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.

"Why I've Been So Quiet Sort of" a brief essay on how I'm weird.

Hey Internet! Do want to know one of my charming little quirks? Sometimes when I start having a lot going on, or maybe not enough going on, or maybe not really that much going on but oh boy the things that are going, are GOING if you know what I mean, (How could you possibly?), I get a little anxious. But thats not so much a quirk as it is humanity. See, when I get into one of these anxious spells I sort of start fearing the sound of my cell phone. Because, what if it is someone who wants me to do something? Like talk? About my day? So I start "accidentally" leaving my phone at home, or forgetting to charge it, or playing music really really loud so I just can't hear it if my phone goes off. Which is the perfect plan of course except for a little thing called voice mail. And once those start piling up my phobia increases exponentially. Because, now not only do I have to listen to what people wanted to tell me, but I'm going to have to call them back! So instead of doing what a normal person would, I just let the voice mail pile up for several days before I even check to see how many I have. Adorable huh?
Email's worse. With email I'll see that I have like five messages, and I think, oh man I just do not have the STRENGTH to look at these right now, I'll deal with them tomorrow. By which I mean next week. At which point the number has jumped to thirty. Thirty??? No way I can deal with thirty messages, I'd only prepped myself for five! Better leave it for a day or twenty. At which point the emails are in the seventies. Seventies!!! No time for that today no sir! I'll deal with it this weekend. (haha)
When I finally come out of one of these downward spirals and force myself to face the situation it is usually grim. More than a hundred emails and usually several unchecked voice mails. Usually I just delete everything and figure that if it were really important I probably would have been gotten a hold of somehow. I must say, there is a deep satisfaction that comes from clicking that "delete all" button. Occasionally the situation has gotten out of hand (uh, you know, MORE SO) and I've had to abandon email addresses altogether. Anyone still trying to get ahold of me via my hotmail address? You should probably know I'm pretty sure I haven't checked it since 2006. The UCLA email account? Left for dead late 2007. To be honest the best way to get a hold of me is probably to hide in the bushes outside my house. Where I'll be delighted to see you! Except if you're a stalker. In which case please wait respectfully across the street. (If you know me in real life this is kind of old news and you already wait in my bushes if you want to see me, and/or have given me up as a friend because HELLO! Phone Jerk!)
In my most recent February induced funk, (By the way, remind me to rant sometime about how much I DO NOT LIKE FEBRUARY!) I found that this annoying habit of mine extended into blogs! I kept wanting to comment on other people's blogs (Book Recommendations! Friday Fluff! Wednesday Giggles!), but I hadn't updated my blog in forever! Better not I told myself because then people will know I've been online! But I figured if I just stayed quiet people might think I had lost my computer or something. And then they would feel bad for me and still want to be my friend!
Which brings me to the point of this weird and rambly post, because...Guess what??? I found my computer! And also it's March which is way better for blogging anyway.