ammogirl

You guys! Right this very minute as I sit and type this, I have nearly 15,000 visitors to my site. I am excited about that.

Alright. Back to the list. We are at Number 6, wonky alarm clock.

One day last week, I woke up, thought to myself that I was really, really, REALLY tired, and headed downstairs. Once down there, I proceeded with my morning routine – making coffee, watering plants, getting my food for the day ready. When I was done, I glanced at the clock and thought, WOW! I’m a super fasty pants today! Because normally I’m not, and NORMALLY by the time I’m done with my morning stuff, it’s like…5:40-ish. It wasn’t until I got out of the shower, however, and went into my room to dress that I noticed my alarm clock was totally wrong. And THEN, John said “Hey. I think our alarm clock is broken.” Yes, indeed…it was. Sometime in the middle of the night, my alarm clock just skipped approximately forty-five minutes or so. Which means I woke up at 4:15-ish. Which makes me not quite the fasty pants I thought I was.

Now, because it amuses me to see it every night so I leave it plugged in even though it’s not working, it’s approximately nine hours fast. Yeah, not really that exciting, I know.

Number 7, my trip! I’m so excited for my trip! I am headed to another conference in Utah at the end of June, and immediately afterward, like, I might have to leave a bit early to make my flight, I am headed to Seattle to visit Miss Devylish, Kario, and from what I hear, Pixie as well, for a rollicking three days of fun! This is a trip much too long in the making, for sure, and there will NOT be another 18 years go by before we get together again.

After Seattle, I head to Oregon, where I am visiting my family: my niece and her fam, and then right after that, my parents and two sisters, who are flying up to see me, because hi, I am loooovvvvveeeddd. My parents will be working at the candy store that week, and so will be driving their RV down to Lincoln City, which mean…my parents and three daughters in ONE RV! Fabulous! I am so excited for this, really, like…you do not understand the depths of hell my parents are going to go through, with me and my sisters all squished together with them like that. Ha ha! It makes me laugh just thinking about it! Hi mom! Hi dad! I HOPE YOU ARE EXCITED!!!! In addition, if you are in the Lincoln City, Oregon area between 5 – 8 July, let me know! We can…hmm. Probably not do anything but still! Perhaps we can pass each other in the street!
So! That’s my list all completed! On to other things…that I previously talked about. I got my MRI scheduled, for a Sunday, which I sort of hate, because I like to do other things on Sundays besides getting MRIs. And today I was totally busy at work, busy enough that I went in EARLY of all things, and worked my little tail off. Work is beginning to be fun now, what with the new people we have gotten in in the past couple of months, and the old people finally leaving. I might actually, at one point in the future, even say I like my job. But don’t hold your breath.

I only have one month of my English class left, and I am so ready for it to be over. Two more papers, and that’s it. I’m not taking anything over the summer, and then I need math, and then…I swear this sounds bad but…I will probably take a break from school for awhile. Not that I have a strenuous schedule or anything, but school stresses me out to the point of everyone hating me, including myself, so…not worth it. And besides, math is the only general class left, and then it’s upper level courses for my degree, and I’m not so sure I exactly know what I want my degree to be. It’s currently Human Resource Management, but…bleh. It’s a lot of business courses, and I just really think that business is NOT my cup of tea.

Anyway, it’s nearly past my bedtime.

Tschuss!!

SOOO much has happened in the past week!  Let me try and make a list really quickly so I can have something to follow:

1.  Pharmacy run-in and throw-down

2.  Work-related throw-down

3.  Ginormously drunken surprise birthday party

4.  Completely destroyed wedding rings

5.  X-ray results with doctor

6.  Totally defunct alarm clock (not that exciting, just wanted to share)

7.  Upcoming trip

~~~~~~~

Okay, first.  Lindsey came to me last week and said she was experiencing some symptoms that sounded suspiciously to me like an urinary tract infection.  Which, um, let me tangent here for a moment…isn’t the rule “an” before any vowel?  But doesn’t “an urinary” sound awfully…wrong to you?  Because it does to me.  Anyway, because I happen to be very familiar with untreated UTIs (kidney infection, yup, that’s me) I called the doctor first thing in the morning and got the lowdown on the situation.  Now, I am going to go completely out-of-character here for one moment and mention the one thing that I really like about the military clinics:  they have walk-in services for UTIs.  If you have never had chronic bladder infections, than you probably aren’t impressed by that, but if you have…I bet you are jealous.

Oh wait.  I want to tangent again.  Do you know that I never had one bladder infection in my entire life until the day my then-future-sister-in-law described one to me, and then, the NEXT DAY I had one?  Power of suggestion, much? And yes, I DID go to the doctor, and I WAS diagnosed with an actual UTI, so no, I was not merely exhibiting my mad hypochondriac-ness.  Anyway, since that day, I have had multiple UTIs, with the last one resulting in the previously mentioned kidney infection (or pyelonephritis, if you want to know the medical term) and a trip to the emergency room.

Anyway.  I hope you weren’t doing anything pressing.  I see this might take awhile.

Okay, so walk-in service blah blah blah, and then the doctor called me up to tell me Lindsey’s meds (two different drugs) would be ready after 1pm.  So at 1pm, I went to pick them up, but had to wait for an hour, because they were, in fact, NOT ready.  And then, when they were, I only got one drug.  Okay, fine, it was the antibiotic so I was good, but then when I got to work I read the label and saw “2 pills 4 times a day for 3 days”.  Right.  I realize I’m not the best at the maths, but that equals 24 pills, no?  What was in the bottle: 9.  Nine pills.  I called up the pharmacy, and they said, “huh.  please come back.” When I did, I was told the scrip could not be filled because it had been cancelled, and I had to ask the doctor to input it again.  Upstairs I trekked, where I had the drugs taken away, and answered a few questions, and back to the pharmacy I went.  Where I found that those drugs that had been issued to me for my daughter?  The wrong drug.  Period.  And then it all went to shit from there…no prescription in the system, the wrong prescription in the system, nobody around to FIX the prescription.  After about 1.5 hours and multiple trips upstairs to talk to the family practice folks, I was told, “sorry.  everyone has gone home.  come back tomorrow.”  Wherein I flipped, as calmly as I could, mind you, and stated quite forcefully, “My DAUGHTER is SICK and IN PAIN.”  And then I stayed put, because, oh HELL no, are you not going to tell me to come back tomorrow when you can pick up the damn phone and call someone’s ass back in to work to fill my daughter’s prescription.   And, shortly after, that is exactly what happened.  And that’s that.

Second: I’ll skip number 2 because it is work-related and really quite boring.  And in retrospect I’m not nearly the badass I think I am in my head.  So.

Third, and fourth, really: We went to a surprise bday (why? why can I not just type out birthday? have I become that lame?) party for one of my co-workers on Saturday, and while I swear I was not looking forward to it, it was a really fabulous time.  The company was excellent and the conversation was great.  I don’t know what prompted me to drink Jaeger directly from the bottle, however, but I suspect it might have been peer pressure.  Regardless, while I did feel like shite immediately after the taxi ride home, and went to bed without BRUSHING MY TEETH (ahhh!), I actually felt fine the next day.  EXCEPT!  Here’s me, washing my face the next morning:  wash wash washity wash, hey, that feels weird, what could that weird feeling be?  It feels like my wedding rings are on strange!  Let me just take a look…ooOOHHHhhh!

You guys, although I have no marks whatsoever on my body, and no sore spots AT ALL ANYWHERE, my rings were completely crushed on my finger.  CRUSHED.  John had to use pliers to pry them off.  My wedding band is cracked.  My engagement ring is completely ruined from the pliers.  And the crushing.  It was devastating.  And a mystery, because HOW DID I CRUSH MY WEDDING RINGS?  There are no clues!  There are no answers!

John wants to immediately buy me a new, nicey nice one with his conveniently made last week surplus stock market earnings, while I think a cheap band will suffice while I look around and save money for one I absolutely want.  What do you think?  And before you wonder, no, I did not do this on purpose, as I was not out to get different wedding rings.  I like mine just fine.  Or, “liked”, I guess, since these ones are not repairable.

Would you like to take a small break?  Because I’m still going, here.

Totally stopping after this one, though: FIFTH:  I went to the doctor today for my x-ray results, which the doctor wanted to give me in person.  She told me she does that s0 people don’t panic at hearing things over the phone, but I submit that being told the doctor wants to SEE YOU IN PERSON tends to cause MORE panic.  At least in me.  But it wasn’t a lot of panic because, hmmm…I don’t know, actually.  Anyhow, so I have some weird fusing of my L5 vertebrae to my sacroiliac joint going on, and while I guess it’s either fairly common or congenital, I’m not clear, the doctor thinks that MAYBE that’s not causing my back pain.  Yes, I said not.  As in, they still don’t know what’s wrong with my back BUT!  This time!  They have crumbled under my persistence that I am really for real in pain and not making it up or whatever it is they think, and admitted that I should not be having pain at this level for this amount of time.  So now, I have to get an MRI, and then, possibly…shots in my S1 joint.  Ahhhh!  You guys!  NOW I am panicking!

Tschuss!!

First of all, that ginormous ball I bought? Came with this…accordian style hand pump. I sat there for nearly an hour pumping air into my new office chair. My hands hurt so bad, BUT! I got it inflated, and once I figured out how to sit on it comfortably (harder than you would think) it wasn’t so bad. It is a little awkward, the constant adjusting of your body you have to do to maintain balance, and I do miss being able to simple swivel my chair around when I need to get into the file cabinet behind me, though. Oh, and at least twice I over-corrected myself and nearly rolled off the back. I could definitely feel my ab and back…and leg, really…muscles by the end of the day, so that means it’s working. Plus, bonus side-effect: constantly moving is good for someone like me who can’t sit still. It is much easier to constantly move while sitting on a ball as opposed to a chair. And, all the moving around kept my energy up, so I made it through the entire day without feeling that sleepiness that hits you sometimes, where keeping your eyes open is impossible, no matter what you do.

At least once everyone who works on our floor had to mysteriously discuss something with me, even if we don’t deal with other on a regular basis, EVER, and they would spend the first 15 seconds or so laughing at me, so that was good. I think they all have gotten it out of their system. Truthfully, I welcomed the interruptions, because this is the slow season at work. I’m sure there is a corresponding civilian job for what I do in the military right now, but basically, my job…never mind. You know what, I tried to explain what it was I was trying to explain, but it was hard, and it’s 5:30 in the morning, and my mind wasn’t working. Work is slow right now, I guess that’s all you need to know. So, I think everyone was happy I brought in the ball, because it gave us something to do for five minutes.

The weather here has been absolutely gorgeous this week, low 80s and beautiful blue skies. This is perfect right now. I am so energized by this sort of weather! Even better, when I wake up at 5am, the sun is already up, and when we go to bed around 10-ish or so, it’s STILL light outside. And it’s still May yet! I didn’t realize Germany experienced such long days, it almost reminds me of when I lived in Alaska. Minus the mosquitoes.

It’s Wednesday, you guys. I think the majority of us have a three-day weekend coming up, no? Almost there.

Tschuss!!