Health vs. Sanity

A few serious but not immediately life-threatening health issues have come down the pike for me as of late. I quit smoking a month ago and now I find myself having to make other major life changes to try and ensure that I live past 35 unless I'm hit by a truck, eaten by a bear, or some other unavoidable calamity stumbles into my path. (After all, I came down with the flu the day after my wedding, and came down with pneumonia the day after I quit smoking. I try to be a realist.)

One doctor told me last week that I needed to eat plenty of Omega 3 fish oils, take (or eat) cinnamon, and load up on fiber. It's all good for your heart, and supposedly your cholesterol. Well, because I'm a realist, I decided to buy all of these things in the form of supplements because I knew I'd never eat much cinnamon in a day's time, even if if I tried to be deliberate about it, and the same goes for fiber. I love seafood and would have no problem eating it on a regular basis but my husband hates it, and - once again, being a realist - I knew I would never make two separate meals in the evening. I also started taking a multivitamin. Nobody told me to do that, it just sounded right.

The cinnamon capsules... no biggie. According to the bottle, I can ever swallow them or open them up and sprinkle them on food. You're supposed to take 2 capsules a day, though, and that would be an awful lot of cinnamon to dump on anything. Spicy overkill with an aftertaste you'd never get rid of. So I swallow the capsules instead.

I'm happy to say the fish oils have no taste, aftertaste, or after-burp taste. They do, unfortunately, have quite a unique and nauseating aroma. Upon opening the bottle, I immediately turned to my husband and said, "These smell like fish-flavored brownies." Yes, fish-flavored brownies. As in... grind up some sardines and add them to your brownie batter, and that's what a bottle of Omega 3's smell like. They look like honey caplets. You'd never guess some machine squeezed the snot out of some cod and sardines and put the results into pill form.

There are a lot of options when it comes to fiber. There are flavored drink pouches you can add to a bottle of water, chocolate snack wafers, and tablets that look like Tums. I'm cheap frugal so I went with the enormous Equate brand bottle of "fiber therapy." The instructions say to use it 3 times a day. I can't help but think those instructions are for people who either can't go potty, or they are capable of reading 3 large magazines back-to-back while they go. I decided I would only use one dose. My bowels might just be the only 'regular' thing about my life!

Wal-Mart's "fiber therapy" smells really good, but it doesn't taste so good. It doesn't taste terrible, but I wouldn't purposely go to the kitchen to mix up a fiber therapy cocktail, if that makes sense. It takes like very watered-down Tang, actually. The problem isn't the taste, but the texture. When I was growing up, my grandfather had serious heart problems and there wasn't much that poor man could eat. His breakfast every day was shredded wheat. Back then, it didn't come in little squares. It came in huge bricks, which you poured milk over and waited for it to get soft enough to eat. No added sugar, no added salt. It looked like this:

But it always reminded me of this:

As the milk seeped into it, the Shredded Wheat eventually turned into this:

That, my friends, reminds me of the consistency of "fiber therapy." Watered-down Tang...with some of that stuff thrown in.

The good news is that it didn't send my bowels into turbo mode, but I can't say it didn't affect my, uh, digestion. Now, I'm a lady and I don't want to go into details or gross anyone out. All I'll say is... you could strap me to the back of a motorboat and I'd be able to power you all the way across the lake. And if you strapped a bubble wand to the back of my jeans... oh, nevermind.

It works.

When my diabetes nurse looked over my food journal last month, she commented, "You're not really salad people, are you?" (Subtle.) Not that we don't eat veggies... it's just that we're really mostly green bean/carrot people. So after that, I made a decision to start including salads into our diet several times a week.

Don't increase your salad intake while you're taking "fiber therapy" unless you want to go up a pants size. That's my best advice to you. Whenever I inject my insulin, it amazes me that I don't deflate like a balloon.

The other day I was sitting here working on a few of my freelance assignments. I had to report on this article. Talk about being deflated.

Popping vitamins may do more harm than good, according to a new study that adds to a growing body of evidence suggesting some supplements may have health risks.

Aw crap. You serious?!? The people in the study who took vitamin supplements actually had a higher death rate than those that didn't. Do you think Wal-Mart will give me a refund? "I need to return these. I have a more than two-percent increased chance of dying in the next 19 years if I take them." 

My friend, Reba, said it best: "I saw the news on it. Everything kills you...so let's not worry about it and just live."

Good advice. 

I wonder how "fiber therapy" would taste in a 2-gallon bottle of Mountain Dew?

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Bad Neighbors: Part 2

"Hey, you kids put those knives down and get me another pack of smokes."

In the fall of 2003, my husband and I were broke. Flat broke. Dumpster-divin', barely-thrivin' poor. We both lost jobs within six months of each other and could no longer afford the charming half-house next to the cat-cooking Chinese restaurant/family with the godfather teenage son. Forced to downsize, we moved into an old church that had been turned into apartments in the 1950s. Charming on the outside, Skid Row on the inside.

It was a dump, but I was determined to turn it into a home. It was harder than I thought, considering the bathtub that had so much mildew build-up that my husband's buddy once told us he felt like he needed to bath in Clorox after showering in it. The water ran constantly and the landlord didn't care. His idea of "fixing" the problem was to show up with a wrench and tighten the faucet handles so much that it took another wrench to turn the water on to wash our hands.

The stove in the apartment below us blew up one day. You might think I'm exaggerating for the purpose of writing an entertaining story, but I am the George Washington of neighbor stories - I cannot tell a lie. It blew up - kaboom - flames, smoke, everything. My landlord's solution? He bought our neighbor a hot plate.

There was a minor mold problem in our apartment... nothing too extreme... just, you know... mushrooms growing in the corner of our bedroom carpet, which was always wet, which the landlord also ignored. Oh, and the apartment produced strange, unidentifiable odors. Every day was a new adventure. What will the apartment smell like today? Raw sewage? What sorts of diseases would be develop from the mold contamination? Why were my eyes crusted shut every morning? It was never boring.

The town was not nearly as Rockwell-esque as the last one. It was more rural, with a dive bar on the corner of our street, but not entirely unfriendly. The neighbors smiled, flashing their tooth at you in a welcoming sort of way.

A single guy in his 30s called the basement home. The other people in the building described him as a "washed-up, wannabe rockstar." He boasted of sleeping with a middle-aged woman and her daughter on a regular basis, and left notes on my door asking me to "walk softly" because he slept during the day. (Too bad. It's a rickety old wooden church. Get a real job.)

At first, we loved the tenants in the apartment beside us. It was a single mom we'll call "Stella", her boyfriend, and her two teenage daughters. Four people, one bedroom, and a living room the size of a Pop Tart. I don't know how they did it. I worked nights and the single mom took pity on my husband by feeding him their leftovers and making small talk in the evenings. The oldest daughter, 17, had dropped out of high school. The younger one, 13, was in a special program for kids who needed a gentle beating now and then. They were the type of people, though, who would give you the shirts off their backs, and they once spent an entire afternoon doing us the favor of improperly installing a fuel pump in our car.

I was working with teen moms at the time and I enjoyed kids, so I was friendly with the neighbor girls. Unfortunately, I sometimes have a hard time being nice and helpful without turning into a complete doormat/therapist/safety net. The girls and I got along just fine until the night the youngest one wanted me to take her and her friends to the mall in the pouring rain at night and I refused. The little estrogen monkeys stood in the front yard and started pelting my front door with rocks. I hurt no one. I merely threw the door open as they scattered, and challenged them to a fight to the death. No more rocks after that.

They were hurting for money just as much as we were. Being the entrepreneur that Stella was, she decided to start a home business... running a daycare for 10 toddlers...out of the apartment. It was totally illegal, but I didn't care. I was a little bothered by the fact that Stella and her daughters chain-smoked and watched TV all day while the youngsters ran wild, but the cigarette smoking couldn't have been a mystery to the moms dropping off their tots. Just walking by their apartment gave you a whiff of smoke so strong you nearly passed out and needed oxygen right there on the front steps. If they were that dumb, who was I to say anything?

I got my book contract right before we moved into Le Toilet, so I wrote during the day and worked at the group home at night. No easy task. The walls were about as thin as toilet paper, and our living rooms shared a wall. Ten toddlers...one bedroom...a living room the size of a Pop Tart...paper-thin walls... I wrote my book to the sounds of a herd of children running and screaming from one end of the apartment to the other all day, every day, with no pauses.

Stella and her herd finally moved out a year later. She had broken up with her boyfriend to start dating a drug dealer. The oldest girl got pregnant. Shortly thereafter, I ran into the youngest daughter, who was working at a gas station and had just dropped out of high school herself. She told me her mom had become a crackhead. Nobody can say my stories are anti-climactic.

The Partridge Family was replaced by a kind 50-something trucker we both enjoyed chatting with. When his electric heat vents died, the landlord blessed him with a cooler-sized space heater. He had an adorable, sweet Akita who had a deviated septum or sleep apnea or...good Lord, I don't know what was wrong, but he snored to loudly we could hear him even when we went in our bedroom and closed the door.

It was the man living in the house next-door to our building who would eventually challenge my sanity and cause me to demand that we find another place to live...




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Bad Neighbors: Part 1

I did my best to ignore the stereotype...

Many people (many people) have asked me to write about the whacko neighbors I've had over the years. I haven't because it's like staring at a set of encyclopedias and trying to figure out which one to tackle first. Where do I even begin? Of course, I can't tell ALL my tales, for various reasons, but I thought I'd take a crack at writing down at least a few.

I guess a good place to start would be the Chinese restaurant next-door.

My husband and I moved into a half-house in a quaint town that looked like it had been painted by Norman Rockwell. It was right between his hometown and mine, and we loved driving through. We thought it would be a nice place to raise a family - the kind of place you could walk around after dark and not get murdered. That's hard to find these days, after all.

I was psyched about the fact that a Chinese restaurant was directly beside our house. So close, I could throw a rock out my living room window and bounce it off one of the cook's heads. It smelled so good on the day we toured the house that my mouth was watering. I couldn't wait to have eggrolls so easily within my grasp, even if it meant swelling up to the size of a rhinoceros. I had no idea that the town smelled like the local chocolate factory in the morning, like fried rice by noon, or that the two scents would combine into a noxious odor by evening.

People warned me about the restaurant. Wanting to be politically correct, I brushed them off when they said the pork fried rice was, in fact, kitty fried rice. Stuff like that doesn't happen anymore in America, does it? Sure, Jade Tiki in the mall had been shut down for cooking with kitties and pet food, but that was a long time ago. I ate up, all the while telling myself the texture of the chicken in my chicken lo mein was totally normal. My best friend at the time - a Korean-American - told me to stop being such a sissy.

But who was she to tell me to lighten up? I'd seen food in her house that scared me half to death. Her family munched on dried octopus tentacles as a snack and served up a "soft drink" that looked like something I can't write about in good conscious because of my conservative audience.

As time went by, I began noticing...oddities...over at the restaurant. There were always people riding bicycles through the kitchen, which was plenty unsanitary. I tried to ignore the large number of cats running in and out of the building at all hours. I told myself they were just "pet people," even though no one cat was like the other. They were different all the time, in and out.

One hot summer day, I went out back to put my garbage in the garbage cans and smelled something obnoxious. It smelled like death. Living in a farming community, I'm used to really bad smells. Farmers spray their fields with liquified cow manure in the spring. This kind of smelled like...liquified cow manure with a pureed decaying body thrown in. And there were flies. Where were those flies coming from? I followed one from my shoulder and up to my right...up to the top floor of the Chinese restaurant building. The owners of the restaurant lived on the second floor with their family. They never said hello and often threw tree branches in my backyard.

I looked up on their porch and saw where the flies were swarming - around a laundry rack with skinned, bloody, decaying animal corpses hanging on it. They were too small to be cats (do Asians cook with kittens or just cats?), but seemed too big to be dogs... unless they were cooking with Pomeranians or miniature Pinschers. I shudder at the thought... They appeared to be rat-sized, and they had rat-like tails.

Sometimes you see things...but you're not sure you're really seeing them. That's why I called a friend to come over and assess the carnage. My friend stared at the shriveling bodies, swatting the flies away, but couldn't figure out what kinds of animals were dangling above. "I don't know, dude. All I can say is, don't eat there anymore."

My husband wanted to call somebody, but we didn't know who to call. Animal control? The ASCPA? The Humane League? The local mental ward?

I was pondering what to do one day as I surfed the internet in one of the bedrooms upstairs. Through my window, I was within slapping distance of one of the family's teenage sons. On a nice day, we both had our windows open. We would glance at each other as if to say, "What are YOU looking at?" and then go about our merry way. On that particular day, I was listening to the whole family arguing with one another.

Usually, it was no fun eavesdropping on them because I don't know Chinese, but that afternoon, I heard the mother scream:

I KNOW ALL ABOUT YOU AND THE MAFIA AND I COULD CALL THE POLICE ON YOU ANYTIME I WANTED!!!

I don't know which family member she was referring to, but that was a defining moment for me. It was the moment I decided:

1. I wasn't going to call anyone about the skinned animals on the balcony because I was afraid they would skin ME and drape me over the laundry rack, too.
2. Not only was I never eating at their establishment again, I was going to warn people not to complain about the food...if they wanted to live to see another day.
3. No more eye contact with the neighbors.
4. I would let them throw as many tree limbs as they wanted in my yard and I would never say another word.
5. Just because it looks like a Normal Rockwell painting, that doesn't mean it is.

I thought it couldn't possibly get any weirder than that. Ha! So young, so naive. That was just the beginning of my neighbor troubles. Pin It

So You Want to be Pentecostal

Note: This is an attempt at satire. Don't take me seriously. I do love God's people.

Church life got you down, huh? Tired of music that reminds you of somber Civil War encampments? Sick of trying to keep your kids quiet during a rousing off-key rendition of "How Great Thou Art"? Maybe you've decided to become Pentecostal... or you're thinking about it. I say good for you! I became one myself about 3 years ago and I haven't looked back since. I feel it would be irresponsible of me not to give you a taste of what you are in for, since Pentecostals are very different from Lutherans, Presbyterians, Baptists... and pretty much everyone else you can think of. We all share a love for God, and that's what really counts, but I think any denomination deserves at least a brief orientation. Here is Julie Anne Fidler's guide to all things Pentecostal. May it serve you well.


#1.Appropriate Pentecostal Attire
Most Pentecostals will tell you that it doesn't matter what you wear because Jesus isn't interested in outer beauty. This is in stark contrast to many other churches, who teach you that you have to dress up, though they don't really tell you why. Maybe your parents, like my own, told you that it's "just the right thing to do." Well, most Pentecostals I know find a nice middle ground. This isn't Yoga class (remember: Yoga is evil!), so it's probably not a good idea to come dressed like you're ready to hit the treadmill. On the other hand, God was nice enough to create a pretty earth for all of us, so the least we can do is show up for God in something business-casual. Keep in mind, ladies, that short skirts run the risk of making men lust after you even as they hold their cup of Welch's communion grape juice, plus you're going to need plenty of room to dance, flop down on the carpet, and kneel.

#2.Raising Your Hands Makes Your Praise Reach Jesus Faster
You have probably already noted that Pentecostals sing with their hands raised in the air. This is because Heaven is really high up in the sky (some say it's even beyond our solar system), therefore reaching up towards the ceiling will make whatever song you are singing shoot up through your fingertips and reach Jesus faster. Not EVERYONE does this, and that's OK. It just means they're lazy and they don't really care, and since God gives us all free will, this should be accepted. They'll grow up someday.

There are various levels of raising your hands, and these mean different things. Raising your hands as far as they can go means you REALLY love Jesus and you want your praise to get there faster than anybody else's. Some people raise their hands only part-way, and this is called the Half-Staff Method. It means, "I love Jesus, but I haven't quite accepted that HE loves ME. I'm kind of scared He'll throw it back." Some people merely open their hands in front of them, palms showing. This is sort of like when people hold aluminum foil under their chin when they are sunbathing. It's more about catching the rays than sharing it.

It should also be noted that there is not ALWAYS a spiritual element to people who sun-bathe worship, keep their arms at their sides, or employ the Half-Staff Method. It could simply mean they sweat excessively and/or forgot to shave their arm pits that day.

#3.Crying Shows You "Really Mean It"
I like people who cry in church. I do it myself sometimes. It can mean any number of things, mostly obviously that you love God so much that you're willing to walk out the door looking like Joan Rivers after she has taken the bandages off from another face lift. Women, use caution: never wear mascara to a Pentecostal church. Don't waste your money. It will only disintegrate and drip off your face. Save it for less emotional affairs, like funerals and weddings.

Some people cry because they have been hit with the reality that they really are scum in need of a perfect Savior. Some people cry because Jesus saved them from a crack addiction, alcoholism, depression, or an evil mother-in-law. Sometimes the music is very emotional and that alone makes you weep. You can expect to cry during acoustic sets, congregational a capella singing, and heavy drum solos. A few people cry because they think they should, plain and simple. Why you do it is up to you, but don't think you can escape it. A true Pentecostal knows when let loose like Lindsay Lohan being sentenced for another DUI.


#4.Pentecostals Like to Sing the Same Verse Repeatedly for at Least 20 Minutes
Forget fast-moving songs that jump from one emotion to another. Pentecostals must be willing to delve into worship for the LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG haul. If the congregation seems bored/disinterested, oftentimes the worship leader will pick a particularly meaningful song verse and sing it until everyone catches on and realizes: If we don't get up and act interested, this song is going to go on forever. Sometimes this means changing the tempo of the song, or adding an electric guitar. If the worship leader starts jumping up and down and commanding everyone to clap/sing/jump/cry/fall on their faces, you know you are being too subdued.  Other times, if the Holy Spirit seems to be working and people are really "into it" the worship leader will thereby assume that the chorus must be repeated until the kids in the toddler room have grown up and moved into junior high youth group. It is not appropriate to take a nap or chat with your friends during this time... but I do it anyway. Sometimes you can only say "Jesus" so many times before you start counting the dots on the ceiling. Do your thing for God... and then feel free to take a bathroom break.

#5.Pentecostals Don't Know Many Hymns
My friend, Gary Chapman is a legendary Christian music artist and songwriter. He has a website called A Hymn A Week and it's dedicated to reviving the hymns of yesteryear. Many young people don't know a thing about hymns. Neither do many Pentecostals, myself included. Hymns have stood the test of time and often say things about God that simple, quick, modern praise music can't. My theory is that Pentecostalism is so bent on being emotional and "feeling" the Spirit, they need new, simple, basic worship songs on a weekly basis. Often, worship leaders will throw an electric guitar and a drum solo into an old hymn and we'll all be fooled into thinking it's the Newsboys' latest hit.

 #6.Pentecostals Love Caffeine
I've found that just about every denomination has their own views on alcohol. Some say it's wrong just because it has the potential to be addictive (growing up in a Mormon family, I heard about this often... even though everyone in my family drank.) Some say it's OK to drink as long as you don't get drunk. I don't actually know the official Pentecostal stance on alcohol, but from what I've seen and experienced, if you DO drink, you don't tell anyone. And if you SMOKE, Heaven help you, you hide it. I had a friend who used to smoke on her roof out of fear that a a fellow Christian might spot her. All of these things can be considered harmful to your body, which is, of course, the temple of the Holy Spirit.

Caffeine, however, is fine. This is interesting, considering it only takes 250 mg (read: 2-1/2 cups of coffee) for caffeine intoxication to set in. So, let's think this through. My church hands out coffee for a donation, it could be $5 or a piece of gum, just as long as you put something in the little box. In addition, they also sell specialty coffee drinks. Let's say you have a cup of coffee when you first get to church. Then, you have a cup of coffee during the break when all the kids go to childrens church. Then, you order a mocha cappuccino with a shot of espresso when you leave. One must ask themselves... do I feel the Holy Spirit, or is my heart just racing? We are God's people, walking around church stoned off of our rear ends, but it's OK because all the money from the coffee shop goes to feed orphans in Haiti. Drink up!

#7.The Point-And-Hope Method of Bible Reading
It should come as no surprise that a group of Christians who believe that God can zap you right in your pew and make you flop like a fish out of water would also believe that God can and frequently does speak to us simply by picking up a Bible.

Now, for the record, the vast majority of Pentecostals I know study and meditate on the Word fervently and seek to have a rich prayer life; however, Pentecostals are big on warm, fuzzy Jesus feelings, too. Many of us wake up in the morning seeking "a word" from God. (Translation: we want God to talk to us somehow.) So rather than choosing a book, chapter, or topic from the Bible, we have been known to flip it open to a random spot, close our eyes, and point somewhere on the page in the hopes that it will reveal something wonderful about the coming day. Sometimes you land on something wonderful, but sometimes you land on... other stuff. And that other stuff should not be taken entirely seriously when it comes to how you should go about your morning. Blindly picking Bible verses can really backfire on you. Here are a few examples.

Genesis 25:30

He said to Jacob, "Let me eat some of that red stuff, because I'm exhausted."

This does not mean you should grab a fork and try that red gelatinous blob that has been in the back of your fridge for 6 months.

Job 19:17

My breath is offensive to my wife; I am loathsome to my own brothers.

OK, actually you might want to take this one to heart. Toothpaste is cheap, you know.

Psalm 137:9

Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.

Don't go there. Just find a babysitter.

Deuteronomy 23:1

No one whose testicles are crushed or whose male organ is cut off shall enter the assembly of the Lord.

Yes, you can still bring your husband to church if he has had a vasectomy.

Ezekiel 23:19-20

Yet she increased her prostitution, remembering the days of her youth when she engaged in prostitution in the land of Egypt. She lusted after their genitals as large as those of donkeys, and their seminal emission was as strong as that of stallions.

 Whatever you do, don't take this as an invitation to a mid-life crisis.

I hope this guide to Pentecostalism has helped you. There is more that I should probably add, but I think this is enough to get you started on your journey to holiness. Pin It