Sweet Yet Sour

No. 1 – “Why are you nodding your head ‘no’?”

Wednesday, September 24th, 2008 | Weird Things | 2 Comments

I get this question a lot, and I generally don’t explain why, but I will for No.1 on my list of weird things.

A good portion of the time I am frustratingly unable to control my own head, so sometimes it will look like I am nodding “no” when I am really not.

I have an essential tremor, which affects the movements of my head.  It’s called a “movement disorder” and is somewhat similar to Parkinson’s disease.  My tremor is genetic, my mother has it and she can remember an uncle having a tremor as well.  Catherine Hepburn had the same condition towards the end of her life; it’s noticeable in “On Golden Pond”.

Sometime in my mid-twenties I began to notice that sometimes when I read a book or watched t.v., my head would move in a “no-no” fashion, without my control.  At first, it didn’t bother me much and was not generally noticeable, so I simply discounted it as nothing to be worried about.

When I was 27 however,  I moved from my home town to Denver and the tremor became much more noticeable.  I was stressed at the time, adapting to a new city, living with my sister, and was working as a temp.  The movement of my head became so violent and uncontrollable that I was at times unable to read a book because my head would move so much that I could not focus on the pages.

I finally went to see a doctor about the problem and was fortunate enough to have a doctor who recognized what was wrong.  (My mother’s is very slight and she has never had it diagnosed, so I did not know what it was, even if my mother had the same thing.) He explained that an essential tremor is similar to Parkinson’s and epilepsy in that all of them involve some sort of electrical mis-firings in the brain.  For me, this misfiring affects the side to side movement of my head; the more the mis-firings occur, the more my head moves back and forth.

Since essential tremor is similar to epilepsy, my doctor and I began first to try medications used to treat epilepsy to see if they would help.  After those made me nauseous and tired, we tried a whole bunch of different medications over the course of several years in an attempt to find one that worked and that did not make me sick.

The tremor was still pretty bad during this “medication trial” period and it caused me to shy away from contact with other people.  I rarely went out or sought out friends and when I did I generally spent the entire time trying to mitigate the tremor by resting my chin on my hand and by avoiding face-to-face conversations.

I searched for and found a tremor support group at a local hospital and went with the expectation that I would meet some new friends.  Instead, I found a room of people all over the age of 70, except for one woman who turned out to be there to discuss the tremor of her adopted daughter.  A neurologist was speaking at the meeting about a new brain surgery that had been shown to help with tremor symptoms.  During his lecture the doctor stated that tremor was generally a condition of older people and, while looking directly at me, said “If the tremor starts when you are young it is only going to get worse as you get older.”  That was the end of my visits to the support group.

By the time my high school reunion rolled around I had found a medication that was able to help with the tremor and did not make me sick.  However, it could not diminish the tremor in situations when I was nervous and because the medication’s main use was the lowering of blood pressure, it had caused me to gain a lot of weight.  I had gained about 50 lbs, both due to the medication and honestly, because I was low on self esteem but not on potato chips.

While I really wanted to go to the reunion and see some of my friends, I simply couldn’t get the courage up to go.  I was certainly never popular or well-liked in high school, and so had hoped to at least go the reunion a “better” person that could wow everyone with how great I had turned out to be.  Instead, I was overweight, single, with no real career and couldn’t control my head.   For my own self-esteem I stayed home and missed seeing my friends.

As the years passed and the medication built up in my system the tremor became less noticeable.  I also learned to avoid caffeine, and learned that the tremor was worse when I was overtired.  By the time I met my husband the tremor was only slightly noticeable and by our third date I was able to talk to Mike about the tremor.  He’s such a great guy that he went out and researched it himself.

Last year I had to stop the tremor medication since Mike and I were trying to get pregnant and it was not a drug I could be on while I was pregnant.  I was really nervous about going off the medication, since it been many years that I had been on it and my tremor was somewhat under control.

In the end, even without the medication the tremor was only slight; sometimes people would ask why I was nodding “no” and I would not have noticed the tremor occurring.  I am still unable to talk about the tremor to most people who ask, it’s really embarrassing for me since it seems like I am nodding my head of my own volition when I am really not.  It’s strange and frustrating to not be able to control your own body, especially my head, since it’s movements are not something I can hide during a conversation.

On the other hand, it’s been a year since I took any tremor medication and I have not had any episodes as bad as when I was in my twenties.  I keep my fingers crossed that my tremor will stay slight without the need for medication and that I can finally start to lose some of this weight…

Baby Style

Friday, September 12th, 2008 | The Daily Special | 3 Comments

Unlike Tori I have no style (unless “Mommy Slovenliness” is style).  But even if I can’t get more than a matching pair of sweatpants and shirt together, I can make my daughter look good.

The other day I went shopping for clothes for Anna at Goodwill.  Unless you have a lot of money, it’s silly to spend a lot on clothes for someone who will outgrow them in less than 3 months.  Goodwill has infant clothes for $0.99 each, which is nicely within my budget.

I was overjoyed to find a coat that matched a hat that Rena sent for Anna.  Yesterday, it was a little cool so before I took Anna and Cash out on the morning walk, I dressed her warmly in her new coat and hat.

Rena's Hat

See? I do have some ability to match clothes items, just not on myself.

This should be especially impressive considering that Anna woke me up every two hours on Wednesday night.  She is showcasing her newly acquired ability to roll over from her back to her tummy on her right side.  She likes to wake up, roll over, and then get upset that she’s on her tummy.  This means that I have to go in and roll her back over and then comfort her until she stops crying.   There has barely been any sleep here and yet I was still able to match up a hat and coat.  Impressive no?

Messy Girl

Wednesday, September 10th, 2008 | Mom Stuff | No Comments

I don’t think that it’s possible to be a neat-freak and be a parent.  You will simply have to let go having everything neat and tidy, especially the baby and you.  Everyone is going to get messy in this process.

For example:

Messy Girl

What you are not able to see in this picture is that not only is her entire face covered in rice cereal, but there’s a lot under her chin, and more on her hands and on her legs.

We decided it wasn’t prudent to feed Anna in the high chair, since she looks like a dwarf princess on a giant’s throne in it, and she wasn’t really liking sitting up.  So, we opted to feed Anna her rice cereal in the bouncy chair.

The problem is that the chair is well, bouncy, so while Anna eats she kicks and bounces in the chair.  This means that while we are trying to feed her she is a moving target.  That, plus the fact that Anna spits out about half of what I put in her mouth, and she keeps trying to take the spoon from me and feed herself, makes this a very messy endeavor.

My father aptly calls rice cereal “library paste” and he’s quite right.  Trying to get this stuff off Anna is like trying to get dried Elmer’s glue off her face.  And since she is again, a moving target during the face wash, I have often thought I got it all off, only to go in for a kiss and find that there are still rice cereal chunks all over her face.

Fortunately, while I was once sort of a neat freak, I let that go when Anna was probably two weeks old when I had to live with spit-up in my hair on a daily basis.  Parenting forces you to evolve…

Sept. 5th – Weekly Update

Friday, September 5th, 2008 | Updates | 5 Comments

Whoohoo! It’s update time!

1. Today Anna is 5 months old.  She’s very different from the baby that I gave birth to 5 months ago.  She talks (well, baby talks), laughs, concentrates on things and is working hard on rolling over.  It’s been a roller coaster, but it’s definitely fun to watch a little person develop.  And damn she’s cute.  We took this picture of her when we visited Nate and Laura on the 23rd.

Anna in her cherry dress

2. While I watched my mom on her road to recovery from her medical nightmare this spring, I decided that the gauge for my mom being 100% was her return to swimming.  This week I finally got that 100% proof.  My mom called me on Tuesday to say that not only did she go to the pool and swim, but afterwards she took the dog on a walk around Prospect Lake, which is right next to the pool.  This is really remarkable considering that 6 months ago she could barely walk.  I’m so proud of her.  This week she’s going on her first trip; driving to the Sandhills with her friend Jan and going to some quilt museums in Nebraska.  I’m sure that they will have a great time and my mom will enjoy being out and about.

3. Last weekend Mike and I got my grandfather’s truck.  It’s a huge 1993 GMC Sierra with a camper top with, I’m scared to say it, a 34 gallon tank.  After my grandfather died my grandmother didn’t want the truck and at the time Mike and I discussed that it might be nice to have since we were doing a lot of landscaping at the time.  Last November my dad and Uncle Ted drove the truck out from Oregon to my uncle’s home in Wyoming where it has been sitting in the garage until now.  We’re not doing too much landscaping anymore, so I’m not sure how much use it’s going to get.  On the other hand, the truck smells like my grandfather; it’s like driving with Grandpa in a way.  The other day Grandpa and I went to Home Depot and then a few days after that Grandpa and I took my sister for a ride in the truck when she was having a bad day.  We were both a little comforted by the presence of Grandpa in the truck with us; I may spend time just sitting in it and remembering him.

4. This week marked the return of the hockey stud that I married.  Before we were married, when Mike was playing hockey much more regularly, I could count on him to score at least one goal each game.  This week Mike came from his 10 p.m. game on Tuesday with two goals.  Very cool!  I’m sure he’s having a good time and enjoying getting back to his favorite sport.

5. It’s no secret, I love ice cream.  This week was good for my love of ice cream, bad for my thighs… I discovered that one of my favorite local ice cream shops, Liks, which originally was only located in Capitol Hill, has branched out.  They have a new shop that is only a few miles away.  I went to the new store and got a few pints, and then saw a sign that Liks is available at King Soopers, our local grocery store chain.  The next day I went to the grocery store and found that I can indeed buy a few flavors of Liks there as well.  Whoohoo!

My other good/bad discovery is that Gelazzi, a really great gelato place that is downtown on Larimer, has also opened a new location close by.  This one is even closer than the Liks.  I haven’t been there yet, but I think this weekend we might need to make a family trip there for some gelato.  Maybe when Anna is bigger we can make a family bike trip there and I can work off 1/4 of the calories I will consume.

6. I’m considering taking down the Denver RRC website.  It’s not getting any use since I don’t have the time or the money to review restaurants anymore.  But I don’t want to lose the recipes that I have put up on the site either.  I’m considering either creating dorriemunhall.com/recipes or just sprinkling the recipes in with the normal blog.  What do you guys think?

The List is Dwindling

Friday, September 5th, 2008 | Weird Things | 2 Comments

I am finally down to the last 3 “Weird/Interesting Things About Dorrie”.  I have a draft of the “No.1″ on the list in my head, and I can tell right now that it’s going to take me a while to complete.  In the interest of time I’m going to combine 3 and 2 and just do short bits on each one.

3. The Last Insect Post

I promise this is the last one about insects and their deaths Rena!

When I was 5 I took a tick to my Kindergarten “Show and Tell”. When I was a little girl I really liked bugs a lot and was fascinated with them.  I was even taken with the tick that my dad pulled off my head.  We had been camping the weekend before and I had apparently brought home a friend in amongst my hair.  When it was discovered that I had a tick on my head my father quickly picked it off with a pair of tweezers.  But, being the weird little kid that I was, I made him put it in a plastic bag for me to take to school.  I proudly showed it off to the class saying “This was on my head.”

2. Paper towels

This is definitely the weirdest thing about me, but I hate paper towels.  It’s the texture and the noise that paper towels make when people use them.  For some reason, when I, or someone within my hearing, rubs their hands on a paper towel, the noise made by the paper towel makes my skin crawl.  When I was younger I wouldn’t even touch paper towels; there is just something about how rough they feel.  I’ve gotten over not being able to touch them, but every once in a while, when I hear someone drying their hands on a paper towel I still get a tingle in my spine.  It’s weird, I know!

Number 4 – Where have the words gone?

Thursday, September 4th, 2008 | Weird Things | 1 Comment

I began this list as “10 Weird/Interesting Things About Dorrie”. So far, it’s been mostly weird things, generally involving insects (which is strange in itself).

I thought I would try writing about something that’s more interesting than it is weird.

Once, a long time ago, I loved words.  I loved the way certain words sounded and I loved stringing them together to make something beautiful.  Once I was a poet.

I “published” my first poem when I was in 8th grade.  I say “published” because it was a kids magazine that was printed and circulated only in my home town.  Nonetheless, I was very proud of it; it was a poem about imagination and it was called “Women and Children First”.

During that time I wrote a lot of poetry; to the point of always having a separate notebook with me just for my writings.  Where I went to high school each year a collection of student poetry, stories and art would be published – “Echoes”.  For all three years of high school I had at least one poem, if not several, in Echoes.

I really thought I was going to be a poet, and I read a lot of poetry then as well.  For my high school graduation present to myself, I bought the Complete Poems of E.E. Cummings, my favorite poet, and read almost every page.

Where I went to college for the first three years, Lawrence University, there was a similar collection of student work called “Tropos”.  As in high school I was able to have at least one poem in Tropos for each of those three years.

And then for some reason, the poems stopped.  Honestly, I have no idea why or when, but I stopped thinking about words, stopped writing poems in my head and stopped keeping a poetry notebook.

When I think about why I don’t write poetry anymore it’s a strange feeling that comes over me.  It’s hard to describe, but it feels like an envelope closing inside my chest; as if once there was a place where the words came from inside me, and now it’s closed.

When I look back at the poems I wrote and published, I think some of them are the typical crap written by an angst-ridden teenager.  I suppose that a lot of people go through a poetry writing phase in their teen years; it’s an art that is sometimes driven by depression, and well, teenagers are a hormonal, depressed bunch.

But there are a few of my old poems that I still find beautiful.  Here’s one of them:

Topic

to tickle the lollipop of the sunset
to cling to ambrosia twine
between the stars
to find sanctuary in Beloved Moon
where time is arabesque in its lines
to be so long amaranthine
where why is no longer a question
where smooth is more than touch
but a place to think
to put beauty upon the shelf
and begin again with ethereal
where words are the pin cushion
of some vast seamstress
whose cloth is woven
of me’s and you’s
and mixed with the colors of a bubble
on the brink of popping
to say to the children
gathered at one’s feet
these are the flowers
that grow on the tips of fairy noses

such
is life
for the poet laureate
upon a rose petal