Here are some Twitter-like things.

There is a new robin's nest on my second-story porch. This time, it's about three feet off the ground, perfect for spying. I haven't seen a robin near it for a few days, though I think I remember that happening last time, too. (The robin is off getting fat and making little eggs inside herself. Or something. We'll see what happens.

I rode my bike to work today. Yesterday I drove, because I foolishly let THE MAN tell me that it might rain. It did not. So today, I said, 30% chance of rain? I'll take those odds! And I was rewarded with a dry commute both ways. Lesson: Don't listen to the MAN! He's clearly in bed with the oil companies.

I have Asked Metafilter a couple of things. Some questions I haven't asked (yet):

Say I found a dead bird on the ground, and wanted to preserve it without getting a taxidermist involved. Could I, hypothetically, mummify it with a food dehydrator?

How can I make a room in my house, with walls and at least some sound privacy, without adding a separate heat source for the room?

How do I stop feeling dizzy on my bike rides? Do I have a brain tumor?

You know how people who have really loud Harley Davidsons talk about how the noise "means freedom" to them? My counter argument to them is, what if my definition of freedom is screaming at the top of my lungs while walking down the street? Is there a hole in my argument that I'm missing? Because it seems iron-clad to me.

So we went fishing for real on Saturday. We had gotten the correct bait at the sportsman's shop, and (from the proprietor) the precise location where fish had recently been stocked and were biting. And I caught our first fish! It was a weird short little bass. He had very big, bulbous eyes, and was only about 5 inches long. So back in the lake he went. But then I caught a perch! He was very pretty. And at about 8 inches long, big enough to eat, so we kept him. Keeping him, in this instance, meant putting him in the old kitty litter bucket which was half-full of melting ice. This meant that for the next half-hour or so that we were fishing, there would be an occasional rustling sound from the bucket as the perch slowly froze/suffocated to death. "Do you want me to gut it now?" asked CJ after I glanced sadly at the bucket for the 10th time. Yes, sure. He "took care of it" out of my line of sight. It was a very pretty fish, with cool stripes on the side and bright orange fins. I think I would have felt less conflicted if it had been ugly. I am like most pampered first-worlders in this regard, sadly.

We ended up not catching anything else, and it was kind of cold and windy, so we took our one small perch home. We don't yet have a scaling knife, so CJ filleted it (while I read a book upstairs, under the covers). He had to do some online research to do so, but he did a great job. We ended up with a very small amount of meat, which I sauteed in a bit of olive oil and salt. The flesh was perfect, very little fishy flavor, mostly just really good, really fresh tasting. The texture was divine. Eating it made me want to go fishing again. But fishing is time consuming, and a lot of that time is spent staring out into space as you wait for something to happen. It is, frankly, kind of boring. CJ is still wicked into it, and is fine with it being his solo thing. Which it may be.

I just got my MA fishing license in the mail. I have never gotten such a thing, but there it is. For $27 a year, I can catch my share of trout and panfish, bring them home, and eat them. (Only one a week or so, though, because of the various heavy metals in the fish. Zero if you're pregnant, which can't be a good sign...) Of course, this is all CJ's idea. I am too squeamish to put a worm on a hook, for example, or to gut a fish, but CJ is experienced in such things. I like the idea of being more connected with the food that I eat, though, so I'm into the fishing idea. Plus I have always liked those Skil-crane games at the arcade, so. You know. Similar.

We actually fished last weekend, when it was cold and drizzly (we had temporary fishing licenses that we'd bought online). CJ has his father's classic, manly old rod and reel and tackle box, and I have a bright yellow Scooby Doo-licensed fishing rod that I got at a tag sale for fifty cents a couple of weeks ago. It works fine, mostly. We went to the conservation area near my house, because we've seen people fishing there before. In fact, there was a guy fishing from atop a beaver lodge when we were there. We arrived baitless, so we dug around in the dirt with our hands to find a few feeble worms. We didn't catch anything, which was fine, as I was considering it a dry run. I had already perfected (almost) my casting technique while inside, using a bobber without a hook. A fishing rod makes for a very alluring cat toy. (Nothing better than having a 10-pound cat at the end of your line with a bobber in her mouth, fighting you with all her might as you reel 'er in.)

Because we caught nothing, we decided to "catch" a couple of trout at the new co-op. They were fairly tasty. CJ stuffed them with tomatoes, garlic, olives, and basil, and then steamed them. Next time I'm going to grill them.

After our failure, we went back to the local sporting goods' store, where the guy gave us advice about where to go and what bait to use (mealworms, which we bought, and this weird neon playdough-like stuff, which we also bought) and how to use it. So we are totally set for next weekend. I may have trouble with the eating, though; CJ is the kind of fellow who doesn't leave a scrap of meat on the bone, and when we ate the aforementioned store-bought trout, CJ opened up the head to get at the forehead meat or whatever. I told him that next time, he needs to do that over the sink when I'm not around.

I am hoping my vegan friends don't disown me now.

The River Valley Market (a co-op) opens tomorrow! I am a "member-owner" which just means that I paid them $150, will get my name on their electronic "founding member wall", and will get some discounts on store items. I am hoping this will mean I can afford to shop there (though they claim things will be competitively priced for non-members too). You don't have to do any work to be a member, which is a bonus, and the fee is a one-time thing. The store is about a perfect mile from my house, so I've gotten to watch the entire building go up. It's exciting. In anticipation of doing my grocery shopping at a place so close to my home, I bought these. Of course it's currently too damn cold to consider riding my bike anywhere (I am a wimp), but eventually it will warm up again. Of this I have faith.

And I am going to begin carpooling with my neighbor/coworker, finally. Having another person depending on my punctuality will really help me get my ass in gear, because I hate disappointing people even more than I hate leaving my bed. The past two nights I've gone up to my bedroom area and found both cats waiting on the bed for me. I think the dose of ultra-cuteness makes it harder for me to get out of bed in the morning.

Yes, I am an old lady who talks about her cats, and sleep, and the supermarket. Yes.

It has taken me this long to realize that my shitty, made-in-China, combination pencil holder/paperclip holder/ LCD clock with date/day/temperature readout corporate "gift" may not actually be all that accurate. Besides the obvious problem of it saying today is Sunday (it knows it's April 25) and the fact that the time is fast (it's now a full 10 minutes later than the actual time), it only seems to think that it's either 74.3, 77, or 80 degrees in my cubicle. I thought maybe I wasn't glancing at it often enough, but it slowly dawned on me that I have never seen it be any number in between 74 and 77. So now I have a theory that it has some poor, clunky Celsius-to-Fahrenheit problem, but I can't be bothered to do the research to back me up.

This is what occupies my mind, people. Well, that and my garden; the barely-used bike I bought off of Craigslist for $300 cash (this one); the accessories I might buy for said bike; the recent notice I got in the mail that, although I used "in-plan" doctors, I will owe nearly $1,000 for my recent surgery; Junebug's recent hobby of over-grooming her fur; wondering about the new "noodles" place on Main Street; wanting to sell some stuff on eBay; needing to clean the house; needing a trip to IKEA; and the continuing struggle between my philosophy that paying more for a long-lasting, quality item is worth it in the end, and the deeply-ingrained desire to not spend more than a few dollars on anything, ever. (I had been feeling quite flush when I bought the bike ... and then I got the health care notice.)

Seriously, when is the health care revolution going to come? I have pretty good insurance, subsidized by my employer, and it still sucks ass. They ended up paying about 85 percent of the actual costs of the surgery. That won't be enough coverage if I ever end up staying a few nights in the hospital. What the hell am I supposed to do? And I'm one of the lucky ones! I'm insured! If I didn't love spring and summer so much, I'd move to Canada. But I am always mindful of how much outdoors time we get up here: how many months I can comfortably ride my bike to work, how many months of planting I get, how many months of using the porches... I don't want to tip the indoors-to-outdoors month ratio beyond 50/50, you know?

Sorry, I'm a little obsessive. As you may have noticed.

I'm feeling ok, health-wise. No more lady business to report for a while, I suspect. That's good news for me and for you!

I had my three-weeks-after-surgery checkup today. My doctor, in whose skills I am confident, was exercising her most emotionally-distant bedside manner. She told me that I was pretty unlikely to get pregnant without in-vitro fertilization, but that I really should try not to get pregnant anyway, because there's a good chance it would end up a tubal. If my cyst-ish pain started again, I should go on birth control pills. And then she seemed to want to move on to the next patient.

To stop her, I kept asking questions. Is it ok if I exercise? Yes, no restrictions. What about forming adhesions? You already have lots, and you've been living with them for years. What about this pain, could it be due to blah de blah? It could be. [Note: I would prefer a yes it's possible, or a no you're crazy.] And I wanted to see the photos she'd taken with the tiny camera she put into my belly button, which I saw were sitting in my plump patient folder (the folder is plump, not the patient). So then I got to see my viscera. It was really disgusting yet fascinating. The less said the better, but everything looked a lot better than I had imagined (since of course I had looked, through my fingers, online at photos of other women's endometriosis-marked abdomens, and had in my mind that mine would be as bad as theirs). It doesn't look great, what with all of the scar tissue she kept pointing at with remarks like, "that's not supposed to be there; this whole area should be empty; that tube shouldn't be stuck to that thing" and stuff. It's best for me to not think about it. Out of sight, out of mind.

And now I really want to get out of work early and get a beer by the big open window at the Dirty Truth, but I have to work a couple more hours first, and I don't know who's around right after work on a Friday for me to drink with. (My coworkers are all moms.) The weather is too nice to just go home. Text me, peeps, if you want to raise a pint.

Today I met with my ex-aunt's niece (so, my ex-cousin-in-law?) because she's graduating from college this May and is wondering what career she should try out first. First she wanted to know about how a magazine was put together, so I attempted to give her a general overview, which was as garbled and confused and as full of stutters as you might expect. (I don't do so well with the ad-libbing.) Then she asked me an interview question: What do you like best about your job? Which was charming. So I told her, that I get to work on different things every issue, I learn things, I work with good people. She also wondered how much opportunity she'd have, were she to start in the editorial field, to switch over to the art and design side. I had to tell her "almost none" but in a less negative way. I did say, however, that once you have things like a mortgage to worry about, it's hard to switch careers and start over at the bottom of the career ladder. I may have said something like "just one of the fun things about being an adult" which elicited an "aw!" from her. That kind of snapped me out of my old-lady-whose-spirit-is-crushed reverie. It's fine, really, I said, because it is. She is a nice young woman, and is excited about possibly interning in my office, so I must have done an o.k. job in our interview.

In other news, I managed to leave my cell phone -- my only phone -- in Lenox, at CJ's house, this morning. I got up and out of bed before 7:30, so I obviously wasn't thinking clearly. I'm still deciding whether it's worth it (gas, time) to drive an hour each way to pick it up. Of course I get to see CJ, too. But I always end up staying overnight, and driving an hour back home before work is ROUGH. This morning I stopped at the only coffee shop open in Lee at 7:45 on a Monday morning, Juice n' Java. JnJ is always staffed by just one person. One person who mans the register, gets you your coffee drink, toasts the bagels, hand-mixes the flavored cream cheese -- he was mixing up a single-serving's worth of honey walnut for a woman in front of me in line when I walked in -- which makes for a leisurely service experience. Oh Lee, you slay me.

I still made it home in time to shower and ultimately get to work semi-on-time. But the whole routine throws off my game for the day. Not that I have a game. But.

p.s. The take-away from this post: I am phone-less for the time being. It is possible I won't have a phone until late Friday night. Please make a note of it (just not on my voicemail).

Half of doing well at work is knowing when to stick up for what you know is right – and I’m not talking about social justice or anything, I’m talking about tiny design issues and turns of phrase and shit like that – and knowing when to let it go lest you be seen as argumentative and defensive. It’s too bad I was hired right before annual reviews are happening, because I get to skip it this year, and right now everyone’s all impressed and happy with me. A year from now, the bloom will be off the rose, and my review will be full of things like “After a strong start, Debbie grew resistant to change” and “Debbie was eager to learn everything, at first, but we soon noticed that nothing we were attempting to teach her was really sticking.” [Note; nothing like those two phrases have actually appeared in any of my performance reviews.]

Also, apparently my company has switched from a three-step grading system for our reviews (1. You're doing exceptionally well; 2. You're doing an o.k. job; 3. Maybe this job isn't right for you) to a five-step one. Which at first sounded great to all of us, because then we get two whole new shades of gray to fall into. But then the managers were told that there were quotas. And now, out of the entire office of 60 or so people, we're only allowed one or two "1" ratings, and just a few more "2"s, making it pretty much the same kind of deal as before, with the vast majority of us being called Average. Never mind that more than a few of us go "above and beyond" in our jobs, the managers have to grade us all on a curve. It's very discouraging, and the managers are pissed off and dreading doing this. Yet another downside to working in Ginormous MegaCorp. The bureaucracy involved makes me more anarchist by the day.

I seem to be healing just fine. I am even wearing real pants today -- true, they aren't jeans, but then do have a zipper in the front and everything. I have hit the big time.

And, tonight I handed in my big freelance fact-checking project! It is finished! Woo-hoo! I have even been paid. The author is a very nice fellow, a professor and all-around creative smarty-pants. He and his wife fed me each time I went to their beautiful old house in the country to work. After dinner, I went over the suggested fact changes to the manuscript. In the text he had mentioned getting Dictaphone recordings on green plastic discs from his father in the 1950s, and I had discovered that the machine with the green discs was called a SoundScriber -- and as soon as I said the name, he said, "THAT'S IT! Oh my word, I haven't heard that name in years! How did you find that?" Just doing my job, sir. I have powerful Google-fu.

Now I can get back to work on things I want to work on. It's been kind of painful reading my usual crafty blogs without being able to spend any time making stuff myself. No more! Plus, tomorrow it'll be warm enough for me to survey my garden, which I haven't visited since November. I am already planning a bean tepee. Soon I may risk my first bike ride to work of the year, and since I have been entirely sedentary for many weeks, it should be a doozy.

So, yes. I had the surgery. And the doctor says I have a really bad case of endometriosis -- everything in the internal-ladybits area is all stuck together with adhesions. One of my tubes is apparently stuck shut, or nearly shut. If I want to carry a baby, or if I start to have pain again, I need to get this procedure done again, with a reproduction specialist. My doctor was too nervous to start clearing out the adhesions herself. She did get rid of the cyst for me, at least. The worst part of the whole thing -- besides the fact that I may have to do this all over again -- was the two days of nausea. That, and the excruciating pain I had the first night when I tried to pee, which I needed to do every hour since they had pumped me full of fluids because I was so nauseated from the anesthesia ... That was pretty rough. I can't remember the last time I was so much pain I was trembling.

Regardless. It was about two days of hell, one day of not-great-ness, and then today was ok. Not great, but not horrible. I was on Vicodin for about 36 hours, and have been on ultra-ibuprofen since then. I can handle the pain of the incisions and the weird soreness in my shoulder. My belly is still weirdly swollen, but not as swollen as I thought it would be. Actually, during the operation, when they first inflated me my heart rate dropped due to the pressure on my nervous system. So they had to deflate me very quickly and then re-inflate me with about half the normal amount. Also, at one point they had to jolt me with atropene because again my heart was slowing down too much. Both of these things point to "not going to come out of anesthesia without problems."

[Here's the longer story of my after-surgery times, if you care or dare:]
The hospital has a just-out-of-surgery recovery area, where I had a breathing mask on and was much too awake for my preference, probably so I could tell them how much it hurt so they could drug me appropriately (I think I said 6 on a scale of 10). Then there's a secondary recovery area, where your boyfriend (for example) can come visit you. I was in that secondary area a long time. I was fine as long as my head was on the pillow. It was too noisy to really sleep. Every once in a while the nurse would try to get me up. First, sitting on the bed, and then with my legs over the side. After about 30 seconds I'd have to lie down (or else start puking, which I never did). And they'd let me lie down for a while longer. The whole time I had an IV in, with fluid dripping in. Eventually they moved me back to the just-out-of-surgery area (it was unclear why, though they said it was so I'd get more attention -- I figure the nurses in the other area wanted to go home). A very nice nurse there talked to me about getting a real room for me to sleep in -- maybe not overnight, but for a couple of hours, until I felt better. But she also gave me an anti-emetic in my IV, and after some more lying around, I sat up, stood up, and hobbled over to the bathroom (held up by the nurse), where I failed to pee much, due to my urethra being all stuck together from the catheter. And then I had to go back and sit down (the nurse wouldn't let me lie down). CJ ran to bring the car up and the nurse got me into a wheelchair, and I made it home and into my bed without actual heaving. It was close, though. Poor CJ was there through it all... I think I was in the after-surgery recovery place for about 6 hours.

Anyway. If I do this again, maybe they can give me the amount of anesthesia that someone my size needs, and not Average Woman.

So, that thing happened. I was indeed mightily nauseated. And in pain. And I still feel dizzy and weird and typing isn't helping. It wasn't a dermoid, it was the worse thing (endo). More later.

I had my pre-op meeting and blood-draw yesterday. My doctor sensed my interest in Thog, and said she would be able to show me photos afterwards. (Of what, she did not say.) I'm not sure I actually want to look, but maybe she can just describe it to me... Also, she and another doctor disagree about what this thing is, so there's still a chance it's endometriosis. Whatever. Also, I'm not allowed to eat or drink or even take a painkiller after midnight tonight, so I'll be in some pain by the time I show up at the hospital for surgery, which will provide some nice incentive for me.

I tried a Vicodin last night. It was ok. I felt super anxious when I woke up at 5 a.m.; I wasn't in pain, but I was freaked out, worried I was going to barf from the Vicodin. Have I mentioned before that I don't like drugs? I don't. Y'all can have your fun with the recreational drugs, I don't judge, and in fact I wish I had the capacity to enjoy them. But I know that I don't. Anyway, the Vicodin works in that I was able to fall asleep and I wasn't in pain, so I have that going for me. I am feeling really dopey and stupid today at work, however.

It's not the barfing that worries me -- a little vom never hurt anyone -- it's the nausea. My doctor said they'll give me something to eat and drink in recovery, and when I said "what about barfing?" she said that if I felt sick, then obviously they wouldn't give me stuff to eat -- plus, the IV will still be in, and they can give me some anti-nausea medication. Sweet. She also said there would be warmed blankets available -- I had forgotten the crazy chills I felt after my wisdom teeth extraction, and how good it felt when I finally got warm (like an hour later; I was at home by the time I got cold).

Anyway, blah blah blah. Tomorrow it's a fond goodbye to Thog. I'm ok with it. At least, this minute I'm ok.

p.s. One of the sheets in the packet of info they gave me at the hospital says, "Do not make any important decisions for at least 24 hours after your surgery." I'd better block eBay from my laptop, or I could end up owning a used car in Seattle or something...

I scheduled the surgery for Thursday -- this Thursday. I am terrified. From what I've been reading and hearing, as soon as I wake up from the surgery I will be nauseated, and I won't feel un-nauseated for three days. My throat will be plenty sore, since they'll have shoved a breathing tube down into it. I will have gas pains and cramps all over my body for several days. And then of course there's the incisions, for which I will be taking painkillers that make me dizzy and more nauseated. It sounds pretty fucking horrible to me. If anyone out there has had general anesthesia without puking or some other bad thing happening, please let me know.

Of course my cyst -- I've named it "Thog" -- has been making me feel terrible, so I do want it out of my body. I wish it would just go away, somehow become the dissolving type. But no, Thog Want To Live! and so he must be forcibly removed. Sorry, Thog.

Lady problems update: My doctor looked at the ultrasound film and spoke to one of the other doctors. They think it is definitely a dermoid (because it looks like there's stuff other than fluid in it - so fascinating and disgusting!) but they don't think it's related to endometriosis. So I might not have that at all, though they'll take a look once they're in there (if I don't chicken out and decide not to do the surgery, which has not yet been scheduled, still). I asked her why my belly felt bloated and she had to reason; there's no fluid in there. Am I just fatter, suddenly? Too much Easter candy? I never get like this, though, and I haven't changed my diet at all, really. (The cyst itself is only 3 inches across, so that can't be it.) She did say that exercising would not have brought on the pain, so I can at least stay active without too much fear.

Anyway, she told me that she has a patient that has had ten surgeries to remove ten dermoids, but that's super rare, plus that person has four children. And that's one patient in 25 years of practice, so.

Luckily, tonight it's on to New Jersey, where there will be egg-hiding and more candy (oh well) and lots of niece-and-nephew (and pre-teen cousins!) time. A nice distraction.