Marshmallow Scars

The US Men’s swim team was AMAZING! wooo Michael Phelps! wooooo Jason Lezak! That was some amazing competition.

Also, Dara Torres is, in my mind, the best swimmer ever. She is so awesome, I can’t even stand it. When she held up the semi-final heat so one of the other swimmers could go change a ripped suit, that cemented her status in my mind. She’s amazing.

My back went to shit last night, and I ended up eventually working up the fortitude to drive out to my mom and dad’s so I could get some help feeding myself and have someone rub my back and try to crack it. I can move now, quite a bit more than I was able last night. My neck is still fracked up a bit, along with my right shoulder, but! Last night I had to roll off the couch onto the floor on all fours and work my way up to standing over the course of a few minutes. Now it hurts a bit, but I can just stand up in a process of about ten seconds. Before, I couldn’t sit up because I couldn’t lift my head without putting my hands behind my head and pulling it forward. Now i can lift my head just using my neck muscles. BIG DIFFERENCE. (a big difference badly explained. sorry. I’m tired, sore, and still distracted by the olympics, even though the broadcast is over.)

Since I’m already discombobulated (i love that word), I guess it wouldn’t hurt to go take some vicodin and try to get some sleep. Monday morning is going to come too quickly.

(and not in the good way)

Monday – came home sick from work.
Tuesday – still felt like shit, but went to work
Wednesday – felt a bit better, but work sucked
Thursday – felt okay, but work sucked even more
Friday – woke up feeling like someone had beaten me with a stick while I was sleeping. Came home to take a bath and relax, had neck/back/shoulder intersection seize up.

It’s, um, rather difficult to do anything at all but stay frozen in one position and not move ever. Which I can’t handle. I am going CRAZY and it’s only been a couple of hours.

so, yeah. My weekend is pretty much guaranteed to be a wash.

I have been using this Tag a lot more than I would like.

So just now my coffee went down the wrong pipe, and I choked a tiny bit. (It was just about ten seconds of coughing, not anything serious.) However, right at the end, after I’d swallowed everything okay, some coffee came out of nowhere and got up into my sinuses on the left side. It didn’t do anything so undignified as come out my nose (thank GOD), but I’ve now got that lovely burning, dizzy, water-up-my-nose feeling.

Lovely.

I have no idea why I don’t have any qualms with putting all of my embarrassing, graceless incidents up for the whole world to read.

I finally met my best friend’s wife today, after about six years or so. I’ve talked to her on the phone a couple of times, but it’s been a running joke in their household that J made me up and I really didn’t exist. But now there’s proof that I actually do exist. heh

It was a long-ass drive to the BBQ, and it ended up being a long-ass drive back, too. The directions Yahoo Maps gave me to get to J’s mom’s house were sucky. Once I got there and knew where I was, I was able to get back a quicker way. Kinda. If it weren’t for the long long wait for construction on 37, and the jackass that wouldn’t let us go for an additional ten minutes even though all the cars from the other direction had already passed, I would have made kickass time for the way home. Oh, well. I got home safely, so that’s all that matters, I guess. I wish I’d taken tomorrow off work, so I wouldn’t have had to drive and could have had some beer! ;-)

I think just about any blog entry I write or every story I tell, hell even any sentence I speak or type, I could end it with “and wackiness ensued”. Not only does it make everything sound more fun, it’s usually the truth.

This morning I actually had makeup/foundation (it was packed away where I couldn’t find it a couple of mornings ago – had to go to work without any), but right now it doesn’t look like I put any of it on this morning anyway. Such is my life.

However, that is not the “highlight” of my morning so far.

I have to turn my apartment assessment in today – you know, the move-in check list. So, while I was getting ready in the bathroom (right next to the kitchen), I was testing the burners on the stove since I haven’t done that yet. It’s a wee stove, with one big burner and three little ones. The big one worked fine. Ditto for the two back burners. The front right burner wasn’t heating – turns out the burner wasn’t plugged into the socket. So, I fixed it, turned it on, and went back into the bathroom. And wackiness ensued.

The smoke alarm in the kitchen went off. The hell?! There wasn’t anything on the burner that was burning off – it was just heat going up to the ceiling. The ceilings in the new apartment are incredibly high. I have no brooms or yard sticks or mops or anything. Luckily, I bought one of those little Bissell floor brooms that’s basically a dust buster with a detachable handle. I ordered it from Amazon.com and it came earlier this week out at mom and dad’s. I brought it back to the apartment with me last night. It was all nice and neat in its box. “Was” being the operative word.

The box is a shambles, but that handle, and some creative jumping, allowed me to hit the button on the smoke alarm to get it to stop beeping. This was very important as the people for the business downstairs had already arrived for the day, and I did not want them calling the fire department because how awesome would it have been for firemen to come running upstairs into my apartment to see me in jeans and bra, jumping up and down trying to reach the damn smoke detector with a vacuum handle? Oh yeah, and there’s no fire, I just had the burner on?

Well, okay, if they were hot, it would be a little awesome while still being almost completely mortifying, but, um, the firemen here aren’t attractive. And my apartment is a mess with stuff laying everywhere and still no proper furniture. So.

Crisis averted.

I think this story properly demonstrates what I claimed the other night about my life being a romantic comedy without the romance. And you probably thought I was kidding about the pratfall-y mishaps, but I WAS NOT. It also shows exactly why I am not a morning person.

Cable is being installed at some point tomorrow morning. I am not going to know what to do with cable tv. (Yes I know, Ron. I’ll watch it. Shuddup.) It’s been years.

So my niece was a bit more serious than they first thought. She has been sent home, finally, but only after she woke up from the morphine they gave her before the CAT scan.

She’s very active in 4H, and she was showing a few animals at the county fair again this year. She raised a pig at her dad’s house, and it won first in her age group and class, so she was showing tonight for Grand Champion contention. The pig bit her and knocked her over, and she hit her head two separate times on the fence that runs around the show ring. She kept telling my sister “It’s so bright! I love you mommy. ” on the way to the hospital, looking at my sister with her eyes closed. (My sister was understandably freaking out over that.)

Thanks in advance, Ron, and also Deb and L if you happen to see this. (not sure if there’s anyone else lurking around out there)

Grilled New York Strip steak, seasoned with garlic pepper. Dipped in A1 sauce, with corn (canned) and instant mashed potatoes.

And an ice cold Harp lager to wash it all down. I would’ve preferred a Bass, but Harp’s what I had on hand.

And I’m such a lightweight these days that I have to wait for the beer to wear off so I can drive into town. (at mom’s at the moment) My oldest niece was injured at the local 4H fair, and I am the only one who isn’t at the hospital (it’s not super serious).

Okay, I probably wouldn’t go that far.

Blackmail would not be out of the question, though.

Enough blather for a while.

I recently told someone that the corn field out back isn’t as pretty as it was last year when it was a hay field. That may have been a bit of a lie. You can’t really see the corn much in this photo, though.

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