Catch-up

Wow. It has been a really long time. I've had a whole lot on my plate this past month. School just ended for the semester and I am 99% sure I got A's in both of my classes.

I've also been having a whole bunch of health problems. I had that cotton wool spot in my eye a while ago and the doctor got me an MRA (sort of like an MRI but it looks at your blood vessels instead of your tissue). I really didn't expect them to find anything; they didn't order the test because they were worried...they ordered it because it seemed like the only time in the near future that insurance would be willing to cover it. We have a history of cerebral aneurysm in my family, so that, combined with the eye spot and some minor headaches I've been having convinced my insurane company that I needed to have my head inspected.

So, it turns out I have two small aneurysms. They're really little...nothing to be worried about yet. But, they're there...and considering that my mother nearly died when an aneurysm ruptured on her brain stem ten years ago, it's something we definitely want to keep an eye on.

Here're some pictures of my head:

The arrow is pointing to one of the aneurysms. The other picture doesn't show anything specific, but I just thought it was freakin' sweet.

I had a CT Angiogram today and it will allow us to see more detail and hopefully get a better idea of how to proceed.

Oh! And thanks to your votes, I'm now in 3rd place in the "My Favorite Toy" contest. I didn't know this, but you're allowed to vote more than once. So, if you have a second, click on the "vote" button below (there's supposed to be a picture there, but for some reason, it's not embedding correctly :().


What's Your Favorite Toy?
Brickfish
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I need a little help...

Help me win some college money. Click on the "vote" button and check out my entry in the Brickfish "My Favorite Toy" scholarship contest. Every vote counts!


What's Your Favorite Toy?
Brickfish
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Did you?

Happy Fracking Halloween!

Eyes are gross and Halloweeny, right?

So it's Halloween and that means that I have to do something festive like give out candy or carve pumpkins or something. Except I don't have time for all of that, so I'm going to post a gross picture of an eye. At least, most people seem to think it's gross. I think it is astoundingly cool.

Check this out:

That is my eye!!!...or really my optic nerve.

Notice the little white spot...looks kinda fuzzy? That's Mr. Fuzzle. He's a cotton wool spot, or a nerve-fiber layer infarct. It's often a symptom of diabetes, HIV and hypertension; three things that I have been tested for and that I'm sure I don't have.I started having weird spots in my vision the other day and I paid a visit to the ophthalmologist. He did all sorts of cool tests and dilated my pupils, which I've never had done before. One of the tests showed two little blind spots in my left eye, besides the normal big-arse blind spot. Upon closer inspection, the doc noticed Mr. Fuzzle.

I need to go to another specialist (I'm kinda confused about this. I thought that the specialist was sorta an "end of the line" thing...) next Friday so they can decide if this is really weird and whether or not I should get some blood work done. I guess most healthy, young adults don't get these...though mine is an isolated one and they usually occur in bunches when some horrible disease is underlying.

Anyway, that's my addition to this crazy holiday. I'll be donning my costume in less than an hour and heading over to a friend's house to see her son's costume and her decorations. Then, it's off to volunteer at the co-op for an hour and then on to Friendly's to have sundaes with J and my friend Franky.

What are you doing tonight?

Oh hai!

Remember me? I'm that chick who used to post a lot.

I've been insanely busy with schoolwork and work and conferences and weddings and such. Also, after going to my academic/nerdy conference, I got a renewed interest in my other blog, which I've been ignoring in favor of this one until recently. So, I'm going to attempt to devote equal time to both...but it's going to mean less posting (at least this semester).

So, AJ and I don't have social lives...we spend most of our "free time" doing homework and eating and sleeping. If we could sacrifice one of those things in order to have friends and stuff, we probably would. But, we obviously can't stop sleeping or eating, and if we stopped doing homework, what would be the point of being in college?

Given that we have no social lives, we didn't make any plans for Halloween, and consequently, didn't come up with any costume ideas. And then we signed up to do our member work at the local co-op and the only day available was Halloween.

The co-op does a themed costume thingy each year and this year's theme is movie/TV characters (really specific, huh?). So, yesterday, I raced around town and put together some costumes for me and AJ.

I tried mine on last night and I must say that while totally awesome, my costume is a huge badge of nerdy, dorky, geeky weirdness.

Pictures to follow...for now, you'll have to be content with the runner up for the nerdy, dorky, geeky weirdness prize: my costume from a few years ago.

She looks like a little lion...

It's been an insane semester so far and it's about to get crazzzzzzzier!

This weekend I'll be driving to Connecticut to attend my cousin's wedding. I'll be visiting my mom and dad as well, which will be nice, since I see them like, twice a year. Then, on Sunday, I'm meeting a couple from England. The woman writes a blog that I've been reading for a year or so and they're heading to the same nerd conference that I'm going to on Tuesday. Sunday night, AJ's mom will be in town (from Florida!) so more visiting of parents will take place.

Then, next week, I'll be in Cleveland for a conference.

So, busy weekend, busy week...lots of packing and planning ahead. Somewhere in all of that, I have to read a couple of chapters from my biology and geology textbooks, do a couple of lab reports and study for a test next Monday.

I did a test shoot with this photographer this past Monday. He was super fun to work with and he's obviously really talented. I can't wait to get some pictures back from him!

Also, this past weekend, EM got her hair cut. Here's a before:

And here're a few afters:

Everyone always says she looks like a little lion, but I think it's closer to rat, don't you?

Confession

Last night, I laid in bed with my eyes closed and pet EM, pretending she was EC. She wasn't meowing or anything and with her long soft fur, she felt almost exactly like EC.

It's not that I don't love EM. I do. A lot. It's just that for a minute, I felt like EC was still alive.

It made me realize that another person's presence is a very personal thing - constructed by my own brain; neurons firing, cells communicating.

For a few seconds, there was no difference between EC's presence and absence. No difference between life and death.

And then I opened my eyes.

I'm still here, right?

This morning, as I was leaving my office, I walked past the guy whose office is next to mine. I looked him in the eye and said "good morning." He made eye contact for a second, then looked away and walked past me as if I weren't there. We don't speak or anything, so I don't see what I could have done to get such a nasty blow-off.

In class, I had a few minutes to kill before the start of class so I turned to the girl next to me and asked, "did you read the chapter for this stuff?" She seriously didn't flinch at all...didn't look over to see if I was addressing her. She just stared straight ahead. I wrote "I think that girl just ignored me" on my notebook to make myself feel less awkward. At least the notebook listened.

What the hell is going on around here? I'm starting to think that I'm either invisible or that I look like I'm a total freak and that people are purposely ignoring me.

Your shining face

So, I promised an update on the 19th about the not washing my face with soap thing. It's been 10 days. I have washed my face twice with soap in the last 10 days. My face looks fine.

I think soap is a ploy to get people to buy more soap.

I went to a wedding this past weekend in the Berkshires. It was really really amazing...a very non-traditional Jewish wedding with some tradition thrown in. The bride was my best friend from high school and she looked absolutely stunning!

AJ and I stayed at his friend's house, which happened to be only a couple of minutes away from the wedding. We had the most amazing breakfasts ever on Saturday and Sunday, both at the Roadside Diner. The diner uses food from the local farm, Gould Farm, so all the ingredients were fresh and local. I don't know if they were organic. The sausage was AMAZING. I've never had anything like it in my life. I would absolutely drive the 4 hours just to spend one night in the Berkshires so that I could eat that sausage again.

School has started and is in full swing, so you'll probably be hearing less from me than you did all summer. I'll do my best, though, to keep posting regularly.

New 'do

I got a haircut yesterday. It was the first time I've had one in almost two years.

The stylist/barber guy (what do you call them these days?) thinned out my hair A LOT. At the end, he swept up a capybarra-sized pile of my hair. I was all like, "ooh! that's a lot of hair!" and he was like "don't freak out!" Except I wasn't freaking out...I was totally psyched to have that crap off of my head. He could have taken more.

Seriously folks...he took off (as in thinned out...he left it the same length) about 1/3 of my hair, and this is what I have left:



Totally crazy, huh? (That's not my boob...it's my giant pectoral muscle...my boobs are totally not that perky)

That sign behind me in the picture? It says "clean." Part of a set that I got at the Christmas Tree Shops. Speaking of, I'm doing a little experiment with the idea of "clean." For the last three days, I haven't been washing my face with soap. Instead, I've been using warm water and just scrubbing with my hands and drying with a towel. I'm an oily person. My hair gets oily in a day - my face gets oily a little after I wash it. Not using soap is, to me, not something to take lightly.

But...

So far, so good. My skin isn't oilier than usual and it looks kinda glowy. I'll give it a few more days and let you know what happens.

Stuff...and more stuff...the update edition

My father visited this weekend and I got to spend some time with my family, which was really really nice. Sometimes I forget how much I love those weird drunk, racist freaks.*

I'm enjoying my geology class so much that I'm thinking of switching my major from biology to geology. It would really mess up my whole 3-year plan. But I am so into geology right now that I don't really care.

My birthday is coming up in a week. I dropped hints all weekend to my father, hoping he'd remember and offer to take me shopping for some winter clothing while he was in town. He didn't pick up on the hints. In fact, I'm not even sure he knows my birthday is coming up. And he definitely doesn't know how old I am...



At my family party on Saturday night, I asked my 12 year-old cousin if he remembered the time my ex spun him around on the swing until he threw up. "Yeah," he said, "he was a jerk." A little shocked, I said, "yeah...he was." My cousin's follow-up? "Then why did you go out with him?" Zing.



*Okay...not ALL of my family are drunks...or freaks...and only one is significantly racist... In fact, most of my family members are outgoing, sweet, kind people. Or cute kids. Here's the money shot from this weekend:






These are my 2nd cousins and one of my first cousins. This was
just before a game of SPUD, which I won. Because I'm awesome.
And like to throw balls at little kids.

We will return

to your regularly scheduled blogging, after we figure out how to balance all the following each day:

- 8 hours of work
- 3 hours of class
- 4 hours of homework
- 1 hour of eating
- 1 hour of transportation via bicycle/foot
- 7 hours of sleeping

Somewhere in there, I'll find time to do some blogging...be patient with me!

Mr. Pedie

I woke up at six this morning; an hour earlier than usual. Not by chance, no, but because I had to. It was still pretty dark and I don't know about you, but nothing about the dark makes me want to hop out of bed and skip to the shower or anything like that.

I emerged from my bed like Dracula - arms crossed over my chest, body unmoving, feet planted on the bed and serving as an axis of rotation. Only when completely vertical did I open my eyes. Since my mattress is now on the floor, thanks to my recent poverty and a certain friend who really needed her bed frame back (the bitch!!!), I literally stepped out of bed.

The vibrations created by my first footsteps apparently also woke up one of our resident house centipedes, though he did more of a snake-like wiggle than a Dracula maneuver. He, with all his gross little legs and his silvery body and his side-to-side undulations, shot out from under AJ's bureau and charged at me, full-speed. EM, good for nothing, watched on as if she were in a 3D movie - batting at the bug while remaining several feet away from it.

I let out a shriek, grabbed the nearest crossword puzzle (thankfully I never throw them out unless they're 100% finished and have 30 at my disposal) and slammed it down on Mr. Pedie. I slowly lifted the paper and BAM, Mr. Pedie went dashing back toward the bureau, hoping to escape with at least 99 limbs still intact. But I was too quick for him, in my adrenaline-induced panic, and caught him again, making sure to slam on every square inch of the newspaper.

After ensuring Mr. Pedie's death (HA! I almost wrote "full death" which is redundant, eh?) I left him, exposed, on the floor while I got dressed. No sense in making two trips to the bathroom, right?

It was then that EM decided to take more than just a lazy swat's interest in Mr. Pedie. She circled the smooshed carcass and just as she was about to give him a little nibble, I realized that I didn't want my cat breathing centipede breath on me. So I swatted her lightly with my shirt.

Apparently, EM was also pretty terrified of Mr. Pedie, because when the the shirt touched her, that little stinker jumped straight up in the air - so high that I could have pet her without bending over (and I'm tall for a woman).

At some point during all of this, AJ looked up groggily from his pillow and asked me what was going on.

He missed a lot of excitement, but he got to sleep until seven, lucky bastard.

Photo from http://richard-seaman.com/

Shwork Bullets

(Schwork = school + work)

• First day of classes. Two, hour-long courses, back-to-back, from 10 a.m. to noon.

• Geology professor is hawt. Not in a Harrison Ford sort of way...more of a Chase Crawford but kinda rugged way. But he's my age, which is such a turn-off. And I'm not single. And he's my professor, so I'm not allowed to look at him as if he were a single, hot, young man...which he is.

• Guy sitting next to me in my geology class is wearing a dinosaur tee shirt. I silently judge him and then realize that not only do I own three or four dinosaur tee shirts, but that I'm devoting my entire academic career to studying dinosaurs.

• Pretty sure my geology teacher thinks I'm hot. Oh, no...he's looking at the giant pair of breasts right next to my face. Hey, get your boobies away from me! I know the lecture hall is cramped, but if I leaned back, I'd be using your cleavage as a neck brace. Yikes...these freshman girls are kinda ho-in' it up this year.

• Co-worker (note, not "boss") reached all-time levels of horribleness today when she gave me and another co-worker crap about watching a 3 minute YouTube video by asking "don't you two have any other work to do?" Screw you, B.

• Plus, she spent twenty minutes this morning talking politics with our soon-to-be boss. Bet you can't guess which political figure she was talking about. I'll give you a hint. It rhymes with "Marah Walin."

• Realizing that this new school/work schedule is less than ideal: Work from 7 am to 10 am. Class from 10 am to 12 pm. Work from 12 pm to 4:30 pm. Every other day. Two days a week attend lab from 6:30 pm to 9:30 pm. Sleep. Rinse. Lather. Repeat. Burn. Candle. At. Both. Ends.

• Guy in Geology class puts his bare feet up on the chair next to me. This is kinda a hippie town, but WTF??? And they're 18 year-old boy feet. *shiver*

Maybe I'll feel better tomorrow...

I cross through the dark apartment, hearing only the sound of EM's claws scratching on the hard wood floors. Somewhere in the hall, she is playing with her crinkle ball. She is nearly hysterical - the scratching sounds increase to frantic and suddenly she is quiet. I know that she has won and that the crinkle ball is clenched in her jaws, her paw still batting at it as if it might put up a fight. I smile.

I find AJ on the porch. He has tried to patch the hole in his bicycle tire. His tools are spread out on the dry wood deck and he is covered in grease. I watch him remove the tire from the rim with a flat and hooked piece of plastic. He holds up the tube to show me the tear. It is not fixable. He will need a new tube.

I have many tears. Many times I have tried to patch them, but, like AJ's tire, they always seem to let the air out. Like AJ and his tire, I have the right tools to find the sources of those leaks, but often I feel powerless to fix them. Unlike AJ's tire, I can't just go to the store and purchase a new me. A shiny, undamaged me.

I am filled with anger and envy. I compare myself to everyone around me. I find ways to cut down people who threaten me - but I don't do it to their faces...I just hate them from a distance while pretending everything is okay.

I don't want to feel this way. I don't want to compete with the rest of the world or feel like I'm not enough. I have a decent life - a great boyfriend, a decent job, the opportunity to do what I've always wanted to do.

How do you do it? Can it be done? Is it possible to live in a world where we're constantly told we need more more more and still feel content? How do you even begin to love yourself, regardless of what everyone else is doing? At what point is it "only human" to feel this way? Is it possible to transcend that?

Look what I found!

It's a bat! A really sick one, at that. It was outside the entrance to my gym. Thinking I'd be helpful in case, y'know, the bat was rabid or just needed to be put down, I told the people at the front desk about it.

"Oh! He's still there, huh? He was there yesterday, too!" was the response I got.

Um, yeah, he's still there...dying of fright or white nose disease or rabies.

By the time I got done pumping iron and doing one pullup(!) they had done something with the poor little critter. I hope he's either free and healthy or out of his misery.

Hooters

Hooters is creepy.

Well, at least the patrons at Hooters are creepy.

On Friday, AJ and I took AJ's developmentally disabled client (HS) to eat at Hooters. HS has been asking AJ to take him there for months now. He desperately wants a girlfriend, which is sad, because HS is disabled enough to not function well in this world without help, but he's not disabled enough to not want a normal life.

And just so y'all don't get all, how could you do that??? It's so inappropriate!!!, I'll just have you know that HS is a 30 year-old man who holds a job, travels around as he pleases on the bus and is allowed to spend his money in any fashion he desires. He lives at home, with his mother, but she treats him like an adult. So, Hooters was his choice and we were happy to oblige.

HS wore his "I love boobies" tee shirt and his pink baseball cap with his own handwritten words; "lookin' for love and ladies." He was so excited that he was literally vibrating when we got out of the car. We walked in, past tables and tables of gross starey (yeah, I know, spell-check...this isn't a word) men who were all looking at my boobs because hey, even if you aren't in a uniform, apparently just walking into Hooters means you've signed up to be ogled.

The food looked so fucking gross, but it tasted really good?!? WTF??? And the wings? Not great. I am really suspicious of food that looks fake and tastes good. I'm pretty sure they inject the flavor into food like that.

Our waitress's name was Crystal. She called HS "hon" and he practically melted. After she left he asked, "Do you think you could get a girlfriend here at Hooters?" We answered truthfully with a big "no," and while HS looked disappointed, it didn't stifle his enthusiasm at all. He left the restaurant still vibrating and with a pack of Hooters playing cards in his pocket.

Even with the crappy food and unwanted stares from the most redneck dudes I've ever seen, I've got to say that I had a really good time. Which is a good thing, since FS is counting the days until we can go again.

It's not fair!

AJ took his client to the county fair this morning and we had this text/picture message conversation:

AJ: 'Sup pink chicken?



Me: I'm so jealous! I freakin' love the fair. I love the petting zoo. Can you pet something for me?

AJ: I pet this giant pumpkin for u.



Me: Aw shucks. Thanks, buddy.

AJ: Hey buddy if u come to the fair i'll give u a boner.



*Just to clear up any confusion, we both call each other "Buddy." Kinda weird, I know.

Tuesday Reaches Record Levels of Awesomeness

I forget my wallet at home. FAIL. But then that means that AJ has to stop by my office, which is awesome, because I love him. I get to meet one of his clients (AJ is a respite worker) who apparently doesn't like me much. I begin the day being hated by a profoundly retarded man.

The gym is busier than usual. I recognize a man who was my statistics professor five years ago. I introduce myself again and he apologizes - he doesn't remember me. How did you do in the class? he asks. I tell him I had a final grade of 101%. Awkward silence ensues. He finally asks how he could possibly forget such a great grade. Who knows? But I wasn't lying - I did pass with a 101.

On the bike ride back to my office, I swerve to avoid some pedestrians and nearly run into a car head-on. It is a police cruiser.

While changing in the bathroom, I hear someone enter the stall next to me and start to pee. Then they fart. I assume they'll want to hide out until I exit, so I hurry. I am wrong. It is my supervisor and she leaves the stall just as I leave mine. She then chastises me for not wearing a helmet when biking.

I talk to AJ and he reminds me of plans we have this Friday. We are taking his other client, not the one who hates me, to Hooters for dinner.

Life is awesome.