This is a normal neck X-ray:

This is the X-ray of my neck that the chiropractor showed me today:

I look like I’m going full retard. This might explain why I always have a headache and my shoulders are always sore.

I went to the chiropractor because my trainer at Crossfit says my right shoulder is much lower than my left shoulder. It’s not so much that he says it as that he contorts his body to mimic my beastly shoulder inequality and wanders around the gym like that and then tells the rest of the gym to look at how uneven my shoulders are and then they all gasp and nod in agreement until I am so sad and scared I agree to go get X-rays.

(I have been surprised to learn that a trainer who behaves with this level of disregard to my emotional well-being is capable of making me push myself far harder in the gym than anyone who’s ever been nice to me. And this, in turn, is actually really, really good for my emotional well-being. But we’ll save the ‘Crossfit changed my life’ spiel for another post.)

I have, for as long as I can remember, felt like my body was uneven. I’m always squirming and contorting my spine and it never seems to quite feel right. I was hoping, actually, that these X-rays would reveal a clear problem with the curvature of my spine and then we could work toward doing something that would fix the need to constantly squirm. Here’s the X-ray of the rest of my spine:

You can see the slight unevenness in my shoulders, but there’s not the clear skeletal curvature I was hoping for. I guess that’s not really something you should hope for, but I guess I kind of hoped there would be a “Here! Here’s why your body always feels wrong. We can fix it!”

The chiropractor said it’s not that big of a deal, but we could start doing “adjustments” to see if it had any impact on how I felt. I’d never had a back adjustment before, and I spent the entirety of it giggling uncontrollably, because a) having any part of my body make a cracking sound is enormously frightening to me, and I cope with that by giggling and b) When the chiropractor bends over you to do adjustments, it is not at all unlike what a man would do when he, say, was about to have sex with you. I couldn’t stop laughing. The adjustment also didn’t make much of a difference. I’m still sitting on the couch, squirming as I write this, because my freakin’ spine is uneven.

For reasons no one can fathom, my apartment complex has invited Valet Trash into our lives. What this means: We all get a special trash container. You put your trash in the container. The container can then be left outside your door between the hours of 6pm and 8pm, Monday - Friday. During that time, an innocent woman is paid what I assume to be minimum wage to collect your trash, and walk it to one of the trash chutes that exist on every floor, like 20 feet from your front door. Then, your trash container has to be put back inside your apartment by 6am, or else you risk losing your Valet Trash service.

Nobody uses this service ever. It would be useful if it were dry cleaning, or dog walking, or DVR-setting (”I’m still at the office and I forgot that the Holly Madison reality show starts tonight! Can you send the Valet DVR lady up to record it? I promise I will have watched and deleted it by 6am tomorrow!”). And I have lived in apartments where this would be useful, apartments where the trash bins are down the street and around the corner and behind the liquor store and not especially anywhere you want to be at night. This is not one of those apartments. No one lives more than, like, 100 well-lit, indoor feet from the trash chute on his or her floor.

Many people have left their Valet Trash containers outside their doors in the vain hope that they might be discarded from our lives forever. This does not work. Instead, you get a letter on your door from management warning you that you are risking the loss of your Valet Trash service forever. Tragically, no one ever makes good on that promise. We are all just stuck with these extra trash cans that no one wants to use, because, despite being the type of people who live in a “luxury” apartment complex, we are not, in actuality, the type of people who believe some poor underpaid stranger should be responsible for carrying our bags of trash half the distance to the elevator each night. I don’t actually know that type of person. I think sultans might be like that.

I spotted this note on one of them in the hall today. It cracked me up.

Chelsia came over today wearing a romper I own. I was like “OMG I own that romper. I wore it on Memorial Day.” And she was like “Oh.” And so we went up to my roof deck to hang out and get some sun and then five minutes later I find her sprawled out on the ground trying to soak up the rays. I was like “First I have to take a picture, and then I have to show you a picture.”

Seriously, though, how cute is that?

Also: I have a terrible sunburn tonight.

I love Dennis Crowley’s Tumblr so much it almost makes me want to get my own. Almost.

When Recovering the Satellites came out, “Another Horsedreamer’s Blues” was my instant fave. I didn’t know what it meant, but there was a girl and she liked horses but she couldn’t have any horses at all because she wanted everyone to approve of her. Or sometimes I thought she could have the horses but didn’t get to play with them much. I was sad for Margery, in that detached way you can feel sadness while it makes you feel more full somehow. Here are the lyrics:

Margery’s dreaming of the middle of the day
Tiyuri to win
Perfect dozen to place
Money is the matter that’s been on her mind
Time ticks by her one race at a time

She’s tryin’ to be a good girl
And give ‘em what they want
But Margery’s dreaming of horses

Lookin’ at a green sky
Sun like a red eye
Bright blue horses are the fortune she lives by
She’s tired and lonely
Scarred and depressed
Her visions of one day go racing the next

She’s tryin’ to be a good girl
And give ‘em what they want
But Margery’s dreaming of horses

Margie doesn’t say anything all the way home
So afraid she’ll awake to find she’s all alone

Margery’s wingspan’s all feathers and coke cans, and
TV dinners and letters she wont send, and
Every race night is shot through with sunlight for?
Drunken fathers and stupid mothers and
Boys who can’t tell one girl from another
So she takes her pills
Careful and round
One of these days she’s gonna throw the whole bottle down

But she’s tryin’ to be a good girl
And give ‘em what they want
But Margery’s dreaming of horses

Tryin’ to be a good girl
And give ‘em what they want
But Margery’s dreaming of horses

At some point, I listened to this song and, while singing along with the lyrics, I was like, “Holy shit! She’s a gambling addict. Margery wants to be a good girl, but she can’t, because of this fucking gambling addiction! And if she can’t get it under control soon she’s gonna OD!!! We need to get Margery some help!”

I think it was this moment in my life where I realized that addiction is a real thing, that it happens, it happens to other people, to damn near everyone, really, it takes all sorts of forms …  and, ya know, gasp. Is it everywhere? Does it hide that well? Is it in me, too? This thing that enters a human body, quietly and with great cunning, and leaves a shell, a breathing, pulsing shell of a person who used to love things that could love her back. Is this thing in me?

I don’t know if Margery ever got help.

We went to the horse races at Emerald Downs today for Laremy’s birthday. It was the first perfect day of the year so far. I placed bets on almost every race. I placed bets on the horses who had the coolest sounding names. I picked three and then I’d get them all to show. I did this for every race. I did not win. Any money. No. But betting on a horse makes the whole event so much more exciting, like suddenly your financial future hinges, in some small part, on what happens in the time it takes these horses to traverse 4 Furlongs (Isn’t he an actor? a rapper maybe?). I mean, even though I only bet $2, I was invested. When my little guy placed I got money! And then when two of my little guys showed I got even more money. It was exciting. I think I understand it better now and I want to go back soon and make more money. I think I understand the system.

Except I briefly decided I will not fund this sport, because one horse (my pick!) got injured in the middle of the run and so now everybody knows they kill the horse and I was so sad about that. I had half a mind to make an offer on that lame horse. I will put him in my spare room and tend to his bandages. I will bring him oats and a doggie playfriend and he will love me forever. We can bring other fillies considering going pro into my guest room, where he will tell them his story and warn them that there are other choices they can make with their lives. He will remind them not to be like Margery. I will remind them that Margery is a human. This plan will not be pursued further.

What were we talking about?

Oh. Pictures.

Then Jason was in town so we headed over to Beacon Hill for his superhero party. He told me to just dress normally, but when I looked in the mirror I was like “JASON I AM GOING TO YOUR SUPERHERO PARTY DRESSED LIKE A WHORE” and he was like “k”. A super hot guy asked me to do luge shots with him. I told him I didn’t drink. Homeboy didn’t miss a beat: “We’ll do ‘em with Pellegrino, then!” Turned out I have Red Bull with me. “Perfect. We’ll get you a Red Bull luge shot.” And we did, and it was wonderful. The hot guy later turned out to be married, which I should have noticed the VERY FIRST TIME he put his left hand in his pocket throughout our entire conversation. Someone should manufacture pants that are missing a left-hand pocket. For wives to buy for their husbands. For them to wear when they go to parties without them.

Anyway. Pics cuz it happened:

I’m doing marketing for this company called Barking Minds that makes this cool iPad/iPhone app called CrowdMap. It’s a productivity app that allows teams to collaboratively develop mind maps in real time. The devs on the team build mind maps called “WWDC keynote” and “User data protection” and “extreme programming.”

I did this one. (Click to view the whole thing.)