Twit Happens

I've succumbed to the twitter. I can tell people what I'm doing as it happens. Still not sure how the whole thing works, but I don't care.
I remember when people used to call other people "twit" if they did something stupid. Or maybe that was just a made-up mom word. I'm not sure.
Anyways, my twitters should show up on the left side of my blog page. It's just an experiment.

I got a new apartment today.

(I cut and pasted the ad)

CAMBRIDGE - STUDIO - 1 BATH - Luxury studio condo in East Cambridge. Furnished, no lead. Pool, health club, and 24 hour concierge. There is a balcony, carpeting dishwasher & disposal. Laundry in building, and parking. NO PETS - 1 Garage parking Available: Now.

It's 514 sq. ft. It makes my old condo look like a mansion. It has a walk in closet, a bathroom with a tub, a kitchen and 15' x 12' area that serves as a bedroom, living room, and dining room. It also has a patio that overlooks a cute little courtyard with a fountain. It has an awesome view of the Charles River. It's in a safe neighborhood and if family wants to visit, they can stay in the guest suite instead of getting a hotel.
I have a lot more updates, but I've been busy trying to shove as much of the hotel's belongings (sheets, towels, coffee maker, dishes, pillows, toilet paper, et c ...if they don't want me to take it, then they shouldn't call it 'complimentary') as possible into 4 suitcases. Bye I love you.

Zumility

While I was in Vegas over the weekend, my mom bought tickets to see a show called Zumanity. It's one of those Cirque de Soliel shows. Little did mom know that the show was all about sex. When she told me she got tickets to see it, I informed her that it's all about sex and I don't really want to watch something like that with my mom, but she played the "mother's day card" and guilted me into going.
When we went to the box office to pick up our tickets before the show, we noticed that it was all couples...that's when mom decided to sell our tickets, she got in trouble for scalping. We decided to go to show anyway.
It was a good show...unless you are with your mom. The MC was some famous drag queen..(s)he kept asking the audience if we were horny. That was embarrassing. They pulled a lot of people out of the audience. That was a little anxiety provoking...thankfully they didn't pick us to come up on stage.
The show pretty much covered every genre of sex...lesbians, gays, voyeurism, hedonism, orgies, bondage, S & M, dildos*...pretty much anything a person does not want to see with their mother. Some highlights of the show; a woman wearing nothing but a mini skirt made of mardi gras beads performed a crazy African dance that involved a lot of high kicks, men kissing men, women kissing women, a male contortionist who let us know that yes it's possible, and yes he does. I couldn't take much more...we left early.

*I wasn't quit sure how to pluralize dildo, so I put dildoes, and the spell checker corrected me. I thought that was funny.

Make Way For Tim

Tim came up to visit this weekend. We had so much fun. Now I'm gonna bore you with what we did....
-We had dinner at The Union Oyster House, the oldest restaurant in the country.
-I gave him the grand tour of McLean's campus.
-I taught him how to play Keno(it's legal in MA), he won.
-We went to the public gardens (the oldest park in the country).
-We went to a graveyard where Samuel Adams, Paul Revere, and my fave...Mother Goose are buried.
-We met with my family therapist Julieta... she said that talking to Tim gave her a chance to see how really messed up I was before coming to McLean. True that.
-We got to see the duck statues....they're bronze statues of little ducks, the are famous because they are in a popular children's book called "Make Way For Duckling", I want to buy it, but it's too expensive.
-We rode on the Swan Boats...it's another famous thing, I'm not sure why, but everyone always says "you gotta ride the swan boats". So I did.

That about covers it....hope I didn't bore you.

Angie Does Boston

My sister Angie came to visit this weekend. It was so nice to have my first visitor. We had a lot of fun. On Friday we went to Harvard Square for dinner. We went into this weird restaurant where you're supposed to "create" your own meals. We were confused by this concept, so we left. We ended up at a pizza place appropriately named "The Upper Crust". On Saturday, we met with my psychologist Fran, and then we went to McLean to meet with Julietta, the Family Therapist. After that, we went downtown Boston to go shopping and site seeing. Everything was great, until we went to eat lunch.
We were eating lunch on Newberry St. (Rodeo Dr. of the East coast), when we realized that the parking meter we parked at, was soon to expire. So, being the nice big sister, Angie offered to go fill the meter real quick. It took her an hour. Apparently we walked a good mile and didn't realize how far away the car was.
Once she came back, we went on the Duck tour...it was fun. I yelled at a baby. After the tour, we decided to go to the North End which was about 2 miles away. I wanted to take a cab so we could keep our parking spot, but Angie talked me into driving. I let her drive, because she of course knew how to get there. We got lost. I got crabby. We went home hungry. But regardless, it was a good time. Angie did a wonderful job tolerating my whining, I would have slapped me, but she didn't. I'm so sad the weekend had to end. It was such a nice time. I miss her already.

Why I Love My Family

Every time I get a new doctor I have to go through an evaluation process where they ask me a million questions about my life. Most people hate this process, but not me...I love it. I don't particularly enjoy the redundancy of sharing my life story over and over, but watching the doctors' stunned reactions and disbelief to my unique family situation makes it all worth it. I just got a new case manager, his name is Dr. Z. This is how some of the evaluation (and the dozen evaluations before) went:

Dr: Do you have any siblings?
Me: yes.
Dr: How many?
Me: 7
Dr: 7? Are they all from the same parents?
Me: yep
Dr: Where are you in the birth order?
Me: last.
Dr: Wow. So how old is your oldest sibling?
Me: 53 (or 54).
Dr: Wow. How old are your parents?
Me: My mom is 72 and my dad is 77
Dr: Wow, they had you a lot later in life.
Me: Yep
Dr: So are any of your siblings married or have kids?
Me: Yep.
Dr: Okay. Starting from the oldest, tell me their name and how many kids they have.
***(Abridged version)
Me: K is the oldest, she has 4, then D has 2, S has 4, D has6
Dr: Wow, that's a lot.
Me: I'm not done.
Dr: Oh sorry, go on.
Me: B has 2, R has 4, and A has 4
Dr: Wow...you are a good Catholic family!
Me: I guess.
Dr: and your parents are still married?
Me: No they got a divorce.
Dr: How old were you when they divorced?
Me: 25 or 26.
Dr: So just recently? How long were they married?
Me: 50 yrs.
Dr: 50 yrs?!!!
Me: I guess they got sick of living in separate houses, so they figured they might as well
Dr: So they were separated?
Me: No. They just lived in separate houses.
Dr: When did that happen?
Me: A little bit after my dad's heart transplant.
Dr: Heart Transplant!?!
Me: Yeah. It was 10 yrs ago.
Dr: Do you mean heart surgery?
Me: No. I mean he has a new heart.
Dr: How is he doing now?
Me: He's doing great.
Dr: Wow!

Ode To Di Di

I promised a prize to the first person to reply,
and the first response I got came from my sister Di.
So this is the prize; a poem by me
because I am cheap, and poems are free.
But back to Diane and how great she is,
She looks really good for having six kids!
She bakes the best cookies, you should try her polikies
but she keeps herself in shape by going to jazzercise.
Her creativity and love of sweets really come in handy
cuz she has a booming business making jewlery, and another one making candy
She's gonna go straight to heaven, of that I have no doubt
because she is so beautiful on the inside and out.
She's a faithful catholic, a loving wife, mom and sister
and when you are apart from her it's hard not to miss her!

The A Word

I got to take a bunch of head tests today...it was fun. During one part of the tests, I was asked to name a word that starts with the letter A. Let's see...aardvark, apple, animal, antelope....there's so many to choose from. But for some reason I just could not think of anything except for asshole, and I didn't want to say that, so instead I said Antidisestablishmentarianism. It's a real word. I don't know what it is, but I know it starts with an A. I'm just glad she didn't ask me to use it in a sentence.

What A Wonderful Bird The Frog Are

I'm getting a bunch of tests done on Friday. It's like a 3 hour psychology extravaganza. I get to do the inkblot test, the word association test, the personality test... throw in a big red balloon and I'll be having the time of my life! What I am not looking forward to is the career aptitude test, and the IQ test. Last time I took a career test (in high school), it told me I would be best suited for clerical work...and that's what ended up doing 5 years later. And about the IQ test, what if I find out I'm stupid? What if I am a Forrest Gump and nobody told me because they didn't want to hurt my feelings. Or worse...what if I find out I'm a genius and they make me study and solve difficult equations and work for the CIA, cracking difficult top secret codes. Or maybe I just watch too many movies (Forrest Gump, Good Will Hunting, A Beautiful Mind). I wish they had a Nerd test because I'd ace that one.

The Salmon Palace

Hawaii was great...as always. It was a perfect vacation except everything at the Royal Hawaiian is different now. It got taken over by some new uber modern management team that doesn't know what they are doing. First off, they changed the color of the hotel...yes, it's still pink, but they added a hint of orange to the mix, so now it's a salmon color. I don't like it. Also, some asshole decided to change the recipe for the Mai Tai. Big mistake. I don't even like the Mai Tai, but just the idea of how ignorant they are to change something that is such a staple in Waikiki irks me. They claim that they hired a world renown "mixologist" (yep, bar tending has officially become a science) to create an even better Mai Tai. Screw tradition. Who cares if the Mai Tai originated here, let's change it and make it healthy, and then we can stop by Colonel Sander's house and tell him how to make chicken!

Mindfulness.

Mindfulness is a term used here a lot...like twenty times a day. It is one of the skills we learn in DBT. It's all about living in the moment and becoming more aware of things. I think it's some kinda Buddhist thing or something. Either way, it works. It definitely has changed my life.
So anyway, this past weekend, my DBT teacher Dr. Murphy went on a mindfulness retreat with the lady who invented DBT, Marsha Linehan (she is like a god to these people). It was a silent retreat...no talking... at all...for five days. Ridiculous. Anyway, I'm not sure what went on at the retreat, but Dr. M is like a total different person now. She is so calm and peaceful and nothing seems to bother her (that is not an easy feat when you're dealing with borderlines all day...trust me). She's like a hair cut and a brown robe away from becoming a Buddhist monk. I like it. More people should go on those retreats.