So far this week I’ve come down with five very serious conditions; MS, melanoma, a brain aneurism courtesy of acute head trauma, meningococcal meningitis and a deadly fast-developing blood clot in my leg. 

I’m not joking, either.  Neurotic doesn’t even begin to describe me.  Hypochondriac does, but then I start to panic about what it actually means to be a hypochondriac and I worry that I will force my body into developing said conditions if they don’t already exist.

Of course, seven years is a long time to live with ones self and I’ve come to know the signs of when I’m being paranoid.  For example; when G. shaves his beard for the first time in six months and the shards of sliced hair  leave me with a rash that makes me look like a leper just in time for my flight to Florida & I wake up with a sore throat because I downed a liter and a half of wine the night before and I Google:

chest rash* & sore throat

and the internet tells me I have meningitis  & I actually believe it enough to go to the walk-in clinic that’s when I know I’m being paranoid.  But that’s not where it stops with me, ever.  On my way out the door I stand up too fast in my childhood attic-bedroom and SMASH the top of my head on the ceiling.  I immediately google:

Natasha Richardson death how

and then:

how fast will I die after brain trauma

and then:

should I have a headache after hitting my head on the roof

and then:

what constitutes a ‘serious headache’

And instead of rubbing it better I check my pupils to make sure they’re the same size and then finally head to the clinic to ask the on-call Doctor if I have meningococcal meningitis and brain swelling from a concussion. That’s when I know I’m being paranoid.  But of course, that’s not all.  The birth mark I’ve had on my head ever since I can remember suddenly appears to have wiggly edges.  And then the mysterious heat I get in my leg whenever my sciatica acts up is all of a sudden Deep Vein Thrombosis & I probably won’t be able to fly to Florida on Monday because I’ll be on blood thinners and if I do I’ll have to wear those weird pressure socks and then to top it all off “heat in the leg” is also potentially nerve damage which is caused by a degenerative disease like MS.  Which I now think I have.

Hi, I’d like to make an appointment ASAP for Dr. M?

“Oh Sure, what’s it for?”

Umm, well… it’s just… a couple of general questions…

My health record shows nothing but the six times Dr. M has tried to give me anxiety medication and the six unfilled prescriptions.  Unless it has to do with my vagina, I’m convinced she doesn’t even listen to me any more (Doctors have to listen about vaginas.  They’re a really important thing.  Continuing the human race and what not.)

I don’t think anxiety medication would solve this though, seeing as I already know what the diagnosis is:

seriously, seriously stressed out woman with the fear of dying before she accomplishes everything on her bucket list which includes currently unattainable things like “have an affair with a famous woman” and “write a New York Times Bestseller”.  And you should see the rest of it if you think that’s far fetched. 

I worry about degenerative diseases and freak conditions and serious cancers because those are the things in life that I can’t plan for and I can’t entirely battle against.  I’m not saying I could successfully get Olivia Wilde to go down on me, but I am saying I could work towards it.  And I am saying it’s something I could do something about.  Kind of.  Whatever.  But Multiple Sclerosis?  I’ll get it or I won’t.  Someone will.  

And when that happens, there are two things that you can do: you can let go and let God and give it all you’ve got and heal, or you can give up and deflate.  Die, even if not in the most literal sense.

I’d like to think I’d be Louise Hay and heal myself from stage four cancer through positive affirmations, but as it stands I’d be that guy you read about in the newspaper who retired after 60 years of 12 hour days and died two days later for no reason at all.

Why am I telling you this?  Well, for two reasons.

A - in case you don’t know, the American health care system is a freaking joke and me and my hypochondria have to go try avoid it for three months.  I’m SUPER stressed out about it, which is making me develop all these weird symptoms and issues FOUR DAYS before I leave even though I bought the mandatory health care.  This is how I vent about that. 

But more importantly,

B- I read something inspiring today:

“If you believe that success can only come after a long, excruciating period of hard work, then your filter cannot show you any opportunities for success until you’ve logged that sacrifice.  But if you truly believe that you deserved wild success right now, then your filter would allow you to see the opportunities for that.” – Lisa Mccourt

I’ve always believed in manifesting and creating the life you imagine for yourself, but I think there’s a large part of me that takes it seriously only to the extent that it’s been successful in my life.  Which is, in theory it could have been kind of responsible for some things.

But as someone who can force herself to develop a full blown physical flu by psychosomatically convincing herself that she has all of the individual symptoms, I should know without a doubt that wanting something and visualizing something and focusing on something can bring it 100% into fruition.

If I devoted my attention to studying Olivia Wilde’s filming schedule as opposed to recording how often my leg heats up two centimeters below my knee cap and slightly to the right I might actually get somewhere.  If I wrote something clever every time I thought my motor skills were going, if I called someone influential every time I wanted to ask my doctor if it was normal for me to turn pink after one or two shots of Jack Daniels, if I sat for five whole minutes and reflected on who I am and what I want out of life every time I had the desire to google pictures of skin rashes, then maybe I just might start becoming more healthy.

I’m not saying we’re all prone to being worry warts, but we’re certainly all prone to sometimes looking at the glass as half empty, or as all full but watered down.  And I’d like to think that this is something we can all change with a little readjustment. And I have this stupid beard rash* and this stupid hot leg, and this stupid moley-birth mark, and all of these stupid, stupid, insignificant but completely physically real problems to thank for that. 

So thank you, rash.

And thank you, Dr. M, for caring about my vagina.  It means a lot.

XO & YW

*No, he wasn’t motor-boating me & for the record, beard rash is the new hickey and it sucks.  Practice safe beard guys.  Practice safe beard.

This is only worth noting because normally I have a series of them, you know?  A list of left-over to do’s, an estimation of how many times I can hit snooze before actually waking up, a mental closet scan, blah blah.  But today I only had one:

I want a macaron.

Which is weird, because the little almond-meal patisseries have never really been my thing.  Probably because by the time fashions bloggers & their instagrams started making them so posh, I was living in a town that didn’t have anyone who could make them and so I brushed them off as “city delicacy” or as something I would stumble upon and enjoy one day when I was in a city that had a Laudree (NYC / Paris).

Anyway, I woke up wanting one.  More specifically, I wanted one that was going to match my outfit of the day that had yet to be decided on.  I wanted one, I wanted it to match my outfit, and I wanted to enjoy it the way posh people on the internet are supposed to enjoy posh things like macarons; on a park bench between the hours of 11:30 and 1PM with a view of the skyline and a view of men in expensive suits who look like their all going to go home to women who would be sitting on a park bench in the middle of the city between the hours of 11:30am and 1pm eating a fashionably-forward thing like a macaron.  And as I sat straight up in bed and flicked the sheets off of me I specifically set the intention of finding one of these little treats because, DAMMIT, the city was my proverbial oyster!  And mostly, because my instagram was completely incompetent without at least one colorful little merengie-y thing-y in a Lo-Fi filter.

Google: Vancouver Macarons

Easy enough, I thought to myself as I carefully selected the macaron provider closest to what I know to be the largest yuppy business district in the city.  I had to go down there anyway to take a temp job for my Dad who happens to have an office out of this area but close enough that it still makes me feel urban-professional enough.

My plan was flawless.

Enter said yuppy business district wearing clothing that a young, urban, professional would wear, stroll calmly but assertively into said macaron shop, purchase said macaron(s), sit on city central park bench with view of skyline and suited men, eat macaron(s) confidently in broad daylight looking like a chic woman who enjoys her lunch breaks to herself and then calmly and assertively walk to work.

Now, I’ll admit, most people wouldn’t have to divulge a scheme quite so extraordinary in order to get their chubby little fingers on one stupid little dessert, but I am not most people and if anything, I’m a bit odd.  So pardon me, and let me continue.

I reached my destination without a hitch.  Brilliant sunshine lit up the harbor and I kept thinking to myself as I swished along in my perfectly business appropriate but also totally chic dress “Gee, what a wonderful day for a macaron lunch!” “I am so Carrie Bradshaw right now, taking a macaron lunch!” “Kate Spade would totally agree with this magnificent afternoon macaron stroll!”

As I walked up to the all-white macaron shop I caught myself rehearsing a script: “oh, hi there, yes, I’d like a macaron please.  Pink grapefruit.  Thank you.”

It shouldn’t be necessary to rehearse a script before buying a snack, but this is an elite snack and even the doily little metal chairs out front made me nervous – in my head I’m all “is it macaron or macaroon?  And are they one in the same or is the difference between Paris-French and Canadian-French?”

Let me tell you the first thing I learned about macarons.  They’re a lot smaller in real life than what you would imagine by following Katie Armour’s Twitter.  Oh, and you can’t just buy one.  You have to buy six and it’s going to cost you twelve dollars.  And no one in their right mind is going to want 6 macarons because you just can’t eat six to yourself and no one is going to want one because no one that isn’t obsessed with the internet even knows what a macaron is let alone would they choose to try a dessert that is flavored after a flower that grows on a tree (cherry blossom.  Rose blossom.  Lavender sprig.)

But I bought six and I spent twelve dollars and she packaged up my plant-flavored circular sponges and put them in this very fancy little box that, in hindsight, I should have watched her fold shut.

“Thank you so very much” I said in my very best Eloise voice.

As I strolled along the harbour-side with my petite little treat box, humming John Mayer tunes, I spied the perfect bench.  Overlooking not only the skyline, but the marina.  I sat down and I took it all in.

This was the last moment I would ever consider buying macarons again.

As I looked out over the water I was greeted not by lunch-break lawyers in Hugo Boss, but by a shirtless, buff, twenty-something marina worker spraying himself and some 140 foot white whale of a boat with a twenty-foot hose.  Not complaining, it was just an adjustment of vision.

I looked down at the box in my lap and began to open it.  And then began to open it.  And then turned it around and began to open it the other way.  Then I tried to open the ends.  And after six or seven tries I realized the box was folded about four times over itself and I finally was able to loosen it enough to peer inside.

Frustrated, hot, and wearing completely the wrong thing to impress Mark the Marina Man I peered inside at my six, tiny, colorful blobs. They were macarons alright, but I didn’t want them.

The smell of street vendor hot dogs filled the air and I scrounged my purse for $3.50 fully aware of the fact that I spend all my change on these butterfly turds.  I settled for the only flavor of macaron I had chosen that resembled food: pink grapefruit.

And let me tell you, it was no fucking hot dog.

I did up the Chinese Finger Trap box and speed-walked past the dog stand.  I speed-walked (sped-walked?) so fast that a mere 300 feet from my work place I felt a sharp pain in my big toe and said “Ow” out loud.

I looked down.

My chic “I could have just left my Louboutin’s under my office desk and slipped these cute little flats on for my lunch break”  $1.99 Mexican walking shoes had done so much walking outside of Mexico that my entire toe was hanging out of the left one.  Scraped and bloodied from my battle with the concrete Jungle.

Now not only was I wearing hobo shoes, I was carrying a box of ridiculous edible Christmas ornaments that cost more than an entire other pair of Mexican walking shoes.

So I did what anyone would do.  I sat down on a cement block and shoved four of the five remaining macarons in my mouth, complaining the entire time of my sweet tooth hurting.

My Father came and rescued me off the side of the road.

“What are those?” He asked once we reached the office, looking at my battered but still dainty dessert box.

“Macarons.  These silly little pointless parisienne pastry-desserty-things.  Want the last one?”

He took it from me and had a bite.

“MMM” he said, and walked away.

& guess what I found in the garbage can twenty minutes later?

3/4 of a two dollar fucking macaron.

“You have eyes the color of the celestial ocean.“

I think it’s sweet when people send random feel-good text messages to me during the work day.

“Look behind you.“

OK.  Not that sweet.  That’s actually a bit too creepy for me.  Especially considering I don’t know who you are.

There was a time when a text message like this wouldn’t have been a problem.  I had the same cell phone number from the age of 15 to the age of 20.  A lot of people come and go between the ages of 15 and 20, and I always took comfort in the fact that if I ever needed to track one of them down (or vice versa) I wouldn’t have much of a problem.  You never know when you might want to contact an old booty call acquaintance for guest list into the Bourbon on a Friday night. 

When I went through my first real break-up though, I felt like it was “the” thing to do.  Change the number.  Start fresh.  Immediately give new number to ex-boyfriend – that sort of thing.  I wiped the slate clean and threw the old phone out without ever transferring the contacts of people who only messaged me after 1am.  It felt great. 

When I moved out of the city (almost a year ago, what!?) I was faced with this opportunity again.  The opportunity to erase my contacts and prevent Indiana Jones from ever asking me if I was “downtown” again.  Naked Picture Guy would no longer be able to surprise me in church whilst I was sitting cross-legged next to the 7 year old Sunday School students.  Whoever my next boyfriend was wouldn’t have to wonder who “Hockey Blake” was and why he sent me 6 asterisks at 3am on every other Friday. 

All of a sudden, I was faced with the opportunity to start life over again as a classy broad who had never made a mistake named Good Time Anybody.

& this freaked me right the hell out. 

Who was I if not the girl who had the stories about all the things you wished you’d never heard stories of?  Who was I without all of my mistakes?  I would no longer be the Samantha Jones of my Sex & the City entourage.  I would be a Carrie, who never shared her mistakes with anyone until it was completely dire.  Or worse, a Miranda who made terrible mistakes and then tried to fix them all.  Heaven forbid I become a Charlotte and start walking out on all my mistakes before I even make them at all.  I wanted my mistakes.  They were part of my identity.

So I did what any girl would do who was trying to fight off the Classy Broad Brigade.  I sent out a mass text message to all my old contacts telling them my new phone number.  I was twenty-four after all.  One good year of not-classy-broad left. 

There was this one time though, where Samantha Jones ended up with a long-term boyfriend (Smith Jared) and she probably decided “hey, I should turn over a new leaf” and she deleted all of her old contacts even though they still all had her phone number.  It probably happened in between episodes, but I’m sure it happened none-the-less.  So when my status changed from “single” to “in a relationship” I did the same thing.  No one wants Patrick ParkgateGym waking up their boyfriend with a text at midnight. Hello, I’m a classy broad now.

“We met once.  You were in my BMW.“

Great.  Just great. 

“My name is Duncan“

What?  Do I even know a Duncan?  Have I ever known a Duncan?  Who are you?

Normally an unknown text message sender gets the hint when you say “sorry, who is this?” but not this guy.  He sent out a “look behind you” in response.  24 hours and some serious detective work later I figured out who it was and realized it wasn’t one of my mistakes after-all, or even a stalker who I had glanced at once in a Starbucks line who now thought we were in some sort of relationship (I watch too much Criminal Minds).  It was the mistake of someone who left their phone unattended on a job site.  I got over it.

But it got me thinking… sure, I’ve classied up my iPhone contact list, but that doesn’t mean the contacts themselves have classied up.  In fact I can guarantee none of them have, because I don’t usually make very classy mistakes.  So wouldn’t it be handy if we were like Brittany Murphy’s (RIP) fiance in that movie?  You know, Little Black Book, and we kept all of these numbers so that if we got a creepy message from someone who knows our name and our preference for shiny imports we could flip through and be like “oh yes, Patrick, sorry, I’m not in the mistake market any more” instead of immediately running off to find the combination for Daddy’s gun safe? 

Or, as a girlfriend of mine so kindly pointed out, maybe I’m the only one with this problem and it really speaks multitudes to how far I’ve come since the first decade of the 2000′s.  If that’s the case, let this be one of those lessons I just don’t want you to have to learn yourself: when you decide to stop making mistakes, don’t give them the option of following you around.

Or just never stop making mistakes.  That’s a viable option too.

I am currently in the throes of what can only be called an “identity crisis.”  It’s not one of those “oh my gosh, I just discovered I actually like pickles – my entire life has been a lie!” crisis, but more like “when I write my first book I want my name spelled properly ” crisis.

I have been spelling my name (Andrea) Andria for almost as long as I can remember.  Not so long that I don’t have an ex-boyfriend who still spells it Andrea, but long enough that the bank accepts cheques written to both forms of Andre(i)a’s.  I don’t really know what made me change it in the first place… probably another “identity crisis”.  But what I do know is that it’s time for me to knock off the “I spell it ia, but it’s legally ea” act.  It’s my name.  I’m not changing it (I would have done this already if I really wanted to), and technically speaking, it’s completely phonetically wrong to spell it with an i.  I know names don’t really fall into these rules anymore, thanks to all the drugs parents do these days, but as an English major I must insist these things have some order restored on them.

I was submitting an article to a publication the other day and typed “By Andria Parker” on the finished product and looked at it with absolutely no recognition.  Hashtag WhatTheFuck, Hashtag Who’sThatBitch. So I changed it.  “By Andrea Parker” and sent it off.  It felt good.  The ‘real me’ if you will.

But then I freaked out.  My entire online existence is By Andria Parker.  Literally, that’s my Twitter handle (twandle?).  That’s my Instagram name.  @byAndriaParker.  That’s my email.  That’s half my paycheques!

Naturally, there’s only one solution: change my Facebook name and hope for the best.  Half of my “friends” won’t have any idea who I am, I’m sure.  The other half probably don’t know who I am in the first place, so that won’t matter much. But my Grandmother will be happy.  She always writes Andrea and then at the last minute, in a different pen, crosses out the e and writes i.  Or sometimes she writes and e and then dots the top.

You see, this one little letter is a big deal for me.  An even bigger deal than the day I decided to change my Facebook name from “Andie Parker” to “Andria Parker” like, 8 years ago.  Honestly, I had an ex-boyfriend (God, why are there so many of them?) call me and ask me if I had legally changed my name to Andria because he didn’t know Andie was short for something.

“Why don’t you just legally change it to Andria when you get married?  You’ll be changing your last name then too, so it’s two for one!”

God damn.  You mean I’m going to have to go through this whole thing again?! What the fuck am I supposed to do with my 125 Twitter followers? Instagram is only patient for so long!  My poor Facebook friends will have a(nother) stranger on their lists!

Feminist Andrea says “duh, don’t change your last name” Andrea with an I says “who’s getting married? What? Why are you even stressing out about this?” Andie short for Andria is all “HAHA, been there, done that, sucker!” and Andrea the original is just like “shut up, all of you.  Who cares about your stupid twandle.“

Besides.  My brother still calls me “Ang”, which isn’t even short for Andrea no matter how you spell it.  It’s short for Angela.  Which is not my name and I’m pretty sure (?) he knows that. So that’s got to say something about how important this all is.

xo & yw

Photo by Ruth Swanson

This blog has seen me through being a student for three or four years now.  I happen to be one of those people who goes through phases thinking “school’s important!” and then whenever I want to flit off to Europe or whatever (#WGP) I’m all “school’s for suckers and non-creative types!” so while I’m finally at the tail end of my BA, it has taken me 8 years to get here thanks to all my meltdowns and start overs and plane tickets and changing my major 67 times to only end up with the major I assumed I’d get all along … English.  The most interesting Major that ever existed (said no one, ever.)

This blog is used to me dissappearing around the end of semester to complete term papers and final exams.  It’s normal for the months of March and April to be filled with weeks of silence and then posts writen after 6-12 cocktails.  I tend to deal with stress that way – burning the candle at both ends, pulling all nighters, saying yes to nights out on the town and then coming home to complete final papers half-cut at 4am.  I like to feel normal when I’m stressed out – you know, still apply fake eyelashes on Friday nights and that sort of thing.

Unfortunately, that isn’t happening this time around. Call it white girl problems or whatever other offensive name you will, but ever since I took this job in Florida for the summer and got hooked up with my LLBean boyfriend, my stress level has catapulted from normal-zombie-student to in-need-0f-student-rehab.  I need a stress intervention.   A Strevention (?)

In ten days, I will have moved (literally, furniature and everything) THREE times in the past three weeks.  Not to mention I have to pack for three months away before I head back to the city next week.  I don’t know if you know what it’s like to live out of boxes for a month (you probably do, we’re all twenty-somethings in a crisis around here) but I basically have gotten really good at wearing the same thing over and over again except with different shoes.  Worse, I think people are begining to catch on (#WGP).

I’ve been shacked up with G. since we got back from Mexico because my roomate and I finally decided that our brick wall, 1800 square foot dream loft was costing us $400 every other month for hydro and that the only time we were spending there was to mope around in our walk-in closet whining about not having anything to wear (#WGP).  We managed to rent it out and convince our respective boyfriends to start life as couples  (convinient that we both had this option, I tell you).  The only problem is that as per the fact I’m moving back to the city for a month and then all the way down south for the rest of the summer, I’m in this wierd “house-limbo” right now.

I don’t know about you, but when I have a plate full of papers to write (or work to do) I need like, a sanctuary to work in.  My own Sanctuary (#WGP).  It has to be basically all-white, because white relaxes me and allows me to feel like I don’t have to clean (#WGP).  It needs to have fresh flowers, preferably hyacinths because they inspire creativity, and normally I buy them at Whole Foods because they frequently sell out-of-season flowers there (like peonies!) except in this town there is no Whole Foods (#WGP).  I need coffee, a LOT of coffee.  I need wine, a LOT of wine (a la Hemmingway, duh).  And I need a bubble bath pretty much every night to shut my eyes in while I’m listening to Paul Simon and pretending I’m a mermaid (G. doesn’t have a tub I can use at 3am every night FYI #WGP).

Needless to say, I’ve been a bit of a wreck.  And to top it all off, G. has ditched his manhood in the gutter (according to his kind friends) and has been allowing me to drive his truck everywhere so that I don’t have to take public transportation and it’s SO frusterating because it’s like 600 tons and I’m so short that I can’t see over the hood and I have to get to school 30 minutes early and walk SO FAR just so that I can find a pull-through parking spot.  Because heaven forbid I have to parallel park - or worse, back in (#WGP).  Have you ever had to carry a stack of 16 books on Feminist Shakespeare Critisism from parking lot Z to parking lot A?  UHG.

After sorting through all of these issues though, and ordering them number one to seven hundred in the order of their seriousness (#1 being the whole finishing my papers thing amidts the chaos of my life and #700 being finding pull through parking spots for the Dodge) I can’t help but enjoy it all a little bit and laugh at myself.  Am I seriously stressed out?  Yes.  But in ten days I’ll be finished my exams, back in the city, hanging out with the ladies who not only encourage me to wear faux lashes on hikes but do it with me, apologizing to G. over wine and oysters for making him wait 90 minutes on an arm chair in Top Shop while I try on 17 crop tops that range from slightly cropped to the absolute croppest knowing full well I’ll get the mid-range one before I even try them on, and of course, I’ll be wrapping my arms around another full set of White Girl Problems that range from #1 How the hell can I lose ten pounds in 20 days to #700 do I really need to bring my leather, mid-calf, eight inch, chrome spiked JC Lita’s to Orlando, Florida because I might want to wear them out on the town in Miami?

#WGP

xo & yw