Little Miss Cranky Pants is temporarily assuaged.

I've had IBS for a couple of years now. IBS is *irritable bowel syndrome*, and is not to be confuddled with its more damaging cousin IBD (inflammatory bowel disease - like Crohn's). According to the popular media, like, tons of people have this syndrome, or various other uncomfortable digestive situations. It's probably connected in some way to our years of rich overeating or some such. IBS is either getting more prevalent, or more acceptable in polite conversation; I mean, who used to feel comfortable talking about erectile dysfunction? Now it's all my e-mail wants to discuss.

In me, IBS is cyclical, like it stays for a couple weeks to a month, and disappears for a couple weeks to a month. When it's at its worst, I end up being incapacitated for an hour or so at a time, several times a day. I can honestly say, it's the worst pain I've ever felt - like my gut is being wrung out and shaken. It will wake me up a few times a night, and I'll spend hours in the dark waiting for the pain to subside.

There're drugs - painkillers, anti-spasmodics...but I can't help feeling that this is something that I should be able to control, though I've found no pattern that might help me understand why it happens. So, last night, I went to an energy healing clinic.

There are various alternative medicine practices that I've considered...this was just my first stop.

It is v. interesting.

First, they check your Chakras with a small pendulum. Evidently, it is supposed to swing in a graceful, clockwise circle, and they look for wobbling or for incorrect movement. Then they do their thing - sometimes touching, sometimes touching the body they say extends past your body. At the end of a half-hour, when I was telling Alexis about it, the only way I could describe it was "insectoid".

"That makes me uncomfortable," she said.

What I meant, is that I felt all fluid and connected inside...like I was filled with goo that flowed through my body in a single cavity. Like I said, v. interesting. Endolymph (I didn't know it had a name, I thought it was called insect goo...)

I don't know, I don't know...all I can tell you is that I slept throught the night for the first time in weeks.

They're baaaack!

Oh, thank goodness...I was afraid they'd left Northside Park forever. Instead, we've had game after game of horrifying soccer - high, vicious, pre-pubescent voices raised in triumph and the lower, angrier, voices of their parents (who ask themselves: is this it? is this supposed to mean something, to be the purpose of my life? here, in this mosquito-ridden field, watching my tenure played out in repetitive, useless motions? the least you can do is perform...fucking kick the damn ball, you parasitic child!)


This evening, however, in the muggy beginnings of twilight, came a happier, fiercer noise. For they had returned: Cricketers!

The view from my driveway.

Roses behaving badly

The lawn and gardens are neglected. The white, wild roses are growing over and around the hot pink ones, smothering them and bending their flowerheads. When I first came here, I wasn't crazy about the hot-pink roses...thought they were sick, thought they were ugly. Now, I tuck bushels of compost and mulch around them in the spring, and deadhead them in hopes of more startling blooms as the summer wears on.

Everything gets tired, though. Leaves that were, in spring, bright green and flourishing are black spotted and yellow, withered even. The green growing things look, maybe sick, maybe normal...through my eyes it all seems a great omen of ecological devastation, but what doesn't nowadays?

Sorry mom.

I've been on a sort of brain vacation (a braication?).

I suddenly have too much to say, and no real inclination to say it...