Monthly Archives: January 2009

Jan8

Et tu pater?

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So I’m talking to my dad on the phone recently, and sans seqway he says, “did you see…what’s, he’s name, Dr. Goo, Gu…” (my dad is not good with languages).


“Dr. Gupta?” I say.

“Yeah, he was on Good Morning America talking about how two glasses of wine or more for women can cause problems.”

And I say, “Yes, I’m familiar with the research [hello, I’m a health writer!], and actually it’s interesting how different news outlets chose to present the research—alcohol BAD (irregular heartbeat risk with too much wine!) or alcohol OK (light drinking poses no heart risk to women).”

Besides, I don’t make a habit of drinking more than two glasses a wine a night. I won’t say I’ve never had more than two at a sitting, but it’s not common…”

“Still, it’s something to think about,” Dad says.

What I don’t say is this: “Oh, Dad, not you too!!”

You see, for years, my mom has waged a not so subtle war against wine. My wine. To be fair, Mom has reason to be cautious about alcohol. My grandfather and at least three of his six siblings were alcoholics. So Mom has seen the havoc it can wreak. We even did a little two-person intervention with my grandfather once. So, I get it.


But biology doesn’t have to be destiny, Mom! I didn’t even start drinking until I was 19, remember? I was a band geek! In my early college years, instead of going to keggers I played Pictionary!

And even when I started drinking, it was pretty tame. Instead of swigging Mad Dog , I slummed by sipping from jugs of three-dollar Gallo Chablis (future wine snob alert). And drinking some concoction served from a garbage can? What is that about? Grain alcohol? Do I look like I want to go blind?

Granted, I did eventually discover shots of tequila. And that did lead to an unfortunate incident in which I induced a friend to do a shot of tequila after sharing a bottle of wine, causing her to vomit in the middle of a crowded bar. But hey, I did NOT tell her to drink the unsolicited spearmint schnapps shots presented to us by some random dude. And she is totally a barfer.

And we were also 23.

I mean really, Mom doesn’t regularly drink, but alcohol has passed her lips without undue incident.

As for me, I don’t drink when I’m depressed, don’t drink much during the week, don’t have a history of blacking out or even drunk-dialing, and when I drink too much, I end up on the floor, not some alley somewhere. And yes, red wine gives me migraines sometimes, but what is life without risk?

But Mom still comes up with not so subtle anti-wine/alcohol messages like these:

“You’d probably lose weight if you cut out the wine. You know alcohol really does have a lot of calories.”
“Drinking wine [any! at all! being the subtext] really raises your risk for breast cancer.”
“Wine-tasting [a hobby of mine] is linked to nose cancer. [OK, I made that one up].

But what set Dad off? He’s never made a fuss about my wine drinking – only smirked and offered some of his Reunite when I visit.

Could it have been all the empty wine bottles in my outside recycle bin? The recycle bin that I haven’t moved in 6 months? Or maybe it was that empty bottle or two on the dining room table? Those have been there forever!! I lost track of them among all the other crap on my table!

Today I noticed an empty bottle under the table. I’m fairly certain Houdini placed it there in an attempt to gaslight me.

Seriously, I like my wine. A lot. But I believe in moderation. In fact, the real substance abuse problem they should be worried about? My sugar habit! I’ve known for a long time that I liked dessert just a little too much. But I’ve been in denial about the true extent.

Until a visit with a hospital “health educator.”

I was in the ER in San Diego after my spectacular fall down the stairs of the convention center. They had checked me out and while I was waiting to be released, they sent in a “health educator”—just a little something they’ve started doing. Right. As my friend Priscilla pointed out, they had probably me tagged me as a drunk because I fell [I’d just like to point out that I have been stone cold sober for the majority of my falls.]. Sorry guys, I’m just a spazz.

But, as they gave me the “do you have an alcohol problem” quiz, I couldn’t help but think of sugar…..

Have you ever felt you should cut down on your drinking sugar? I once ate an entire bag of candy corn in one sitting. And it wasn’t even good candy corn. So, what do you think?

How often during the last year have you found that you were not able to stop eating dessert drinking once you had started? I’m virtually unable to sit down with a pint of ice cream and not eat all of it. So, the answer would be a lot.

Have you ever felt remorse after indulging drinking? As a child, I used to steal some of the really good candy from my YOUNGER sister’s trick-or-treat stash. I was like, 10 and she was 5. It doesn’t get any lower than that.

Is there such a thing as “sugar” rehab?

Jan5

Sometimes I miss my office

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Who am I kidding? I ALWAYS miss my office.

Late last April, I left a reporting job I’d been at for almost 3 years. It was my first—and most likely only—job with an office.

And it was great. Who wouldn’t happily abandon cubicle-land for their own office? I had a window. With a view of….the side of Union Station!! Woo hoo! And if I squished the left side of my face up to the window and craned my neck, I could look up First Street and see the Capitol dome. Or, closer by, the every-other-week convergence of emergency vehicles for yet another unattended package in the train station. And who could forget the summer of striking, chanting, workers and their giant inflatable rat?

Bnd it wasn’t just the view. I could hang some nice pictures, turn my music up pretty loud (actually I sometimes used to do this in cubicles too), put my feet up on my desk, and shop online without looking over my shoulder. In short, I had a DOOR. Pretty damn handy. Because even in at a company with a “nap room” and all sorts of wellness programs, lying down on the floor to meditate (and no that’s not a euphemism for sleep) in a cubicle is pretty awkward.

The office was also a place to let out the crazy. And that was part of the problem, really. Not so much the office itself, but my state of mind.

When I came to that job I was fleeing a really bad place. A really really bad place. For eight months, my boss made it her mission in life to tell me all the ways in which I sucked. So, I was feeling kinda…shaky. My former editor didn’t like to edit. So I obsessed over my choice of words. The thing is, when you’re so afraid of the wrong words, eventually the right ones don’t come either. My writing became, to put it not-so-delicately, constipated. And at my new job I started experiencing this really weird form of post-bullying-PTSD. As I nervously began to learn the ropes, I half expected someone to burst through my brand new office door and point their finger, “j’accuse-style,” shouting, “IMPOSTER! You are obviously not a reporter! Or a writer! Go now—and hang your head in shame!”

They didn’t, obviously. But you get the idea.

I started having trouble with deadlines. I’d always been a procrastinator, but I’d also made my deadlines. And my copy was good. But suddenly it became a struggle.

Ah, Depression, my old friend. Come in. Shut the (office) door behind you.

But I had a good boss. And I was working my way through my issues.

Then we got a new boss. And everything started to slide again.

Our new boss was…mercurial, is the best way to put it, I guess. Suddenly everything had to change, RIGHT NOW. And then it had to change AGAIN, right now. Deadlines? Deadlines were random, moving targets.

My office had now become my Fortress of Freakitude. As in my place to go to freak out, rant, rave and just generally break down. Whispered bitch-sessions with co-workers. Frantic calls to my therapist. Breaking out the Valium. It was ON, bitches.

I would (yet again) kick depression’s ass. I would meet my deadlines. But it wasn’t enough. Not for this boss.

And so I hid again, trying not to be accused of, among other things, talking too much. Which led to ridiculous email exchanges like this one, with my friend and co-worker, Amy.

ME: “Wanna go over to McDonald’s to see if they have Shamrock shakes?!”

AMY: “OMG! I’ve been thinking about that exact thing all day.”

ME: “OK. But I can’t risk being seen on your end of the hall. And you probably shouldn’t be seen down here….”

AMY: “Meet by the elevators again?”

ME: “See you in 2 minutes.”

Skulking about for a Shamrock shake? Is this really what it had come to?

I was all but recovered. In fact, the only barrier to my mental health was my job. In a continuation of the (somewhat disturbing) trend of music from Grey’s Anatomy as soundtrack of my life, I couldn’t get, “This is your life. Are you who you want to be?” out of my mind.

So in the end, the office had to go. My view, my door, my work (which I really loved), my always interesting interviews—none of it was enough.

I’m back in a cubicle. I work in a suburban office park, so the view, if I had one, would be less than thrilling. No door, virtually no privacy.

No breakdowns.

And the right words? I think they’re back….