RANDOM ACTS OF BLOGGING 6: THE BLOGGANING

1) This morning while I was getting ready for work, I reached over and grabbed one of the sample bottles of perfume that I keep on the edge of my vanity.  I have a lot of these tiny bottles as a result of being a member of Birchbox and because I'd sent off for some samples from a new perfume company I found on the web. The vial didn't have a name on it, just a number, and I couldn't smell which one I picked up through the glass.  I was in a hurry, so I didn't think about it before I sprayed it on and immediately realized that I'd put on one of the samples of men's cologne that I'd been sent from that new company.  Since it's one I don't usually wear, I haven't gone nose blind to it and I have been smelling it all morning.

I normally wouldn't have a problem with that, but y'all, this is a sexy smelling men's cologne and it's distracting!  I love it when I come across a good smelling man. I used to make my boyfriends uncomfortable at times because if they just naturally smelled good (maybe it's a pheromone thing?) or wore cologne that I liked, I'd pretty much latch myself to them and just sniff them for a while. That actually sounds pornier than it should, but it's true. 
 
I think that because I don't see very well, my sense of smell is heightened more than it should be. Because of that, I am affected by scents almost more than any other thing. I can't help it!  It's a very primal thing.  Of course, with great power comes great disappointment. If I don't like the way a person smells, it can ruin the way I feel about them. If I really don't like the way they smell, I can't be around them at all.

Good grief, I just made myself sound like a golden retriever. :) Well, at least I don't bark. OK, well, sometimes I do.

Anyway, so this cologne is awesome and would smell good on a man, and Steve doesn't like wearing cologne, so I need someone who will volunteer to wear this stuff (I don't even know what it's called) so I can just stand by and sniff you.  That's not a weird request, is it?  Anyone?

Eh, I can probably find someone on Craigslist!  ; )

2) I hurt myself this morning when I was getting some Jell-O for my lunch.  I hurt myself on Jell-O.  How is that even a thing that can happen?  That's more embarrassing than the time I hurt myself crocheting.

3) Last Saturday night, Steve, Anthony and I went out together for the evening.  We started out at the food truck rally, which would have been cool if the lines weren't so darn long!  The only things I was interested in trying had ridiculously long lines, and we didn't have a lot of time, so I ended up having a hipster, Margarita popsicle for dinner.  It was very good, hipster or not! I should have fancy popsicles for dinner more often! :)
After that, we went to a play Anthony had heard about.  It was very unusual.  I don't mean it was bad, because it wasn't, it was just very different from what I'm used to.  For starters, it was held in an old, historic house that I didn't even know existed called The Lowry House.  It was a really beautiful house, and I wish I'd had time to tour it, but there were a lot of people wondering around and I didn't want to lose my seat, so we sat and waited for the show to begin. We saw "Bluebeard: the Trial of Gilles de Rais" which was the story about the man who inspired the fairy tale Bluebeard.  Only instead of killing his wives, he seems to have been a child rapist and serial killer.  Maybe.  No one really knows if he actually did those awful things or if he was only accused of them and then admitted to them so that he wouldn't be tortured.  The play was set up like a trial.  It was actually interesting, if not a bit long.   The main guy (Gille de Rais) was a fantastic actor, and as far as I could tell, they were all local folks. so it was both odd and impressive.

Once it was over, all of the actors stood outside in a kind of receiving line so that you could talk to them as you left. I know it was rude and I shouldn't have done it, but I felt too awkward talking to them, so I just ran past them all and hid in the car. I'm an awful person, but I was just too shy.  I might have shouted that they did a good job as I went by, but I can't be sure any of them heard it. :(

4) I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but it bears repeating: How did the couple in The Pina Colada song not end up in a screaming fight when they met up with each other?  Basically, we are led to believe that they are perfectly OK with the fact that each of them were caught getting ready to cheat on the other one, but there wasn't a problem because they still ended up together at the end?  I call shenanigans.

I think they needed couples therapy, not rum drinks.

5) I accidentally killed a turtle over the weekend.  I feel really terrible about it.  Its ghost will probably haunt me.  It will haunt me slowly!

AN INTROSPECTIVE QUICKIE

Sometimes I wonder if I shouldn't just grow up.

I'm a ridiculous, silly person and I have no idea what I'm supposed to be doing.

I know so many people who do amazing things, and I'm just here...making dumb jokes, telling weird stories and making videos and pictures for friends.  That's not a very useful thing.

I feel like I should apologize to everyone I know for not having it more together.

Sorry, you guys!

I feel like I'm running out of time.

Maybe one day I'll figure it out.  I hope so.

A QUICKY: A SILVER LINING

Last week I finished my physical therapy! 

I can definitely tell a difference in how I feel, so I know it helped.  My arm doesn't go numb nearly as often and I have learned some stretching exercises to help if my neck and shoulders start hurting again.   I still have some pain, but so far, it's not nearly as bad as it was before.  It's more annoying than anything, really.  It's like sitting in a chair that has a big button in the upholstery, right at the top of my back, and no matter where I turn I can't get away from the button.  But hey, it's better than not being able to feel my hands, so I'll take it! :)

The silver lining I spoke of isn't that I was done with therapy, though.  It's better!  As I mentioned, the doctor said I have bone spurs, degenerative disk disease (which sounds worse than I think it really is), and arthritis in my neck. Apparently, the arthritis has made it possible for me to tell when it's going to rain!  My neck knob (or the C7 vertebra prominens if you're nasty) now functions as a weather detecting device!  I never thought that was a real thing.  You always hear of old timers that say they can tell the weather by their knee or elbow or something like that. It's really a thing, though! I can attest!  Every time it gets ready to rain, my neck starts hurting.  How funny is that?

So if you ever see me rubbing my neck, don't plan any picnics!

James Spann wishes he was that accurate.  

(Also, just like Karen, my boobs can tell the weather, but that's a different process.)

RANDOM ACTS OF BLOGGING 5: ELECTRIC BLOGGALOO

1) I had a weird and kind of upsetting dream the other night.  I'mma tell you about it.

The other night I dreamed I was dead.  I didn't die in the dream, because when stuff like that happens a person tends to wake up completely.  No, I started off the dream knowing I was dead.  I could see my coffin, I could see my body in the coffin (although even in my dream I wouldn't get close to it or look at it in detail because it was giving me the serious wiggins) but I could still walk around and interact with people.  I guess I was dreaming I was a ghost, which is a new one for me.

I don't remember many details, but I do remember that I understood that I was going to be lying in state three days.  I only had those three days to do whatever it was I had to do as a walking dead person.  On the third day was my funeral and the minute they closed the coffin lid, I'd go on to wherever it was I was going to go.  It was a stressful dream.  As I said, I can't remember what I actually did, but one thing I know I was trying to do was look for people I loved so that I could say goodbye, only I couldn't find them all.  I was rushing around until my funeral (and I didn't recognize ANYONE who was there. Boo, you guys. Seriously.) and when it was over, I knew they were going close the lid, so I ran up and tried to keep that from happening.  I didn't make it.

When the lid closed, I blinked and realized I didn't go to any afterlife that I'd ever heard of. I wasn't in heaven or hell, I was in a library of some sort.  It didn't have books, but it did have computers.  I finally asked someone what was going on, and they told me I was in the year 3017. I'd been sent to the future!  I was horrified, because I knew I was too far gone to ever see anyone I knew again, but I jumped onto a computer and tried looking up information on my friends and family, only I couldn't find it because it was over 1,000 years ago and no one had kept records that long.

It was a sad dream and I didn't like it.  I did get to go to the future, though, so that was kind of interesting.  Silver lining, I guess.

2) Steve and I went to a very sweet wedding on Saturday!  His band director's daughter got married at a place called Hudson Family Barn, which was a lovely, lovely spot.

I wasn't exactly expecting the place to be as nice as it turned out to be.  I had designed their wedding invitations and when she told me where she was getting married, she just told me it was in someone's barn.  Now, I'm not so far out of the loop that I didn't know that barn weddings are a thing.  I have Pinterest, after all!  I was literally expecting a barn that had once held animals and farm equipment, but as it turns out, it was a gorgeous spot that (I think) had actually been created to hold events.  There were three buildings, all designed to look like old farm buildings, but in a good way.  It's kind of hard to explain, so here are a few pictures I took:

 It really was a great spot for a wedding and the day was slap your eyes out gorgeous, so everything turned out beautifully!

There was only really two things that bothered me about the whole thing.   Let me just get this out of the way first: I personally think that it is absolutely tacky to take pictures with your phone during someone's wedding.  I know, I know, that isn't a popular opinion, but people holding out phones ruins a lot of the professional pictures AND since some people haven't figured out how to mute their phones, you hear camera sounds during the ceremony.  I'm a big believer of having fun during your wedding ceremony if that's what you want, but still, it's a sacrament and should be treated with at least a little solemnity.  When the bride walked down the aisle, at least 5 people in front of us (we were on the third pew, so I have no idea how many people behind us were doing it) held out their phones to take pictures. There was a brass ensemble playing and it was interrupted by camera sounds.  Even when the music stopped and the preacher started the ceremony, someone's mawmaw held out her phone and started snapping away, sound on her phone turned all the way up.  It literally sounded like:

"Dearly beloved, we are *CAMERASOUND* in the sight of God and *CAMERASOUND* *CAMERASOUND* *CAMERASOUND* and I believe it was the Apostle John who said *CAMERASOUNDCAMERASOUNDCAMERASOUND* bond between two people who...."

It was so annoying and rude! Maybe the bride and groom didn't care and therefore I shouldn't care, but I don't like it when people have no manners!  Then there were the people sitting in the seat directly in front of us. Oh. My. Word.  These people got on my nerves!  When we arrived and sat down, as I said, we were on the third row.  We were sitting towards the middle, and the man of the couple was sitting ahead of us, but got up and went someplace.  I thought he was one of the photographers, because he had a big DSLR camera around his neck, but he never moved to take any pictures before the wedding started.  He came and sat down right in front of me.  I mean, he blocked everything.  Then his wife (I guess) walked over and he pulled out a big, blue towel and spread it over the pew.  Now, the pews were a little splintery (I lost a new pair of hose that day) but they weren't dirty.  This lady came wearing a white pants suit, and I guess she figured that the outside was just too filthy for it.  Even the mothers of the bride and groom, wearing their fancy dresses, didn't drape a towel over the pew.  It didn't really annoy me, exactly, I just thought it was tactless and made the pews look junky, plus it made me feel as if they were making a big deal about having to be outside or something. How about you don't wear a white suit to an outside wedding? (Or at all, but that's just my humble opinion.)

Immediately after the ceremony began, both of these people pulled out cameras.  He had his big DSLR and she had her phone, and while she took pictures, the guy was filming on his big ass camera and he didn't care how much he was blocking everyone behind him.  I couldn't see the couple get married because his big, damn camera and his big, damn head, kept getting in my way.  I made a dramatic recreation so you can see what it was like for everyone behind him:

Today the rude wedding man will be played by Baby Chewbacca.

 

Just imagine Chewbacca holding a big, bright camera and waving it around his head and completely blocking what was going on.  I actually did that thing where I sighed really loudly, hoping he'd hear and maybe have a little shame, but he never did.  Steve thought I was disapproving of the ceremony and just being rude, but really, I was just trying not to punch this guy in the back of the head.

I did have one moment of embarrassment right before we left the venue.  The groomsmen were tearing down the wedding decorations and carrying them back to the storage shed, but I wanted to get a picture of the arch before they got to it.  I walked up ahead of them and sort of bent down to get the shot I wanted, when a big gust of wind blew the back of my dress pretty much over my head. I'm just thankful I was wearing a slip and decent underwear!

But everything else was great and I'm glad the wedding went so well.  :)

 3) I woke up at 2:00 AM with a weird desire to learn how to make edible sequins.  I don't know why.  Anyway, I looked it up online and those are actually a thing!  Who knew?

WAIT, I REMEMBERED #3

3) Because I know a couple of you were concerned, I was going to let you know that my dingy gray funk is now just sort of really pale gray.  It's not so much of a funk anymore as it is a film over everything.  A much thinner film than it was, though, thankfully. 

This has been a tough one, but I'm definitely feeling better than I was.

My inner music is almost back, though, which is good.  I now that sounds weird, so let me explain.  I usually always have music in my head.  It's a good thing, because when it isn't overpowering stuff (like Fat Bottomed Girls was literally stuck in there for days) it's just a good thing to have inside.  It gives me a beat to walk to and something to hum. It's a happy thing. Sometimes, though, when things get funky (in a bad way) the music stops and it gets too quiet in my head and everything feels too heavy.  That isn't a thing that happens a lot, so when it does, it's just a little scary.  It's like being in a house when the power goes off, so instead of that background noise of the little machines doing their thing that we get used to, you hear the weird sounds of your house settling.  I don't like it when my house settles. 

Buuuut, recently it's been like someone inside of me has been rolling a radio dial really fast.  So I can hear it, but I can't really catch it yet. I did have a moment when I was getting ready this morning when "Me and Mrs. Jones" came up on my play list and I almost had it back!  So, I'm getting there.  I'm hoping it sticks.

Thank you for caring, though! I'm glad you do.

Oh, and while I'm here...

4) Do you know why I was late to work today? 

Just as I was getting into the shower, the guy who does our quarterly bug spraying thing showed up.  When I say I was just getting in the shower, I mean I was completely ready to get into the shower, only the water wasn't warm enough.  I had to turn off the lights, stand for a minute or two wrapped in the decorative outer shower curtain in case he passed by the bathroom window until I could actually stand to get under the water, and I just stayed in the shower until Steve told me he was gone.  Steve was kind enough to make himself late for work so that he could let me know when it was safe to come out. I was in there a LONG time.

I'm glad the hot water held out.

RANDOM ACTS OF BLOGGING

1) I went to see Batman vs. Superman on Saturday night and I liked it.  I don't care what anyone else says, it wasn't terrible.  It was dark and kind of humorless, but it wasn't a bad movie.  If you want a funny superhero movie, go see one from Marvel!  I even liked Ben Affleck as Batman!  So there, world!  Someone out there liked it.

I didn't have the best time while I was in the theater, though, because a teenage couple decided that they were going to sit right next to me and carnally explore one another during the movie.  I was so grossed out.  It was a weird situation, because even though there was an almost entirely empty row just ahead of us (we were in the back row of lower seats) and, in fact, many other places they could have sat, these two goobers decided that sitting right next to me was the best course of action.  When they first came in and sat down, I thought they were preteen kids coming in with their parents and they just didn't want to sit right next to them.  The boy sat down next to me and then the girl sat next to him.  I was uncomfortable, because I don't like strangers sitting that close to me when they don't have to, but what could I do?  Then they got up, moved down a seat to leave one in between us, but then got right back up and moved back.  Then the guy raised the armrest in between them and the girl pretty much lay down in his lap with her feet up on the seats ahead of us. I glanced over and saw how old they were, realized they were on a date, and prayed that they'd just watch the movie and leave each other alone. 

That prayer was not answered.

Look, I was a teenager once and did my fair share of movie theater kissing. However, when I knew I wasn't going to be watching the movie, I didn't sit right up in front of the theater, pressed up against a perfect stranger while I was doing it!  They were practically in my lap!  It was like they saw me and thought "Oh, she looks nice and squishy, let's go lie on her while we are publicly inappropriate!" They were literally so close to me that I could smell what she'd washed her hair with, and the grease from whatever restaurant they'd had dinner at. I could feel their body heat, and that is closer than I allow a lot of people I know and like to be to me.  Really, if I want to feel your temperature through your clothes, I'm really going to want to have to be that near to you at my own discretion.  I'm also going to expect you to take me to dinner and I at least know you're first name! Oh, and they were kissing SO DAMN LOUD.  It was gross. So gross.  I was so uncomfortable, but I didn't know what to do!  I wanted so badly to be mean and say something rude to get them away from me, but I couldn't do it! Times like this are when I really wish I hadn't had politeness instilled into my brain. I simply didn't know what to do.  Had I known that there were empty seats on the other side of my friend, I'd have just moved, but I thought the seats were full.  I didn't want to have to drag Steve and Anthony off somewhere else in the middle of the movie. I was stuck.  Y'all, by the time the movie was over (2.5 long ass hours later) I was afraid I was going to need to go to a clinic for an STD panel and pregnancy test.   Oh, and to top it off, when that dumb chick wasn't attached to her boyfriend's face, she was texting, and the light from the screen was in my eyes. So...yeah.  Good times.

But Wonder Woman was in the movie, and she's been my favorite since I was young enough for Underoos, so I was glad for that! 

Bleh.  I still feel unclean.

2) So, I've been going to physical therapy for my back/neck and it is actually noticeably helping!  The woman is from my church, and the pastor's daughter, and she is the DPT at the clinic I'm going to.  I'm glad for that, because I feel more comfortable knowing the person who is helping me.  She was glad that I wanted to come to her clinic, because where she's located is in a pain management center and she told me that a lot of the people who come in to be assessed are people with chronic pain and on really hardcore pain meds, and that there isn't really anything she can do to help them. 

I am someone she can help!  Yay!  What she is helping me with is to stretch the muscles in my neck and upper back, which is helping me regain the natural curve to my spine. I have to do a lot of weird neck stretches and posture exercises. She also applies this heated thingie (that is it's scientific name, I swear) to my neck and back, and she digs around in my muscles with her exceptionally bony fingers to undo knots and realign some kind of thing I have in my neck.  If it wasn't for the more painful things, it would almost be like going to a really unusual spa for an angry massage. My favorite thing, though, is the E-Stim machine!  She applies these big pads to my neck and back and sends electric pulses into my muscles. It was the thing I was worried about before, thinking it would be like electro-shock treatment, but it is very nice and relaxing.

In fact, when I told the pastor that I liked it, he brought his own at-home e-stim machine to let me try out.  His daughters bought him a small one to use after he plays golf.  I was willing to give it a shot, but unfortunately, it wasn't a nice as the big, professional machine and I couldn't quite get the setting right and it was actually kind of painful.  I reached over to turn it off, and I accidentally turned the knob the wrong way! That was incredibly unpleasant!  I did manage to turn it off before I did myself any more damage, but I think I'm going to leave the e-stim treatments to the professionals. :)

3) There was more, but I can't remember what it was!  I'm sure it was entertaining, though. :) I'll probably remember it later.

THE NIGHTMARE SOLO

Have you ever had one of those nightmares where you walk into school, and someone grabs you by the arm and tells you that you're late for your presentation, and you're all "What presentation?" and you get pulled into an auditorium full of very serious people who are interested in your presentation, and you still have no idea what you're supposed to be presenting, and then you look down and you aren't wearing pants, and it's not in any of the good ways that not wearing pants can be, and everyone is looking at you and you still have no idea what you're supposed to be presenting, but it is obviously very important?

(Wow, holy run-on sentence, Batman.)

Well, that happened to me on Sunday.  Ok, not exactly that same thing, but very similar.  I didn't have to make a presentation exactly and I at least had an idea of what I was supposed to be doing, but I was pulled into a situation that I was not altogether prepared for and it wrecked me for a while.

I actually wasn't wearing pants, though,  but since I had on a dress that didn't seem to matter.

When our minister of music picked out the Easter music earlier this year, instead of picking out a proper, ready made Easter cantata, he picked out three songs that were specifically arranged for a choir.  One of those songs was called "This Blood" and it is a beautiful, very powerful, very long and kind of complicated song that was a soloist backed with a choir.  Originally, the music minister wanted me to sing it and I had agreed to do it, but I was very intimidated.  It wasn't exactly in my range, and it had a lot of ad lib sections that I didn't know if I could pull off.  After I thought about it, I asked Jim (the music minister) if he thought me doing it was actually a good idea. Number one, I'm not exactly in the choir.  I am the sound tech and I really enjoy doing that job.  I've sung with the choir as a featured singer, but I never know if people get offended that he'd pull me in to do a solo since there are so many other people already in the choir that are available. Number two, it's such an awesome song, I didn't want to screw it up. I suppose he must've had second thoughts about me doing it as well, because a week later he told me that he'd asked another choir member to sing it instead of me.  To be honest, I was relieved.  I really liked the song, and wanted to sing it at some point, but it was supposed to be the climax of the Easter music service and that is a lot of pressure, even at a relatively small church such as ours.

Jim is such a sweetheart and he was convinced that by asking someone else to sing, that he had hurt my feelings. That wasn't the case, but he was genuinely worried about it. He fretted so much that I finally told him that I'd learn the song on my own as the understudy of the woman he'd asked to do it.  We do not generally have understudies for our choir, so I mainly offered to do it to make him feel better about the whole thing. I didn't really bother to learn the song, because what are the odds that the woman wouldn't be able to sing on Easter Sunday, right?  I mean, I knew the song well enough from sitting in the sound booth and listening to her during practice, but that was pretty much it. I knew enough of it, but not enough to perform the song.

The soloist Jim had picked had been working her ass off for weeks learning this song.  She had the range, but she mainly sings country/gospel songs, and this was not in her comfort zone.  She was very worried that she couldn't do it, but she could do it and she was coming along very well during practices. She practiced during Wednesday choir practice and sometimes on Sundays in between services. She was very dedicated.  She was also terrified of singing this song, but she had a lot of encouragement, and I think she was feeling better about the whole thing.

Saturday afternoon, I got a call at about 2:00 PM from Jim telling me that the soloist was sick and she didn't know if she'd be able to sing, and he wanted me to be ready to sing just in case she wouldn't be there.  I believe my initial reaction was a silent, but very intense "F*ck!!!!!"  I didn't say that to the music minister, of course, but I felt it in every cell of my body.  I'd been telling him this whole time I'd learned the song, but of course, I had not.  As I said, I knew it enough, but not enough to perform it, but I told him I'd be ready, just in case. After we got off of the phone, I went to my computer and played the song on repeat for two hours.  I didn't know all of the words, so I had to pull them up on the iPad to look at while I was making strawberry pretzel salad (the word salad doesn't make sense here, but just go with me. At least it didn't catch on fire.)  to take to my mom's house for Easter lunch.  So in between making a horrendous mess and getting covered in jello and whipped cream (also not in any of the good ways that can usually happen) I learned the words to the song, tried to figure out the ad-lib parts, and tried not to have a complete nervous come-apart.  I also didn't know if I'd actually have to do it at all, because for all we knew, the lady would be much better by the next day, but that didn't help me feel better about it!

I barely slept the night before because all I could think of was how badly I could screw up the song if I had to sing it.  My whole thing was this: church music can be incredibly important in setting the tone for the service, and I know from experience that if you really, really screw up a song, that will be the only thing people will remember when everything is over. I didn't want that to happen since there would be people visiting because of Easter and I didn't want to take away from the service.  I was also supposed to sing "Via Dolorosa" before the choir songs, because that song is kind of a tradition for our church and I know how to pronounce the Spanish parts. Y'all, I was so scared.  I know it doesn't sound like a big deal, and it shouldn't have been one, but I'd gotten so psyched out about everything that I was convinced I was going to ruin church forever!

When I got to church the next morning, sure enough, the soloist couldn't come because not only was she sick, but she had completely lost her voice. My nightmare solo was a go.  Oy.  I only got to practice twice before services and then everything happened.  I got through "Via Dolorosa" just fine, and went to stand with the choir after that and pretended (I mean, literally, I mouthed the words to the song like a freaking muppet) to sing the next song with them. By the time it was time for me to do the other song, I'd worried so much that I broke through to the other side and managed to sing the song without any major incidences.  I know that sounds anticlimactic and everything, but I was so relieved that I didn't ruin the song. I'm sure it wasn't as good as it could have been, and that if I'd practiced the way the original soloist had done, it would have been much, much better, but I didn't mess it up at least.  I was so riled up by the whole thing that by the time I got back to the sound booth to finish the services, I had no idea what the pastor talked about. I honestly don't remember big chunks of Easter Sunday services.  That's just how nervous I had gotten.

Anyway, as it turned out, for a last minute, barely practiced solo, it wasn't terrible and I didn't ruin Easter.

And not ruining Easter is a good thing!

BTW, this is the song I sang yesterday, only we used a recording, there wasn't any hand waving that I know of, and our choir is much smaller.



 

RANDOM ACTS OF BLOGGING

1) For those of your wondering, I have another update about my back!  Aren't you excited!

I believe I mentioned that I was going to have to have an MRI done.  I've had numerous scans done because of my lungs, so I wasn't worried about that bit of it at all.  At least I wasn't worried until they called me back and handed me a booklet that just so happened to mention that people who are claustrophobic might have a problem.  Sigh.  Nice.

I had thought it would be an open MRI, but I was mistaken.  However, I put on my brave pants and decided that since it was only my neck that would be scanned, I'd mostly be outside of the machine and would be able to stand it.  The radiologist gave me a set of big, 1970s DJ earphones and said we would listen to the new Loretta Lynn album and everything would be over in 10 minutes. So I lay down on the cot and the lady got me settled, handed me a panic button, and then she inserted me into the depths of Hell's belly button.

Y'all, it is well established that I am violently claustrophobic. I've gotten claustrophobic is small places and I've gotten claustrophobic in huge places that just happened to be full of people.  The only, and I swear the only, way I'm usually able to handle it is if I can convince myself that I can get out if I have to.  Sometimes I have to literally get up and leave, but mostly as long as I know I CAN leave, I can deal.  When she slid that cot into the MRI machine, I was in there up to my knees. I think I was in there for 14 years, and every second of that time I was in a state of high adrenaline fight or flight mode. I immediately started to panic, but I stayed still because I knew if I freaked out and pressed the panic button, they'd just stuff me back into the machine. I clamped my eyes shut and counted forwards and backwards, tried self hypnosis, and did everything I could to stay calm.  At least 10 times I came within an inch of screaming and clawing my way out of the thing, but I barely managed to stay inside. She finally slid the cot out, and it was only when I tried to stand up that I realized those giant earphones were attached to clamps that basically had my head in a vice.  If I had known that, I really don't think I could have stayed in there.  At least before, I thought I could get out, but if I'd known I was clamped in, I would have probably Hulk-smashed my way out of the thing and gone running off into the night.  After it was over, I shook for a solid hour.  It was terrible.

But the scans turned out to be super awesome.  I saw my spinal cord and medula oblongata, and also saw that my disks are slightly bulging into the spinal cord, which is less awesome, but still, the fact that I can see it is pretty neato. I even got to keep the scans, so when we finally get another chair and can have a friend over, I'mma pull those things out and show them off like vacation slides!

2) So, my blue funk has faded a bit and now it's just sort of a dingy gray, but the funk it still around.  At least now I can make complete sentences and just look at otters on my own.  I don't need to post them here.  I hate feeling like this, but I still can't seem to shake it off.  (Cue Taylor Swift.)  I don't know.  I'm ok sometimes, when I'm distracted or talking to someone, and other times I just sit staring at the wall and feeling sad.  Haha, it sounds weird to type it out like that.  Very emo of me, no? The weirdest part of it is that my music is gone. That has happened twice before, and it came back, but it's really quiet in here when it's gone.

I've mentioned that I don't like to feel feelings anymore. One day, when I don't feel so weird and protective about it, I'll explain why so that you folks will get that it isn't just something I say and you will understand me a bit better. All I know is that I usually have my armor on and it protects me and I can just let it all bounce off. I get dented, of course, but not too badly.  Sometimes, though, something just whacks against me hard enough, my armor falls apart and I open up like a busted can of biscuits and feelings go everywhere. With a bit of perseverance (and duct tape) you can eventually get the biscuits back in the can, but it takes a while and stuff gets messy.  I'm in the process.

Thanks to those of you who were concerned, though. I appreciate it. I'll be fine. I always am!

EDIT: Heh...I'm a busted up can of emotional biscuits.  Emotional Biscuits is going to be the name of my new band. 

3) So, yuck, enough of that.  Look! Puppies!

4) I went to see a movie by myself the other day!  I've done that once, years ago, because I got stood up for a date and figured maybe the whole evening shouldn't be a complete loss.  Steve was working last weekend, so I decided I'd go see 10 Cloverfield Lane because I wanted a excuse to get out of the house.  It wasn't bad.  It was more like an episode of the Twilight Zone, or X-Files than a movie, but it was entertaining.  I've realized I don't mind going to movies alone, but it is better when you have someone to talk to afterwards so that you can pull yourself out of it a bit. That is true, especially when the movie is creepy, and this one was.

At any rate, to date, I have finished an entire tube of Chapstick on my own without losing it, and I went to see a movie alone!  At this point, I might as well run for President because I'm on a roll!

I've been in sort of in a blue funk and I can't seem to shake it off.  So today we get otters. One cute "hug me" otter and one "grumpy otter." The grumpy one looks like I just told him I failed Algebra even after he spent a lot of evenings tutoring me.

(Steve's grandma used to make the same face that the grumpy otter is making.)

AN UPDATE

A couple of entries ago, I mentioned that I'd hurt myself somehow, probably last year, and had probably pinched a nerve in my back.  It only made sense, seeing at how my arm was going numb and everything was tingling.  Even the DPT I know said it was probably just a twisted disc or something similar, so when I went to my GP and he told me to go see an orthopedic (I think I said an osteopath, but I didn't know the difference) doctor, I figured that I'd be directed to the nearest chiropractor and be popped back into place!  Easy peasy.
Not so much, actually!

Yesterday I had my appointment. I honestly had no idea what was going to happen (I made sure to wear decent underwear just in case) but all they did was take some X-rays of my spine.  It was actually a bit anticlimactic, to be honest, but they took the things and sent me back into the exam room to wait on the doctor.  By this point, I was feeling as though I'd been repeatedly stabbed in my neck with a butter knife, but I had faith that they'd come in and twist me around a bit and fix it all.

The doc came in showed me my x-rays (I have lovely bones, just so you know) and as it turns out, I had not hurt myself and my problem is just a tiny bit more complicated than a pinched nerve.  It took her less than a minute to figure out what was wrong. She pointed out that my cervical vertebrae (which were way, WAY higher up in my body than I had thought) had a problem. Apparently, I have degenerative disc disease, arthritis and bone spurs! All in my neck!  That's kind of an embarrassment of riches.  You'd think stuff like that would get spread around in my body more.  She also pointed out how straight my spine was.  I was a tiny bit flattered until she said that was because my muscles were pretty much in a state of pissed off contractedness, which is a bad thing.  She did tell me, happily, that she didn't think I'd need surgery, but that they'd treat me with anti inflammatory drugs, muscle relaxers, and epidurals.

Haha, no. I know what an epidural is and I don't think I want that unless there is just no other way.

The muscle relaxers were a bit of a letdown, but the anti inflammatory thing works well for a while.  I also get to have another MRI done tonight, but at least this time they don't have to inject me with anything, so SCORE!

So what does all this mean?  Well, it could mean nothing.  The pain can just go away on its own. That would be number one on my wish list!

It can also mean I might have to be on medication forever, which would be OK as long as it helps.

It might also mean I will eventually lose the ability to do fine work with my hands if the nerves that are currently being irritated get damaged, which would be sad, but it would keep all of you from having to pretend to like the stuff I make for you!  Honestly, how much more jewelry and crochet can you really be polite about?

I might also eventually end up in a wheelchair, which would suck, but I'd save so much money on buying new shoes!

In a nutshell, I have a whole spectrum of possibilities!  I'll actually find out more next week when I got back to see the doctor.  Let's hope it's a lot more of the pain going away on its own and a lot less of the wheelchair thing. That's what I'm hoping anyway.

So, you know, finding out all of this was just a cherry on top of one of the best weeks ever for me!  If it gets any better, I'm going to be tempted to fling myself in front of a train out of sheer delight!

I did find a silver lining, though!  If I wind up not being able to use my hands for things, I'm one step closer to that helper monkey I'm always talking about!

I'm going to name him Henry.

EVEN MORE RANDOM ACTS OF BLOGGING

1) I've had time to think about my theory of mental time travel, and I know...I KNOW...it has flaws. All kinds of cause and effect problems come to the forefront, not to mention that if we will have the ability in the future to mentally influence people to do stuff, why hasn't someone made Hitler jump off of a roof?  There are obvious flaws.

I still stand by it.  Otherwise, I can't explain some of my past actions.  Don't judge me.

2) Today is Leap Day and I'd like desperately to do a fun thing that I've never done before.  You know, because Leap Day. I can't explain, it just seems right, so let's go with it.  However, I can never think of anything. I get a mental block. No joke, I can think of a thousand things when I don't have the time or the reason, but I go blank otherwise.  It's frustrating.

At any rate, I'll be taking suggestions. Keep it clean.

3) Do you remember last summer when I talked about having a bad reaction to some medication that I was taking? It was because of a change in manufacturer or because they switched me to a generic brand, but it all boiled down to the fact that the medicine had different ingredients. One of the things that the medicine did to me was make my ears ring, and even though I got switched back to the old medicine, it hasn't stopped. It's like high pitched sleigh bells ringing in my head all of the time. It's become so constant that it's become normal to me. It doesn't keep me from hearing other things, but when I'm in a quiet room, it's all I can hear. Yes, I finally told my doctor about it last week. I didn't say anything before because it's such a normal thing now that I forget about it until it's driving me crazy.

Anyway, this morning when I woke up, the ringing was super loud. I think it was because it was so quiet in the house, but I finally just said aloud "Gah, I wish the ringing in my ears would stop!" Steve rolled over and said "Well, maybe you should answer it."

...maybe I should answer it.

4) Well, that isn't a good thing.

I HAVE A THEORY

Bear with me.

Last night as I was falling asleep, I was thinking about the people that I've met during my life so far that I immediately felt a connection with.  You know what I mean, right?  You meet someone, and it doesn't feel like you are strangers getting to know each other, but like you are old friends that are just catching up? You get that feeling of "Oh, there you are! I've been waiting on you!"  That has happened to me a wonderful few times, as well as the opposite where I've met people and immediately disliked them for no discernible reason. 

So I have this theory...

What if, sometime in the future, someone has developed a type of non-corporeal time travel.  You can't physically travel in time, but you can contact yourself mentally (or maybe someone else can connect to you mentally for whatever reason) and although you don't get completely clear messages, you can at least get feelings about stuff if you have the right kind of psyche.  So, let's say, my future self wants to go back to experience being a kid or teenager again and in the inexact science that time travel would be (of course) the day that I land on happens to be the day I meet a certain person.  Obviously, my future self would know this person and have warm (or icky) feelings about them from the experience of knowing them, and since I can't get clear thoughts, I only get that feeling of either happiness or disgust! Maybe some people can "hear" more clearly than others and so that's why you never question certain situations. Why do I like and trust this person immediately? I don't know, it's just the way it is!  Why do you want to punch this person in the neck even though you just met them? Who knows?  Just go with it!

That would also explain why sometimes you might do stuff that makes perfect since at the time, but completely confuses you later on when you think about it! You aren't being controlled by someone, exactly, but something just seems like a good idea at the moment and you make a decision based on that idea. Since the person time traveling in your head can't stay there forever, when they're gone, you don't know why you felt that way to begin with.  It makes sense.

Of course, that opens up the idea that people are mentally time traveling for important reasons, like, certain people have to meet because the butterfly effect of their meeting and being friends causes certain things to happen that are important in the future.  Maybe there are bad guys who mentally time travel, too, and they get people to do bad things, and then good guys have to mentally time travel to get people to do good things so that the future isn't destroyed!

So I tell Steve about this when he comes to bed and he pointed out that the fact that I have come up with this theory out of nowhere, I may be accidentally getting a message too clearly and understanding the whole time travel thing could cause irreparable damage to the future. Or....or..maybe since I'm writing about it here, some random person (hello, future time travel pioneer!) will take this idea and create the technology to actually make it happen!  (Name it after me!)

So, if I have accidentally created a rift in the space time continuum, I apologize.  If I've given someone the idea of non-corporeal, mental time travel, you're welcome. :)

You know...I like my going-to-sleep thoughts much better than my suddenly-waking-up thoughts.

RANDOM ACTS OF BLOGGING

1) Boo.  I had gotten a really neat opportunity and had gotten kind of excited about it, but it didn't work out. A man I worked with at the Sprocket (ptooey) had been a long time, local TV news reporter before he worked there, and after he left, he jumped right back into reporting. We'd always gotten along really well when we worked together.  I'm friends with him on Facebook and he often mentions stories that he's working on.  Last week he sent out a casting call, of a sort, asking for volunteers to film a recreation of something that had to do with a story he was working on. It wasn't a big thing, but it sounded interesting. He needed a woman "between 35-40 with average build" who wouldn't mind that their face wouldn't be completely shown on screen.

It was like he was casting for my autobiography! Haha!

I volunteered. Actually, what I told him was that I was the right age, and even though I didn't know how average my build was (rowr) it should be fine, and that my face is at it's best when you can't see it in it's entirety! He said I'd be perfect for it and he explained everything and told me he'd let me know when the filming would be and then I didn't hear anything else. I kind of figured out that he probably didn't need me to do it anymore, but since he'd never said anything, I sent him a message.  He said management took over and they did the filming two days earlier so the story could run the next week.  Huh, well, thanks for letting me know! I wasn't mad or anything. As I said, I'd started to get the idea that they didn't need me when I didn't hear from him, but you'd think he'd have said something before I had to ask.  Eh, oh well.  I was a little disappointed, of course, but really only because it's so rare that I step out of my comfort zone voluntarily that it seemed like kind of a waste that I'd done it for something that didn't pan out.

At any rate the story is very interesting!  You can find out all about it here! 

Just think, that dark silhouette could have been me!  :)

2) I have hurt myself, yet again.  Actually, I think I probably hurt myself sometime last year and have slowly and carefully exacerbated the problem until it has how began causing me problems on a daily basis! Yay, me! For the past few weeks, my shoulders and left arm have been hurting. I thought I was getting the flu for a few days, but then my arm and hand started going numb in stages. I probably would have freaked out over my heart again if my back hadn't started prickling at the same time.  I'm fine unless I have to sit for long periods of time, which, unfortunately, is what I do everyday. The only way I could relieve the pain was lying down on the ground and stretching my arm out as far as it could go.  It felt like I needed to pop my back but I couldn't.  I tried, though!

My boss' daughter is a DPT, and Steve told me to ask her what I should do. I  didn't want to because it makes me uncomfortable to ask professional people to give me free advice, so he told her what was going on (when I wasn't there and couldn't object) and she was very cool about it.  She sat me down after church and started feeling around my spine. She found the spot that hurt and pressed on it. It was unpleasant. She told me I had some kind of disk torsion (or something, I don't know) and told me to talk to my doctor (I had an appointment the next day) about it.  Of course, she was thumb-deep in my spinal cord at the time, so if she'd told me to put a live ferret down my shirt and dance the Macarena, I'd have agreed!

She also put KT Tape on my back, which weirdly helped a lot.  I don't know how it works, but it did help. She told me I could leave it on for as long as I wanted, but to take it off it it started to hurt or itch. I left it on all day yesterday, but by that evening, it was itchy. I wanted to pull it off, but it didn't want to come off. It REALLY didn't want to come off. I'd resigned myself to living with tape on my back for the rest of my life, but finally just gritted my teeth and pulled it off.  It would have been easier to pull off my own face, and I dare say, it would have hurt less.  I feel like I've got a terrible sunburn on my back and I can't get all of the glue off of myself.  Yuck.

At any rate, My doctor is referring me to an osteopath to make sure no nerves are getting damaged and hopefully my arm will stop going numb! Yay!

3) I've been getting steady freelance design work lately!  Woo-Hoo!  I had forgotten how much I enjoy making things pretty. I just finished a wedding invitation for someone Steve knows.  I had a lot of fun with it, but I have to say, wedding invitations can be complicated. I spent DAYS on the set of drafts that I did, and I came up with six things I thought were kind of awesome! I remembered at the last second that she'd sent me an example of one she'd liked online, so I threw together something similar for her so that she'd know I hadn't forgotten it, and of course, the one I spent the least amount of time on was the one she picked!  Haha!  Oh, well, she's happy with them, so I'm happy.

I've also been working with another bride who's family has the potential to throw some professional design work my way, so I hope I can keep her happy, too!  :)  I'll be working on her stuff during my free time this week. I'm in wedding stuff up to my eyeballs.

My only problem is that when I bill these clients, I do not charge them nearly enough. I need to figure out how that works. I don't want to over charge, but I want to be fair to myself, too.  Eh, I'll figure it out one of these days. 

A SHAMEFUL STORY

To my knowledge, I have never told this story on my blog. I'm not even sure I've told people in real life. It's time. My shame can no longer be contained.

This painting is probably the only piece of legitimate art I have in my house.

 

I love this painting. I am not usually a fan of this style, but something about it just spoke to me. It also was a perfect match for the wall color in my office.  It doesn't look like it in the picture, but it compliments  beautifully. I've had it for almost 10 years.

My problem is that I only own it because I stole it.

I didn't mean to steal it.  I didn't even realize I had stolen it, at the time.

When I was in college getting my art degree, we had a very small art building. That's not so unusual at a college that's main purpose is churning out astrophysicists and engineers, but because of that, space was kind of an issue. When I came back to school for my last year, I walked into the lounge area of the building and saw that a lot of projects were piled everywhere. Mostly it was drawings, but there were a couple of paintings and this one caught my eye. The frame was peeling and there was a hole in the canvas, but I immediately wanted it. I couldn't read the signature, and I didn't know anyone in painting classes anyway, so I went to the office and asked the lady in there who the art belonged to and why it was in the lounge. I don't remember her exact words, but I do remember she basically said it didn't belong to anyone and was art that had been graded and that students had left behind over the summer. I know I asked her again if it belonged to anyone, and I know she said no.  Trust me, I'm way too paranoid to just assume something is free to be taken.  So I went and got the painting and took it home.  Over that semester, when art would get piled into the lounge, I'd sift through it and take stuff I liked.  Free art!  Woo!

My last semester of school, I walked into the lounge to see if anything interesting had been left in there over the break. The room was completely bare of any art. I was disappointed, of course, but I didn't think much of it until later on when I overheard someone asking where last semester's projects were being kept, and heard the reply that they were now in a locked room because stuff had gone missing.

SHAME!

I literally had no idea that the artwork that I was taking wasn't just left over, it was final project type stuff, which is usually a big deal and had been left there over the summer because it was being graded and there was no other place to put them! I had just been going in there and taking whatever I wanted, when there was a pretty good chance that the artist didn't get a chance to decide if they wanted to keep it or not!  Without realizing it, I was Thomas Crowning the sh*t out of the art department.  I almost died, right then and there, and in a perfect world I would have confessed and brought everything back. I didn't. I was too embarrassed.  I think I just went home and got rid of everything I hadn't given away, except for that painting.

It's still hanging on my wall in the same place it's been this whole time. Judging me.

Now you know that, at one point in my life, I was a prolific art thief and I never got caught!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

Happy birthday to me!  Well, yesterday, anyway.

Yes, I am now a woman of a certain age and that age is 38.  I'm no longer the young, beautiful, blushing spring flower that I once was. Pardon me while I weep in a corner.  *SOB*

Nah, just kidding! I'm still pretty awesome. Actually, I've got 38 years of awesome built up, so I'd say it's a fairly significant amount of awesome. 

My birthday was good. It was a good day. It wasn't the most exciting birthday I've ever had, but that may be because it was a Sunday and it was cold, and I was not feeling well.  I did manage to make it through the day without any major disaster, so at least that's a thing!  I went to church in the morning, had lunch with Mr. Lee and Steve that afternoon, and spent the rest of the day at home relaxing. 

The church was showing a movie last night and it was one I flat out refused to sit through. One day I'll explain why, when I'm not ashamed of myself. So I got it all ready except for pressing "PLAY" on the machine and left it to someone else so I could spend the rest of my day in my pajamas.  I know... pajamas, but it was just too cold here not to wear pants.

I'd actually been celebrating on and off since Friday, when my mom, sister and I went to lunch and went shopping. We usually do that together before our birthdays.  It was a lot of fun!  That night we also got to have dinner and watch TV with Anthony, who I've missed a lot since he changed jobs and he's been too busy to hang out much. 

Saturday was kind of a weird-ass day, but only because I think I experienced every emotion a person can have, all in the space of a couple of hours.  True story!  Steve and I were out, doing Saturday stuff and went from having an argument in a Cracker Barrel (well, not so much an argument as it was a misunderstanding. We didn't cause a scene and throw syrup or anything.) to laughing and joking five minutes later, to me getting frustrated as I ran all over town looking for something that apparently isn't sold until spring, getting my feelings hurt by a rather rude shop owner who didn't seem to feel I belonged in her store, and then I UGLY cried, and that is not an exaggeration, over a dog Steve wanted to bring home from an adopt-a-thon (he was a 12 year old dog named Augustus, and we can't have a dog right now for several reasons and I had to be the voice of reason about it, but the idea that we were leaving him behind and alone unhinged me for a while. Do you have any idea how hard it is to drive when you are full on weeping? Very hard! Oh, and just in case you're worried, if he is still not adopted by July, we're going back to get him.) THEN, less than an hour after I got home and calmed down from the dog thing, I got flowers delivered, which made me happy.  I honestly don't remember the rest of the day, because that was too many feelings to process in such a short amount of time and I think my brain shorted out.

On my actual birthday, lots of people at church very kindly remembered my birthday, and of course, my Facebook friends and family told me happy birthday, which is always nice.  So, all in all I either saw, spoke to, or got texts (and a video) from the people I love the most in the world and I don't know how things can really get much better than that! 

In light of full disclosure, there was one tiny thing that didn't go my way.  It's so stupid and personally embarrassing that I'm not going to tell you what it was, but it really was such a dumb, little, truly unimportant-in-the-scheme-of-all-things thing that I'm sorry I let it bring down my day even a little.  You know how sometimes little stuff can sometimes take on huge proportions when you think about them too much?  That's what it was.  I just wanted a certain thing to happen, and it didn't. I could have probably forced the issue, but I didn't want to, and got upset that no one read my mind.  It was really silly.  I think if I hadn't had so many other good things happen, it might have upset me more, but even then, it was a dumb thing to get upset over.

Stuff like that is the just way I'm made.  Really, it's because without those little flaws, the gods would get jealous and destroy me in a truly spectacular way. It's best for everyone that those flaws exist. :)

So anyway, let's see what my 38th year has in store. I hope it's lots of good things! Keep your fingers crossed for me! 

A QUICKIE

I woke up in the wee hours of the morning with the absolute worst feeling. I don't know what I was dreaming, but it must have been awful to wake up feeling like that.  It was all muzzy and unformed and I couldn't protect my brain from it because I wasn't all the way awake.

It was like my family leaving me at the airport on purpose with no way home and no way to call anyone to come and get me and no money for a cab, and even if I could get someone to let me borrow a phone, no matter who I called, no one would admit to leaving me at the airport.  It's the way I feel when I have the panic dreams where no one will give me a straight answer to my questions. Bleh.  It was irrational and panicky and I literally started picking apart everything I'd done and said in the past week or two to try and figure out what I'd done to make everyone hate me. I felt completely abandoned, and it didn't help that Steve had gotten up to get a drink, so when I did wake up I actually was alone. I even started composing apology letters to people in my head, just in case.

I even made Steve talk to me about what I could have done when he finally came back to bed, and trust me, he hates my irrational fears and the fact that I need to talk about them sometimes!

I know that none of this makes sense.

I'm not the only person I know that this happens to. It's a weird thing and I hate it!  I wonder why it never happens that we wake up in the middle of the night and think "Hey, remember that time you did this awesome thing? Oh, and think of all the people who love you and think you're great! You were really funny the other day. Your friends would never in a million years abandon you without closure or even get angry without explaining why! Bask in the warmth and safety of your life! You've never once made a truly bad decision, and even if you had, it won't ruin everything!"  Heh. That would be nice!

No, it's always the worst things that pop into my head.

Buuuuuut....at least I was sufficiently awake to decide to go to the gym super early.  So, silver lining?

Haha, I hate morning brain!




Just in case, though... please still love me! I didn't do it, whatever it was, on purpose! Probably. :)

A QUICKIE

I don't know about you, but cold weather makes me hungry for warm things.

It was snowing and yucky on my way to work, so I couldn't stop anywhere and get breakfast because my windshield had started freezing over (my heater was having one of it's not working days) and I wanted to get to work before I couldn't see anymore.

I had food in my bag, so I didn't starve or anything, but it was all cold and my brain is now telling the rest of me that it wasn't good enough and still wants something hot.

I'm not even hungry anymore, but I'd kiss someone right on the mouth if they'd bring me a biscuit.

(I think people may see that more of a threat than an enticement these days, but I'll at least leave it as an option.) 

MORE RANDOM ACTS OF BLOGGING

1) I can't believe it's the second week of February already!  This is nuts.  My mother always told me that when you get older, time goes faster, and now I understand!  I think I've figured out the phenomena, though.

Every day is the same. Well, close enough, anyway!  I don't think I have ever realized this until I started working at the church.  I have such a regular set of things that I have to do each week that the days just blend into one another.  It's really kind of weird when you think about it.  I bet it's the same when you have to drive a lot for your work; just miles and miles of road that eat up your time and after a while, you stop seeing it.  I'm lucky to have the job I have, so no complaints exactly, but you do have to break things up a bit.  Luckily, I have a few things I do to make things more fun!  Otherwise I'd wake up and be 100 years old and have no idea what had happened!

2) Sorry, I'm just realizing that I'll be another year older soon and I'm trying to fight off the panic of getting old.  Well, older. I don't guess I'm old enough to be OLD just yet. I just start getting kind of breathless when I realize how old I am and that there are so many things I want to do! I've barely started!  *wheeze, wheeze, wheeze...uses inhaler...*

I'm going to have to start thinking about who I'm going to do for my midlife crisis soon!  Hee!

3) You guys, I have a problem. Ok, it isn't a real problem. Well sort of. It's a stupid thing, really, and also kind of embarrassing, but only in the sense that it's about underwear.  If you don't want to read about underwear, then you can skip this one.  I apologize.

Last Friday, I was shopping and I found myself in the lingerie section of a store. They didn't have what I'd specifically been looking for, but they did have lots of pretty bras and I like pretty bras!  They even had some in my size! It's rare enough to find pretty bras in the size I need that I tend to seize the moment and get them if I can.

Let me stop here and explain that, for those of you who don't know the actual, in person me, I have been blessed with what my sister refers to as bodacious tatas.  I don't know how bodacious they are, but there you go.  (*EDIT: I feel I need to be more clear, here. This is why I have trouble finding nice bras on my size. At a certain point, they either get prohibitively expensive because you have to go to special shops, or they go ugly industrial elastic and rubber, or porn-star stuff that I don't think would work under normal clothes. I'm not bragging or anything like that.)

Anyway, so I bought two of them and decided to wear one today, and although it's doing it's job admirably as far as keeping everything contained, the bra is creaking. It's creaking like an old wooden ship being rocked by waves. It's awful. Every time I move, I sound like an old rocking chair. I think it might be the wire inside rubbing against whatever the bra is made of, but it's embarrassing and I'm afraid to move around too much because it's loud enough for others to hear it!  I'm lucky that I work with people who have their own offices, but if I have to take something to them they're going to wonder why my boobs are creaking.  I'm sure there's a joke in this somewhere, but you'll have to figure it out for me.

4) Sometimes I am forcefully reminded that I am not enough. I don't know if that makes sense to anyone else. I've never been enough. I guess something is missing. I wish I knew what. 

5) I have been slowly, but surely, clearing out my home office since Friday night.  Steve is installing some shelving in there that, hopefully, will alleviate the cluttering issue I have now.  It had gotten way out of hand.  I try to keep my books and art supplies in there, and I have a LOT of books and art supplies.  I had actually forgotten that it had once been a small dining room and was big enough for a family to eat in since there was very little room to move around!

While I was going through stuff, I found a lot of old pictures and things from my high school days. I had a nice little stroll down memory lane, although, something about looking at old pictures makes me melancholy.  I guess it's because so many of those people aren't a part of my life anymore, but even pictures of the good times always make me a bit sad.  That always happens.  Who knows why.  At any rate, I got a chance to look through a lot of my pictures of old friends and good times!  I even found my senior portraits and I can't believe how young I looked!  I also had some weird eyebrow game going, because in a lot of those pictures, I looked MAD.  Haha!  I always feel mentally that I'm still that age, but it's an unpleasant realization that I'm 20 years older when I look in the mirror!  I mean, I'm still really adorable, and have the bodacious tatas (ha) but still, I'm 20 years older.  At least my eyebrows aren't as angry! Silver linings!

RANDOM ACTS OF BLOGGING

1) Allow me to rant for a second.  I'm sorry, I realize that the last thing you probably want on a Monday is to hear someone complain, but may I just reiterate how much I HATE IT when people ignore questions I have asked?  Not just tell me they can't answer me, but literally just not acknowledge I've asked anything?!  I just...I don't even understand why this is even a thing that happens!  It's so fucking rude.  Pardon my language, but it is.  It is bad mannered, rude, insulting and hurtful.  Basically, it's the same thing as someone telling me that I matter so little in the scheme of things that they don't even have to respond to me. It's bad enough in a personal conversation.  Actually, it's worse in a personal conversation because friends shouldn't do that to you, but it's infuriating in a work situation. If you work with people who think so little of you that they will ignore the things you say, then you should probably start looking for another place to work because they aren't even affording you the most basic respect you deserve.

If I were asking personal questions, or if I were out of line asking something, it would be one thing. I'd get that. If I'm going to ask what I think is a personal question, I always preface it with an option not to answer.  But FFS, just don't do that!  If you can't answer, or even if you prefer not to answer, say that much.  I'm literally having nightmares about this lately.  I used to have nightmares about people not listening to me when I had important things to tell them, but now the nightmares consist of me asking questions and people not answering me.  They just talk round and round and I have woken up in tears. I hate that SO MUCH.

Now, some of you are thinking that I'm overreacting, and maybe you don't care if people ignore you.  Give you a cookie. I don't know, maybe it is silly, but I do care and it is like a slap in the face. If there is something so wrong with me that I don't deserve to be acknowledged, I beg of you, please tell me.  I'm being 100% serious about that. TELL ME.  If I understand why this keeps happening, I can deal with it.  But it's like I'm invisible. I'm so tired of being invisible.

 Sorry.  I needed to get that off my chest. People suck.

2) Our power went off at work this morning!  It was fun, except that I was alone, and the church is big and it makes scary sounds when there are no other sounds to cover it up!  Luckily, I had brought the portable spotlight (or bright-ass flashlight) that Mr. Lee gave me for Christmas to replace the sad dollar store one we've had for a while. That kept the monsters away!  If it hadn't, it would have made a spectacular blunt object.

The only problem is that it seems to have fried our membership program, which is something we need to keep up with records.  I've been trying to fix it all morning, but the program is old and on the verge of no longer being supported. The only option of getting the program updated is subscribing to the new software which is on a cloud server, and that might not fly because they keep the membership stuff on a computer that isn't allowed to be connected to the internet.  I'm going to have to explain why this should be OK.  I don't look forward to it. I'm the only one who works here that seems to understand that software needs to be replaced occasionally.

3) We got snowed in on Saturday!  We were supposed to go on a road trip to Atlanta, but we had to cancel it. We actually had to go to buy something we needed for some kind of home project Steve is working on (and after the cluster frak that we had ordering parts online we decided to go to the actual store, the closest of which is in Atlanta.) After years and years of asking, I had FINALLY gotten Steve to agree to go to the Aquarium while we were there and then we had to cancel.  Boo. 

It was boring being stuck in the house, but it wasn't terrible.  Like I told a friend, at least I was warm and didn't have to wear pants most of the day! Silver lining!  Atlanta will still be there whenever we decide to go again.  Whether or not I can get Steve to the Aquarium will be another story! 

Shut up. I like looking at fishes. I was a mermaid in a former life.

It isn't that I don't want to jump. It's just that I am having trouble finding the edge.

MORE RANDOM ACTS OF BLOGGING

1) The University of Alabama won another college national championship game!  Good for them.  We didn't watch the whole thing, but we checked in on the score periodically!  We did watch the last part of the game, and if that was any indication, then I'm glad I didn't watch it all.  Football makes me tense!

My coworker, who I'm sure I've told you is a HUGE Alabama fan (maybe even more so than my father was, and he was the most die-hard fan I'd ever known) was thrilled, of course.  He came in with a big grin and an Alabama sweatshirt on.  He and the pastor stood and talked about the game for a while, but I managed to tune most of it out.  He's in there right now watching replays.  I hope this doesn't last the rest of the week.

2) Kind of related, but not really... There is a chance I've mentioned this before, but I'm not sure. I'm almost hesitant to mention it now because it's a bit crass, but I noticed this and now I can't unsee it. I blame the classes I had to take in art history for my perception of it and I apologize in advance if you immediately think I'm gross for it.  The college National Championship logo bothers me.  I know it's a stylized football. I KNOW THIS.  However, the more I look at it, the more it looks distractingly female.  More specifically, it looks like a yoni.  There are a lot of depictions of those in ancient art, and once I made the connection, I can't see it any other way. It's simultaneously funny and embarrassing.

3) I've been working hard on the wedding invitations that I talked about, and I've got several drafts so far! Yay!  I'd like to make a couple more, though, just to be safe.  I know that sounds crazy, but I'm always afraid that I'm going to hand over a bunch of drafts and they will not like ANYTHING.  I even flat out copied the one she sent me as an example (with minor changes, of course) so that she can't be completely dissatisfied with everything.  As silly as it probably sounds, doing any kind of creative work is nerve wracking. When you pull pictures or words out of your head for someone else to judge, it's a very vulnerable feeling.  It's like pulling out your liver (you know, to show someone who likes livers) and hoping that they don't say "Oh, that's a sub-par liver."  I mean, it's the only liver you have!  It's even worse when you can't get the stuff out of your head and translated onto a page.  Don't get me wrong, I love doing this sort of thing. When it all works out, it's a fantastic feeling, but when it doesn't, you can't help but feel like you will never be able to do anything creative again. 

Oh, such a tortured existence for an artist. :) Ha!

4)  We have a couple from our church getting married in the fall and they're so cute.  They are an older couple that have been dating for several years and finally decided to make it official!  There is something so sweet about older people deciding to get married.  I know that sounds a bit condescending, but I really don't mean it that way.  I mean, it's wonderful (and getting more rare) when people can get married young and stay married for a million years.  However,  I always think it's special when people who think that kind of thing is over and done with for themselves find someone else to love.  It's nice.  Hooray for love!*

*Yes, as jaded and cynical on that subject as I've been, you know I have to mean it to say it! :)   

RANDOM ACTS OF BLOGGING

1) You'll be either glad or disappointed to know that I never had to take another one of my anti-pain pills.*  I probably could have done, but I was always afraid I'd need to drive somewhere and I wouldn't have been in any state to do so.  I never actually found out what was wrong with me, but I guess it was good I went to the doctor just in case. I'm going to keep telling myself that, because otherwise I'm going to bring myself to the point of actually dying before I go back again.

*I originally called them "Pain Pills" but then realized that the name sort of implied that the pills caused pain instead of stopping it, so I changed it. Also, getting rid of unusued pain medication is complicated.  You can't just flush it away, apparently.  There are rules and stuff.  Oh, well.

2) Speaking of being on medication, I had to take Benadryl last night and it's almost noon and I haven't shaken off the floopiness yet. I wonder if I took too much?  The box wasn't in there with the medicine, so I wasn't sure.  I only took two, though.  That's normal, right? Two is usually normal. I'm still so logy and fuzzy headed, and also weirdly emotional for some reason.  No joke, I was checking my email to see if a friend had responded to something I sent, and there wasn't anything there, and I almost cried.  I don't know why.  I literally had to sternly remind myself that people have other stuff to do. Still, though, if anyone spoke sharply to me right now, I'd probably collapse in a puddle of tears. It's completely irrational.  I originally had to take the Benadryl because I broke out in a weird rash after eating some chocolate I got for Christmas. That has never happened before and I've had that particular kind of chocolate before as well.

I swear to God if I have become allergic to chocolate, I'll have to seriously consider whether life is still worth living.

3) Christmas was great, by the way.  We spent it with family and also had some quiet time and we watched the Doctor Who Christmas special.  We spent a very quiet New Years eve at home, but we had cookies and grape juice and things that made sounds.  We had champagne, but Steve has been sick and we didn't think it would be smart for him to mix alcohol with his meds.  I didn't think it would be smart to have a whole bottle of champagne to myself, seeing that I'd probably wind up topless on my neighbor's roof, so I stuck with grape juice, too.  I wish we'd been able to go someplace like we did last year, but we made it work.  My new year resolutions? Meet new things and try new people.

While I was making the cookies, I accidentally took the mixer out of the batter before the whirlygigs stopped spinning, and cookie goo went EVERYWHERE.  I had to change clothes. I also keep finding bits of cookie dough shrapnel in weird places.  My hand mixer must have a V8 in it.  The resulting cookies were delicious, though, so maybe I'm on to something!

4) I feel so bad!  One of my work responsibilities is to pay everyone.  I have spreadsheets that I copy over every year so that taxes and stuff are automatically deducted. I've never had a problem with them, but as we were closing out the books for the end of 2015, we noticed that the pastor's pay was way too much.  We couldn't figure out why, so when we went back and looked, we realized that for some reason his spreadsheet had a broken formula, and I hadn't been deducting his retirement at all last year.  I was still paying his retirement, but it wasn't coming from his salary like it should have been.  It never occurred to me to check the dang spreadsheet, because usually if a formula goes bad, there is some kind of error message.  Now he has to pay back the money I overpaid.  Well, the church wasn't going to require it, but he's honest and didn't feel right keeping it.  I feel terrible. :( 

I also had to do the taxes for the church employees, and while it's really not a terribly complicated thing, I'm always so scared I'm going to screw it up.  I started on them on Monday, and by the time I got home I was so stressed that I went to bed and pulled the covers over my head for a while like a 4 year old.  I wish I wasn't so useless!

5) I've got another freelance project that I'm getting ready to start on this month! I'm doing wedding invitations for the daughter of someone in Steve's band.  The wedding is in April, so I hope I haven't waited too late to start on them. Some people want everything well before they need to be sent, and I don't want the bride to freak out.  I'm kind of nervous about doing any design work since I couldn't even get an idea for the last thing I was asked to do, but I can probably handle this.  Hopefully!  Fingers crossed.

YOU CALL HIM DR. JONES, DOLL...

So...Saturday morning I woke up in a great amount of pain.  I won't elaborate too much, because when it comes to pain, elaboration isn't altogether necessary. Let's just say that it was somewhere in between "Wow, this is kind of bad" and "This is appendicitis and I need to go to the hospital."

I thought I could tough it out, honestly, because what are the chances that I'd wake up with appendicitis out of nowhere, really?  I figured that the pain would stop and I'd go about my day.  Only, it didn't stop.  It got a bit more bearable, but it didn't go away.  I think I've mentioned that I'm not the kind of person who goes to the emergency room for just anything (and the fact that I went to a walk-in clinic for what I thought was a heart attack should be proof enough) but this time I decided that I should probably go and get checked out.  I couldn't stand up straight and it felt like I was slowly being stabbed in my right side.  Granted, as the pain had lessened a bit, I knew I wasn't in immediate danger or anything, but if something inside of me is getting ready to explode, I thought it might be best to see about getting ahead of any unpleasantness.  I was determined to take a shower and put on clean clothes before going, so I (quickly) did that and we drove to the hospital.

We were taken back to a room impressively quickly, and I was immediately given an IV and had blood drawn.  Then I was given pain meds and everything got so shiny and bright.  They x-rayed me, gave me a CT scan, and then the doctor came in to talk to me.  The pain had quietened down a bit, so I wasn't in agony, but when the starting pressing down on my side, I felt like a water balloon on the brink of popping.  It was a weird feeling, but it wasn't terrible.  The doctor left us to wait until they could run tests and see what was going on, and that is how we were for several hours.  I kept thinking how embarrassed I was that I was at the hospital and wasn't hurting anymore, but Steve kept reminding me that I'd been given pain meds, so I shouldn't be hurting.

I have this fear, or if not a fear, a concern, that I'm going to end up being the kind of person who goes to the emergency room for absolutely no reason and waste everyone's time.  That is the main reason I always usually go to the walk-in clinic when something's wrong.  I know a lot of nurses, so I don't want to be an unnecessary burden on them in case someone who needs them more comes in.  I kept apologizing on the off chance that there was nothing wrong with me.  I'm sure they were annoyed, but they all assured me that it was better that I came in, just in case.  I just don't want to bother people.  That's pretty much the crux of the matter.

I'll be honest, though, I was expecting to be operated on that day.  Steve and I discussed all of the things that we might need to discuss in the event I needed surgery, my DNR preference, the go ahead to take out anything that needed to be taken out, and if I died, donate everything salvageable.  You know, the normal stuff.  I even gave him the info on how to implement my zombie apocalypse plan in case it happened while I was unconscious (I should have never watched the first episode of The Walking Dead. Also, pain meds are fun.)  We waited and waited, but no one came in to tell us anything.  We noticed that the ER doc who had seen me was Dr. Jones (unfortunately, his first name was not Indiana) and Steve started cracking Indiana Jones jokes that made me laugh, which didn't feel good, but it was good to laugh.  I'm not sure how long we were there, but the nurse came back in to tell me all of my tests were OK and I could leave.  They didn't explain the angry wolverine that had been trying to claw itself out of my abdomen earlier that day, which was disappointing.  I would have liked to know why that was happening.  They gave me  prescriptions for pain and anti-nausea medicine, I apologized again for any inconvenience, and we left.  So, I have no idea what happened to me Saturday morning, but I was pretty much OK by noon. I didn't hurt, but it felt like a balloon slowly inflating inside of me getting bigger and bigger. 

We went to Target to get the medicine, just in case, and I was still kind of high from the pain medicine they'd given me at the hospital. That was fun.  It wasn't too bad, because I think it had mostly worn off, but I know I texted a bit and maybe didn't make a lot of sense. I don't know, really.  Maybe no one else noticed!  I went home and slept a lot.  I didn't take a pain pill because I wasn't hurting, but I took one of the other ones.  Then I ate, which was a big mistake.  I spent the rest of the evening really, very unpleasantly.  I think it could have been a reaction to the medicine I'd taken, but I have no idea.

Sunday I woke up feeling like death on a stick, but I had to go to church and run the sound for the choir's Christmas cantata.  I was the only one who knew how to adjust the music, so I did that.  It wasn't terrible.  I wasn't in the same kind of pain I'd been in the day before, but mainly the "balloon" was still in there.  I decided that I wouldn't go to lunch with Steve and his dad, and instead went home where I slept for several more hours.  I'd even decided I wouldn't go back to church that night, because of the way I was feeling.  The balloon had been replaced by a feeling like I had been punched in the side and was having a pencil driven into me quite slowly, so I decided to take a pain pill.  I don't know what the pills are, but I know they aren't the really powerful ones.  I don't know what they are, but they WORK.  By the time Steve came home, I was not feeling any pain at all.  I also wasn't blinking, and with a bit of persuasion, I probably would have been convinced that I could have flown to church if I'd flapped my arms hard enough.  Apparently, I'm sensitive to this kind of stuff.  I told Steve that I was going to be fine, so he took me to church.

I don't think I have to tell you that I was only in the initial stages of feeling the effects of that pill when we got there.  I was cheerful, and not hurting, but I still wasn't blinking and the lights were so pretty.  I got steadily more "involved" with whatever I had taken as church went on.  I was running the sound and video system, which went OK at first, but the computer decided to switch off in the middle of things, and I slumped to the ground and scrabbled around with wires until I could make it work again. I had no idea what I was doing.  I also decided upgrading the computer to Windows 10 in the middle of service seemed like a great idea, even though I had no idea if our software was compatible.  By the time preaching got started, I was full on stoned.  I don't know how else to explain it.  All I could do is stare at the lights, and I had no idea what the pastor was talking about. I couldn't follow the music and I STILL wasn't blinking.  I got to the point where, had this been tequila instead of pain medicine, I would have had my top off and been sending rude Snapchats to everyone I knew.  I'm not kidding, I actually started thinking about doing just that, but thank the Lord and whatever pharmaceutical company that made my pills, it didn't disable my Jiminy Cricket voice.  That voice kept telling me "No, no, let's not do that, OK? This is neither the time nor the place."  I listened to that voice.

THANK GOD.

Today the balloon is back and it feels like I swallowed some staples, but I can't take anything until I get home because I have to drive.  I hope that I don't have to go back to the hospital.  Maybe not!  So that was my weekend!  Hope yours was as much fun! :)

RANDOM ACTS OF BLOGGING

1) Last Saturday, a couple had a wedding at our church.  Well, technically, it was a vow renewal, but because they'd never had a church wedding, just a Justice of the Peace deal, they wanted to have something their friends and family could come to. Actually, it turned out to be a double vow renewal ceremony because the bride's son and his wife had also gotten married by a JotP and wanted to do it again in front of family and friends. Only no one they invited came.  Not one person.  Granted, it wasn't supposed to be a big, lavish deal or anything, but still.  I felt so bad.  I was their only wedding guest, and to be fair, I wasn't really a guest as much as I was a worker.  It was still a beautiful ceremony, though. The church is decorated for Christmas, the brides were beautiful, the grooms were handsome, and everything went well.  It was a very sweet wedding.

I don't mean to sound braggy by telling you this, but I actually did a lot for this wedding, and it's kind of funny when I look back on it.  I made the decorations for the reception, made the unity candles, played the music, controlled the lights, took the photos, laid out the food for the reception, served the drinks, caught the bouquet, ate with the two couples, cleaned up afterwards, and saw them off from the church!  Apparently, all of our dry goods from the pantry had been given out, so we didn't have any rice to throw, but I did find a jar of dried beans for soup, so I threw those at them instead. Hey, it was all we had and I couldn't let them leave without something!  If I'd had a couple of weeks warning, I could have probably gone to the courthouse and gotten a temporary county license to perform the ceremony since I was ordained online a while back!  I'm a one woman wedding chapel, y'all!  If you ever need a wedding in a hurry, just let me know.  I can hook you up!  I will also throw beans at you, but that's just a bonus. :)

2) Sadly, our pastor's mother passed away on Friday.  I never got to meet her, but he'd told me stories about her and she seemed like a really hip lady.  She'd been bedridden for years after a botched back surgery almost killed her.  I feel so bad for the pastor but he seems to be holding up well.  He reminds me a lot of my dad after my own grandmother passed away.  I hope he'll take some time to rest and recoup over the next couple of weeks.  Sorrow is exhausting, and he isn't the kind of person to sit still and rest, but I hope he will at least try.  Trying to tell someone like that to take some time off is pretty much an exercise in futility, but I did anyway.  Got to keep everyone sane around here, you know.

Steve and I went to her viewing last night and there were a lot of people there.  It was very confusing!  Instead of the whole family standing in a receiving line, they were just in little groups in the chapel, and every time we would walk over to talk to the people we knew, someone would slide in front of us and start a long conversation with the family member.  It was borderline rude, although I know they didn't mean to be that way.  I also got the stink eye from some of those denim-skirted-bun-head ladies while we were there.  I guess because I was wearing slacks and makeup, I don't know.  Personally, I don't think Jesus cares what I wear as long as I'm decent, and I certainly made sure to be!  Had I known I'd get snurled at, though, I would have gone with the first thing I tried on, which was a dress I hadn't worn in years that turned out to be so low cut in the front that it went past indecent and all the way to hilarious!  I refuse to be shamed for my clothes by anyone wearing a denim skirt. Don't test me.

3) This lady at my church is a fantastic cook and she's always bringing me food.  I can say I'm not hungry, and no thank you, and regardless I'll have a plate of something in my hand in less than 15 minutes. If I was stronger, I could just not eat it, but you guys, that woman can COOK.  Everything she makes is delicious and I am helpless.  I'd already had breakfast when she came in for the ladies prayer meeting this morning, and she asked if I wanted anything. I told her no. She did not accept that answer. I have just finished a slice of quiche and some kind of barbecued sausage and I think I'm so full I might die. I regret nothing, and everything.  I'd do it again.  Help me.

4) You know, I've always had this ability to kind of read people.  It kind of freaks people out, because some folks think it's supernatural or something, but really, it's just about paying attention. Anyone can do it if they are interested enough to try.  Honestly, I wish I was much better at it, but as it is, I do alright. At least I used to do alright. Anyway, being able to read people is useful, because if you can do that, you aren't surprised very often by what they do.  That is comforting in a way.  But lately I've come to realize that there are some people who I should be completely in tune with, that never, ever do what I think they will anymore.  I don't know if it's time or distance, or if I just don't spend enough time actually with the person, or if my brain is broken somehow, but it's really frustrating!  I'll be the first to admit that it's an inexact science, this reading people, and that sometimes it's more of wishful thinking situation where you think "Oh, if they answer this question *this way* that would be a perfect response." However, I've been right more often than not in the past, but now...even Steve is surprising me lately, and with a few glaring exceptions, I'm pretty sure I had him pegged.  It's weird and frustrating and I need to get my vibe fixed soon before all you wonderful, crazy people drive me insane.

NOPE

I took that last post down.  It bothered me more than I realized and now I'm not happy I wrote it.

HOWEVER...I've thought about it and since it was such a long time ago, I'm not going to let the muggles get me down.

Instead, I'm going to post a picture of a bunch of puppies.

It's not even otter worthy!  

Everything about me is, and has always been, perfectly adequate. 

 I'm sure the puppies would agree.