hilarious...

great googly-moogly...i've got mick flaps!

:-D

http://japingape.blogspot.com

too funny! i'm telling *everyone*..

creepy.

eek. i just woke up from a creepy, scary dream. in it, Mummers and i
were travelling in this backwoods mountain-y place, and i parked at
this restaurant that looked like an open-air laundrymat, and there was
this guy there that was a preacher-type person -- he was kind of a
cross between fred phelps and mr slausen from the movie Tourist Trap
-- and he had a congregation or following, or whatnot. i had just
decided to get us the hell out of there by going back where we'd been
and going a different way (figuring they would expect us to try to
keep going the way we'd been headed), and the congregation had dropped
us back off at the open-air laundrymat, and i realised that my car'd
been stolen, and dusk was on its way. there were cars left sitting at
the laundrymat, but i thought they looked staged (and as such, perhaps
rigged to break down, or impossible to steal, and/or to be somehow
used as 'proof' that we broke their laws or whatever, so i was not
comfortable trying to steal one of those. i was *just* trying to
figure out what to do when i woke up.

wow. creepy.

pokering, AMA.

meg's made me go off to play poker. i called a 5k bet in bad position
with pocket eights cos, well, i'm on percocet supplemented with the
occasional darvon (yes, i can so too spell 'percocet', so no more
emails, please; i am DRUGGED. be grateful that i PUNCTUATE). then,
when i should have seen that stupid-ass play through, i folded to a
re-raise, trying to minimise my (stupid) losses. i would've fucking
boated on the river (8) -- the re-raiser only had a set of queens.
gah. ack. pfft. bleah.

so i am currently being a stoned tourist outdoors, waiting for the
next game. at least this is apl, and it's not for actual money -- meg
may be able to stomach this, but i just cannot play for that much real
money; i've said before that she's got more balls than i. tonight is
her first apl game, and she's doing well. :-) well, she's still in
there, at least. we went to play with her new minimeg, whom i met
before meg left for vegas. i like her minimeg; she's a post-doc whom
meg is raising up in the way she should go so that when she is old she
should not depart from it. ;-)

UPDATE...meg out, thinks apl is a silly soc thing, minimeg doing ok,
we'll play the next tourney tho.

'codia still elegantly wasted, by-the-by. but i'll have to quit typing
'fore meg comes back from the loo and asks what i'm doing.

Pinch me.

Today has probably been the best day I have had all year. We're
talking all of 2008 here.

Called on account of rain...

Speuterfest moved two weeks up because we're fricking drowning here. Pfft.

I am still sleeping most of the time. I need to proofread my
syllabison at some point this weekend. ;-) can't bear un-proofread
syllabison.

I am going back to sleep.

I cannot tell you everything...

There is a local news story that I find so upsetting, I cannot even
describe. It's worse now that I have nothing to do but listen to the
news. This has been going on for a few months, and I honestly get
filled with such rage that I am mentally overwhelmed and
incapacitated, and it is best that I stay sedated. I am thinking of
taking up drinking heavily. This issue is in the neighbourhood of
gross misconduct, dereliction of duty, and so forth, combined with
animal and/or child abuse. I have had an undercurrent of upset for a
while...but it is significantly increased. I never got around to
putting a tv back in my room, so I have just the radio. I could do cds
or something, but there has been the threat of bad weather here, and
if I have to protect my squooshables, I don't want to miss the weather
alert, so I've been listening to a local talk radio station for most
of the day until NPR's programming comes on. I used to listen to this
station more often, but wandered away in favour of our two public
radio stations, and now I remember why -- they are beating this story
into the ground.

It's making me stir crazy.

Meg is coming to pick me up and we will be driving out to my father's
for a couple hours. I am supposed to be on bed rest, but I have to get
moving or else I will go batshit. She's bringing taro milk tea with
boba because 1) she loves me and 2) her tacos collided with my colace,
and I had to take an immodium and extra narcotics to get back to the
happily constipated state I had previously enjoyed. And it's all her
fault; I told her this.

I expect to be ok for the travel since I discovered that sitting on my
fluffy flannel Christmas throw makes cars livable.

Fat Pets and Vampires

Meg is back. She did well during her Vegas trip, but the Fall semester
is about to start, and her sabbatical is over. She's grumpy, but she's
come to take care of me nevertheless; I couldn't ask for a better
sister...though I could ask for a less grumpy one, to be certain. :-)
Meg made tacos, and we're now watching The Porky Pets of Britain (or
whatever), waiting for Vegas Vampires to come on. My pain management
is going well, provided I remember to take my pills on time. Meg is
teasing me that I'll end up like Mummers' youngest sister, who was put
away in a rehab centre and had to do methadone or something -- but in
fairness, my youngest aunt was an unintentional junkie; she used to
fly a lot and had two really bad accidents (not plane crashes,
accidents), and one happened when she was out of the country, and they
just basically gave her oxycontin and sent her on her way. These are
the joys of socialised medicine. *Anyway*, by the time she made it
back stateside, she was an addict and needed to have some of the
vertebrae in her spine fused. So she had the surgery and had to stay
on pain meds for a while, then went through detox and rehab. So she
has had her share of tsouris, and Meg is just being grumpy.

I am doing ok, though. I have a lot that I need to get done before
Monday, but I am not going to stress over it. I am on official leave
from Eviljob until 4 September, and Jobs 2 & 3 will just have to wait
until I have the energy to deal with them.

ok...why is everyone's shirt blurred out in Vegas Vampires?

And I'm cramping again; time for another pill. Argh.

Still livin'

I am sleeping a lot. I think it's the Percoset.

i live.

i am home. stiff, sore...VERY stiff and sore, but alive. i am having
some amazingly awful pain in my diaphragm and neck/shoulder area, but
i am sure this will pass. i cannot mange to get to my computer or
tolerate sitting with my laptop yet, so i'm on pda, but...i'm alive.
yay.

and i am desperately craving a big-ass chef salad, only i am alone and
it is the middle of the night, and it is all stormy, so i can't have
one. if i *could*, it would be a ginormous salad with avocado, bleu
cheese crumbles, tomatoes, bacon, chicken...or, even better, that
saladwhatsis at california pizza kitchen that has all that stuff *and*
beets. beets rock.

sigh. i do not remember when i took my last pain pills. grr. i think i
am due. after my surgery in 2003, i was sent home with three brown
pills and a big bottle of percoset; this time i have just the
percoset. oh, well. mom drove me home, and in retrospect i should have
let kate or, well, anyone else who had offered take me, cos my mother
drives like shit. i ended up throwing her out, so she's currently at
home pouting, i am sure.

i would post more, but right now i am pretty boring -- my conversation
is limited to how i am in pain and hungry. you can fill in the blanks
from there, i am sure.

Goodbyeee...

I met Mom for dinner this evening at Cracker Barrel, and they had their Halloween stuff up -- Mummers said that this looked like something I would wear:



:-) She's right. Every second of every day, I would wear that; if I were younger, I would be sent home from school for wearing it...constantly. They also had a snazzy pirate costume that I'd wear -- what's up with children's costumes getting more fabulous every year? Unfairness -- I demand a re-childhood.

I'm happy; my mommy may not approve of me, and she might not actually love me, but she does know me, and in my world, I guess that's as good as it gets.

Well, wish me luck tomorrow.

.

Missed again

Crap.

I mis-remembered the speuterfest date -- it is *next* weekend, not
this coming weekend. In the meantime, a kitten was hit and killed in
Eviljob's parking lot on Tuesday, and I am so upset over this that I
cannot even describe how I feel. I tried to find where the body was,
what happened to it, *something*, and no-one seems to know. I could
find no trace of it, or I would have given it a decent burial. This is
so depressing, and I am so strung out emotionally that I have to stop
thinking about it or I will start crying again; as it is, I was in the
bathroom bawling, and I even feel guilty for crying, because no matter
what I feel, because I am incompetent, that kitten felt worse.

Today's pre-op went shittily as well; unlike my 2003 surgery (and this
is a different, allegedly better hospital), I was rushed through, the
admitting nurse neither listened nor knew what she was talking about,
and she was a tich rude besides. Oh, forget it; I am being nice -- she
was clearly one of those 'I hate women' women, and as long as I live,
I will never understand the animosity, the pure *hatefulness* with
which some women deal with other women. I am not saying we should all
go around calling each other 'sister' and fucking singing Kum-Bah-Yah,
but the womyn-y version of a fucking professional courtesy would not
be such a ridiculous proposition. We all hurt, we bleed, we have
rampaging fucktards in our lives and histories...why the cruelty, the
terseness, the dismissal? Why assume the worst? If nothing else, men
and women are more similar than different (don't tell me no, I study
and teach the brain), so this 'I get along with men, but I hate other
women' is just sexist bullshit, general stupidity, and a heaping
helping of wishful thinking.

As can probably be inferred, today has been a shitty day, and I am
tired and depressed.

And Soni just set a new world record...christ; I am going to start
wearing one of those Speedo Laser suits all the time like secret
Mormon underwear. That's freaking incredible!

ok, back to my depression:

I feel guilty about the kitten. Hideously, horribly guilty for
anything I could have done and didn't, and for any happiness or even
relief I may have had on Tuesday. I am aware that is irrational, but
it is the truth; I have regret enough to drown, especially when I
think about how I was trying to pick my mood up when I got back from
the hospital ordeal and was joking and laughing. Guilt. Total guilt.

So, in short, I suck. And we all knew that. Maybe my pre-op nurse knew
that, too.

Appipulai. :-/

Mom's over...again. We're watching tv together, and she brought dinner
again. Sigh.

Harry's therapy crap went well yesterday, and I am off the hook for
further visits; I do hope he can manage on his own.

Tomorrow I have my pre-surgery blood work and stuff at the hospital,
where I will meet the anaesthetist, be told that I have a Class I
airway, and feign interest. I am not hostile, I just want this to be
over, and quickly. And I want Versed, lots of it -- that's some
wonderful stuff; it truly makes one not give a royal damn, and I need
much more of that in my life.

Butsoanyway.

I finally heard from Baby Bat, the consummate bovarist; she's been
preoccupied with a *new* guy, and I'm a liberal girl, so I will
refrain from passing judgement, but I might have a little better
attitude if all of them weren't unemployed losers. It always goes the
same way with her -- they are supposed to rescue her, they instead
leech a few hundred off her and she stops wanting to have sex with
them, then they get angry at her and they say they dumped her, and she
says she dumped them, and I lose the will to live halfway through the
story, because it is always the same.

Butsoanyway.

They will be trapping without me this weekend; I am in pain, plus have
too much to get done before Monday. It's ok, though; the guy who is
heading this up on behalf of the rescue group has this under control.
If anything, I would probably create problems because after three
years of being an amateur, I am...well...still a monumental fuck-up.

ok...Mom left a few hours ago (I have been typing this off and on
since I came home, and now am watching The Fifth Element...can you
tell?), and I need to get some sleep. One thing I quite decidedly *am*
anticipating with glee is being out of this constant, horrible pain,
if only for a year or two, like last time. Yay.

No time to say hello, goodbye...

I am still trying to get everything in order before I go in on Monday, and it seems like the more I accomplish, the more there is left to do.

I am just very frustrated right now.

What's new...

Well, I have a new pet peeve: saying 'fill' in place of 'feel', as in
'I'm rilly fillin you on that one'.

And yes, 'rilly' is exempted if being used for comedic purposes. ;-) Rilly.

I am planning -- or, more correctly, *trying* to plan -- to have a
really good 2008 Holiday Season. I am planning on doing some
completely non-productive things, and I am totally committed to making
a birthday cake for myself this year. w00t!

In other news, my back is just *killing* me, and I think it's stress.
I have a LOT to get done this week, not the least of which is
remembering to take the nail polish off my toes and not wear my toe
ring. Sigh.

Right now, Action Jackson is coming on, and I may stay up to watch it
-- I haven't seen it in *ever*, and it makes me homesick. :-) Hey, I
kinda liked the movie -- it was cute, funny, and I'm all for redeeming
heroin addicts. Plus, any movie that kills Sharon Stone cannot be all
bad. :-D

Oh! And! I have MALL HAIR! No, seriously; after going to The Goddess
ever since I moved here, I slutted around a bit and then just found
this AWESOME stylist at an anchor store salon who is a third of the
Goddess' price, and on Saturday she gave me the best haircut I've had
in ages. I let her take a lot of length (fear not; it's still long),
and she made these 'functional layers' (her term) that don't *look*
like layers, but totally gave me my curl back. I couldn't be happier,
and if I do die on Monday, at least my hair will look great. :-).

I ended up today having to deal with one of the people I'd had to file
a complaint about at Eviljob, and it went well -- I'd been dreading a
confrontation, and it was a relief to have them behave in a civil
manner, especially since this person was documentably in the wrong. So
that's good.

Mom took it upon herself to make dinner for me; she brought over some
really nice salmon croquettes and other stuff, and it was actually
pretty good (which makes me wonder if they were from elsewhere, cos I
would have expected ol' Mummers to do something like try to 'break up
the taste' of the salmon by adding lemon juice, walnuts, thousand
island dressing...and marshmallows, served on a bed of pineapple. With
sausage gravy). But, seriously, these were good. :-) I think she knows
I'm nervous and stuff.

When it's time to change...

Still watching the Olympics with Cookie and eating shrimp roll sushi. It's time to try on some new clothes here; I love lighthouses soooo much, and well...I need a change. This one strikes me as being nice and late-summery, and that's almost as good as getting to actually *go* lighthouse-gazing.

Though the good news is that, provided I don't die in, or as a result of, surgery, I'll be near water for next semester -- one of my classes is at a satellite campus that is a bit of a drive, but I am actually quite happy over the situation; I need the relaxing me time the trip will provide, and it's only two days a week. Plus there are some very fabulous sights between Here and There, and it will give me some time to be all self-indulgent and maybe get some photographs going again; I've not had time at all in the past year to really take many. I specialise in taking shitty pictures with a crappy camera (note, that's not one of mine below -- I thefted it). :-)

I don't feel like talking about my upcoming surgery right now; for the time being, let's just look at the pretty lighthouse. :-D




.

The Cookie Olympics

 

I am watching the Olympics...with Cookie.  I think she wants to be a swimmer when she grows up or something.  Honestly, Cookie is the most tv-watching cat I've ever encountered. 

Climbing down from the ledge

I am ok now. Still upset, but ok. There are some good parts, but for
the past two days, my head has been a little full of the shitty, scary
parts. So, on to The Bad News:

I had a doctor's appointment on Wednesday for a checkup of Millicent,
my beautiful-but-stupid left ovary's new little cyst; I didn't mention
it because it was supposed to be a routine visit.

I walked out scheduled for emergency surgery on the eleventh. As in
this coming Monday.

Thursday morning I cemented crap with my gyn's surgery scheduling
department -- appointments for pre-op blood work and so on. I started
freaking out -- I NEVER freak out; not in real life -- so much that I
kind of blacked out for the end of the conversation (as cc is my
witness, I have officially PEGGED my stress-o-meter) and was just
blank-brainedly staring at the walls for about an hour when my gyn
herself phoned...I can only assume that I freaked out her scheduler,
though I honestly don't remember what I said, or even hanging up. So
my gyn pep-talked me for a few minutes (she even apologised for having
to get through a couple pts to give me a ring). She really understands
me, understands *women*, just when I honestly thought I would never
trust a woman gyn again. She reminded me that I'll be pain-free (I
have been in tragically awful pain for seemingly ever), out of danger,
will NOT lose Millicent (no oophorectomy form 'just in case' like last
time with the other gyn in 2003 -- she promised, and even said she's
looking forward to delivering my babies, so why would she take an
ovary :-) ), and I'll be 100% happier, and she's right, I know.
Typical girl (she's a lot like me -- a hyper-competent
girly-girl-who-could-kill type), she's giving me a gift-with-purchase
that I'll go into later lest I sound frivolous (ok, ok, *more*
frivolous). So after talking with her, I felt more together, and
started phoning around to get everything in order -- FMLA paperwork
for Eviljob, a sub for Job 3, and letting Job 2 know when my Do Not
Disturb signs will be hung, and whatnot. Then the hospital phoned to
confirm my pre-admit stuff, and then my gyn's scheduler phoned back a
few hours later -- she'd had a bigger emergency that she needed to put
in my spot, and needed to move me to the eighteenth. That was fine
with me, cos it gives me a week to finish my syllabus and initial
lesson plans, make arrangements to board Rhett, Cookie, Squoosh, and
Weebie until Meg gets back in case I die or something (listen,
shaddap; I really do worry about these things). I was ok for the rest
of the day, then I started to freak out again.

I am ok now, just scared and kind of lonely. Staying up past my
bedtime and watching Motel Hell isn't helping. But I'm ok. This is
going to be a busy and stressful week. Pfft.

Wish me luck, I guess.

Too blunt for many, too sharp for most...I guess.

Ok, this is funny: I finally managed to get Harry to use his health insurance to go to a fucking therapist, 'cos I cannot spend eight million weeks on his problems any longer. Harry asked me to go to the initial appointment today with him, because he has 'sensitive' issues that he has a hard time talking about, and I am all about just ripping the band-aid right the fuck off.

So I went to his late afternoon appointment with him, checked credentialling, made sure this therapist was not going to pull anything batshit like crystal healing or praying to trees on Harry (hey; these days, a PhD is a guarantee of NOTHING -- nutbags abound, and as far as I knew, this guy graduated last week from the University of Papaya, and plans to free the world of neuroses through kundalini yoga), and then gave a Harry anamnaesis (to the best of my ability). Then the therapist spoke with Harry, and I interjected when he was lying, misrepresenting, misunderstanding, or just plain forgetting. See, I have no problem at all explaining dirt. Don't mind it at all, and hold it against no-one; I'm the All Reality, All The Time Girl. Unfortunately. Harry was embarrassed at times, sure, but Harry took it well; he really has a hard time talking about some things, and I at least got the conversation started.

The result?

This therapist has asked if I could clear my schedule to return next week, 'cos I've cut so much time out of him having to wrest all this from Harry.

It lives.

Mummers' CA-125 test was negative; I've taken her up on her 'offer' to
accompany her to the doctor (read: she phoned me every ten or fifteen
minutes to ask me if I would be heading out anyway, then to mention
traffic conditions, next pretending that she'd forgotten she'd already
phoned...and so on. This is Mommyspeak for 'come be with me'...sigh).

I sent a text to Meg to let her know; I don't remember what she is
doing today, but I think it was a tournament. Late last night when I
spoke with her, she was going in Circus Circus, and she said the
outside reminded her of a dead mall, and the clown is creepy...so she
was thinking of me. Funny girl.

In Other News, I have Mummers' bronchitis, and a raging headache from
the clarithromycin. Bwaah.

oh...and...as mom was filling out her 'what's new with you' med update
forms, I noticed she made a 'bronchitis/bronchitic' slip like I do
(even more frequently when typing quickly), and I just found that
humorous; it's good to know that I'm not the only one suffering from
the occasional cyrillic bleed-over.

I have taken everything I can get my hands on for this headache,
including half of one of Mummers' Mobic tabs, and nothing has
*touched* it. I may explore trephanation soon.

Oh! In Cat News, huge speuterfest next weekend. Yay.

lessee...

We-ell...

I have managed somehow to get sick. Bleah. My throat hurts a lot. And I have data I have to work on that I've not gotten to yet...and I don't feel like it.

But wait -- there's more!

Mom went on Thursday for a CA-125 test, which we will have results on around Monday. Let's all hope she doesn't have cancer, say? She's also been battling some flu she brought with her from Texas (probably from my brother's children), and we thought she was over it, but then I went and took her around on Thursday and she tried some of my taro milk boba tea, and I think she freaking infected me. With this throat crap, I mean; not cancer. ;-)

Meg's staying at the Rio, and took today off to drive out to NTS, or so she says. :-) I told her Mummers has an in at the lab now and can get her bumped up in line for CA-125 tests. Meg's not big into dead malls and whatnot as I am, but she and I are similar enough that she's NTS-bitten; tell us not to go somewhere, and that's the first place we beeline. Anyway, then she's going to Rachel, then back to her hotel, I think.

And oh, my...my throat is sore. This sucks ass. I tried to phone my brother to see if he thought I should start on something (ok, ok...and to talk him into phoning in a prescription for it), but he was celebrating the birthday of another doctor in his group, so he was half-drunk, so yay. I asked what he was drinking (he favours the nasty german beers), and thought he was trying to be funny when he said 'shayna madel' (that's what I heard at least, and asked him where his wife was; it was actually a pretty funny misunderstanding, but I'm too tired to give it a full treatment here), but it is Shiner Bock he was slurring, and he says it's wonderful, so I can only assume it tastes like the soles of panzer boots like the other stuff he drinks. He made me promise I'd try it when I'm there next. Woo-hoo.

To make myself feel better instead, I bought rainbow cookies. I *love* rainbow cookies. These are Delancy St. Bakery's and (imo) are a little heavy on the raspberry and not heavy enough on the almond flavour, but they're good.

Maybe if I don't die, I'll make my own. w00t.

Only a few weeks to go until the Christmas/Holiday Season. Hang in there. Just a few short weeks.