HOW LONG CAN IT LAST?

I'm seriously going to have to stop trying weird things from farmer's markets.

A couple of weekends ago, Steve and I went to our favorite farmer's market. We usually go to this particular one because the Mennonite Lady (I don't know her name) who keeps a booth there has the best bread I've ever stuck in my face. We also sometimes buy squash, or peaches, or coffee, or meat from the Meat Lady (I also don't know her name) but unless something particular catches our eye, we tend to stick with those things. However, on this particular day, something new did catch our eye.

There was a booth that had some small packets and bottles that we had never seen before, so we walked up and the nice fellow behind the table started telling us about their products. Apparently there is a hemp farm a couple of counties west of us, and the stuff they were selling were products that were infused with CBD and Delta 8. I had heard of CBD before, and had even tried some to help control my back pain for a while, but didn't see any effects whatsoever. As for what Delta 8 was, I had no clue. The guy was explaining that it's completely legal and was not THC (I do know what that is) but it had some similar properties. He even opened one of the little bags and gave both of us a little gummy square to try. I figured, why not? Certainly if he can give us a sample at a farmer's market, it couldn't be all bad. My main takeaway was that it's supposed to help you relax, and boy did I need to relax.

The last few weeks have been a patchwork of different kinds of suck and sleeping/relaxing has been difficult, so we bought some of the gummy squares to keep until we needed them and went on our way. I figured maybe it would keep me from needing to take my anxiety pills as often. The sample one he gave us didn't do anything throughout the day other than make me slightly sleepy, really, so I figured that if nothing else they might help me go to sleep if I had trouble doing so.

Skip forward a day. I'd spent the afternoon with my family in Athens for Mother's Day, and had just gotten home. Steve (who'd been with his dad) had gotten home just after I did and we decided to take our traditional Sunday afternoon nap. I had the bright idea to see if the gummies would help us sleep better, so we each took one (and they were twice the dosage of the sample we'd had the day before, but still not strong.) We didn't end up sleeping right away. We decided to watch a couple of episodes of Fringe to unwind from the day before we napped. There was no effect from the gummies at all. I figured that whatever Delta 8 is, it wasn't going to bother us, so I didn't think about them again until I stood up when the two episodes were over.

I don't know if it was because I hadn't been moving around, or if the food I'd had for lunch slowed down the effect of whatever it was supposed to do, but I was so incredibly woozy that I decided I needed to go lie down immediately. I felt drunk, but not drunk. It's hard to explain. You know how if you've been swimming for a long time and you get out of the pool, you sometimes still feel a bit like you're floating? I felt like that. It wasn't unpleasant, but it wasn't normal. I figured that was the relaxing part finally kicking in. Steve felt the same. It was like it was on a timer. We lay down and talked for a minute or two and Steve fell asleep. I did not. I did the opposite of falling asleep.

I don't know if it reacted with some of my medications, or if it hit my bloodstream too fast, or if I metabolize things differently now that I only have 20% of my original stomach, but I was no longer relaxed. In fact, I'm fairly certain that if I hadn't been lying down, I might have crawled right up onto the ceiling like Spider Man. It was one of the worst sensations I'd ever felt in my life. Every single nerve ending in my body felt like it grew horns made of electricity. I literally couldn't relax my muscles. It was like being hooked up to a TENS machine on the highest setting. I was in a state of complete sensory overload and it scared the crap out of me. I tried to wake Steve up, but he couldn't wake up enough to help me. The stuff put him out like a light. He said "I can't help you, I'm sleeping." and that was the last thing he said. I couldn't calm down. It was physically like the worst anxiety attack I'd ever had in my life, but my mind was at least not as muddled. I was afraid I was allergic to it or something like that, but there wasn't anything I could do about it. Ripples of what felt like electricity went through my body and it wouldn't stop. I tried to get up and go into another room so I wouldn't focus solely on the horrible feeling I had, but it was too much input to my brain. Walking down the hall felt like experiencing an earthquake. My teeth chattered and any movement of my head or hands felt too...much. I finally ran back and sat on the bed to try and calm down. It didn't work. If I had sneezed while feeling like that, I might have literally exploded. The only thing I could think to do was put on a pair of headphones and watch a video online. I didn't know if it would help, but I had to focus on something or I thought I'd fly to pieces. So for the next couple of hours, I made myself watch YouTube videos until the horrible tingly feeling backed off a bit. It was awful. The sounds were too loud and the lights were too bright, but the only way I could calm down was to focus on the videos. I finally yanked off the headset and tried to go to sleep. I couldn't do anything other than try to relax my muscles and that took hours. I think I finally slept for a while, but it was more from exhaustion than because I was in any way relaxed.

Do you know how long it lasted before I felt normal again? Over 24 hours. I had to go to work feeling like I had live wires running under my skin and I had to behave normally while doing it. It was the worst out-of-control feeling I've ever had in my life and that includes being sedated for surgeries. I hated it. I hated every minute of it. That stuff was being sold next to tomatoes and jellies and was supposed to be relaxing and safe! It wasn't relaxing at all! At least not to me!

Now, don't come for my neck and tell me I shouldn't have tried something I wasn't familiar with.That is obvious. To be fair, the lower dosage one didn't do anything remotely like that to me, so I thought it was safe. I've also never used THC before and had no frame of reference, so maybe I didn't understand what something similar was supposed to do in general. All I know is that I'm going to dig a deep hole and bury the rest of those accursed gummy squares in the backyard so that I never have to be in the same room with them again. I also have zero desire to ever try anything remotely close to them again. I'll take my anxiety and trouble sleeping over that feeling any day.

PS: Steve slept for a solid 14 hours and barely moved the whole time. The bastard.

A GOOD MAN

The world lost a good man on Sunday morning.

Capping off a spectacularly shitty April, and now moving into a probably similar May, my uncle, Garry Puckett, passed away after a fight with a long term illness.

He is Steve's uncle, technically, but I've been lucky with all of my in-laws and they all loved and accepted me immediately. He might as well have been my own blood. He was a good, gentle, kind, and funny man and the world is a lesser place now that he is gone.

I'm not good with words. I know people who could write beautiful paragraphs about someone's character, but I'm too clumsy. I mean, I could write a lot of words, but I don't think they would be the right ones. I think I've mentioned this before, but if I could cut myself open and spread out my feelings onto a table, it would be easier to show people how I feel about things than for me to try and explain.

Death is a weird thing. It can be sudden and cruel, it can linger, or it can be a relief. Uncle Garry had been sick and sad for a long time, so I believe death came as a friend to him. He was ready. He said as much. It doesn't make those of us he left behind hurt any less, but it helps us to hurt differently; maybe less sharply, and less raw.

I will miss him.  

That is all I have to say about that.

MORE RANDOM ACTS OF BLOGGING

1) I'm going to attempt to get my hair cut next week. Keep me in your thoughts and prayers.

2) Everything still sucks. I actually think I feel worse about it now than I did two weeks ago. I am, however, going to be 100% respectful of whatever things need to be done to fix it. 

But I've never been in a scorched earth situation before, so I'm not sure of the etiquette beyond the obvious. Am I blocked from everything? What if someone dies? Can I say happy birthday? What if I misdial or text the wrong person by accident, or am I blocked there too? I'm too scared to find out. What if there is an emergency or something important happens? I've never been the bad guy before and it's very weird. Until I hear differently, all I will do is nothing. I hate it.

I wonder how long I'll feel this sad, lost, and terrible? Probably long after everyone else is ok, I'd bet. Heh.

3) The person who bought the property next door went HAM and ripped out everything over the past two days. There is no lawn, no trees, and although we thought that the house was going to be sold and moved off property, it was simply crushed. I swear, it only took them 30 minutes to destroy it. I looked out of the window and it was there, and then walked out of the house half an hour later and it was nothing but a big pile of wood and bricks. They didn't even take the wreath off the front door first. It makes me weirdly sad.

I didn't know the people who lived there, but Steve grew up with the kids of the family. The house looked almost exactly like ours, but was on a slant on the lot. We learned a while back that it was the first house built in the subdivision and it belonged to the son of the developer. They positioned the house so that his family would have a clear view of the beautiful valley we live in while the other houses were being built, which I think is kind of cool. 

They are going to build one of those big McMansions on the property that will sell, unless the housing market crashes beforehand, for close to a million dollars. It's weird to think that property where we live could get something like that, but with a big, fancy house on the lot, it can. It's going to make our house look even worse by comparison, I'm afraid. There are only about 3 houses where we live that haven't been extensively remodeled or torn down and rebuilt, so our little 1959 ranch house is going to look like a hobbit hole next to whatever gorgeous, trendy thing that will be built next to us. 

I hope the new neighbors will be nice, but if they aren't, I'll just sunbathe nude, fall, winter, spring and summer, until they move. 

4) The people who work with Steve and trying to talk us into getting a dog. They know how much we love dogs, but they are being weirdly relentless about it. I don't like the pressure of it.

I've tried being coy about it, and joking about why we can't right now, but I wound up just being honest and telling them that I still miss my other dogs too much, and that the thought of getting a new dog or dogs makes me too sad, but they don't seem to understand that. Some people can just replace pets the second the other ones die, but I'm not like that. It hurts too much to love things that will just die and rip your soul out when they're gone. Butler and Bear were my boys. Simba wasn't even officially our cat, and it still makes me cry to think about her being gone. I know one day that we will have other pets, but they'll have to be snuck into the house under the cover of darkness and I will have to be told "this is your pet now."

I don't know how to politely tell them to stop bothering us about it. They're good people that I like and I know they mean no harm. But I wish they'd stop.

5) Twitter is sometimes a very weird place.

I was checking my followers the other day and noticed someone that I didn't recognize. I don't have many followers in general so I know who is there and who is gone. This guy was new.

I clicked on his name to see if it was someone I knew - I did not - and saw he had posted a series of photos. I looked at them, then looked again, and then looked again. I finally realized that they were all photos of his privates.

I don't know what it says about him that I couldn't recognize what I was looking at at first, or even second, glance, but the thing that actually threw me weren't the photos of his junk, but that he was wearing a Spider Man costume with the crotch cut out.

I'm sure there is a whole section of the population that might be into that kind of thing, and I won't judge, but I (fortunately or unfortunately) am not one of them. 

I did not follow him back, in case you're wondering. Geez.

RANDOM ACTS OF BLOGGING

1) So I got to call 911 for the 6TH time at the church last Sunday! They don't even ask me my mane anymore. Soon, they are going to install a big, red button next to my desk that patches me right into the system.

One of our elderly ladies, who has some balance issues, fell while trying to walk between two pews and her cane tripped her. At least I think that's what happened. I was in the room, but was behind the sound equipment so I only heard the commotion. When I looked up, a bunch of people had surrounded her, and so I hung back until I heard someone say "She needs an ambulance!" So I jumped up, told them I'd call, and did the thing. Thankfully I'm an old pro at it by now, so I knew what to tell them. They had me go back (I'd been in the lobby so I could hear better) and sit by her so I could answer some questions. 

When an old person falls, usually my guess is that they are going to hurt a limb, or their back, or maybe break a hip. This lady had done none of those things. She was laying in a pool of blood. One of our deacons had a cloth pressed to the back of her head, but the blood had spread in a big pool under her head. She'd clipped the edge of the pew when she went down, and damn, scalp lacerations are no joke. 

She was lucid and not in much pain. Other than the bleeding, she said she was OK. Of course, when you're 85 years old and you hit your head, you never know. I sat next to her and made a few jokes to keep things from being too serious, and the EMTs finally showed up. They checked her out, and it didn't look like she was in any immediate danger, so they got her into a wheelchair and got her to the ambulance. I'd had to call the lady's daughter, and I have no idea if I was comforting or alarming, because adrenaline hit me like a ton of bricks when I went into "HELP THE OLD LADY" mode. 

Once she was out of the way, I shooed the looky-loos away and told them I'd clean up. That is part of my job, after all. There was a lot of blood. A. Lot. Of. Blood. More blood than I'd ever seen outside of the human body before. Thankfully, blood doesn't bother me, but it was still gruesome to have to carry out an armload of bloody towels in front of the entire congregation. When I woke up that morning, I hadn't imagined that I'd spend the first part of the day wrist deep in an old lady's blood. I didn't have any gloves, to which one of our church members helpfully pointed out that I needed them because this was, and I quote, "A bye-yo hazard." All I could do was promise I wouldn't lick my fingers. I did find out later I had a cut on my hand, so who knows how that will end up. I hope that lady doesn't have anything communicable.

I felt like Lady Macbeth the rest of the day. I still don't know if my hands are really clean yet, even though I scrubbed them. 

The lady is fine, by the way. She's a tough old bird. She called and said they'd put seven staples in her scalp, and she's staying with family until she gets better.

2) I deleted what I wrote here, because I forgot I wasn't going to say anything else about it. I'm too lazy to renumber. Everything still sucks, though. I hate every minute of it.

3) I found another pair of the giant underpants in the laundry, again. This is getting stupid! I know I washed and folded them all by this point, and there was no reason for them to be in the laundry four months after the fact! If it was a joke, Steve wouldn't let it go on this long. I think I'm going to have to burn them, or bring them to church and bury them under one of the shrubs. If I find one more pair in a place where they shouldn't be, I'm taking them to the closest priest and having them exorcised. I wonder how that would go?

4) My weight loss journey is going well. People are finally able to tell that I've lost some weight, which is nice. I'm still so tired all the time and eating sucks. I miss being able to comfort eat, or at least enjoy food! I don't anymore. I can't even watch cooking videos anymore without feeling nauseous. Right now, even the food I can eat, I don't want. But, I have to eat or I'll die. Allegedly. Geez. It's all supposed to level out in a few more months, so I'll keep my fingers crossed.

Oh! Another fun effect of my surgery is that my hair is falling out! I'm sure there are people out there who'd be thrilled to hear that, but I'm a little scared. I knew it was going to happen, but I didn't realize to what extent. I can only hope it won't be too terrible. I don't know to what to expect. I've thought about going and getting my hair cut short, just so it might not be such a shock if a lot more falls out, but I hate my hair being short. Ugh. Again, what can you do? 

Will you still love me if I'm bald? Even if my head is a weird shape? Even if I have to wear bad Hannah Montana wigs? Just don't let Chris Rock make any jokes. I don't think Steve would take up for me.

BROKEN

I fucked up.

I fucked up and ultimately destroyed one of the oldest, most important, precious to me, dear relationships I have ever had and I can't do anything about it. 

I'm not going to elaborate. I don't really even understand all the details. Suffice it to say that something that seemed fun, silly, and harmless wasn't. I should have been smarter, but ultimately I didn't want to be. I hate myself for it. Losing my friend was the one damn thing I didn't want to happen. I tried to explain but I don't think my message made it to the right place.

At the risk of sounding melodramatic, my heart is genuinely broken. I don't want to eat, I can't think straight, my body physically hurts, and I forget to breathe. I feel the same way as I did when my father died. If I had my way, I'd sleep until it didn't hurt anymore. I know one day I won't feel like this, and somehow that's worse, because it'll be like it didn't really matter at all, and it does. I feel like I've lost part of myself.

Everyone else involved will be fine. I have no doubt. They always are. I doubt anything truly bad ever happens to them these days. They're too perfect. That's a good thing, though.

My only hope is, at this point, that maybe it won't have to be forever, but it'll be a long time.

You might think I'm over reacting. If so, then you probably don't know me or my heart very well.

That's all I've got to say about that.

RANDOM ACTS OF BLOGGING

1) Something has occurred to me that seems very strange in a way that I don't think has ever crossed my mind before. 

We, as relatively normal, everyday people all have secrets. Not necessarily bad ones, just private stuff we don't talk about. Some keep more to themselves than others, obviously, and depending on who you are or what has been going on in your life, those things can either be silly or serious.

But what I think is weird, is that if you were to decide to tell someone something that you've never mentioned before, especially one of your very closest guarded secrets, they might think you were crazy, or even lying about it because those secrets can also be very weird.

Maybe only my secrets are weird. All I know is that I can never tell anyone else my very secretest of secrets, because I don't think anyone would believe me.

2) I'm wrestling with a situation.

It's pretty well known around where I work that the people who live in the neighborhood don't have very much. A lot of them have come to or called us asking for us to give them money. Our former pastor would occasionally let people come to the church and do work, and pay them minimum wage per hour for what they did, but anytime we gave money out to help people, word would get out and we'd be slammed with people and their sob stories asking us to pay for rent/bills/gas/whatever else they wanted money for. We finally had to refuse to give anyone cash, and went to a grocery gift card system so that we could be fairly certain the money they needed for food, actually went to purchase food.

I could write examples of the people who've taken advantage of our good will, but I don't want anyone to think I'm just that cynical about people needing help. I know there are people who are in need, and as a church, a lot of people think it's our job to bail people out of their problems.

See, the thing is...we can't afford to do that for everyone who calls and asks for help. But, if we do it for one person, we'd have to do it for everyone. We don't have the resources to pay for rent, phones, food, hotels, and things like that for everyone who asks. It has been that way for the past few years, and unless we get a huge windfall of money, we probably will never be able to do that.

BUT...here is the quandary.  This morning I was asked if I would personally give someone a certain amount of money. This person is a kid our church and they need to pay a cell phone bill that they will not be able to pay otherwise. This particular kid (teenager, I guess, but not old enough to get a job) has very little in life. Terrible home situation, no dad in the picture...that kind of thing. The kid offered to come by the church and do work, but we don't have anything for them to do. Even if we did have something for them to do, it wouldn't be enough work to justify paying them the amount of money they need for the bill. I considered just writing a check and telling the person who asked me to do it (the kid didn't personally ask me) and having them give the money to them, but I realized that would possibly be opening a door that couldn't be closed. I'm not saying specifically that people would come to me for money, but they might start asking the church for money, and if we helped this kid, why can't we help this other person? Or what happens if the kid can't pay their bill the next time? Would the money fairy need to pull out the checkbook every time?

One one hand, I can afford to give them the money. That isn't the issue. I'm not a stingy person by nature, and money is money and it's going to get spent one way or the other. On the other hand, I can't set a precedent of handing over money for cell phone bills or things like that, especially for kids who might mention it to other kids, or even adults, who have needs and then where will it stop? We tried to think of a solution, of inventing work they could do, but even then, I don't feel there is a good way to do this. If it were something more important than a cell phone bill, I don't know if I'd feel the same way or not.

I realize how awful this makes me sound. I just feel icky about the whole situation. I just don't think any of us giving them money is a good idea. We can't open ourselves up for the kind of problems this could cause. We're working on a solution, but I don't know what we actually should do.

3) Our church caught on fire a little bit last Saturday. 

We had a workday to clean out a bunch of junk that had been accumulating in the unused rooms of our church for the past 25 years. I never thought that so much junk would end up in a place that isn't regularly inhabited! 

Only five people showed up, three men and two women (plus two little kids and two ladies who were cooking for a fundraiser) but we hustled and managed to shovel out the worst of the junk from the basement to the second floor in just a couple of hours. While we were finishing the upstairs, the other woman came back from downstairs and mentioned that she smelled something smoky in the hallway. We'd had a door open on the bottom floor so that we could carry junk outside, so the guy who knows things (he really does, that is not sarcastic) said it might be the heat exchange trying to regulate the heat in that hallway (it was a cold day, so it would have had to work harder) and we figured he was right. I went downstairs and smelled the smoke, too. Granted, my sense of smell is so strong that I can sometimes smell lights turning on, if there is dust on the bulbs, but it was a very obvious electrical burning smell. Still, we couldn't find anything, and me and Amanda looked everywhere we could think of for signs of fire. We even opened the closet where the heat exchanger is and didn't see or smell anything in there.  So we walked into the church lobby. We saw a tiny bit of smoke floating near the ceiling, but because neither of us could see where it was coming from, we thought it was just dust burning off of the heater. 

I know you probably think we are complete idiots, but don't come for my neck, I've never been in a fire before, ok? I smell things all the time. I smell heat, and the ghost of food, and can even smell cold, but we didn't SEE anything other than the smoke, which was such a small amount that it didn't alarm us. So I opened the double doors to let it out so that...get this...it didn't set off the fire alarm. Oy. We went on to do some other things.

I walked into the office to bring some things out we would need for Sunday services, and I just happened to turn my head in the right direction and saw black smoke coming out of one of the air conditioning grates. I honestly didn't know what I was looking at. That sounds crazy, but it wasn't big billows of smoke, it was a black haze coming out of the grate and spreading over the ceiling. My brain didn't register it as even being real at first. I finally yelled out that there was smoke, and the guy (one of our deacons) walked into the closet and realized the exchanger was actually on fire internally. The reason we couldn't see or smell it was because it was enclosed in the housing and the smoke was floating through the ductwork.

We were very lucky that we had people in just the right places to take care of what was happening. The deacon told me to call the fire department (so I got to call 911 for a 5TH! time since starting work here) and he found the extinguisher and put out the active fire, they got the kids outside, and we eventually got everyone out of the building just in time for all of the firemen to show up and make sure all the fire was out.

Amanda and I sat with the kids and kept them occupied and out of the way of everyone, and thankfully the only thing that was damaged was the machine in the closet and some smoke damage in the lobby. It was still rather stressful, but thankfully after the smoke cleared, literally, the damage was minor. I actually felt bad that the firemen came in their whole kit, but I know they had to come and make sure it hadn't spread into the walls or into the second floor.

After that we went home and I didn't let myself think about it very hard until I went to bed, and that's when I realized how badly it could have turned out. The fire happened because a belt broke inside of the machine, and it took three people actively looking, sniffing and being curious to realize it was happening. Ostensibly it happened because the heater had turned on due to the door being open, but since it was a cold day, that would have happened anyway. The ladies cooking downstairs would have been there even if the rest of us hadn't been, so if that fire had started, they wouldn't have known until it was too late, and might have died. The location of the closet where the heater was is perfectly situated that if the fire had gotten bigger, it would have torn up through the cooling system and started burning the second floor, as well as an adjoining room where we keep choir robes.  Also, we had shoveled out a ton of junk from that closet, which would have been great fuel for spreading a fire into something much bigger. I just let myself have a little cry and was very grateful that we were there to catch it before it destroyed the building.

I don't really have a clever way to end this story except I'm really glad our church didn't burn down.

WTF?!

 I found another pair of the gigantic underpants that I didn't know existed!

Where are the coming from?!

THE UNDERPANTS ARE COMING FROM INSIDE THE HOUSE!!!!!

SHORT BLOGGINGS

 1) I can't believe I forgot to mention that while we were in Tennessee, someone (he may have been drunk) mistook Steve for the guy from Pawn Stars. We were checking out at a store and he said "Oh, shit, you're the dude from Pawn Stars! Oh...no you're not...but damn, you look like him! Are you sure you aren't him? Maybe I should get your autograph!"

I don't think Steve has ever been confused with a celebrity before, so he should have taken advantage of it and charged the guy $20 for a photo or something.

2) This week I have learned that grown ass, otherwise professional, men who had overbearing mothers/have overbearing wives will never, ever, be honest with any woman they interact with. They just tell you what they think you want to hear, even if it isn't what they want or need, and then hide from you and go quiet when you have questions that might be a little awkward so they can avoid any unpleasantness that might arise. It's the most infuriating thing, because it doesn't let you get anything accomplished, and I can only assume it's a survival instinct or something. It's really bad when it's obvious that's what is happening, but you can't get them to be clear, and no matter how honestly you tell them that you need to know what needs they have.

I wish there was a way to keep this from happening, especially when you need to know things to accomplish work, or have real questions that need to be answered. Do I need to wear a "I am a safe lady" vest or something? Geez. What a friggin' week.

3) OMG, I had the best, and most random meeting recently! I went with Steve to one of his cybersecurity social meeting things that they have once a month. I honestly don't know why he invited me, and I almost didn't go, but I figured that I should get out of the house a little (I've not been in the best place lately, brain wise.) The meeting was held at a local microbrewery, and while I was standing there feeling awkward and out of place, I suddenly look up to see a familiar face coming over to me.

When I was in high school I had a very close, very awesome friend who I spent tons of time with. He was awesome! We were in the marching band drum line together, and he was one of the most genuinely funny, fun, and nice people I'd ever known, and we were such great friends up until I graduated. In the way that leads on to way, he and I lost touch, but I never forgot about him. I'd seen him maybe three times since 1996, once when I went back to my old high school school for some event, once at his mother's funeral, and once out in the wild at a pizza place a couple of years ago, but there he was at the random microbrewery I was at! I was so glad to see him!

He was with some of his friends and work colleagues, so we didn't get to spend a whole lot of time together, but we did get to catch up and talk, and he is still funny, and nice, and pretty much an all around righteous dude. I didn't realize how much I missed him until I saw him again. What a great coincidence and it made my heart happy!

He's also single and has a dog, ladies, so let me know if you want to meet him. :)

RANDOM ACTS OF BLOGGING

 1) Yuck, ya'll, it's such a dark and rainy day! The weather was supposed to get rough at some point, but apparently that didn't happen. Now it's just a slow, constant drizzle that will probably stop when the sun comes out and then get super humid because Alabama is usually a greenhouse from about now until next November. Not only that, but now just walking from the car to/from whatever building I'm currently in allows me to breathe in enough pollen to almost kill me. Spring is beautiful and it's warm, but it makes me feel terrible! 

2) Someone at church stopped me and asked me how I was doing since my surgery. I told them that I was fine, but having some trouble eating enough of the right things because I still get nauseous really easily. (I never know what to say to people who ask about what I had done, because I can't ever tell if they are truly interested, or morbidly curious, but I'm not coy about it.) So this grown ass man says "Well, you know, a lady I worked with had that surgery and all she ate was sweets and she died. You need to be careful so that doesn't happen to you too." I don't generally eat sweets, because they make me feel bad, but I can barely eat things I'm supposed to, so I don't think death by too much cake is what will get me. But, I mean, what a way to go, though, right?

It's bad enough that there are people absolutely disgusted at what I had done, that is hurtful in it's own way, but for people to keep warning me I might die at any moment because of it really sucks. I mean, yeah, I could get run over by a garbage truck at any point, too, but nobody says that to me on a regular basis!

3) Sorry if I seem a bit grumpy. I've been kind of, I dunno...blah...lately. Everything seems beige. I know that doesn't make sense to most of you, but beige is a blah color and everything feels blah. Maybe it's because lately it feels like I don't have a life, I have a routine. 

I'm not saying that because of anything bad happening, but I don't know what to do with myself lately. I work, I (have to) think about what to eat everyday so I apparently don't die or get scurvy, I sometimes work on my house models, and I watch YouTube videos. That's pretty much it. I don't even look forward to anything very often, either, so I feel kind of flat all the time.

I did had one thing this past weekend I was looking forward to, but that didn't really work out like I hoped. I tried to make the best of it for both of us, but I know my friend was preoccupied and had other things to do, so it wasn't their fault. I felt bad for taking up so much of their time. I just think I'm not great company these days. Eh, well. I'll try again at a better time! Onward and upward, right?!

4) We are going to see some of our cousins for dinner this weekend, and Steve and I are going to represent his company at a STEM event Saturday night, so maybe everything will stop being beige and have some colors soon.

5) Sorry for complaining. Maybe I need some endorphins, or serotonin, or cocaine. I'll figure it out! :)

BLOGGED AFTER THE FACT: AN APPALACHIAN ADVENTURE PART IV - FIN

 Monday morning we slept in a bit (or I would have if Steve hadn't been so raring to get the car packed so we could leave.)

We got on the road just a little after 10:00 AM and headed out of Gatlinburg. We only had one place we wanted to stop on the way, and that was Cade's Cove. 

I don't know if you've ever been to Cade's Cove, but it is beautiful. It has a collection of historic homes, churches, and graveyards along an 11 mile loop that you can drive around to see everything. I assume that during it's time it was cleared for farmland and homesteads, and most of that is gone now, but there are big open fields surrounded by mountains and it is just gorgeous. We stopped at a couple of the buildings, and wondered through a graveyard. We also stopped at the visitor's center and saw a working grist mill. Somehow, we spent several hours there. 

Seriously, I'm not sure how we spent so much time! We didn't stop at every cabin, or walk every trail, but somehow we didn't leave there till well after noon, so that when we got on the road in earnest, it felt like it was very late in the day. (Oh, and Anthony got a very passive aggressive little speech from a FORMER Illinois park ranger because he picked up a pine cone on one of the trails and had it in his hand when we got to the car. She was very Delores Umbridge-esque when she told him he'd get in trouble and have to pay a fine. Well, you know what, former park ranger? You can suck it. I'm not sure what happened to that pine cone, but I wish we'd told that lady to stuff it in her cram hole before she walked off.)

Oh, and I've learned that I hate something I didn't know I hated! We saw several old homes and buildings on this trip, and for reasons I will never understand, people go into these historic places and carve their names on the walls, or (like the most recent ones) write their names in Sharpie marker across the logs. I'm sorry, Taylor and Megan, but literally no one needs to know you love each other by reading it on the wall of a historic landmark. I hate when people deface things like that. It makes me want to hit them with a shovel.

ANYWAYS, we finally got back on the road in earnest and headed for home. It felt like it took us a full year to get to where we were going, but we did stop a couple of times for potty breaks and dinner. Oh, and it decided to come a full on flood the darker it got and the closer we got to home. Poor Steve was basically driving blind the last third of the way home. It was very tense!

Make it home we finally did, though, and happy to do so. It was a great trip and I'm glad we got to go!

I bet you're glad to get to the end of this, huh?

BLOGGED AFTER THE FACT: AN APPALACHIAN ADVENTURE PART III

Sunday was our nature day. There was a lot of nature.

Anthony's goal for the day was to go on one of the nearby trails for a hike and see natural beauty and all that stuff. He bought a stick for the purpose and everything! 

(Anthony is a hiker. During the beginning of the pandemic, going on local trails with him was the only way we got to see him for months. Steve also likes hiking, although he doesn't do it much.)

I'm sure you will be shocked to know that I'm not exactly an outdoor type of girl. It's not my fault, really, because when you live where I do, going outside usually ends with me getting hot, dirty, cranky, and allergic to every plant that has leaves, so over the years I've learned to be outside averse. However, I think I would love being outdoors if the climate were completely different, or if I lived near water, or if all mosquitos had been obliterated during the last ice age.

BUT...since we were in a place with beautiful scenery, and it is currently winter, and the bugs would be at a minimum, I put on by borrowed toque, laced up my shoes, and went on a hike. It was actually a lot of fun!  We walked and talked and saw a lot of nice dogs along the way. The trail we took wasn't rough, thank goodness, because I hadn't been prepared to climb or descend anything. It was wide, had been graveled, and was well traveled. It also went right next to the Little Pigeon River almost the entire way, which was beautiful. For some reason, walking next to water is much more enjoyable to me than walking on a trail without water nearby. It wasn't a particularly long trail, just being shy of two miles, but we made it to the Sugarland Visitor's Center, and we turned around and went back. It was a really great way to spend the morning!

After that, we got in the car and Steve drove us through the Smoky Mountain National Park. That was really lovely. It would have been nicer had there been some leaves and stuff, but even with bare trees, the scenery was gorgeous. 

I felt kind of bad for Steve, because he was driving he couldn't look through the windows and enjoy the scenery himself. I could have driven (we were in my car) but apparently my driving scares everyone, and me driving on twisty, mountain roads would not let anyone else enjoy the scenery while they were terrified for their lives. Pffft. 

But seriously, that's probably true.

We drove all around for a long time, stopping here and there to take pictures. We stopped at the Appalachian Trail, where Tennessee and North Carolina meet, and walked for a little bit on that so that Anthony could say he'd walked on it (and to justify getting an AT staff badge for his walking stick. He and I collect them, but I justify getting my badges much more loosely than he does.) We eventually made it to the very edge of Cherokee, North Carolina and stopped at the visitors center there. We had wanted to go onto the Blue Ridge Parkway, but it was closed because of ice and snow that had happened earlier in the week. Eh, well, we enjoyed seeing the elks and the little buildings at the visitor's center and decided that we'd head back into Gatlinburg to try another driving trail that is just off the main street out there. Unfortunately, that trail was closed due to the weather as well.

Now, there is kind of a big blank spot in my memory here and I can't remember what we did at this point. Maybe we went to lunch? Maybe we went back to the hotel? Could be both. I don't know. Shut up, I was tired!

However, I do know that a while later we walked down to the Sugarland's Distillery so that Steve and Anthony could do a moonshine tasting. I can't drink alcohol for another 8 months or so, so I couldn't join in on this one. That was perfectly ok with me, because I did that once on a very hot day, and I ended up sending drunk videos to my family and texting a friend of mine from high school. Moonshine may be legal now, but it's still kind of dangerous in a very different way!

12 different flavors of moonshine in little, plastic communion cups measures out to about 3/4ths of a cup of a very high ABV beverage. (I checked after I did it that one time) so by the time they were done, they were feeling pretty good. We went to dinner after that, and then visited the "faux-dega" where we bought sundries and stuff for our trip home the next day.

It was a long, but very fun day.

BLOGGED AFTER THE FACT: AN APPALACHIAN ADVENTURE PART II

 On Saturday morning, we got up and met in the lobby for breakfast. I learned fast and quick who the moms were a chaperone for the church group staying in our hotel, because I made a joke about a gay bar in Denver and got a look of death from the lady in the next table. It wasn't even that bad of a joke! Maybe she needed to mind her own business. 

The first thing we did was go to Ober Gatlinburg, which is a sort of winter sports complex/shopping area  that you can get to by riding a massive gondola up the mountain. You can also drive, but where is the fun in that? We got there fairly early, which was good, because there were a lot of people in the boarding area. So many in fact, that I had to take one of my e-stop anxiety pills because I came very close to losing my biscuits, screaming, and clawing my way through a group of young people wearing ski pants to get out! Luckily, I managed to get all the way there without getting the screaming meemies and we had a good time! It was a lot colder up there than we thought it would be! Steve wanted to do something called an Alpine Slide, but it was closed, and since we didn't know how to ski or ice skate, we spent that time going up another level  on a ski lift to a scenic overlook where we could see everything! Well, maybe not everything, but a lot!  Poor Anthony, we didn't know he was scared of heights until then. Oops. 

We looked around the place for a while, and even went to see some rescue animals that are in a kind of permanent rehab kind of habitat. It wasn't the best quality place, but the animals can't be let back out into the wild because they have been injured or have some other types of problems, so I'm glad that they can be safe there. The bears were in their dens, but we did get to see some raccoons, possums, birds of prey, and otters! I love otters! At least I used to. These were cute, though, and we got to see them being fed. They were sweet.

After we left Ober Gatlinburg, we went back down to the town to get lunch. We had some good timing and managed to get into a pretty nice place near our hotel before the crowds came in. 

PAUSE: I suppose I should explain my eating situation, though, so I can stop saying that I'll explain it all later. Eating, for me, is no longer fun. I can eat, but not very much, and I am supposed to eat certain kinds of things for the next few months. I am not feeling sorry for myself here, because I did sign up for this, but it sucks because eating while on vacation is usually part of the fun. Now, mostly, I just feel sick and full after a few bites. Add to that that I can't really order what I normally would, so even the food I do get to eat is not really what I want. Eating is no longer a satisfying activity, and I had to get up and leave from a restaurant more than once just to walk around so my food could settle. It made me feel bad, because I never wanted to affect anyone else with the choice I made to have the surgery, but I kept having to leave Anthony and Steve to go back to the room because eating made me feel so bad. I don't care that I physically felt bad, but I hated that it affected them.

Anyway, enough about that. After lunch, I went back to the room to lie down while Steve and Anthony walked up and down the main street, visiting the places all along the strip and shopping and whatnot. They had fun, though! They came back to the hotel to rest up a bit before we left again that evening. We were going into Pigeon Forge to go to Cooter's store, and to have dinner at a place our former pastor told me we should go to! 

I don't know what was going on, but it took us nearly an hour just to get out of Gatlinburg proper so that we could get into Pigeon Forge. Also, the traffic was so bad that we had to take an alternate route to get to Cooter's, and we still almost got there too late. Steve and Anthony had a good time looking at all of the Dukes of Hazzard memorabilia, but we weren't able to stay very long. We drove over to the all year Christmas store and looked around a while, and then decided we wanted to see if we could get into our dinner early. We had a reservation at 8:00 PM, but we figured that we might eat earlier so we could get back to Gatlinburg before it was late. Boy, were we wrong. We couldn't even find a parking spot at the restaurant when we got there, people were parking in the grass around the building, and people were lined up outside in the freezing cold just to get in. We figured we might go someplace else and go back closer to the time of our reservation, but traffic by that point was so bad that we got suck in it for a concerning amount of time. We finally just went back to the restaurant, waited for someone to leave a spot, and we sat outside for an hour in the car until it was time to go inside. I'm so grateful we made a reservation, because the wait was routinely an hour and a half for people just walking in. We finally got seated, and had a good time! Steve and Anthony said the food and drinks were really good!

By the time we left, traffic had let up a bit, and we went back to the hotel. I feel like we had an extremely long day of doing stuff, but when I write it out, it doesn't look like much at all. Huh.

Eh, well, it was still a very fun day!

BLOGGED AFTER THE FACT: AN APPALACHIAN ADVENTURE, PART 1

As I mentioned before, Steve, Anthony, and me took a trip into the mountains! 

Wait...Is that grammar correct? Should it be Steve, Anthony, and I? Eh, whatever. Bite me grammar Nazis!

Anyways, we met early on Friday morning and hauled our cookies from Huntsville into Tennessee! It wasn't a terribly long drive.

Our first stop was in Chattanooga. There is a restaurant there that Steve and I like, called the Maple Street Biscuit Company, and we wanted to have brunch there, as well as visiting a distillery that Steve knew about so that he could get some bourbon or scotch that you could only get at their brick and mortar shop.

We had breakfast (well, I kind of did, but more on that later) visited the distillery, and then ended up walking a bit downtown before getting on our way. I didn't know the Chattanooga Choo Choo hotel was a thing! It was so cool to go into the lobby and see what used to be the station! It also has some trains parked in it's backyard, which was pretty darn neat, too. It was also really cold outside, so we didn't stay long. We wondered around a bit and then got back on the road.

The drive to Gatlinburg is really beautiful in some places. Maybe not the miles and miles of interstate exactly, but once you get into the mountains and the road gets twisty, it's really a very pretty drive.

We made it into Pigeon Forge at around 4:00, I think, and Anthony got to get hit right away with the absolute cheese of the place. He was not impressed. Pigeon Forge is a hole. I don't know any other way to say it, but it is! It's just a few miles of tourist traps, bad souvenir shops, and traffic. It has a couple of places worth visiting, if you want to stop here and there, but mostly it's just depressingly awful among the pretty scenery. It's like a redneck version of the Las Vegas strip, but somehow not as classy.

We finally got up to the drive from Pigeon Forge to Gatlinburg and eventually made it to our hotel, which was located at the far end of the main street. Don't get me wrong, Gatlinburg is also very touristy and crowded, but it has a tiny bit of charm to it. Well, at least I think so. We did find that it was super crowded, but it was a holiday weekend and that is kind of expected. We also found out that the town was hosting a Church of Christ Youth Conference, so it was full of teenagers. They were loud, but well behaved for the most part.

Our hotel was...how can I express it...not great, but utterly sufficient for our needs. Granted, I'm a bit of a hotel snob, well, in that I want where I'm staying to feel safe, have inside hallways if possible, be clean, and be comfortable. I'll even forgo a bit of the comfort as long as the clean and safe parts exist. We chose the particular place because of it's location, which was nicely situated on the far end of the main street, within walking distance to a few things that we wanted to see, and within just a few minutes of the Smoky Mountain National Park. Anthony wanted to do nature stuff. Steve wanted to visit distilleries. I just wanted to have a fun trip! It was a fine location for all of that. It was maybe not so comfortable and the shower was terrible, and we found popcorn under our bed (we didn't eat any popcorn at all) but it was safe and the bed was clean, and we didn't spend a great deal of time in the room other than to sleep, so we didn't make a fuss. Anthony said his room was the same. I looked on the website, and neither of our rooms were anywhere near as nice as they ones they advertise, so I think the owners should look into the ethics of truth in advertising.

BUT...we made it, got all suited up for the cold, very cold, weather, and started our visit! We spent that evening walking down the strip and trying to plan out what we were going to do for the rest of our time there. That was fun, even though there were SO many people around. I still don't think I'm used to being in crowds yet. We managed to have good timing when we found a place to eat, so that we didn't have to wait for hours to get a table. It was an Italian place that boasted having the best pizza in town, but since we hadn't had pizza anywhere else in town, we didn't know if it was true or not! I didn't eat pizza (but more on that later) but after we ate, we walked around some more, looked at stuff, joked and had a good time before we went back to the hotel to sleep!

 

WELL, SCHEISSE

OK, so I spoke too soon. Our trip to Germany has been officially cancelled. I found out on my birthday!*

Because so much is still in the air with COVID and vaccinations and different countries having different rules and people not wanting to get into big groups and etc and etc and etc...too many people cancelled their reservations for the trip and now there aren't enough people to make up the band. 

I'm disappointed, of course. I've been trying to learn German for three years in preparation for this trip. I went through the merry hell of getting my passport redone and I had even already bought some stuff for the journey, but alas, it was all for nothing. 

It's ok, though. I'm not mad about it. I get that people still aren't comfortable traveling, and I don't blame them for that. I can't even say that I'm totally surprised about it all being cancelled, all things considered. For all we know we'd get there, another variant would arise, and we'd be living there for two years while the world got locked down again. Hehe, that would be an interesting adventure, though, wouldn't it? Sitcom worthy, even!

I did want to see Germany, though. I want to see so much of the world, but unless it's the world showcase in EPCOT (EFFING SIGH), Steve doesn't care much about going to different countries. 

Oh well, maybe I can talk him into going someplace else at some point. It's rare we go places without an entourage, and as much as he complains about it, he doesn't like to take time off from his job, so it might not work. Would it be indecent of me to suggest we go someplace I want to go and he can just work from the hotel? I can entertain myself! He can shut himself in a room all day and I can have fun and do whatever I want! It's the perfect plan!

Ah well, we'll see. But there will be no German adventures this year! Maybe in a couple more years, all this virus nonsense will be in the rear view mirror and we can go on tour with the band again!

 I just hope all those German lessons pay off somehow!

*BTW, I had a nice birthday! It was very chill. I was kind of in a weird headspace for most of it, TBH. I felt kind of like I was waiting for a blow to fall, but honestly, I had no reason to feel that way, so I can't explain it. I went to work, went home, and watched TV. I slowly got older. Then I went to bed!

I got lots of wishes from Facebook, of course, and I heard from my most favorite people in the world, as well. I got a video from someone I love to bits, a plant I'll probably accidentally kill, gifts, cards and texts from friends and family. I'm truly more blessed than I deserve to be.

UPDATE: A STRANGE HAUNTING

 This is just a very short update on the underpants haunting my house.

It's been two months since I bought them. Two months since I washed them.

I was attacked by a pair of giant gray underpants while folding laundry a few days ago. There is no rational reason any of those pants should still be in our laundry, but yet, those were there. 

I'm trying to put them all in one place, but I still seem to find them when I least expect it!

I'm scared!  Do you think Victoria's Secret could come to my house and do an exorcism?

MORE RANDOM ACTS OF BLOGGING

 Hello to the three people who still read my blog! I shake you warmly by the hand!

1) We went to the Robert Burns dinner at our local golf club thing last week (wherein we don't play golf, we just go there for the food.)  It was a lot of fun! Apparently it's a big deal thing every year, but because of covid, they haven't been able to do the whole event justice until this year. Robert Burns was/is the national poet of Scotland and they celebrate his birthday every year with a themed dinner and bagpipes and poetry. 

Steve got very into the spirit by buying an entire Scottish outfit, kilt and sporran and everything. As much as I'd never envisioned him in such a thing, I thought it looked good on him. I tried to get into the spirit, but damn, an entire outfit of Highland Dress for a woman is freakishly expensive, so I ordered a kilt and a fluffy shirt, and wore our family tartan (well, Steve's family tartan, which I guess is also mine now, but whatever...) sash. We were adorable. Haha! 

They paraded the haggis around the room and we had pseudo Scottish food, and they did a scotch tasting, and read some poetry with fake Scottish accents that were terrible, and it was a lot of fun! The haggis wasn't bad at all, although I did find out later it wasn't exactly traditional. Apparently we have some FDA laws about serving legit haggis here in the US, but that's fine. It was still good!

Steve, Anthony and I have decided we want to go to Scotland for real someday, which I hope we actually do. Mostly they want to go to tour the distilleries. I want to go and pet (and possibly steal) a highland cow. I have already named her, and she will live in our backyard, and I will ride her to Target.

2) Y'all, Im disgusted to realize how much I've been relying on social media lately. I really feel like that shouldn't be a thing, but for the most part, that's how I talk to people now and it makes me sad. I keep catching myself compulsively checking the same apps over and over just to make sure people are still out there. I have fights with myself in the morning, heehee. I'll say, I know there is no response to my message on this particular app yet, so I won't check it. But then I'll say, BUT THERE COULD BE BITCH YOU DON'T KNOW! and I check it anyways. I have a very Sméagol/Gollum situation going on with myself sometimes! If the message is answered, I feel better, if not, I'm disappointed, and I know that's going to make my whole day down. However, that is how we communicate, so what can you do?

Of course, I'm also realistic enough to know that if we didn't have those things, there would be people I'd never hear from again. That also makes me kind of sad. I wonder how much effort we'd put into keeping up with friends if it required, you know, actual effort? The future is weird.

3) The weather in Alabama has been so odd lately! It was warm...too warm, and then we had tornadoes! Then snow! Then days and days of rain. Then there was another warm day and then more rain and more cold, and things like this are why going outside is a crap shoot this time of year and I never know what to wear. I know there is this odd thing called "layering" but I don't know how to do that and I'm afraid I'd get tangled up and suffocate trying to take off a sweater. Like a turtle in a fishing net. 

Can you imagine that being on your death certificate? Geez.

4) OOOH! As of right now, our trip to German/Austria/Prague with Steve's band is officially on! That will, of course, depend a lot on the public heath situation, but we might finally get to go! I'm ready. This dang trip has been hanging over my head for two years and I want to get it done! 

Even after two years of Duolingo lessons, I still don't know enough German to carry on a conversation, but I can ask for the essentials. Mr. Lee is going with us this time and I hope he has fun. Of course, he's been all over the world already, but he's never traveled overseas with us! I told him he has to listen to the tour guide and not wander off by himself (I am a very bossy daughter in law) but Mr. Lee is a honey badger and he doesn't care about rules! He will do what he likes! We might have to put an AirTag on him to make sure we know where he is. Heehee.

5) Oh, and speaking of traveling, we are taking Anthony to Gatlinburg. He has never been, and we decided that he needs to experience the glorious cheese of the place. If he doesn't come back with a Dukes of Hazard tramp stamp, then he will not have gotten the full experience. Gatlinburg is a place that people should visit at least once. There are better, less red-necky places (that I desperately, one day, would like to visit-please) but we want him to see it! 

6) I'm still working on my current model house. I had to cut all the electronics because I couldn't figure out how to connect anything. This one had too many wires and they wouldn't stay where they were supposed to! There is glue everywhere and I have purchased three more model houses/rooms. It's like an illness. Send help!

A STRANGE HAUNTING

When I was getting ready to go into the hospital, I asked the nurse at the surgeon's office what kinds of things I would need to wear on the day of my surgery. Granted, I knew I would eventually be wearing a hospital gown, but they told me I'd need to wear something loose and comfortable so that my sutures wouldn't be irritated when I left the hospital. However, one of the things I was particularly curious about was underpants.

Now, I don't know if every surgery requires you to get completely naked under the hospital gown, but I didn't want to go commando into the operating room if I didn't have to. Those places are cold! The nurse said that I would need to get 100% cotton underpants, because if I were wearing anything synthetic, the equipment they use during the surgery might melt them onto my skin. At least I think that was what she was saying, because they use electrical currents and things, and possibly because I'd be hooked up to specific equipment, that synthetic fibers would react badly to that? Don't quote me on that, but that is how I understood the reason why I had to go and get cotton underpants before the surgery. 

So I went to Target and found the packages of sensible, cotton underpants. You'd be surprised how much underwear isn't completely cotton these days, so I didn't have a wide selection. Instead of anything cute, all I could find were legit granny panties. It was all big, voluminous, and spacious. However, I thought to myself, what's the big deal? I'm wearing them to the hospital, not out on a date with Chris Hemsworth, right? (Pfft, like I'd wear underwear on a date with him!) So, I grabbed a package and went on my way.

My first mistake was buying the wrong size.  I overestimated. There is a size chart on the back, but I didn't know my measurements. I'd been too ashamed to measure myself for anything for a long time, and it didn't occur to me to do so to buy underpants, so the package I got was a size too big. They were the most granny-ish of granny panties I'd ever seen. They were more like bloomers from Little House on the Prairie or something. They were the kind of underwear you wear if you plan to shoplift and need a place to hide things. Again, though, I figured that it wouldn't matter because I'd be wearing them during surgery and it might be more comfortable if they were roomy. I did wash them before wearing them, just to shrink them down a tad (for not-falling-off purposes) but they didn't shrink much, if at all. And because you can't just go and buy one pair of underpants in a regular store (unless they are the slinky, cute kind) I had not one, but five pairs of these monster underwear now loose in my laundry.

Ultimately, I didn't even need the underwear, because they gave me those weird mesh ones that I talked about before, so the giant granny pants were pretty much going to go unused. I had the one pair I'd taken to the hospital, but the others were just loose, and I keep coming across them at weird times. It's like I'm being haunted or something! I'll turn over a basket of laundry and BAM! giant pink underpants end up tangled with something I'm looking for. I'll reach for a pair of socks, and a ghostly pair of white granny panties will be right next to what I'm looking for. I don't even know how they all got to different places in the house, but I can't seem to get rid of them! I swear, I think they're multiplying. Soon, every time I open a cupboard or unscrew a jar of peanut butter, there will be underwear inside waiting to tangle itself around my hands. They are following me! They are mad that I didn't wear them more, I think. When I bought them I didn't know I was making a lifelong commitment!

So, I'm just throwing it out here, in case any of you have a solution. How do I end an underpants haunting? I'll take any and all suggestions. Thank you for your time!

RANDOM ACTS OF BLOGGING 2022 STYLE

 1) Happy New Year, you guys! It's 2022 and so far...well, an asteroid hasn't fallen onto any of us and Godzilla hasn't crawled his (her?) way out of any nearby bodies of water! So, I don't care if we're only three days in, I'm calling that a win! Woo-Hoo!

2) The holidays were swell, thanks for asking. Because of my afore mentioned surgery, we didn't do a ton of festivities. We spent Christmas eve with Mr. Lee, wherein I cooked a very large dinner for Steve and his dad and we visited for a while. It was really fun! 

We spent Christmas Day with my mom and the extended family over there. I am still wary of spending time with big groups of people, but sometimes we aren't given much of a choice on things. Two of my nieces are now expecting babies, so there was much excitement about that! There was also a puppy there, which was much more my speed, so I got in some good cuddle time with him!

Probably the best part was dirty Santa, which is always fun and funny. The bag I originally picked turned out to hold a huge box of Godiva chocolate. Any other year, I would have bitten anyone who tried to take it from me, but it wasn't going to be doing me much good this year! Heehee! Thankfully someone took pity on me and took it away and I ended up with one of those plaid, earflap lumberjack hats. I love it so much, but Steve has claimed it for his own. I'm sure I can steal it for when I want to look like a Canadian hoser, so I'm not bothered too much. We ended the day watching movies and sleeping, so I guess you could say it was a pretty great Christmas.

3) One of my childhood best friends, who was like a sister to me for years, lost her husband to Covid yesterday. They are my age, not old or infirm, but my age. He had been on a ventilator for a while, I gather, and was struggling, but she was asking for prayers. I did pray, and hard, but he didn't get better. It broke my heart for her. I didn't know the guy, and to be honest, I haven't spoken face to face with her for close to 20 years, but somehow that didn't matter. When you are ever close to someone, I don't think you really ever stop caring about them, and she has had so much hard luck in her life since we were friends. I wanted desperately for him to get better so he could go back to her and their son, but it just didn't work out that way. Sometimes prayers just don't work like you think they will. His funeral is tomorrow, and I wish I could go, but I can't. 

4) Speaking of Covid, guess who has been quarantined for the past few days because of it? The Pratt family! Technically, Steve came down with it first and now I'm pretty sure I have it, too. I hadn't had a chance to get my booster yet, which sucks. Since my surgery, I had avoided going back to church because I was recovering and also because we have a few people there who haven't ever taken the whole pandemic seriously. I purposefully even missed one more Sunday than I actually needed to just to make sure I was in the clear. Steve went, because he had felt bad for missing so much, and wouldn't you know it...a couple came to church who didn't know that they had it. Steve shook the guy's hand and that's all it took. Weirdly, the man was fully vaccinated and had had his booster, but he still got it. We didn't know until Thursday that they were sick, but that's when Steve started coughing. He had a regular doctor's appointment the next day, where they gave him one of the tests that take a few days to get back, but the doctor said he should go get a rapid test, just to be safe. It took him two days to find a walk-in clinic that could see him. They are so busy that they have to stop taking walk ins by 11:00AM, but he finally managed to get a test and found out he was positive. He says he doesn't feel bad except for the coughing, which is good! I don't feel so great and I've had a low fever, coughing and runny nose, but it isn't terrible. It's like having an annoying cold. Maybe it is just an annoying cold, but we can't take any chances. Thankfully I'm stronger than I was even a week ago, so maybe it won't get any worse. Also, we didn't get any groceries before we found out we needed to quarantine, and we've had a hell of a time getting things delivered to our house, so it's good I'm not eating much at the moment. But it could be worse, so I'm not going to dwell too much on it! It just means I get to sit around in my nightgown for a couple of days while I avoid doing anything productive. That's not so terrible. :)

5) Being stuck at home and away from people, I've been thinking a lot about the people I haven't gotten to see in a long time. I'm really very worried that I'll never see some of them again. I know that sounds dire, but at this point it is also very possible. I hate the idea of that. I'm fairly sure they just don't want to see me, even after it's safe to do so. It's not like we haven't had the chance or opportunity even when it was safe, but what can you do? I wish I knew what I did to cause it. It makes me so sad and makes my heart hurt.

6) It snowed here last night! It looks to be about 5 inches, but I didn't measure. It's so beautiful outside. The downside is that we lost some limbs and part of a tree fell on our garage, but thankfully it doesn't look like it did any damage. The really funny thing is that the day before it was almost 80 degrees, and we had tornadoes! Even in our neck of the woods, which hasn't had a serious warning since 1989, we had them. I had on my bike helmet and had my emergency bag strapped to my chest (Literally, that's how close it came) but thankfully it passed over. We have such weird weather here!

7) Except for the possible covid, I'm doing fine. I actually got to go back to work last week and everything! I'm still struggling to figure out how eating works now, though. Sometimes I feel hungry all day, but when I try to eat, I can't. Sometimes I can eat just fine. Sometimes I can't tell if I'm hungry at all. I know I can't eat chicken, but I can eat lentils and eggs, and I figured out how to make a kind of gruel that doesn't taste terrible and has some nutritional value. You know, I kind of thought this surgery was an easier way to control my weight, but it really isn't. There is so much you have to figure out! You have to learn how to eat all over again! Also, I'll eventually have to begin exercising, and that'll be hard because I'm so tired all the time. Eh, I'll figure it out. I'm a smart cookie.

Want to know something weird, though? People are sometimes kind of rude about it. Granted, I don't think they mean to be, but they have a lot of anecdotes. They say things like "You know this might not work. I've heard that you can just eat and gain all of your weight back" or "I knew a lady who had this and one day she just died. You really need to be careful." So, I mean, WTF? I already have enough anxiety about this, but it's still not fun for other people to come out with stuff like that!

And although I can't 100% prove it, I know there are some people who, and they'd never admit to it, but I get the impression that they are kind of grossed out at the thought of what I had done, and by extension, they are grossed out by me. That makes me feel like a freak show on wheels! Ugh. I just didn't think there would be so many OPINIONS about it. Geez.

8) Wow, this is a lot of thoughts. I'll just end it here. HAPPY NEW YEAR!

A WEIGHTY ISSUE VOL. 3

Hello again!

Look, don't worry. Not every entry on my blog is going to be about this surgery, I promise. I mean, I might mention it from time to time, but I'm not some expert about what I've had done and I don't think I'll want to turn into some kind of guru about it. I'll do my best not to create a hashtag or a new IG account called "The Incredible Shrinking Kelly" or anything like that. In fact, I hope I don't have to mention it very often again!  

I've done it. It's done. It's a part of my life now and I've got to learn to adapt to it. 

But I am going to write one last update (for now, at least) about how I'm doing and all of that. I'm sure one of you cares, after all! Haha!

I'm almost two weeks out from having the vertical gastric sleeve and I'm feeling much better. I'm not 100%, but that is to be expected. Most of my soreness is gone, except for one incision site where they had to stitch a muscle back together. That should probably be feeling better than it is, but I made the mistake early on of trying to lie on my back. Apparently that was stupid of me, because I couldn't get back up. Steve couldn't help me up. There was only me, lying on my back like a sad turtle, with what felt like what I imagine a bullet wound feels like. I finally managed to squirm my way back on my feet, but I'm pretty sure I either pulled out an internal stitch, or viciously pulled a muscle in my side. Either way, that bitch still hurts! 

I've graduated from sleeping in the chair and can now sleep in the bed, as long as I'm propped up, which is nice. I'm still trying to drink all my drinks and it sucks. If I'm not thinking about it, I can drink water all day. Now that I have to measure it all, it's much harder. I don't know why. Stupid brain! I'm still really weak and get tired easily, but honestly, I'm running on about 350-400 calories a day and I haven't been cleared to take vitamins yet. I suppose I'm lucky that I'm able to function at all, but so far I'm doing ok. I've even run a couple of errands by myself, which was awful, but I was determined not to be stuck inside all day. I'm mostly avoiding going out so that I don't catch the flu, or a cold, or even COVID (I can't have a booster until I talk to the surgeon) because if I cough, or sneeze, or throw up, I think my abdomen would explode. Also, I want to see my family at Christmas. If my mom doesn't see me in person soon, I'm fairly certain she'll disown me. Getting back to normal is something I'd like to do very soon!

But as I'm healing, I'm coming into a lot of fears. What if this doesn't work? What if I went through all of this bullshit and I don't lose weight - or even worse - lose very little and no more? That can happen. it is a legit statistic. Some people just don't respond to it. 

Also, a lot of how you succeed in this process comes down to discipline with food and exercise and I already know I am not great with that. You shouldn't have 80% of your stomach taken out and then screw that up, ya know? I'm afraid I'm not strong enough. What if I fail?

Another weird thing that has been happening, is that I'm feeling very hungry at times. Granted, I'm living on liquids, which could be the culprit, but I wasn't supposed to feel hungry. The surgery is supposed to take care of ending the feeling hungry portion of things, but there are times when I'm starving. It's frustrating. What if, when I'm healed enough to eat regular food, I can't stop? Or, if I can control that, will I be hungry forever?

Ugh. There are a lot of worries in my head right now, and it takes up a lot of my brain space, but honestly, I just want to do the best I can with all of this. I don't know how it will shake out in the end. I hope I'm able to follow the program and find what works for me, and not be an idiot about things when it comes down to it. I still have a long way to go, so I'd appreciate your good vibes or whatever you can send my way!

But I don't want to end this on a downer. There is still a chance this will work exactly as it's supposed to and I'll be so much healthier down the line. I'm sure there will be some disappointment and backsliding, but there is an equal chance that I'll do great. The biggest problem at this point is not knowing. I don't want to sabotage myself ahead of time out of fear.

Oh, and just so that you can be excited for me, later this week, I get to eat an egg! A whole egg! I've been told it's akin to a religious experience.

TO EGGS! 

A WEIGHTY ISSUE VOL. 2

The surgery has been had. 

In a word…ouch.

I had to be at the hospital very, very early in the morning so that I could be my surgeon’s first patient of the day. It started out fairly normal, I guess. I got taken back to a sheeted-off section in pre-op, told to get naked, and to put on the gown and weird mesh underpants that they gave me. Do you know how vulnerable you can feel while standing naked less than 5 feet from a crowd of strangers and trying not to fall down while trying to get your legs into weird mesh underpants? Well, it’s very vulnerable!

I got the pokes, pills, and prods, an IV was inserted into my arm so deep I swear it hit bone! The anesthesiologist came in to make some jokes and tell me what to expect, and when I asked him if I could have something to chill me out (I was very nervous) he nodded his head at the nurse and from then on I was flying high! I think Steve came in at some point, but honestly I don’t remember very much. I do remember being wheeled into the operating room, and then being wheeled out again, though! I had to get out of the bed and walk into the recovery room myself, which sucked, but I made it! There were two nurses who were very attentive, and they came in and checked my vitals and asked questions, and I spent a good portion of time hallucinating things! 

Steve was a champ, too! He stayed with me the whole time, even though he had to have been bored. He had spoken to the doctor, who told him my surgery went perfectly and they didn’t have to do any biopsies (a thing they do if they notice weirdness) and that my liver looked great! I’ve never had anyone compliment my liver, so that was nice. One thing they gave him were pictures from the surgery. Since it was all done laparoscopically, they had cameras in my abdomen taking pictures! Those pictures were GROSS!! He kept waking me up and asking “Do you want to see the pictures again?!” I did not! Stomachs are ugly. I think that’s why God put them on our insides. I could post those pictures here, but A) I don’t think you’d enjoy seeing them, and B) it feels weirdly intimate to have people looking at my organs. So…just Google it if you need to see, or you can text me if you truly have to see my insides! Heehee.

Dear Lord, everything hurt so bad. It wasn’t the incisions, but the CO2 gas bubbles they pumped into me to give them the room to work. None of the pain meds they gave me did any good, not even the good stuff! I know I complained about being in pain a lot, so I hope they didn’t get annoyed with me. In my state of mind it was all I could think of!

I kept going in and out of consciousness for a while until I was told I had to get up and walk. Apparently, you have to pass the lap test, which meant I couldn’t go home until I did 15 laps around the hallway. I was not in the mood to walk, but walk I did! Well, I did it in two halves, but I did it! I have no concept of time or anything else until they can in with my discharge papers, and they gave me a bunch of instructions I didn’t understand (thankfully Steve was listening) and they told me I was ready to go home!  The last bit of fun I had was trying to get dressed and having the IV bandage get caught on my sleeve and pull off. So. Much. Blood! I kind of wished I could have stayed overnight, but they didn’t deem it necessary, so I went home.

I don’t remember the ride, or getting home, but eventually I was in my chair trying to sleep off the last dregs of my drugs.  Even at home, I had to keep waking up every hour to walk around the house to prevent blood clots and stuff, I was told. Great, I get through the surgery and now I have to worry about rogue blood clots! Aaaargh! 

As of this writing, it’s been three days since the surgery. I’ve spent a lot of time walking around, panicking about blood clots and strokes, taking naps, watching TV, trying to drink enough liquids (I have goals I have to meet. Yuck.) and struggling not to barf. Today I got to graduate to drinking protein shakes! I can only drink them an ounce at a time, so it takes a long, long time. I feel like I’m drinking all the damn day! I have to drink from a medicine cup so I don’t swallow too much at a time, so it’s a process. 

There are times when I wonder if I made a mistake, but I think that’s because it’s hard to get used to. Also, I know my life has to change a lot for this to be worth it, which is scary. It’s also scary that I made a decision specifically for myself. I didn’t do this for anyone else, so I have to take this responsibility all on myself not to waste the opportunity I’ve been given to change some things that I didn’t like about myself, and that is also hard. It is a lot!!

The one really surprising thing (and I know how stupid this is going to sound) was how many people have been checking up on me and being concerned about me. When Steve told me about all the people who had texted and called him to ask about me, I almost cried. I do t think I’ve ever verbalized it to myself, but I always kind of thought people forgot about me until I got in touch with them. That’s weird, I know, but I didn’t expect that anyone would remember, much less care very much, that I would be doing this, and I have been overwhelmed with the kindness that people have shown me. It’s very humbling!

So that’s the status for now. I’m walking, sipping, trying not to barf and taking 900 medications that I have to crush, and being amazed about how many people that care!