Various and Sundry

You lovelies know that I can run with the best of them in the hypochondria marathon, but honestly.  It's enough already with this swine flu.  Do you people know how many people get the regular flu, let alone die from it, every year?  5-20% of the population gets flu-like symptoms in the U.S. each year, according to the CDC.  200,000 are hospitalized, according to the CDC.  (In the U.S. alone.)  36,000 die from flu-related causes each year, again, according to the CDC.  Do you know how many cases of swine flu we have confirmed in New York state here so far?  About 45.  Do you know what percentage of the population that would work out to if the number of cases were to stay steady at that number each month for the year?  The population of New York state is about 19.5 million.  If there are 45 cases per month for an entire year - through next April - that's about 540 cases.  That's not five percent.   540 cases is less than .00005 of the population of New York state.  (A certain mother of hoofed ones tells me, "The problem is that with pandemics, it's not going to be a linear, maintained occurrence of cases.  If there's a jump in confirmed cases that points to exponential change....we have a problem."  My response to her?  "Meh.  This isn't a pandemic."  Famous last words?  Aaiieeeee!!!!  I feel like now, just for kicks, the universe is going to give me swine flu.

And now Egypt is slaughtering all their pigs, even though they haven't had a single case of swine flu yet.  "No pun intended," says Tommy Thompson on CNBC at 10 a.m. today, "but that is overkill."  LOL, Tommy Thompson for the gruesome win.

*headdesk*

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It's been 90 degrees in New York for the past few days.  Not that I don't enjoy hot weather (to a certain extent), but the miserly sadists who own our apartment building don't turn on the coolant in the AC thingy (whatever it is) until Memorial Day.  No matter what.  No matter. What.  Our apartment isn't exactly set up for optimal cross-breezes, either, so I basically have to sit in front of a dinky fan, half naked all day when we're in this predicament.  And not that it isn't nice to be admired, but there's only a certain number of times my boobs can be randomly grabbed per day (by my spouse - chill) before I get crabby.

It's back to 57 today and oh my gaaaaawd that's nice.

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Awesome.

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I'm going to Sonoma with my mommy a week from Thursday.  It's going to be freaking awesome.  You can either expect no posts, or lots of tipsy posts.  Or posts about how I contracted swine flu at the airport.  You've been warned.

Easter Confession

So,* here's what happened:

The beginning of this year brought with it a period of unremitting, profound stress unlike any I've known in my adult life thus far. (It was totally unrelated to the economy, hilariously enough.) Like any good former anorexic, one of my main tools to drag myself through the stress swamp was to stop eating as much as possible. The stressful period abated, mostly, after about a month, and I'd lost about five pounds. Not a huge deal either way, five pounds. But, like any good former anorexic, I found my affinity for hunger didn't fade into the background with the stressful situation. Now, in mid-April, I've lost more like 8 or 9 pounds. Still not the end of the world. I am still well within my healthy weight range (which is a larger range, for nearly every person, than the media would like you to believe). It's not a question of how much I weigh (about what I did at the end of college, in my final period of weight gain post-anorexia). It's a question of why I'm allowing myself to delay and shrink meals, to revel in the feeling of lightness if not lightheadedness, and to fixate on my waist or my arms or my belly in a way I haven't in several years now (that is to say, in an accomplished, purposeful way instead of a defeated, disgusted one). I am at a medically sound weight, but I feel that old, familiar pull.


* How many sentences do I not start with "So," on this blog? Maybe 40%? Yeah, I'm thinking that maybe Joyce Carol Oates doesn't write like that.