Carla von Lahnstein may be my newest European fantasy lover, but Laetitia Sadier, lead singer of Stereolab, has given me special tingles since 1992. She’s tall, dark and brainy, has an accent, and seems like she’d smell faintly of cigarettes and red wine, but not in a bad way. I’d love to sit at un café with Laetitia, both of us looking bored while sipping red wine and talking about le philosophe. If I could be her microphone for one song, I’d be totally willing to ignore the fact that she’s French and decidedly left of Lenin.

Behold Laetitia! (she’s in the black sweater):

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R.I.P. Mary Hansen (in the red shirt)

I’m sure this is the most riveting piece of information you’ve read today - I signed up to run in a 5K race taking place in mid-October. It’s kind of a big deal to me because September 13th will mark ten years since I wrecked my back. I’ve talked here and there about my back drama and I think it’s been a while since I’ve posted an update.

The very short of it is, I spent the first nine years after my injury getting treated for degenerative disc disease. This meant I spent countless hours doing core stabilization exercises, seeing who knows how many physical therapists and doctors, enduring excruciating epidural corticosteroid injections in my spine, and never having a single pain-free day. The medications for treating pain and inflammation were often worse than the pain itself. Chronic pain shouldn’t be underestimated, nor its wingman - depression.

About a year ago, I had another round of thoracic spine and cervical spine x-rays to see what was going on in my back because I started having acute pain in my mid back, which is a part of my back that never bothered me before. Plus, I was also having headaches that wouldn’t go away for weeks. The x-rays weren’t the sexiest because they revealed that my thoracic spine is curving laterally and rotating. This was not something that existed my x-rays from years prior. Basically, my years of overcompensating with the same back muscles has caused enough of an imbalance that my spine is twisting in a bit of a corkscrew fashion. I’m even a little shorter than I used to be because of it. The neck x-rays weren’t sexy either and noticeable changes were present in those images too.

I couldn’t bear the thought of more pointless physical therapy and more stabilization exercises and more medications. None of it had given much, if any, pain relief in nine years so I didn’t have much faith in hopping on yet another Swiss ball and working on my core. My primary care doc told me that she believed most of my pain and body mechanics problems are myofascial-related. Right around this time, a friend told me about a myofascial treatment technique that had given her a lot of pain relief - dry needling. Since I had tried just about everything except surgery, I thought I’d give this dry needling thing a chance. Why not?

Beginning in October of last year, I started getting dry needled in my main trigger points, which go from my butt to my skull. There has not been one pill or steroid injection involved. The people I see for these treatments have changed my life. It’s not your typical physical therapy and it’s not even a little bit like acupuncture, which is how some people describe it. I’ve had lots of acupuncture and trust me - dry needling is nothing like it. The dry needling treatments are often painful, but the relief I’ve gotten on the other side of the pain has been worth it. I’ve cried more in the last year during my treatments than I care to admit, but it’s the good kind of crying. It’s the kind of crying that comes from real relief. I am far from pain-free, and I have no expectations that I ever will be pain-free, but I am so much better off than I was a year ago. I’ve gotten a piece of my life back that’s been held hostage since 1998.

My shoulders have slowly been unlocking and settling back into (almost) proper position and the radiating pain from my lower back through my butt and into my thighs has diminished greatly. The range of motion that I have now in all extremities is not something I thought I’d ever have again. The biggest difference I notice is that I’m not crippled on the other side of sneezing or doing housework or getting in/out of my car and I actually feel okay after working out.

The fact that I’m running because I want to, not because I’m being chased, is pretty amazing. For years I was told to give up running and stick to the elliptical machine or take up swimming. This was not easy information to digest for a person who loved being outside and doing sprint triathlons pre-back injury. It’s definitely been slow going getting back into this running thing. My muscles and lungs start screaming with every stride, but it’s all good. It’s nice to hurt in a different way, for a change. It’s like my body is coming out of a very long and reluctant hibernation and it’s trying to remember what it’s supposed to do. I’m really keeping myself in check and not going crazy with over doing it. I have to be mindful of my physical limitations at this stage in the process. I’m up to running two miles right now - two very slow miles, but two miles just the same. I’ll take it.

If you’re still reading this post, I guess that means you haven’t fallen asleep yet. You are to be commended for you high level of endurance and high threshold for boredom.

Spouse? Boyfriend? Family member? Coworker? Neighbor? Your kid’s soccer coach?

Six weeks or so from now, we’ll be off to Norway for the Viking Queen’s wedding. It will make exactly a year to the week that I was last in Norway and this trip will mark LF’s first trip to Europe. I’ve never been to a gay wedding before, but this wedding will be particularly meaningful because it’s legal. LF and I won’t understand a word of their vows, but I’ll probably get a little choked up seeing my best Scandinavian girl all grown up and getting married. Plus, the Viking Queen’s soon-to-be husband is completely dreamy. There are not enough superlatives in the book to adequately describe his dreaminess.

We’ll be staying with the happy couple in Oslo, but LF and I are going to branch off on our own for a couple of days before the wedding and do the touristy thing. We just booked the Norway in a Nutshell tour, which is a train trip that will take us from Oslo up through the fjords and over to Bergen via the Flåm railway and the Bergen railway. I’m particularly excited about the Flåm Railway though. We’ll spend a couple of nights in Bergen and then take the one-hour flight back to Oslo and begin the countdown to the wedding.

I know the trip is going to fly by and we’ll be back in Baltimore before we even realize that we were on vacation. I definitely envy the Europeans with their many weeks of vacation time they get each year. A week is barely enough time to get adjusted to time zone differences, let alone get a feel for a foreign city. We’ll take what we can get though. We are very fortunate to have good friends host us and show us Oslo through their eyes. Besides, how often do you get the opportunity to spend $10 per draft beer? A girl like me could die of thirst living in Norway full-time.

Curse the YouTube gods!! Clicking on the ‘Related Videos’ section can steal hours from your life, if you’re not careful. I honestly can’t remember what I was watching when I stumbled upon what has become my new obsession - Verbotene Liebe. Verbotene Liebe (Forbidden Love) is a German daytime soap opera that has all the typical daytime soap drama. What makes it different from most of the other daytime dramas is that it features a bunch of full-on lezzies and mos. One of the main characters, Carla von Lahnstein, is a super-sexy Euro Lez who manages to seduce any woman she sets her sights on. She’s smart, beautiful, well-dressed, and the daughter of an aristocrat - what more could a girl ask for in another woman?

See my new fantasy lover in action:

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I’m not sure exactly what it is about this show that gets me all a-flutter. I know a big part of it has to do with the clothes and shoes that these Euro Lezzies wear. I just can’t help myself when I see attractive women in tailored clothing. It’s my weakness.  Another aspect of this show that makes my No-No places tingle is the language. I don’t speak German, but it always sounds like someone giving commands whenever I hear it spoken and that’s pretty hot.

More Carla von Lahnstein in action:

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I don’t need to learn any German because HOT is a universal language.

Bret Michaels + Rock of Love Bus = More Sundays of Unskinny Boppin’

Dreams really do come true!

My nephew is almost two years old and I’m experiencing all of these (I think they’re called) feelings that I didn’t know were possible. Awww. If I didn’t have to work full-time, I’d probably stalk him because he’s the coolest person I know. Since I can’t stalk him full-time (yet), I always want to know what kind of kiddie crack he’s currently hooked on. Several months ago, my brother mentioned that my nephew is obsessed with a show called The Wiggles, which he described as being “totally gay.” I asked what he meant by “totally gay” and he said, “Well, for starters, they have this character named Captain Feathersword.”

This morning, while scrolling through the DOUCHE DISH Network guide, I saw that The Wiggles happened to be on and I thought I’d check it out. If it’s good enough for my nephew, it’s good enough for me. I made the grave mistake of hitting the ‘Select’ button. What I saw can only be described as the gayest thing on TV. It features four grown-ass Australian men: Jeff (purple shirt), Anthony (blue shirt), Greg (yellow shirt), and Murray (red shirt). They sing and dance and they all seem to be tweaking a bit. One of the guys had the Whitney Houston Crackhead Sweats and another guy had the Bobby Brown Cokejaw thing going on. It made me anxious just watching them. Murray (red shirt) is completely ablaze with limp wrissthhssted lissthssping. I dare you to watch this fabuloussthssness in its entirety:

It’s stunning, isn’t it? It’s like Liberace and Elton John got into a head-on collision. I had to hit the DISH guide again because I was sure I had landed on Bravo or Logo. Oh no…it was the Disney Channel. I immediately texted my brother and sister-in-law and said “Watching The Wiggles. It’s totally gay.” My sister-in-law replied, “Don’t hate. We’re taking (my nephew) to see them live in August.” I’m still trying to decide if I should call DSS and report them. Anyway…

My brother wasn’t kidding - they really do have a character named Captain Feathersssthhssword. He’s a friendly pirate with a friendly pirate ship and he prances around with a giant…well…purple feather sword. There was much emphasis placed on rainbows and dancing with hands above heads. Gay? Umm…just a little bit. I also couldn’t help but notice that the particular episode we watched had no little girls in it. Hmm. Lady Friend wondered if we had stumbled on the NAMBLA Network. Again, we checked the DISH guide and we were still on the Disney Channel. LF said, “They should only show this after 10 p.m. on the Logo Channel.”

We sat there and watched the entire episode of The Wiggles. LF and I fell headlong into a shame-spiral after admitting that the songs are really quite infectious…like ringworm. I even had to rewind and replay some parts because we couldn’t believe the fagtasticness of what we were seeing. It was as if we had been transported to an alternate universe called When Dinner Theater Queens Attack:

Make sure you let me know how many hours it took to get this song out of your head.

Not that there’s ever a good time to be a prostitute, but now is especially not a good time to be a prostitute in Baltimore. See here and here.

I passed the WJZ van on Nanticoke Street on the way home this afternoon. They were across the street from Amanda Bishop’s memorial. Here’s the segment the did tonight.

Lady Friend and I took Thursday off and started the long weekend by borrowing a small powerboat and getting our Crockett and Tubbs on. We hit the Magothy River and tooled around the different creeks checking out all the waterfront houses and passing judgment on people’s bad taste. We live in Pigtown, so we consider ourselves authorities in bad taste. Before we went on our three-hour tour, we had to gas up the boat. I guess the cost of gas is really c-blocking people from blasting up and down the river in powerboats and on jet-skis because the Magothy was so empty that I lost my bearings and I almost missed the marina. We pulled right up to the gas pumps at the end of the pier and there were no other boats gassing up or waiting to gas up. It was like a ghost town on the dock. We filled up the boat  and took off for Dobbins Island, leaving $20 bills in our wake when I hit the throttle.

We didn’t make any plans for the 4th of July since we didn’t have any money left after cashing out our savings and our 401(k)s to fill up the boat. One of my hungover cousins called and she didn’t have any plans for the 4th either, so we decided to hole up in the Pigtown Palace and do the most patriotic thing any true American can do in honor of Independence Day - watch a Steven Seagal movie. Saturday, LF and I continued the patriotic theme by packing up some lawn chairs and some ice cold beers and then heading over to Fort McHenry N.P. We picked a tree on a hill and sat in the shade nursing our low-grade Seagal hangovers while watching the ships move in and out of the harbor.

Yesterday we took a day trip to Sharpsburg, MD to bike around Antietam National Battlefield. It took us about three hours to bike the whole thing because it’s pretty hilly in spots. The scenery is beautiful and it’s so quiet around the battlefield that it’s hard to believe there were 23,000 casualties in one day in that location. When I worked for the state park service back in the day, I occasionally used to have to camp at Antietam Creek. I could never fall asleep when I stayed there because my imagination always ran wild thinking of all of the ghost stories I’d heard about Civil War soldiers wandering through the woods.

I feel like I should fess up to my weekend lowlights though. When I’m left unsupervised in front of the TV it’s not uncommon for me to make really bad decisions in my viewing choices. LF came home from unSafeway and caught me fully engrossed in the atrocity that is Georgia Rule. To quote LF upon opening the front door and seeing what was on the screen: “I was only gone for ten minutes!!!” There’s only one thing worse than a Lindsay Lohan movie and that’s a Lindsay Lohan movie co-starring a pinko communist traitor and hater of American troops Jane Fonda. I need to call DOUCHE DISH Network and give them an Anger Hangover Rule - No Jane Fonda Movies on the 4th of July (or ever, for that matter).

As if losing precious minutes of my soulless existence to Georgia Rule wasn’t bad enough, I debased myself even further by getting caught up in Freedom Writers (aka Million Dollar Dangerous Minds). Wow. This movie was so heavy-handed and overly wrought that I was praying Clint Eastwood would show up and put this Mo Chuisle out of her misery. He never showed up though, which meant I was left lingering on life support for the duration. Fortunately, LF found the strength to pry the remote control from my cold hands and pull the plug on HBO-E.

Some may debate whether or not this his a highlight or lowlight, but LF and I got sucked into El Cantante starring Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony. I feel no shame in admitting this - the movie was really good. It was basically a Puerto Rican version of What’s Love Got to Do With It, minus the chronic wife-beating and Buddhist chanting. Good stuff.

I took my dog on an early morning walk around the neighborhood this morning and spotted the obligatory Dodge Neon parked along Bush Street next to the MTA bus yard. I saw a white guy (shock) in the driver’s seat and a slumped-over mess (shock) in the passenger seat. Hmm…wonder what that’s all about. Since the car was parked on the same side of the street we were walking down, I figured why not take a look. After all, they’re in my neighborhood and maybe they’re lost and need directions.

I know this is going to come as a shock to some people, but there was a junkie/prostitute digging in her arm with a needle and some middle-aged soccer dad with a chub in his khakis watching her do it. I walked right up to the passenger side window and bent down to look inside. The prostitute didn’t even notice me, but I watched the soccer dad’s corporate life flash before his eyes when he saw my face nearly pressed up against the window. I did what I usually do when I happen upon these situations - I stepped behind the car to get the tag number, pulled out my cell phone, and called 911. Soccer Dad hauled ass as fast as a Dodge Neon can go (26 m.p.h) and turned right on Wicomico Street. I guess they didn’t need directions.

I skipped having coffee this morning because ruining some junkie’s high and scaring the shit out of some suburban soccer dad is so much better than any caffeine buzz.