The Great Interview Experiment

The ever-fabulous man with the talking penis, Neil from Citizen of the Month, recently came up with the idea for The Great Interview Experiment. How it works is that by leaving a comment on the interview post here, you agree to interview the person who comments after you; they interview the next person, and the chain carries on. As a result, we all get to learn about the bloggers behind the blogs, and discover some blogs we may never have stumbled across otherwise.

After commenting on the post, I was contacted by Theresa from My Fairbanks Life. (Check out her blog: it is fantastic!) She was the person I was to interview, but she thought she was supposed to interview me. By the time she figured out her mistake, she'd already combed through my blog and come up with a ton of questions, so she decided to interview me anyway. Which is a good thing, because the person who was actually supposed to interview me flaked off.

Question: Your blog Saviabella has such a beautiful name. What's the story behind your cute bellybutton?

Answer: Thank you! Savia is the Italian word for wise and bella is the word for beautiful, feminized. Those are the two things that I feel life is in pursuit of: wisdom and beauty, in all their forms.

Q: Your dad was born in Italy; does that mean you're an Italian citizen? Have you spent much time there?
A: No, I don't have dual citizenship, but when people ask me about my ethnicity, I tell them I'm Italian. Even though I am also half-Hungarian. I just associate more strongly with my Italian side, because that's the way I was raised. I haven't spent a lot of time there, unfortunately. My first trip was when I was one-and-a-half years old, then we went for my aunt's wedding when I was seven, then after I graduated university at 21, and I finally made it back this summer, a full decade after my last visit. But now that I have a permanent job, I am going to make a greater effort to visit more often. My grandparents are elderly and my grandfather is quite ill, so there isn't much time left, you know?

Q: How do you say "I'm a little pig face" in Italian?
A: I've always had big lips, so my dad used to call me "mousoutta", which means "pig lips."

Q: You are a classically trained vocalist, a mezzo soprano. Do you sing in the shower? In the toilet stalls? In the car?
A: I sing in my car all the time. I try to harmonize with the radio, which doesn't always work. I sometimes sing in the shower, but not very often. If I'm feeling sad or depressed, I'll often sing to make myself feel better. I used to do that a lot when I was a kid after my dad died. I'd be crying myself to sleep, and then I would just start singing and that would make the tears go away.

Q: Seriously, how did you realize you had talent?
A: My mom put me on a stage in a church musical when I was two years old, and I guess I was a hit. I've been performing ever since.

Q: Somewhere on your blog you said it is your dream to someday perform "The Laughing Song" from Die Fliedermaus by Johann Strauss. What about that composition appeals to you? What's the song about?
A: Oh, how I love that song! The premise is that the Marquis' chambermaid makes a bet that she can pass herself off as one of the guests at his party. She gets all dressed up and goes. When the Marquis is introduced to her (she's using a pseudonym, of course), he says she reminds him a little of his maid. Instead of demurely dismissing this comment, she makes a huge deal about it, singing an aria about how it's so ridiculous that he could possibly think she would be a chambermaid, because she is clearly far too elegant and dainty. The best part about the song is that it is full of singing laughter. "What a funny ah-ha-ha situation ah-ha-ha, so excuse me ah-ha-ha my elation ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha..." It's a great character piece and so incredibly over the top. Once my jaw is healed, I'm going to start working on it again. Hopefully, I'll be able to do it justice.

Q: Does mediocre pop music make you cringe?
A: I firmly believe that whenever a Nickelback song is played, God kills a llama. It makes me very sad that this kind of music is allowed to exist and destroy our environment and livestock. And llamas are so cute and smart, too. I'm ashamed they're Canadian (the band, not the llamas).

Q: I like it when you talk about singing. All that breathing and diaphragm lifting. It sounds spiritual, like yoga or meditation. Does singing seem like a kind of spiritual practice for you? Do you ever just not feel like singing? Like too lazy or just not in the mood? Is singing good exercise?
A: Singing is very much spiritual for me. It lifts my mood and makes me feel as though I'm connecting with something divine. I can literally feel it coursing through my veins. If there is something more out there beyond this physical world, I believe that music has got to be a part of it. It's also really good exercise, if you're doing it right. You get a lot of oxygen into your body, and you also push a lot of air out, which is very cathartic. There's been times that after a voice lesson, my entire core, from my stomach to my lower back, ached. It was like I'd been doing sit-ups for an hour. There are, of course, times when I don't feel up to singing, but I find that if I push past that, it's always worthwhile.

Q: You have shared your vulva painting with your on-line fam and uploaded the picture to a photosharing site, where it was censored. How did that affect you?
A: I love that you used the word "affect" correctly in that sentence. I'm such a grammar geek. I've been censored a few times now, and my reaction is, "Seriously?" I don't think that what I do is obscene or particularly risque, so it always surprises me when I get that reaction. I think people should lighten up and focus their energies on pictures and websites that perpetuate hatred and violence and abuse. Which is going to do more damage: an artistic rendering of a vulva that looks like a flower, or child pornography?

Q: Any thoughts as to how the Internet will evolve when it comes to free speech?
A: I think some of the big time service providers will be a bit more puritanical when it comes to censoring content, but the Internet is huge, and growing by the day, so people will always be able to find new service providers and websites that will allow them to express themselves freely. I just don't think it can be controlled when you have a forum of this magnitude. Which is both a good and a bad thing, I suppose.

Q: Some of my best friends are Canadian. Does that sound racist?
A: Not at all! In fact, I imagine that living in Alaska, you have a lot in common with us. Or maybe we're just frozen together somehow.

Q: It seems like the Canadian bloggers I read are all part of a close-knit blogging community. Did you make most of you online friends through your blog or did you start blogging because of them? In other words, which came first the blog or the blog friends?
A: I met Schmutzie through work and we became fast friends. She and Palinode introduced me to this whole blog world. I didn't even know what a blog was before that point. Many of their friends also had blogs, so I met a lot of other bloggers online (like Abigail, Smyrish, Knuckle Toes, Wench, et al) before I ever met them in person. Madam Diva and I met online and later became close friends in real life. Interestingly, when we met online, we were living in different provinces. Then, she moved to Saskatchewan and ended up working for the same organization as me. We were obviously meant to be friends.

Q: Jaw surgery. Ouch. How are you doing on your quest to end the pain?
A: It really hasn't been as bad as I thought it would be. I think going in with a positive attitude made a big difference. I still have a stack of stories I need to write on my blog about the surgery and its aftermath, so stay tuned.

Q: You write with great honesty and humor about some really painful events, your dad's death, your jaw surgery. How do you do that without sounding sorry for yourself or wallowing in despair?
A: I came across this quote the other day, and it kind of says it all: "I have always believed, and I still believe, that whatever good or bad fortune may come our way we can always give it meaning and transform it into something of value." - Hermann Hesse, 1877-1962, Novelist and Poet. I believe everything happens for a reason, so I take a lot of time to turn events over in my mind, trying to find the meaning behind them. I only sit down to write about them once I've found that meaning. If I wrote while I were still in that discovery process, I'm sure it would come out quite differently.

Q: Do you go through many edits? Are you a writer in real life or do you just play one on the Internet?
A: I am a writer in real life, but I write my blog much differently than I do my professional work. My blog is here to tell the more interesting stories in my life or to help me find perspective on difficult situations. I write the way I would talk to a friend, and that's the way I want people to feel when they visit my blog. It's very conversational - I just let the words flow without thinking much about literary techniques. I don't do a lot of editing, either, except to tighten up my writing a bit before I click "publish post."

Q: What's the weirdest thing you ever remember smelling?
A: I wasn't sure how to answer this one, but then I smelled something this week that was truly disturbing. Superstar and I were at a mall where a Lush store had just opened next to the food court. As I was walking by, my senses were assaulted by the odours of grease, fresh bread, and pungent, flowery bath products. I alternated between holding my breath and breathing through my mouth. It didn't really help. Bleck.

Q: You say you're not afraid of clowns, what if a really tall clown holding some kind of sharp sickle looking thing showed up at your door some late night? Would that scare you?
A: Yes, but mostly because I live in HoodLite, so anyone showing up at my door late at night is kinda scary.

Q: Kindertoys. Do you toss ‘em or stash ‘em?
A: Eat the chocolate, then shove the toy at Superstar and let him figure it out.

You asked for it

"We want pictures!" you exclaimed in the comments to my last post. Well, be careful what you wish for. If I weren't so cute in real life, I would be far too vain to put these pics on the Internet, let me tell you!

The day of the surgery, and the swelling started.
I now know what my face would look like if I were morbidly obese.
As you can see, I was determined to keep a positive attitude.
After all the high-fiving, I switched to a thumbs up.

Bruising, where the not-so-cute anesthesiology intern screwed up my IV.
This picture was taken one week after the surgery, if you would believe.
And now, two weeks later, I still have bruises. Jerk.

A lovely shot of the stitches they put in my cheeks

(that's where they put the screws in.)

A close-up of my sexy bruises.

My wired and elasticized jaw.
Orgasma told me this wasn't what she expected it would look like.
"It looks like pimped out braces," she said.
Oh yeah. Rappers got nothin' on me.

Three more days and the wires get cut off. Hooray!!

Under the bone saw, part three

The next thing I remember is waking up in the recovery room. The room waves and spins around me. A really nice nurse asks how I'm doing. I mumble, "High five" and hold my hand up for her. She high fives me back. I feel a bit of pain, but not much. What's worse is that my entire body itches really, really badly. I start scratching my face and arms.

"Oh, are you itchy?" she asks. "The pain medication does that. I'll give you some Benadryl." She adds something to my IV line and the itching slowly goes away. After awhile, she tells me that it's time to take me to my hospital room. My bed starts moving and I realize I'm being pushed down the hallway.

I pretend to drive the bed like a race car. Every time we turn a corner, I turn my imaginary steering wheel and make a muffled "Vroom" noise. As we wheel down the hallway, I also wave to everyone we go by: nurses, doctors, other patients, visitors. They all smile and wave back. Some of them laugh. I keep "driving" my bed.

"You're the happiest surgical patient I have ever seen," one of the nurses says.

When we get to my room, Superstar is waiting there for me. I, of course, high-five him. He tells me that he talked to my surgeon afterward and he said that the surgery went really well and there were no complications. I later found out that my surgeon had told me the exact same thing in the recovery room, and I had high-fived him. I have absolutely no recollection of this.

One of the nurses brings me some ice packs to wrap around my head. Then, they introduce me to the morphine dispenser. Anytime I felt too much pain, I could push this button and it would dispense morphine. I quickly fall in love with him and name him George.

I write on my white board that I want Superstar to call my mom and brother to tell them I'm okay. Then, I get him to call Diva. I hear him say hi to her and pause, then say, "She LIVES!!" in a crazy overdramatic voice.

This was fun. I get him to call everyone I can possibly think of - my boss, my coworker, a bunch of my friends, even the ones living in other parts of the country. I'm sure if I had my grandparents' phone number in Italy handy, I would have had him call them, too. I really don't want to see that phone bill.

After Superstar leaves, I update my online peeps on how I'm doing. I had smuggled my handheld into the hospital and was on Twitter and Facebook almost immediately. (You can check out my Twitter archives here.) I have no recollection of some of the things I wrote on people's Facebook walls, but I do know they were riddled with spelling errors. What I do have a record of is my status updates while I was in the hospital. They include:

Savia:

Feb. 12:

• is not dead.
• really likes the happy morphine dispensing button. Mmmm...incapacitating.
  
• wonders if it's weird to be having this much fun in the hospital. And that's not just the drugs talking.

Feb. 13:

• is the queen of eating through a syringe.
• is thinking some sleep would be nice, but some morphine would be even better.
• thinks this would be the perfect time to make some crank calls. No one would recognize her voice with her jaw wired shut!
• looks like a puffer fish, only more swollen and bruised.
• is the cutest chick on the ward.
• is going to miss the morphine. She named him George. RIP George.

Feb. 14:

• is celebrating passing gas by high-fiving nurses. Apparently, this is a big deal in post-surgery land, which isn't nearly as magical without George. RIP George. He is missed.
• is asking everyone with a non-wired-shut jaw to masticate some chocolate on her behalf and also do some romantic things that involve using your mouth.
• is finally off morphine and wondering what the heck she's been writing on everyone's Facebook walls?

Feb. 15:

• looks like a car crash victim and is glad she has a good sense of humour.

I know this will sound weird, but my hospital stay was actually a lot of fun. The nurses were amazing and also had good senses of humour. I'm sure they appreciated someone who wasn't whiny and in a bad mood. Every nurse I had shook her head at me and said she'd never seen a surgical patient this happy before.

Hey, I finally got the surgery I was waiting the past two years for, my surgery went without a hitch, I'm in a hospital with super nice nurses, George the morphine dispenser is my new boyfriend (sorry, Superstar), hospital staff bring me juice, "food" and ice packs (and also heat up my teddy bear for me when I ask really nice), I get to hang out in bed in my pajamas all day, and I have awesome friends like Diva and B-rad who visit and bring me Booster Juice and a stuffed animal named Fuck the Duck. What isn't there to be happy about?

I got out of the hospital on Valentine's Day and have been home ever since. It's not nearly as bad as I thought it would be. Eating is a bit frustrating, but workable. The pain is there, but manageable. And the swelling and bruises aren't pleasant, but they're fading each day.

I just feel grateful to have had this experience and still be here to blog about it. Thanks, everyone, for your good wishes. It's really meant a lot.

Under the bone saw, part two

The anesthesiologist and the cute intern went away, leaving Superstar and I to wait some more. I looked up at the clock and tried not to get nervous. Superstar held my hand. Then, the cute anesthesiologist intern came back and apologetically asked me one of the questions I had already been asked 12 times. Hey, at least they're thorough. I answered him and he left again.

Superstar: That guy's funny.
Savia: How so?
Superstar: Just the way he carries himself.
Savia: I think he's cute. I'm totally hitting on him on the operating table.
Superstar: Do what you gotta do.

A few minutes later, a nurse clad in operating room scrubs and one of those surgical shower caps came into the room to get me.

Nurse: Hi, Savia. It's time for you to go to the operating room. I'm Blah Blah [Side note: yeah, like I'm going to remember her name. I suck at names in the best circumstances, but put me in a stressful situation and forget about it.] I'll be with you the whole time.
Savia: In that case [holding her hand up]...pre-surgery high-five!
Nurse: Uh...okay [high-fives Savia back and laughs.]

I turned to Superstar and gave him a big hug and kiss. I told him I'd see him soon and that I hoped he had fun at the art gallery or wherever he was going for the next two-and-a-half hours. Superstar walked one way, and I followed Nurse Blah Blah in the other direction. Neither of us turned our backs - we watched each other walk away. Just as we were about to leave through our separate doors, Superstar stopped and said, "Merde!"

I gave him a quizzical look, then burst into huge smile. I sometimes forget that he used to work professionally in the theatre. Fuck, he's hot.

"Merde!" I called back at him.

Well, that's one thing I didn't expect to be yelling across a surgical waiting room right before I went under the bone saw. But whatever works, right?

Nurse Blah Blah took me down the hallway and pointed to a bed outside the operating room. "That's your bed," she said.

"Oh, okay," I responded and sat down on it, preparing to lie down.

"Oh, she meant that it will be your bed after the surgery," said another nurse.

"Oh," I said and got up. "In that case, I do find this bed to my liking and I approve it for my post-surgery use." [Savia makes some ridiculous hand motions as though she is blessing the bed and the nurses laugh.]

The reason I was a bit confused was because anytime you see someone go into surgery on television, they get wheeled in on a stretcher. I guess it's more dramatic than walking into the operating room and hopping up on the table yourself, which is what I did. I thought they'd at least sedate me first, but there was none of that. I walked into that room stone-cold sober.

The room itself surprised me, too. It was so...bright. I mean, it makes sense that the room would be bright - you want the surgeons to be able to see what they're doing - but I expected it to be a more sterile, florescent light kind of bright. You know, like on Grey's Anatomy.

Instead, it was a small room filled with natural light from a wall of windows facing a park. The ground and trees outside were covered in a fresh blanket of snow and the sun's reflection off it flooded the room with even more light. There were also large medical lights, but the room was so bright on its own, it didn't even seem like they were plugged in.

Nurse Blah Blah told me to take off my robe. When I handed it to her, she complimented me on my back tattoo. I told her the reader's digest story behind the tat to distract myself from the fact that my ass was hanging out of the hospital gown. At least she didn't comment on that.

I climbed up onto the table and lay down. There was a flurry of activity around me, a team of people bustling around getting everything ready. I'm not even sure how many there were; I just tried to block it out so I didn't start freaking. The table itself wasn't what I had expected, either. It was shaped like a cross, with two "arms" extending on either side. I stretched my arms out onto them and waited for something to happen.

Cute anesthesiologist intern dude crouched by my left hand and started tapping my vein to insert the intravenous needle. I tried to chat him up, but he seemed very intent on his task. He used a smaller needle to freeze the area, then put in a very large needle. I looked away and squinted at the pain. Something had gone wrong and he called the anesthesiologist over to see. He had put the needle into the vein wrong and lost the opportunity to use that vein or something. I'm not entirely sure what the deal was. All I knew was that it hurt.

I decided he wasn't so cute anymore.

The anesthesiologist moved to my right hand and started tapping the vein there. "See," she said to him. "She's got great veins. You just have to coax them out."

"It's true. I'm so fabulous that even my veins are fabulous!" I said in a dramatic voice.

They laughed and the not-so-cute-anymore anesthesiologist intern dude put an oxygen mask over my face.

"He's going to give you some oxygen before we give you the anesthetic through the IV," she said.

I breathed into the mask. It was fine, until they let the anesthetic loose in my veins. I felt as though I were drowning, choking on water. I felt like I was fainting and coming to at the same time, before I was hit by a wave of nausea. I started coughing and gasping for air and looked up pleadingly at the anesthesiologist to save me, because if this isn't what it feels like to die, I don't know what does.

"Don't worry, Savia, we..."

And that's all I remember.

Under the bone saw, part one

We went to the hospital in Cosmopolos at 10:30 a.m. I went to admissions and jumped through all the hoops, answering the same questions again and again from several different people:

"Are you allergic to anything?" No.
"Are you on any drugs?" Yes. Please give me some more. I can't deal with this.

After awhile, we were ushered into a semi-private hospital room. I was given a bag of hospital clothes and told to take everything off and change into them. Coming out of the bathroom, I modelled the hideous green backless gown and ugly blue robe for him. "Oh, baby, you so sexy," he said.

"Don't you know it."

Then we sat there and waited. And waited. And waited. The sign on the wall said, "Your pre-surgery assessment visit can take up to four hours." The words "OR LONGER" were written below it in black marker. "Do you think that was written by a staff person or a patient?" Superstar asked.

I passed the time by flashing Superstar and trying to convince him to make out with me on the hospital bed. He liked the flashing, but I think he was a bit freaked out by the old lady and her family on the other side of the thin curtain, so no make-out action for me. Fair enough. I was just trying not to think about how hungry and thirsty I was, as I had been told not to have anything to eat or drink since midnight the previous night.

I unpacked some of the things I had brought to the hospital - a cute framed picture of us, a Warm Buddy stuffed dog, magazines - trying to make it seem more homey and, again, trying to distract myself from the inevitable. Superstar asked one of the nurses if I'd be in the same room after the surgery. The answer was "no." So, I repacked everything again. At least it was something to do.

At some point, a nurse came in, put down a binder and left. She didn't come back for well over an hour. When she returned, she apologized with a casual air, as though she had just left for a minute to take a phone call. She took my vital signs and asked me the same questions everyone else had asked me. We finally learned that my surgery was scheduled for 1:30 p.m., something that would have been nice to know earlier.

Finally, someone came and ushered the four of us who were waiting for surgery to another pre-surgery room. This was a large, open room with chairs located next to the operating rooms. Someone came and put a warm blanket over my legs. That was nice.

We waited some more and I passed the time by playfully torturing Superstar with an Oprah magazine. He haaaates Oprah with the passion of a thousand burning suns, which I find amusing. He refused to cuddle with me as long as I was holding the magazine in my lap. So, of course, I had to start reading the articles out loud to him.

Then, my surgeon came and talked to me to make sure I understood all the surgery risks and to answer any last-minute questions I had. I asked when I could start post-surgery acupuncture and lymph drainage massage. There wasn't much else to ask, as I had done all my research years ago and knew exactly what I was getting into.

Then, the anesthesiologist and her very cute intern came to talk to me. They asked me the exact same questions everyone else had asked, then wanted to know if I had any questions for them. I asked about the tube they were going to be putting down my throat during the surgery and if there were any possibility of my vocal chords being damaged, as I am a singer. They checked my throat out and said it would be fine. Then, they asked if I had any further questions.

"Just one," I responded with absolute seriousness.

Pause.

"Pre-surgery high-five?" I asked, and held up my hand to them, hoping they wouldn't leave me hanging. They stopped and looked at me strangely for a moment, then burst out laughing and both high-fived me. I'm guessing they don't get that very often.

"Break a jaw!" I called after them as they walked away from me and toward the operating room.

Pre-surgery hotel antics

Superstar and I drove up to Cosmopolos on Monday afternoon. We had reservations in the giant castle hotel, because I had a gift certificate (I would never have been able to afford it otherwise). We ate supper at the Japanese restaurant there and filled up on some of the most amazing sushi I have had in my life.

At my pre-surgery appointment the week before, I had to sign a waver about three pages long, showing that I understood all of the risks involved. And, man, were there a lot of them. Everything from facial paralysis to scarring. One of the risks, set aside in a large box, was that female patients had to acknowledge that they understood the antibiotics they'd be given after the surgery would interfere with birth control pills' potency and they were to discuss alternative birth control arrangements with their doctors.

I was glad for this reminder. While I'm happy for all my friends who are currently knocked up, I, personally, French kiss my pill pack each and every morning, thank you very much.

So, I brought a bunch of condoms with me to the hotel. Because you totally know we were going to get it on before I went under the bone saw. Like right up until before we left for the hospital.

I was packing up my stuff to leave when Superstar opened his backpack to find a bunch of condoms stowed in one of its compartments. "Hey," he said. "You didn't have to buy them after all.....Oh, wait. They're expired....Now, what am I supposed to do with expired condoms?" he asked.

"I don't know. Blow them up into balloons?" I replied and went to the washroom to brush my teeth for the last time. When I came back, Superstar was unwrapping the expired condoms and flinging them haphazardly all over the room, to make it look like we had done the deed on every possible surface. I burst out laughing. He was having so much fun with it. It was hilarious.

"Okay, sweetie," I said, trying to stop laughing and doing a terrible job of it. "They do have my credit card on file, so maybe we shouldn't leave it like this."

I went back to the bathroom and when I came out again, he was meticulously arranging the room again. This time, all the opened condoms (about ten of them) had been put in the same garbage pail, next to a package for the cock ring I had gotten as part of his family's Christmas exchange (man, I love his family.) He artistically placed remnants of condom wrappers around the room to leave the impression of his original masterpiece without the mess.

"Perfect," I said, laughing, as we left to go to the hospital. And that's how my day under the bone saw began.

Praise be for the anesthetic

I really should NOT have gone to this site right before my surgery. (Click at your own risk: the site contains graphic pictures of the surgery I'm getting.)

I know "knowledge is power" and all, but I'm fine with "ignorance is bliss." I couldn't even read the descriptions that went with the pictures.

Ugh. I feel queasy.

Food has outworn its welcome

I never thought I'd type this phrase, but I am officially sick of food.

When I found out about my jaw surgery date about a month ago, I decided to toss the "sensible eating" diet aside and gorge myself on all of my favourite foods before I got my mouth wired shut and couldn't eat anything except for pureed goop. I went out for lunch and supper almost every day, using this as a great opportunity to have meals with some of my fave people before going under the bone saw.

Thai food, Italian food, Ethiopian Food, Afghani food, Japanese food, Greek food, greasy food, desserts...you name it, I ate it. Also, there was a daily dose of chocolate involved. That was just a given.

No doubt there was an element of emotional eating involved in my plan. The surgery is something beyond my control, something scary. Eating comfort foods and pushing down those fears by shoving food down my throat was a coping mechanism.

But there was more to it than that. I was concerned about losing a ton of weight when my jaw is wired shut. Now, a lot of people would welcome this opportunity, but not me. Because I know I have a screwed up body image and that if I saw the scale dip below a certain number, I would get obsessed about staying at that number. Even if it were unhealthy for me. So, in order to counteract this possible result, I decided to allow myself to gain weight.

This is the first time in my life that I've actually gained weight on purpose. I didn't step on a scale for several weeks, but when I did, I was surprised at the result. I didn't expect that it would go up that much, that quickly. But, as they say, you can lose weight, but you never really lose those fat cells. They just shrink. But they remember what it's like to be plump, so they lie in wait and seize the opportunity to gorge themselves when you're gorging yourself.

Bastards.

Anyway, I'm about 10-15 pounds above my "goal weight" now, and I'm trying to talk myself off a ledge. It feels so gross to be this weight again. I know it's only for a week or so and then it will come off, but I feel so bloated and uncomfortable in my own skin.

My friends tell me I don't look like I've gained weight (I'm tall with a sturdy frame, so my body tends not to show it too much) and Superstar is enjoying the more prominent T&A that has resulted, but I don't feel good about it. This is the body that I left behind long ago, and I don't want it back. I don't want to feel this way ever again.

Another result is that I'm sick of food. All that overeating and gorging has done me in. It took all the energy I could muster to go out to one of my favourite restaurants last night with three of my favourite people: Superstar, Schmutzie and Palinode.

Over the past month, I ate the way I used to eat, the way that made me fat in the first place, and I got physically and emotionally tired of it. I guess that means that I have left those habits behind, hopefully for good.

I'm looking forward to eating pureed organic veggie soups for awhile. Maybe this will be the start of a new Savia, one who cooks and feeds her body with nourishing foods, instead of just crap.

Hey, anything's possible, right?

Weirdness times seven

Wench tagged me for another meme. Yay for things to keep my mind off jaw surgery! This one is:

7 random or weird things about yourself

The rules are as follows:
# Link to the person who tagged you
# Post the rules on your blog.
# Share seven random and/or weird facts about yourself on your blog.
# Tag seven random people at the end of your post, and include links to their blogs.
# Leave a comment on their blogs so that they know they have been tagged.

1. It is hard for me to sleep in places that aren't my own bed. You will never see me doze off on a plane, bus, train or car. If I am asleep in any of these situations, call the cops because I was probably drugged. I usually can't sleep the first night at a hotel or someone else's house, though this seems to be getting better as I get older. Also, I like sleeping alone, sprawled diagonally across a queen-sized bed. This is slowly changing with Superstar around.
2. Although I would never go out and buy this music, I like listening to cheezy dance and R&B when I work out (which I haven't done for about a year, but that's beside the point). When I'm driving my car, I like to listen to the lame Top 40 station. I find the inaneness of it soothing and less distracting while I drive. It drives Superstar, Mr. Alternamusic, nuts.
3. I'm incredibly unobservant. I don't pay much attention to my surroundings because I'm always lost in thought or my mind's wandering somewhere else. If I walk by you on the street and don't acknowledge you, it's not because I'm pretending not to see you - I really didn't. Please jump in front of me and wave your arms wildly. Then, I'll snap out of it.
4. The above is the reason I'm a crappy driver. I tend to hit inanimate objects a lot. My driving record is on the minus level of the scale. I let Superstar drive for both of our own good.
5. I am anal retentive about my credit record. It's spotless.
6. I can't be anywhere near a mirror without watching myself. This is particularly distracting when we go to restaurants with mirrors on the walls. What can I say? I'm just so damn cute.
7. I'm a lightweight. If I drink half a glass of wine, I get a little loopy. Extra strength @dvil used to get me stoned. I even get high from getting my braces tightened. For a few hours afterward, I'm dizzy and wonky and say a variety of weird things.
   

And the tagged folks this time are...

MinTea
Cecilieaux
Cans and Jars
Nat
Bipolar Lawyer Cook
Em
Butterfly

Meme 1-2-3

Cecilieaux tagged me for a meme. These days, I'll do just about anything to keep my mind off the impending bone saw, so here we go.

The game is to

• Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages).
• Open the book to page 123.
• Find the fifth sentence.
• Post the next three sentences.
• Tag five people.

The book next to me is residual desire by J. Jill Robinson, a Saskatchewan author. It's an incredible book of short stories. When I met the author, I gushed all over her, and then bought copies of all her other books from her. I'm such a groupie.

Anyway, the passage is:

Of course, the trestle bridge carries its railway tracks alongside, while at White Rock, to reach pier or beach you must cross the tracks on crushed granite, tracks on a T to the pier. And here you cannot descend concrete steps and go underneath into dark, make-shiver cold and wetness, where crabs and mussels cling to thick, black, oily posts. Bad things happen underneath, Jess, you whisper to me ominously after our lessons, as we start slowly back down the pier.

The tagged folks are:

Madam Diva
Knuckle Toes
Abigail
Wench
Deb

Ninja fucking, girlie style

Guess what? I made another shirt. Actually, I made a special edition of one for myself. I figured that since it was my blog and all, I should be different. No black and white ninja fucking for me.

**NOTE: To buy either shirt, you have to have a Zazzle account, which you can get at www.zazzle.com. Also, you have to change your Zazzle "account settings" to PG13. Then, you'll be able to click on the link and get your very own smut shirt. Not sure why Zazzle makes all this so complicated. Maybe I need to take my ninja fucking business elsewhere?**

This chickie would probably never wear my shirt.
Poor Internet models who whore themselves out for Zazzle.
They have no idea what their boobs are saying on any given day.

But then, I wore it to a concert with Schmutzie, Palinode and Superstar. And may I say, the bands on the stage weren't the only hit.

We're talking people walking up to me, reading my chest, laughing, then going and getting their friends so they could read it, too.

I think the pink shirt and the girlie script add just the right touch of irony, don't you?

It didn't seem fair to steal all the ninja fucking attention, so I am making my special shirt available for all you Internets. Cause I'm all sweet like that.

And I am also trying to avoid thinking about my jaw surgery, which is coming up in four short days. Yikes! Hmmm...maybe I should wear my shirt to the hospital?

This is my brain on radiation

Superstar and I went to Cosmopolos yesterday for my pre-surgery appointment. The surgeon's office had told me that it would be some pictures and X-Rays. They hadn't mentioned how involved and painful it would be.

Paddles pulling my cheeks away from my face to show all of my teeth in pictures, X-Ray torture devices that involved wooden pegs being clamped into your ears and your head being stuck into a vice, biting on weird things and struggling to stay still while devices whirl around your head. In case you're looking for examples.

Good times. Oh well, at least we got to go to Lush. And have lunch with Madam-Diva. Also on the plus side, I got to see what the inside of my head looks like:

See? It's not empty after all.

They also made me bite down on this plastic thing while a portable X-Ray machine circled my head. That gave us this nifty shot:

They told me I have a small mouth....
The first time I've ever heard that one!

And, in my final discovery of the day, I learned that Microsoft Word is a great backdrop for viewing and photographing X-Rays. (If you look closely at the one of my skull, you can see the blue MS Taskbar at the bottom.)

Six days to go...

Um...okay

According to my StatCounter, "Italian porn" and "cousin porn" are the top two searches that lead the Internets to my blog. And then there are the many variations on that theme: "Italy incest", "Italian lesbian porn", "blog cousin lesbian", and "blog porn cousin". Who knew these were such popular searches?

Less popular, but just as amusing, are the following searches that landed people on my blog:

• ninja fuck
• different kinds of vaginas
• drinking wine through a straw for braces
• fuck my classmate
• sex toys rocking stick
• girl is dancing to follow to fucking
• how to get sex in saskatchewan

And, my personal favourite:

• She couldn't keep any of his possessions so she stabbed him in the brain.

I have no idea where the heck that one came from. I'm a lover, not a fighter (as the many other search terms imply.)

Hmmm...can you tell my blog has changed a lot since this post?

Bullshit

This is what my Astrologyzone horoscope has to say about next week:

On Valentine's Day, instead of going out, you might decide to whip up an enticing, sexy meal at home - a super way to use the full extent of your lovely at-home star power and enjoy the privacy that as a Scorpio you would truly appreciate. Mars, your ruler, will send a golden beam to the Sun, so this day for lovers should please you, for sure.

How about, more accurately, I'll be in the hospital in another city, far away from Superstar, with my jaw wired shut?

Could my "enticing, sexy meal" include something that can be sucked through a straw, perhaps?

Bastards.

Surprise!

Palinode is stranded at the movie theatre, so he calls Savia up for a ride. She, of course, obliges, because she's all sweet like that.

Palinode: Thanks so much for the ride, Savia.
Savia: No problem!
Palinode: I got you a present!
Savia: Really? Yay!

Palinode pulls a Kinder Surprise egg out of his pocket and gives it to Savia.

Savia: Awwww...thanks. [pause] Kinder Surprises really aren't that much of a surprise, are they? You know there's going to be a crappy toy in there, it's just which crappy toy. They should really make it a surprise. Like put a cock ring in there. No one would be expecting that.
Palinode: That's a good point.
Savia: Or they could just mix it up. Put a cockroach in there, or one of those spiders that lays eggs in your ear, or a Smurf toy.
Palinode: Or they could have a Smurf toy that lays eggs in your ear.
Savia: Now you're talking.

Superstar and Savia open the egg the next morning. The toy looks like a treasure chest. When you raise the lid, a happy ghost with a mallet in his hand pops out at you. What the fuck's that all about?

Fucking brilliant

This was too good not to share.