Something about crisis and opportunity

I promised to offer "tips" for living life chronically ill without losing (too much) of your mind. As previously stated, I do not claim any particular expertise. Just want to share some ideas, habits I've found helpful in my own life. "Tips" seems the shortest, simplest way to label that (and I will now leave off with the basically unnecessary quotation marks as I am beginning to annoy even myself.) So here's one for starters -- take your bad days and find a way to use them to your advantage. This way, even a bad day doesn't seem like a total loss. I hate when a day feels completely wasted. And there is sometimes a hidden upside to what can otherwise be difficult just to get through. For example...

A day when I feel so sick or am in so much pain that I cannot get out of bed is not a good thing. I think most people would agree with this feeling. However, I have learned (through some amount of practice) that these days are a great opportunity to watch a foreign film. If all I'm good for is staring at the TV screen, that means I can easily keep up with subtitles, free of distraction. And there's a lot of great movies that I might never have seen without this extra nudge. Such as "Timecrimes," a perfect little puzzle of a time-travel murder mystery. In fact, after watching this once, I immediately watched it over again to see how the pieces fall together. Truly ingenious.

Or, how about a day when I just can't get out of the house? Perfect chance for all those things I've been going to, you know, get around to. Like cleaning out my closet and finding all the clothes that should really be given away. Or getting my books/CDs/DVDs/sock drawer better organized. (To be fair, I do kinda love reorganizing stuff...) Or maybe it's even a good time to write a blog post, since I was going to do such a good job at keeping up on that. Maybe.

Look, y'all, I'm not saying that every cloud has a silver lining. But trying to find them sure does make life a little better, and at least passes some time.

Nora Ephron

"She could peel an apple in one long curly strip..."

When I was a kid, the local library let you check out videos for free.  And not just educational movies, but popular theatrical movie-movies too.  "Sleepless in Seattle" was one of the first grown-up (non-animated or musical) movies I watched and really liked.  I don't know what drew me to this particular film in the first place, but I checked it out of the library over and over again until I had it pretty much memorized.  Sure, some of the jokes were a little over my head, but I didn't care.  And as time went on, I started to get more of them and the movie just got better.  Even this past week, I discovered a new level to one of said memorized jokes --

Sam (on returning to the dating scene): "What is tiramisu? ... Some woman is gonna want me to do it to her and I'm not gonna know what it is!"

Now, tiramisu is, in fact, an Italian dessert so... funny.  The extra layer that was lost on me until recently is that "tiramisu" literally means "pick me up."  That is something a woman may want you to do to her (one way or another.)  Ha!  Bonus humor finally dawning on you over a decade after first viewing -- I'll credit that to a good writer.  Which Nora Ephron certainly was. Thanks for a very worthwhile introduction to movies, Ms. Ephron, for proving repeatedly that romantic comedies don't have to be junk, and that a good script is essential.