What I Did on My Summer Vacation

Since the last time I blogged I:

Got older, had party, went to Utah, painted a mug, tried to steal Lacie's son, gave him back when it became crystal clear the lad had NOT mastered toilet training, and also because thats apparently not legal in this part of the country, came home, went to eighty billion weddings in various parts of the state, took a Stats class, refused to buy the stupid book, had a teeny party by myself to celebrate the end of said stats class, went to the beach but not nearly enough, BROKE my laptop for good and for real, a pair of tweezers may have been involved (I KNOW, and I don't want to talk about it.), was gifted with real live ART, read East of Eden, decided halfway through that I wanted John Steinbeck to be my literary boyfriend, saw his slightly creepy mustachioed picture on the back, decided we should just be friends, worried about how to break it to him, remembered he was dead, felt better, then felt slightly guilty and possibly a little delusional, and finally I went ahead and broke grammer by writing the longest run on sentence ever. I had a bunch of pictures of these events, which would really make this post a lot more interesting...but they are all on my dear departed laptop, and I just couldn't go one more day with the stupid doctor story up.

I Should Probably Stock Up on Apples or Something.

You know how some people don't really believe in going to the doctor and only go when, like, they're hacking up blood, or accidentally lost a foot or something? Or slightly less extreme, (and hopefully less graphic, lost a foot? ew.) they have a general practitioner they see every three years or so when they have a cold or the flu or a particularly nasty hangnail? Well. This has not been my medical experience.
I don't so much have a doctor as I have a panel. First there's my primary care doctor, who I actually see very little of, but of whom it must be said, has the best waiting room. (Note to doctors everywhere: Play romantic comedies on the waiting room tv instead of Diabetes home care how to's. Your patients, even the diabetics, will thank you.). And then there's my Rheumatologist, who I see the most often. (actual quote from ol' Rheumy when he found out I forgot to get my blood work done again this month: "Hannah! What the hell dude?!". We have good times Rheumy and I.) My lame hand wringing surgeon who for SOME REASON will not give me the ok to bungee jump even though I SAID I would use a chest harness. Add in a hand specialist, a foot specialist, a chiropractor and a team of highly trained psychiatrists to treat my chronic delusions of grandeur. (At least thats what I like to pretend.) Alls I'm sayin' is, I have a lot of doctors.
What this means is that I also have a lot of doctor appointments, which I'm pretty cool with. I usually have them pretty spaced out, one or two a month depending. But for some reason, without meaning to I seem to have scheduled appointments with pretty much all of them this week. And let me assure you, I'm not complaining, I love all my doctors (Except for Surgeon. Surgeon needs to lighten up.) and I'm totally glad I have the ability (i.e. health insurance) to see them. But boy oh boy. How many waiting rooms can a girl take in one week? And the questions. What medications are you on? When were your most recent x-rays? When was your last period? Do you still have arthritis?Any changes to your insurance? What is the capital of Vermont? Over and over and over. Its a good thing I'm so long suffering. (Also, not dwell, but the nurses at both Rheumatologist's and GP Doc's offices both didn't let me take my shoes off when they weighed me. THAT IS AGAINST THE RULES LADIES! Even SURGEON lets me take my shoes off.)
What I would really like to do is have all my doctors meet me at IHOP or something where they could all ask each other who was prescribing what and compare notes and make recommendations over a nice stack of chocolate chip pancakes. Oddly no one has responded to my invitations to do this yet...maybe next month.

If you squint real hard and look at the screen from an angle, this almost looks like a blog post.

Oh friends, I am ner-vous. I cannot tell you why exactly because I'm being weird and superstitious about it and I feel like I'll jinx myself if I disclose information, but I will give you these words as clues: conference, lots of people, in charge, me, why, don't know, send help, maybe a cold compress.

Sufficed to say, I cannot wait until its over. If you see me skipping down the lane Monday morning with a spring in my step and a song on my lips you'll know why! (Hint: its not because I love Mondays.)

In other news, my cell phone was stolen. At a Borders. While I was distracted by someone else stealing my sunglasses. It's not important, the real issue is how much I CARE that I don't have my cell phone anymore. You'd think Miss Who Needs Communication With The Outside World would be all over a stolen phone! Perfect excuse not to call people back! But no. I hate hate hate not having a phone. Partly because I had all kinds of necessary calls to make this week, but mostly because I have grown accustomed to putting in reminders every time I make plans to do something, and so all day long I get happy little beepy reminders of where I'm supposed to be and what I'm supposed to be doing. I even get fifteen minute warnings! I've grown to rely on ol' Celly, and now? I don't know whether I'm coming or going. I spend most of the day wandering around in a daze wondering if perhaps I have school today? Dr's appointment? How do I know I wasn't supposed to have some sort of power lunch with my attorneys and I just forgot? I mean, to my knowledge I don't have attorneys and lunch usually consists of peanut butter and jelly, but this is just the kind of information I would entrust to Celly! It's a hard life I lead, but fortunately I'm very long suffering.

And now, because even though I'm hiding it really well I'm still nervous about my weekend, I think we should play a game called you guys tell me what fun things YOU are doing this weekend, so I can jump ship and play with you instead. I mean, calm my nerves or something.

Solid Gold Baby!

Honest to goodness I planned on immediately updating a list of five things I was good at so as to balance things out, but clearly that didn't happen. So instead how about a random update about my life featuring excessive exclamation points?

Surprise! I'm going to grad school! I want you to know that I'm doing this grudgingly. I don't want you to think I'm not still very upset that the fancy job, solid gold house and snazzy dental plan I was ASSUMING were going to show up after I got my bachelors degree never materialized. Oh I gave it a fair chance, I've been waiting for almost a year now but the C.F.S.G.H. (Committee For Solid Gold Houses) has yet to contact me. Lucrative as substitute teaching is, I decided it was time for a change. And so, after attatching a crisp twenty to my application, I was accepted into a counseling program for the fall! I'm excited, I think. I'm glad to have a plan again, and I was really happy to have the summer off to have the maximum amount of fun before signing my life away for the next to years. Imagine my heartbreak when I discovered on Friday that while the program itself doesn't start until September, I have three prerequisites I have to take this summer. RUDE! I just keep telling myself that two years isn't that long, and then I'll have a masters to hang on the fridge. (And thats probably when the house shows up right?)

Remember when bad meant cool?

Do you know what is awesome about Liz W.? She hands me blog post ideas FOR FREE! Which is good because its about time for my monthly post. Probably should work on that. Anyway, her suggestion was to write five things your really bad at, and even boldly faced up to her poor avocado selection skills. (I should say alleged, I have no real proof that Liz has poor avocado skills except her word. I might need another witness.) So without further ado:

1) Painting finger nails. I don't know why I never mastered this skill, but even now at the age of somewhere in my twenties, when I try and paint my nails it looks like a kindergartner did it. A charming and well intentioned kindergartner I'm sure...but not exactly known for her great cosmetic dexterity.

2) Filling out applications. Of any kind. School, Job, um...those are the only kinds I can think of. But I HATE them! I just sit and stare at my computer screen for hours doing absolutely anything except actually filling out my application. Occasionally I have to be bribed like the charming well intentioned but kind of ornery kindergartner that I am.

3) Being in charge. Oh how I hate being in charge of anything, especially events. I'm scared to delegate, but I consistently procrastinate the most important tasks (something I'm doing RIGHT NOW!) and spend the whole event in a near panic.

4) Not being in charge. I also don't like being out of the loop. And when I see people planning and organizing I totally want in, and I start getting cranky if I feel like my ideas aren't being given the FULL ATTENTION that they deserve. But I'm worse at #3 and so I try to remember that when I get that boss lady feeling.

5) And finally, I'm bad at chess. Do not understand it at all. I blame this on the prehistoric computer of my childhood. My sisters and I figured out how to cheat and change all our pawns to queens, which, so you know, makes it so that you can win in one move. People get very annoyed when you try to do this in real life.

Opressive Heat and Monday Grumpiness Cause Sporadic Blogger to Mumble About Math and Jousting. Please Send Smoothies.

Today was hot hot hot! And while I am pretty much a HUGE fan of summer and summer like weather...uck. I only like this weather when I'm at the beach, and I could not help noticing that my math class was held in a class room AGAIN today. (Oh yeah, I teach math now, sort of. It's an after school thing.) But I don't know why I'm complaining because at least there was air conditioning. When I was in middle school, (Oh yeah, it's at a middle school.) we had either NO air conditioning or unreliable air conditioning. Which led to many zombie like classes. Of course I never complained about it because we totally got heat days, where we got out of school at 12:30. Which I thought was only fair since we had no chance at snow days unlike the rest of the world. I was sort of bummed when halfway through my freshman year the district installed new ac systems in all the schools. Anyway, my kids were cranky, and I was cranky, and even though we were blessed with icy blasts from overhead we were not fooled...it was too hot for math and WE ALL KNEW IT! Whatever, this paragraph was boring. Hope you skimmed it!

So I went to a jousting tournament this weekend. (Totally should have opened with that instead.) My friend is in a sword fighting class and heard about it so the two of us drove down to San Diego and watched people in armor charge each other with lances. Actual armor. Actual lances. It was so great. Sometimes I just love watching the weird things that people do to entertain themselves. Like football. Anyway, I wanted to give one of the knights a handkerchief as a token of my esteem so people would know I was a lady, but the best I could do was a slightly used hello kitty tissue, and that just didn't seem appropriate somehow. After that we went to the beach and I was reminded yet again just how gross the water in Santa Monica is compared to the rest of the beaches in California. But I digress.

Oh man, when I sat down to write this post I felt like I had so much to say, but now my lap top is making me feel hot again and all I can think of is how I STILL don't have a swimming pool. Anyone want to come over and sit in the sprinklers with me?

A Brief but Embarrassing Moment in Time

So I'm walking down the street in the Village headed for my car when behind me I hear a call: "Hannah!" says a voice. I turn around to see a girl about my age staring at me about three shops down. I freeze. I have no idea who she is. Did we know each other in high school? I am always amazed at the number of people who remember me from high school. I only remember like twelve people, and lest you think thats because I was school-jerk, let me assure you that I was merely EXTREMELY shy. Mumbled answers kinda shy. Hide in the library shy. Hair in my face shy. Elaborate one woman show for English class final shy. (That might seem like an sort of attention seeking thing to do but I assure you it was after remaining entirely tight lipped the entire semester, even refusing to read aloud my essay which by the way was a REQUIREMENT, choosing instead to take a C on that project. But it was literally a week before my surgery and I knew I wouldn't be seeing any of those kids for awhile so I threw on a costume, brought some hats and a prerecorded tape and blew the minds of Ms. Bobo's Comp 2 class! And then disappeared for six months. The perfect plan!) Anyhoo, what were we talking about? Oh yeah, so this chick is looking at me and I'm looking at her trying to think of anything that might spark some recognition and she repeats: "Hannah!" now starting to look a little offended. So I smiled really big and we started walking towards each other. When we were about ten feet apart I took a deep breath and said brightly, "Hiiiiiii..."
"Hannah!" she barked at the same moment sort of giving me an odd look out of the side of her eyes.
"I'm coming!" snapped a voice behind me.
"iiii!"
Mortified I meet the strange girl's eyes. She raises an eyebrow. Otherhannah passes me. I veer left into a shop and pretend I was talking to...um, the doorway? I don't know, internet. I just don't know.