Build-a-Bear workshop updates I have; the time, I do not..

I'm committing to one more short post before a real whopper is presented for your pleasure...

With no better way to lay this out, here's an unnumbered list:

I get a lot of e-mails from build-a-bear workshop. I'm not exactly sure how they got my personal information, but I suspect foul play. Because of this foul-play, I am immediately apprised of any new product/animal/theme/special/color option/feature as it is coming in off of the truck.

This beach bunny may or may not be available...

Thank you build-a-bear workshop. I will make sure to pass this pertinent information along to whoever I suspect signed me up for the pleasure of knowing your business.

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Lately I have been completely confused as to what day of the week and/or in the month that it actually is. This is not entirely unique in my life, but the occurrence of this has reached a new extreme-one that creates excitement followed by disappointment followed by a mix of anger, confusion and usually a fit of silent laughter.

For example, I woke this past Monday morning thinking time had advanced an entire week. I thought it was the 23rd and went into a bit of panicked excitement. A moment later I realized it was actually the 16th. An ease settled over me that I hadn't completely lost a week, but was then sad thinking that I was suddenly one more week away from summer vacation.

The following Wednesday brought the certainty that it was actually Friday. More excitement followed by disappointment. As for today, I have no idea what day it is.

This problem has been compounded by the stoppage of my watch battery.

My watch stopped Tuesday afternoon at 7 til 3. The realization of this took 4 and a half hours. These 4 and a half hours did not pass due to my not looking at the watch. I looked at my watch multiple times. Apparently every time I looked at my watch, I was just going through the motions of looking at my watch rather than actually registering what time it was. If I did register the time, I only went with the minute hand.

This came in handy for arriving just in time for happy hour (as I thought it was 7 til 7), but not so much when determining the time after the sun had set.

As the next few weeks pass, I am confident that my brain will continue to turn to mush (clearly it has progressed far in this process already). 

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I both fear and look forward to having time off this summer. Your benefit will be a much more active blog. My benefit will be an ever-expanding waistline and dwindling bank account.

Be forewarned: if you receive informational e-mails about the inner-workings of build-a-bear workshop, you are suspected of foul play.

UPDATE: Bridge Count MMXI

YES

I am still counting bridges.

In fact, I am counting the shit out of bridges (eh hem, pardon the language)

It is tough work. I have to constantly be on my toes, counting toes. Do you realize how easily I fall asleep in cars?! Especially rocking Judyth down the highway during the 3:00pm slump?! Where are those Emerald Nuts when you need them?

I reached the 5000 bridge mark over the weekend. So: woo.

Counting bridges is exhausting, tedious, and entirely pointless-but I. AM. DOING. IT. Even on road trips to Athens, Georgia and beyond.

Here are a few pictures that I risked my life to take so as to document the bridge counting...

Here's a particularly sinister bridge that did not want to be counted...

As it tried its best to hide from view completely.

Main Street Bridge, not counted on this occasion; only because in this moment, I was not driving/walking/biking over it.

Off in the distance: the Fuller Warren Bridge, also not counted on this day. I drive over it most days. Some evenings the lights of the city seen from this bridge draw me in and try to take me over the side of said bridge. Luckily, I have resisted thus far...

View of the Acosta Bridge and a train bridge not yet travelled.

Atop the Acosta Bridge on a grueling bike ride.

Ok there are obviously more pictures to include, but I'm afraid that this is reaching a red flag point where I am giving the idea that Decadence is obsessed with bridges in an unhealthy way. She is not, promise.

She is however obsessed with counting and driving over bodies of water.

Happy bridge navigation, people.

A Feast for the Eyes

So April was a lax month for Decadence in terms of sending new and old stories through the blog, but rest assured it's been an active month in the life of Decadence (which in turn creates more stories to tell).

Sorry, I'm not sorry.

To satisfy your thirst for more...here is a picture log of the days Decadence has spent while not posting new material:

Fortunately this man is not in 

Decadence's kickball league.

~|~ Decadence has been playing kickball as a part of the well known: "Growler Girls" on the team the Rubba Bustas. Not to be confused with the Rubber Busters which might suggest something less than pure.

Responsibilities of being a part of "Growler Girls" include, but are not limited to:

-Bringing a growler of brewery fresh beer to the field
-Outrageous and unannounced dress-up parties
-Dominating the kickball field
-Flip Cup
-Setting the dance floor ablaze
-Being the source of obscene amounts of noise
-Heckling


~|~ Recently, while at a beachside establishment,
Decadence came across an alarming sight:

BARBIE ORGY

The toys of our youth can't even keep it G-rated...

Penthouses of local skyscrapers have recently become a frequent hangout...

The view from the top...of the world

Decadence has been gaining entry into the most exclusive of VIP sections

This one only allowed the patron to visually enter the VIP section,
something only Decadence was able to do

Decadence only drives a dawn. It's really the worst way to travel, the sunrise constantly urges her to stare versus watching the road.

This day she appeased it by snapping a shot of it in place of staring.

Of COURSE Decadence spies on her neighbors under the guise of a "Neighborhood Watch"

This neighbor, a particularly unique individual, chooses to water his
absurdly large front yard garden with urine.

In Decadence's line of work, she comes across many situations that one could only handle in the moment. Rather than create the necessity to visualize these situations by giving you descriptive text, here is a picture splash:

Chair throwing

Brief periods of quiet, interrupted by the sounds of this guy

The ever escalating food fight, ending in tears and bloodshed

Ginger wall scaling

Decadence also employs snake charming techniques to gather the crowds at work as well as distract others from the pandemonium going on around them

~|~ After days like that it may be easy to see that in order to counteract the madness, she must find and run with a wild, but elite crowd...the likes of which are pictured here

Although Decadence and friends have much less conflict than this zoo crew

Ultimately, this is to prevent a general freak-out, because alas...

There's never any time.

Decadence promises that May will be a more active story-telling month in blog land. 

Deuces 

Big Bad Botulism

Decadence fears little. The assumption that the things she does fear are irrational, would be on point. 

As mentioned in A Decadent List of Grievances, as a child Decadence had a strange fear of large patches of mud for fear the MudMan would grab her shoe, foot, ankle or entire leg. At least he might according to the warning Father Brown gave Decadence time and again when nearing patches of mud while walking through Atlanta parks.

Decadence has since overcome this fear...at least 90% of it. 

Perhaps Decadence's most crippling fear is that of botulism. Food botulism, not Botox botulism-although Botox is not an option for Decadence as her age progresses. Actually, strike that, Decadence does not age.

Just as her fear of the MudMan has roots in her childhood, so does her fear of botulism. The fear of botulism and/or botulism poisoning is far more serious than the MudMan fear ever was. This fear is far-reaching and at times has affected Decadence's life in a negative way. It is a pervasive and persistent fear…the features of this fear may in fact make it a borderline phobia.

As a child, and usually while reheating leftovers, Mama Brown would tell Decadence of the time when distant family members ate leftovers for dinner. This particular dinner contained corn. Specifically under-cooked corn. Mama Brown warned of the grave dangers in not boiling corn when it is reheating. "ALWAYS make sure that the leftovers containing corn are so hot they boil" she would tell young Decadence. "Boiling kills the bacteria." 


Case and point: the family member preparing the food for these distant relatives did not boil the leftovers properly. As a result, the entire group was poisoned by the botulism lurking in the sub-par reheated corn and all almost died from the poisoning. Luckily they arrived at the hospital just in time to counteract the botulism poisoning.

Mental image of corn for young Decadence

Decadence wondered, "does this 'botulism' show signs of its presence? Does it smell?" Decadence never asked these questions of her mother; she simply pondered silently. It seemed that there was no way to know other than to boil leftovers. 

Decadence later learned that botulism often finds its way into canned goods. Somehow Decadence missed the detail that it was much more of a problem in the past due to home canning methods and not those employed by modern times. Instead Decadence assimilated  the idea of this danger, resulting in her associating the botulism danger to all canned goods and feared that she was at risk every time canned vegetables were presented for her consumption.

Silent, but deadly

"Have these vegetables been boiled?!" she would wonder in a state of internal hysteria. "It would be rude and wasteful not to eat them." The weight of the potential danger as well as the knowledge of it were daunting. 

She constantly found herself in a two-part struggle:

-to eat or not to eat

-to warn others, not to warn others, or run from the table in a hair-pulling, arm-flailing, screaming fit

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Somehow Decadence made it to college away from home. During her second year, her fear experienced a breakthrough.

Her roommate, who will be referred to as "Mo-licious" was also a teammate on the college soccer team. One afternoon before practice, Mo-licious opened a can of sweet peas. Mo-licious decided to forego heating the peas in order to save time and dirtying a bowl. 

Instead she dipped her fork into the can of peas, blissfully unaware of the impending danger.

Decadence, witnessing what could potentially be her roommates final moments, knew she had to act quickly.

Decadence ran and jumped directly at her roommate from across the small dorm room, screaming "NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!" 

When she reached Mo-licious, she attempted to hit the deadly botulism can out of her unsuspecting hand. Luckily Mo-licious had cat-like reflexes and pulled the can out of Decadence's reach.

Mo-licious returned Decadence's look of panic with an expression of bewilderment and surprise:

Mo-"What is wrong with you?!"

DB-"You canNOT eat those!"

Mo-"Why not?"

DB-"You didn't heat them! You have to boil canned vegetables to kill the botulism or you could die!"

Mo-"What the hell are you talking about?! I eat peas out of the can all the time!"

DB-"What? You aren't worried about botulism?"

Mo-"Seriously. What are you talking about?"

DB-"My mom told me that you have to boil canned vegetables to kill the botulism and bacteria, otherwise you could get really sick and die."

Mo-"I promise I eat canned vegetables like this all the time. I have never gotten sick and I have no idea what you're talking about."

DB-"Oh. Sorry."

Decadence had some reevaluating to do. She clearly had not done her research on this fear. 

Also it was abundantly clear that she had missed out on a world of food. As such, Decadence began eating her canned vegetables without boiling them. 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Decadence continued however to fear leftovers and previously opened canned goods, i.e. spaghetti sauce.

For an example of Decadence's fear of left-over consumption, review the previous post: Staycation Cleanup.

Most recently, Decadence spent 20 hours convinced that the spaghetti sauce she used on her spicy red pepper noodles might be the end of her reign on Earth.

Decadence's first warning that something may be amiss was the popped out sauce lid...on both bottles of spaghetti sauce. (Decadence likes to mix the marinara and alfredo sauces together, it's more decadent this way.)

The fact that this was the label on the jar should have also
been a red flag, bad spaghetti sauce indeed

Not wanting to waste the delicious noodles she had just prepared, as they were the last of her noodles, Decadence poured her favorite sauce combination.


Pouring the sauce, Decadence thought: "Should I boil this sauce? I never have before-this time it seems risky not to... Hmm, maybe this is a bad idea, but maybe I'm just being paranoid."


Then the botulism fear began to rear its ugly head.

Botulism fear looks strangely like Al Pacino

The fear told her:
-"You could be eating botulism infested sauce right now."
-"Each bite could take you one step closer to death's door."
-"You might want to call someone."


The pace of her eating slowed as she realized that she was the only person home. She then realized that after only a month in a new city, the only 2 people she knew were her 2 roommates. Where were they anyway? 


She put the pasta down and pulled out her computer.


Google screen. Search: Botulism


Search: How long does spaghetti sauce stay good


Search: Symptoms of botulism poisoning 


This did not look good.


Lucky for Decadence, her first roommate in grad school was a dietetics graduate student and she now lived a couple of hours away (we shall call her KayPay). "She'll know what to do," Decadence decided. 


Decadence called her dear, long lost roommate.


After some panicked explanation of the current situation, Decadence and KayPay searched from their respective homes for various combinations of situations that may arise from eating bad spaghetti sauce.


KayPay asked if the sauce smelled funny. "No, replied Decadence, "but that doesn't rule out botulism poisoning!"


KayPay, after a year of living with Decadence was aware of her fear and in being around Decadence's fear, had slightly adopted a similar feeling about the potential danger in keeping food too long-although she was open about her misunderstanding of what Decadence's fear contained. Clearly KayPay knew about foods, health, and the like, but to her Decadence's fear seemed odd and misplaced.


Nevertheless, the situation escalated. The two decided that Decadence should stop eating the spaghetti (which she finished during the escalating conversation), and "wait it out."


KayPay: "Basically you have 24-36 hours to live if you ingested botulism. This means we will know by tomorrow afternoon because you will either get really, really sick or you won't. If you start to get really sick, it's probably too late. So, just call me tomorrow at 12 noon and no later. By then we'll know if you're going to make it or not."

I'm afraid I have bad news, you may or may
not die in the next 24-36 hours

Not comforting words, but having a plan seemed to help. Ahh-who am I kidding, it didn't help at all. Decadence was panicked. Her current roommates came home and got to hear all about her botulism fear.


Decadence managed to sleep through part of the night and made it, albeit nervously, through the day. At noon, her fears had not subsided, but by noon the following day, she sensed she had made it through the danger zone.


Decadence dared not laugh about the incident until a week later when she knew that she had not been exposed to any potentially botulism-infused foods, and even then it was cautious, shifty-eyed laughter.

Always watching for the next botulism attack

Moral of the story: Watch your food and take inventory of your roommates fears.


Also-to dispel some myths about botulism click here, just in case you share Decadence's fear.