Baring It All

Jun 062011
 

Today was the day.

The one day out of the year that I have to pay to bare all.

Yep, I’m talking about my yearly physical.

Oh, and don’t forget about the mammogram.  Always a highlight for women.

I had the whole day planned.  I figured my appointment would last a 1/2 hour, and I would have time to grab some lunch before my mammogram at 12:30.

Bwahahahahaha!!  Yeah, right.  I should know better than to make my appointment anything besides first thing in the morning.  But this isn’t my first rodeo, so I took my Kindle along for the routine 10 – 15 minutes that I figured I would have to wait.

I arrive 5 minutes early (I hate to be late… ask my kids) which was good since they wanted to update my information.  The customary 15 minutes goes by and people are coming and going and I’m expecting my name to be called at any minute.  Make that another 15 minutes.  By this time I’m freezing my ass off because they have the A/C set to blizzard.

Finally I hear my name and am escorted through the doors and asked to step on the scale from hell.  It had to be lying because it read that I had dropped down to double digits.  Here I thought I was doing so good with all the meals and fruit I was eating.  I wanted to punch it.

Next came my height and onto the exam room for inquisition number 1.  Any new meds?  Feeling OK?  BP is a little high, but she comments that it’s probably just nerves, which happens to everyone when they go to see the doctor.  I’m thinking it had something to do with the 1/2 hour wait in freezing conditions.  We waste about 10 minutes on BS and she leaves while I slip into one of the sexy “gowns” we all look forward to wearing.

15 minutes goes by, then another.  The nurse peaks her head in (probably to see if I’m alive) and asks if I’ve had a Tetanus shot in the last 10 years, because they don’t have a record of it.  I agree to get a booster, just to be on the safe side, and ask if the doctor is going to make it because I have another appointment in 45 minutes.  She says it won’t be long.

Back to my Kindle.

Finally, after waiting an HOUR in this room (and reading 63 pages of my book), the doctor comes in and ever-so-quietly apologizes for making me wait and says we have to hurry so I can make my next appointment.  Ya think?

Next comes inquisition number 2 and a review of my last appointment with her 18 months ago.  Do I still smoke?  Do I have any plans for quitting?  What do I do for exercise?  Do I have any concerns that I want to talk about?  Hmm… you’ve dropped 6 pounds since the last visit and your BP is a little high.

OK, hop on the table and let’s get started.  As she listens to my heart, she makes a comment that I have and extra “beat” and wants to do and EKG.  OK, stop the bus, because this was just supposed to be a normal, routine physical, you can’t just throw in extra medical tests.  Besides, you already threw me off schedule with the waiting game.  Naturally, I say “go for it” and we get to the fun parts of breast exam and PAP (sorry for the TMI for those of the male gender).  I’m laying on the table thinking “It’s about time they put something on the ceiling to get my mind off of what is going on, but did it have to be a poster about an event involving Loons that is from 2008?” when I’m informed it’s all over and I can get dressed but I need to come back after my next appointment.

With 5 minutes to spare, I run out to my car first to have a quick smoke and head back in for the booby vice grip.  At least radiology has their shit together, because I didn’t even get one page read before I was called back.  After having this done for over 20 years, I know what to expect.  But I still have to believe that a man invented this machine, because there is no way that a woman would say “Let’s build a device that takes the female breast and smooshes it between 2 plates until it is resembles the thickness of a pancake and then tell her to hold still and not breathe.”  The only upside to this was they have done away with the practice of having us put tiny little “pasties” on our nipples so that the x-ray could be read better (again, sorry for the TMI).

Out one door and into another for the blood draw, EKG and booster.  I’m thinking it would have made more sense to do the EKG first, because I hate needles and I’m sure that will be reflected on the reading, but what do I know?  2 vials of blood later, I’m up on the table again being hooked up to cables that reminds me of a scene in Frankenstein and waiting for the technician to scream “IT’S ALIVE!!!”.  10 seconds later it’s all over.  The nurse comes back in and tells me that I do indeed have an extra “beat” but it could be due to excessive caffeine (not likely) or my thyroid giving me more trouble than it already does.  She gives me the booster shot and decorates my arm with a cute purple band-aid with skateboarding alligators on it (which, by the way, was damn cute).

I was done.  Outta there.  Free.

So I immediately  went and bought myself a pair of new sandals for the summer.  After all that stress, I figured I deserved a little treat.

Friday Night Fun

Jun 042011
 

Friday night is date night for Rick & I.  We usually go up to the local casino and do some gambling and grab some supper at the buffet.

It usually goes something like this:  We enter the casino, give each other a kiss and wish the other good luck and head in separate directions until we are ready to eat.

We are an exciting couple, aren’t we?

Only last night there was a new element added to the festivities.  As we were heading to the restaurant, Rick told me that a woman had approached him and asked if he wanted to sleep with her… on stage.  He was like, “Excuse me??”  I’m thinking, “Greatest pick-up line EVER!!”

Come to find out there was a hypnotist act going on in the event center, so we decided to check it out, just for shits and giggles.

Let me just say this:  I’m glad we didn’t have to pay to see this!

We walk into the opening act which appears to be a comic.  A lesbian comic.  Hey, I don’t judge on personal preferences.  She could have been an alien with 10 arms and I wouldn’t have cared.  But considering what I heard in the 5 minutes that remained of her act, I’m thinking that the alien would have been funnier.

Next up, the “Hypnotic” act.  These people kept bragging about how they do their act in Las Vegas, and how you could purchase one of their DVD’s on how to hypnotize your partner.  I was not impressed.

This kind of show always requires that members of the audience volunteer to get up on stage and hopefully become a puppet of sorts.  Rick decides to be a good sport and join some other poor souls on stage.

7 people volunteered, and 5 apparently were able to be hypnotized.  Rick was one of those that “failed,” if that’s what you want to call it.  Actually, I’m not totally convinced that anybody on that stage was actually “under.”

For the next 15 minutes we sat through one of the worst things I’ve seen in a long time.  The whole routine was based on anything having to do with sex, from playing with dildos to one participant telling her husband she wasn’t going to have sex with him.

I swear that the person running the sound for the act was drunk, because all of it was mis-timed and at one point they couldn’t get the CD player going.  This was top of the line equipment folks!

When Rick asked if I wanted to leave, I practically ran to the door!

I was never so happy to see those slot machines that awaited me.  I may have to spend money on them, but at least they are entertaining.

The Calm After the Storm

Jun 022011
 

Monday and Tuesday proved to be interesting days, mostly because of the weather we have been having in the Northwoods.  Work was interesting too, but that was just because I was crazy busy having to add one more task to my repertoire of already filled to the brim things that need to be crammed into an 8 hour day.

But work is another story.

Monday brought with its wonderful self high winds and thunderstorms.  In waves.  But to spice things up just a tad, we also got a nice smattering of hail, with some up to golf ball size.

And, in the tradition of our neck of the woods, a power outage.  But this one, like the one we encountered 2 weeks ago, blacked out the whole community in which we live, not just our “circuit.”  Again, we were very grateful that we had the generator to provide electric to our house so that we could function.

But it also brought about another problem that may have been attributed to the sudden power outage that wasn’t discovered until Tuesday morning:  a coffee maker that did everything but brewed coffee.  It worked just fine on Monday, but when I looked at it with sleepy eyes at 5:30 am on Tuesday longing for a hot cup of java to bring my mind to life for the day ahead, all I saw was an empty pot.

The lights were on but nobody was home.  That’s right, it turned itself on at the appropriate time to start up and brew the liquid gold that is so appreciated in this house, but the pot was empty and the warming pad was cold.

NOT a good way to start my morning.

That machine is damn lucky that I still keep a stash of instant around just in case the world is coming to an end.  Or in case the coffee maker takes a dump.  Same thing at 5:30 in the morning.  But hey, with enough vanilla creamer, any coffee can taste good.

And it did.

So after work, I had time to tinker with the damn machine and see if it was absolutely totaled.

It was.

This is unfortunate, since it was quite expensive.  But it also was a piece of crap that we’ve had to replace once a couple years ago because it was defective.  Now, it was way past any kind of warranty and completely dead.  Only after cleaning the counter space from where it was located did I finally discover what was probably the reason for its demise:   A nice brown stain perminately etched into our fairly new countertop from the underside of the heating pad when it went “poof!”

So, I lug the piece of crap out to the garbage can for a proper burial and head back inside to see if I can salvage the counter.  While I’m scrubbing away trying to get the stain out, the lights flicker.

The wind is blowing like there is now tomorrow and I suddenly hear a tree cracking.

Naturally I freak and run from window to window hoping it isn’t around my yard.

Then I hear it again.

Just to give you a mental image, there  are no windows or doors open in the house and I am hearing a tree crack.  That is how loud it is.

I’m ready to dive under the table.

I like gusts over 40 mph about as much as I love having my teeth ripped out.  When you live in an area that have trees around the peremiter of your yard that are over 60 feet tall, you tend to be cautious of falling trees, limbs and power lines.  And pray they don’t fall on you.

Luckily, this is the extent of what landed in our yard on the large scale.

To add insult to injury, Rick comes home and wants to split the new pile of wood that was delivered, and wants me to stack it.  This means having to go outside in the monsoon winds.  Under the tall trees.  And a power line.

Well, I’m still here, but believe me, I wasn’t above diving under the back porch a couple times, especially when  a branch fell 10 feet from me.

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