Archive for the ‘The Nonsense’ Category

So, if you haven’t noticed already, posting is going to be SUPER light this week. I had two final exams today and I have one Thursday, one HUGE one Friday, one Monday, two Tuesday and one Wednesday. And probably a blood patch Thursday. I know. You wish you were me.

While I’m not really blogging here, I am having my blog posts aired other places all week. Right now one of my favorites is up at the Chronic Babe edition of Patients for a Moment. It’s a pretty cool thing for health bloggers to display some of their writing and this time is about funny experiences, so it’s definitely worth a few minutes of your time (and also? if you have a chronic disease and aren’t on Chronic Babe? You’re crazy. Just sayin’).

And on Friday I’ll be back with another super exciting announcement regarding my blog appearing everywhere except, you know, here.

Heh.

Hope you’re all having a good week.

I stumbled across someone’s twitter page the other day, I have no idea how I found it, but it was a father whose son had been diagnosed with type I diabetes. He had tweeted repeatedly that while they were seeking medical treatment, what they were really waiting for was God to heal his son. He believed that miracles not only happen, but that one was absolutely going to happen to his son.

The tweets sort of caught me off guard. And before long I began to realize that as terrible as it sounds, what frightened me the most was the realization that, deep down, I do not believe in miracles.

I’m not sure when I reached this point of cynicism, but I’m clearly there. I believe that people can make amazing come backs in terms of health and impending disasters, and I think that there are things that modern medicine cannot always explain, but I do not believe that miracles happen every day, if at all.

I don’t think that this man’s son is going to be healed of diabetes because he’s praying for it. I don’t believe that a deaf man at a concert accepted Christ and suddenly had hearing again. I just don’t.

I think that miracles, if there are any, are few and far between. I think they don’t happen simply because you wish and hope that one will, or that you pray endlessly for it. If that was the case, how many miracles would’ve been performed this year? How many children would’ve been spared disease and death? How many families would’ve been spared suffering and sadness?

It can’t be as simple as prayer.

Too many children and husbands and wives die in the midst of storms of prayers for it to simply be an issue of prayer. Too many natural disasters take too many lives. Too many good, faithful, righteous people die for it simply to be a matter of faith.

I guess I don’t understand how there can be miracles when good people suffer and die. I can’t believe in miracles in healing when so many people don’t get that. I can’t trust that there’s a heavenly fix when so many need it and so few receive it.

It’s not that I don’t think that prayer isn’t powerful (it is) or that there isn’t a God (I believe there is), I just don’t think that there are miracles. I think that there are logical explanations for much of what happens in life, I think that expecting prayer to heal a child with diabetes is crazy. I think that hoping for miracles sets you up for a lifetime of disappointment and perhaps I’ve reached the point where I can’t handle that disappointment any longer.

In a way, miracles feel like Santa Claus to me. There something that you’re taught to believe in as a child. That if you believe in something long enough and hard enough, it will come true. But as you grow up you realize that it was fantasy. You can’t make something happen just because you believe in it, you can’t get what you want or what you need simply by praying long enough and hard enough for it.

And there’s something completely terrifying about that realization. There’s no make believe, there’s no magical fix, there’s no 11th hour hail mary pass to save the day.

There’s life.

There are the highest highs, the lowest lows and everything in between.

And all we can do is survive the hard parts and celebrate the easy ones. And learn from these experiences, challenges and triumphs. So that next time they won’t surprise or scare us. So that next time we can look to reality instead of fantasy to find hope for tomorrow.

I spent the weekend in a gorgeous house in Oceanside. It was my husband’s intern retreat, which meant it was sort of required, but still very nice, and about 20 of his coworkers and their spouses were there as well.

As you can imagine and would expect in any house with 20 people, there were moments of drama, but overall, the weekend was a lot of fun. And being able to see the ocean from the bedroom window didn’t suck either.

What did suck was waking up in said gorgeous house with those 20 people who were trying to clean up and get out on time and feeling like I was going to hurl. And not just my normal always feeling like I am going to hurl. It was the kind of feeling like I was going to hurl that didn’t respond to any of the 3 different anti-emetics I threw at it.

It helped that the 20 people were frying up hashbrowns in the kitchen attached to our room. Nothing like the smell of greasy food to help settle a queasy stomach.

The 90 minute drive home was also a peach. Particularly when I realized that it wasn’t just my stomach, but I had a headache (not my normal) and what felt alarmingly like a fever. I rarely get fevers, when I do they aren’t very high (my normal temp is 97.7) but they always knock me on my ass.

By the time we got home, an hour after tylenol, the fever was over 100 and despite the fact that I never take naps on Sunday, I took a 2 hour nap. And woke up feeling exactly as bad as before.

I am sick and whiny and I want my mom.

And as much as I want to write about stuff that’s going on and everything else you’ve been waiting with baited breath to hear about, my brain is mush right now and I’ve got, at best, 10 more non-whiny words left.

So perhaps tomorrow. Unless the fever doesn’t break, in which case, there will be much whiiiiiiiiiiiiiining. Get excited.

It is somewhat widely known that I am a tremendous smart ass. I enjoy plays on words, I say “that’s what she said” waaaay too often and some most of my knee jerk reactions are snarky ones. I can’t help it. I was raised on sarcasm. I then married it and will give the gift of it to my kids.

You’re all welcome.

But what you may not know is that for every bit as snarky as I am, I’m also overly apologetic.

It’s like I’m Canadian.

Case in point: Twitter. It one of my best forums for snark. I can dish it, I can take it, but in the end, I have to apologize. I always worry that in one of the jokes that seemed harmless, I’ve said something offensive, and especially if the person doesn’t respond after a comment that I think is borderline, I freak out. My preferred method of apologizing is direct messaging, but sometimes I’ll do it on the main twitter stream.

I do it in real life too. If I think there’s ANY chance I’ve crossed even a tiny line, I apologize. If I tell a joke or when joking around call someone a name, I always apologize. When my husband and I get into a fight, I almost always find something to apologize for, even when it’s totally his fault. When I get into a heated, but civil, political conversation, I apologize, even if I haven’t done anything but politely stated my opinion.

I. can’t. help. myself.

It all really boils down to a greater fear of imperfection and of hurting other people, but what it ends up looking like is that I’m basically just a big apology whore. Or apology addict. Or apology monger. However you want to see it, I have an addiction to apologizing.

I think it borders on compulsion. If I’m being honest I really want to apologize for the Canadian joke at the beginning of this post because I’m afraid I’ve offended the Canadians. I wish I was kidding.

I even revised my position on poutin (don’t google it, GAG) this morning on twitter because I originally said it was gross and was afraid that was too harsh. Revising, one step up from apologizing, just in case you were keeping track.

I have no idea what’s wrong with me. But I’m thinking that there are worse additions to have.

I mean, I could be addicted to never apologizing. And then I’d be a man! (Sigh. Sorry to all the men. That was harsh.) I could be addicted to apologizing and never meaning it. And then I’d be my douchebag ex-boyfriend! (Again, sorry. Even though he is a douchebag.)

Above all else, know that if I have offended you and not apologized, it’s probably because I haven’t realized it yet, or I’m in the process of finding a way to make a proper apology. Or possibly, it’s because you’re an asshole and I’m not actually sorry. One of those is probably what’s going on.

(Sorry for calling you an asshole. Unless you are. And then I’m only a little sorry because name calling isn’t really very nice. Even if I am calling you what you are.)

On Thursday, I went to the eye doctor. It had been more than a year and I had just begun to notice that I spent an inordinate amount of time squinting, both while reading and while out in the sun. So I bit the bullet and made the appointment.

They did the puff of air in the eye (I HATE that. I can’t explain why, but I hate it on a visceral level), the star wars vision fields test and finally had the exam with the optometrist. I’m farsighted like both of my parents (had glasses/contacts since age 11), and it’s always a struggle to find a way to correct my farsightedness without eliminating my distance vision. And true to form, this visit was no exception.

She decided that I needed two separate pairs of glasses- progressive lenses (hello, I’m 80 years old) for normal wear and some stronger prescriptions for computer and reading stuff. My wallet, it weeps.

And when she looked at my eyes under lights and later after they were dilated, she saw that I have one largish and one small freckle INSIDE my eyes. I’ve known about them for a while, but hey, fun fact, freckles in your eyes are really great at becoming melanoma, so we had to take a picture of it and measure it, so that it can be compared. She said that for now, they’ll check it every year. If it shows signs of growth, we can re-evaluate then.

When it was all said and done, I ended up with a set of progressives (in new frames, which, if I’m being honest look remarkably like the old ones), computer glasses (which will be in the old frames, just new lenses) and prescription sunglasses because there’s some evidence that they can reduce the melanoma risk. And of course, crazy dilated pupils that lasted for hours.

And because new glasses weren’t enough of a change, I decided that it was time for a haircut. I got my hair trimmed in July and December of last year, but prior to that, I can’t remember the last time I had a cut. And while I sort of enjoyed the long hair, it was in a wet bun 99% of the time and on the days I did want to do it, it required SO much time to blow dry and straighten.

So on Saturday I went from this (this is unstraightened, which I never really do):

To this (mind the self-portrait double chin):

I love it. It does still go back into a pony tail (that was a requirement), but it’s lighter, it’s easier and I was able to blow dry and straighten it in less then 25 minutes today, so that’s a win.

And now that I’ve gotten all of the exterior stuff upgraded, I’m hoping and praying that Wednesday’s blood patches (more on that tomorrow, I’m sure) will start some change on the inside too.

One can hope.

When I was in high school, my mom and I moved into a house, just the two of us. My older (perfect) sister was away at college and my mom and I had been living at my grandparents while we waited to get enough money to pay and for the time it took to build it. It wasn’t a mansion by any means, but it was our home.

The day of our walkthrough, one of the builders came and every time we found something that needed repair or work, he stuck and orange dot on it. By the end of the walkthrough, we had amassed a small army of orange dots all over the house and were assured they’d be fixed shortly.

We were finally able to move in a week or so later and found that all the orange dots were still there. Not one flaw had been fixed, not one dot removed, but we were so ready to be in our new home that we ignored them, assuming they’d be fixed later.

Over the course of the 5 years we lived there, the house never got fixed. The stickers gradually faded until they were so light that you had to look closely to see that they were once orange. We had to peel them all off when we sold that house a few years ago, revealing all our home’s little blemishes, shortcomings.

Sometimes when I think about that house and those dots, I feel like my life has those same orange dots all over it. Sure, I don’t need paint or spackle, I don’t need a bolt tightened or a cabinet straightened, but I have flaws. Flaws that desperately need repair.

There is an orange dot on my schoolwork, on my energy to complete it. I’m still passing everything (that I know of), but my ability to push through, to keep trying, to not give up, is wearing down. I don’t know what the fix is, I don’t know how to repair this, but I see the problem and maybe that’s the first step.

There is an orange dot on our apartment. Even while on vacation, I haven’t been able to keep the mess contained. And so much of what I can’t do, my husband is forced to. He picks up so much of my slack, does so much more than he really should have to. And even still, it’s a stye.

There is an orange dot on my relationship with my family. There are members of my family that I still cannot bring myself to speak to, ones who I actively go out of my way to avoid seeing. There are others that I haven’t found the courage to tell all my truths to, and many of those truths are ones I’ve been dying to scream out for a very long time.

There is an orange dot on my marriage. We have a good marriage, I’m not complaining. But we have problems that our peers may never encounter. Having one half of a marriage be chronically in pain, chronically ill, chronically (gulp) disabled, isn’t just hard for the one in pain. As I’ve learned from finally sitting down and listening to Slappy is that it is intensely challenging to the “normal” one too. And it’s not made easier when the normal one has 80-90 hour work weeks and himself is run ragged all the time. It’s hard to make time for each other, it’s hard to find energy. I have a million excuses, but the bottom line is that it needs work.

There’s a huge orange dot over my mind, my sanity. I bear such guilt that sometimes I think I might sink right through the ground from its tremendous weight. I bear guilt for what I’ve done to myself, to other people, to my family and friends. I bear guilt for not being able to do everything I sign up for, for not being able to be everything I want to be for other people. For not being supportive enough, for not being happy enough.

There is an orange dot on my health whose size rivals the sun. I am doing everything I can to make the repair there, I will walk to the end of the earth if it means my health gets better, if it means I get to be me again. I have never wanted anything as much as I want to be without pain. Not just for me, but for my husband, for my mom and dad, for the people who rely on me.

There is an orange dot that is starting to show in my spirit. In my belief that things will get better. Doubt has crept in, it has invaded the back corners of my mind and it’s hard to push away. I struggle to stay in the present and not think about the rest of my life and how I’ll ever manage if things stay on the course they’re on now.

The more I look around, the more I see those orange dots stuck to so much of my life. And I’m fighting as hard as I can to find them all, to figure out what needs to be fixed, before they fade.

Before they fade into the background and things stay broken for good.

I was reading Daisy’s blog the other day, and she was talking trash about processed food. Well, she was talking trash about it until it literally blew up in her face (karma?). Her post got my mind turning, because, well, I think she’s crazy. But for the record, this post is not about her, it’s about the crazy people who refuse to eat food because someone else made it easier on them.

Seriously. You’re doing it wrong.

I love me some processed foods. There I said it. I love homemade and homegrown and organic too, but if given the choice between making a sort of homemade tortilla soup with canned diced tomatoes and chiles and a chicken cooked by the lovely people at my grocery store (like I did tonight, it was delicious) or do it all from scratch, I’m pretty much always going to choose the former.

I can almost see some arguments about hormones. Almost. And I’m sure that I’ll change my tune later when I have kids and have to really worry about those hormones and all that crap, but for now, I worry about getting a semi-balanced diet, I worry about fitting into my clothes and paying my bills. And if that means my cheap apples are grown somewhere with chemicals, well, guess what, I’ll wash them with my really organic water.

Speaking of which, the label of “organic” is also doing. it. wrong.

I picked up a can of pumpkin from the grocery story and pointed out to Slappy that it was organic. Without missing a beat he replied, “well, I hope so.” It took me a second to realize what he was saying. And then it hit me. IT’S PUMPKIN. IT’S ORGANIC BY DEFINITION OF WHAT A PUMPKIN IS. How do you have inorganic pumpkin? I mean really.

Someone is going to have to explain to me why one section of the produce is organic and the rest is not. IT’S FRUIT. How is it not organic?

But more than that, if my blood pressure, cholesterol, and basically everything (*cough*except my brain*cough*) are perfectly fine, why shouldn’t I eat food that is already processed or partially cooked? Because really, that preservative laden Lean Pocket in my freezer is delicious. Why do I care that it can last for decades? Isn’t that the sign of a good product? Longevity? Come on now.

Maybe preservatives are the key to a long life? You don’t know. I could be right. I’m married to a doctor, you know.

In the end, I think that what matters most is that we make our own choices, the choices that are right for us. You might think I’m lazy for eating processed foods (you would be right). I might think you’re crazy for spending twice as much on “organic” fruit (I might be right). But if it’s that’s what’s right for me or for you, then what’s there to argue about?

You know, except the totally incorrect use of the word organic.

Because dude, just no.

We’re officially half-way through the week of hell, with three midterms down and just three little midterms ahead. And by little, I mean the exact opposite. The last two exams on Friday are the mothers of all exams. The second of which we have all been told we will fail. Which really? Makes me not want to study for it AT ALL.

But, I’m not going to complain about the exams because I’m trying to stay positive about their passability, and frankly, I’ve chosen a different calamity to attack.

You see, yesterday after my morning exam, I went to a friend’s house to nap relax between the morning ass-kicking exam and worthless afternoon classes. When I woke up from, um, relaxing, I grabbed the salad I’d bought earlier and sat down to read emails.

The salad dressing was an asian dressing in a little container with a plastic lid that had to be peeled off. And without paying much attention, I picked it up and pulled back a corner of the plastic. And before I even realized it, there was a big splash of salad dressing on my laptop keyboard. The splash hit the entire top right part of the keyboard. I cleaned it up as quickly as I could with copious paper towels and turned the computer upside down to help drain as much as possible while I was in my afternoon classes.

When I got back after class I had planned to make a study guide using my computer for the test I had this afternoon. A test which I had devoted precisely ZERO time to by that point.

So you can imagine my delight when I started typing and realized that several of my keys weren’t working. At first it was just the delete key (I say just there with a hint of sarcasm because THE DELETE KEY. It’s a little important). As the evening progressed and I continued to try to type, more and more keys stopped working. When I woke up this morning to do more work, even more keys were out.

So far the y, i, o, l, 0, +/=, delete, g, h, ;/:, “/’, ENTER and the right side of the spacebar are not working at all. The u is finicky and there are a few more that are getting really hard to make work consistently.

The irony here is almost too much. My oil based salad dressing made it physically impossible for me to type the word oily.

Well played Karma.

I can’t check my school email anymore because my username AND password require letters that don’t work, and I can’t even use most of the internet because, hey, guess what? That enter key? It’s REALLY rather important. Seriously, just try to type in a web address…and then what? Because willing it to open isn’t working yet.

But what makes this so especially painful is that, if you’ll recall my husband very recently dropped his computer in a bathtub and had to replace it. And while it may be a great shock to some of you, I definitely dished out A LOT of jokes in his direction. A. LOT. And may have insinuated that he was a *little* bit irresponsible with his really expensive computer.

In case you wondered, being a hypocrite stings.

I can’t make it to the Apple store until this weekend, so until then I’m using my phone, Slappy’s brand spanking new computer and every bit of patience I have in using my own computer to type the words that I can.

While it wasn’t that much oil I have some substantial concerns about the fixability of the computer. Because apparently the motherboard is like sort of close to the keyboard. And unlike water, oil doesn’t just dry up. It sits there and stays all NOT DRY. And while I may or may not have pined over the pretty new laptops at the Apple store recently, I really REALLY do not want to buy a new one. I can’t afford a new one, I like my computer and did I mention I can’t afford a new computer?

For now I will go back to studying, be grateful that my husband is using great restraint with all the jokes that he can easily be hurling in my direction and hope that the oil magically evaporates and saves me a thousand dollars.

If wishes were horses we’d need a huge fucking stable in our apartment right now.

I may or may not have mentioned that I have 6 midterms and a presentation this week alone. It’s not pretty. It’s really really really not pretty.

I’ve gotten roughly 10 hours of sleep in the past two nights and while the first test went pretty well, the second one was a total mindfuck. Everyone seemed equally upset by it, so that’s a good sign. But you just never want to walk out of an exam feeling like you were defeated by a packet of paper. And dude, I totally was today.

When it comes to tests, I am crazy superstitious. I have routines that must be kept, otherwise in the totally irrational part of my brain I just know that I’m going to fail. I’m sure that few, if any, of these things make a difference, but I’ve never claimed to not be totally batshit crazy.

The routine begins the night before. I always sleep in a shirt from my school. It can be any color or style, but it HAS to be a school shirt. No school shirt, no sleeping.

When I get dressed the morning of the exam the outfit is entirely crafted out of superstition.

First, the underwear. Yea, that’s right, I have exam underwear. I just happen to have 5 pairs of them (in different colors), so I don’t even have to do laundry during exam week. I am nothing if not a planner. I also may or may not believe that one color of the 5 is slightly less effective than the others. I tend to wear those on the days when I feel the most confident. You know, when I don’t need to pull my luck from my underwear.

Then, the shirt for the exam has to be yet another school shirt. And if I’m layering and putting on a sweatshirt, it also has to be a school one. The pants have to be sweats. There can be no jeans when you’re sitting and freaking the hell out for at least 2 hours. Just no. And unless it’s raining, the black reef flip flops. Always.

When I leave for school, I have a playlist to listen to on my drive. It has to be played as loudly as possible and I have to sing. I think it works by distracting me from the gigantic mental breakdown that’s usually rapidly approaching. And the last song on the playlist has to be the same one. This varies over time and since my current obsession is Glee, my last song is always “Keep Holding On” on the highest volume I can manage. If I can’t listen to that before the exam, I feel unprepared and unfocused.

And finally, the writing implement is and always has been the passing pencil. It’s a really worn out blue mechanical pencil with a separate clicky blue eraser that I’ve used on every test for as long as I can remember. I have proven the efficacy of the passing pencil by not using it on a number of quizzes upon which I have set low grade records (23% for. the. win.). And if the passing pencil ever runs out of lead in the middle of an exam, the world might literally stop turning.

Rationally, I doubt any of these things help, but irrationally, which, let’s be honest, is how I operate, I need things to be just so. No, I’m not a control freak, why do you ask?

But surely these aren’t the craziest superstitions, right? Feel free to suggest any that might be useful in the remaining 3 days of mind draining exam filled psychosis. I’ll try anything. Even studying.

Instead of telling you all about the 6 tests and a presentation I have next week, or the hideous headache that has deprived me of sanity and sleep, I’m going to go off in an entirely different direction. Basically I’m procrastinating. But passionately and stuff.

What I really want to talk about is this. Because reading it makes me mad at this country. You can click safely, it’s not really about Sarah Palin or Barack Obama, it’s about logic and fairness.

And children.

Twenty years ago, a 9 year old boy shot a 7 year old girl, with a rifle, out of his bedroom window. The little girl died.

It is, in no uncertain terms, a horrific and tragic situation. But, the way that our justice system handled it was equally horrific. That 9 year old boy was tried as an adult in court. That boy who was 7 years from driving and 9 years from being declared an adult by the government, was declared one in a court.

The reasoning was because he had lied when he was initially asked about what had happened and because he fell asleep during court hearings. They said that lying was truly an adult behavior. I call bullshit. My 8 year old cousin regularly tells his mother that he doesn’t know how to turn off the Wii. That lie is not an adult behavior, it’s a childish one. It’s the act of a kid who thinks that he can get a few more minutes of video gaming if he tells a lie. It shows a disconnect with reality, not a level of maturity on par with someone 10 years his senior. If lying is an adult behavior, than every four year old I’ve ever met should be getting driver’s licenses and be old enough to buy cigarettes soon.

Just recently an 11 year old boy shot and killed his father. And was tried as an adult.

As much as I try to consider this rationally and think about the need to incarcerate and rehabilitate all those who commit murders, I cannot understand how this is reasonable. That child is clearly not an adult in any way, shape or form. It is a child and should be treated as such.

Think about it this way- if a man had sex with an 11 year old girl, he would absolutely (and correctly) be charged with statutory rape, because that 11 year old is clearly not an adult. But if that same 11 year old child killed someone, they could be tried as an adult.

Is age dependent upon the situation? Are children only children as long as their mistakes are minor? Because it seems like we’re happy to label them as children until it suits us otherwise, until we become scared by something they do. To me it seems like this child, who did something truly horrible, deserves a chance to grow up. They deserve treatment. Do we really think that at age 11 there’s no chance that we can turn this life around? That because in the 5th grade they made a mistake, that they cannot be taught differently?

Children’s minds are painfully impressionable. They can be shaped, molded. And sending them to prison with real adults, is not the answer to a situation like this. Holding them to adult standards is not reasonable. They do not have the reasoning skills, nor the understanding of the world that adults do.

I’ve been milling over this article since Friday and the more I think about it, the more I am disappointed with the justice system and those who populate it. In our haste to punish for crimes, we forget that those who committed them are people too. And we forget to consider them when we set out to rectify their wrongs. You cannot punish every person in the same way and you can’t make a child equal to an adult. They simply aren’t the same.

I think if we all took a step back and considered that we’re talking about 9 and 11 year olds, we’d see the absolute insanity that was applied to the cases of these two children. Treating children as adults is not reasonable, nor responsible.

And as adults, it is our responsibility to be both.