Charm City Cakes

The Marine and the Nurse.

A nurse took the tired, anxious serviceman to the bedside.
"Your son is here," she said to the old man. She had to repeat the words several times before the patient's eyes opened. Heavily sedated because of the pain of his heart attack, he dimly saw the young uniformed Marine standing outside the oxygen tent. He reached out his hand. The Marine wrapped his toughened fingers around the old man's limp ones, squeezing a message of love and encouragement. The nurse brought a chair so that the Marine could sit beside the bed. All through the night the young Marine sat there in the poorly lighted ward, holding the old man's hand and offering him words of love and strength. Occasionally, the nurse suggested that the Marine move away and rest awhile. He refused. Whenever the nurse came into the ward, the Marine was oblivious of her and of the night noises of the hospital - the clanking of the oxygen tank, the laughter of the night staff members exchanging greetings, the cries and moans of the other patients.
Now and then she heard him say a few gentle words. The dying man said nothing, only held tightly to his son all through the night. Along towards dawn, the old man died. The Marine released the now lifeless hand he had been holding and went to tell the nurse. While she did what she had to do, he waited. Finally, she returned. She started to offer words of sympathy, but the Marine interrupted her.
"Who was that man?" he asked.
The nurse was startled. "He was your father," she answered.
"No, he wasn't." The Marine replied. I never saw him before in my life."
"Then why didn't you say anything when I took you to him?"
"I knew right away that there had been a mistake, but I also knew that he needed his son, and his son just wasn't here. When I realized that he was too sick to tell whether or not I was his son, knowning how much he needed me, I stayed."

Artificial hearts; Paving the way for a new mindset for heart transplants.

The proposition of an artificial heart has always been one of reverence and fear. A thinking machine with independently moving parts, solely responsible for keeping the human soul tied to the earthly body. Pretentious and melodramatic of me to open that way, but cosmically, it's what we're dealing with here. I mean shit, look at that thing. It has every quivering appeal of an early 1980's clear-bodied engine, complete with steel piston covers, but it goes inside of a human being, rather than a mouthwatering hotrod. With such upgrades available, why would anyone be satisfied with their own, fleshy stock engine? Personally, the immortality that would come from having such an anomaly inside of me would probably some sort of karmatic forces bananas, seeing as by all logical means I should have been dead five years ago. But that's a story for another time.

I've seen artificial valves, the first of them, actually. One of my patients that I had as a clinical nursing student told me that his metal valve was the first of it's kind. I looked it up, and ironically this surgical advancement came in the year 1964... Wells should have been more concerned about the possiblity of cyborgs than power-crazed political parties, it seems. Anyhow, I could have chilled with this guy my entire shift if I could have, because not only was he incredibly healthy (in for a routine cardiac cath check, if my memory is correct), but you could hear the valve from a foot and half away. A soft metallic click, almost like a nervous person with a pen, repeatedly making the ball point go in and out in a steady rhythm. It was absolutely fascinating. Before they had artificial valves, they used animal parts who had the same blood type as the patients, and were similar in genetic makeup. Ideally of course human valves are prefered, then primates (which I'm certain PETA has kittens over), and the more commonly used pig and cow valves. The trouble with the fleshy valves are that they not only suffered the wear and tear from their previous owner, but are now subjected to whatever lifestyle that their new owner chooses. Essentially, it's a band-aid fix. Artificial valves are much more practical. It's like starting over with newer, better equipment. Super cool.

TO WRITE LOVE ON HER ARMS by Jamie Tworkowski

Pedro the Lion is loud in the speakers, and the city waits just outside our open windows. She sits and sings, legs crossed in the passenger seat, her pretty voice hiding in the volume. Music is a safe place and Pedro is her favorite. It hits me that she won't see this skyline for several weeks, and we will be without her. I lean forward, knowing this will be written, and I ask what she'd say if her story had an audience. She smiles. "Tell them to look up. Tell them to remember the stars."
I would rather write her a song, because songs don't wait to resolve, and because songs mean so much to her. Stories wait for endings, but songs are brave things bold enough to sing when all they know is darkness. These words, like most words, will be written next to midnight, between hurricane and harbor, as both claim to save her.
Renee is 19. When I meet her, cocaine is fresh in her system. She hasn't slept in 36 hours and she won't for another 24. It is a familiar blur of coke, pot, pills and alcohol. She has agreed to meet us, to listen and to let us pray. We ask Renee to come with us, to leave this broken night. She says she'll go to rehab tomorrow, but she isn't ready now. It is too great a change. We pray and say goodbye and it is hard to leave without her.
She has known such great pain; haunted dreams as a child, the near-constant presence of evil ever since. She has felt the touch of awful naked men, battled depression and addiction, and attempted suicide. Her arms remember razor blades, fifty scars that speak of self-inflicted wounds. Six hours after I meet her, she is feeling trapped, two groups of "friends" offering opposite ideas. Everyone is asleep. The sun is rising. She drinks long from a bottle of liquor, takes a razor blade from the table and locks herself in the bathroom. She cuts herself, using the blade to write "FUCK UP" large across her left forearm.
The nurse at the treatment center finds the wound several hours later. The center has no detox, names her too great a risk, and does not accept her. For the next five days, she is ours to love. We become her hospital and the possibility of healing fills our living room with life. It is unspoken and there are only a few of us, but we will be her church, the body of Christ coming alive to meet her needs, to write love on her arms.
She is full of contrast, more alive and closer to death than anyone I've known, like a Johnny Cash song or some theatre star. She owns attitude and humor beyond her 19 years, and when she tells me her story, she is humble and quiet and kind, shaped by the pain of a hundred lifetimes. I sit privileged but breaking as she shares. Her life has been so dark yet there is some soft hope in her words, and on consecutive evenings, I watch the prettiest girls in the room tell her that she's beautiful. I think it's God reminding her.
I've never walked this road, but I decide that if we're going to run a five-day rehab, it is going to be the coolest in the country. It is going to be rock and roll. We start with the basics; lots of fun, too much Starbucks and way too many cigarettes.
Thursday night she is in the balcony for Band Marino, Orlando's finest. They are indie-folk-fabulous, a movement disguised as a circus. She loves them and she smiles when I point out the A&R man from Atlantic Europe, in town from London just to catch this show.
She is in good seats when the Magic beat the Sonics the next night, screaming like a lifelong fan with every Dwight Howard dunk. On the way home, we stop for more coffee and books, Blue Like Jazz and (Anne Lamott's) Travelling Mercies.
On Saturday, the Taste of Chaos tour is in town and I'm not even sure we can get in, but doors do open and minutes after parking, we are on stage for Thrice, one of her favorite bands. She stands ten feet from the drummer, smiling constantly. It is a bright moment there in the music, as light and rain collide above the stage. It feels like healing. It is certainly hope.
Sunday night is church and many gather after the service to pray for Renee, this her last night before entering rehab. Some are strangers but all are friends tonight. The prayers move from broken to bold, all encouraging. We're talking to God but I think as much, we're talking to her, telling her she's loved, saying she does not go alone. One among us knows her best. Ryan sits in the corner strumming an acoustic guitar, singing songs she's inspired.
After church our house fills with friends, there for a few more moments before goodbye. Everyone has some gift for her, some note or hug or piece of encouragement. She pulls me aside and tells me she would like to give me something. I smile surprised, wondering what it could be. We walk through the crowded living room, to the garage and her stuff.
She hands me her last razor blade, tells me it is the one she used to cut her arm and her last lines of cocaine five nights before. She's had it with her ever since, shares that tonight will be the hardest night and she shouldn't have it. I hold it carefully, thank her and know instantly that this moment, this gift, will stay with me. It hits me to wonder if this great feeling is what Christ knows when we surrender our broken hearts, when we trade death for life.
As we arrive at the treatment center, she finishes: "The stars are always there but we miss them in the dirt and clouds. We miss them in the storms. Tell them to remember hope. We have hope."
I have watched life come back to her, and it has been a privilege. When our time with her began, someone suggested shifts but that is the language of business. Love is something better. I have been challenged and changed, reminded that love is that simple answer to so many of our hardest questions. Don Miller says we're called to hold our hands against the wounds of a broken world, to stop the bleeding. I agree so greatly.
We often ask God to show up. We pray prayers of rescue. Perhaps God would ask us to be that rescue, to be His body, to move for things that matter. He is not invisible when we come alive. I might be simple but more and more, I believe God works in love, speaks in love, is revealed in our love. I have seen that this week and honestly, it has been simple: Take a broken girl, treat her like a famous princess, give her the best seats in the house. Buy her coffee and cigarettes for the coming down, books and bathroom things for the days ahead. Tell her something true when all she's known are lies. Tell her God loves her. Tell her about forgiveness, the possibility of freedom, tell her she was made to dance in white dresses. All these things are true.
We are only asked to love, to offer hope to the many hopeless. We don't get to choose all the endings, but we are asked to play the rescuers. We won't solve all mysteries and our hearts will certainly break in such a vulnerable life, but it is the best way. We were made to be lovers bold in broken places, pouring ourselves out again and again until we're called home.
I have learned so much in one week with one brave girl. She is alive now, in the patience and safety of rehab, covered in marks of madness but choosing to believe that God makes things new, that He meant hope and healing in the stars. She would ask you to remember.

A Song on the End of the World

On the day the world ends
A bee circles a clover,
A fisherman mends a glimmering net.
Happy porpoises jump in the sea,
By the rainspout young sparrows are playing
And the snake is gold-skinned as it should always be.

On the day the world ends
Women walk through the fields under their umbrellas,
A drunkard grows sleepy at the edge of a lawn,
Vegetable peddlers shout in the street
And a yellow-sailed boat comes nearer the island,
The voice of a violin lasts in the air
And leads into a starry night.

And those who expected lightening and thunder
Are disappointed.
And those who expected signs and archangels' trumps
Do not believe it is happening now.
As long as the sun and the moon are above,
As long as the bumblebee visits a rose,
As long as rosy infants are born
No one believes it is happening now.

Only a white-haired old man, who would be a prophet
Yet is not a prophet, for he's much too busy,
Repeats while he binds his tomatoes:
There will be no other end of the world,
There will be no other end of the world.

(Warsaw, 1944.)

Twenty what / Eating is hurtful

I'm legal to drink now. Who wants to buy me one?
No takers?
Oh well. I just do shots anyways.
My mother always warned to to watch my addictions because they run in the family. I mean, my family on my father's side are completely soaked in alcohol and drugs.
Too bad they missed the eating disorders completely. That kind of hurts that they didn't even notice really, and what they did notice they just told me to cover up.
"Wash out the sink next time."
"Make sure we can't hear you."
"I don't want to hear you bitching about eating that later."
"Why bother eating when you're going to throw them up anyways?"
"Does it taste good?"

Hurtful.
I weigh less than I did when he deployed. But I still hate my body, and I lied about it. I told him the only part of my body I didn't like was my belly and my lower back. I didn't mention the fat saddlebags or the teeny boobs or the chest flab or the cellulitis on my thighs.
It's days like today that I wish I hadn't given up cutting. It would feel so good right now, just to cut open my skin and let the blood leech out, and let the fat go out with it.
I can't do that anymore though. He checks me for cuts when he gets back. He found all the ones from last deployment, and I can't handle that face again. It's hard to hide them when you're lying naked on his bed.
Maybe I'll go put on some make up, take some of my diet pills, put on a long baggy shirt and just suffer through. It's what I always do. I can't hide from this, and I'm too stubborn to give in, although it's tempting as fuck.

Fasting tips.

Some great thinspiration before heading off to work the second half of my double. I didn't know the thing about the 12 hour fast. Good to know. I'll have to try that these next couple of days... water and diet pepsi, here I come!

A true fast is eating nothing at all, and drinking nothing but water, or, you know, the amazing wonder of Diet Coke and other such drinks.
Everytime you eat, your body stores it because it doesn't know when it will get it's next meal- it's next energy source. It takes twelve hours of fasting before your body will begin to actually begin eating off it's fat.
If you eat something with no calories, like mustard, or something that is a supposed negative calorie, like a celery stick, you are still ruining your fast! If you put any foods into your body, calorieless or not, your system will think it is going to be fed and will wait another twelve hours before it begins eating off it's fat again!

Make a list of all the foods that you crave. Each day, pick one to take out of your diet. No matter what, you absolutely cannot eat again. Take one off until there are no bad foods.
Eat in front of a mirror naked except for tight underwear. Do you want him to see that?Competition is the best motivation for some people. Find a buddy on here to lose weight with. If you're ahead of them, it's a blissful feeling that dwarfs the sick pleasure of eating. If you're behind, looking at them makes you realize that food is unnecessary. There is nothing stopping you except you.
Curl up in a ball if you have hunger pains. Look at those rolls! You aren't nearly hungry enough to willingly add on to those!
The smell of coffee suppresses appetite.
Wear perfectly applied lip-gloss. You'll eat slowly and cautiously to avoid messing it up, which will draw your attention to the fact that you're stuffing your face.
Don't carry extra money, you'll be tempted to spend it on food.
Avoid alcohol, tons of calories. Luckily, alcohol is intolerable if you're chewing peppermint gum. Don't give in to your cravings. You're stronger than that; look at those around you, getting fatter by the second. Be glad that isn't you.
Drink a glass of ice cold water as often as possible, every half-hour is ideal. The water fills and cleanses you; the cold burns calories. At least two quarts daily is good. Water is necessary to carry away the breakdown byproducts of fat.
Wear your favorite tight bikini bottom and take a picture of your love handles. Look at it when you want to eat.
Before you eat, count to 100-slow n steady. Usually that's all it takes to realize you don't want it.
If hungry, follow the 4Ds: Distance yourself from the food; Delay eating; Distract yourself; Decide what your goals really are.
Think of something disgusting and put the food you crave beside it mentally. Recall a mortifying event and tell yourself that it was caused by the food. Soon you will automatically associate the two.

Tips to Control Eating
Never eat more than a cup. Your stomach will expand and you'll eat more later.
It takes twelve hours for the body to start feeding off its own fat.
Write down everything you eat. Sometimes you'll disgust yourself by saying it.
Look at what you're about to eat. Imagine a bulge in your stomach shaped like that cheeseburger or muffin or whatever it is. Only eat it if you'd be willing to eat the same amount in pure fat.

If you've eaten an acceptable amount of food but are still hungry, wait twenty minutes and you'll probably feel full.
Fiber is a natural laxative and makes you feel full.
Eat with your non-dominant hand.
Hot cocoa or chai tea with skim milk fills you up amazingly fast.
Give yourself tiny portions. If you put more than you need or even want on your plate, you'll feel obligated to eat it.
Imagine everything you're eating is coated in butter- even the utensils.
Stay away from Slim-fast and other "diet" foods. Glance at the nutrition facts and you'll see why. With all the carbs and excess calories you might as well go eat a freakin pie or something. They also cost a bundle.
Put your food money in a jar; buy something inedible at the end of the month as a reward for everything you didn't eat.

Tips to Burn Calories
Every bit of movement burns calories. Think of people in third-world countries who eat nothing and walk miles and miles every day.
Work out before you eat to burn fat instead of food.
Eating celery is better than drinking water! You've probably heard that it has negative calories, which means it takes more calories to digest than it contains.
Turn down the thermostat. Your body trying to keep warm burns tons of fat energy. It takes 200 (I believe) calories for your body to raise it's temperature one degree

Curves

I like this thinspiration because you can see how thin her arms are. And the thinness of her face. Mine is so chunky. And my arms have so much excess skin on them. I hate it, it makes me uncomfortable to be in public.

Christie took me to Curves today. It was nice. Very quiet and secluded. Not at all like the Y where at any second Dan could walk in and I'd have an instant panic attack. I wish so badly sometimes that he'd say something so that I could just sock him right in his stupid fucking face. Or something. Anyways. Christie has this keycard thing that she used on all of the machines, and after two circuts it said that she burned 600 calories. I don't think that's quite right, because when I go to the Y to do my workouts, I bust my ass and usually don't cap anything over 650, and I work out hard for an hour and a half. Whatever it takes to lose this weight. I have to stop eating at night, or start throwing up again, because I think that's where my extra weight is coming from.

I'm waiting for Tim to call me back. We're supposed to go to lunch today (salads and coffee, the perpetual cheap date), and we're going to just talk. I hope he can pick me up on the scooter, I love that thing. :)

Thinspiration archive to date.

I figured that if I'm going to put thinspiration on here, I might as well just put in my archive to date. I know that Josh will come home and delete it all off my computer in September, so hiding it is ideal.

That last one is me.

Don't look at me like that. :P

Just really pissed off.

<--- Thinspo for the day


I'm sick of retarded people. I'm sick of this body. I'm totally done with DVD Pilates. Fuck that shit. My internet isn't apparently up to date enough so it won't play the video portion, and let me tell you, the audio portion is very unhelpful. The lady talks forever about good concentration and good breathing and being calm and then leaps into doing a whole bunch of shit that I have no idea what she's talking about.

"And upppp and reach to the ceiling and don't move your ribcage and then rolllllll down each vertebrae and then breeeeattthheee andoneandtwoand ouuttt and then up and out and outout and breeeaathhhee..."

I have no idea what she's doing. I need video. You can't just assume that I know this shit. The DVD says "quickstart pilates". That doesn't mean for telepathics only. Fuckin' bitch.

It doesn't help that I was already pissed at Josh. He called this morning and was asking me if I had the number for one of his old roommates, because he had a router that was Josh's that he never returned... or something. He said that because he didn't get it returned to Clearwater, he now owes them eight thousand dollars. And he wanted me to pay that off using his Citizen's account back home. I'm really really hoping that he's just being a douchebag, and he's not seriously 8 grand in the hole, or I'm gonna have to kill a bitch. Pam is pissedddd. I am too, don't get me wrong. I'm going to marry him and he's going to demolish all of my good credit.