Monday, February 27, 2012

rain. it skews my thought processes...

so today . . . it rained. thank goodness.

when i left for school this morning, i knew rain was in the forecast. i had checked my weather app which shows the weather prediction hour by hour, and it said there was a 50 percent chance of rain during recess today. i thought those were pretty good odds, so i wore my lightweight raincoat because i knew i had to do a few errands after school and my raincoat would keep me dry. but it isn't very warm. which is usually fine, since our daytime temperatures rarely dip below 60 degrees, and i was already wearing a sweater and a scarf.

i left the house, got into my car in the garage, and went to school. i parked in my usual parking space, got out of the car, and was hit by a freezing cold wind. (this is the problem with keeping your car in the garage--you don't have to actually feel the weather until you get where you are going.) i immediately knew i was in trouble... there were hardly any clouds in the sky, probably because of the wind. rain did not look imminent. in fact, rain didn't even really look like a possibility. i was suddenly wishing i had worn my warm coat instead of my waterproof one.

i spent the morning praying for rain by recess...

fifteen minutes before recess i went to check the weather. it was raining! well, sort of... the ground was a little damp. there were clouds in the sky. if it wasn't exactly raining, it was sure looking like it was thinking about it... that was good enough for me. this is southern california after all.

we spent recess in our warm, dry classroom :) sometimes it is good to be the adult.

after school it was still threatening to rain. and it was still cold. at least i had on my warm boots, because i had to go pick up my new prescription. fortunately for me, my pharmacy is in the same building as my eye doctor. i have an eye appointment early thursday morning, but i will have to rush to work afterwards, which won't leave me much time to look at new glasses. so while waiting for my prescription to be ready, i ventured to the second floor and the optometrist's office.

there were a lot of frames from which to choose. a lot. and yet, i found that the frames i kept choosing looked a lot like the ones i already have, which i LOVE, which is maybe why i kept choosing similar frames! but i currently only have one pair of glasses, and i can't be without them for two weeks while kaiser sends them out to have new lenses put in. so i need a second pair.

i walked up and down the wall of frames more than once. i found a few frames i liked, but of course they were all over $300 just for the frames! and my lenses are not going to be inexpensive--that's what happens when your eyes get to be of a certain age. and then i heard the woman next to me mumbling. she was not happy. she was there to have her new glasses replaced, but she was there alone with no one to give an opinion. she was afraid she was going to end up with another pair of glasses that didn't work for her. pretty soon she turned to me and said, "what do you think of these?"

please don't ask me that! please, please, PLEASE don't ask me that! i mean, i have opinions about fashion and accessories, but my bubble tends to be a bit off level. i like things that are a little different, quirky, unexpected. my taste is not for everyone. but how do i explain this to a perfect stranger in the next 30 seconds. so i took the easy way out. "i think they look nice," i said.

let this be a lesson to you. don't ask a stranger what they think. they don't know you well enough to say, "that looks hideous! what were you thinking??" obviously she thought they looked pretty good or she would have already rejected them. should i be the one to tell her they weren't that great? i don't think so!

"ok," she said, "what about these?" and she put on another pair. "those are nice, too," i said. when she asked me about a third pair, i finally said, "look, i like glasses with a bold frame. i do not like half frames, skinny metal frames, or frameless frames. i want my glasses to say 'look, i have eyes!' so that affects my opinions. if you like something that blends in with your face, i am the wrong person to be asking!" and then she said, "i like your glasses!"

oh sheesh. now i had to help her. so we compared several frames, and i told her what i thought. and she chose the frames i liked the best. i hope she is happy with them...

and then i realized SHE CHOSE THE FRAMES I LIKED THE BEST!! now what was i going to choose?!?! because i'm pretty sure kaiser doesn't keep several pairs of that particular gucci frame in the back room! and my appointment is on thursday! what is wrong with me?? why did i have to go all gaga when she put that frame on?? why didn't i push her toward the guess frame so she would leave my gucci frame alone?!?!?! now what am i going to do????

maybe i am too nice...

let this be a lesson to me. don't talk to strangers. even ones who need help. i teach tiny children that lesson every year--you would think i would know it! now my only hope is that they will get some newer, even better frames in before i have to make a decision...

...yes, by thursday.

Friday, February 24, 2012

tmi... trust me...

so today . . . i survived my procedure. but just barely...

there were times when i thought i wasn't going to make it. not eating for two and a half days was not a good thing for me. it never is. actually i got through the prep fairly well. i thought...

but then i woke up this morning feeling sick to my stomach. i managed to get myself into the car to go to the medical center, but i confess i wore my pajama pants...

(i don't know why everyone gets all militant about pajama pants. they are comfy and at least they cover a person up!! have you see some of the shorts and skirts that pass for clothes at the mall?!?!?! i think we should be encouraging everyone to wear pajama pants...)

while i was checking in, i thought i was going to pass out. it took the receptionist sooo long to find me in the computer and then the machine that prints the wrist bands had apparently gone out to lunch! i finally had to leave rollie with her and go sit down. the next thing i knew, rollie was wheeling me around in a wheel chair...

talk about embarrassing! forget about being out in public in pajama pants, just take a ride in a wheelchair when you have the capability to be ambulatory and see what happens. although, i am sure i didn't really look able to move under my own steam at that point. my face was buried in my hands, and i was just trying not to throw up...

we made it up to the fourth floor, and thankfully we didn't have to wait long for my name to be called. by elizabeth. elizabeth was the perkiest, friendliest, most polite nurse i have ever encountered. i'm sure under normal circumstances, i would have enjoyed her company, but today i just wanted to smack her. i know. that's awful. but she kept asking me questions, and every time i had to open my mouth, i had to fight the nausea. when she finally got me into a bed, it was better, but it didn't stop. "do you mind if i leave you for a minute?" "would you please excuse me for a few seconds?" "can i close this curtain now?" "can i open the curtain now?" "have you seen any good movies lately?" (this last one was while she was trying to distract me from the fact that she was inserting an iv into my arm. this was not my first rodeo. i knew what she was doing. but it was easier to play along than to say JUST STICK THE NEEDLE IN ME AND STOP ASKING ME QUESTIONS!!!)

and then my doctor came in to once again inform me of all the risks of the procedure i was about to undergo... like i cared! what was i going to do, say no? after i had just endured two and a half days of misery?? she could have said my left leg might fall off, and i would have still signed. i just wanted to get my warm blanket and lovely sedative, and all these questions were keeping me from it!!

finally maria came to rescue me from elizabeth. maria was nice, but all business--just the way i like my nurses! as soon as we entered the room where my annual indignity was about to occur, i started getting sleepy. i know it was probably just psychological, but i tell you, everything started swimming around... they gave me oxygen, put the lovely sedatives into my iv... and off i went, to blissful slumber.

there is nothing better than drugged sleep.

except, it took them longer than it usually does to complete my procedure, so i woke up before they were done. now before you say, "oh no!" i should tell you that several years ago, i underwent this procedure without any anesthetic. it really isn't painful at all. i could feel pressure and the scope moving about, but it didn't hurt. and it was interesting... i could watch the screen and see what they were seeing, AND if i looked at my abdomen, i could see the light on the scope moving around... it was cool and creepy all at once. however, given the choice, i prefer sedatives... just in case...

i wasn't sure what i should do. i am always hesitant to speak when under the influence of sedatives. i always think i sound drunk and probably don't make much sense. but i sort of thought they should know that i could HEAR WHAT THEY WERE SAYING!!! so i think i said something like, "um, i am kind of awake here..." to which my doctor replied, "we are almost done. are you ok?" i said yes and alternately focused on the tv screen which was showcasing my innards and closing my eyes hoping for a few more minutes of drugged sleep...

my body reacts weirdly with drugs. usually they stay in my system for a long time, so if they give me the normal amount of sedatives it takes me a long, long time to wake up. my doctor knows this, and i'm sure she was envisioning me hanging out in recovery for the next couple of days if she gave me more. so we finished the procedure without having to give me any more drugs.

it still took me an hour to fully wake up. and when i say fully, i mean awake enough that rollie could get me out of the building and into the car. he always has to sneak me out before i am really ready, otherwise i would take up one of their recovery beds all day! when i had my wrist surgery, it was late in the day, and those people thought they were never going to get to go home...

during my hour of recovery, my doctor came in and talked to me. i think. i remember seeing her, but i could have been dreaming. it's a good thing that they write down everything they tell you, because apparently my colon is not happy (which i knew. i just didn't know how unhappy it was.) and so we are going to have to start playing with my meds (which is never good,) and looking for alternative treatments (which is also never good.)

on the way home, rollie stopped to get me some food. in hindsight, i should have had him take me home first, because while he was in jack-in-the-box procuring eggs and hash browns for me, i had to make a mad dash into the bathroom, where my nausea finally won...

we made it home, i ate my eggs and hash browns (which, let me just say, was not what i was planning to have when i was thinking about my first meal last night. but in the light of day, and taking circumstances into account, it turned out to be a good choice.) and then i took a nice long nap.

i'm going to live. the good news is, i don't have cancer, which is always a concern for me when i have this test. the bad news is, we may have to repeat the procedure sooner rather than later. but for now, i am just going to go eat something and try to put the whole ordeal behind me...

:)

Wednesday, February 22, 2012

it's that time again...

so today . . . i am sitting here, waiting to race to the bathroom...

yes, it is that time of year again. my annual colonoscopy is scheduled for friday. i say annual, but i have managed, thru several circumstances, to avoid it for an extra seven months. maybe not the best decision health-wise, but as i am sitting here, drinking my first bottle of magnesium citrate and waiting for it to do it's evil thing, i can't say i am sad that it has been so long...

as you know, i am a world class procrastinator. it's amazing i ever get anything done at all! but i find my procrastinating skills are best showcased when it comes to making doctor appointments. i am an odd combination of whiny crybaby and doctor avoider. i don't mind actually going to the doctor, but i hate making the appointments. i don't know why... it is probably because i have kaiser insurance (which i mostly love,) and their appointment center is automated. machines don't give you choices. machines don't listen to my scheduling issues. machines just say, "here is the next appointment. do you want it or not." and if i say i don't want it, there is no going back if it turns out the first appointment was actually the best choice. so i just avoid all of this by not making appointments... until i absolutely have to. in fact, i've been known to go sit for hours in urgent care waiting to see a doctor rather than make an appointment.

i know. i have issues.

right now, my issue is hunger. i'm starving! all i can think about are chocolate chip cookies and cheeseburgers! but instead i'm drinking my water. it is not satisfying. at all. i've been wondering if i could get by with eating just a few bites of a chocolate chip cookie... i'm thinking that if i chew and chew and chew it up until it is pretty much liquified, how much trouble could it cause? i bounced this idea off rollie, who said "don't do it!" (of course. of course he said don't do it! that would be breaking the rules of colon prep.) but he continued, "it's a slippery slope..." (that's what i say every time a store tries to get me to sign up for a credit card :) ) ok, so maybe a chocolate chip cookie isn't a good idea, but maybe i could just suck on a piece of dove dark chocolate... or lick a hamburger...

and this is only the beginning. i can't eat anything all day tomorrow either, but it will be worse, because i am going to be home! my only consolation is that at least my kitchen is not currently stocked with delicious things to eat--i haven't made it to the grocery store yet after being gone for two weeks.

finally, my procrastination pays off :)

and so, here i sit, with nothing to eat, waiting... just waiting... and waiting...

don't look for a blog tomorrow. i'm pretty sure you are not going to want to hear about my day.

unless you are a fan of whining...

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

well, it IS the 21st century...

so today . . . my dad initiated a video chat with me on facebook :)

i have the best parents. i think they can pretty much do anything. but all this new technology can be confusing! just ask me how many times i've been at the "genius bar" in the apple store during the last three months!! but as each new thing comes along, they figure it out. here's how it works...

usually, either rollie or i get a new electronic gadget. ok, usually rollie gets a new electronic gadget, then after listening to him tell me all the amazing things his new electronic gadget will do, i get one. then i convince my mom that she needs one. and my dad sees her playing with her new toy, and after a while, he decides that maybe he would like one too. this process takes a few months, but eventually, we are all playing with the same electronic gadgets.

a side effect of this progression is that since my dad is usually the last one on the train, it takes him longer to figure out how to make his new toy do all the things that we do with ours. luckily, my mom is there to help him out...

this is the way it has always worked. until today. today my dad initiated a video chat on facebook with me. my dad.

last night, while we were farming, he hit the video chat button. i don't know if he did it on purpose or accidentally. since he doesn't touch type, he sometimes inadvertently hits the wrong key, which sometimes causes him big problems. but this time it turned out to be a good thing...

so i was farming along, when i got the message that he was "calling" me. this has never happened to me on facebook before, so i wasn't quite sure what to do. so i hit the video chat button, but then i realized that i was "calling" him. all that this accomplished was to confuse everything! i got another message that i had missed his call, and he had missed mine. now i really didn't know what to do. i didn't know whether to try to call again, or wait for him, or message him, or just turn off the computer and go to bed. and then i got a second message that said he was "calling" me. and then my mom's face appeared, and suddenly we were looking at each other and talking!

isn't technology wonderful :)

so we talked for a while, and she showed my dad the results of his experimentation. but you know how it is when you accidentally do something wonderful and then can't remember how you did it? that's kind of what happened. so we disconnected and my mom showed him how to initiate the video chat if he wanted to. i figured he would never want to. when he is farming, my dad is a man of few words...

and then tonight he did it again. on purpose! and my mom was nowhere in sight!! he just wanted to tell me to move some of my trees so that he could harvest a few hidden crops. he could have typed me a message, but he didn't. he video chatted with me!! all by himself!!!

i'm so impressed. and while my farm didn't function all that well while we were chatting, it was ok, because i could see his face. and it had a big smile on it. i think maybe he was kind of impressed with himself, too! and he should be!!

my electronics confound and frustrate me quite often, but i am so glad for the technologies that we have. remember when video phone calls were so futuristic that we only saw them on the jetson's?? and now they are a reality for anyone with wi-fi and a webcam! and as our families and friends spread out (diandra lives clear across town from me now, you know,) it is nice to be able to see their faces (even if they are kind of pixelated,) and hear their voices (even if the audio is a little bit behind the video,) no matter where we are...

now if someone could just perfect that whole robot maid and instantly cooked meal thing that the jetson's had...

Monday, February 20, 2012

adventures in building...

so today . . . i built a dresser and two nightstands. from IKEA (i used caps to spell IKEA, because apparently that is the only spelling they recognize. when i was looking for dressers, i googled ikea and got the response "did you mean IKEA?" so, i guess it isn't the same if it isn't in caps...)

we needed new dressers. the dressers we had were the ones we bought when we were first married, which was a long time ago. we originally just bought the chest of drawers, because that was what we needed and it was all we could afford. but i finally talked rollie into getting the big dresser with the mirror that matched. my rationale was that if we didn't get both dressers while they were available, we were going to end up with mismatched furniture, because eventually we would need a second dresser. so we figured out how to pay for it and brought it home. i loved the look of those dressers, but over time, my love waned... they were made of wood "products" and plastic, and although they still looked good, they just didn't say "grown-up" furniture to me...

when we moved into our new house, i decided we didn't need any dressers at all! we had this "huge" walk-in closet and i was sure we would be able to get all our clothes and shoes and stuff into the closet! i was wrong. in case you didn't know it, walk-in closets look much, much bigger when they are empty than when you start filling them up with your stuff...

so i went on a search for "the perfect dresser." you know where this story goes... i went to furniture stores. i searched online. i went back to furniture stores and took pictures. i watched for sales. the problem was, i only wanted ONE dresser, and all the furniture stores wanted to sell me a whole bedroom set! plus, i didn't really know what i wanted... and while i love to shop online, when it comes to furniture, i want to see it and touch it and open and shut the drawers, so the online thing wasn't really working for me.

and then we got a sale flyer in the mail from IKEA, and i saw a dresser that i really liked. so one friday after school (while rollie was sick,) i went to IKEA. alone.

if you have never been to IKEA, my advice to you is don't go alone, and don't be fooled into thinking it will be a quick trip. because IKEA stores are like a rat's maze for furniture shoppers! i'm serious!! they don't have rows and aisles which allow you to choose where you are going to go--you just have to follow the path. there are no short cuts. you go around and around and around. and don't even try to go backwards unless you want to feel like a salmon swimming upstream... i did not take my own advice. i went alone, because i was looking for one specific thing--the dresser i had seen in the ad--so i knew it would be a quick trip.

it wasn't. and the worst thing was, that while i was trying to find the dresser and then figure out how to get out, i saw so many cute and wonderful things... which i am sure is the reason for the maze-like layout to their stores. those IKEA people... they are evil geniuses...

anyway, i found the dresser i had seen in the ad, but once i found it, i also found all the matching companion pieces. and boy, were there matching companion pieces!! open bookcases, bookcases with glass doors, double wide bookcases, tv stands, 3 drawer dressers, 5 drawer dressers, 8 drawer dressers, nightstands, wardrobes, desk units... it was mind boggling. and there i was, alone, with my tiny car...

which was ok, because there was no way i could make a decision surrounded by all those choices! so i battled the friday afternoon traffic on the 405 (another HUGE mistake,) and headed home.

i spent the next few weeks mulling and measuring and checking online and printing out specs and looking at colors and checking the checkbook, until i finally made a decision. of course, i was spurred on by rollie's exasperated (yet patient) voice saying, "JUST PICK A DRESSER!!!" (he spoke in caps, because his socks and underwear had been folded on a high shelf in the closet for the last seven months and the stacks kept threatening to fall over. there are just some things that need to be in a drawer...)

the dresser and two nightstands were delivered this weekend. furniture from IKEA comes in large flat boxes. unassembled. that's probably one way they keep their prices down, but if you are not good at following picture directions, do NOT buy anything from IKEA! there are no words AT ALL in their instruction booklets, and even the pictures have minimal detail. let's just say that getting the correct piece of hardware into the correct hole and having all the holes line up properly is about as easy as juggling on a unicycle--it can be done, but not by just anyone...

fortunately, i am quite good at following picture directions. and i LOVE to build things from a kit. i decided to start with a nightstand. i figured it was smaller and would be quick to put together while familiarizing me with how the directions worked. i was very careful. i had to be, because one time, about 20 years ago, rollie put a small video cabinet together (by himself,) and he put the bottom piece on it upside down. did it make a difference in the functionality of the cabinet? no, but it was wrong, and it tweaked my ocd tendencies, and so now i build the furniture. (there have been times when i wondered if he did it that way just so that he would never have to build another piece of furniture, but i don't think so. he was just putting all the nice, wood grained pieces on the outside where they would show. the problem was, you can't see the outside of the bottom piece--it's on the floor! that's the problem with picture directions--sometimes they leave out little details like which side should be up!) since i have teased him about this error mercilessly over the last 20 years, i can't afford to make a mistake...

i got both nightstands put together without incident. and then i started on the big dresser. it was more complicated than the nightstands, and i had some trouble with the hardware. rollie was letting me use his power screwdriver, but i found there was a bit of a learning curve to using it without stripping the screws. rollie's knowledge of tools and how to use them helped me solve some assembly difficulties, but since we don't build well together, he pretty much stayed out of my way.

and then it was time to put the top on. i had the whole framework together and everything was lining up nicely. i lined up the holes in the front and got them secured. i lined up the first two holes in the back and got them secured. and then i ran into trouble...

... because those last two holes were not lining up with the holes in the top. i tried everything i could think of, but it just wasn't working! finally i called to rollie for help. he came in and managed to muscle the pieces close enough that we got one more giant screw into place. but that last one was just not working. after several attempts, we decided to leave it until later...

i spent the next several hours assembling the eight drawers. after the frustration of dealing with the top piece, the drawers were a lot of fun to put together. everything lined up just right!

and while everything feels nice and sturdy, i may be living on borrowed time, because i finally decided the top of the dresser was plenty secure with just seven screws in place. but don't tell rollie. i will never hear the end of it...

:)