Category: Rants

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The Bidet

There was gas in the water line for the bidet. Got your attention? It sure as hell got mine. We don’t have a “real” bidet in our place, but it’s a sprayer attachment on the side of the toilet. Works great, though. The fact that I have a bum sprayer, let alone that I use it, still kinda boggles my mind. But it’s good. The sprayer is a fairly new addition, I put it in about a year ago after we got back from Brazil. Brazil is what changed it all for me.

My wife and I went to visit her family and we stayed at her mother’s place. It’s a beautiful home and when I first used the bathroom I noticed the sprayer next to the toilet. Now, I knew what bidet’s were and being a good Mid-Western boy there was no way in hell I was going to use water instead of toilet paper to clean myself. No. Way. In. Hell. I don’t know what my aversion really was. Although, if I’m being honest, it may be left over from attending junior high and high school in the 80’s where if anything came near your butt you were called gay and you were endlessly teased about it. And I didn’t want to be teased back then. So, maybe, on some level, I was still associating a bidet with being gay. Which is stupid on so many levels, ’cause, I mean, c’mon, who hasn’t at least been curious about exploring back there? Guess I’m still learning about my biases. Well, that’s the first step to changing them : )

So anyway, I didn’t use the sprayer at my mom-in-law’s place. Then we went on a vacation while we were on vacation. We went to Jericoacoara.  A beautiful place and I highly recommend it if you’re looking for somewhere to visit. The main point about it is that in our hotel bathroom there was a sign next to the toilet that said something to the effect of, “Please do not flush toilet paper down the toilet. The town’s sewer cannot handle it and it will back up.” Well, “fuck that,” I thought and I used my TP and flushed it down the toilet. There was a little trash can next to the toilet/sprayer for you to put the TP you used to dry yourself. I’ll be honest, it took me a second to realize that’s what it was there for. My first thought was that you were supposed to wipe yourself clean and put it in there instead of flushing. Which seemed absurd. Then I realized I was the absurd one. So I flushed my TP down the toilet and wet some more and placed it in the basket. I certainly didn’t want the hotel staff to think I was flushing it down the toilet. I know how to get away with stuff.

Then I felt bad. What if it backs up? How badly can this TP mess things up? Does it really screw up the sewer in the rest of the town? ‘Cause the plumbing in the hotel looked pretty new. And then I realized I was being a stupid, selfish American. The next time I used the bathroom I used the sprayer. Not gonna lie, it was fuckin’ weird. But over the next week, I got used to it. My wife said she wished we had one at our place. “That’s easy enough to do,” I told her. So I put one in. She was happy. I scored points. It was all good.

So now, I use one every single day. I love it. It’s refreshing and clean and we’re saving a ton on TP. The problem is, once I got used to using my bum sprayer, things got pretty sensitive back there. Normally, it’s great. Traveling, however, is the worst because I have to use TP, and it’s typically the cheap, rough stuff. Can I just say, “Damn!” After a day or so I feel scraped raw and when you’re walking around with your bum hole feeling raw, it makes everything else less fun. This is a common complaint amongst my family when we travel. Oh, well. I spend more time pooping at home than anywhere else, so it’s totally worth it. And, while it may seem awkward and weird to most of us Americans, in the end (ha, ha), I’d recommend trying one.

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Struggles With Inertia – 500/1

I’m a little late to this round of 500 words a day for 30 days. I want to lie and say I’ve been writing, that I’ve been keeping up and I just haven’t been posting. And while I did write once in my journal (it may even have been 500 words) I certainly haven’t been “keeping up.” My writing has been waning for a while now, both personally and what I post. I’ve been having a block and that block is starting my new website. I have tons of things I want to add to it, but I just keep on piling up ideas and never fleshing them out, and certainly not starting the website. At least I bought the domain and month ago or so, so that’s started. RevelLivingTherapy.com coming soon.

I try not to get down on myself, but that’s part of the problem. Years ago I would get down on myself so much I hated myself. I thought about killing myself most days for 15 years. I’m way past that now, but one way I did was to give myself a “break” and trying to “accept myself as I am.” These are good and worthy things. The issues comes when that is the default. See, I’ve allowed myself to become lazy. Shoot, who am I kidding, I’ve always been lazy. I guess that’s one of the things I need to accept about myself. So knowing that, what do I do?

Put a schedule, of sorts in place. Focus on what I want and where I want to be, on what I love. Focus on being loving to myself. That last part was huge for me in learning to get over self hate. The question I started asking myself was, “Is this loving to myself”? That really helped whenever that internal struggle to do something unhealthy came up. And so now I’ll use it to add healthy behaviors into my life, rather than just remove unhealthy ones. So I guess this is my commitment 500 Words a day for the next 30 days.

I’m going to add to that 30 days of working out. As I said, I’ve gotten lazy, and my body doesn’t like it. I woke up at 5:15 am this morning. In pain. There’s always some level of pain in my body these days. I have back issues from hyperlordosis and neck issues from a flattened out cervical spine. Then there’s my right shoulder pain from swimming and wrist pain from lack of flexibility. I also have a heel spur on my right foot, knee pain in my left knee and, my most recent acquisition, right hip pain from a partial dislocation. These are all issue stemming from not caring for myself. And it’s not that I don’t exercise, although I don’t do it as often as I used to. I believe most of it is from not warming up properly and not doing enough to balance out my body when the activities I do tend to focus on one side of the muscle groups (hello, acroyoga).

So here I am, recommitting. The 500 words a day is a good reminder to me to get out and do something. It’s 6:30 this morning and I’ve already done a quick stretch and written this. Here’s to a productive rest of the day, too.

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Taint Ache

So I’m getting older. That’s a fact of life. But what really snuck up on me in the past few years is how lazy I’ve gotten. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve always been lazy. It’s the curse of my life, but I’ve always been fairly physically fit. What I haven’t been keeping up with is my cardio. I noticed this the other day while doing standing acro with a friend. We went through a series of poses starting with High Bird (think Dirty Dancing lift) and then transitioning through several others where I’m supporting her over my head with one arm. When I set her down, I noticed that my heart was racing and that I was short of breath. It seemed weird to me because, while those lifts do take strength, I wouldn’t have thought it would affect my heart that way. Both my blood pressure and cholesterol have been borderline for a few years now and I’m not OK with that. Yes, diet can change those things, but I also believe that exercise is helpful. That said, I decided to take a spin class.

And Away We Go

I’ve been to spinning classes before, but it’s been a while. Like, not this decade. Or the one before that. So it was with some apprehension that I went. I’ve read stories about middle-aged men who tried to exercise like they did when they were younger and they ended up having a heart attack. To avoid being carried out on a stretcher, I decided not to go all out my first time back. It seemed appropriate, but also amusing to me, that I was more worried about the embarrassment of being carried out on a stretcher than the actual proposed heart attack. Someday I’m going to have to reassess my priorities.

I check in to the health club and said good-bye to my sweetie, ’cause, you know, I may never see her again. I remembered that the class is supposed to be popular and that I needed to reserve a spot at the front desk. I turn around and head back. As I go to sign in, I see several people have already done so, but it looked awkward. Instead of signing up one, two, three and so on, they signed up for 18, 32, 11 and other random numbers. I didn’t want to seem like I didn’t know what that meant, so I signed up for 16. Why not.

I get in the classroom and as I’m setting up my chosen bike I realize that all the bikes are numbered and it’s possible people signed up the way they did because that was the bike number they wanted to use. Now I’m uncomfortable. I look for bike 16 and I don’t like where it is in the room, so I decide to stay where I am. “No big deal”, I tell myself. If someone says something to me I can plead ignorance, smile nicely and offer to move. Meanwhile, I eye everyone who comes in and wait to see if they are going to say something to me. As if impending death weren’t bad enough, now I have added awkward social anxiety to deal with.

The Instructor

Since I’m already watching everyone come in, I give them all the once over to see if I can actually do this or if I am well and truly screwed. I think I’m good. Aside from the very fit people, there are some older folks, some heavier folks, and some heavier and older folks. Then I see the instructor, Vlad, come in and he appears to be in his mid-to-late-50’s or so. I’m feeling better until I look at his legs. I’m fairly sure Vlad did some steroids, just from the waist down. I’m not sure how he worked that out, but I’m fairly certain that’s what happened. Once again, I see myself being carried out the door.

The class is about to start and a woman walks near me. She doesn’t say anything, but silently stalks around me, eyeing me the whole time. She fidgeted with the bike on my right a bit, then decided she doesn’t like it. She goes to the bike on my left, fidgets with that one for a minute and finally sets up there. I’m fairly certain this was the person whose bike I stole. I feel a little bad, but honestly, the room is set up with almost 50 bikes. There’s about 15-20 of us in the room. If she can’t vocalize anything to me, she can deal.

In The Beginning

Vlad starts the class. He gives this spiel about “not holding back” and that “you’re only cheating yourself.” I know better. By being in this class at all I am already cheating death, so I decide I can take some liberty with his instructions. Half turns, full turns, whatever. I’m just going to play it by ear and if I have to pretend I turned the damn dial, I will. Music starts thumping, spin cycling’s greatest hits, I think. Whatever. The beat is pretty good and judging the music takes my mind off what I’m doing. Yes, all my mindful techniques did get shot to hell today. So sue me.

We’re ten minutes in and I feel good. I remember sweating more when I took these classes. I remind myself I’m not out of the water yet. We start doing hills. It starts to get to me, but I wasn’t stupid enough to put a lot of tension on the bike. The singer starts saying something like, “Yeah, I’m gonna do you hard!” The fuck are we listening to, Vlad?? That astonishment got me through the rest of the hills.

The “Taint Bounce”

Then we did what I’m going to fondly call the “taint bounce.” In case you’re wondering, the “taint” is technically called the “perineum.” If you don’t know what the perineum is a) you’re probably a guy and 2) you’re on your own to look it up. I’m not sure if this move was developed by Vlad or some other evilly inspired spin instructor, but we were spinning at about half speed, maybe a little faster when Vlad instructed, “Stand!” I got through about two rotations and he shouted, “Sit!” On and on it went, stand, sit, stand, sit, stand. Basically, we’re just bouncing up and down on our (hard as rock) seats and trying to pedal at the same time. God knows for how long this went on. All I’m sure of is that I’m feeling rubbed fucking raw and I’m not happy about it.

The Trooper

We get some blessed relief and just spin easily for a while. My butt is sore but if I get it in a good spot I can’t feel the pain. I consider that I’m probably not going to be comfortable sitting for the next two days. Screw it. It’s good for my health, right? Vlad says we’re going to start spinning faster and gets off his bike to change the music. Seemed weird, but he puts on the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. I’m cool with that and, to be honest, I was shocked at how well it went with trying to get my legs to move so quickly in little tiny circles. It really was fucking great. I felt like I was flying. I take a moment and wonder at the fact that I still have fast-twitch fibers in my legs. Who knew? They haven’t been used in decades. While I was marveling to see those puppies back in action, I suddenly realized I knew the song that was being covered. Iron Maiden. The Trooper. Sweet! Even though it’s an instrumental, the lyrics immediately pop into my head. “You’ll take my life, but I’ll take yours, too!” The woman whose bike I stole glares at me. I think I may have said that out loud. Now I’ve been upgraded from asshole to psycho. Oh well, she already hates me, I’m just going to enjoy the music.

It Was Short Lived

MORE taint bounces?!? Are you fucking kidding me, Vlad? Different singers are now doing each other over the speakers. What the fuck? Some small, dim part of me realizes that I decided yesterday to be less judgmental of people and things. The therapist in me pokes his head up and I start ruminating on my childhood. I made some great progress, therapeutically speaking, until I realized I was dripping in sweat. Literally dripping. I don’t think there was a dry spot on my shirt. When the hell did that happen? All life changing revelations have been forgotten in sweaty wonder.

The End

The class comes to a close. We stretch for about 30 seconds. I follow the group of people to the towel station so we can clean the puddles of sweat off our bikes. The person in front of me grabs hers and turns around. It’s my bike neighbor who hates me. She glares at me, but I’m used to it by now. To get around each other we each cut to my right, then my left. Finally, I go left and, with a parting glare, she goes right.

My legs are feeling unsteady as I walk towards the lockers. I notice a pretty girl looking at me from a treadmill. I know she’s either amazed/appalled at how sweaty I am or staring at my tattoos, but I smile to myself anyway. As I’m enjoying the look, I dimly realize that my unsteady legs have walked me directly into the path of another treadmill. I somehow manage to avoid both the treadmill and falling on my face, which I’m sure would have resulted in my being carried out on a stretcher…

I know my ass is going to be sore for the next few days, but I made it through class. More importantly, I didn’t die. Yay me.

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Lessons Learned From Being Hurt

Another writing prompt… a time I was hurt.

I really don’t want to do this one…and yet I do. I don’t think I’ve really spoken about it to too many people over the years, at least not in detail. It was so long ago, many lifetimes for I have been many different people since then. I was so in love, and maybe even in love with being in love. I though I had found someone who loved me for me, for whom I was. I felt like I didn’t have to put on any masks, that I could be the person whom I really was. Another writing prompt was to write about a time you were happy for a week straight. Maybe I’ll do that one, too, but about another time. To be honest, when I think of that time, it’s hard to remember how happy I was because of the pain I now associate with it. I’m sure you can guess what happened, she cheated on me.

I found out from a “friend.” Hell, it was him she slept with. I told him I already knew and that he should have the balls to own up to it. I didn’t know, I just suspected. As I’m writing this I find it odd that I could easily have written about a time I was physically hurt. The prompt just said “hurt” and I immediately thought of emotional hurt. Damn therapy mind lol. Honestly, I kinda want to write about that now. It seems easier than to relive the emotional hurt. Maybe this will bring some closure.

Anyway, I was hurt and I didn’t want to deal with it. I didn’t know HOW to deal with that type of hurt. I was starting my third year in college, I had the girl I loved and everything was pulled out from under me. So I did what any red-blooded, American college boy would do. I drank. A lot. So much so that I got to know my bar tender fairly well. WOW, was she beautiful. I considered her to be one of if not the hottest women on campus. I considered her to be so far out of my league that it never even crossed my mind to ask her out. And yet, even through my introverted, drunken awkwardness, I did manage to have a couple of conversations with her. She even gave me a few drinks for free. Heck, probably more than a few.

The next year I bumped into her at a party, the last of the year before we would both graduate. I’d never seen her at a party before and thought it was pretty cool. She was kinda drunk. That’s when I found out she had a crush on me that whole time. But now she had a boyfriend, she was going away, and it was too late for us. I was flabbergasted. I like that word, and it really fits. It makes me realize that because I spent so much time in pity , depression and drunkenness I missed a chance to go out with someone new. And did I mention how gorgeous she was?

Oh well, life goes on, and it’s been pretty good. Moral of the story? Get your head out of your ass and notice what’s right in front of you. In the words of Ferris Bueller, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

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Who Knows? – 500 Words a Day – Day 23

It always seems to be 9:30 by the time I get around to do this. I guess that’s better than it was when I started and I was posting closer to midnight. When was that, again? Last week? lol Oh well, I guess I’ll take what I can. I always seem to see someone post theirs about now, when I’m chilling, about ready for bed. I don’t want to be doing this right now. I haven’t felt particularly inspired today, but here I am anyway. I guess it’s good, but sheesh, it’s can be hard when you don’ want to. That’s not really true do, some part of me does want to to do this. I know that’s true because I’m doing it. The proof is in the pudding as they say. So I want to do it, why don’t I just accept it and do it with a glad heart? Instead of bitching and complaining about it. Ok, not really botching and complaining, but I’m not doing this with a glad/happy heart either. Just being honest. Is it enough that I’m doing it? That I’m getting stuff down  and putting it out there? Am I being too hard on myself, feeling that I should just magically start to feel like doing this, when I apparently didn’t before? That last part is interesting. I guess that I did feel that after a few days that I’d just naturally want to start doing it. That it would be great and cathartic and I’d be happily typing away. Well, I don’t. Fuck it. I’m doing it anyway. Which is what I know I wanted to teach myself. That is something I’m learning. To not to feel like doing something, and doing it in anyway because I recognize it’s important to me in the grand scheme of things. Will this hold true when the 30 days is up? I don’t know. I also had this romantic view that at the end of 30 days I’d be so in love with blogging that I’d continue it for another 30 days, and another. Right now, in this moment, fuck that. While I do reserve the right to change my mind, at the moment I don’t want to continue after the 30 days are up. I do want to continue to blog, don’t get me wrong, just not daily. I’d much rather blog weekly, take time to do research , and put out better content. Not that my rants aren’t awesome, cause they are lol. But ranting isn’t really why I started this blog in the first place. I will say that when I did star this blog I feared that I’d get 1-2 posts out and never look at it again. I feel like I’ve done that with stuff in the past, and I didn’t feel like that would happen. I’ve changed a lot from who I used to be, so I had more confidence in myself, but old fears do raise their heads form time to time. That being said, I’m stoked to have written as much as I have, and it’s gotten easier to share it with y’all. I’m not going to say what I’ve learned so far during this experiment, mostly because it’s not over, but also because I really don’t know. Some days it seems like a lot, and other days it seems like nada. Like today. Who knows??