Nesting

I'm either seven months pregnant or just getting ready for the upcoming "hermit" season because I spent (almost) the whole weekend organizing my apartment.
I hadn't cleaned my room in over a month and it was bad. I even took a picture as a "before", but was so disgusted by how I was living that I couldn't bring myself to post it. As a Virgo, I'm supposed to love living in an orderly way, which is true in the common areas of my apartment, but definitely not in my room. I was living out of a laundry bag, and since everything in there was clean, I HAD to put the dirty clothes on the floor. For weeks I was walking on top of my clothes, including a bridesmaid dress that I ripped off as soon as I got home from the wedding last weekend (mostly to get out of the worst invention in the world - a strapless bra - as quickly as possible).
When I was done with my organizing, I had filled an entire duffel bag full of clothes that I'll be donating. Not just a small duffel bag either, but a gigantic one - one that I fit inside (as I've confirmed. It was a lonely weekend, I needed to be entertained somehow). I took everything out of my dressers and re-organized them. I took everything out of my wall o' bookshelves and reworked it. I pulled all of my shoes out of the closet and placed the shoes I never wear towards the back, shoes I feel guilty for never wearing towards the front and the shoes I always wear, on top of those.
This was not enough. By Sunday I organized all of my spices, which included creating a make-shift shelf to put the spices I use most (garlic, cumin, oregano) up front and the ones I use the least toward the back (nutmeg, curry, chicken seasoning (?)). Then, with everything organized there, I decided I needed to bake for the upcoming Thanksgiving trip to northern Massachusetts. I made a pumpkin chocolate chip loaf. While that was baking, I cleaned out all the flour/sugar jars and cabinet above the oven. Did my roommate need to hold onto that white chocolate Easter bunny still? Probably not, as it's been there for at least the last year and half I've lived there. How about that maple syrup that expired in 2007? Nah.
When the loaf was done (and deliciously un-poisoned, as one should always check), I made apple turnovers. Then jalapeno corn bread. Then dinner.
After dinner, I knit for a few hours before I fell asleep listening to Tracy Morgan's audio book (which I highly recommend!).
So while I could have found more exciting things to do this weekend, I'm really happy that I spent the time cleaning, organizing and knitting because I'm going to be gone for a lot of December (traveling for work/going home for the holidays for an ungodly amount of time).

Stick it to me

Among my swaps at the NY Gift Fair, I mentioned I got an acupuncture treatment. I give this woman all of our New Age books and she'd give me acupuncture. My back has been really bothering me since then, and now I'm afraid this woman used some sort of voodoo on me.

It wasn't your typical acupuncture treatment with needles, she used an electronic acupuncture tool that shot electricity into my "trouble spots" to "open up my vessels". Essentially, I was being electrocuted. When she was applying the tool all over my upper back, I would spontaneously spasm and my arm would move and I'd get goose bumps, then I lost feeling in my hands. They've been a little tingly ever since.

While giving me the treatment, she said I had a lot of tension in my shoulders. I explained it was probably because the night before I had carried four laptops over five avenues from the Javits Center to my office. Now, since getting the treatment I keep getting a sharp pain in my right shoulder blade.

This isn't the first time I've experienced adverse effects post-acupuncture. Last summer, I tried it because my doctor - whose waiting room has a serenity waterfall - suggested it. She said it wouldn't hurt (it did) and it would alleviate my stress (it didn't). I was in her office because a few weeks prior I had fainted on a subway platform at Astor Place. I was taken to the hospital and they recorded an irregular heartbeat. Apparently, my irregular heartbeat is likely to be activated by stress, which at the time I had plenty of: the same weekend my boyfriend of five years was moving out of our apartment, my grandfather died.

When she put a few needles in my ears, I was immediately uncomfortable and lost sensation in my hands. Then, she put a needle in my calf and I instantly burst into tears. I wasn't in physical pain, but she hit something that all I could do was cry. Buried emotions? Hitting a nerve? I have no idea, but I immediately asked her to turn off the Pure Moods CD and let me go home with a prescription for Prozac.

If I have to find a silver lining in all of this, it's that now my back feels extra sensitive. So sensitive, I finally have found that stray hair that I know has been growing on my back that I couldn't feel until now. I have one over-active hair follicle and my ex-boyfriend used to groom me and it hadn't been found since we broke up. So, you can imagine my excitement of extracting a two-inch hair from my back while in the car today.