Tracie L. Lee
CBRE
Investment Properties
404.923.1309
tracie.lee@CBRE.com
Friday, October 15, 2010
Saturday, June 12, 2010
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Tracies Frozen Foto Album | Dog and 'Hood
Good thing I had my trusty camera! The snow day only lasted the one day!
Sunday, September 06, 2009
Friday, August 14, 2009
Wednesday, July 02, 2008
The Burden of Poo...and Other Problems of IBS
I am going on vacation in four weeks and part of me is terrified.
Not only am I meeting people in person that I had only known on paper for several years, but I am also staying with them and so the inevitable dilemma ensues. One of the most embarrassing things to contemplate about staying with friends is the prospect of backing up their toilet with an unexpected, yet unavoidable IBS attack. There’s the tell-tale subterranean gurgle which lets you know that something wicked this way comes, along with the debilitating cramps and terrifying urgency to find the nearest bathroom.
As a long-time IBS sufferer I have had the misfortune to back-up the normal working order of many a toilet bowl, from a brand new Barnes & Noble bookstore to a BJ’s Wholesale Club, a library in New Orleans a week before hurricane Katrina, Pawley’s Island in Myrtle Beach, a four star hotel in Rome, Italy, my place of business (no pun intended), the movie theater at Phipps Plaza, Wal-Mart, but probably most traumatizing of all, the toilet of a male pen pal who paid for me to visit him in Ireland for my 32nd birthday.
I was staying at his house which was an attached duplex next door to his parents. I made the mistake of having a cheesy pizza on the second floor of Flannigan’s and following it up with some sort of cream pie and three cups of coffee…the perfect storm for an epic attack of slithery stool. I suffered gut wrenching pains as I tried to stay casually interested in the sights of Dublin from atop a double-decker tour bus and then the DART train to his house. I could barely walk up the driveway to the house without fearing my bowels would involuntarily expel a brown drizzle of chocolate mousse. I took the stairs two at a time and locked the door behind me and commenced to suffer the breakout of sweat on my brow, the contortion of cramps, the spasmodic clenching of sphincter muscles and finally the fits and spurts of the attack itself. It seemed to go on for hours and just when I thought it was time to do the paperwork and take my leave, a new onslaught of pain and suffering and mushy, pasty poo would ensue. This cycle repeated itself several times and I was alarmed because the toilets in Ireland don’t have as much water in them as those in the states, and I realized that all the water in the bowl had been absorbed by the swirling mass of toxic waste which was the end result (again, no pun intended) of too much cheese, cream and caffeine. After using what seemed like a whole roll of toilet paper to erase any trace of my painful ordeal I stood up, rearranged myself and looked down at the environmental hazard I had created. I was repulsed and checked under the sink for glade or any other odor masking agent and was stymied to find that men, unlike women, are accustomed to the smell of their own foul bodily functions and feel no particular obligation to obliterate them for the comfort of others. I opened the window and frantically fanned the pungent clouds of unholy odor with a hand towel, washed my hands with the thoroughness of a scientist in level 4 bio-hazmat conditions and thankfully pushed the lever to flush the toilet…only nothing happened! I pushed the lever again and held it down and there was nothing but the fitful sound of the inner workings of a foreign toilet that would not flush. I was claustrophobic with fear. I felt encapsulated in this tiny bathroom and planned to never come out until my plane left 5 days later. Even then I would climb out the window and shimmy down the ivy covered trellis to avoid the embarrassment of having my male host see what I had done. I could think of no other recourse but to cover the mess with more toilet paper and then casually mention that the toilet would not flush.
Needless to say the rest of my trip did not go well. He was strangely distant and uncommunicative and I spent most of my time conversing with his lovely parents. I made a point to never use their toilet as they were the only ones still treating me civilly. It has been almost 6 years since this most humiliating incident and to this day I wonder if it was the mountain of poo I left for him to clean up that ruined our relationship. Who can say? I only know that the prospect of traveling to the UK to visit friends for 10 days has me in a quivery quagmire over how to avoid the inevitable bowel eruption. After all, it would not do to have a repeat of the time I ate too much lasagna at Myrtle Beach and did my own impression of Elvis Presley’s final moments where I passed out from the pain, banged my head against the wall on the way down, and lay sprawled with my pants down around my ankles only to be awakened by a little girl who had crawled under the stall and announced to her mommy that a lady died on the floor. My only plan of attack would be to avoid the following items:
-Cheese
-Chocolate
-Caramel
-Caffeine
-Coffee
-Cereal
-Cake
-Green peppers
-Ice cream
-Milk
-Pudding
-Bananas
-Vodka
-Pizza
-Pie
This condition continues to be a glaring social problem that should be further addressed in after school specials and Lifetime movies so that the stigma of IBS can be erased. In the meantime I can only hope that my British friends are a forgiving bunch and that a few explosions here and there will not affect our friendship.
Friday, June 06, 2008
Deathbed Confessions are Lame
Someone I used to know only sends me "forwards" with never a personal message, but only these cheesy, emotionally manipulative emails that are supposed to make me believe that if I just stop what I'm doing and recite a few lines on the email...I, too, can be saved. Which is ironic considering we were both baptized in the same church. I wonder what makes him think I'm going to hell again all of a sudden? Anyway, he sends me this hideously graphic collage of photos from the 9/11 attacks where God is supposedly talking to each person, trying to get the frightened, the choking, the burning, the dying people to "come to Jesus" just before they die. I think this is a terrible thing to tell people. If you lived with a man your whole life and treated him like crap and never got him anything for his birthday or even noticed he was around and just stepped over him on your way to and from work, but you proclaimed your undying love for him on your deathbed...one would have to either question your motives or your sanity, at the very least, your veracity. I would think this poor man who's shared your life for decades would know you as the pretender you are and just reach over you, gently, as though to give you a final kiss, but instead pull the plug out of the wall so that you flatline alone and miserable...I think that's fair, don't you???
Deathbed confessions are lame, people. Tell the people in your life how you feel about them now while it still matters, while it doesn't cost you anything, while it still makes sense that they'd believe you. Don't be a deathbed chump.
Deathbed confessions are lame, people. Tell the people in your life how you feel about them now while it still matters, while it doesn't cost you anything, while it still makes sense that they'd believe you. Don't be a deathbed chump.
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