Category: Uncategorized (Page 18 of 114)

…. the ENT doctor says, “I’m going to numb your right nasal passage and it’s going to taste like horse manure…”

Uh, yeah. At first, I just felt the Spray! Spray! Spray! and thought, well, hell, I don’t taste anythi- eeeeeeyyyyyeech! Dude did NOT LIE. The most hideous taste, ever. But it did numb everything up – the roof of my mouth is still a little numb. I started my day by sitting in a waiting room for an hour, and eventually had a black rubber hose with a bright light & camera at the end of it snaked up through my nose and down my throat. How did your day begin?

Fortunately (or unfortunately, for those of us who enjoy a Magic Pill solution to all our problems), I have what is termed “post-viral irritation”. Dude, I have had post-just-about-everything-in-life irritation for MONTHS now. I am always skeptical when there are pre-printed sheets that they pull out and hand you with instructions to follow, including forgoing all caffeine. Friends, I cannot begin to describe the irritation that would ensue if I followed that direction. I realize I should gently wean myself down off the addiction, but not cold turkey right before a new business pitch. HI! (bares teeth) I’M LOOKING FORWARD TO WORKING WITH YOU! (:growls, gnashes teeth, smacks at imaginary bugs on arm:) Yeah, not gonna happen. Interestingly enough, I was running a slight fever, so I have independently concluded that I just need to kick all the bugs out of my system and get healthy. (Who needs med school?! My liberal arts degree devoid of sciences is A-OK.) The best news he gave me was that I did NOT have a giant ball of mucus sitting in the back of my throat, so it’s just an irritated sensation, not something I need to try to force out. I had sort of hoped he could vacuum everything out – there was this old-timey machine in the room with me that had all sorts of dials and knobs and I got a picture or two of it, but then was nearly busted when I stood up to get a picture of the slice-o-head that showed a cross-section of your sinuses.

The naso-snozzo-phonography (it had a super long name under one of the switches):

The wire-thingy suspending instruments. I first thought they were hooked and sharp, like dental implements, and was very afeard.

Alas, no slice-o-nasal pics for you. Just to mix it up, here’s a cross-section drawing of an elephant’s head.

Do you ever wonder what’s happened out there in the Crazy World, when you call in to a doctor’s office, and the first thing you hear is, “Welcome to the Offices of Doctors X Y and Z. If this is a medical emergency, please hang up and dial 9-1-1.”….. followed then by a list of automated instructions. My primary care doctor’s voice greeting has this, as does the Otolaryngologist’s office I just called.

Now, I don’t know about you, but if I’ve just cut my leg off with the meat slicer, I am NOT going to call my primary care physician. Or a specialist. First of all, the wasted seconds with the extra numbers (and especially extra if you’re crossing state lines with the 816/913 preface you have to enter) could mean the difference between life/death, or stump/re-attached leg. Second of all, do you know how long it can take to get in to see a specialist? It can take weeks! I’m certainly not going to jump around (jump around! jump around! jump up jump up and get down!) until Dr. Whozzits is back from Aruba. Last, but not least, if you can’t distinguish between what IS and is NOT a medical emergency, and you need to hear a recording tell you to hang up and call 911? Perhaps you should stump yourself right out of the gene pool, my friend.

In less-scathing news, I am going to a full-fledged Oto- ok, an Ear Nose & Throat guru tomorrow to deal with my post-nasal drip. The coughing is back, and no amount of Zyrtek, antibiotics, or nasal sprays is cutting it. I was driven to purchase one of those sinus irrigation kits yesterday because of my Wikipedia research, thinking perhaps suffering through an elected nasal-irrigation-process would better my situation. I believe it’s supposed to be good for you, and it sure does clean out your sinuses. And glamorous – my god, I cannot even begin to describe how glamorous it is. Think vintage Valentino and Cartier diamonds. So, so glamorous. It’s akin to the sensation you get when you accidentally get water up your nose – that frightening, horrible pressure – and yet, much to my surprise, you can simply keep breathing through your mouth & the sterile mixture just sails right on out the other nostril. I was searching for a term to describe it … Sexy? Yes. It is extremely sexy time. You will burst into flames, the hotness is so flammable and … hot.

And when you’re on fire, just make sure you call 911, not a specialist’s office.

Sorry, gotta pull out the ol’ Blink-182, because apparently I can’t quite keep track of how old I am. Yesterday, the Kansas City Star published a story featuring 10 local bloggers, and they were kind enough to include me in their feature. I’d gotten a list of about 10 questions to answer, and then some general information about me, including age. I haven’t looked at my submission, but because I know this tends to be an ongoing issue with me, I’m assuming for now I sent the wrong age in and it wasn’t their typo. For the record? I’m 38 – but my birthday’s in less than four months. I didn’t even notice it when I read it, and it wasn’t until knit night last night when the whole thing came up & someone thought I wasn’t 39 yet. With all the societal hooplah that surrounds turning 40, I can only hope I get that one right next year. (It IS next year, right?)

Yay! Operation Haremail is underway!

I swap with Swap-bot!

Tammy, over at Polka Dot Mittens, has organized this swap, she is just the sweetest (and a great designer!)

I’ve been up since 5 a.m. Bleah. Who likes getting up early? There are you crazy kooks, I know, and yes, my husband is not only able to get up early, he gets wherever he’s going at least 10 minutes early. Oy. The Overachieving. But I woke up this morning, and the voices in my brain started up, much like the birds in the backyard, who are SO confused with the daylight savings times, they are just up! and chirping! and talking! and having an avian hootenanny complete with coffee and fresh biscuits. And the voices were NOT at all interested in going back to sleep. So we all got up and despite my best attempts to engage in all activities that result in me being late, like playing on the computer for half an hour, I still got to work at 8 a.m. Including time for a Chik-Fil-A breakfast biscuit stop. (The birds have theirs, I wanted one too!) The grass has not grown under my feet since. I have gotten all Jedi-Knight about things and I am wwwwwwervvvpping (that’s the sound the light saber makes) and blazing and while I’m not cutting anybody’s legs off, I am Gettin! Stuffs! Done! Both of my co-workers accused me of sucking their own personal fire out of them and appropriating it for myself.

I could be over-compensating for the fact that my whole post-dad estate situation is essentially out of my hands, and I’m making sure that the things I CAN control? Are about as deftly handled and resolved like a Jujitsu sensei. Yeah, I’m now mixing asian martial arts with Star Wars. What I really want to do is handle one of those big fighting stick thingies like Uma Thurman had in Kill Bill (I & II). (whaaawhawhaawhaaaa is the sound those things make.)

You have no idea how much I could accomplish.
(Laughter, for one thing. Riotous, pant-wetting laughter from all around.)

I have to call a phone number tonight to see if I have to report for jury duty tomorrow. Joy! Why do these things happen when there’s already 800 things going on? I’m all about being civic-minded and being responsible, and lord knows, when I was on that jury when I lived in St. Louis, I was not only an excellent juror (elected forewoman to boot, always an over-achiever, I’ll blog it at some point…), I take the process extremely seriously. Maybe because of my deep-seated fear I will be accused of a crime I didn’t commit and there won’t be a handy-dandy CSI team to clear up the mistake in under an hour. And, let me tell you, the idea of “jury of your peers” is a scary one. Three jurors fell asleep during our jury trial (granted, they’d turned the a/c off, in July, in St. Louis, but still!), and the guy seated by me had just barely cleared the IQ test to stay in the mainstream classroom. At least that was the only explanation I was left with, because he was so stupid I wanted to punch him in the face. Behavior unbefitting a jury forewoman, so I refrained.

So, no, I don’t want the general masses holding my fate in my hands while they rush to end early so they can get home to the doublewide and catch the latest episode of Smackdown. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that my services will NOT be required. Otherwise, I have to cancel multiple appointments, and work from home at night.

I did rather enjoy the photo they have on the website, making jury duty look worthwhile and exciting. SELL it, baby!

(Note the man trying to stay awake by grabbing the bridge of his nose. (I do that trick myself!) These people need an ad agency! Let’s make jury duty sexy! Or at least as riveting as an hour of “24“…..)

Truly, and we’ve heard it for years, decades even, it’s not a good idea to grocery shop when you’re hungry. I knew this, and still – went anyway. I needed to pick up buns (we were having brats for dinner), a vegetable, and fries.

When I got to the store, I’d already sat in a huge line at the CVS drive-thru, staring at the Volvo-driving woman who’d cut me off two miles earlier & lo & behold, here she’d reappeared to sit in front of me at the drive through, life’s little ironies, and she didn’t understand that these days, you don’t have to sign on credit cards at the pharmacy if, like, the amount’s under $1,000, so she just sat in the lane for seven more minutes until I think someone finally told her to leave. I was also tired from my day of coughing fits & well, you know, a day of work. So I added some additional qualifiers to the life lesson of not grocery shopping while hungry: Don’t shop when you’re tired, sick, and filled with self-pity. Because it will go something like this: you will sail right by things you need. You double back. You grow even more tired and filled with self-pity, and this cycle continues so that by the time it’s frozen-food-aisle time, your ability to pick and choose with any semblance of logic or needs-based thinking is absolutely shot to hell. Plus you’re hungry. Seriously, I came |this| close to buying the party-sized box of cheddar jalapeno poppers. And had they been filled with cream cheese? It wouldn’t have even been a debate. As it was, I got three kinds of french fries (they were on sale!), two cartons of ice cream (no sugar added & extra churned! and on sale!), and then two boxes of asian appetizer thingies (on sale!) because I wanted to rip open the box and gnaw on them Right! This! Minute!

Which totally would’ve made me the crazy lady at the grocery store. There’s always one. If only I’d been wearing my pajamas.

Whenever I think about what I could blog about lately, it all feels like a gigantic WHINE. I’m still coughing from this crap drizzling down the back of my throat, I’m still kvetching through post-dad-death stuff, my computer at work is selectively deciding what it WILL and WON’T do for me, and then throughout it all, there’s crazy non-stop knitting. I suppose if I got a little more motivation (and wasn’t dragging-ass tired every night from coughing/lack of sleep/more coughing/bitching/kvetching and whining) I could take some pictures and show that indeed, I continue to progress on the Bayerische socks, that in the time I’ve done 16 rows (on each sock – always always do I knit socks two at a time), I’ve started & finished a pair of socks out of Tiny Toes yarn, procured last fall on the Wedding Trip across Iowa. I’ve also made one baby item, with another one needing to be finished, for the lovely new bambino Sammy. But you can’t have pictures of that until they’ve been gifted!

As far as the Anger Management tour goes (that’s how I think of it in my head) – I’ve had some serious rage-aholic times the past few months, and I’m trying to stop myself when it feels like my head is going to explode right off my body in a Monty-Python-esque skit. I was challenged the other day at lunch, when our waitress disappeared and never refilled my drink or really, brought the check until she finally noticed the laser beams shooting out of my eyes. I almost had to use those laser beams on the jackasses sitting near us who had their phones on “high ring” and kept getting calls all through lunch. And then the jackass (same lunch hour) that cut me off in traffic and proceeded to slow down/speed up and basically make me crazy as we went for a Starbucks.
Like I said, it’s getting better, but I still have some challenging days, when I want to rip off the offender’s hands and beat them with them, violate their corpse and RUIN YOU! AH AH AH! (this is a reference to the SNL Barry Gibb Talk Show skit. I find it helps to channel Jimmy Fallon in times of extreme rage.)

In other news, hopefully more interesting than me being a big fat raging whiner, JWo has begun full-on garden preparation. He is going to plant seeds tonight, and has all sorts of little plants growing in our breezeway under the grow lights. I do get a thrill seeing the tomato plants, because they signify that great moment in time when we can abandon grocery-store produce, for even the cherry or grape tomatoes this time of year are sadly lacking that tart-sweet acidity and full flavor that only comes from the garden.

Oh, and I discovered this weekend my neice makes picklesicles. She actually takes pickle juice & freezes it in a popsicle mold. A quick Google of this shows she is not alone. None of us are, no matter how much we think we are, sometimes!!!

There truly is nothing like starting your day with your annual well-woman exam. I had mine today, bright & early, and everything went fine. I just always hear the song “Back in the Saddle” when I get into those stirrups….

I felt like I was reaching middle-age, because I took my little notebook in and had a whole list of things to run through/check off. It was a good thing I had my list, because the office was in a STATE OF CHAOS. Apparently the lab phlebotomist’s last day was yesterday, and the lab was supposed to send over a NEW phlebotomist (and I love to use the word phlebotomist, just so ya know) but they weren’t there yet? And so the doctors’ nurses had to do the blood draws, but the one doctor (the one who was snooty and mean to me once, and who has signs all over advertising that she can give you Botox, that woman, the one I’ll never go to unless I have a four-foot spear piercing my torso & coming out the other side, she is JUST that much of a bitch), yeah, that doctor’s nurse? She doesn’t DRAW blood. (I am so not surprised.) So my doctor’s nurse was doing all the blood draws, and my doctor came out to get me & did all the nurse-type stuff like measure me, take my temp, etc.

So that was good, because we actually got more time to run through my list and whatnot, and get me my prescriptions and thingermabobbers before I went off to get my blood drawn, and there was a phlebotomist on the scene! But this phlebotomist was not going to be the regular phlebotomist, she will be training the new phlebotomist, and I was disappointed because this girl? Could draw blood like nobody’s business. I praised her. I didn’t even require she use a baby needle, which is my usual m.o. ever since the crack-addict phlebotomist went crazy on my arm several years ago and I almost passed out when I took a gander at what she was doing. Nobody should see medical instruments jabbering around UNDER YOUR SKIN. I’m just saying. In case you, junior phlebotomist-wannabe, are studying up on your skeelz and want a free tip from Blogland. It’s just not a good idea.

(I know for a fact my husband is curled into the fetal position from having read this blog. Sorry, honey. JWo not so much on the needles. I’m brave. And proud, like dog show.)

And the rest of the day has FLOWN. But I don’t recommend starting out in the stirrups every day. (Unless that’s your thing…hey….. we’re non-judgemental here.)

I believe in siestas. I’ve never lived or worked anywhere that allowed for them (well, college, I suppose, but that was a completely different state of affairs, mostly inebriated). Today, I felt myself drooping and sagging after lunch (and feeling a bit carsick on top of that, go figure, since I’m driving a DESK.) So I retreated to the only place nobody will burst in on you: the restroom. I always try to frequent the handicapped stall, because you can rest your elbow on one of the metal bars, and slouch your face into your hand and sort of get all stupor while you sit there & hope nobody else comes in and you have to busy yourself up like you’re actually, well, doin’ some bidness.

But, alas, it’s not just the squeak of the door and the click of a co-worker’s shoes on the tile to wrench you out of that glorified state. We have the autoflushers on our toilets. Which I’ve talked about before, and unfortunately, they seem to be on HIGH ALERT for potential non-flusher users. I was in the restroom for under 6 minutes, doing NOTHING, and the toilet auto-flushed no less than 10 times. Whether it’s the light reflecting off my shirt, or the settings, or what, I don’t know what it is that makes it so flush-happy. But it really interferes with trying to catch a moment of peace, let me tell you right now.

So, I’m drinking more Diet Coke to get myself peppy & caffeinnated…..and, as we all know, the more we drink? The more we have to pee. Sigh. Me & the autoflusher. Friend? Enemy? Both?