MH, Peanut Butter Zig Zag, Fear of Flying

I have been eating from MH (mouth hunger in OO parlance; non-physical hunger) for a couple of days now. It seems to have started when I visited the website of someone I was once involved with and saw the photos of him and his lovely family vacationing all over Europe. Ten minutes after leaving his site, I was awash in Venezuelan chocolate wrappers.

Tom and I once saw the Sklar Brothers at a comedy festival and thought they were hilarious. One said, “I just got married, which means my brother’s apartment is now my porn annex.” Tom’s apartment, which is right above mine, is my no-longer-favored-foodstuffs annex. When I get tired of something, I give the rest to him. In this way, he has recently acquired, among other things, two unopened jars of dill pickles. (“In case you get pregnant,” I explained.)

This came in handy last night, when I marched upstairs and knocked on his door. “I’ve come for my stuff,” I said. “What stuff?” he asked, edging out of my way. I went into the kitchen and peeled open the freezer. “This stuff.” A pint of Peanut Butter Zig Zag Soy Delicious Pure Indulgence non-dairy frozen dessert.

I went back downstairs and ate it all, followed by some homemade butter cookies with lemon frosting fresh out of the freezer. Then I finished reading Don Lattin’s book Following Our Bliss: How the Spiritual Ideals of the Sixties Shape Our Lives Today, and began Ian McEwan’s novel Saturday. If you’re wondering why you don’t read more here about the exciting San Francisco nightlife, it’s because my nightlife consists of sitting in my comfortable chair reading a book. Thelonious often is lying on the back of the chair, on a pillow I call the Cat Nest.

Earlier, I’d given P. a call. I don’t know if I’ll take him out again (I probably will), but it’s easy enough to give him a call most days. He’s not allowed to call me. He said he’s not worried that smoking will give him another heart attack; he hopes he’ll have a heart attack, as opposed to a stroke, because the former is more likely to be lethal.

For a while, every time I talked to him he asked when I was going to take him to the movies. I finally said, “Pretend it’s the fifties and I’m the boy and you’re the girl and you have to wait for me to ask you to the movies.” That worked. I hate to be asked for stuff. It takes the fun out of giving it.

I bought the ticket yesterday for my annual trip to Ann Arbor to see my parents. Usually once I do that, I have low-level anxiety until the day of the trip, as I severely hate to fly. Once the plane takes off, all is well. What I hate is the claustrophobia I feel right after I get on the plane. I always try to get an aisle seat toward the front. (Which means I have to keep going to Orbitz’ website to make sure I still have the seat I requested.) When I board, I make a point of looking particularly cheerful, in case anyone who’s already seated is also freaking out, and also to reassure them that I’m not the kind of person who has a box cutter in her backpack. Then I try to “drop the story and feel the feelings”— tune into physical sensations instead of my thoughts. And I ask myself, “How is everything right now?” Everything right now is always fine.

To be on the safe side, I also carry a little bottle with about six Ativan in it. I once took Ativan when I had to have an MRI (speaking of claustrophobia) and it is a miracle drug. What had been impossible became downright pleasant, but you don’t feel high. I called my doctor’s office to plead with them to consider giving me a prescription for Ativan. Before I was halfway through my spiel, the person who answered the phone said, “Where do you want to pick them up?” On a plane, I tell myself that if I really flip out, I’ll take the Ativan, but I’ve never had to yet.

San Francisco is considering charging motorists to drive into a downtown congestion zone, which I think is a fine idea. London does this. I heard this morning on the radio that the American embassy in London refuses to pay the charge, claiming that diplomats are exempt. Humiliated by my country once again.

My coworker just came over to apologize in advance for training someone at her desk near mine today. She hoped the noise wouldn’t be a problem. I said, “Don’t worry; I have tin foil and masking tape.” As soon as the trainee sat down, I said, “Keep it down, eh?” (I recently gave this coworker and two others a bar of Venezuelan chocolate apiece for all the coughing they had to listen to when I was sick. One of them said her husband said, “Hey, where’s my bar of chocolate?” She told him, “You didn’t have to listen to a lot of coughing.”)

On my ride to work this morning (it’s raining and raining, but I’ve been riding my bike every day except for acupuncture days) I realized I was extremely pissed off. This very often goes hand-in-hand with bouts of MH. I think I must be mad about something or other, and then I turn it inward by eating what my body doesn’t want. Twice this morning I chased motorists who had given offense; twice this morning an unpleasant scene was avoided when the motorist got away, which is good.

I decided to try to pretend that menopause has set in and that I will be enraged out of my mind for 10 years. What would I do then, to avoid ending up in prison? I would have to pause often and take three breaths, I think.