uh, guys? the whole world is still watching.

This here post is about pain. For one thing, it happened again. For another, I spent a whole day this week trying to accurately capture in pixels what I did to my finger. (It's not gross, if you're squeamish like I am - just a bruise.) But no matter how impressive and purple and yellow the bruise looked in the shower, by the light of day it was nothing. So, sorry, no finger-joint bruise pictures.

So, I spent another hour last Saturday locked in the bathroom of the pharmacy, begging God to kill me or whatever one does when one is in that much pain. No, I wasn't begging God to kill me -- from what I remember, I tend to take a practical approach, and meditate on how in seriously, like, an hour I won't be hurting like this. I check my watch and say things like, oh hey! That was 10 minutes! Wow, this will be over in no time!

Then there are the chants, which range from a nonsense phrase meant solely to express suffering, to the down-to-earth I just have to get through this, to the more basic repetitive o-kay, o-kay, I'm-o-kay, I'm-o-kay. That one also involves rocking.

This time my arms were tingling, really really tingling, from about my biceps to the tips of my fingers. I don't remember that from before. That, plus the way my entire body was in pain made the whole experience profound. All I could do was experience the pain. It was diffuse, it was my whole self.

How can childbirth be worse than this? If it was all I could do to keep from blacking out during this, how to women stay conscious during labor? This is one of the things I thought about. If I hadn't been afraid to die alone and childless and PhD-less on the floor of a pharmacy bathroom from choking on my own vimit, I would've happily given up consciousness. If on the other hand I was surrounded by competent professionals and loved ones, I'd pass out after the first contraction. Hey y'all, wake me when it's over.

I passed out in Belize. I did the, "Hey, So-and-so, I don't feel so-" CLUNK thing. I was disappointed when they woke me up, because I'd been remembering some scene from when I was a kid and the whole family was sitting around the living room. It was nice.

Is this what alcoholics are after? If so, I finally, totally understand.

me want kill everybody. even you. no... ESPECIALLY you.

I started the aforementioned new job last week, and I'm liking it, thanks if you were silently wondering. There's only so much to say about it, especially to the internets (which are not known for their subtlety or discretion). But, yes: better.

My sinuses, on the other hand, are not doing so great. They've slept about three hours in the last 50, their normally-reliable childcare crapped out on them yesterday, which threw everything off, and when they stepped out of a cab this morning, they stepped straight into a puddle that actually, somehow, miraculously topped the mid-calf boot on their right foot and left them with about five inches of cold water between them and the cowhide. Not good.

So I went to the doctor today - the student doctor, because I've constructed the most delicate net of plausibility that I qualify as a full-time(ish) student and it's okay to see me there. There's a lot of nodding and saying "these are not the droids you're looking for" involved, and it actually worked.

Here's the backstory: I gave in on Friday night to the fact that I cannot just wait out a sinus infection. Can't. Didn't work the last seven times I tried it, didn't work Friday, won't work next fall. I gave in at about 5:07, which you might recognize as being 7 minutes after the doctor's office closes. This works on the same principle as guides the dog slicing her paw open at 9am the day the vet's office is closed (Thursday), and as guides Other's ear infections that hit at 6am on a Sunday. (That would be the shift at the ER with the doctor who DOESN'T BELIEVE IN INFECTIONS. Have I ever told you about that? My God, what a morning.)

So. Friday night, I take a look at my stash from when I had Ceftin (or -zil, who the hell knows) left over from the whole Biaxin unpleasantness. Or, wait, that's weird - the Biaxin was replaced with Keflex. Hmm. Well, whatever, I had five leftover antibiotic tablets, perfectly enough for the rest of the weekend, and started taking them. Felt better pretty quickly.

I went in under a hail of I-know-I'm-supposed-to-take-all-my-antibiotics-I-swear-
these-were-left-over-because-I-was-on-more-than-one-cycle-Seriously-I-was-going-to-
die-if-I-didn't-start-taking-antibiotics-Friday-here-are-all-my-disgusting-symptoms. And this was a doctor I knew and liked, because he did believe that Other got painful ear infections, and even recommended a good specialist. But I was no match for the You Really Shouldn't Do That. Which, okay, yes, I understand the ramifications of antibiotic tolerance. It's bad. I promise promise promise I won't.

But there was also the advice about how to avoid sinus infections, which yes: please: lay it on me, help help help. My other doctor (whom we are Avoiding) said to combat the allergy attacks as soon as they start with Claritin and Sudafed, which I did this time and which didn't help in the least. This doctor said drink lots of water (check - I even bought a $20 fancy-ass aluminum thing so as not to be ingesting nasty chemicals from the plastic water bottles). Wash your hands before you eat (check - I washed my hands so much in Costa Rica that I got a freaking fungal infection under my wedding band.* This is not something I had intended to share with you all, as it is gross, but it is also proof that I am serious about washing my damn hands). Don't chew gum. (Huh! This is interesting. I chew gum. Is it something with the ear canals? No, it's because when you touch your gum, germs are transferred from your hands----wait, wait, who said anything about touching your gum? At this point I actually did speak up. People take their gum out of their mouths and put it back in. Really? Gross. I don't do that. Well, when you first put it in your mouth. And at this point, vigorously shaking my head kind of like a crazy person might, I'm literally gesturing the act of unwrapping the top half of a piece of gum so that the bottom half remains swathed in wrapper -- and just try for a second to gesture that, it's harder than you think -- and declaring quite staunchly that I AM NOT A GUM-TOUCHER.)

So I get to both feel like I'm a leetle bit compulsive with all the hand-washing and gum-touching-refraining-from, and yet that I'm still somehow responsible for my tendency to have allergies turn into sinus infections. Which, yeah, okay, fine. I mean, I do devour M&M's by the handful, so maybe that's where these rogue germs are coming from.

Uhmmm, I think the point that I wanted to make at the beginning of all this is, doctors, why can't I just know when I have a sinus infection? Why can't Other just know when he has an ear infection? I'm not the most embodied person I've ever met, no, but I know the sensations that go on in my face and head when I have a sinus infection. I mean, I understand that I didn't "go to medical school" and you did, but I'm pretty familiar with my body. I'm not trying to diagnose some new and unusual thing that's happening, either - I've had five sinus infections in the last four years, I know.

I still like this doctor, and don't blame him for thinking me some kind of Gum Toucher. But man, none of these experiences are adding up to me not hating doctor visits.

*Yeah, if you've seen me in person recently and noticed I wasn't wearing my wedding band and thought about saying "Trouble in paradise, eh?" to me but didn't because that would probably be inappropriate, then no - not trouble. Just fungus.

oh, that's just my uvula wishing me a happy september

This is going to sound weird, but my snot has completely turned against me. I don't normally write about things like snot, so, sorry, but maybe you can save me? From the snot? It is acid snot, its pH is off or something. It is burning me. My nose. My throat. It is interfering with my breathing. And thus my sleep, but also my ability to stay awake. And thus my will to live and ability to make sense. And write and think about anything other than the Evil Snot of Evilness and Pain.

Hey, Miss Doxie's back!

I'm just so effin self-actualized right now, I can't even believe it.

I have never given a permanent home in my brain to things like federal holidays. Some part of whatever's in charge of those kinds of details seems to have decided that meh, there's a decent chance that Labor Day just won't happen next year. Inductive reasoning from evidence of the past 27 years not withstanding. So every year it comes as a pleasant surprise that I have some random Monday off. And that also may explain why I'm never sure if wearing white pants will meet with disapproval from elderly ladies.

back on the M&M pain train

This is a conversation I have at least once a Saturday:

Customer: What time do you close?
Me: Five.
Customer: Seven?
Me: Five.
Customer: Oh.

I have gotten better at enunciating. We. Close. At. Fiive.

Today a guy came in (several times, actually) who was wearing a t-shirt that said, "I taught your girlfriend everything she knows." Which is totally weird, because back when we first hooked up, she was pretty emphatic about the fact that she'd never been into guys. And I mean, hell, it's fine if she was, you know, we're our own people. I don't own her. That's just a hell of a way to find out.