Today's discussion started with Linda, I'll call her Linda even though her real name is Linda, complaining about her husband's magazine subscriptions. Apparently they cause a lot of clutter. Ken, I call him the new guy because he is the new guy and it finally isn't me who is the new guy, says he likes magazine subscriptions. He likes getting something fun in the mail. One of the managers chimes in with a complaint about her ex husband. This is par for the course. Every time any subject comes up she relates it to her ex and we have to listen to that for the next hour. "Hey? Did you see such and such on the reality TV show last night?" "No. But my ex-husband Dennis is a real prick. Do you know that he made a tape of him reading stories and sent it to my daughters? They aren't babies! What is he thinking? He babies them. They aren’t babies. And stuff." Etcetera.

I don't sit at the lunch table but it’s close enough that I can still hear them. Usually I have my headphones on. The other day I had a panic attack at the grocery store. I was there late at night; late for where I live. At eight thirty everyone but the crickets and the night flying geese disappear into their homes. We have these incredible grocery stores around me. The produce sections are bigger than most other grocery stores I have ever been in. I was looking at bananas and a woman came in talking on a cell phone and she glanced over at me. You know, just the way you would glance over at someone looking at bananas and it set me off. The last time I had one at the store it was a box of Honey Combs in the mile long cereal aisle.

Panic attacks start with this sort of mild suffocating feeling. Sort of like a tickle in the back of somewhere that isn't really a tickle but you know it is going to get bad and it does. It got bad in the meat aisle. I don't eat meat but I was standing there and my legs got heavy to the point where I felt my feet were glued to the floor. My arms tightened and my hands started to curl in towards me. Someone was walking past me with a basket and I knew I was going to make a scene and that no one would be able to do anything about it or offer any help because offering help would make it worse so I knew I needed to move. I grabbed a pack of pork chops and chicken and something else that might be bacon and put it in the cart.

No one in my family knows I don't eat meat. I don't have that kind of family. The non-meat eating kind. If you tell someone you aren't eating meat they will try to argue with you and think you are taking on airs. My brother-in-law has a whole spiel about people that don’t eat meat. He hunts and has a spiel about that too. Even reading a book means you are taking on airs. I keep my Tolstoy and Hesse under wraps. I keep a lot under wraps.

So I'm in the middle of this mini crisis and I have meat in my cart and I have a grocery list with all my necessities and I tell myself out loud to just get what is on the list and get the fuck out of there. I keep telling myself that. Get what's on the list and get out. In addition to lead legs I come up with a case of the fumbles and drop several things on the floor as I go through the store which makes it even worse and I can't seem to stick to the list. This fucking grocery list. I end up buying things I don't need or use. Aside from the meat I end up with the following, three cans of goya nectar that I have no idea what to do with. Do you drink it? Is it used for cooking? I think it was the pictures of fruit on the can that drew me in. A six pack of black cherry soda that I won't drink. Mayonnaise that I don't eat. Ranch dressing and a Spongebob Squarepants toothbrush. My list is all but forgotten and I just wander up and down the aisles trying to hold on to my composure talking to myself all the while. Then I realize I am talking to myself and I think of how that looks to the people who hear me and that makes it worse so I talk to myself more. I duck into the magazine aisle and pick up a magazine about four wheeled motorcycles and look at it but don't look at it and at least I managed to get out of the store without buying the thing.

At the lunch table they are talking about Michael Jackson selling his house and someone says something about Barry Manilow. Then Linda says something about her spring shoes and the manager chick talks about how her ex husband wants more visitation and what a dick he is.

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Today I left the office for lunch. Linda and Ken were sitting at the table as we walked past. We is me and Heather. She is in the box next to me. I listen to her exasperated sighs when she listens to the lunch conversations. I had to go to the bank and she had to go to the bank. They are different banks. At my bank there was a book sale out in the lobby. They had The Rainbow Fish. At her bank I sat in a chair watching her stand in line while she stood in line. Then I paced back and forth. Where the banks are is in the city on Main Street. These banks get robbed all the time. I paced back and forth until I remembered these banks getting robbed all the time and then I wondered if they thought maybe I was going to rob this one, that I was staking the joint or something. Then I wasn’t sure what to do. Should I sit down or would that look suspicious? So I kept pacing. A lady at one of the bank desks where you go to get a checking account asked if she could help me and she called me sir. Then I said no and kept walking and now I got more nervous until Heather was done and then she walked past me toward the door and I merged in with her and we walked outside. It is 54 degrees today but it still feels chilly. We went to a local Chinese place that has a buffet. We ate lo mein and sesame tofu and rice and vegetables and water. I paid. We got one fortune cookie and we said it must be a fortune for us to share and we sort of laughed. The fortune said, "You don't accomplish anything by standing still." She looked at me and I looked at her and thought how it was odd because I had gotten the same fortune some weeks ago when I was there with her and Linda and she made a point of making a point of it then and this time I said, "Well this must be a sign." And she said, "You need a fortune cookie to tell you that?" And I didn't get into how I thought some things could be accomplished by standing still I just sort of smiled a little and acted like what she was telling me made me smile a little even though she wasn't really smiling about it. On the other side of the fortune it said how to say, "You are very kind." in Chinese but I don't remember what it was.

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Today lunch started out with talk of children. Amie's got two kids. She goes on and on about them and how spectacular they are but that wasn't today’s conversation. Today's conversation was how it is annoying when people go on and on about their kids and about how kids aren't interesting but parents think that their kids are. Then Amie started talking about how she had to start being polite to her dogs when her kids were little because they started telling the dogs to get the fuck out of the way and to fuck off and to shut the fuck up.

Linda just found fly in her sandwich. She's screaming and bitching. Want to hear? Give me a call. I'll hold the phone up.

Now they are talking about parasites in the human body.

There are lots of eeewwws and grosssssses. And Ken is saying how he would never get breast implants. People wonder why I'm on the verge of a fucking breakdown, why I don't keep rope at my house, and sold the shotgun. I kept the bow though. I never heard of anyone being able to shoot themselves with a bow. I never really had a shotgun. I just made that part up for the sake of drama. The rope and the bow part are true. Most everything else is too.

Carnie Wilson got her stomach stapled.
Amie ends every sentence with "and stuff."
Fat runs in her cousins.
Do people live long in your family.
Nobody in my family has ever died of cancer.
No Jesus pizza.
What's an Osier?
Why the hell did I get two hot dogs?
Standing outside, dancing in the street, drinking beer; that's just a cool concept.
Blah blah blah.
People Magazine.
The beach.
Scientific studies show that the land the surf even if you built your house you have...the cottage that we have...twenty years ago...etc.

I keep telling maintenance that they should come and lock my window but they think I'm joking.

Seriously. Call me and I'll hold up the phone.

Amie just said, "I think Chrisina Agwilahra will have more longevity in the long run then Brittknee Speerz."

I made the mistake of going to see my doctor about my jaw. I've been clenching down on it so hard lately that when I wake up in the morning I open my mouth and then I can't close it again. She told me how you have all these crazy muscles in your jaw and mine are working id direct opposition to each other because of the clenching. I told her I clench when I'm stressed which is more than I told anyone else ever but she didn't seem to think it's important. She gave me some muscle relaxants (which I was hoping for) and some anti-inflammatory which I sometimes take and sometimes don't, and she sent me to a phlebotomist for blood work. She said it was just to get base lines in case i need blood work later and to check my thyroid to be sure that wasn't the reason for my jaw trouble. I didn't bother pointing out that I already told her what my jaw trouble was. I figured I already told her once, no need to beat a dead horse. Then she schedules me for a follow up in two weeks.

Well my jaw can close now but it is still tight at the joint and I've been using the muscle relaxants to get through my weekends. When I go back to the doctor she looks at the results from my blood work and she looks at me then she looks at the paper again like it is the first time she had seen it and I think it probably was then she starts talking about glucose and insulin production and how I have something called something that I can't remember but it amounts to pre-diabetes and it isn't really a big deal because she can tell I "make good choices" whatever that means and I need to make some changes in my diet and how I need to buy this book and eat five meals a day and there is medication but we'll just try to diet first. I'm not overweight. I work out religiously, if religiously means once twice three times a week but sometimes I take a month or so off which is exactly what religiously means and I'm a vegetarian and I don't eat fried foods and I'm down from 225 to 180 but that's probably because food doesn't interest me anymore all that much. That is why I sit at my desk eating a salad and a skim milk and six almonds because my doctor told me to that's why. So I'm eating this salad with skim milk and almonds and olive oil which is fine which is fine which is fine but I don't tell my doctor that I find my eyes lingering a little longer then they should on bridge abutments and telephone poles and thick trees as I drive by them and how can she expect me to stay on a diet when most times I have trouble staying on the road. How am I supposed to care about insulin levels when life levels are difficult enough. And save the bit about how insulin levels might be making me look at trees a little too long. I've always liked trees.