Miss Healthypants Returns

Update: Miss Healthypants is healthy once again! And about to dig into some pizza and salad…the salad makes it a healthy dinner, right? Right?? (Just agree with me. Don’t break my delusions of healthiness.)

Excuse Me While I Sleep Another 15 Hours

I can’t believe it. For the second time in two weeks, I’m sick again. Correction: I’m sick, but almost better…thank God!

Here’s what happened:

On Tuesday night, Iwanski requested that his generous, loving wife pick up some dinner on her way home from work. His loving, generous wife picked up said dinner at Chipotle Mexican Grill. The Iwanskis feasted heartily.

Cut to later that night. Iwanski is writhing in pain (no doubt caused by the aforementioned Chipotle dinner). Miss Healthypants is sleeping through nearly all of it. Iwanski is up half the night. Miss Healthypants sleeps right through the alarm, dreaming that she and her coworkers are dancing to "Ba-ba-ba-ba-Barbara Ann" in the office. Iwanski and Miss Healthypants barely make it out of bed to get to work.

Cut to later that day, around noon. Now Miss Healthypants is writhing in pain. Iwanski has some pain, but is mostly better. Miss Healthypants is just starting to get sick.

Miss Healthypants (who is now Miss Sicklypants) leaves work early, goes home, and sleeps for the next 15 hours, waking only to eat half a container of Ben and Jerry’s Frozen Yogurt (brought to her by her loving, generous husband).

Miss Sicklypants now has a temperature of 100.7 degrees. Having never been prone to running a fever, Miss Sicklypants calls Buck, the King of Fevers. (Buck can get a slight cough and immediately start running a fever of 103 degrees.) Buck reassures Miss Sicklypants that 100.7 is not too bad, and tells her that unless it gets to 103 degrees, she’s probably okay. Then Buck gives Miss Sicklypants some great advice: take Tylenol and drink lots of liquids. This proves to be very sage advice. A couple of hours later, Miss Sicklypants’ fever is broken and she is feeling slightly better. She sleeps several more hours.

Cut to present time. Miss Sicklypants is mostly better, except for the fact that whenever she eats anything, it feels like little aliens are poking at her intestines from the inside. This feels wonderful. (Buck, you got any advice for that?)

So there you go. The story of Miss Sicklypants.

I guess I could just not eat until tomorrow. I could stand to lose some weight, anyway.

A Thought

Would it really be so difficult to give envelopes and stamps a better taste? Really? In the hundreds of years since we've been using envelopes and stamps, they couldn't come up with a way to make them taste a little less like ass, and a little more like--say--chocolate?

Bad Habits

Everyone has bad habits, right?

Here are some of my bad habits:

--I chew on pens until they are all mangled—and then I chew on them some more.

--I bite my nails (I’ve a bit of an oral fixation, don’tcha think?)

--I pet the cat and then rub cat hair directly into my eye. (This one is not only a bad habit, it’s fun, as well!)

--I routinely spill glasses of water.

--When I’m cleaning, I often go into a “cleaning frenzy” and put objects in unlikely places. (Yes, Iwanski, your contact lens case does belong in the filing cabinet.)

--I walk in the house and dump my work clothes on the floor, two feet from the laundry basket (because IN the laundry basket would be just too easy!)

--I blend my makeup with tissues, but then leave the tissues on the bathroom counter instead of throwing them into the wastebasket directly below the counter. (I apparently have problems putting things into containers!)

--I stack books and magazines on the floor next to the couch, intending to read them, but never getting around to it.

So I’m pretty much a slob.


What are Iwanski’s bad habits? I’m glad you asked!

--He leaves little shaving stubble all over my makeup sponges (although to his credit, he’s working toward changing that habit).

--He freaks out over salmonella (to the extreme).

--He hems and haws over where to eat lunch (this is especially fun if Miss Healthypants is really hungry).

--After taking a shower, he doesn’t push the “stopper” on the faucet down, which makes an annoying “eeeeee!” sound. (Believe me, this is more irritating than it sounds.)

--He chooses Popeye’s chicken over a salad.

--He’s a clutterbug. (Do you know anyone who wants the past 20 years of baseball, basketball, and football preview magazines?)

--He balls up his socks and throws them across the living room, usually at one of the cats. (They love this. So does Miss Healthypants.)

--He reads newspapers and magazines and then leaves them on the floor next to the chair, instead of putting them in the recycling bin.

OK, I guess we’re both slobs.


What are your bad habits?

Positively Imperfect

I am a very positive person—normally. In fact, I am always the one preaching to my friends about how important it is to stay positive. (They love that.)

But today, my negativity got the better of me. As the receptionist in the movie “Office Space” said, “Sounds like someone’s got a case of the Mondays!” I want to punch that lady.

And at 6 PM, after an entire day of wallowing in worry and negativity, I thought, “Why am I doing this? I tell my friends all the time about how important it is to stay positive, and hear I am, Miss Negative Nancy, all day today! How can I be such a hypocrite?”

And then I remembered: I’m not perfect!

And then I thought, “That’s right! I’m not perfect! It’s okay that I was like this today, because I have the rest of my life (and perhaps several more lives) to try to overcome my negativity.”

And that thought changed my entire attitude around. What a blessing it is to remember that I’m not perfect! Now I can go forward and be positive again. There’s no point in dwelling on past negativity—that would just make me more negative!

Also, I really believe in the concept that “what you put out there (to the universe) comes back to you.” I believe this is especially true of our thoughts.

So for example, if you kept thinking, “People aren’t very helpful to me” or “People don’t respect me,” what do you think would happen? Well (I believe), then people won’t be helpful to you or respect you!

One of my good friends is seeing this concept work for her as she tries to improve her self-esteem. Every day, she’s been telling herself, “I love myself, and I’m beautiful.” This has been especially difficult for her, as she often sees herself as unworthy of love and unattractive (neither of which is true in the least!); However, today she was substitute teaching at a high school, and she could hear the kids whispering about how pretty she was. One of them even gathered up his courage and said straight to her face, “I just wanted to say that you’re really pretty!” Isn’t that wonderful?

So here are some thoughts that I’m going to try to think every day—we’ll see if they work!

 People are very helpful to me.
 People respect me.
 People compliment me often.
 I am losing weight every day, no matter what I eat.
 I am very organized and never lose anything.
 Iwanski loves doing housework and is obsessive about making sure the house is clean.
 I am very lucky and will win the lottery soon.

Well, a girl can dream, can’t she?

Looptopia!

God, I love living in this city!

Last night was the 2nd annual “Looptopia,” an all-night festival of art and music in Chicago’s loop (downtown) neighborhood. (And I mean all night—there were things going on from 5 PM Friday till 7 AM on Saturday.) Last year, John and I were in Wisconsin visiting my parents during Looptopia, so this year, we were excited to check it out.

We wandered out of the house around 8 PM and headed over to State Street. We had heard that up and down State, there were supposed to be performance artists in an overall exhibition called “Ghost Light.” We had no idea what we were in for. On each downtown block of State Street (on both sides of the street), there were single performers on raised platforms, all dressed in white. They were all different and all very weird (weird in a good way!). For example, one of them was a woman in a long white dress with a veil, picking petals from a flower and looking down at a writhing pile of white doll babies, lying on their sides with their arms and legs moving. Off to the side, there was a huge mesh bag full of more white dolls, which were not moving. Trust me, it was very creepy-looking. I heard someone say, “I think this is something about abortion.” I thought that was probably as good a guess as any.

Then there was the tortured artist guy, who had drawn ominous-looking self portraits and was trying to poke a hole through one of them with a metal pick. And the female karate master, who did a series of bows and slow kicks and then used a pair of chopsticks to slowly pick up a gummy bear from atop a huge bowl of gummy bears and move it over to a canister on the other side of the platform.

The best part of the exhibit was probably hearing people’s reactions as they went past them. “I don’t get it,” was one of the most common utterances. There’s nothing to get, people! It’s art! It means whatever you want it to mean.

We walked for a good hour through this exhibit, and then walked over to Dearborn Street. Around every corner it seems that there something else interesting to see. We saw two women stacking up eggs on the sidewalk, a wandering band of hippies singing some tunes, and a giant multicolored lit-up piece of hard candy.

Then we got to the hoedown. Yes, there was a hoedown in downtown Chicago! Right in Daley Plaza, there was a live country/bluegrass band complete with a guitar, banjo, and fiddle player—and a square dance caller. We got there at the end of the square dance lesson, and then watched as hundreds of people—young and old—square danced next to the Picasso. They were pretty good, too!

Then the band played a waltz, and John and I joined hundreds of other people waltzing in the square. You could almost touch the positive energy in the air. It was just beautiful.

Then it was time for the Virginia Reel, a type of line dance. John, who doesn’t always like to join in line dances, decided it was time to join. The guys were told to line up on one side, the girls on the other. There were about 6 couples to each line, and somehow John and I became the head couple. The instructions seemed easy until it got to the linking of elbows. Somehow, John and I got completely lost on what we were supposed to be doing at that point—and our fellow Virginia Reelers didn’t help much, either. Some of them were yelling “We’re supposed to join the other line!” while others yelled out, “No—it’s right elbows, then left elbows!” It was all very confusing. John did the right thing and left the line. “’Bye!” he yelled, and I followed him, laughing. I was glad to be away from all that. We instead did our own little dance from the sidelines. We had fun, either way.

After that, it was a free-for-all dance, and the band played a rousing Irish tune and then three bluegrass songs. The band was fantastic, and John and I were in seventh heaven, dancing and singing among hundreds of others who were having the time of their lives.

At a hoedown, right here in downtown Chicago.

I know that there were several other events happening throughout the night, but for us, nothing would top this.

After that, John and I walked around for a while longer and joined the throngs of people wandering the streets, taking in all the amazing artistic and musical exhibits. There was a feeling of happiness and energy in the air. The city was just so alive.

Eventually, we went home and opened our window a crack as we watched a bit of t.v. I fell asleep on the couch, and at two in the morning was awakened to the sound of music and people yelling and “woo”ing. Yep, the festival was still going—all night long.

At 5 in the morning, there was supposed to be a huge game of hide-and-go-seek happening in Millennium Park. I wish I could have stayed awake to see that.

About 9 years ago, John and I decided to leave Wisconsin to come live here in downtown Chicago. I have never regretted that decision. And I’ve never been happier to live here than I was last night.

Dirty Jobs

OK, we’ve already confirmed that I’m a lucky bad-ass.

Even in my job, I think I’m pretty lucky. I work with people I like for the most part, and the work that I do translates into good things for the community.

But I wasn’t always so lucky in my professional pursuits. My first two jobs were the worst.

The first job I ever had was sorting through people’s nasty clothing at Goodwill. My sister-in-law worked there, and my Dad talked her into getting me a summer job there. He later told me that he helped me get the job so I would be convinced that I needed to go to college. I was convinced after the first hour there.

My job was to sort through huge crates that came in, to find clothing that was suitable to sell in the store. This meant that it had to have no stains, or holes or rips. Trust me, VERY little clothing that we got in those crates was salvageable. And it wasn’t just clothes. You would not believe the horrible things that people “donated” in those crates. Chicken bones were one of the least disgusting things, if that tells you anything. One time, we saw a pair of child’s underwear with poo in it. That was lovely. Then there were the times when an entire crate would come in stinking of ammonia. Why on earth would people donate pee-stained clothes? Or else they were peed on by someone after they were donated. Yikes! Either way, those crates went right into the garbage.

So we had to stand there all day, digging through these dirty crates, never knowing what we’d find in there. Oh, and everything was so dusty (and I’m allergic to dust), so I had to wear a dust-mask all day long. Man, I hated that job.

Then, in college, I worked one summer as a housekeeper on campus. (People would stay in the campus townhouses for a couple of weeks at a time. I guess it was cheaper than getting a hotel room.) That job convinced me that I do not like to clean up after people. (Yeah, my future kids are always going to clean up after themselves. Always.) I remember one time that I picked up a half-full can of Mountain Dew. I went to empty it into the sink, and gobs of chewing tobacco dribbled out. The smell was even worse than how it looked—I started gagging and almost threw up.

Man, I’m really glad I went to college.