That would be the sound my mind is making as every day until my Duodenal Switch surgery passes. It would be funny, except for the part where I can't sleep. And dammit, but I need my sleep!
It's gotten so bad that two nights ago I was so exhausted from previous nights of next to no sleep that I not only slept through the alarm clock when it went off for The Husband to get up, but I also slept through him kissing me before he went into the kitchen to get his stuff together and almost slept completely through him kissing me goodbye! Aaack! (Although, I must admit that it is really, really nice to be awoken by the love of your life sweetly kissing you and stroking your hair. Aaahhh!)
I'm usually the person who is wide awake ten minutes before the alarm is set to go off, no matter what time, so being this dead to the world because of exhaustion is something totally new for me. No matter how tired I am (and I'm always tired lately it seems) my mind just cannot relax for a single moment. We go to bed after an exhausting day, and while The Husband is out cold, I'm lying there with my eyes closed and mind a-whirling for hours on end, it seems. Which means that I am constantly feeling like putting my head down on my desk and taking a nap. (I did that yesterday after my comatose morning. Shhhhh! Thank God for the new cubicle that I'm in!)
As a result, I am consuming more caffiene than ever in the form of sodas and coffee - and the combination of sugar and caffene buzz and then the abrupt crashes from coming off of the stimulants is making me cranky both in body and attitude. My acid reflux is killing me every day, and I am becoming more and more snappy when something annoys me.
I think it's time to see the doctor and get a prescription for Ambien or something like that. I also need to start back on the occasional Prozac because I know that my hormones are going to go completely ape-shit when I have surgery and all that estrogen is released from those fat cells. I really don't feel like snapping and committing an axe murder just because somebody changes the channel on the TV to something I don't like, so I consider this a pre-emptive strike at saving my marriage and preventing me from doing some jail time over something really unnecessary. Stripes just aren't my thing, you know? They totally make you look fatter than you are, and Lord knows I don't need anymore of THAT going on.
* * * * *
Well, the Farewell to Food Tour (tm Dagny) continues for me. Tomorrow, I'm going to meet my friend Amy who had the DS for lunch at one of our local Chinese eateries. This should be fun - actually seeing how much she eats five years out from this thing. While I'm able to indulge my tastebuds with Crab Rangoons and Orange Chicken. Mmmmm!
Also, I just ordered four of Lou Malnati's deep dish pizzas to be shipped here tomorrow. The Husband and I LOVE Lou Malnati's pizza, but let's face it. We can't afford to fly to Chicago on a regular basis to satiate our tastebuds. So, it's going to come to us. I'm going to savor every last bite, dammit. Chinese for lunch and Lou Malnati's for dinner. There's about five pounds gained for the day right there! Aaack! But it'll taste ever so good!
And next year at this time, when I've lost 100 pounds or so, I'm going to order another pizza from Lou Malnati's, and we're going to eat it in celebration, because life with the DS is going to be so much better than life as it is now. I can't wait for this new life to begin.
Wednesday, June 28, 2006
Tuesday, June 27, 2006
A Dark and Stormy Night Indeed!
This year's 10 winners of the Bulwer-Lytton contest, AKA "Dark and Stormy Night Contest" (run by the English Dept. of San Jose State University), wherein one writes only the first line of a bad novel:
10) "As a scientist, Throckmorton knew that if he were ever to break wind in the echo chamber, he would never hear the end of it."
9) "Just beyond the Narrows, the river widens."
8) "With a curvaceous figure that Venus would have envied, a tanned, unblemished oval face framed with lustrous thick brown hair, deep azure-blue eyes fringed with long black lashes, perfect teeth that vied for competition, and a small straight nose, Marilee had a beauty that defied description."
7) "Andre, a simple peasant, had only one thing on his mind as he crept along the East wall: 'Andre creep... Andre creep... Andre creep.'"
6) "Stanislaus Smedley, a man always on the cutting edge of narcissism, was about to give his body and soul to a back alley sex-change surgeon to become the woman he loved."
5) "Although Sarah had an abnormal fear of mice, it did not keep her from eeking out a living at a local pet store."
4) "Stanley looked quite bored and somewhat detached, but then penguins often do."
3) "Like an over-ripe beefsteak tomato rimmed with cottage cheese, the corpulent remains of Santa Claus lay dead on the hotel floor."
2) "Mike Hardware was the kind of private eye who didn't know the meaning of the word 'fear'; a man who could laugh in the face of danger and spit in the eye of death -- in short, a moron with suicidal tendencies."
AND THE WINNER IS...1) "The sun oozed over the horizon, shoved aside darkness, crept along the greensward, and, with sickly fingers, pushed through the castle window, revealing the pillaged princess, hand at throat, crown asunder, gaping in frenzied horror at the sated, sodden amphibian lying beside her, disbelieving the magnitude of the frog's deception, screaming madly, 'You lied!"
10) "As a scientist, Throckmorton knew that if he were ever to break wind in the echo chamber, he would never hear the end of it."
9) "Just beyond the Narrows, the river widens."
8) "With a curvaceous figure that Venus would have envied, a tanned, unblemished oval face framed with lustrous thick brown hair, deep azure-blue eyes fringed with long black lashes, perfect teeth that vied for competition, and a small straight nose, Marilee had a beauty that defied description."
7) "Andre, a simple peasant, had only one thing on his mind as he crept along the East wall: 'Andre creep... Andre creep... Andre creep.'"
6) "Stanislaus Smedley, a man always on the cutting edge of narcissism, was about to give his body and soul to a back alley sex-change surgeon to become the woman he loved."
5) "Although Sarah had an abnormal fear of mice, it did not keep her from eeking out a living at a local pet store."
4) "Stanley looked quite bored and somewhat detached, but then penguins often do."
3) "Like an over-ripe beefsteak tomato rimmed with cottage cheese, the corpulent remains of Santa Claus lay dead on the hotel floor."
2) "Mike Hardware was the kind of private eye who didn't know the meaning of the word 'fear'; a man who could laugh in the face of danger and spit in the eye of death -- in short, a moron with suicidal tendencies."
AND THE WINNER IS...1) "The sun oozed over the horizon, shoved aside darkness, crept along the greensward, and, with sickly fingers, pushed through the castle window, revealing the pillaged princess, hand at throat, crown asunder, gaping in frenzied horror at the sated, sodden amphibian lying beside her, disbelieving the magnitude of the frog's deception, screaming madly, 'You lied!"
Monday, June 26, 2006
At least we got free room and board. And good hotel sex.
Eeesh. Never in my life have I anticipated something so much in order to be so disappointed by it. Unbelievable.
The marriage weekend? The one I rescheduled my life-changing surgery for because this class was going to be just as life-changing, if not more? Was a complete waste of time. Both The Husband and I found it completely lacking.
There's a reason why they don't want you to tell other people about it and make them anticipate it because it's "secret." Because it's boring, has no cohesive structure, is stuck in the 80s and basically takes far too damn long.
Maybe our disappointment was because both The Husband and I have been involved in two highly engaging marriage classes - one of which we've done twice. We're too spoiled, and know what it means to attend a directed seminar on how to make marriages better by applying Biblical standards. We know the information you're going to be presented with because let's face it - the Bible basically doesn't change. Different translations, maybe, but it's the same thing. But why we continue to attend them and seek out new speakers is because we are looking for new nuggets of information that can be discovered even though the big stuff remains the same.
Let me tell you the one little nugget that we gleaned from this seminar. Are you ready for it? Here it is: Junior Highschoolers? They're "pre-people."
Yes, folks, we went to an all-weekend-long marriage seminar and learned that the 12-15-year-old set are "pre-people." Shoot me now!
Very little of the actual seminar was on how to apply things to marriage. We talked about things like forgiveness and communication, and wrote love letters to each other dealing with these topics, but the whole thing was lacking. It seemed as if it couldn't make up its mind if we needed to be bludgeoned into becoming believers or if we actually wanted to hear about how to apply the whole God/Christ, Christ/Church, Husband/Wife relationship thing that so many people just don't understand and have frankly never heard before. THAT's what a marriage seminar should be about. Not about focusing on how we need to praise God and how we should do that.
But the worst thing? They made us sing hymns. Not just any hymns, but obscure ones that the vast majority of us attending had NEVER even heard of. It's one thing for everyone to sing "Amazing Grace" and another to sing these hymns that according to copyright information were from the sixties and seventies and had never seen the light of day since. Oh, and there was no accompaniment.
This obvious dating of the whole class is apparently because the people that run American Family Services are in their seventies and eighties and possibly nineties. They are part of what some of us call the "old guard." And it isn't that the old guard isn't needed anymore, it's just that most of the young people that would come to seminars like this just don't identify with many of the things that the old guard love. The old guard loves these hymns. Most of the young people in today's emergent churches have never heard them. To insist that we sing these hymns, however lovely in sentiment, creates a level of uncomfortableness that I don't think was ever overcome throughout the weekend.
They also played those insipid TBN-style hymns with the organs and harps - lovely words, but the style of music just makes you think of three piece suits, wingtips, shoulder pads, eyelet lace dresses and Tammy Fay Baker hair and makeup. Not the kind of thing you want when you've got young, hip people that are the core of the modern church attending a seminar.
Just so you know, it wasn't as bad as all that. We had some friends there that we had a ton of fun with, we met a bunch of new, neat people from all across Southern California, ate some freaking fantabulous food, and stayed in a really nice room.
As an added bonus, on Saturday night, we all got a chance to renew our wedding vows. This made it the third time The Husband and I have gotten married. But get this. Every time, we have "eloped" (first time in Lake Tahoe on the spur of the moment, second time in Las Vegas in the drive-thru of the Little White Wedding Chapel) and neither of our mothers have seen us get married. And all three times I have been wearing black. Yes, I wore BLACK to my wedding. It's not my fault, it was all that I had and that's what I get for not planning a wedding ahead of time. So sue me. :-P I told The Husband that the NEXT time we do this I WILL be wearing another color other than black.
This morning The Husband e-mailed me when he got to work. "Only 9 more times we'll be able to have an anniversary every month of the year. I like that idea! Up for it?"
Silly boy. I'd marry him every day of the year if I could. Isn't that what marriage should be about?
The marriage weekend? The one I rescheduled my life-changing surgery for because this class was going to be just as life-changing, if not more? Was a complete waste of time. Both The Husband and I found it completely lacking.
There's a reason why they don't want you to tell other people about it and make them anticipate it because it's "secret." Because it's boring, has no cohesive structure, is stuck in the 80s and basically takes far too damn long.
Maybe our disappointment was because both The Husband and I have been involved in two highly engaging marriage classes - one of which we've done twice. We're too spoiled, and know what it means to attend a directed seminar on how to make marriages better by applying Biblical standards. We know the information you're going to be presented with because let's face it - the Bible basically doesn't change. Different translations, maybe, but it's the same thing. But why we continue to attend them and seek out new speakers is because we are looking for new nuggets of information that can be discovered even though the big stuff remains the same.
Let me tell you the one little nugget that we gleaned from this seminar. Are you ready for it? Here it is: Junior Highschoolers? They're "pre-people."
Yes, folks, we went to an all-weekend-long marriage seminar and learned that the 12-15-year-old set are "pre-people." Shoot me now!
Very little of the actual seminar was on how to apply things to marriage. We talked about things like forgiveness and communication, and wrote love letters to each other dealing with these topics, but the whole thing was lacking. It seemed as if it couldn't make up its mind if we needed to be bludgeoned into becoming believers or if we actually wanted to hear about how to apply the whole God/Christ, Christ/Church, Husband/Wife relationship thing that so many people just don't understand and have frankly never heard before. THAT's what a marriage seminar should be about. Not about focusing on how we need to praise God and how we should do that.
But the worst thing? They made us sing hymns. Not just any hymns, but obscure ones that the vast majority of us attending had NEVER even heard of. It's one thing for everyone to sing "Amazing Grace" and another to sing these hymns that according to copyright information were from the sixties and seventies and had never seen the light of day since. Oh, and there was no accompaniment.
This obvious dating of the whole class is apparently because the people that run American Family Services are in their seventies and eighties and possibly nineties. They are part of what some of us call the "old guard." And it isn't that the old guard isn't needed anymore, it's just that most of the young people that would come to seminars like this just don't identify with many of the things that the old guard love. The old guard loves these hymns. Most of the young people in today's emergent churches have never heard them. To insist that we sing these hymns, however lovely in sentiment, creates a level of uncomfortableness that I don't think was ever overcome throughout the weekend.
They also played those insipid TBN-style hymns with the organs and harps - lovely words, but the style of music just makes you think of three piece suits, wingtips, shoulder pads, eyelet lace dresses and Tammy Fay Baker hair and makeup. Not the kind of thing you want when you've got young, hip people that are the core of the modern church attending a seminar.
Just so you know, it wasn't as bad as all that. We had some friends there that we had a ton of fun with, we met a bunch of new, neat people from all across Southern California, ate some freaking fantabulous food, and stayed in a really nice room.
As an added bonus, on Saturday night, we all got a chance to renew our wedding vows. This made it the third time The Husband and I have gotten married. But get this. Every time, we have "eloped" (first time in Lake Tahoe on the spur of the moment, second time in Las Vegas in the drive-thru of the Little White Wedding Chapel) and neither of our mothers have seen us get married. And all three times I have been wearing black. Yes, I wore BLACK to my wedding. It's not my fault, it was all that I had and that's what I get for not planning a wedding ahead of time. So sue me. :-P I told The Husband that the NEXT time we do this I WILL be wearing another color other than black.
This morning The Husband e-mailed me when he got to work. "Only 9 more times we'll be able to have an anniversary every month of the year. I like that idea! Up for it?"
Silly boy. I'd marry him every day of the year if I could. Isn't that what marriage should be about?
Thursday, June 22, 2006
So she thinks she has an original song?
Is it just me, or is Rihanna's song "SOS" a blatant ripoff of "Tainted Love" by Soft Cell? Damn. I could sing the whole damn song and it didn't sound bad with whatever it was that she sang tonight. If you're going to sample, sample - don't rip it all off. At least have *some* originality. Eeesh.
That said, Heidi's solo was THE BOMB! If Nigel had told her to go home (or Dmitri for that matter), I would have turned off the TV on this show forever. Not that I expect her to win, but damn. That girl could DANCE!
That said, Heidi's solo was THE BOMB! If Nigel had told her to go home (or Dmitri for that matter), I would have turned off the TV on this show forever. Not that I expect her to win, but damn. That girl could DANCE!
Miscellaneous ramblings of the disconnected sort
Lord Almighty, but it is HOT here! In the triple digits and quickly climbing so much so that the middle number will no longer be a zero. Ooof!
Temperatures like this of course mean that I feel like a sweaty, sticky pig. Ew. It doesn't help that the building that I am in currently has airconditioning that only works when it feels like it. That is to say, erratically. But never fear! A work order has been sent out! They should get to it with the two technicians they have for the entire freaking base by, say, oh, about mid-July. :- Good thing I'll be out on medical leave by then.
And let's not talk about having to actually walk between my building and my car. Heat makes me breathe more, which makes me wheeze more, which makes my heart race. Not a good combination when you feel like you're going to have a freaking coronary just getting to your car. This surgery cannot come soon enough, I tell you!
. . .
This weekend should be rather interesting. Tomorrow The Husband and I will be dumping Thing One and Thing Two with their Godmother and heading off to Oxnard for the annual Loving Marriage Seminar. This seminar is supposed to be so good that they keep it a secret from anyone who hasn't attended what it's all about. Right. Because being a good Christian means that we keep secrets of marriage success to ourselves and only hand them out to those so priveledged to be deemed worthy to receive them.
If we hadn't been waiting so long to go to this seminar that I rescheduled my surgery for it, I would be very tempted not to show up. The Husband kind of feels this way as well.
First off, I/we hate secrets of this nature. It's one thing if you are given who the speakers at a seminar are and what they will be talking about. That's an acceptable level of secret to me for a seminar. You know the general topic, but they're not going to hand you a copy of their speech, right? No problem.
But this? Nobody will tell us anything. Not if there are going to be speakers, if it's just going to be a Bible study, if it's going to be exercises of some variety - nada. And it's driving me insane.
And then we're expected to not tell anyone else about it either. Oh, but we're supposed to make couples feel good about it if they're one of the lucky ones who get to go next year. Or we might be recruited to help at the next one! Yeah, right! Secret keepers are us. NOT!
Remind me again why I postponed my surgery for this? Please? *sigh*
. . .
I am sick and tired (and tired always follows sick) of being either asked the same thing over and over again or being told the same whiney song and dance over and over again. This is being done by two well-meaninged, but ultimately annoying, older gentlemen in my office.
The first one at least has an excuse. He was recently out on medical disability because he fell down a flight of stairs at work here and broke oh, just about all the major long bones on his left-hand side. And this was only 8 months after he had two spinal surgeries. He blacked out and was alone in the stairwell for at least two hours, possibly more, so if he doesn't remember things too well, I try not to get annoyed with him.
We used to work for the same company, but when the contract was re-bidded, we ended up being on separate companies. Now, he gets these e-mails from my old company sending him to websites to do their mandatory training and keeps asking me if I had problems with them. I don't work for the same company that you do anymore, dude. I say this at LEAST three or four times every. Single. Week. This week? I've said it at least three times a day. I try to be polite, but after a month or so, you tend to get a bit batty from the constant questions that have the same answer. My timecard sheet? Not the same company. Employee intranet? Not the same company. Get the picture yet? Aaaaaugh!
The other gentleman? Well, he doesn't have an excuse. He's just a leech. He likes to glom onto you and tell you his latest woes. Which happen to be the same woes he told you about last week. And the week before. And the week before that.
Due to a system that shall not be named out loud for fear it will take over my entire life, a system that was *supposed* to make us all work faster, better and more efficiently but has instead ended up costing the gummint much more than they anticipated, this second older gentleman has been without a computer onsite for over a year. And because of my position, he had to deal with me every time he needed changes made to a specific document. No big deal, right? I can do that.
But then he thought I was his best friend in the whole wide world and his leech-e-ness came into play. He now must tell me of all the indignations he has suffered because of Ehn-ehm-see-eye and his not having a computer, about how he got kicked out of the software building because people didn't like him, and how he needs to have surgery on his foot but he doesn't know if he can afford it. And his foot is considered pre-gangreneous. Gah!
I have considered getting a blowtorch and bringing it to work just so that I can singe him every time he starts to leech on me because isn't that how you get a leech to release from sucking your blood? By touching it with a match? Or is that a tick? Anyway, same principle.
I am sick unto death of acting like a lady and being polite and saying the nice things when all I want to do is start screaming the minute one of them begins talking to me. Deep breaths. I'm getting all worked up about this. In. Out. In. Out. I can do this . . .
. . .
Anyway, I'll be gone until Monday and then I'll update you on the damn super-top-secret marriage seminar weekend thingie because dammit if I'm not a rebel. Somebody's got to break the silence! The Repression Must Cease! The end.
Temperatures like this of course mean that I feel like a sweaty, sticky pig. Ew. It doesn't help that the building that I am in currently has airconditioning that only works when it feels like it. That is to say, erratically. But never fear! A work order has been sent out! They should get to it with the two technicians they have for the entire freaking base by, say, oh, about mid-July. :- Good thing I'll be out on medical leave by then.
And let's not talk about having to actually walk between my building and my car. Heat makes me breathe more, which makes me wheeze more, which makes my heart race. Not a good combination when you feel like you're going to have a freaking coronary just getting to your car. This surgery cannot come soon enough, I tell you!
. . .
This weekend should be rather interesting. Tomorrow The Husband and I will be dumping Thing One and Thing Two with their Godmother and heading off to Oxnard for the annual Loving Marriage Seminar. This seminar is supposed to be so good that they keep it a secret from anyone who hasn't attended what it's all about. Right. Because being a good Christian means that we keep secrets of marriage success to ourselves and only hand them out to those so priveledged to be deemed worthy to receive them.
If we hadn't been waiting so long to go to this seminar that I rescheduled my surgery for it, I would be very tempted not to show up. The Husband kind of feels this way as well.
First off, I/we hate secrets of this nature. It's one thing if you are given who the speakers at a seminar are and what they will be talking about. That's an acceptable level of secret to me for a seminar. You know the general topic, but they're not going to hand you a copy of their speech, right? No problem.
But this? Nobody will tell us anything. Not if there are going to be speakers, if it's just going to be a Bible study, if it's going to be exercises of some variety - nada. And it's driving me insane.
And then we're expected to not tell anyone else about it either. Oh, but we're supposed to make couples feel good about it if they're one of the lucky ones who get to go next year. Or we might be recruited to help at the next one! Yeah, right! Secret keepers are us. NOT!
Remind me again why I postponed my surgery for this? Please? *sigh*
. . .
I am sick and tired (and tired always follows sick) of being either asked the same thing over and over again or being told the same whiney song and dance over and over again. This is being done by two well-meaninged, but ultimately annoying, older gentlemen in my office.
The first one at least has an excuse. He was recently out on medical disability because he fell down a flight of stairs at work here and broke oh, just about all the major long bones on his left-hand side. And this was only 8 months after he had two spinal surgeries. He blacked out and was alone in the stairwell for at least two hours, possibly more, so if he doesn't remember things too well, I try not to get annoyed with him.
We used to work for the same company, but when the contract was re-bidded, we ended up being on separate companies. Now, he gets these e-mails from my old company sending him to websites to do their mandatory training and keeps asking me if I had problems with them. I don't work for the same company that you do anymore, dude. I say this at LEAST three or four times every. Single. Week. This week? I've said it at least three times a day. I try to be polite, but after a month or so, you tend to get a bit batty from the constant questions that have the same answer. My timecard sheet? Not the same company. Employee intranet? Not the same company. Get the picture yet? Aaaaaugh!
The other gentleman? Well, he doesn't have an excuse. He's just a leech. He likes to glom onto you and tell you his latest woes. Which happen to be the same woes he told you about last week. And the week before. And the week before that.
Due to a system that shall not be named out loud for fear it will take over my entire life, a system that was *supposed* to make us all work faster, better and more efficiently but has instead ended up costing the gummint much more than they anticipated, this second older gentleman has been without a computer onsite for over a year. And because of my position, he had to deal with me every time he needed changes made to a specific document. No big deal, right? I can do that.
But then he thought I was his best friend in the whole wide world and his leech-e-ness came into play. He now must tell me of all the indignations he has suffered because of Ehn-ehm-see-eye and his not having a computer, about how he got kicked out of the software building because people didn't like him, and how he needs to have surgery on his foot but he doesn't know if he can afford it. And his foot is considered pre-gangreneous. Gah!
I have considered getting a blowtorch and bringing it to work just so that I can singe him every time he starts to leech on me because isn't that how you get a leech to release from sucking your blood? By touching it with a match? Or is that a tick? Anyway, same principle.
I am sick unto death of acting like a lady and being polite and saying the nice things when all I want to do is start screaming the minute one of them begins talking to me. Deep breaths. I'm getting all worked up about this. In. Out. In. Out. I can do this . . .
. . .
Anyway, I'll be gone until Monday and then I'll update you on the damn super-top-secret marriage seminar weekend thingie because dammit if I'm not a rebel. Somebody's got to break the silence! The Repression Must Cease! The end.
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