just needs to settle in at this job and wait and see what happens. It’s been hard being on pins and needles these last couple of months, every time he calls me I think did her hear?  Is there news?  And that gets old.

*And, finally, regarding the Great VaJayJay Vigil of 2006…I just don’t have any updates.  We haven’t decided if we’re going to try another clomid/IUI cycle nor have we seriously discussed IVF. I am in total denial.  I want to think that something, some miracle, will happen and that the acupuncture or the herbs or the fact that BeBop is finally working will make a difference.

So, for now it’s all about doing the needles, choking down the tea, trying to adjust to (and trust in) our new life and hope for the best.  Hope that things become clear and I figure out what to do next.

Oh yeah, and watch my ASS so I don’t get bitten by the lethal spider (from India!)  and you all should do the same.

Update!  From India! (Has that gotten old yet??)  People, I think these Chinese herbs are driving me crazy.  Seriously. I feel crazeeee emotional, and since it’s only CD14, I can’t figure it out.  I almost started crying at work, and even now that I’m home I feel like I’m on the brink of tears.  For no apparent reason. I am outraged (outraged, I tell you!) that I have to get my ass on a train and go up to San Francisco to meet BeBop for a Giants game.  The nerve! 

What is with me?  Have any of you Chinese medicine gals felt some emotional swings while on the herbs?

And this — THIS — is a typical afternoon for me:

My Mom calls me at the office, even though I’m frantically trying to get out of here on time and finish packing.  Like an idiot I pick up the call.

Me:  Hullo?

My Mother:  Well, what is BeBop going to do about his job interviews?

Me:  He is going back for another round of interviews today, and then will probably decide between Company A and Company B when he gets more information.

Mom:  OH!  We’ll ask the wire.  She says to her friend: "Ask the wire about Company A vs. Company B."

Me:  The what?

Mom:  THE WIRE…the whirley gig! She says, exasperated that once again I don’t know what in the frigging hell she is talking about.

Me:  The wha…??

Mom:  THE DOWSING ROD (she says like I am a total freaking moron).

Me:  Oh, THAT.

Me:  Audible sigh.

(Crickets.)

(On her end of the line, her friend is holding one end of a metal dowsing rod, a short pole bent at a 90 degree angle that spins either clockwise or counter clockwise; one direction  means ‘yes’ and the other direction means ‘no.’) (You know, according to the dowsing experts out there.)

Mom:  It’s saying comme si comme ca.

Me:  Why are you speaking French?

Mom:  Pay attention!  The wire is saying he could take either offer but Company B seems to be a bit stronger.  The wire is really going crazy now!

Me:  Okkaaaayyyy…thanks for the advice.

Mom:  Bye!  Call us later and tell us if the wire was right!!

Welcome once again to MY.CRAZY.LIFE.

As a postscript, my Mom got her ‘wire’ from a man named Joe, who is like 150 years old.  She met him at a conference back in 80s when he was giving a class on using dowsing rods for divining purposes.  He comes to family events and is so old, with such a tentative grasp on reality, that she has to reintroduce each one of us every single time.  He likes to call my friends by different names, like he’ll say "hello Pamela" to my friend Michelle who he has just met.  When we say, "Ah, Joe, her name is MICHELLE,"  he’ll say, "Well, her soul name is Pamela so I’ll call her that." 

And then?

Then he’ll bust out the dowsing rod and it will start spinning around a million miles an hour.  He’ll say that she (Michelle/Pamela) needs a healing, which sends my mother into screeching fits of happiness, as if she is about to literally witness the second coming of Jesus Christ.  Whirley Gig Joe (as he’s affectionately known as) will then ‘heal’ Michelle/Pamela of a future case of breast cancer that she’s now not going to have, thanks to him.

So just to recap, here’s the scene at any given family BBQ:  100+ year old Whirley Gig Joe spinning his wire around my friend’s chestal area while she stands there, horrified, being called a different name, while my mother practically weeps with relief that she’s being healed, right there in her very own kitchen.

Then there’s the time my mom dragged me over to his condo for a ‘healing’ and while he whirled the dowsing rod around and around, talking about some trauma I experienced 1500 years ago (it might have had something to do with a horse I think)  a squirrel sauntered in the front door and began snacking on nuts he had left on the kitchen counter.  And this alarmed no one.  But me.

Yes. Good times, people.  GOOD TIMES.

So. Yes, growing up in my house was…well, strange.  Not all hippie-pot-smoking-parents-in-the-hot tub strange, but strange nonetheless. 

This exchange was very typical of a normal evening at my house:

Scene: I am watching ER in the family room

Mom: Watson, WATSON!  What are you doing?

Me:  Watching ER, what do you want?

Her:  Do you have a camera I can borrow?

Me:  Why?

Her:  Do you remember David David?

ME:  (distractedly watching George Clooney as the fabulous Dr. Doug Ross) David David who?

Her:  David David who WHO?

Me:  Wha……WHAT are you talking about Mother?

Her:  (exasperated that I cannot keep up) David David the young man who almost died from electric shock but came back from the light and now goes by David David, that’s who!

Me:  Ohhhhh-kayyyy…well, what do you want a camera for anyways?

Her:  Well, they say at night a vision of the Mother Mary appears on the wall of his dining room and I want to take a picture.

Me:  Ohhhhh-kayyyy…well, I’m sorry. I don’t have a camera.

Her:  You’ll be sorry! I mean, who doesn’t want a picture of a vision of Mother Mary!!!!

And that, ladies and gents, is a true story.  And it’s good context for the story about the healer, because stuff like this happens to me All.The.Time.

So, my mom calls me last week and says she has a ‘great new healer that I just HAVE to go to," and I was all, "okay, I could really use some healing about now."  She says he’s from Korea and is called the Key Master, which immediately makes me giggle and think of that John Cusack movie where he plays Lloyd Dobler and there’s a key master at the party to keep the crazy kids from driving drunk.

So off I go, and thankfully my poor husband has a pretty adventurous side and not only agreed to go with me, he said he’d have a healing too!

He drops me off at this nondescript office building on a busy street, to go find parking, and I take my shoes off and walk up some stairs.  There’s a youngish Korean man there, who introduces himself but has such a strong accent I can’t really understand him (but I’m pretty sure he doesn’t call himself the Key Master).  I suddenly feel really weird being there alone with him, because it’s a Saturday night and there’s no one around.  I mumble something about telling ‘my husband who’s waiting downstairs’ that it will take about 30 minutes, but when I get down the stairs BeBop is nowhere to be found.  But I say it anyway, thinking if he IS a crazed ax murderer, believing my husband is down the stairs might dissuade him.

So, he brings me in this small room with a massage table on it, and thankfully I get to keep all of my clothes on!  I lie on my back at first and close my eyes.  He starts making these really weird sounds — like "mmmmMMMMMMM" and "shooo shooo shooo."  It’s like he’s clearing his throat and wearing a respirator or something.  It’s really weird, people — and if I say weird, you know it’s really weird!

He proceeds to lay his hands gently on me (at first), the whole time making these bizarre mmmmMMMMMM and shoooo shooo sounds.  At one point, he covers my eyes with his hands and does the shoooo shoooo-ing right in my ear. I don’t know whether to laugh, cry or scream.  At this point, I’m thinking one of two options is likely to occur:  1)  I am hacked into small pieces and placed in various dumpsters around the city or 2) I am sold into white slavery.

Lucky for me, neither of those options came to pass. 

He continued doing the ‘healing,’ moving around my body, touching my neck, back, shoulders, legs, and feet. It was sort of like a massage but he pressed really hard instead of a nice soothing motion. Like REALLY hard.  At some points, I started to tear up it hurt so bad.  He pressed this one point on my foot and my eyes flew open and I almost propelled myself off the bed into the air.

Then, halfway through he had me turn over so I was face down, looking through a head cradle (like they have on massage tables).  This is where things started to get freaky.  (This?  THIS is where things started to get freaky, you’re asking??), but yes, it did get weirder when he climbed on the table with me and kind of straddled me.  I guess he assumed this position to get better traction for the hideously painful pressing he did all over my neck and upper back.

About this time I happened to open my eyes and look down, and I could see his feet.  He was wearing socks, but socks that were like mittens!  I’ve never SEEN such a thing!  It was like each toe had its very own place, just like fingers in a glove.  Have you ever? 

Finally, he finished up the ‘healing’ with some more breathing and some burps.  Yes, you read that right.  Actually, they were more like belches and I’m thinking, how rude.  What did he eat before this appointment?  But then, he explained that’s his way of releasing toxins he picked up from ME.  I guess that makes ME the rude one.

Anyway, it was so hard to understand what he was saying I had to guess a lot, he talked about moving energy around and releasing the aforementioned toxins.  And then?  And then I didn’t feel much different, just relaxed when it was over.  This could have been from the healing, or the fact that I was not in various garbage bags scattered all over town nor was I on my way to serve as someone’s overseas sex slave.

But I do have to say, the next day my whole back and neck felt much better — not as tight as they usually are.  And after BeBop’s healing (which included the same cacophony of sounds) he also felt much better and fought off a flu he was getting.

So who the heck knows?  I do believe some people have a gift and can channel positive energy for healing purposes.  But I also know there are a lot of charlatans out there.  I’ve probably met a fair number of them.  I just try to keep an open mind and go into things with a sense of fun and adventure.

As a postscript, my Mom called me the following day and said, "Uhhmmmm…I may have forgotten to tell you that the healing is actually quite painful."

"A-hem, yes, you DID IN FACT leave out THAT LITTLE TIDBIT of information and I AM COVERED WITH BRUISES AND IT HURT LIKE A MOTHER FU–"

"–Okay, okay…well, you should go back to the Key Master and see if he can help you get pregnant."

She didn’t mean it like THAT, geesh.

My Mom believes in all conspiracy theories.  All of them.  She’s made me too paranoid to actually list them here, but believe you me, if it has to do with a small cabal of evil-doers controlling every aspect of the world’s geopolitical, economic and social conditions, she subscribes to it.  She attends an annual Conspiracy Theory conference:  (Yes, they actually have those.)

Me:  She can’t come to B’s graduation ceremony??  She’s spending the entire day there?!

Dad:  Apparently so.

Me:  Do they serve lunch?

Dad: Yes, but everyone is too paranoid to eat it. 

My Mom goes to India each year to visit her Guru and has taken me with her twice.  The first time was great; the second time was not so great.  The second visit, while lovely on many levels, included up to seven hours a day of sitting on a marble floor.  Marble, while beautiful, is not the most cushiony surface on which to rest your bum for an extended period of time.  This situation was exacerbated by the fact that I fractured my tailbone on my 21^st birthday (I know!) and suffer from an acute pain in the ass when forced to sit for too long.  This agony, combined with waking at 4:00 AM each morning and the 104 degree heat, did not translate into a wonderful vacation.  There was also the near-death experience my sister had after contracting some lethal virus, and the cockroach invasion which culminated in the two of us spraying the giant bugs with hair spray, but it’s all too traumatic to relive at the moment.

My Mom believes that earth changes will cause all of California, and much of Nevada, to fall into the Pacific Ocean following a catastrophic earthquake. (For any Arizona readers, you could soon be the proud owners of beach front property!)  Consequently, she makes my Dad keep food (some kind of crazy bunker food that lasts like 15 years) and about a million gallons of fresh water stored in the garage. And a raft. But because my Dad doesn’t subscribe to these prophesies, she threatens that he will have to swim for it and by God, he’ll feel stupid then.

She despises microwaves and yells when she catches me spiking my coffee with flavored Coffee Mate.  Yum!  But what is a little shot of vanilla heaven for me is pure unadulterated poison to her. 

This is a typical dinnertime exchange, one that actually happened when we went out to dinner to celebrate her birthday last year:

Me:  Um, hi.  Yes.  I think I’ll order the flank steak, well-done please.

Mom:  Did you know that my friend’s sister’s cousin’s hair dresser just died?  It was a horrible and gruesome death.  Of an undiagnosed brain disease that could have been Mad Cow DISEASE?!?  They just don’t know enough about this…

Me:  Well, I guess I’ll order the salmon then.

Mom:  Aren’t you concerned about mercury poisoning??

Me:  I’ll just take a salad.  Sigh.

When I was about ten, my Mom made me take EST.  EST was a course coming out of the whole human potential movement of the 1960s and 70s.  It was, I believe, usually taught in a large group setting and the goal was to get you to get IT.  I still have no idea what this means.  I only remember scant details about the two-day weekend seminar (where my Mom dropped me off in the huge ballroom of a San Francisco hotel) and they are as follows:

1.  Everyone had to get up on stage and tell the entire group about the most traumatic thing that had ever happened to them.  EVER.  I remember telling the story of how, during my family’s brief move to New York when I was about three, my Poodle drowned by falling through the ice of a pond across the street.  I cannot remember if this charming little yarn was a crowd-pleaser or not.

2.     They would not let you go to the bathroom.  Like, at all.  Until the end of the day. 

3.     They served pretty good chicken for lunch.

So, to recap:  adults are mean authoritarians who want you to get IT and make ten year olds confront their fear of public speaking while detailing their most damaging life experience to date; holding your pee all day is not a good thing; and despite the trauma endured I could still enjoy a good chicken breast.  And that, my friends, is what I learned at EST.

There is this whole other story of how my Mom took me to a psychic surgeon when I was about 14, but that will have to wait for another day.  Oh!  And the photo of the Russian healer that she taped (with actual Scotch tape!)  to her head after falling down and cracking her skull on the floor of a hotel room.  Yes, that’s a good one too.