I used to do most of my writing, homework, and blogging from this desk:

Uninspiring, isn’t it?

I thought for a long time about getting a new desk, but I really like this one in a lot of ways. It is solid. Heavy. Has lots of little cubbies. Yet the oak finish and the brass-and-porcelain hardware were so dated. I had a mess of cables and clutter everywhere. Something had to change.

It was time to paint.

Here’s what it really looked like, under the clutter:

Faux-oak back panel? Adios!

As part of the solution to the storage issue, I decided to mount my flat-panel monitor on the desk so I could put my laptop under it and run all the cables behind it, out of the way. I used to have it set on a book to get it to eye level. Cables were a huge part of the mess in the first picture. (Never mind the beer and the mac and cheese.)

So I built this brace with a couple of pieces of wood and gave it a few coats of paint. This was meant to go up on the back of the desk to hold the monitor arm. I used the same mount that I used on my TV that I put on the wall in my bedroom a few months ago. It’s perfect for my 20″ monitor.

But despite the fact that I measured and thought I had everything right, the monitor ended up lower than eye level. No good. This presented another problem – the monitor mount slides over the top of the backpiece, which is mounted on the brace. But the monitor is too tall for me to do that if I mount it any higher! I can’t get the mounting over the backpiece.

Soooo, I had to leave the monitor on the brace while I re-mounted it. This was scaaaary… I was so afraid I was going to drop it and kill the screen. But with the aid of a stack of books, I was able to balance it just right and get it screwed back in where it needed to be.

When the monitor was in place, I started in on a few more storage solutions. Since I planned to eliminate the big chunky desktop box where I previously stored all my pens and pencils and stuff, I decided to turn the keyboard tray into a drawer. I found these metal mesh bins for $3.00 each at Wal-Mart and tacked them each in with a penny nail. They even matched the silver-mesh desk accessories I’d already had for years. Perfect!

Then for the cubbies over the printer, I bought some plain cardboard magazine files at the Container Store. I was worried that sliding them in and out would chip the new paint surface, so I hot-glued some felt to the bottoms. I used the same felt to line the shelves of the cubbies over the main part of the desk as well. These files were actually too tall for the space, so I cut down the tops a bit and then finished them off with a little ribbon to hide the cut edges.

Those now hold all of my printer paper, stationery, receipt files and notebooks. The final touch was the back panel of the desk – no more faux-oak fiberboard, but I needed something to pull it all together and work with the dark color of the desk and the woodwork in the room, the light color of the files, and the dusky purple of the walls.

I spotted the perfect fabric at Hobby Lobby, and with the help of my trusty staple-gun, created a new back for the desk. I even worked it out to use panels of fabric behind the monitor section, so I could run all the monitor cables behind one panel and then up through another to the laptop – so there’s not a single cable dangling down from the monitor.

All of the desktop cables are clustered right around the laptop and then go right off the back. Some new brushed metal hardware is dressing up the drawers. And I covered the desktop with a few cheap pre-cut glass panels to protect the paint from chipping.

I’ll never be one of those people who has a clean, minimalist desk. It just won’t happen. But this is darn close, and I think it’s awesome.

I am in love with the fabric panels and how they tie in all the colors of the study, plus the pale blue of the living room right next to it. It’s not too cutesy but not too boring (and the coordinating ribbon was a nice bonus). I love my new magazine files and my little mesh-bin drawer. I love how the paint color matches the color of my bookcases and the lovely old woodwork and molding in that room. I love the free space from having my monitor up and my laptop under it. I can just set the keyboard on top of the laptop when I need the space in front of me to write or read.

And I love that now I have a desk where I love to blog. Hello again, guys!

That sounds a little harsh, doesn’t it?

Maybe not harsh exactly. Provocative, perhaps. It piques thought. But it sounds very black-and-white. A square is not a circle. And I hated seeing that phrase bandied about on several blogs in the last month or so because if there’s one thing modern publishing ISN’T, it’s black and white. This colorful Internet actually makes many things into hazy shades of gray.

This was drawn to my attention by a post on David’s blog in January, in which he referenced the conversation sparked by a post on Modite.com called “Bloggers are not Writers.” What struck me about both David’s post and Rebecca Thorman’s post on Modite was the way the authors worked off the dichotomy that a person who types is just one or the other, blogger or writer. On the other hand, the conversation in the comment section of those posts DID bring this fallacy forward in a huge way, and it got me thinking about labels.

I work in healthcare. A doctor is a doctor because he/she had gone through a specific academic program and taken a very nasty test designed by a national association and applied to every medical student in the country. You must pass this exact test, every one of you, to become a doctor. That is black and white. From there you can take advanced training to be a surgeon or a rheumatologist or a pulmonologist or any other sort of specialist you can imagine. Anyone can be trained and get certified in First Aid or CPR or other medical care things, but to be a DOCTOR, everyone must pass the same test.

Yet having a degree in Journalism makes me a journalist just as much as having a degree in French makes me a native Gaul.

It’s not always so cut-and-dried.

The open-source nature of the internet blurs the lines we’ve known for years. A journalist works for a professional news organization. An author has had a book published. And so on. But in this age of user-generated content, many of the gatekeepers that applied those labels are gone. Whining for the good old days of traditional publishing and the labeling of the profession does you no good now.

I have a blog so I am unquestionably a blogger. But what if a publishing house came to me and said “We’d like to publish some of your blog posts.” Am I suddenly a writer then, even though they want to publish what I wrote as a blogger?

What if I decide on my own to make my blog posts into a book and publish them on CreateSpace, get an ISBN, sell on Amazon, and place my work permanently in the Library of Congress? I can do that, you know. Would that make me a writer? Or am I a blogger with a book?

David made a point in his post about how a writer is not a writer until he/she gets paid for doing it. I respect a lot of his opinions but this one was a bit of a sticking point because although it seems to draw a line on where to place the labels, that line is extremely blurry.

I could get royalties off my CreateSpace book. Am I a writer now?

I can make money off of ads on my blog and paid posts, should I choose to do something like that. Am I a writer? Or should I call myself a professional blogger?

What if I just made the argument that it’s part of my job to write? I write newsletter articles and abstracts and things that are published at national conferences. And I get paid to do my job. So am I a writer?

Gray. Endless hex codes of gray.

User-generated content has reduced the definition of the word “writer” to a quibble over semantics. If all I did was blog, I’d have no problem just calling myself a blogger. But even though I’ve never had a book published, I have no problem calling myself a writer. Because I am WORKING AT IT. Not just on my blog, that’s a separate animal. I am working on the craft, as I have been for years. I am working on a piece of writing that may or may not ever be picked up by an agent or a publishing house. I may put it on CreateSpace someday if it’s not. I may trash it if it sucks. And I haven’t made a cent from it.

Am I a filmmaker if I practice my craft but my films that don’t sell? Am I a musician if I work hard at my art and never cut a professional album?

One commenter on the Modite post offered the intriguing parallel of trashy romance novels and award-winning literary novels. Are they both the product of WRITERS? Should the author of the award-winner be offended that the romance author also calls herself a WRITER?

Seriously? Boo-hoo.

There are bloggers. There are writers, and some writers blog. There are vloggers. And there are some filmmakers who make vlogs.

I’m not a writer because I’m a blogger. But I am a blogger. And I am a writer.

What are you?

Well, I’ve felt a little off.

Things have been happening and I’ve even taken photos of a few things, intending to write witty and engaging posts about my recent escapades with paint and power tools. But everything I wrote just looked blah to me. I hovered over”post” at least a dozen times in the last ten days, and I just never made the click.

Sometimes it feels weird trying to pull meaning and insight out of my everyday doings. I try to do this. I often use my blogging to make sense of things, to piece things together so that the world seems more cohesive and explainable. But when there’s nothing dramatic going on, what is there to write? What is there to do but just live and keep on living until there is something finally worth writing?

That looks depressing, and there’s the problem with even just writing this post – I’m NOT depressed. (This time, anyway.) I’m fine. Everything is just coming out all wrong, and I think that because I don’t feel like I have anything that simply MUST be said, I just haven’t said anything much. There’s no sense of urgency, none of that deep-seated need to spill my guts. It comes when things are really great or really awful – you know the moments, where you have to write it or you’ll go crazy, those moments when you don’t even think before you click “post” and you can just breathe a sigh of relief what it’s all OUT.

At times like that I don’t give a shit if it’s written well or not. Blogs are narcissistic and meant to be cathartic.

But when I have time to construct a thoughtful and well-written post and I just CAN’T write it? It frustrates me so much that I don’t even want to sit back down and try again until I feel that must-tell-the-world feeling again.

So today, I’m actually going to click “post” because I really want to know what you fellow bloggers do when you can’t write the way you want.

Are you comfortable posting what might not be your best writing?

A man of late years was admitted to the emergency room with pain in his leg. They hooked him up to a few machines to check his vital signs, and noticed that his oxygen saturations were in the low 70s.

That’s like breathing nothing. That’s like being, well… DEAD.

But he was sitting up and talking to the nurses. All of his other vital signs were in normal ranges and he didn’t exhibit any signs of difficulty breathing. The staff panicked when they saw that number on the monitor, though, and scrambled to put the man on supplementary oxygen.

With the tubing placed and the oxygen flowing, the man’s oxygen saturations jumped up to a normal range in the mid-90s. And then all the rest of his vitals started going crazy. His heart rate went up. His blood pressure made a jump. And he was coughing and struggling to breathe… until they took the oxygen off him, and his sats dropped back into the 70s and all other vitals returned to normal.

HUH?

It emerged that the patient, a cigarette smoker of many packs per day for fifty years, had all the classic lung damage you’d expect. But he didn’t have emphysema or lung cancer. His crappy lungs had adapted themselves so well to the ever-increasing damage over the years that they were able to function in a less-than-optimal state and still sustain life.

That’s some crazy shit. But that’s evolution at its finest.

I bring this up because of that whole detox thing I’m interested in. Last week, before I was able to see my doctor about the herbal system, I decided it couldn’t hurt to start drinking more water and eating better beforehand. So I committed myself to 64 ounces of water per day, no more fried foods or candy, and no more soda.

Take a wild guess at what happened.

Not only did I have the major caffeine withdrawal (I expected that, of course), I had more stomach upsets and sleeplessness without fried food or caffeine. I actually felt DEHYDRATED from drinking that much water – my skin and lips were painfully dry. Every time I’d have a salad for lunch, even with dressing and some chicken on it, my blood sugar would drop in the early afternoon and I’d have to slug a bottle of orange juice just to get enough natural sugars in me to function the rest of the day at work.

Then on top of that, I got a cold. And I just couldn’t take the stomach aches AND the sniffles.

So I’m back on Diet Dr. Pepper and McChickens and peanut butter cups for now because my body simply cannot handle the cold-turkey quit of everything crappy that I’ve fed it. It just straight up REBELLED when I tried to cut out fried and over-processed foods and replace them with greens and fruit! The caffeine withdrawal I was expecting, that’s normal… but what about the rest of it?

Can you have a physiological addiction to grease and sodium like you can nicotine? I really want to know.

The doctor said the herbal thing is fine, so the new plan is to sloooowly cut out those foods over the next two weeks or so, and then do the detox system.

Besides, it would be pointless to start a diet before the Super Bowl parties anyway, right? Beer, nachos, beer, pizza, beer, little hot dogs in BBQ sauce in a Crock Pot, beer…

What’s your addiction? Have you ever tried to quit?

Crap. Snow is falling and the sidewalk looks slick, so we struggle into long underwear and hiking boots. It’s finally time to help my boyfriend’s brother move his stuff out of my boyfriend’s house and into his new place. We are not happy to be pressed into service on a slushy, cold, Football Sunday, but at least he’s leaving. We had told him in advance that we’d help until the noon kickoff.

By the time we get to E’s place, Brother has started piling random crap in the back of the U-Haul in no practical fashion. There is slush all over E’s floors, clothes on hangers are strewn around the living room, half-packed boxes lay open in the dining room, and Brother is flinging things haphazardly into a laundry basket.

“You said you were packed,” I say accusingly. “You didn’t use any of the good boxes I brought you.”

“I am packed. And I had these boxes,” he said, gesturing to a pile. “Those can go, by the way.”

I already want to curse him because seriously? He’s had months to pack. He’s had the key to his new place for over a week and hasn’t moved a damn thing. He waits for a snowy weekend when he knows everyone would rather be at the bar for the games. He ASKED for good boxes and I brought him some, the nice ones with handles and lids.

And now I am carrying a Crock-Pot box held together with duct tape, with a block of knives poking dangerously out the top.

I lug it out to the truck and hop into the back, pushing things around to make space for the couch, the chairs, the big television, and all the other stuff he’s been storing in the basement since he got kicked out of his old place and had to move in with E five months ago. It will be so good to have him gone, I tell myself as I shuffle and stack, just deal with this for one more day, one more day…

“Everything’s out of the upstairs,” Brother says when the truck is about three-quarters full. “Let’s go.”

“You still have a bunch of boxes in your room,” E points out.

“Yeah, well, I haven’t decided about those. I might give that stuff to the Salvation Army, I dunno. But why move them twice?”

“Because they are taking up space in MY HOUSE,” E says flatly.

“Whatever.”

“We’re not making a trip till this truck is full,” I announce, so we troop down to the basement. I start grabbing things and Brother stops me on every other item – not sure about this, might give that away. It’s classic Brother, never making decisions, waiting till the last minute for everything and still blithering, expecting everyone to sympathize with poor him.* Five months of tension finally snap, and out comes The Crazy.

“What do you mean you haven’t DECIDED?”

“I just need to think for a day or two if I should keep that – ”

“You have had MANY days. You had Saturday. And Friday. And all last week while you had your new place. And all the last five months while you kept talking about moving out, to pack properly and make these decisions. Do not call people to get up early on a Sunday and help you when you haven’t done your part! You are wasting our time, so get your shit together!”

I storm off with a box, not caring if it was meant to go or not. It was going.

I felt bad for a little bit. But good GOD, he was on my last nerve, after everything he’s done to E, his own little brother who took him in, and after everything he’s done to take advantage of both of us – up to and including opening MY Christmas presents and eating MY food while he gambled away his paychecks and borrowed money because he was broke  – E and I used to practically live at his place, and lately we haven’t even slept there because Brother has made it so miserable. It was that bad.

We finish loading the truck and drive to the new place. I carry an armload of his on-hanger shirts upstairs and lay them on his bed.

“You can hang those up,” he calls

“No, I’m making that your ‘deal with it’ pile,” I say, stomping out to the truck to get more. I could have brought them all in one load if they’d been in a box.

E and I schlepped back and forth angrily for another hour. We were late for kickoff, we were wet and hungry (who asks for moving help and doesn’t have pizza or beer?!), and when we left, Brother asked when we’d be back.

I told E later that I felt a bit bad for yelling. “Don’t,” he laughed. “He deserved it, and it was pretty funny. He kept looking at me like I could somehow shut you up, and I just smiled and said ’she’s right, dude.’”

I think I secretly hoped that he would change, that maybe if he heard from someone other than his dad or his little brother – who has fought with him all his life and told him this a thousand times – that he’s a rude and irresponsible bum, maybe it would make something click. You know, confirmation from a third party. But I realize now that I may as well have been yelling in Welsh, for all it was worth. E explained to me that his brother is like a dog: he hears loud noises and sees angry looks from humans, but he cannot associate them with his actions.

“How was moving?” E’s best friend asks when we get to the bar. Said friend is familiar with the horrible living situation, of course.

E tells my story.

And I get a slow clap.

———————-

* There were actually several other instances where he treated E and me like total crap that day, but they make the story too long. Trust me. He deserved this.

I’ve been with The Hospital for seven years this week! In honor of this momentous (to me) occasion, I bring you a reprint of something you’ve probably never read in the first place. This is from long ago when this was just a baby blog called “My Red Stapler” and I was a wee tot of 21 when the story took place. It’s about a weird thing that happened to me not long after I started working at The Hospital.

And it was an eye-opening experience….

Originally posted as:

Um, there’s a body by the elevator… anyone?

June 2006

I was only a few weeks out of orientation, working as a unit secretary. Not a lot of people actually died on the unit I worked in; if they are terminal, they know they’re terminal and they go home so they can die in peace, without us jabbing them with needles and force-feeding them green jello. Usually, the people who actually die on that floor are the ones who surprise us.

Mr. Patient wasn’t a surprise – we knew he was going, he knew he was going, and the plans were in place to discharge him the next morning with hospice. He just jumped the gun a bit. When his son came up to the desk an hour after my shift started and asked if he could see the doctor, I told him the doctors would be in soon on rounds. I had been taught from Day One that one does not interrupt the doctors in a discussion (as they were at that very moment, right behind me where Mr. Patient’s son could see them but thankfully not hear them, since they were talking about golf). He said again that he really needed the doctor to come to the room, and I explained again that the doctors would be in very soon, it was almost time for rounds, and could I get the nurse to bring him anything in the meantime?

He leaned across the desk and scowled at me. “Well,” he said loudly, “my dad just DIED and I think I need the DOCTOR to come in and pronounce him.”

Guuuhhhhh…..

The golf conversation screeched to a halt and I sat down, speechless as the doctors clamored around and looked at papers and asked questions and finally went to see the patient’s family. I knew there was something I was supposed to be doing… ah yes, there, in the back of my orientation manual was the checklist. Okay…notify physician, that’s done, call spiritual care, will do, call expiration tech…

“What’s an expiration tech?” I wondered aloud.

“He’s the dude with the body bags,” said the CNA, passing by my desk. “Bags and tags.”

What a job, I thought. I called spiritual care, the expiration tech, the nursing office, the clinical manager, everyone on the list – check, check, check. Spiritual care came and consoled the family, a social worker appeared to suggest funeral arrangements – it all went on around me in a blur as I went back to the daily grind of answering the phones, processing orders and scheduling exams.

About half an hour later, admitting called. “We have a patient for room 25,” the girl said.

“Um, 25 is still…occupied.”

“You discharged Mr. Patient thirty minutes ago.”

“He died so I have to take him out of the system. But he’s still in there. The family needed some time and the expiration tech–”

“Well, I’ve got a patient in the Emergency Department who needs a bed on your unit now, and that’s the only one open. You guys need to move that guy out of there, NOW.”

Click.

I told the charge nurse, and miraculously, the family cleared out and went into a meeting room with the chaplain and the social worker while the expiration tech bagged and tagged. Or so we thought.

The orderlies rolled Mr. Patient by my desk on a stretcher with a sheet pulled over the raised rails so the outline of his body was obscured from view. Away they went on the service elevator, just as a housekeeper showed up to clean the room. The expiration tech filled out some forms for the chart, handed them to me and left as the patient from Emergency rolled past my desk and into room 25. It was perfect timing.

A few minutes later, the service elevator opened and a confused-looking orderly pushed the stretcher-with-a-sheet-over-it back in front of my desk. Mr. Patient had returned.

“Why are you here?” I asked him. “Why is HE here?”

“Uhhh,” he mumbled. “They said the tags was wrong and to bring ‘im up, so I brung him.”

He shoved a crumpled transport log in my face. I ignored it. “Who said the tags were wrong?” I demanded, looking around desperately for a charge nurse, any nurse, anyone who had been here more than three months and was better-equipped than I to deal with a body in the hallway.

“The guy in the morgue. Could you sign this? I got another trip to do.”

“You can’t just leave him here!” I wailed.

“I’ll put ‘im back in the room,” the orderly said, kicking the brake off and starting toward room 25.

“There’s a patient in there now.”

“Where’s your empty rooms?”

“We don’t have any. Please, just wait while I call the morgue and straighten this out and then you can take him–”

“I’ll put ‘im here,” he said, pushing the stretcher into an alcove by the elevators. He grabbed the transport log from me, not caring that I hadn’t signed it, and disappeared.

Breathe, I told myself. Call the morgue and tell them that the idiot orderly just left a dead man by the elevator.

“His tag was wrong,” the man in the morgue said when I called.

“What tag?”

“His toe tag. He has the wrong tag on his toe. That one goes on the bag and there’s no tag on the bag so you have to do them over before we can take him. Identification purposes. Go look at it.”

“I am NOT looking at it.”

“Better call the expiration tech.”

Click.

So I called the expiration tech. I explained the situation frantically. “You’ll come up and fix it right away?” I pleaded. “He’s in the hallway, we have no rooms–”

“Those tags are right, it’s that guy in the morgue who’s all backwards,” the tech grumbled. “Go look at the body, there’s a white tag on the toe and blue tag on the bag, right?”

“I AM NOT LOOKING AT IT!” I said again. I couldn’t, physically could not go look at Mr. Patient’s toe. I’m the newbie, the secretary for chrissake, why should I have to go look at the toe? I looked again for a nurse – WHERE were my nurses?

“Call the guy in the morgue back, tell him–”

I mustered all my meager courage. “No, YOU come up here, YOU look at the tags, and YOU call the morgue back since YOU are the expiration tech and there is a body in MY hallway.”

I slammed down the phone and a nurse finally appeared. “I need to take Mrs. Brown to CT. Is anyone using that stretcher?” she asked, pointing to the corner by the elevators.

“Mr. Patient is,” I said wearily.

“But he–”

“Came back,” I finished. “The morgue sent him back and said his tags were wrong and there was no empty room to put him in and he’s there and I called the guy and he wanted me to look at the toe but I couldn’t go look, I really couldn’t and so I told him–” I was gasping for breath and trying hard not to cry. “And Mr. Patient’s family is still in the meeting room and if they come out they’re gonna see him and I told the guy and he wanted me to look at the toe, but I couldn’t because I’ve never seen a dead body before and I couldn’t go look at the toe and–”

The nurse was wide-eyed and furious, but as she opened her mouth to curse the expiration tech to the seventh circle of hell, the elevator pinged and he reappeared. Blind to our hysteria, the tech trotted over to the stretcher, unzipped the bag and placed a white tag on the toe and a blue tag on the bag. We watched, mouths agape, as he silently pushed the stretcher onto the elevator and he and Mr. Patient disappeared just as the red-eyed family emerged from the meeting room.

Once again, it was perfect timing.

The nurse and I could do nothing but shut our mouths and tend to the living.

It’s so easy to only see the short-term when you’re looking forward. But what about when you’re looking back?

I have been so tired lately. Physically tired, mostly – sometimes I just lay in my bed with my brain on, on on… writing the novel or a school assignment or a blog post in my head but so exhausted that Iwon’t even get up to sit at my computer and put words on a screen.

So this week, I blamed it on the post-vacation slump.

Then I thought about it and realized I’ve felt this way for a long time.

Last week I just thought I was relaxing.

The week before I blamed the pre-vacation madness of getting everything done before leaving.

Before that it was post-holiday blues.

Before that it was pre-holiday blues.

Before that it was NaNoWriMo exhaustion.

And of course I can blame that bipolar monster of mine any time I can’t think of a better reason.

Wishcake had a post up the other day that touched on cleansing and detoxification. In the comment section, several people recommended various programs to try or avoid. It all piqued my interest, so I went to work on The Google.

On one website, I checked “yes” in about 75% of the boxes for toxicity risk factors. That’s everything from having silver fillings (like I can help THAT?) to working in a place with wall-to-wall-carpeting (again, not my fault) to being around smokers a lot (I don’t myself, but my friends have vices) and especially my diet (that one’s my fault). Almost everything I eat is processed, carbonated, pre-packaged, preservative-packed, sodium-happy, and low in actual nutrients.

Oh, and I drink. Sometimes rather a lot.

So, according to several websites, this could be the reason why…

• I am physically but not mentally tired so often
• I have a lot of tummy upsets, upper and lower GI
• I have a visible belly pooch post-eating
• I get a lot of headaches
• Water weight, water weight, water weight. (Beats me how I have this since I hardly drink water, but it’s there.)

I eat crap food and I know it. Too much junk, not nearly enough fruit and veg, and I am horrible water drinker. Apparently, these things could not only be contributing to my weight gain, but also to the buildup of a whole lot of nasty stuff in my digestive system, my liver, my kidneys, and my blood. I’ll spare you the details some of these websites go into, but trust me: EWW. I know that my diet is entirely my fault.

Because I absolutely cannot fathom the idea of giving up my beloved Diet Dr. Pepper forever, I’ve been looking into short-term cleansing systems that require a few weeks of massive (for me) diet changes, plus a shit-ton of vitamins and other herbal things. Not the scary plans where you only drink maple syrup and lemonade (WTF?), but just the sort of plan where I’d cut out junk food, fast food, alcohol (o noes!), carbonation, some meats, white carbs, and a few other things – then add in super lots of water, veggies, fruit, and certain fiberous things. You know, the stuff I should be eating ANYWAY. And, of course, whatever horse-pills of detox herbals go along with said plan.

I tell myself I can do it short-term. Supposedly I will feel so lovely and fresh and clean that I will stop craving such crappy food and will instead want the sort of healthy things that got me feeling so much better in the first place. And starting a short-term program doesn’t seem quite so intimidating as “I will never eat McNuggets again.”

There are always risks to these programs. One is that if it doesn’t work, I’ll crave not healthy things, but more and more tacos and peanut butter cups. And of course, what about all that stuff in the pills? Will I have nasty side effects like some people claim? Will the herbs clear out the good as well as the bad bacteria, making me vulnerable to infections? Will they interact with the medicine I already have to take every day?

Good patient that I am, I am starting this with a trip to the doctor who prescribes my meds, just to see what she has to say about interactions, etc. I have that appointment scheduled for next week. And of course I’m reading a ton of reviews, good and bad, about a lot of these various cleansing and detox systems.

This might be a good first step. What do you think?

On the advice of several of his coworkers, we went here:

Let’s get something out in the open right now. My family grew up going on camping trips for vacations. I’m totally good in a tent with a sleeping bag and eating food that’s been cooked over a fire or on a little camp stove. So, try and imagine my eyeballs when I saw that we got to stay here:

Here’s our hotel, smack in the middle of this beachside lineup.

Suffice to say, I felt a little country-come-to-town wandering around that place. I was constantly asking E who I was supposed to tip (anyone who arranges things for you or gives you something you asked for) and who I was not to worry about tipping (anyone who brings you something you didn’t ask for, or anyone who assists you while you are in a bathing suit and obviously do not have money).

I took advantage of the free steam room and the seven-headed shower in the spa, enjoyed the complimentary L’Occitane bath goodies every day, and got an amazing pedicure. We had one meal at the restaurant and one meal with room service just because we were feeling lazy. But beyond that, we really skipped out on all of the fuss and were just our normal, beer-and-burger kind of selves.

Except the Bud Light was $7 per bottle and the burger was made of grass-fed, free-range, pilates-doing, inner-peace-having cow, and cost $18. Plus tips.

Seriously? We actually stopped at the grocery store before we got to the hotel and loaded up on bread, cheese, lunchmeat, hot dogs, yogurt, fruit, beer, soda, and chips. We even brought the mini George Foreman grill down there with us so we could make hot sandwiches in the room. Even at the Four Seasons, and even with 50% off at their restaurant, we’re still cheap.

There were red flags on the beach much of the time, but we had some beautiful sunshine, enough for good walks and a 20-mile bike ride down the island.

This pier was about a ten-minute walk down the beach from our hotel, and it goes out to where the water is about 40 or 50 feet deep. We saw  a school flying fish being chased by barracudas – tricky to photograph, but so gorgeous. Here’s my attempted shot of the flying fish – look in the lower left of the picture.

The Four Seasons is on an island between the Atlantic Ocean and the Intercoastal Waterway. We had to go over a drawbridge to get pretty much anywhere, and for some sort of growing-up-landlocked reason, this totally thrilled me.

The ocean side was full of hotels, and the waterway side was lined with huge homes – some probably bigger than the hotel – where the supa-rich docked their supa-expensive boats.

It can be an expensive town. Even the taxis are Lincolns and Cadillacs. No, not just the Four Seasons club car. I mean the TAXI you wave down on the street. And even it has complimentary candies and bottled water.

We took a day to go deep-sea fishing, and although it started out kind of gray-ish, it ended up sunny and perfect (minus the first hour, in which I was uncomfortably – but not barfy – seasick). Here’s our little boat:

And here is E reeling in a freaking 7-foot sailfish.

Click here to view the embedded video.

That was completely amazing. We ended up letting the fish go (as you can see) because we weren’t going to eat it, sell it, or mount it. That pinkish thing in its mouth is actually the fish’s stomach! Sailfish, I kid you not, will spit up their own stomachs to rid themselves of a hook if they can, and then gulp it back down once freed.

There’s your trivia for the day.

(And no, I didn’t catch anything.)

Aside from the bike ride and the fishing, we really spent most of the time just wandering the shore searching for coral and shells, laying around by the pool if it was nice or in our room if it was not. We only did one night out on the town and it was okay, but we chose to spend our last night in Palm Beach eating a delivery pizza  and watching movies instead of going back across the drawbridge.

It was just better that way.

Neither one of us could get more than two bars of cell service while we were on the island. I didn’t even get to read my guest bloggers’ posts until Saturday because we chose not to pay extra for wifi in the room. Although it was pretty frustrating to feel so disconnected at first, I have to admit that it was kind of sad to look down at my phone at the airport and see all the bars lit up again.

And, in keeping with the frugal nature of our swanky trip, I didn’t buy a single souvenir.

But I think I’ve got the best one right here anyway:

And that was our vacation.

]]> http://rebekahj81.com/2010/01/palm-beach-vacation/feed/ 15 http://rebekahj81.com/2010/01/a-post-about-boys-because-who-doesnt-love-those/ http://rebekahj81.com/2010/01/a-post-about-boys-because-who-doesnt-love-those/#comments Sat, 16 Jan 2010 15:38:50 +0000 jennbollenbacher http://rebekahj81.com/?p=2442 Hey everyone! I’m Jenn, and you can find me over at my little piece of the web, you’ll grow to love me (seriously, you will. Don’t ask questions.)

When Rebekah asked me to guest post, I asked her what she would like me to write about. She answered “BOYS”. I suppose as the token single girl AND as the token college girl, I’m expected to have lots of stories about boys.

I thought about telling you all about the time that I got dry-humped, but that story has been told (complete with illustrations.)

So since Rebekah is in Florida with her boy, I decided to write about the time that I went to Florida with a boy.

My last relationship was about two years ago, and about this time in 2008 we decided we had had enough of the Boston winter and were going to jetset down to Florida and bask in the sun (where I proceeded to do a little too much basking and not enough sunscreen-applying.)

Neither one of us had ever traveled anywhere with a significant other, and we were both a little nervous. We ended up having a great time though, and I learned a few lessons along the way.

1. Make sure your partner is a “good traveler”. You don’t want to be THAT COUPLE that holds up the security line or throws a tantrum when United says your bags are going to cost $100 to check. You want to be with the man that calmly and patiently sorts out the problem with the rental car (and you want to be far far away while he does it, TRUST ME.)
2. Wear sunscreen. It doesn’t work so well when you’re burnt by the end of the first brunch. (Believe me when I say that hotel room activities are not as enjoyable when IT HURTS TO MOVE.)
3. Splurge. You’re on vacation! Go to the delicious Brazilian steakhouse for dinner and consume more wine than you ever thought possible, even if it means you skip breakfast the next morning.
4. Prepare yourself for the bathroom. All of the bathroom sharing you do while spending the night at each other’s places is nothing compared to when you discover that your man is “dropping the kids off at the pool” while also talking to his mom on the phone.
5. Take lots of pictures — just don’t put them on Facebook. I know you want to show off your tan to all your friends and make them jealous of the warmth you were in, but I guarantee that you’re going to want to burn every single one of those pictures when you break up and they only serve as a reminder of that time you went on a romantic getaway with that dbag that broke your heart.

Anyone else have any advice or lessons-learned when traveling with a significant other?

Rebekah hasn’t had the best luck with fire lately. First, we discovered her lack of smoke alarm thanks to an ancient oven and a blackberry pie. Then, the laundromat brought her some more fire woes, and reminded her why she’ll never be Zen. Needless to say, she’s probably not the biggest fan of anything in flagrante.

So, while Rebekah is off catching some R & R in a warmer climate, I’m guest posting with a little fire-demon-exorcising:

Ladies and gentlemen, meet the dessert that cannot catch fire no matter how much I try…aka the Chandelier-Swinging Black-and-Blue Mini Tart!

Want your own?

You’ll need:
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup water
heaping 1/2 cup blueberries
heaping 1/2 cup blackberries
1/2 tsp lime juice
mini phyllo dough shells (pre-baked)
whipped cream
vodka (optional)

Do this:
Preheat your oven to 350, and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Arrange the mini phyllo shells on the baking sheet.

Stir the sugar and water together in a saucepan, and bring to a boil. Add the berries, and once the liquid reaches a rolling boil, turn the heat down to medium. Let the sugar-fruit mixture hang out on the stove until the berries plump and soften, and all start to look purple instead of blue and black. Using a slotted spoon, separate the fruit from the liquid — it’ll make filling the shells much less messy!

Fill the mini phyllo shells with berries (and a little bit of juice), and bake for 3-5 minutes. Eat the rest of the berries. And, just between us…I won’t judge you if you drink the juice.

Top the mini tarts with whipped cream, and enjoy. They’re bite-sized and have fruit in them, so feel good about the (relatively) healthy dessert you just made!

Optional: Forget the whipped cream. Pour vodka over the tarts, and attempt fail to light on fire for the amusement of Rebekah and her readers.

Oh yeah…for your amusement, a video of me trying to set these on fire:

Click here to view the embedded video.

(Note before you play: There’s music embedded. I don’t know how to lower the volume.)

As you can see, it didn’t work (no matter how much vodka I poured!) — I’m going to take that as a sign that Rebekah’s fire demons are gone