Boils

Two days ago, I woke up with a boil on my hip. I've never had a boil before and at first I wasn’t even sure what it was. Let me just say, I now appreciate why boils were one of the ten plagues of Egypt; these things are extremely sensitive to the slightest touch, but also the pain radiates quite far from the source of infection. It came up surprisingly fast, too, at first appearing as a pimple-sized, sensitive, red spot, and blooming into a half-dollar over the course of a single day. “Crap,” I thought as I studied it in the mirror. “Soon I’ll have a third butt cheek!”

Last night the boil was getting bad; I couldn't sit properly because of its location and the associated swelling. As I sat in my parents’ living room, my dad kept asking why I was lopsided. Something had to be done, so I googled how to treat boils. (Whoever has access to my Google searches must be highly amused, as in the last six months I’ve searched for how to cure boils, why students don’t apply what they learn, and cat ejaculation. But that’s another story.)

Of late, as I crawl on toward 30, I have begun to feel old. I’m fine with being in bed by 10 PM on a Friday night. I now fall asleep reading books. I wake up in the night to pee. But nothing has made me feel as old as the most-highly recommended boil remedy I found online. Currently, I'm spending spring break sitting in bed without pants, with a wet tea bag attached to my rump, and a towel and heating pad under that.

To make matters worse, I have three cats who are trying to stealthily steal my heating pad.

Lessons from Mary Tyler Moore on Keeping a Sense of Humor

As a kid, I enjoyed watching Nick at Nite, and one of my favorite shows was The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Mary was funny and charismatic in an achievable way. Even as a kid, I knew she was far sweeter than I would ever be, but there was still something about Mary that kept her in the realm of possibility as a role model.

Plus, she had a great life. She had that hilarious best friend, Rhoda. She had a great apartment. She had a great job with great coworkers like Lou and Murray (I could do without Ted). There was something romantic about her independence. And in a strange way, daughter of a working mom and granddaughter of a working grandmother, I expected my life to be similar to Mary’s.

And now it is. At 26, I am a single, oft-bobbed brunette working an unexpected job in a city. All I’m missing is a great hat to throw and a catchy theme song.

But life is not what I expected. As a kid, I saw the fun and freedom in Mary’s life; the hardship was always resolved with a good cry, a couple laughs, and half an hour. Real life is so different when you get the bad news that the extra literature class you thought you’d be picking up was canceled for lack of students, so you’ll be making a few hundred dollars less per month. Or when he doesn’t call after the date you thought had gone really well. Or when you find a nail in your new tire and you’re already late for work.

Those things, in some ways, make my life even more like Mary’s. What was funny in the show—all the frustrations and challenges and disappointments—were really just real life presented with witty dialogue. It was all a play on perspective. When life begins feeling too heavy, the challenge is not so much in getting through it. Life is constantly changing and, therefore, as long as we keep breathing, our situations will keep altering, bringing both more good and more bad. The challenge lies in keeping our sense of humor throughout it all.

In retrospect, I find humorous the story of the three weeks I spent in grad school with only $10 to my name. I tell the story like I’d wear a badge of honor, because it was my struggle and I overcame it, and we can laugh at whatever doesn’t kill us. But it’s also only funny because it’s over, because I’m not still staring at the oatmeal cylinder in the kitchen, wondering whether I should eat it or save it for my pet rabbit, debating which of us will run out of food first. The hunger pains of a few missed meals have waned, and what I’m left with is the realization that, while difficult, one can subsist on so little for so long.

It’s inevitable that our sense of humor will weaken in times of stress. Sometimes all we can realistically do is hunker down until things stabilize. But if we lose sight of the good things—our Rhodas, our apartments, our independence—then we risk losing our sense of humor as well. And if we lose that, then our struggle is for naught, for if we emerge from strife with nothing other than bitterness, then we overlook the strength we have developed along the way.

Cleaning the Couch

One of my cats, Jack, urinated on our couch as soon as we moved into our apartment. Try as we might, we were never able to get the smell of cat urine out of the cushions. Over Christmas break, I asked my sister, Kelly, to help me try to clean the couch cushions by washing them in the shower since they would not fit in our washing machine. That part was ok, but drying the cushions was another matter since they did not fit in our dryer, either. The following is an exchange in which I was telling Kelli about this.

Me: I feel like an idiot over these couch cushions.

Kelli: They will dry. Eventually.

Me: I just hope they don't smell too weird by then.

Kelli: Maybe not—it was vinegar too!

Me: This is true. Vinegar and a little baking soda; I decided to “volcano” the stains out.

Kelli: I wish there was a video.

Me: There wasn't much to watch. I put a little water in the tub, sprinkled in the baking soda, and then added vinegar, but it was diluted so there was a quick fizz and then nothing.

Kelli: I am sad about this. I will envision a volcanic explosion of cleaning solution on the actual couch.

Me: Well, in an alternative universe...I added the vinegar and there was a monstrous bubbling, like a huge pot of water was boiling. The water turned bright green, and there were huge, churling waves.

Kelli: I like this couch cleaning. Fun times!

Me: I added the cushions one at a time to even louder, angrier roars. The bubbles were so strong that I could barely force the cushions into the tub! Bravely, Kelly leaned against my back, pushing me—and by extension, the cushions—into the roiling waves.

After half an hour of whirling and roaring, the water slowed to a simmer and we were able to rest. As the water calmed, we could see traces of stains begin seeping away from the cushions. Finally, the cushions were glistening white and the water had taken on a stained, yellowish hue.

Better?

Kelli: That at least got an actual laugh out loud.

Pushing for Twenty

I love Natalie Tran’s videos. One of my favorites is “I Hate Past Natalie,” and I love it because it’s so true. We tend to live in the moment, thinking only of what we want right now, with little regard for what we’ll need tomorrow or the day after.

When I want to make a life change, it can seem overwhelming until I remember that life is made up of lots of little decisions. Should I eat the whole bag of M&M’s now, or stretch them over the course of a few days? Should I bother to do my laundry today, or leave it for tomorrow? Change isn’t about making one big decision; change is about consistency, about consistently choosing over and over to be who and what you want to be. I can wake up tomorrow and decide I’m going to lose ten pounds, but that doesn’t mean I’ll do it. What really determines my success is whether I wake up tomorrow and decide to lose ten pounds, and then wake up the day after that and again decide to lose ten pounds, foregoing the extra piece of toast at breakfast and the mid-afternoon soda for two, and then three, and then four days in a row. All of that change is much more manageable if I focus on one day at a time.

The same thing applies to the gym. It’s easy to decide I’ll go. It’s easy to get dressed and grab my iPod and step onto the machine. But it’s just as easy to decide running one mile is good enough. It’s easy to decide that fifteen minutes on the elliptical is close enough to twenty.

I’m past the initial thrill of training for a 5k. And now that my work schedule conflicts with Lindsay’s and my workout schedule, it’s harder to remain devoted to running. Yesterday at the gym when I hit the ten minute mark, and I was close to completing my mile, I was tempted to quit. But then I wondered who I wanted to be today. Because shaving off five minutes on one Tuesday isn’t bad, but it so easily becomes a habit, and then you’re shaving five minutes off your workout every day. Do I want to be someone who can run for twenty minutes, or do I want to be someone who runs for ten?

I choose today who I want to be tomorrow, and the person I want to be tomorrow is a person who can run for twenty minutes straight, and can manage two miles in that time. So I pushed through the stitch in my side and the sweat in my eyes and made it to the full fifteen minutes.

Tomorrow I will push for twenty.