HOORAY! IT ISN'T LEPROSY!

About a month ago I woke up and found a weird, itchy, red splotch on my left wrist. 

It was about an inch and a half long and an inch wide, and it covered that knobby little wrist bone that sticks out on the side.  My first thought was that it was a bug bite, which didn't make me happy because that would mean something crawly and bitey had gotten in bed with me and decided to take a nibble of my arm.  I wasn't too worried, though, because it was just itchy and red, and as long as it didn't spread, I was OK with it. 

Well, it didn't spread, but it didn't get any better, either. In fact, it got worse. I couldn't see a bite mark on it, so I ruled out an insect bite, and decided that it was probably poison ivy.  I don't usually break out from poison ivy, but there is a first time for everything!  I remembered that when I was trying to pull a weed out of some of my flowers, the plant swung back and slapped me on the wrist and it stung.  OK, poison ivy it had to be, right?  The red splotch swelled up and got all wrinkled, like the skin of a naked mole rat.  Yeah, it was gross, but again, at least is didn't spread.

Ladies...

 

Since I'd never had a reaction to poison ivy before, I didn't know if that was normal or not.  It didn't seem like it would be normal, but I'm not a dermatologist!  I tried moving my FitBit to my other arm to keep it off of the rash, but it felt weird on that arm, so I found some of these little cuff things (I honestly don't know what they are, but they're like wide bracelets made out of tights) and started wearing them under my Fitbit to keep it off of the itchy spot as well as to cover it up.  I had to!  I didn't want someone coming to talk to me and suddenly seeing my naked-mole-rat-arm-rash and wondering if I was contagious!  It was embarrassing and itchy and gross and ugly, and I wasn't going to put anyone through that.

 

Two Words: Triage Fashion

So, that lasted about two weeks and during that time the pastor and Mr. Lee both asked me why I was wearing the cuff. I suppose fashion isn't a good enough answer!  So I showed them the rash and they said it was poison ivy and that I shouldn't wear the cuff over it.  It would get better sooner if I didn't cover it up.  OK, then.  I still wore the cuff while at church, just so I didn't gross anyone out, but I took it off at home.  It didn't get better.  In fact, it went from Naked Mole Rat to "Possibly Turning Into a Lizard" really fast.  Not to disgust you or anything, but the whole thing got scabby and red and it looked like I was molting like a snake. You're very lucky I didn't wake a picture of it because none of you would ever sit next to me again, just in case.  Steve said I should go to the doctor (and I'd have said the same thing if it was someone else) but I felt dumb going to the doctor over an arm rash!  That's like going to the doctor because you twisted your ankle! I told him it was just poison ivy and it would go away.  

I had ultimately taken to wearing the cuff all the time, as well as a giant band-aid, and putting cream on it every day. It seemed to slowly start to get better. Slowly.  However, the longer it was there, even in the "getting better" stage, I began to worry that it was something other than poison ivy.  If it had been a bug bite, it might have been something poisonous - and if you've ever seen what a brown recluse can do to a person, you'd have worried too.  But my arm didn't rot off, thank goodness.  It still looked like it was healing, but now it looked like I'd been badly burned and was healing.  Seriously, folks, it was less gross, but still gross. I had SCALES!

Finally, (and why I didn't think of it sooner, I'll never know) something that had been in the back of my mind the whole time suddenly popped up and I couldn't ignore it anymore.  When I'd bought my watch (It's a FitBit Force) there was a disclaimer that some people get skin irritation due to the charge port on the back of the thing.  I'd been wearing it for months with no problem, so ignored the warning.  It wasn't until things got as bad as they did that I decided to look up what kind of problems people were having.  All the pictures; Every. Stinking. One. Had the same kind of weird, wrinkly rash on it that I'd had.  I was allergic to my watch, and I'd continued to wear it on my bare skin, which is why it kept getting worse.  I had no idea because I'd never had a contact allergy before, so I didn't know what was going on.

Now that my arm is getting better, I've got to figure out a way to make a new band for the FitBit that will cover up the back of it so that my skin doesn't come into contact with the charging port anymore.  I could technically send it back and get refunded, but I like the thing.  I just feel stupid for not realizing what was going on sooner. As long as I don't actually turn into a reptile, I should be OK.

 

Actually, that might not be so bad...

 

RANDOM ACTS OF BLOGGING

1) This weekend saw a "soft opening" of one of the local farmer's markets!  Woot!  I actually just sort of found out about it by accident and so I hauled my cookies out that way fairly early on Saturday and bought some stuff.  I got some tea, strawberries, lettuce and something called chard.  I didn't know what chard was, but it was pretty, so I bought it.  When I got home, I went on to Facebook to see if anyone knew what to do with chard.  I was hoping that someone out there had eaten it and had first hand experience cooking with it, and I had one or two recommendations, but mostly I just got told to Google it.  Damn it, I don't want to be told to Google something if I'm asking a question!  I wouldn't bother to ask people stuff if I was going to use Google!  I wanted actual, real help!  I swear, the Internet has turned people into non-helpful jerk-faces.

2) One thing I wanted especially from the farmer's market was lettuce from a local grower.  I've only had really fresh lettuce once, when I grew it myself in the hydroponic thing I have, but I wanted some that had been grown in the ground by a real, live farmer!  I got a honking huge head of romaine from one stall and took it home to disassemble.  It was really dirty, but it was grown in the ground, so of course it was dirty.  As I pulled the leaves apart, I started seeing these weird, prickly, orange and black bugs attached to the leaves and I couldn't rinse them off.  I also couldn't brush them off.  They had become one with my lettuce.  You know me and my feelings about bugs, so I immediately wanted to chunk the whole thing and set it on fire, but seeing that I'd gone to the trouble to buy the thing (from a real, live farmer, don't forget), I didn't want to do that.  So I threw away those leaves and started cleaning each individual leaf before I chopped them up.  Although I could have sworn that I'd gotten rid of all of the gross bugs, I kept finding them.  I soldiered on, though, just tossing away the parts that had the bugs, and chopping up the rest.  By the time I was done, the lettuce was greatly reduced, but I still had a decent amount.  I rinsed the leaves again, and I doused them in diluted vinegar just in case.  I put it all in the fridge and brought a salad to work today!  Although I couldn't find anymore of the weird, prickly bugs on the lettuce, I can't eat it. I mean, I ate the salad today, but only because I made myself.  I kept imagining that I was going to bite into a bug and that has completely ruined the whole thing for me.  I know that bugs are a part of the whole process of farming, and I know it's completely psychosomatic, but I've been nauseous ever since I ate it and keep thinking that I probably ate a prickly bug and didn't see it. Horf.

I'm a giant weenie.

3) Saturday night, Steve and I went to a retirement reception for his high school band director!  It was nice, but we didn't really know anyone who showed up.  There were a lot of the teacher's current students, but only a few past ones, and none from Steve's class. Of course, we had a lovely time trying to look casual and not be awkward, and for once, I didn't break anything or knock anything over!  Score!  :)

The reception was held at the SpRocket (ptooey) and I looked around a bit before and after the reception.  I know it's stupid, but I really miss it there.  I hadn't really thought much about the place in a while, but just walking in there brought it back.  As much as I still hate the politics and everything, I miss doing the job and just working at such a neato museum. I honestly loved my job and I have a lot of great memories of being at the place, which is why I miss it so much. I had a lot of really wonderful friends there, too. I mean, I like my job at the church, and I know that's where I am supposed to be right now, but still.  I know what the deal is.  I just have a really hard time letting things go!  Anytime anything/anyone means something to me, I just hang on with both hands.  I'm that way about friends, jobs, and all kinds of stuff...it's actually pretty pathetic!  I know people who can cut themselves off from all kinds of things without worrying about whatever it is, literally out-of-sigh-out-of-mind, and sometimes I wish I could be like that.  It would make things a lot easier!  Also, it would cut down on a lot of internet stalking of friends I haven't seen in a while. :)  Ah, well, I suppose if I'm going to love things, I might as well love them all the time and not just when they're in my line of sight.  That can't be a completely bad thing...right? RIGHT? 

4) The other day I went "Hate Shopping."  If you are unaware of what that is, it is when you get super ticked and feel the need to buy stuff.  It is one of my ways of coping.  It's probably not very healthy, but at least I'm not kicking babies or anything.  I did realize (after the fact) that when I hate shop, I spend way more money than I normally would.  So, if you want a really awesome birthday, wedding, or baby gift, piss me off before I go shopping.

5) As of today, I'm officially a notary!  Woot!  I've been attempting to become one since last year, but I kept putting things off because I wasn't clear on the process.  I asked a lot of people what to do, and almost everyone told me something different, but I can't fault them at all because I was really asking the wrong kinds of questions.  I finally found my bond (which I had gotten online and it was mailed to me, but it was misplaced until last week - oops) and I went to the courthouse this morning and now I can officially watch people sign things.  Now all I have to do is get my stampy-punchy thing (that's the scientific name for it) and I'll be in business.  Look at me...becoming a useful citizen.  I never thought the day would come.

RANDOM ACTS OF BLOGGING

1) The word I couldn't remember yesterday was "crepitus." Now sure why I kept thinking it was "decrepit" but there you go!  It has something to do with worn down cartilage.  Still...gross.  I don't like my knees being hurty and crunchy!

2)  I feel so bad.  We filmed the Easter cantata on Sunday morning, and I spent last night editing it all together.  There were a few sound issues, probably I had the microphones up too loud, but it wasn't anything too noticeable.  I managed to get it all looking and sounding as well as I could and I burned it to some disks so that they can be sent to our home bound members.  Burning the master disk usually takes about 30 to 45 minutes, but last night it burned much more quickly than normal.  Our service wasn't as long as usual on Sunday (the whole thing was barely 4 Jolly Ranchers from beginning to end) so I didn't really think much about it until later on.  I was actually editing another video (a piano and violin recital) when I realized that there could have been a problem.  I went back and watched the master copy, and the music cut in and out almost the whole time! It was in the same spots that the sound issues had been, but instead of just minute cracking sounds, the sound blanked all the way out.  I went back to the digital copy, which I hadn't deleted, and the music was fine, but the DVD was messed up.  I didn't get a chance to test the DVD in a regular machine to see if there was the possibility that it was just the computer's DVD player that was just having problems with the disk, so I don't know if all the disks I sent out are messed up or not.   The reason I feel so bad is because for the people who get these disks, it's the only church they have.  They are either very sick, or they are invalids (which is a terrible word, by the way), or they have some kind of other physical limitations that keep them from being here.  All of them are older people who enjoy being able to watch the services, and now we've sent them a -  possibly - messed up DVD of a special service that they'd probably really enjoy otherwise.  I don't want anyone to think I don't take that job seriously, and I'm afraid that sending out a DVD with half the sound missing is going to make it seem like I wasn't paying attention to what I was doing!  I'm really hoping it was just a glitch in the video program I was using to watch it.  :(  

3) I've spent time today looking up the names of Super Villains to help the youth pastor with his lessons.  Youth group is a lot different than it was when I was in there, I guess!

4) I had a panic attack while having dinner out with friends the other day and it was so embarrassing.  I mean, it wasn't violent or anything, but one minute I was fine and the next I suddenly felt like I was going to completely fly apart.  We had to leave the restaurant and go home, and I felt so bad.  The friends we were with didn't know I was prone to them, so they were very concerned, which made it even more embarrassing.  It's been years since I've had one of those that hit so suddenly that I couldn't calm down before it got out of hand, but at least I didn't cry or anything.  I HATE those things!  

5) This has seemed to be a fairly downbeat entry today.  So to make up for it, here is a picture of a corgi dressed as a lobster!

I WAS RUNNING, AND THEN NOT SO MUCH.

    Whelp....my dreams of becoming an Olympic marathon runner have been crushed, y'all. CRUSHED!  Ok, yeah,stop laughing. My actual, real-life dreams were way more modest than that. :)  Actually, all I really wanted to do was get to a place physically where I could run.  Not even long distance running or competitive running, but, you know...just running for exercise and funzies. 

Both a nutritionist and a nurse told me that I had to change my workout pattern, since my regular workout was no longer doing anything, so I took their advice and started using the treadmill.  At first I was just walking, but I started turning up the speed and I found out that I actually liked running!  I know, I'm just as shocked as you are.  Actually, it was sort of a love/hate feeling with it because I've never really ran before, unless someone was making me, of course.  But, it was not as bad as I thought it would be and I found that when I was done walking/running, I felt more accomplished.  I *gasp!* liked to run.  I knew I'd have to work up some tolerance and stamina before I could do any real running, and so I was just doing short periods of jogging in between walking to build up to it.

Unfortunately, it wasn't too long before my left knee started to hurt.  Not just an ache, but actually, really hurt.  Even on the days I didn't go to the gym, I could only just hobble around. I thought maybe I'd pulled something (but can you really pull your knee?) or that maybe it was just the regular pains of starting to do something that I wasn't used to.  I iced it, I elevated it, I sang "Eye of the Tiger" to it, but nothing seemed to help.  It just hurt all the freaking time.  I kept on trying to run, but it got so bad that I couldn't even run or walk evenly anymore.  I had to hold on to the rail to keep from tripping over myself.   I finally took some advice from friends (who are far more athletic than I'll ever be) and I started doing some research on running.  Was I doing it wrong?  Apparently, you actually can run the wrong way.  Who knew?  Everything I read, though, said that I was doing the right stuff.  The only thing I was doing wrong was continuing to run on a knee that hurt.

I was on the verge of trying to find a place that specialized in running shoes (I've been told on good authority that these places exist) to see if my shoes were wrong, when time came for a physical with my doctor.  I told him what was going on, and asked what I should do.  He started flexing my knee and got this kind of  "Eeesh" look on his face.  He said I shouldn't run anymore!  He said walking was fine, but I guess anything high impact is a no-go.  He said I probably had arthritis and something else that I can't remember (in my head it sounds like decrepit, but that's not it.  It starts with a "C" and it sounds like decrepit, though.)  He told me to put my hand on my knee and move my leg, and I did and felt little crunchy movements in there, and I wasn't even putting weight on it, so...gross.  Anyways, no more running for me. 

You know, that really sucks!  I've never actually found an exercise thing that I liked until now and I've been told not to do it anymore. 

I'm riddled with old. Get off my lawn. 

MORE RANDOM ACTS OF BLOGGING

1) Today I had to go have blood drawn as another step towards saving money on our insurance.  The blood draw went fine and I didn't scream or faint, even though they used a needle the size of a boba straw. (That may be a slight exaggeration, but still...)  The lady who did the work taped my arm, and per usual, told me to leave it on for about 10 minutes.  Usually I wind up taking the tape off before the 10 minutes are up, if for no other reason than I don't like people looking at the bandage and wondering what sort of medical test I just had done.  I've never had a problem with it before, so when I stopped for coffee on my way in to work and the tape began pulling loose, I didn't think anything of just taking the whole thing off and throwing it away. It had been close to 10 minutes by that time, I thought.  However, today I must have been having a clotting issue, because while I was walking away from the garbage to pick up my drink, my arm started bleeding!  Gross much?  Ugh, I was embarrassed.  No one wants to see your blood while they're enjoying their breakfast!  Well, I wouldn't think so, anyways.  I had to grab a napkin and hold it against my arm until it stopped.  Now I have learned a valuable lesson: I'd rather have people looking at my bandage and wondering about my medical issues than looking at a bleeding appendage and wondering if I'm going to give them Hep C while they're eating. 

Sorry, people at Starbucks! No Hepatitis here, I promise, just bad judgement!

2) I've realized something about myself in the past month or so, but I'm not sure if it's really an unusual thing or if everyone feels this way.  Bear with me because it's a little hard to explain.

One of my Facebook friends sent me a message with a picture attached and said something like "Saw this and it made me think of you."  This guy IS someone I consider a friend, although we haven't seen each other in person in a long time, but I immediately felt odd that he was telling me that he saw something that made him think of me.  Now, it wasn't an odd, creepy-stalker-this-man-is-freaking-me-out feeling, it was more of a why-would-he-think-of-me? feeling.  It wasn't the first time I've felt like that.  I had to actually sit back and think of why hearing that made me feel so strange, and I finally came to the conclusion that it was because I genuinely never thought that anyone, with exception of my family, ever thought of me at all.  Like, I cease to exist to people unless I somehow initiate contact between us.  I'm also usually surprised when I get unsolicited contact from other people.  That probably puts me on the Autism scale somewhere, but it's the truth!  I hope you don't take that as me just being pitiful, but I've almost always felt like that.  I think that's why I always have such a hard time inviting people to do things with me, calling, texting or even sending an e-mail, because I'm afraid that I'm bothering them by reintroducing myself into their everyday lives!  I've even realized that's why I'm sometimes very surprised when I get gifts and cards, even on my birthday.  I know, I know, it's weird.  I've apparently convinced myself I'm a Silence (if you get that, you're cool). 

Honestly, though, is that how other people feel? 

3) I am wearing an orange and blue dress today, and have already gotten a comment about how they are Auburn colors. Sigh.  I...I just like the colors together.  It's not that hard!

RANDOM ACTS OF BLOGGING

1) I'm feeling restless today.  I don't want to be at work, but I have no idea what I would possibly do if I weren't here, so I'm not sure why I'm feeling this way.  I've been feeling weird, jittery and slightly bad tempered since I woke up this morning.  I thought it was caffeine related, but then remembered I didn't have any caffeine, so unless Butler is dosing me with Excedrin at night, I have no idea. I wouldn't put it past him.  Maybe it means bad weather or some bad news (I hope not) coming.   The same principle of how horses freak out before a storm. Because I'm part horse, I guess?  I don't know! I don't like the feeling, though.  It's crawly. 

2) Speaking of Butler and crawly things, I found a tick on him last night!  Yuck!  I thought he was on medication to deal with ticks, but apparently we had been misinformed about that.  I suppose we're lucky that he isn't covered in them, since he spends his days wallering around in the grass, but that one tick was enough for me to feel itchy the rest of the day.  I went to the vet first thing this morning and got something for them.  I can't stand the thought of the little critters being on him or on us!  When I was a kid, our house got infested with them somehow (I remember seeing them on the curtains and crawling up from the carpet) and ever since then they've given me the wiggins something awful.  As God as my witness I will shave the dog and have him shrink wrapped before I let him get all ticky!  Bleh.  Even writing about this has made me itchy.

*IN FRENCH SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS NARRARATOR VOICE*

Two. Days. Later.

3) I recently got a Fitbit Force!  It's a really neato little gadget that you wear around your wrist that acts as a watch, a pedometer, an alarm clock and sleep analyzer, and it connects to an online program to help you keep track of all manner of health stuff, like water consumption and calorie intake.  Basically it's a shaming device unless you are really active, which I am not.  I wanted it for two reasons: A) I'm hoping that by seeing how very little I usually do in a day, I will be motivated to move my carcass around a little bit more and hopefully restart whatever healthy lifestyle changes I need to make. B) It also connects to a program online that Steve's company is a part of called Vitality, which (I think) keeps track of the ways that you are exercising and making good health decisions so that you can get discounts on insurance.  Barring those things, I'm sure the NSA can use it to track me down in case they decide I'm a threat due to the sheer amount of yarn I buy.  There's a joke about afghans/Afghans in that, but I'm not feeling very clever today.

Anyways, one of the things I really like is that you can set a goal of how many steps you want to take in a day.  If you meet that goal, the bracelet/watch thing buzzes and it does a little digital light show in celebration.  You also get a big green smiley face on your Fitbit dashboard. If it could just dispense a small pellet of chocolate once you reach your goal, it would be perfect.  Inversely, one of the things I'm kind of iffy about is that the pedometer doesn't seem to be totally accurate.  While I'm walking, it seems to be doing the job correctly, but there have been times when I've been in the car and noticed that it is advancing my step number.  I'm not 100% sure why it does that, but I'm assuming it's the way I've moved, or maybe vibrations or something. Who knows?

Last night I'd been sitting in the living room crocheting when I decided to check the app that the Fitbit syncs to and see how far away from my goal I was.  I was surprised to see I was only about 800 steps away from my goal, because I'd been crocheting for a long time.  I just guessed that I must have done a lot of walking during the day, so I got up to walk around the house for a few minutes to see if I could get closer to the goal.  I walked around for a while before I got bored (my house is not big, nor is it interesting to walk through) and I decided to sit down again and continue my crochet project. I checked my Fitbit again and saw that I was only about 400 steps away from my goal and figured I could do that before bed without a problem.  I settled back and began crocheting again, and after a while my Fitbit buzzed.  I looked down and saw that it was doing the "Hooray! You made your goal!" thing.  Apparently, the Fitbit had been counting my crochet stitches as steps!  I hadn't walked that much at all, I'd just been doing something with repetitive motion that triggered the pedometer!  I also found out that I crocheted about 1.7 miles.  If only that burned calories...

BIRTHENTINE'S DAY!

I had a lovely birthday, thanks for asking!  It was very low key, but nice.  My mom and my sister took me out to lunch in Athens at a place called Wildwood Deli.  It's a tiny, tiny, tiny place off of the square. Like, only 2 tables inside kind of tiny!  The food was delicious, though, so if you're ever rolling through Athens, I very much recommend it.  Honestly, all I had was a ham sandwich, but it was the best dang ham sandwich I've ever eaten!  Then we walked around and browsed in some of the shops for a while and then went home!  I had a lot of fun spending time with them!

In the usual stripe of my birthday, there was a snag in the evening, but it was a small one.  Steve came home early and told me he wanted to take me out to dinner, which I thought was very sweet, but since my birthday is on Valentine's Day* AND it had fallen on a Friday, I knew it would be a mess out there trying to find a place to go.  We decided on a place (a place we've been before and liked) and even though it was one of the nicer places around, we got a table right away since we got there so early.  I wish I could say we had a lovely dinner, but we didn't.  In fact, we didn't even stay for dinner!  Don't worry, we didn't get into a fight or anything, and I'm even willing to say it was all my fault that we ended up leaving before the waiter even came over! OK, when we were seated, they gave me a rose and placed two pieces of paper and a menu on the table.  Steve picked up the menu and opened it, but said "This is only wine. Where is the food?"  That's when I looked down and saw that the pieces of paper they'd laid down were the menus for the evening.  Apparently, it was a set menu and it was $100 a plate.  Say what?  NOPE.  Look, I'm not adverse to expensive restaurants and I'm not adverse to having money spent on me, but I couldn't in good conscience let Steve spend that kind of money on a dinner we'd just stumbled upon with no notice! Had we planned it, sure, but we just got a table by chance!  I think it was just sticker shock.  To Steve's credit, he was willing to pay for it, but I didn't want him to.  We didn't really know what to do, but I just gathered everything up and took it back up to the hostess and told her we were leaving.  She looked a little shocked, and we probably looked cheap as hell, but we left.  Ugh, it was a bit embarrassing. I felt bad for messing up dinner, but by then everyone was out and we knew anywhere else would be crowded, so we just got barbecue and went home.  Honestly, I think I liked that better anyway!

Don't worry, I'll let Steve buy me expensive food soon, but I at least want some warning first! :)

I was remembered by lots of friends and family, so that made my birthday wonderful no matter what we had for dinner! I love my friends and family so much for thinking of me. They're good people.

*As far as Valentine's Day itself goes, I'm growing more and more indifferent about it.  I mean, I like the sentiment behind it, but I hate the drama! But I love the chocolate, too, so I don't know what to think about it as a whole, so therefore I call indifference.  I will tell you that the backlash against it all is getting on my nerves.  You know, celebrate it, don't celebrate it, I don't care.  However, I get really tired of the people who are so above it all.  They are the ones who talk about how stupid it is and how they don't need a special day to blah, blah, blah.  Of course it's stupid, it's a made up holiday, but geez. Lighten up, Francis. Have some red foil Hershey kisses and chill the hell out about it!

OOPS

I'm a terrible person.

I mean, I'm not a terrible person on purpose (at least not normally) but I did something recently that makes me feel like a terrible person.

I think I may have mentioned this before, but one of the members of our church is a severely autistic man.  Since I don't know know enough about autism and it's different forms, I don't know how to explain his issues, but he's very childlike and he has the amazing ability to know what day a certain date fell on, and he can remember birthdays and dates with freaky accuracy.  In fact, that's kind of his jam.  When he meets you for the first time, he'll ask your birthday and even if he sees you once every three years, he'll remember when it is.

OK, so one of the things I do in my job is update and print the bulletins (you know, the little programs that tell you the order of service and when the next potluck will be.)  We have a new one every week, so I have to change the date on the outside each time.  I've put the wrong day on them a time or two, which is great fun when everyone and their mom let's you know you've screwed it up, but I'm human and it happens.  At any rate, I'm usually pretty faithful to remember to change the month and day, if for no other reason than I don't want 10 old ladies and 40 engineers telling me the date on the front is wrong!

/Exposition

When the year changed over, I forgot to change the year on the front of the bulletin.  It's an honest mistake, since I'm usually so focused on getting the month and day right AND since it's the thing I change least often, but still, every date in the bulletin still said 2013 up until about the third week in January. I'm guessing it's not something other people look at very often, either, since it took that long for someone to point it out to me. However, by the time they said something, I'd already printed the bulletins for that week and couldn't justify wasting the paper just for a date misprint, so I fixed the digital file so that the year would be right for the next week on.  Well, apparently that week was the one where someone must have pointed out the mistake to the poor autistic man, because as soon as he could, he came over and said "It's 2014, right? Not 2013?"  He looked really concerned and so I said "You're right, it's 2014, I messed it up."  At that point, I didn't feel bad, just dumb, but then he said "It's not my fault is it? It's not my fault?"  I told him that it was all my fault, and he walked away.

Look, I know I didn't do this on purpose and I know that I don't need to feel bad about forgetting to change the date. Intellectually, I know this.  But here is this man, who apparently thinks that he controls the correct flow of time by remembering the date, and because I accidentally forgot to change a number, I threw a cog in his universe. I temporarily disturbed his personal space-time continuum to the point where he thought it was his fault that the date was wrong and I feel awful about it.  Seriously, it's been two weeks and it still nags at me!

This is probably a dumb thing to worry about, but geez.  I've never been responsible for throwing someone's world into chaos before.  Maybe this is going to be my super villain origin story.  Ugh, what if I become this man's personal nemesis?

Great, now I feel terrible AND drunk with power.

RANDOM ACTS OF BLOGGING

1)  Did everyone have a wonderful holiday season? I did!  It was very busy, but I enjoyed it a great deal.  I did have to work a bit the week of Christmas, but that was OK.  There are things I do for church services that have to be done before the next Sunday, so I was very busy on the Monday before!  Bulletins aren't going to print themselves, am I right? :)  It was actually Steve's birthday, but he'd made plans to have dinner with a buddy of his.  Boo.  Oh well, what could I do? I had stuff to do anyways.  That was the night I baked Steve's birthday cake and made cookies*!  My mother had asked me to decorate some cookies to bring to her house on Christmas day, and I was determined to do it right. I bought a recipe and some tutorial videos online from a professional cookie lady (seriously, she's amazing) and got to work.  I will say this: making cookies her way was a pain in my ass.  You had to make the dough, then chill it for an hour.  Then you roll it out, and then chill it for a half hour.  Then you cut the cookies out, freeze them for 15 minutes, bake them, then you have to leave them alone until they were completely cooled.  I know that all of that was so that the shapes you cut out didn't spread out all over the cookie sheet when they baked, but dang.  Also, the cookies smelled really weird to me.  The recipe was for Vanilla Orange Spice cookies, and they had coriander in them, which I'd never used before, so they kind of smelled the way I think sausage smells.  They tasted OK, but they just smelled weird.  Oh well.  That was all I could do for the cookies that night. 

Tuesday, I worked for a couple of hours, and then I went home to get ready for our Christmas Eve dinner.  I also worked on the cookies again, which made a huge mess.  I've decorated cookies before, of course, but this was a whole new ballgame.  I got sugar, icing, and food dye all over me, in my hair, ugh...just everywhere!  However, for my first try, the cookies turned out pretty well, I think!  Mr. Lee was supposed to come over that night, so Steve and I finished cleaning the house and got everything ready.  Well, we almost had everything ready.  It had apparently been so long since we'd had anyone over for dinner that I'd forgotten how to set the table and completely forgot to get drinks! Steve and I don't drink soda or tea much anymore, but Mr. Lee does, and so I ended up making tea (one K cup at a time) to fill up a gallon pitcher.  That was really tedious!  Anyways, we ate, talked, and exchanged gifts.  Butler was very glad to see Mr. Lee, and he fell asleep with his head on Mr. Lee's shoes.  It was cute. :)  Since he (Mr. Lee, not Butler) was going to be joining us at my mom's the next day, he went home fairly early, and I cleaned up because for the first time ever, after years of being invited, I was going Waffling!  Waffling is kind of like wassailing, but with more butter and bacon. Hee!  Actually,  what it really means is that I met Kenny and Lauren at a local Waffle House to usher in Christmas Day!  They were going to be going to church late that evening, luckily near my neighborhood, and so we got to meet and hang out for a while!  I literally hadn't seen either of them in years, so I was thrilled to get to spend some time with them!  Not as much time as I would have liked, but they did have a long drive back and it was late. I thought it would be rude to shackle them to the car.  I can't speak for them, but I had a great time! :)

Wednesday was a lovely day altogether.  As usual, we spent Christmas day at my mom's house.  We ate and opened gifts, but the best part was just sitting around, talking and laughing.  I love my family!  My nephews, Logan and Seth, took me outside to show me how to shoot!  I realized that although I'd been around hunters and guns all of my life, I've never shot a real gun.  BB guns and pellet guns, yes, but bullet guns, no.  It was fun, but I don't think I'd ever want to kill anything.  I'm a terrible shot, though.  I also need to remember not to swing the gun around while I'm talking.  I think I need a course in gun safety!  I did manage to hit the edge of the paper that the target was drawn on, though, so it wasn't a complete fail.  I also walked through the woods a ways with them while they shot at stuff.  I liked it.  We stayed over at mom's for a long time, and then we left (taking a great deal of food with us, of course) and went over to Mr. Lee's house to open stockings and watch a movie with him.  Of course, I promptly fell asleep.  I'm such a party animal.  We finally went home and ended the day watching the Doctor Who Christmas Special.

Friday we actually got to spend time with Josh and Anthony!  I was so glad to see them!  Josh, of course, lives in Denver and Anthony has been working so much that we hadn't even talked to him in a long time - much less seen him.  While Josh was in town, we all got together and had dinner and hung out for a while!  It was like old times! Well, almost. A lot of our friends have scattered to the winds and I wish they could have been there, too. I also wish Geoff, Josh's husband, could have been there, but he had to work.  Boo.  But, having those two guys there was still great!

It was a really very wonderful, few days and I'm blessed beyond what I deserve to have these people in my life!

*After I wrote that, I remembered I did the cookie baking on Sunday and started decorating them on Monday.  Not an important detail, but one I wanted to mention. I also didn't want to go back and rewrite all of that.  Anyone who thinks I should have can suck it.

2)  Unfortunately, the happy times couldn't last for long.  Sunday afternoon, after lunch, I started feeling icky.  I thought it was just whatever I had eaten not settling well, but I drank some soda water and took a pill and soldiered on.  I was fine until that night after dinner, when I realized that whatever was wrong with me was not what I had for lunch.  I'll spare you the details (you're welcome) but suffice it to say that at one point, I actually thought I might die.  I'm saying that with no hyperbole at all, I literally didn't think I could feel the way I felt and still live to see morning.  When the best I felt was when I was lying on the bathroom floor, shivering and praying, it wasn't a stretch.   I couldn't even get up enough strength to entertain the idea of going to the emergency room.  It was miserable.  By morning, I was feeling, not so much better exactly, but the idea that death was fast approaching had faded.  I was exhausted, sore, nauseous, and dehydrated.  All I could do was lie still, like a slug surrounded by salt.  Steve brought me some Gatorade, which I managed to sip about a tablespoon at a time without getting sick again.  Pretty much other than that, I slept.

A friend of mind had been similarly sick a few weeks before, and because he didn't take the time to slowly reintroduce regular food into his diet, he ended up in the hospital.  I didn't want that to happen to me, so for three days, all I ate was broth, rice, lentils, and bread. It was all I could stand to think about eating.  I was an accidental vegetarian for almost a week because thinking about eating meat made me sick to my stomach. In fact, even though I feel a thousand percent better now, I still can't stand the thought of eating chicken or pork, and the only meat I've been able to eat without feeling ill is ground beef.  I mean, I do like hamburgers and all, but it's a little ridiculous.  As with all other things, it will pass.  At least I hope so.

I wound up having to go into work for an hour that Tuesday because I forgot that everyone needed to get paid. Since I'm the only one of our office staff that can sign checks, I had Steve drive me to work (I was too weak to do it myself) and I took care of that. I know I was still feeling bad because I went without makeup. I don't do that. Ever.  Also, one of my coworkers said (and I paraphrase because I can't remember his exact words) "This was really bad. We need to do something about this.  I mean, what would have happened if you'd wound up in the hospital or something? How would we get paid?" He wasn't trying to be funny.  If I'd had the energy, I would have given him the finger.  :)

3) Also, it got cold.  SO FREAKING COLD, you guys!  Actually, it wasn't the cold that bothered me.  I mean, I am lucky that I live in a technologically advanced enough society that I both work and live in climate controlled environments.  No, it bothered me that the cold did stuff to my environments!  It froze the pipes at our church. It froze them so solidly that we had no bathrooms that we could use consistently.  You could only use each stall once, and then there was no water in the tanks.  I'd forgotten how uncomfortable it was not to have reliable bathrooms.  You can't drink anything for fear that the urge would arise, and if you did give in and use one of the swiftly dwindling supply of toilets, you couldn't wash your hands. I know Purell is supposed to kill 99% of germs on contact, but it doesn't sterilize your state of mind about not being able to wash your hands!

I came home from work to see water running down my driveway.  When I opened the garage, I saw a pipe in the wall squirting all over the place.  On the bright side, it wasn't ruptured, but ice had forced a connecter-thing off of a pipe, and it was just spraying merry hell all over the place.  Steve was on travel, and I have no idea how to do anything plumbing related, so I called Mr. Lee to come and fix it.  I didn't even know how to turn off the water, so I Googled that (Thank God for the Internet) and had to dig through wet leaves and tangled grass to open the meter thing in the front yard.  I hadn't been able to find the T-shaped thing that turns off the water, but my neighbor came running with hers and turned it off for me!  (Thank God for neighbors!)  Poor Mr. Lee had to haul his cookies across town and then to two different hardware stores to find the right parts to cap the pipe.  It had stripped when the ice forced it off, so we couldn't just reconnect it.  (Thank God for Mr. Lee!)  I felt so bad that he had to come over and fix it.  I should know more about how to fix things.  :(

Also, Butler was being weird.  I had to keep him indoors during the day, which he hates, so every night before bed I'd let him out one last time to do whatever business he needed to do. The dang dog would run off and then just sit there and stare at me.  He wouldn't come back inside unless I ran out and chased him in!  He's 12! He sleeps all the time and has arthritic hips, but I still had to chase him. I guess he was determined that he was only going to go inside on HIS terms.  He's lucky I didn't shave him as a punishment!

QUICKIE

It's very frustrating when I have this really funny story about something that happened to me at a gay bar in Denver, but when I try and tell people about it, they can't get past the fact that I was in a gay bar in Denver.

RANDOM ACTS OF BLOGGING

1) Hey!  It's been a while, hasn't it?  I have no excuse for not writing more other than pure, unadulterated laziness, and trust me, I'd be ashamed of it if I didn't enjoy being lazy.  Actually, part of the issue is that not a whole lot has been going on lately.  Well, not much of note.  I've got to change that soon, though, because I hate boredom about as much as I like lazy, i.e. A LOT.  Let's see what scraps of info I can come up to prattle about!  You guys are interested, right?  RIGHT?!

2) Oh, first thing...I finally joined all the cool kids and got a smart phone.  It has a touch screen and everything!  It wasn't my idea to get one. We can thank Steve for that. I think he got tired of me complaining about my crappy, old, flip phone.  No, I'm not just saying that it was crappy because it wasn't the newest piece of technology, it was a genuinely a terrible phone.  I couldn't hear when people called, it stayed dead almost more than it stayed charged, and no matter how much I explained to people that it was a pay-as-you-go phone, I kept getting put on mass text lists where every time someone would reply to the original texter (is that even a word? Spell check says no.) I'd get charged 20 cents. Bleh.  I was actually very hesitant about getting a smart phone, because of my well documented hatred of the rudeness that seems to come along with them.  I was afraid I'd end up being one of those people who spends every minute I'm not physically interacting with another person, with my face buried in the screen. So far I'm not doing that, thank goodness.  I actually really like being able to take pictures and look things up on the fly, so I'm enjoying it a lot.  See, I can do stuff like this:

 I took that just now!  Being excited about that isn't dorky, is it?

When I first got it, I was showing everyone, mainly because they all made fun of my old phone.  I'm sure I was like a kid with a new toy, so I apologize to everyone I made look at it!  I wasn't showing off, I promise. I just wanted you to know I didn't have a drug-dealer's phone anymore!

3) Thanksgiving was wonderful, as usual.  We went to Waleska to visit the family, and had a wonderful time.  We ate a lot of very good food and had a lot of fun!  We had the traditional Thanksgiving meal with everyone on Thursday, and on Friday we celebrated early Christmas at Kristin and Greg's house with awesome Italian food and presents!

I also got locked in the bathroom. Again. Shut up!  I don't know what I did to the door, but I couldn't get the darned thing open.  That wouldn't be a big deal, but except for Uncle Garry, who was asleep in the den, and Aunt Brenda, who was asleep in the back bedroom, everyone else had gone Black Friday shopping. In the bathroom, no one can hear you scream! I knocked and knocked, but no one came to let me out. I rattled the doorknob, trying desperately to get the dumb thing to work, all to no avail.  I decided to wait it out and dry my hair, but I was starting to panic about being trapped, so that didn't last long. Luckily, though, I remembered after all of that, that they'd put a phone in the bathroom! Of course, since it was a house phone, I couldn't call and wake anyone up, so I had to do the humiliating thing and call Steve.  Normally, in a situation like this (and it's kind of sad that I have a contingency plan for such situations) I would have just extricated myself by any means and only told Steve after it was over.  However, since I love these people and didn't want to punch a hole in their bathroom door, I had to suck it up and call Steve so that he could, in turn, call the house and wake someone up so they could let me out.

The conversation began thus:
Steve: Hello.
Me: Steve, I'm locked in the bathroom again.
Steve: *Pausing for what I can only assume was internal laughter*
Me: Please call Aunt Brenda and tell her that I'm in here so that she can let me out!
Steve: But...have you tried the doorkn...
Me: OF COURSE I TRIED THE DOORKNOB YOU GIANT DORKFISH! CALL AUNT BRENDA!

Right about then I heard someone walk by the door and I started knocking on it again and was released from the bathroom.  It actually turned out that Aunt Brenda had thought she'd heard someone knocking earlier and came to the door, but when she heard the hair dryer going, she went back to her bedroom. It was very sitcom-like.  Happily, in the end, I was freed and now Steve has an embarrassing story to tell everyone. It's all very win-win.

4) This year, unfortunately, I have to announce that Steve and I will not be attending the work party that we have attended for the past two years.  You know the one.  It's the family with the gorgeous house where I lose all of my social skills and wind up hugging the waiters and throwing food around.  I know that the unfortunate antics that I get up to, whilst trying very hard to be a normal party guest, are a source of amusement for so many of you, but we actually weren't invited this year.  Steve isn't sure if that's because there isn't going to be a party, or because they got tired of having to search the Christmas tree for the shrimp that somehow end up among its branches after I've been there.  Either way, I'll just have to be awkward someplace else.

5) Football.  I'm so very tired of football.  I never thought I could reach absolute football saturation, but I have.  I mean, I'm tickled that one of our state teams will be going to the BCS championship (because of course they are...hellooooooooo) but every time I'm anywhere these days, someone is talking about football!
I'm starting to feel like Scarlett O'Hara:  "Football, football, football.  I'm so sick of hearing the word football!  It's ruined the fun at every party this season.  I get so bored I could scream! Great God Almighty, if I hear the word football one more time, I'm going into the house and slamming the door!"

I don't actually blame any of the fans for talking about the season, of course, but I've never realized how many people have their whole selves wrapped in the team they root for! At least two men from our church actually seemed to need counseling after Alabama lost the Iron Bowl!  I haven't been anywhere in the past couple of weeks where someone doesn't start talking about it. Oh, and Facebook? Fugettaboutit. It's like sitting down to eat and instead of getting what you ordered, you always get a bowl of mashed potatoes. I like mashed potatoes, but if I get too much too often, I'm going to start gagging on them.  I'll admit, I just don't get it, but I don't blame people who do.

I suppose I could just pull out my phone and ignore everyone when this happens, though, right? : )

IT'S KIND OF FUNNY...

I think it's hilarious that so many people I know think that it's funny and comment worthy when I wear one of my superhero shirts, or have something on me that shows that I'm a fan of some sci-fi, comic or whatever geeky thing I'm enjoying at the moment.

However, if I were wearing a football jersey, had my face painted and sat screaming at a group of college kids for several hours every week, no one would bat an eye.

This world is weird.

We're all geeks about something. Embrace it!

WHO YOU GONNA CALL?

OK, just in case you think I'm about to talk about ghosts,  I gotta stop you right there.  Sorry, this is about something much creepier and much more disturbing than disembodied souls.

My house is currently crawling (quite literally in spots) with lady bugs.

EFFING LADY BUGS, Y'ALL!

What the heck is going on?

See, when I think about lady bugs, I imagine cute, happy little bugs like this:

That happy little critter might come into your house, fly around a bit and then ask politely to go outside again.  Of course you'd oblige and let the poor thing out. 

No, what I came home to today was some kind of disgusting, creeping, living wallpaper pattern made of bugs. There were dead ones littering the floor around the doorway. My curtains were infested with them, and they were all over the wall and ceiling around my front windows.  I imagine that one of these vermin found a way to get in and invited all of her friends over for a house party.

Artist's Representation, of course.

Ladybugs are one of the less terrifying bugs, but there were so many of them!  Normally,  I'd run screaming from the house, throwing a hastily contrived Molotov cocktail through the window as I went.  However, I actually surprised myself this time.  I was hungry, tired, and honestly, I didn't know what to do about the sheer amount of bugs in my house.  They also seemed to be sitting very still, only on the window side of the room, with the exception of one or two brave souls that would fly around and bump their heads on the ceiling for a while until they went back and settled on the curtains again.  So I did a very Un-Kelly thing and just sat down to eat my dinner instead of freaking out.  I mean, I kept my eyes on them, just to make sure one of them didn't do a cannonball into my root beer or anything, but they were being cool and I was being cool.

After I finished my dinner, I remembered there was a book I wanted to get into, so I got it out and started reading, actually forgetting for a while that my living room was currently playing party central to a swarm of insects.  In fact, I got so wrapped up in the book that I didn't notice when the light began to fade outside, which confused the bugs and sent them all sailing through the air over to the lamp across the room. I guess I must have seen something out of the corner of my eye, because when I looked up, they were just -shudder- flying everywhere.  

 

In the immortal words of Will Smith in the blockbuster movie Independence Day: Aw, hell naw.

I had to do something!  I knew I couldn't just let them run loose in the house, because I didn't want one of them getting into the bedroom and hiding out until the lights go off, possibly giving it an opportunity to crawl into my ear and have babies.  Nope!  I also didn't want to just spray bug poison all over the living room and furniture, because Butler isn't very smart and he licks the floor for no reason and I was afraid he'd die.  So I did the only thing I could think of.  I got the long barreled, Dyson handheld vacuum cleaner, also known in our house as the Bug Sucker.

When you absolutly, positively have to suck up every last

 mother f***** in the room, accept no substitutes.

We didn't actually intend to use this thing as a bug sucker when we bought it, but the long reach and superior suction of this fine machine, allows us to get rid of terrifying bugs that we can't otherwise get near without screaming like little girls (I'm looking at you too, Steve.) 

I apologized to Butler in advance, because he hates any kind of vacuum, and I went into the dining room closet and pulled it off of the charger.  

I'm not going to lie: for a moment, standing there holding the Dyson, I felt a little bad ass.  I caressed the trigger, running my other hand lightly over the barrel, and giving those unwelcome little buggers the evil eye.  At that moment, I was Sarah Conner, dangit, and I was about to do some terminating!

 

That feeling didn't last very long though, because as soon as I walked back into the living room, they saw me and started to fly.  In return, I started running and screaming.  It was very undignified.  Butler couldn't figure out what to do.  He was torn between being terrified of the vacuum, wanting to stay there with me, and knowing that if he left the living room, he'd be forced to walk on the slippery kitchen floor, which he hates almost as much as the vacuum.  So he did the only thing he could.  He hid in his kennel and watched as I ran back and forth through the room, screaming, and trying to suck flying bugs out of the air.  

It was then that I realized that I wasn't Sarah Conner, and this wasn't The Terminator.  No, this was Ghostbusters.  I was Peter Venkman, and I was trying to shoot a flying, green blob out of the ceiling of a fancy, New York ballroom with very little luck.

I looked into the trap, Ray.

I managed to suck up a lot of them, still screaming, still running around and scaring the hell out of the dog.  I had to go outside and dump the canister into the grass, knowing that I was only giving the live ones a chance to get back into the house to torture me, but I thought I'd gotten most of them.  Unfortunately, once I got back inside, I saw that more had crawled out of the curtains to take their place.  Now I have no idea what to do, and about a billion insects are making a home in the living room.

Anyone mind if Butler and I come and spend the night?

Ick.

A DAY OF FAIL

Yesterday was one of those days where I seemed to just be half a beat out of step with everything I tried to do!  Nothing that happened was terrible, or even remotely serious, just frustratingly annoying because I couldn't seem to get my act together at all.

It was one of those days where I had a lot of little projects planned.  You know, just a series of hurdles that I had to jump over to get ready for something else, and I just...I don't know, managed to screw up one tiny thing or another on each project.

A lot of time was spent baking for our church's fall festival.  Things started out, OK, but  I managed to under cook the first thing I baked (thankfully fixed), I had to actually leave the house and buy special boxes for the second thing (which I wasn't anticipating, and putting the darn boxes together took longer than baking and assembling the cakes and I cut up my fingers on the edges of them AND which still managed not to contain them correctly.) Those cakes turned out lumpy and weird, and I tore the heck out of them when I was trimming them.  I ran out of icing, but didn't want to go back out and buy more, so I thinly stretched what I had and it looked weird.  I thought the third and fourth cakes I made were going to be perfect, and the cake parts were fine, but I was making buttercream icing for them that I was going to tint red. Apparently, tinting a whole mixer of icing red is a darn near impossible feat if you still want to be able to eat it.  I never got it red, only pink, even after adding a ton of red coloring, and when I tasted it, I remembered that red food coloring is horribly bitter if you put too much in. More like bittercream icing, am I right? Ha!  I don't like pink, so I thought I'd just add some blue and make lavender icing, but it just turned out a weird puce color.  It was also overmixed and stiff, so I could barely pipe it on the cake.  The last cake I made, I just figured that I'd forgo the icing and bake some beautiful silver sugar sprinkles on top of it.  When I pulled it from the oven, it looked perfect.  I sat it aside and covered it with foil.  I guess I should have let it cool all the way off first, because when I went back to look at the cake, the silver (actually blue I found out) coloring in the sprinkles had melted into the cake and tuned it green in spots, and I swear it looked like moldy bread.  There was no way I could take that to church, so it just stayed home.  Oy.

I also made some chili for a chili cook off and things were fine at first.  I added some harina masa to thicken it up, but it sucked up a lot of the flavor.  So I grabbed what I thought was chili powder and poured it in.  I stirred it in, and realized it smelled weird, but I didn't think anything of it.  After a while I went back in and realized I needed more chili powder, and I grabbed the same container, only to realize it wasn't chili powder, it was cloves.  Yick.  Luckily I hadn't put in too much, but you could smell it.  So, chili fail.

I also managed to have trouble communicating with everyone. With every email and phone call I made, I managed to offend, irritate, and say the absolute wrong thing to everyone.  So, if you were one of the people I called or emailed, I'm sorry. I was just having a weird day.

None of the stuff I did was bad in and of itself, but by the end of the day, the cumulative effect just made me feel so dumb and inept, I figured anyone could be mean to me at that point, and I couldn't feel worse about myself.  I was just glad when the day was over. 

I did manage to get into bed without hurting myself, so in the end, the day wasn't a complete loss! Silver lining!

RANDOM ACTS OF BLOGGING

1) You know, I had a whole rant that talked about how cynical and unsympathetic I've become since working at the church, but I deleted it.  It made me sound petty and small, and I hate that I sometimes feel that way.  People come to this church all the time asking for money and things, and a great number of those people are scamming us.  It bothers me that I haven't learned to discern between those with an actual need and those who just want someone else to pay their way in the world.  I don't want to lose my charitable heart, but every time I realize we give help to people who are just too lazy or stubborn to go out and help themselves, that part of me dies a little more.  I think I get so angry about it because I know that there is always a chance that one day I could be in the same situation as them, and I'd like to believe that I'd be less likely to scam a church for money, but who knows?  I might be just as likely to lie to a good-hearted pastor as some of the people who've come here, and that scares me.  I don't want karmic retribution to put me in that place to teach me first hand why these people do what they do, I just want to understand so I'm not fooled by it. Sometimes the world and the people in it can be awful.

2) Steve and I went camping a couple of weeks ago, but I don't think I'm going to do it anymore.  It wasn't all bad!  The cooking out and being outside was nice, and sitting around a fire and roasting marshmallows was actually fun.  I don't even think sleeping in the tent would have been so bad, had we had an air mattress or something, but it was the whole feeling dirty that sticky and smoky that I didn't like.  Oh, and also having to walk to a completely different place to go to the bathroom (although, I'm very grateful we had actual indoor plumbing nearby) was not fun.  I suppose that makes me sound like a pansy, and if so, I guess I'm a pansy!  I generally don't mind being dirty, if I can get clean again in a reasonable amount of time, but there is something about the kind of gross you feel after sleeping in a tent that just icks me out almost more than I can stand.  We had friends who were camping and asked us to join them the week after we went, but only Steve stayed to sleep that night.  I went home and took a shower!  Then this past week we went back to the campground to have dinner with those same friends (they are RV campers who can deal with prolonged camping) and that was lots of fun, mainly because we didn't have to sleep there.  Even though we were only there for a couple of hours, my hair STILL smells like wood smoke.  I can't get it out. Every time my hair gets wet, it smells like my head is on fire! Anyone know a remedy for smoky hair? I'd make a terrible outdoorsman, I think.  I'm too much of a weenie.

3) I'm so glad the weather is getting cooler!  I have so many scarves and boots and I like being able to wear them without breaking a sweat.  Of course, I think I actually started wearing them a bit prematurely, but who cares?  I looked cute!

4) Last week I was invited to a baby's first birthday party, and I went!  (Take that, people who think I hate children!)  The party was for a little girl from my church, and I really like her family.  Her parents are younger than me, but we share a lot of the same geekyness, so when they told me it was a super hero themed party being held at the local comic book store, I was all for that.  The Facebook invitation said it was a dress up as a super hero kind of party, and that everyone was welcome to join in on that.  Believe it or not, I don't actually own a super hero costume, so I figured that I would just wear one of my appropriate t-shirts or something.

A couple of days before the party I got a message asking if I'd be willing to wear the mom's full-on Wonder Woman costume.  Bless her heart for thinking I could fit into her clothes (I couldn't) so I had to say no. Of course, I don't even like wearing a bathing suit in public, and wearing that costume to the comic store would have been the equivalent of me wearing a bathing suit to a grocery store.  However, I felt bad because I thought that maybe they wanted the adults who came to dress up to add to the party.  You know, in the same way some people want clowns (shudder) they might want super heroes.  So I devised a much more modest, yet still clearly identifiable, Wonder Woman outfit.  I had star spangled pants, a red shirt with the logo, red shoes, a headband with a star, big poofy hair and bright red lipstick.  I was so adorable!

When I showed up to the party, I was the only adult wearing anything resembling a costume. Seriously, the only one.  Granted, my version of the outfit wasn't as flashy or skimpy as it would have been if I was wearing the real costume, but I still stood out a little bit!  Oh well, I really didn't mind.  The birthday girl's older sisters knew who I was supposed to be and they seemed to like it, so it was worth it!  I had fun being Wonder Woman for the evening, and if I ever think I look good enough in the actual costume, I'll even wear that! So call me for all of your super hero needs!  I do parties! :)

After the party, I stopped to get get something to eat. I ended up having to go inside, and when the guy behind the counter realized what I was wearing, he was laughing so much he almost couldn't help me.  Oh, well!

OY

Yesterday I stopped at Fresh Market after work so that I could pick up a few things.  I mainly needed some spinach, but I also got a couple of apples, some sandwich stuff, and some coffee.  Up until right before I got into the check-out lane, there was nothing really unhealthy in my basket. 

Since my weight loss has gone from slow and steady to flat out nonexistent*,  I usually look at the nutritional info of food I buy and I try not to get anything that isn't completely reasonable.  I say "usually" because I'm human and sometimes sister needs some potato chips or something OK?!  I'm not made of STONE!

So, I grabbed a bag of chips as well as a bag of the big, in-house made croutons to see what they tasted like. They only had big bags of them, so it was my only option.  I also got Steve some, well, I don't know what it was, but it was one of those mixed up snack things I knew he'd like from the bulk bin area. 

I get in line, totally not paying attention to anyone or anything around me - like I do - when the woman at the register right ahead of me says my name.  I looked up and it was my nutritionist!  You remember, the one who gets so excited when you're losing weight and doing well, and who looks like a punched kitten when you don't?  I say hello, and we do that whole awkward small talk thing that people who only kinda know each other do when they see each other out in the wild. You know what I'm talking about.  Right as she's getting her stuff to leave, she glances at the basket in my hand.  She doesn't say anything, of course, but I see her looking.

I swear to you, time slowed down.  It was like one of those slow-motion parts of a movie right before a bomb goes off, or bullets fly, or something equally terrible happens. 

I also glanced down at my basket and realized that all of the decent, healthy food I'd originally come in to buy was completely obscured by potato chips, a huge bag of croutons, and a vat of snack mix.  For all I know, she didn't really pay attention to what I was holding, but she IS a nutritionist and food is her jam, so I'm pretty sure she did.  When I looked back up, she was walking away, and I came within an ace of running after her and screaming "WAIT! THERE'S SPINACH IN HERE! APPLES! HEALTHY STUFF, I SWEAR!!!!!!"  Alas, she was gone, and I was left holding what looked like a 4:20 Munchy Run. Oy. I expect to hear about this at our next meeting.

So the moral of this story is: Now I have to go clear across town if I want potato chips, and Steve can buy his own damn snack mix.

*Seriously, I need to be in another wedding, or get invited to the Oscars, or something where I'm in danger of having my picture made.  Apparently, the only working motivation I have is the fear of being fat in front of large groups of people. It's quite frustrating.

RAD

As a lot of you already know, I spent this past week attending a self defense class.  I think I told everyone I know that I was going to do it, mainly because I was nervous and didn't know what to expect out of it, but no one really knew what to tell me.

One of the members of Steve's band is a detective with the county police department, and she deals with crimes against children and sexual assault survivors, so when the county allowed them to hold a class, she told Steve that I should come.  I agreed, but as I said, I was nervous about doing it.  I have never been to anything like that before, and I am not a very strong person, physically.  I didn't think I'd be able to learn anything I could actually do. I might have even chickend out of going, if not for the fact that I work at a place where I'm sometimes scared to walk outside by myself.  I figured that whatever I could learn might be helpful.

The class was called RAD (Rape Aggression Defense) and the main purpose of the training (obviously) is to give you the skills you need to protect yourself in case of attack by disabling your attacker enough to get away.  The class was only 4 days long, but it was intense, and I'd come home at the end of the day completely exhausted.  There were 42 women attending the class, no men allowed except for the male instructors, and some of the most badass women cops and civil servants I've ever met.  What we learned was fairly easy to do, although the trick will be to remember to do it if/when you are ever in a situation that calls for it.

One thing I wasn't expecting was that I'd be in a class with so many people who'd been victims of sexual assault and physical violence.  I suppose it's almost a given that you are around people like that every day, no matter where you go, but people don't really tell you those things unless they know you very well.  To hear some of the stories of these women would just break your heart, and to watch them learning to fight back was amazing.  I've been fortunate enough so far not to have been a victim of either one of these crimes, but if I had, I don't know if I would have been brave enough to face it head on like these women did.

Friday night was the night we did our...I'm not sure what to call it, really.  Our practical exam, maybe?  It was the night we had to use what we've learned in the class against the male instructors (who were in these terrifying padded suits that made them all look like Judge Dredd.)  Not everyone who took the class came back for this part.  But those of us who went were all padded too, in helmets, elbow and knee pads, and padded gloves. We were supposed to do three different scenarios: The first was fairly tame, where we just had to break out of an unexpected arm grab.  The second was a bit scarier.  We were to be approached from behind, heckled, and then grabbed.  I'm not sure what I did, but I managed to knock the guy down and I landed on top of him.  (I'm a significant amount of woman to fall on someone, so I hope he's ok.)  I kind of just went into Spider Monkey Mode, where I managed to get out of his grasp, and because I was in the moment, I landed a hammer fist to his face cage that may or may not have been necessary.  He had to be taken off to the side and checked.  I felt bad about that.

Several women had trouble with this one, because it was too familiar to them from when they were assaulted.  Some cried until they could be calmed down, and one lady just went mental.  She ran after the instructor, beating him and screaming, and had to be pinned down.  That was the one that really drove it home to me that some of these women were really struggling with the whole thing.  I can't imagine having to be in these scenarios if they'd happened to me in real life.

Because so many of the women in the class were struggling, they weren't going to make us to the third scenario unless we were certain we could handle it.  I almost didn't do it.  Everything we'd done had caused an adrenaline rush, and by the time we had come back from our break to do the last thing, I was shaking.  However, I'd promised myself that if I was going to do this class, I was going to do it all no matter what.  I was one of 8 women who did the last part.  They turned off the lights, and we had to close our eyes.  They walked us around the room so that we'd be disoriented and not know where we were.  All three Judge Dredd guys came at you and heckled you, walking around you, bumping into you, and then one of them would grab you.  I sincerely only remember bits and pieces of what happened when I actually got grabbed, but it didn't take long for me to get lose.  I know I punched and kicked, but everything else is a fuzzy blur.  I'd forgotten to open my eyes until right before I punched the last time.  I kind of forgot what I was doing and ran after the instructor to hit him again before I remembered to run to the "Safe Zone." People were cheering for me, and that was awesome, but I wish I could remember what I did.  All I know is that by the time I settled down, I felt like I might either cry or throw up.  Luckily, I did neither.

I honestly don't think I expected to feel as weird about the whole thing as I did once it was over.  I tried to tell Steve, but I couldn't explain it well enough to make it make sense.  I'm very, very grateful to have been taught everything I learned, and I'm even more glad that I was able to use what I learned to complete the scenarios, but I think it scared me a lot, too.  It isn't just that I'm more aware that women are frequently attacked and hurt, much more often than I knew AND a lot of the times it's by people they trust, although that is terrifying enough in and of itself.  I think it also scared me that I am capable of hurting another person, and that I will do it if I have to.  I'm not physically violent, really, but when put in that position, even in the fake situations we were in last night, I just blanked out and came back to myself beating the crap out of a person.  It took me a long time after I got home to calm down from it all.  Even after I got up this morning, I was still shaky.

I'm so very, very glad I took the class, and I recommend that any woman take it if they get the chance. The RAD classes are poorly funded and have been cut back to only 2 a year, but I can't imagine many other city funded things that could do as much good as the class I was in.  Seriously, do it.

*****Earlier in the week, we had to pair off with someone to practice the moves they were teaching us.  My partner was this teeny-tiny grandmother who might have weighed 100 pounds and she was two inches shorter than me.  You've never lived until you have had to get someone's maw-maw in a headlock, and in return, have that maw-maw kick your ass.  :)

A QUICKIE

A couple of weeks ago, I kind of got conned into going to a youth Lock-In with the kids from my church.  I say conned, because I was under the impression that he would have to cancel the whole thing if he couldn't get an adult woman there as a chaperone, and I didn't want him to have to do that.  There was another adult woman there, but apparently she wasn't old enough...being almost 30 AND a RN wasn't sufficient, I guess.  *Sigh*

At any rate, Steve had already agreed to chaperone and I was there too, along with three other adults and 23 teenagers.  Yikes.

We spent the night at a local gymnastics facility, where they have trampolines, this weird pit filled with foam blocks that you can jump into, balance beams and uneven bars.  I think it's a place where cheerleading squads train or something.  I don't know, I just know we treated it like a big playground.

We were there all night, and being a chaperone meant we didn't get to sleep, so we jumped on the trampolines and used (or tried to, because let's be honest, I am not cut out to be athletic in any way) the other equipment.  It was fine!  I didn't hurt myself, turn my ankles or anything.  Considering I'd been moving around a lot, that was a miracle.  By the time the whole thing was over, I'd been awake for about 25 hours and I was sooooooooooo tired.

We took the kids back to the church and stayed until they were all picked up, and while I was talking to my coworker, I went to lean back on his door frame.  At least I thought I was near his door frame.  Apparently, in my very tired state, I wasn't standing where I thought I was, and I fell.  I tried to catch myself, but my shoes got locked together and I fell, flat over, without the benefit of slowing myself down at all.  Honestly, I think if I'd seen myself, I would have thought it was hilarious, but hitting what I'm fairly certain was a concrete floor with only industrial carpeting on it as padding, wasn't very funny at all.  I managed to get up (the way you do when you've hurt yourself and don't want anyone to know) and played it off until I got into the truck to go home, but I genuinely thought I'd broken my wrist or dislocated by shoulder, or something!  Oh, it hurt so bad!  I guess the only saving grace was that my head didn't hit the floor! Oy.  Luckily, my skeleton is made of wrought iron or something, because I was OK.  Well, relatively OK, because I still sometimes hurt from where I fell, but I know nothing is broken!

So that's the story of how I spent an evening jumping around and hanging from things without getting a scratch, but almost killing myself at the office while trying to lean against a door frame. Ta-da!

RANDOM ACTS OF BLOGGING

1) Out of all the people I work with, I'd have to say that the person I talk to the most often is the youth minister.  His office door is right next to where I sit, so we're in each other's line of sight almost constantly.  This means we talk to each other quite a bit, because...we're right there.

I realized a while back that he's trying to figure me out, because he's always asking me questions just out of the blue.  They aren't weird questions or anything, but they usually are completely random and unprovoked.  I'm OK with this, because I love talking about myself, as you all know. Hee!  No, really, I don't mind answering questions, I just sometimes find the questions that he asks me to be a bit odd.

Usually it's stuff like: What is your favorite book (restaurant, music, and etc.) or sometimes it'll be something like: What is the most you'd spend to go to a concert, and who would you go see?  He'll also sometimes ask if I like to do things, like play sports or skate or swim.  I know part of it is that he's trying to figure out what he can con me into chaperoning for the youth group - because I've told him I'm not interested and he finds that unacceptable!  Other times, I have no idea, because he just goes back to what he's doing, like he's got interrogative Tourettes. 

Anyway, the reason for me telling you all of that, is that no one has asked me about any of that stuff in such a long time that I haven't really been thinking about what I like and what I don't, and usually the answer to the "Do you like to..." questions have ended up with me saying no, I don't.  I mean, an unusual amount of these things he's asked me about have ended with me saying that, no, I don't like to do those things. An alarming amount of things he's asked me about, I just don't like.  I can also rarely ever think of my favorite...whatever.  It's very weird and now I'm feeling incredibly self conscious about it.  I mean, I don't care what he thinks, but it's weird to me that there are so many things I'm not interested in.  I'm not particularly narrow minded, nor do I consider myself a stale misery biscuit, but I'm beginning to wonder if I am just world weary at the ripe old age of 35!  I hope not!  I promise, I do like things!  I can't think of any of them right now, but I promise!

2)  I'm sure most of you know that I started another blog a while back.  It's called "We Review All the Things" and it was intended to be collaborative with some friends, but I didn't realize at the time that those people were very, very busy and wouldn't be able to do it with me.  It is pretty much just something I do occasionally and so there aren't that many reviews on there, and they are mostly all for food!  See, I like food! 

Well, I was looking at the stats for both of my blogs, and according to the blogger analytic (is that the right word?) chart, the newer blog of food reviews, which I started in 2011, now is within 10 views of this blog, which I started in late 2003!  I can't decide if I'm just terrible at telling stories about my life, or fantastic at reviewing food! 

3) I fell off my bike the other day and it was very embarrassing!

Steve and I have been biking with Steve's band director, Dave, for a few weeks now.  I hadn't actually been on my bike in years before we started doing this, because it's a pain in the neck to haul it to one of the riding paths, and I'd gotten a little out of practice.  Granted, I didn't forget how to ride, but getting the feel of my bike again has been a challenge.  I had forgotten that you can't just clamp on the brakes!  We were on a new trail, and there was a hairpin turn I wasn't expecting.  I tried to simultaneously break and turn, by bike locked up and flipped sideways!

It scared me more than anything.  I've been worried about wrecking since we started riding, and it just happened so fast!  Granted, it could have been worse.  I could have been hurt badly.  However, I managed to fall smack on my right buttock, and I barely even felt it! (No jokes please.)  I also managed to fall right in front of this guy and his kids.  He jumped off his bike to help me, but the only thing injured was my pride.  Well, my leg did hurt after a couple of days, but not as badly as I thought it might! 

I think I may have the wrong type of bike for me.  Steve bought it for me when we first got married, and for what I use it for it works well enough. It's just heavy and a little bulky, and I think it might be more of a mountain bike than one better suited for riding paths.  Of course, I wouldn't dare invest in an expensive, new bike unless I get way more serious about riding, and that hasn't happened yet!  However, I do look adorable in a bike helmet, so I might have to ride more just to show that off! :)

Nah, I'm kidding, I look like something horrible from Mario Kart is perched on my head.

RANDOM ACTS OF BLOGGING

1) I'm currently down in the basement of the church editing last Sunday's sermon video.  That is where our editing room is, but I actually convinced a lady here that they'd moved my office downstairs because I was too weird for them upstairs! Heehee.  Of course, now I'm concerned as to why she believed me.  Hmmmm.
I think I may have inadvertently gotten into something I was allergic to, or maybe I'm catching a cold, because my whole head feels like it's full of bees, and my nose is running.  I feel like complete yuck, so as soon as I'm done down here, I'm heading home instead of staying for choir practice.   It's actually kind of funny if I am sick, because yesterday I went to the doctor for a follow-up visit after my physical and I was completely fine.  It would be a great waste of a doctor visit to get sick the day after! (EDIT: Turned out I had forgotten to take my allergy medicine!  Oops.)

2) Speaking of my doctor appointment, the angry nurse was there yesterday.  She makes me incredibly uncomfortable.  I completely respect what nurses do, honestly, and I know the job is hard.  I have several friends who are nurses, and I know it takes a very special kind of person to do that job, but this lady really makes me feel like I'm not welcome there.  Maybe it's not just me she does it to, but it always feels directed at me while I'm there, so either she doesn't like me personally, or she really hates her job and treats every patient like this.  I even caught her looking at me weird when I walked out of the office (she didn't know I was going to turn around) so I know I'm not just imagining it.  I'm not going to say anything about it to the doctor, because I don't know this woman's life, and maybe she's just a surly person, but a fantastic nurse.  Her bedside manner sucks, though.

3)   Butler is finally getting around a little better than he was!  He'd been having some trouble getting around because he has arthritis in his back hips.  It was actually kind of pitiful to see him struggle to get up and then have to walk around all stiff.  We'd been hesitant to have the vet put him on what she described to us as pain killers, which we thought meant some kind of opiate, because we didn't want him to be drugged up all the time.  The last time he was at the vet, though, they told us that the medicine they wanted to put him on was an anti-inflammatory medicine, so we agreed.  Now he seems to feel a lot better and we are glad!  I even saw him run yesterday, which I haven't seen him do in a long time.  I can't imagine how bad we must have seemed to the vet when we wouldn't agree to have him put on meds to begin with, but we had no idea what kind she was talking about!

4) I wish our church was in a better neighborhood.  I know I shouldn't complain, and normally it wouldn't bother me, but now that I work here, I'm afraid a lot.  It isn't really terrible or anything, and there are definitely worse places in our town, but we've had some crazy stuff happen around here.  Plus, we have people who come by asking for money, and you can tell that some of them are tweaking (or at least high) which scares me.  I'm not worried when I'm inside, because we have a security system in place, but when I have to go outside by myself it's a little scary.  Maybe I'm just a giant weenie.  I just wish it were a safer neighborhood.

5)  I've been writing this blog entry for three days now, and every time I open up this site, I forget what I came here to write!  That isn't a joke, I honestly have things I want to say, but can't remember them until well after I log out of this thing!!!!  It's as bad as when I can't think of a word I want to say, and then I have to make hand motions and sound effects until someone guesses the word, only I can't do that online!  What is happening to my brain?!  I'll just have to start writing myself blog notes.  I give up for now.  Here's a nice picture of some dogs: