I've been having symptoms of a cold? Maybe allergies? For about a week now. It's all sinus-related, that's for sure. So yesterday I decided I would try my neti pot again. For those who don't know, a neti pot is a sort of short teapot that you use to pour salted water into one nostril, up in through your sinuses, and out of the other nostril. This takes some doing. For one thing, you have to tip your head forward and to the side just so, then you have to breathe through your mouth so the water doesn't pour down your throat. Pretty much all of the times I've tried using it (I've had mine for 10 years at least) I pour the water in one nostril, I feel it go into my sinuses a little, and then, nothing. The water doesn't flow.

This time, I poured water in one nostril, and let it fill my sinuses, and unlike the other times, it felt TERRIBLE -- like you feel when you fall into a pool and accidentally get water up your nose, except I was pouring it in MYSELF, and not letting myself blow it out. My eyes started watering but I just let it happen, and finally the water came out the other nostril! yay. I poured most of it through, and then I got bored and I stopped. Afterwards you're supposed to keep your face facing the ground and gently blow your nose a lot. Which I did, a lot, but I still had a ton of water in there or something, because I was feeling water and junk drip down my throat for the rest of the evening. Today I don't feel any better.

In short? Waterboarding yourself = not as fun as you'd think.

Hey, look at me, I skipped another day of posting! huh. Time for another list of randomness.

During my therapy appointment last night, a big parade of marchers came through town. I was on the third floor and couldn't see them, but I could hear them yelling, "No justice, no peace!" and "What do we want? Blergabedoobit! [something with two many syllables that I couldn't make out] When do we want it? NOW!" If I had been in a more fun situation I would have gone over to the window to check them out and maybe make fun of their garbled chants. But I wasn't, so I didn't.

The building my office window faces is usually topped with a full row of pigeons, of which there are exactly two all-white ones. All-white pigeon = dove.

I have not been feeling so great physically or mentally and I'm having a hard time pinning down the reason. I'd blame it on The Pill, but I just started it Sunday (no barfing yet, but some queasy feelings). The only things I can pin it on is the recent cyst reappearance, the weather getting colder, annual holiday-related anxiety, an upcoming trip to CJ's parents' place for a week, and restarting therapy. (Therapy usually makes one feel worse before you feel better, right? Please?)

The bad feelings might also be attributed to watching too much Celebrity Rehab and The Real Housewives of wherever and other similarly empty-calorie shows. I need to stock up on some quality DVD rentals for my free time this weekend.

I am excited to get out of work early tomorrow and shop at the Food Bank Farm, a CSA that opens to the public on the Tuesday and Weds. before Thanksgiving. I'm going to try to buy everything I need for my Thanksgiving side dishes there.

And that's all from this chick for now.

CJ's family was in town this past Friday and Saturday. Note to self: Do not take the guys from San Diego out on a nature hike during peak mosquito season. They aren't used to the buzzing and the swarming and the biting and the general horror. We are numb to it, of course, but they don't really have annoying insects in southern California. The people there are soft and pampered, like babies. They did say that it was very pretty, though.
Being around CJ's parents means going out to eat a lot on their dime. It was enjoyable, I must admit. They are similar to my bro-in-law's parents in many ways, and since they are all Jewish, I now have the (probably-mistaken) impression that all Jewish families are helmed by people who are incredibly generous and declarative. (They can also give guilt trips at a professional level of skill.) It's like visiting a foreign country.
My parents, however, avoid making nauseating, cringe-making hints about CJ and I getting married and having babies. And if we have babies, how we should move closer to them so they can spend time with the babies. And how they'll buy us fancy Danish furniture and give us a house if we move there and have babies. They are kind of kidding, but in that way that's obvious they are not kidding at all. I tend to deflect the conversation by making snarky jokes, since they like and appreciate a good cutting remark. So they like me a lot, which is nice.
Not nice? My robin's nest is empty. Empty! It still had two eggs in it on Sunday, but this morning, empty. It shocked me and made me very sad. There are enough robins in the world, but this one was my robin. I looked up robin egg predators online; both squirrels and crows are happy to take an egg from a nest without leaving a trace behind. We have plenty of crows and squirrels here too, but none of them are my crow or squirrel. Thus I now hate all squirrels and crows. (The previous is an allegory about how the personal is political, or all politics is local, or something.)

This one's for all the ladies. Seriously, it's more crap about my lady business, so feel free to skip it.

My little cystic friends have been still hurting me, off and on, and they hurt so badly a couple of days ago that I pondered another visit to the emergency room. Instead I waited, and went to the doctor today to check it all out with the ultrasound machine. Turns out I have a dermoid cyst, which is the kind that sometimes has teeth and hair inside of it (I find this secretly thrilling), and I have endometriosis of the ovaries, which is a major bummer. You know that stuff that forms the uterine lining? Of course, who doesn't. Well, some of that stuff is outside of my uterus. And like a zombie hand that still twitches and moves after it has been sliced from its zombie body, the endometrium that's stuck to my ovaries actually produces period blood every month. Ew, and ouch. Between this and the cyst, it's like my body really wants to make a baby, and I'm not cooperating, so it's just going ahead and making do with whatever scraps it can find. My body would apparently be o.k. with a shambling, crudely-formed golem of a child.

The long story short is, my doctor is recommending laparoscopic surgery. That's the kind with the tiny incisions and the little camera, and you get to go home after it. They also inflate your abdomen with gas, which is alarming, and apparently results in having gas pains in strange locations for a few days after surgery. She says that recovery will take a week. People I know who have had their gall bladders removed with a similar technique say it doesn't take as long. But whatever. The extra exciting part is, once they get inside there, they may decide to remove the entire ovary, so I shall become half a woman. Or, the problem may be bigger and more complicated than they thought, and they'll end up slicing me open like a melon, and I'll end up in the hospital for a couple of nights, and recovering at home for weeks. I am really hoping that neither of those things happen. I have not yet scheduled the surgery, I still have some questions for my doctor, who will call me tomorrow after she studies the film. (By "film" I am assuming she means the ultrasound photos, and not "College Road Trip.")

All of this means that if I want to ever have a baby, it will be very difficult for me to do so. Not so difficult that I can stop using birth control, however. Thanks, universe!

WHO just spent 8 and a half hours in the ER?

I did! I did!

I drove myself there because I have been having some crampy lower GI pain, and when I called my gastroenterologist and described my symptoms, she suggested I go get it checked out. When I arrived at 11:24 a.m. (I had to write down the time on a form) there weren't that many people in the waiting room, so I thought I might be out in a couple of hours. After about 20 minutes my name was called, the nurse took my vital signs, and I returned to the waiting area. A few minutes after that, the insurance-taking person called me in, and we did that part. Then I went back to the waiting area. After a while longer, I was lead to an actual examination room... But it was dirty. So the nurse told another person to clean it out, and I waited in the hallway with other waiting people. After the cleaning person headed out, I just kind of wandered into the room alone, since the nurse was long gone.

A nurse came in (these are all different nurses, by the way, but somewhat interchangeable) and took my vitals (again), drew some blood, and asked me to change into a hospital gown. And then she left, and my real wait began. I had brought my GameBoy, thank god, so I played my game for about 3 hours, slowly getting more bored and hungry. A nurse checked on me and I asked desperately if I could slip on my pants and quickly scamper back to the reception area and vend a snickers or something. She said no, because if I was admitted for surgery, my stomach needed to me empty, and besides, I was third in the doctor's line-up and shouldn't be long now. Then two more hours passed. I had given up on the video game and was just falling asleep when the doctor arrived. She was very young, but she put me at ease and I liked her attitude. She and her assistant were doing a lot of sassing, which I enjoy. She took my history again, and did exam stuff, and ruled out my G.I. theory. Instead, she decided to investigate my lady business. They did a crazy origami/swiss-army-knife thing with the cot, and gave me a pelvic exam (ladies, you know what I'm talking about. Can I get a what-what?). The doctor ordered me up a sonogram and left. Her nurse helper stayed behind to re-create the cot, and I asked her if I would have to cut a bitch in order to get something to eat. But nicer than that. She offered me a chicken or tuna salad sandwich, saltines, graham crackers, and jello. Hard to resist those choices! I picked chicken salad, with a side of apple juice. I ate it like a starving animal and it was totally delicious.

Then I waited a while longer (maybe an hour?) for someone to come and push my cot over to the sonogram place. I told the pusher, "I've never been wheeled around in a hospital before!" Warily, she said, "Well, there's a first time for everything." She totally rained on my parade. The route to the sonogram office was twisty but deserted, seeing as it was now after 6 p.m. The sonogram tech started on me right away. It took like half an hour, and she did the kind with the thing on your stomach, and then the kind with the condom-covered wand stuck up your hoo-hah (ladies? Anyone?). This was my second ultrasound experience, and I secretly love seeing all of my squishy insides in black and white. The tech was very friendly and answered all of my questions. I knew from my previous time that I have a uterus shaped like an old-fashioned Mickey Mouse balloon, and she showed me that more clearly. And she measured my ovaries, and made sure there was no torsion or loss of blood flow. Turns out, both ovaries had big ol' cysts in them. And the one on the right, where I was feeling the crampy pain, had actually hemorrhaged a little. Aha! Success!

Then she wheeled me out to the hallway, where I waited half an hour for someone to come push me back to my ER room. After that, I had a short wait for the doctor to come in and tell me her findings. She told me to come back if the pain got much worse, and gave me a script for Percocet, so I've got that going for me, which is nice. And then I was "discharged."

I know that I only waited so long because the hospital was unusually busy. I could hear the nurses talking about it, wondering if there was a full moon. The hallway area right outside my door was even being used as an exam "room." The first person to come in was a loud drunk, and the first thing he said was, "Hey brother! I just got laid!" so I knew I was about to get some nice in-room entertainment. I think he had a security guard assigned to him, because after drunky (actually, his name was Christopher) would say something especially loud, stern-voiced guy would tell him to knock it off. He was swearing like crazy. "I've fuckin' raped girls, I've fuckin' killed people..." "I'm in the hospital, and I'm fucking hungry, why can't I get a fucking sandwich!" Then, "I swear on my mother's grave, my father's grave, and my brother's grave that I'll stop." "You're my man, you know? You did right by me, so I'll do right by you." The doctor showed up and said, "Tell me what happened today. I heard you passed out at CVS?" Ha. It seemed like he was going to let drunky sleep it off in the hallway, but drunky kept on yelling and carrying on, and the nurses and the guard kept shushing him and saying, "There are elderly people and children here, have some respect." And then, suddenly, a cop showed up -- I'm just going on what I heard here -- and said "Chris, dammit, you can't stay here!" and Chris responded meekly, was handcuffed, and led away.

The second person in the hallway position was a high school guy who had been throwing up but also had headaches and shortness of breath. He seemed fine by the time I was listening to him, and he had two buddies with him, a boy and a girl. They were super talkative and raunchy. One of the boys and the girl were a couple, and the three of them talked about having anal sex ("you just gotta relax!"), going to Taco Bell, and what their perfect girl would be like ("34 D's -- no, double D's; Russian or Brazilian; brown or black hair"). The doctor gave him some meds, told him that because he has asthma as a child he really shouldn't be smoking (idiot!), and sent him away.

The third person was the worst. I came back from the sonogram to hear a new arrival moaning and crying. Someone said, "They didn't give her anything in the ambulance?" so I knew this was bad news and a true emergency. Apparently she was only 20 (and with her mom), had had surgery a few days ago, she'd been throwing up non-stop since one p.m., she felt feverish, and her incisions were hurting a LOT. Ugh. She sounded so horrible. Constant moaning and crying. I was very, very happy to get discharged out of there.

Long story short: My ovaries like to make big cysts for some reason, but I'm fine. That's all.

[Update: I did send a revised resume, with a short but funny/mildly-self-deprecating email; the guy wrote me back almost immediately saying not to worry, he hadn't read the previous one yet. Sorry for ignoring your advice, commenters; I went with a former co-worker's opinion.]

Last Thursday, I drove CJ to a CVS to get eye drops and much-needed pain reliever for an eye thing he was going through. I could tell it really hurt because he was kind of trembling and not-talking. While cruising through the parking lot, a big old sedan in front of me suddenly stopped. So, I pulled into the open spot he had just passed, and parked. As CJ and I searched the car for his pain-killing prescription (with increasing distress), a very angry man suddenly knocked at the window. "Do you do that a lot, stealing people's parking spaces!?" I opened the door to be polite and asked him to repeat himself. He did. I said, "Oh, were you going to back into it or something? I didn't know." (By the way, there were plenty of parking spaces. Plenty. And the dick didn't have his blinkers on.) He said something angry to me back, about being careful or something, and how I should watch out and pay attention (I didn't pay attention). He was so furious, so furious at ME. I suddenly got angry, and as he walked away, I said to his back, "You don't have to be an asshole about it." He immediately turned and rushed up to the car saying, "Excuse me? Did I use bad language with you??" I glanced over at CJ, still wincing and fumbling around in the dark for the prescription, and I said, "No, fine, you're right. Have a good night" -- that last bit said with sweetness and only a tiny hint of sarcasm.

After he walked away and the adrenaline rush subsided, I felt like crying. We decided the prescription was not in the car; this was bad, and meant he'd have to just use Advil. As I walked a blind CJ to the CVS, I had to excuse my bad behavior to CJ: see, I used to just turn meek and yielding when confronted with jerks, but now I stand up for myself, maybe a little too much, when I should really be polite but firm. Plus, because CJ had his eyes closed, I felt I had to convince him that I hadn't actually knowingly cut the guy off. (He doesn't know me well enough yet to know I don't pull that crap.) But replaying what had just happened made me feel worse and less-together. I nearly fell apart in the freakin' CVS, and I think it all happened because I'm unemployed.

Here's why: My ego has taken a big hit, which I didn't really expect from being laid off; I don't feel it consciously. I know I'm good at what I do (or used to do). But I am definitely more insecure than I have been in a long time. It's not a good feeling. Nobody's more critical of me than I am. I don't know how to counteract this, except to just be aware of it. I hope I don't end up stripping for cash just to feel better about myself. If you catch me on the pole, please pull me off of it.

Inside CVS, CJ sat in the waiting area while I collected the other stuff he needed. As he occasionally blotted at his teary, shut eyes, and I held his hand and tried to distract him from the pain, I thought I saw the angry guy walking up the aisle. I hoped he saw me, and I hoped he felt guilty.

This week has been all about choices.
I could get up and out of bed when my alarm first goes off in the morning. Or I can stay in semi-consciousness for an hour or so, enjoying the warmth of my bed and the cats lying on me.
I could clean the bits of raw chicken out of the kitchen sink strainer, or I could leave them there and let the cats eat them during the night.
I could work on the various art projects I want to create, or I could play Turok: Evolution.
I could get angry at the two loser assholes who won my eBay auctions and then never responded or paid me, or I could shrug it off and get the auctions canceled so I can just redo them.
I could fall into the trap I commonly lay for myself at this stage in a relationship -- where I start saying critical things without thinking, subconsciously trying to push them away and/or test their devotion to me -- or I can try really, really hard to not do that.

This week, I've been choosing the second options.

Have you ever started eating a new food just because you're heard it's so good for you? Something like kale, maybe. You buy it at the farmer's market, thinking, this doesn't look like something that will be delicious, but it will make me feel so healthy and good that maybe I won't mind the taste. And at first, you only eat it because you know you really should. But then, once you get to know kale, you start finding new and delicious recipes, and eventually you realize that, even though this food is packed with vitamins, low fat and high in fiber, you love it. You taught yourself to love kale. Sandy, chewy, good-for-you kale.

Yeah. That doesn't work when it's with people and not food.

Erin was my grandmother. When we were little we called her Grandmommy, but in the last few years of her life we called her Nean. Like good grandmothers everywhere, she was an excellent baker of cookies and pies, as well as the famous Way Family Granola, and she had the ubiquitous jar of hard candy that had solidified into one big piece. Unlike good grandmothers everywhere, she wasn't particularly warm or effusive with her affection. She was very reserved and liked things to be done the proper way. When we were frustrated with her, we'd secretly call her passive aggressive, but she was really just assertive, even though it came in a "frail old lady" package.

She always seemed slightly sad or disapproving, but that was due to the structure of her face more than anything else. She didn't like talking about herself, and even after we asked, she never told stories about what life was like during the depression and WWII, other than the basic facts of names and dates and who moved to what town after marrying who.

My fondest memories of her have to do with the house in Center Harbor, NH she and my Grandfather bought when we were born -- when we were older, she told me that they bought it so they'd have enough room for us to come for extended stays. The entire second floor of the house was just for guests. It had a huge backyard, a hammock, raspberry bushes and wild blueberries, croquet... and they lived a short drive to the lake's beach. My grandfather would chop wood while my grandmother worked in the kitchen. We visited for at least a couple of weeks every summer, and (I think) every other Christmas. When we grew into pre-teens, they sold the house (breaking our hearts) and bought a boring cookie-cutter one in town, because "you didn't want to visit anymore." Which was probably true, but we wanted the house to always be there just the same.

I remember getting a 12-inch of "Do They Know It's Christmas" one year, and making Nean listen to it, since the song had been in the news a lot. My grandparents always had the radio playing classical music, so having Nean listen to a "rock" song was a novelty. After the song was over she smiled politely and said something vague like "that was fine."

We also watched E.T. (the movie) on cable with her at our house in Jersey. We all loved it and thought she would too, but after it was over she said she had liked it, but that it was "no Wizard of Oz." I was offended (even though it's true). She liked to catch Jeopardy every night, and loved to watch stuff on PBS that may as well have been broadcast from another planet (as far as I was concerned), like the Kennedy Center Honors.

She wasn't a frivolous, silly person, so when she *would* be silly -- flashing a funny face at the camera, or gamely wearing big green Hulk hands (a photo of this is on my parents' fridge door) -- it was beautiful and surprising, like seeing a unicorn.

When I went up to sort through her things a few weeks ago, after she was transferred from her apartment to a nursing room, I found that she had kept every single card we had ever sent her, plus of course all of the various pieces of "art" we'd given her on holidays. She loved us, and wanted us to visit more, to write more. She was very proud of us and loved showing us off to her friends. I think she never really understood my sister and me when we were kids, who were weird and volatile and moody and sparkly, while she was always calm and in control and had lunch on the table at noon every day because that's when lunch is. But -- once after a fiery outburst with my sister (we were home on a break in college) she found me alone and told me that I was sensitive -- and she meant it as a compliment. It was the first time I had ever remotely considered that being sensitive could be a good thing.

Nean died around 4 a.m. Tuesday morning. She was 90 years old.

Trying to keep busy from feeling broken-hearted again. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Trying to stay positive, and luckily it's gorgeous outside. Tilling is scheduled to happen tomorrow afternoon; hopefully I won't accidentally till my toes. Going to buy a lot of plants at the farmer's market and get ready to go. Just got a coupon in the mail for Hadley Garden Center, my gardening store of choice, so I'm pretty happy about that. New tires are scheduled to be purchased on Monday after work, so I don't pop a tire on the way to and fro NJ for yet another depressing family obligation. Sigh. At least I have lots of plans for this weekend...