You’re fine. You’re walking down the street, the same street as any other day. Maybe it’s a nice day. Maybe the temperature is just that perfect midpoint between cold and hot. A gentle breeze might blow past you. You’re in a relatively good mood. You feel happy, you don’t have anything in particular on your mind. Maybe you’re even listening to music while you walk.

You go into the store because you need to buy toilet paper, or maybe you need diapers, or hell, you just decided to go pick up some chocolate bars as a treat for your kids. You’re walking down the aisle and all of a sudden something changes. Someone else may not have noticed the change but you’re so familiar with this sensation that you can’t help but feel it immediately. You realize that your heart rate has accelerated. Not a lot. Nothing that makes you break your stride but it’s definitely faster.

You frown because you know what that usually means, but you force yourself to keep thinking about what you came here for, or to concentrate on the music in your ears, or to look at the labels on the products you’re passing.

Except nothing is distracting you as you realize that your heart rate is not slowing down, it’s not even staying at the status quo: It’s getting faster. And a little faster. And then too fast. It feels like you’ve been exercising hard, the way it used to feel when you did aerobics at the gym or how it used to pound after a good, solid two-hour kung fu workout. The problem is you haven’t been exercising hard; you didn’t even break a sweat walking to the store. Your heart is not pounding because of exertion. You know exactly why it’s pounding, thudding, thundering in your chest, your throat, your ears.

You decide to start taking long, slow breaths, only you have to fight to do it because as soon as you consciously think of your breathing you realize that for the past 60 seconds it’s been coming too fast, too shallow. You force yourself to fill your lungs with air, hold it, and release it. You keep inhaling again before you’ve completely exhaled no matter how hard you try to control it.

You get to the shelf holding whatever you wanted to buy. Maybe you had to think hard to even remember what it was that you needed so badly because all you want to do is breathe properly and slow your heart back down before an artery bursts. You quickly grab what you need.

You carry on through the store, searching for the other things on your list. You realize you’re sweating. It’s not very hot out, but you feel like the sun is all of ten feet away. You open your jacket or push up your sleeves, wishing it was appropriate to strip down completely to cool off as much as possible.

You try to swallow and realize your throat is dry, too dry and you nearly gag. For a second you feel like whatever’s in your stomach is going to make a rapid exit up and out onto the floor. You breathe, breathe, breathe, reminding yourself to slow down. But everything is fast. Your heart is too fast, your lungs are expanding and constricting too fast. Your feet start matching their pace. Your brain says something is wrong and by god you had better keep moving or there’s going to be trouble. As long as you keep moving, just moving, you’ll be fine.

You’re still trying to swallow, still trying to convince lunch to stay where it is. You feel like everything is too tight so you start tugging on the neckline of your sweater, trying to pull it away from your neck where it’s clearly squeezing you and trying to choke you.

As you grab the last of what you need, you do an abrupt 180 and head for the nearest cash as quickly as you can. As you race past the displays, past people, past posters on the walls you wonder why everything is so surreal. Faces are too bright. Everything is too bright. You feel like someone has adjusted the color intensity on your surroundings and everything is just a little too over-saturated.

You get in line and curse that there are two people in front of you, why the other cash isn’t open. You breathe, you breathe, you mutter to yourself under your breath, reassuring yourself that you’re okay, you’re fine, you’re nearly there, if you can just get out that damn door it will all be right again. Sounds explode in your ears. You wonder why everyone is talking so loud. Everything is amplified, as though everyone around you is speaking directly into your ears, into your brain.

You’re closer now, only one person in front of you. Things go just a little blurry, they way they look when you first wake up and can’t quite focus. You try to stop yourself from swaying and realize that it’s actually your head spinning. The customer in front of you leaves. It’s your turn. You just need to act like a normal person and then you can get out.

You all but throw your purchases on the counter and start fishing immediately for your bank card while you wait for the friendly cashier who is too bright and too fuzzy and too loud to ring up the total. You swipe your card and try to make your fingers stop shaking long enough to punch the right numbers.

While you wait for the transaction to complete you notice things aren’t that bright anymore. You might actually even think you were getting back to normal except for the fact that your heart is now racing so quickly that you wonder how it’s still going, and you’re breathing so quickly that you wonder if people can hear you, but surely they can’t because everything is still so goddamn loud. Then you realize that the brightness is fading because your vision is getting dark and fuzzy around the edges and now your head is spinning more and the world is kind of tilting just a little to one side and your stomach is climbing up your esophagus and you’re not sure if you’re going to faint or throw up or maybe do both but you do know that if you don’t grab your card and your bag and get the fuck out of there right this second then something bad is going to happen and you’re trying to count because sometimes counting backwards by threes from three hundred distracts you from things but there’s no distracting this time and you need to leave, leave, leave, now, now, NOW.

And then you’re done and you get through that door as fast as you can without raising suspicion – good lord, no raising suspicions, that would only delay you from getting outside – and you lean against the wall and pretend to be putting your wallet away or looking for something in your bag, but really you’re just trying to inconspicuously gasp for air, you’re trying to remember what number you were counting, and you’re resisting the urge to sit on the ground with your head between your knees.

Then as air starts to surround you, you feel your heart slowly but surely thudding a little more dully than before, gradually winding down. You realize that you can get a full breath into your lungs again. The dizziness is still lingering but you feel the way you used to in college when you’d reach that slightly tipsy but not quite drunk level and you can cope with that. Still trembling a bit, partly from aftershocks and partly because you finally stopped sweating, you start walking towards home. You’re drained so you can’t walk too quickly, but you’re too bruised inside to walk too slowly so you settle for a moderate pace. You can feel traces of a headache seeping into your skull but you don’t mind too much because you know that it means it’s over now.

Later, at home, when everything is normal, when you’re normal again, you think back on it and decide that it was rough but there have been worse times. And you survived. Again. And you will carry on to face it all over again some day. You don’t know when. It could be tomorrow, if you’re lucky it might not be until next week. You wish it would surprise you and never come back, but you know better by now. Regardless, you congratulate yourself for not letting it win this time.

And that is what it’s like to have a panic attack. That is what it’s like in my brain when my fight or flight trigger gets flipped and I have no way to stop it. That is what it’s like to be me on a regular basis.

Today I took a little bit of time with my coffee to catch up on a few blogs I hadn’t read for about a week and one of them was Carrie’s blog. I am so very happy that I was able to find that quiet time today because thanks to her I have discovered a movie that is now on my list of “Holy shit, I HAVE to see this!” movies.

But first I must ask – WHY WHY WHY did no one tell me about this?! Repo the Genetic Opera. Oh my God. Totally my kind of movie. Here’s the official trailer:

Okay, let’s see. Anthony Stewart Head. Anthony Stewart Head as a legal assassin who, in a futuristic world of organ shortages, repossesses organs if the buyers fall behind in their payments. Anthony Stewart Head SINGING about being a legal organ-harvesting-from-living-people assassin. YES PLEASE.

Paris Hilton has a role in the movie and normally that would totally turn me off but in this case a) she’s so unrecognizable that I only knew it was her because I was looking for her, and b) in the clip I saw, she actually wasn’t bad at all.

And Anthony Stewart Head singing outweighs her anyway.

Aside from the trailer, I urge to to watch this short behind-the-scenes clip. The man is amazing.

There’s also this clip – Zydrate Anatomy – which is incredibly catchy. I keep singing it to myself. It shows Paris Hilton, she comes in at 0:53 and you can see how she’s barely recognizable. (Please note this clip is a little, er, explicit at times so it’s not particularly safe for work or young’uns.)

Continue reading →

I’ve made some professional changes, speaking in the blog sense. While I’ve enjoyed writing for Inside Motherhood and Geeky Traveller over the past year or so, I’ve learned that my passion lies elsewhere. The truth is, I’m a bonafide celebrity kind of person. I love reading about them and evidently I love writing about them. PittWatch is my absolute pride and joy and b5media will have to pry it from my cold, dead fingers at this point.

Also, I forget if I ever mentioned it or not and I’m too lazy to check, but quite some time ago I was asked to co-blog the Britney Groupie blog because the original blogger’s schedule was hectic. That was working out pretty well but he ended up deciding to bow out, so now that blog is all mine too.

And now, I’ve decided to let go of Inside Motherhood and Geeky Traveller because I really feel they’d flourish more with people better suited to them.

So instead of writing those two blogs, I’m now also writing about Christina Aguilera over at Aguilera Buff. Between her and Britney I’m starting to feel like my pop music fandom is being exposed. Sad but true, I love my ex-Disney star pop music.

I’ll be finishing up the other two blogs until the end of the month but then I’ll hand over the reins to someone else. Then, at that point, between Brad/Angelina, Britney, and Christina, plus my celebrity style blog at Style Crunch, I’ll officially be a celebrity blogger.

Not to be confused with a blogger who is a celebrity.

*******
Today Hayley asked if we could have McDonalds for breakfast but George had played last night and got home at 3 am so he offered lunch as an alternative.

Usually when we go to McDonalds, the kids eat half a french fry and then want to go into the play area. We get them to wait until at least one of us is finished if we’re not sitting directly next to the room so that we can be there to watch them but they’re always frantic to get in.

Today they were amazing. Hayley ate her entire cheeseburger and about half her fries, then waited for George to finish eating. Breanna ate half her burger and half the fries and then they went in and were well-behaved, playing for about 45 minutes (part of the reason that they both fell asleep quickly and easily today – late night last night, sleepy today, playing hard, good combination).

Sometimes they frustrate me but then they have their great moments too.

*******
When I first saw Justin Timberlake doiing his “Dick in a Box” skit on Saturday Night Live, I laughed so hard that I cried and figured he could never possibly be any funnier than that.

I was so wrong.

If you missed this week’s SNL, please go here and watch Justin Timberlake, Beyonce, and Paul Rudd in the “Single Ladies” skit.

I just about died. George actually came out from doing something to see what the hell I was watching because I was laughing so hard.

*******
I think I’ll finish up this beer while I catch up on last week’s episode of Criminal Minds. I hope you had a great weekend!

George had to play tonight and the kids had had a bit of a rough day, so I decided to have a girls’ movie night to cheer everyone up. We had just gotten Kung Fu Panda and I knew they would probably love it.

After George left, I popped them into a quick bath to relax them a bit and once they were in their pajamas I spread out a quilt on the floor in the living room. While I had some green tea for my throat (and green tea is pretty appropriate for a kung fu movie set in China!), they had a small bag of chips each and some juice and we settled in to watch it.

It was such a great movie (yes, I write for PittWatch and yet I had not seen it yet – I don’t get to see many movies until they’re out on DVD). The kids enjoyed it, Hayley in particular, and I loved being able to laugh at some of the jokes that they didn’t quite get.

Jack Black was so perfect for the voice of Po and naturally I loved Angelina Jolie as the voice of Tigress. It was all very cute and funny and exciting. I enjoyed seeing cartoon renditions of some of the animal forms that I used to learn back when I did kung fu (especially Tiger and Snake).

The only problem I had was during one of the training scenes there were bowls full of Chinese dumplings and now I’m craving some with no way to have any. Alas, my beer and Tandoori BBQ chips* will have to do somehow.

And with that, I’m off to find another movie to watch now that the kids are finally asleep!

*Seriously. Tandoori BBQ chips. It’s like worlds colliding. Someone took one of my favorite foods (chips) and combined it with one of my other favorite foods (anything Indian) and they are SO GOOD.

I really need a hair cut. It’s getting desperate because I’m starting to eye my grown-out bangs critically and I know where the hair scissors are. That’s never a good thing.

I really liked the cut I got last time, right at the end of the summer. The bob is technically a good cut for me, except that my hair doesn’t like it. It doesn’t co-operate well with the whole concept of curling under at the ends. It prefers to flip up instead. It’s been an enormous pain in the ass trying to get it to behave, and within an hour, one side is always flipping out again no matter what I do. Now that it’s grown out a bit more, I just brush it out and up at the ends anyway.

At this point, I want something that will work with what is natural for my hair. Last Saturday when we went to a birthday party, my friend had one of those hair magazines lying around because she had just gotten hers cut. I flipped through it and found an updated shag cut that I think will work with my hair, my face shape, and my preference for bangs. Lots of bangs.

I don’t know when I’ll get around to going, but I’m hoping my hair god will agree that it’s a good idea for me. If not, I think I’m almost ready to just say, “do something with my hair” and let him do whatever he wants.

Yes or no on the shag?

(I’m too Brit-influenced, I seriously can’t say shag without giggling like a 12-year-old boy.)

I’m ready to douse everything and everyone in this place with Lysol, or bleach, or maybe a bit of both. Then I’m going to buy a SARS mask for Hayley to wear to school. Because I finally got over whatever I had last week, was more or less fine, if a little tired – and then yesterday I noticed that my throat felt weird. I recognized it, but slipped into denial mode, telling myself that clearly I was just thirsty and needed more water.

Right. Today it feels like there’s a big ball of broken glass in my throat. I was able to go back to bed from about 8:30 until 11 but it didn’t do much good since I felt groggy for several hours after the fact.

I am so tired of people being sick around here. I really want to get flu shots for all of us, but you’re supposed to be reasonably healthy at the time – by the time we all feel well at the same time it will be summer and flu season will be behind us anyway!

Enough already!

The other night I spent an hour on the phone with my sister and we talked about this and that, but one thing we talked about was the military, the war(s), and the troops. I won’t rehash it all here but I can summarize it by saying that after the discussion I agreed with her viewpoint that whether we like it or not, sometimes war is a necessity. I ended with the fact that I’ve always wholeheartedly agreed with the concept of “hate the war, but support the troops”.

The thing is, whether I like war or not, and I think most of us do not – even those fighting in them, the fact that we are all here and living in a world where we can hold that opinion is because someone, somewhere, at some point in time fought for our rights, fought for our country, and fought for our freedom.

My grandfather, Alan Osborne? He was one of them. He fought in World War II. He went overseas as a signalman. At some point while he was there, he was shot in the arm and sent to an army hospital to recover. He came back home shortly afterwards. Because he fought for what he believed in, our world was a better place. Because he came home safely, my father was born, and as a result so was I.

I still remember my grandmother telling me how he would write her letters and tell her what was going on in a roundabout way. He’d mention a relative or family friend that would tip her off as to his general location. Clearly he couldn’t say, “we’re in such-and-such a location” but he could say, “I couldn’t help but think of Marjorie today” and she would know more or less where he was because of that. He would sometimes write, “it was raining yesterday and it rained all night. I think it may rain today too” and it wasn’t that it was raining. That was their code for enemy fire, for bombs.

I can’t imagine that world. I can’t imagine being my grandfather and living through gunfire and planes dropping bombs, then calmly writing that it was “raining”. I can’t imagine being my grandmother and sitting by the window, waiting for the mail, only to have it arrive with words that would only cause me to worry more.

I can’t imagine wondering when or if he would ever come home.

But he did it – and she did it too – for freedom and for what was right. They did it for the people who couldn’t or wouldn’t fight. They did it for me and for you and for our kids.

And so today, on Remembrance Day, when I took my two minutes of silence to think of everyone in the middle of a battlefield today in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other countries like the Congo, when I thought of those who fought in WWI, WWII, Korea, and Vietnam, I also stopped to look up and say a thank you to my grandfather who risked his life.

Who did you think of today?

Apparently I raised some curiosity the other day when I mentioned having written some Harry Potter fan fiction. I got one comment and three emails from people wanting to know if they could read it, if I wrote anything else, and if I could suggest anything really good.

Yes, of course you can read it. I have two Harry Potter fics over here. It should be noted that “Rivalry” is incomplete, and due to a lot of changes in the real story I will never be able to finish it, which is unfortunate. “The Long Wait” is still one of my favorite things that I’ve ever written even if the story is practically impossible after books six and seven were released.

I’ve also written one CSI fic over here, which pairs up Greg and Sara, a pairing that was a bit weird for me since I always saw her with Grissom (which is why I was so happy they finally got together on the show, and I’m still distraught that she’s gone; to be honest I stopped watching as regularly after Sara left the show).

I wrote one fic for Criminal Minds as well, which is here. It pairs up Gideon and Elle, but I should really try to write something with Hotch and Emily some day.

Did I mention I’m a geek? I love fanfic. Really. There’s a lot of really bad stuff out there, and most of it lives on fanfiction.net but if you look around you can find some real gems sometimes. I find most of the good stuff on Livejournal or on forums. I discovered fanfic back around the late 90s when I stumbled across some that was dedicated to Buffy. That’s why, although I will always be a Buffy/Spike fan, I still have a love of Buffy/Giles fic. True story.

One of the best Harry Potter fanfics I have ever read is The Room of Lost Dreams. I am a huge fan of Hermione/Snape pairings (HUGE!) and this is the best one to date. The author managed to take the end of the series and spin it into this story and made it work. I absolutely love it.

If you’re into Criminal Minds, this is a great one to read, The 5 Ways Aaron Hotchner’s Marriage Ended.

And uh, there you go! If you have a favorite fic, please let me know!

I am not ready for my kids to grow up just yet. As it is, they’ve been growing way too quickly. I still can’t believe Hayley is six, and Breanna will be three on the 20th of this month. It’s crazy.

On the other hand, I do look forward to an age when the kids are more capable of entertaining themselves without any help for long periods of time so that I can spend a day like today, a chilly and dreary Sunday, stretched out on the couch with a book and a cup of tea. As it is, they’re slowly getting better at playing together without constant fighting and that’s nice to see, but there’s still enough bickering and bossing around that reading is best done at night for me, since I’d be interrupted too frequently and my tea would likely get cold.

Still, that’s what I’d like to be doing today. How’s your Sunday?