Fresh and delicious stories about anything that amuses me, confuses me, or makes me blow a gasket. Take a look around the drawer. Just leave everything where you found it.
I know it’s not 2011 yet, but I’ve already been out to see the clock countdown to the new year.
I went to my first ever Peep Drop!
What’s a Peep Drop, you ask? Just Born, the company who makes deliciously sugary, marshmallowy Peeps, is located in my town. Every New Year’s Eve, they drop a Peep at two times: early evening (for kids and tired old people) and again at midnight, for people who can stay up past say, 10PM.
I’m a tired old person, so that meant fake midnight. My husband and I sidled up to the viewing area, and looked up to the sky to find a glowing fiberglass Peep hanging from the top of a giant crane.
As the countdown approached, screaming kids chanted “Drop-the-Peep! Drop-the-Peep!”
And then at the appointed time, Enormous Peep in all its paunchy yellow glory, was lowered to the ground to great fanfare and then fireworks.
After Mr. Peep touched down, an organizer came over to the area where I was standing and said “OK, press? You can come over now.”
OMG. She thinks I’m press. Should I go over? I can get real close and maybe hug the costumed Peep who walked around and cheeped at people.
And then I chickened out. I stayed behind while real press people got to get within inches of both real and Plastic Peep.
Sigh.
At least that’s the last regret I’ll have in 2010. Tomorrow’s a new year, ripe for plenty of new regrets.
Disclaimer: I am not a doctor, but I’ll play one on the blog today.
If you have sinus problems and prefer a non-pharmaceutical treatment, go get yourself a neti pot.
A neti pot is a container that looks like a cross between a small tea pot and Aladdin’s lamp. It’s used to irrigate your nasal passageway and relieve sinus congestion or allergy symptoms.
It’s also used to make you look more ridiculous than you ever thought possible.
You fill it with warm water, add non-iodized salt and then place the spout into one nostril, tilt your head and run the water out the other.
Ridiculous!
If you do it right, it’s not uncomfortable, just oddly, weirdly, bizarrely strange. If you do it wrong, you’ll feel like you’re drowning. I strongly suggest you do it right.
Why the neti pot?
I have not been able to breathe clearly from my right nostril for years. What’s worse is that I also suffer intense pain in my ears when I lie down, more so on my right side. I’ve discussed the ear thing with three different doctors and they are intrigued, yet stumped as to the cause.
While researching the ear pain issue on my own, I came across a forum where someone suggested a neti pot as a possible solution. Because I take advice from total strangers on the Internet, I thought perhaps if I relieved the congestion in my right nostril, it might also alleviate some pain in my ear(s), assuming the two issues are related. Isn’t that a good doctory assumption? I should know. Because I’m a doctor.
I prepared the pot and got right to it. I. Was. FEARLESS! I was also alone and not in front of a mirror. No one, including me, needed to see a drainage of the Kathy Canal.
The clearing effect to my nostrils was immediate and lasted a good while. I breathed equally well out of each side for the first time in probably a decade.
What remains to be seen is whether regularly-administered neti pot action will do anything for my ears.
More about that ear pain
Whenever I lie down, pressure builds up and it feels like someone jammed a knife directly into my ear and left it there. The pain varies. It can be sharp, burning hot, dull or throbbing. I’ve described the pain to my doctors as simply “My head’s on fire.”
Fun.
I’ve also said that if I had this kind of pain while awake and walkin’ around, I would be on disability. It would easily incapacitate me if I felt that measure of pain 24/7.
The reason I can tolerate it is because I’m mostly sleeping through the pain. It often wakes me up, but then I flip over to the other side to relieve pressure and pain in the ear. When the other ear hurts and wakes me, I flip back. I do that probably a dozen times a night.
Again, fun.
If the neti pot doesn’t help with my ears, at least I’m seeing results with my plugged-up nose. So it’s at least a partial win.
Oh, and some of you remember I said on Facebook that I might videotape myself using the neti pot.
For. Get. It.
Imagine filming yourself doing this and you will understand why I changed my mind.
Robot Lady Using a Neti Pot
So have you ever used a neti pot? Are you like some friends of mine who bought one, but are too afraid to try it? If you love your neti pot, share your success story!
UPDATE: I just discovered that I can’t use my neti pot over the kitchen sink, where I find it more convenient.
My cat Shadow thinks my nose is a faucet. Because she loves to drink water right from the tap, she tried doing the same out of my nose.
I know. Gross. And annoying. Thanks, Shadow. ‘ppreciate it.
A friend of the family enjoys my blog, but she doesn’t read it the way you do.
She’s in her 80s and doesn’t have a computer or access to the Internet. She gets my blog when I print out several months’ worth of posts and mail them to her at the post office.
A blog through snail mail. Weird, huh?
Whenever I print out posts I always sit down and read through them before mailing. Why? Because reading a chunk of your old posts in a quiet setting, on paper, is a full-immersion exercise that gives you a clearer picture of your writing. Much more than just browsing a single post on a computer screen can.
Because there is time and distance between me and something I wrote months ago, it almost feels like I’m reading someone else’s work. It’s fresh to me.
I discover a lot from this process.
When I laugh at something I barely remember writing, it’s like getting a surprise gift. “I wrote that? Not bad, Kathy. Not bad.”
It also gives me a chance to watch for negative trends that I might have slipped into over the years and that need improvement.
Here are some things I noticed:
1. I’m writing less. This last packet I sent was thinner than it should have been for five months and I know why. The larger my audience gets, the more afraid I am to publish something that I’m not sure will be a hit. There were periods I went as long as eight days without a new post.
When I first started The Junk Drawer, I published every 2-3 days. I want to get back to that, accepting the risk that something will fall flat. Sure, if I write more, there may be more stinker posts, but I know that I’m happier when I publish more often.
2. No matter how much I edit a post before I publish, I found some posts that still weren’t cut enough. I wrote things that weren’t necessary for the post theme, especially in the lead paragraphs. Some passages sounded awkward or lengthy, and didn’t help move the story along. Lotta clunky stuff in places.
3. I overuse some words, use clichés when I get lazy, and sometimes something I write doesn’t even make sense to me when I read it months later. I’d sit there and think “God, what must my readers have thought? They sure are forgiving.”
4. I’m insane. But we knew that already.
So in this season of giving, give yourself a little gift.
Print out some of your stuff and cozy up with it for a while. You might be surprised by your own writing, find a few things you can improve upon and renew your excitement for blogging.
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