No promises!: July 2007

Thursday, July 26, 2007

A birthday realization

I've figured out how to prevent drought! Gather 'round, everyone, and I'll tell you how:

Have me plan any - ANY - kind of outdoor activity. "If she plans it (outside), the rain will come." I've proven that time after time after time this summer.

4th of July/Cam's birthday party at Barb's pool? Rained CONTINUOUSLY.
2nd annual dog days of summer camping trip? Rained out on Saturday, with a tremendous thunderstorm thrown in to boot.
Marching camp for four weeks? It's rained at least once per day this past week, but today - the day I planned to grill burgers and dogs for the kids - we are POUNDED with rain. Know when it let up? After lunch.

Had I known of my gift for bringing rain BEFORE we were in drought conditions, I'd have been able to stave it off with some handy picnic planning or maybe another camping trip. Hindsight, my friends, truly is 20/20.

Labels: weather

posted by Jen @ 3:26 PM 2 comments

Friday, July 20, 2007

OK. Today is the day. Well, tonight, anyway...I plan on heading up to B&N around 8 tonight. I've warned the friend going with me that I just might become homicidal if some jackass blurts out the ending before I can leave the store. I'm thinking about taking my MP3 player with me for that exact reason.

So how about the rest of my day? Well. Within hours all the people in Europe that lined up for days for the last HP book will be posting about the book. I have decided upon the following rather radical course of action for myself:

No reading of online news. Period. I don't want to see a headline or accidentally pick something up that will ruin this for me. This will be hard - I'm constantly reading the news. Pray for me! Heh - I'm kidding...well, about the praying thing.
No listening to radio news. Except public radio. They'll have the decency not to say anything about it for a while yet.
Very little reading of emails, in the event someone thinks they're doing me a favor by passing anything Potter-related along.

Yeah. I'm taking this very seriously. I was the same way with the last Dark Tower book, only there wasn't the same frenzied hoopla in the press. I've worked up the courage to find out who lives and who dies on MY terms, dammit. I don't want the whole experience ruined! I plan to hang out at B&N until I get my book, when I plan to make a mad dash home where I plan to sit up all night reading. I told Val she can pick it up on her way to work Saturday morning. If, for some strange, strange reason I can't finish it (ha!) I told her I'd call her. Nobody's prying this book out of my hands until I'm done!

Labels: Potter freak

posted by Jen @ 10:05 AM 2 comments

Thursday, July 12, 2007

Look! A title!!

Just a little notice to everyone that I'm going camping this weekend.. I'm leaving this afternoon, assuming I can get the rest of my stuff together and not fall in the river on the way to the camp site. :) See y'all later!

Labels: Camping

posted by Jen @ 2:07 PM 0 comments

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Still no titles...c'mon, Blogger! Get your act together!!

It's 9:33 PM. I have tickets to see the new Harry Potter at the 12:01 showing. I plan to leave the house around 11:15. I'm supposed to be laying down for a little cat nap...I'm too excited to sleep, though. Squee!!

posted by Jen @ 9:33 PM 0 comments

Sunday, July 08, 2007

Blogger seems to think I don't need a title for this post - it sure won't let me add one. Hmph.

I just got back from Wal Mart. This is the content of my bag as I left the store:

birth control pills
Swimmer's Ear ear drops
1 pink bath pouf (did you know they say you should replace these every 30 days?!)
1 yellow onion
1 Diet Pepsi (the Diet Coke was too far away)

Only at Wal Mart...

In other news...I finally broke down and bought tickets for the 12:01AM showing Tuesday night/Wednesday morning of the latest Harry Potter movie. Sounds crazy? Well, Resa is driving over from Jacksonville just to see it with me. Ha!

In other other news, TJ and Billy just got back from Lowe's with a load of lumber and other building supplies. He's building his bar. I'm not going to say anything else about it yet. Ahem.

I'm wiped...my allergies have been lashing out at me all day and I think the Benedryl I took is finally kicking in. I'll see y'all later.

posted by Jen @ 5:01 PM 2 comments

Thursday, July 05, 2007

Monday again?

Don't get me wrong - I enjoy having a day off as much as the next person. I do! However, this middle-of-the-week stuff has thrown a curve ball to my system from which I may not recover. (Heh, TX Jen - the grammar thing is contagious! I keep hearing "with which to wick" in my head...LOL!!)

As I slowly woke up yesterday, I was thinking, "Aahhhh....I get to sleep in tomorrow, too!" "No - wait - it's a holiday...I have to work tomorrow. Oh hell!" I spent the rest of the morning having different versions of the same conversation in my head. Then I moved on to thinking it was Sunday. Crap. At least I knew I had to work the next day.

I got up this morning - grudgingly - and got ready for work, absolutely certain it was Monday. I could not convince myself otherwise, even though I KNEW it wasn't right. The way my morning went, it sure FELT like a Monday.

I got up and got myself and Cam dressed and ready to go. I found TJ's blue-tooth headset - he said I could have it as he didn't use it any more. Woot! He said the charger was on his dresser, so I grabbed it...guess what kind of charger it is? Mini USB. Guess what else it charges? Uh huh. My phone. It's been sitting there all this time. Now, I enjoy irony as much as the next guy, but this was a little ridiculous. "Doh!"

Cam was hanging around playing one of his new Gameboy games, and I actually got ready early. I told him that we ought to just leave early - I needed to get gas after I dropped him off at day care, and leaving early would get me to work at the usual time. We headed out the door. Got him to day care only to realize that we left his lunch at home. Shit! I got gas, went home, then took his lunch back up to day care. I got to work late, of course.

I kept thinking, "Shit, I'm going to miss the meeting!" The Monday morning meeting. The Monday morning meeting that was not going to take place BECAUSE IT'S THURSDAY! Bah! I finally worked my brain around THAT little bit of info, and settled down to get some business done. I wanted to charge the headset, fax my lab work to UWF for my medical records, and see what other hoops needed jumping through before I could register. I plugged in the headset, faxed my paperwork, and sat down to log into U-Dub's student services online. There was a brief moment of panic when I couldn't figure the stupid site out, and I kept thinking, "If I'm not smart enough to use their website, how am I going to earn a DEGREE?!" Don't worry though, I did manage to figure it out.

It took me 3 log-in attempts, but I finally got into my account, to see that they have everything they need for me to see my department head to register. They have my transcripts from PJC and from high school, but they insist that I have NOT met my language requirement. 2 years of Spanish and 2 years of Latin don't count? Maybe because it's been too long? Hell if I know - I"m going to ask when I go up to register. Then I realize they have me listed as a Senior. Wha?! I was talking to TJ as I was looking over the info, and when I mentioned that to him, he says, "Heh. Maybe they're referring to your age." Smart ass. Thanks for the support, honey. Though I do have to admit - it was funny. I'll straighten that out when I register, too.

All this has compounded to leave me feeling a bit slow on the uptake this morning. The final straw was not knowing the word of the day today. I have Dictionary.com's word of the day widget on my iGoogle page. I take great pride in the fact that more often than not, I know the word of the day. Well, not so much today. I mean, really...heterodox? (It means "holding unorthodox opinions"...you know, in case anyone else is unfamiliar with it.) As I said before, I did take two years of Latin...that set me up with an amazing knack for word derivations. No use here...the 'dox' bit made me think of 'unorthodox', but why on earth would you create a word so similar to 'unorthodox' that just means 'has unorthodox opinions'??! Redundancy pisses me off. Especially when it catches me off guard and makes me feel stupid. I have therefore decided to ban "heterodox" from my vocabulary for ever and ever, and will rain down obscenities upon anyone else that uses it. Stupid word...I bet they just made it up, anyway.

So that's the tale of my Monday-that's-not-a-Monday. There is more to tell, but that's best saved for another day. This is my 2nd absurdly long post in the same day, and I'm afraid of overwhelming my dear readers. Heh.

posted by Jen @ 12:46 PM 1 comments

Sunday, July 01, 2007

I apologize in advance

This is going to be gross. Really gross. One of those "too gross to keep to myself" sort of things. If you're easily squicked out, turn away now. Seriously - IT'S GROSS!

So I have warts. Well, I had warts. I had them frozen off nearly 2 weeks ago. There were 4 on my left leg and one enormous one on the back of my right hand. Dr. Willis actually went "Wow, that's a big one!" when he saw it. Yeah. So as he's freezing them off, he tells me that they'll scab up and then will heal up within about two weeks. Well. That was Friday afternoon.

By Friday night, the ones on my leg weren't particularly gross, but the one on the back of my hand...you know, gargantu-wart? The skin of the wart and immediately surrounding the wart were beginning to inflate. No kidding - INFLATE. It grossed me out. I actually had to put a Band-Aid over it, it grossed me out so much. (Scooby-Doo, if you were curious...the Band-Aid, I mean.) I mean, had it been on my LEG it would have been one thing - that is practically out of sight. This was FAR too visible. I went to bed Friday night kind of squicked out, but had no idea what I would wake to the following morning.

Saturday I woke to find a half-balloon of skin that stood (no lie) half an inch high off the back of my hand. I realized that it wasn't pus-filled or anything - I could see shapes and colors though it. BLAR!! We had to go to Jen's sister's birthday party the same day, and the plan was to swim. Shit.

The party was good. Cam did announce to everyone at the party that I had a huge wart and it was really gross and disgusting. I thanked him. Scooby Doo held up pretty well, until we got in the pool. Scooby failed me...it fell off. I got out and put the useless Band-Aid on the table and got back in, trying not to look at it. I briefly thought about just popping it and getting it over with, but really...that's just nasty. We played in the pool for a while, and started to play with these really cool little pool torpedoes. Naturally Cam and I started wrestling over them, and my right hand ended up stuck between Cam's side and his arm - he pinched my arm to him like that. Well. He snatched his body back, and I realized what it's like to feel a COLOR. My whole hand felt red. I knew what had happened, but didn't want to look. That would make it hurt more, know what I mean? I did suddenly stop wrestling, which alerted Cam to the fact that something was not kosher. He asked what was wrong, and I said that it was the wart...he was immediately excited and grossed out at the same time. Boys are funny that way.

I stood up in the shallow end and looked at my hand...the bubble of skin had in fact popped, and the bubble part was sort of dangling there, useless on the back of my hand. And....AAAAANNNDDDD, as if that weren't disgusting enough, there was this red and yellow wet ~void~ where the wart had once been. ooooooooooh man. Jen was out of the pool, and I said, "Um, Jen? I think I need a Band-Aid." She looked - at my face, not the wart - and scooted into the house to get one. Her Mom came out and put a waterproof one on me. Now, I dunno if you've had the pleasure of wearing one of these bad boys...I gotta say, it was pretty damn cool. I'm not even going to describe it - you'll just have to take my word for it. It turned out to be for naught, as I didn't get back in the pool. But the point is that I COULD have gotten back in, if I wanted. So there. The rest of the day was uneventful, wart-wise.

Sunday I began to worry that it would never solidify...it was still all runny and gross. I was trying really hard to leave the Band-Aid off so that it COULD scab up; but being all runny and gross it was a chore to look at...and then I kept smearing it on things, furthering the gross-out quotient exponentially. By Monday it had finally scabbed over, but was no less disgusting...just more dry. Mind you, the ones on my legs all combined haven't been HALF as disgusting as this one. Just ugly red spots on my legs. I kept joking with people that my leprosy was acting up - if my arm fell off, please add it to the pile and try not to think any less of me.

So we come to Saturday. I went to a 4th of July party and ended up in the pool for a couple hours. Some of you already know where this is leading, and to the rest of you, I apologize. Yes, this actually gets more gross. Look, don't say I didn't warn you. So. I got out of the pool and, as has become my habit, I checked out my leprosy - er, my wart. Oh dear...around the edges of the newly formed scab, it had turned yellow, and the yellow bits were loose. Loose like unattached from the fresh skin underneath, but not loose enough to let go of the scab. Upon realizing this, I immediately set out to find someone to show. Can't keep all this gross disgustingness to myself!! Cam, predictably, was horrified and mystified all at the same time. Billy, predictably, told me to quit picking at it. Heh. I sort of folded the yellow bits up away from the skin and went about my business. Once it dried I used some clean cuticle clippers to trim it...all the while sort of throwing up in my mouth a little.

Sunday was spent in Foley with Barb and Cam, purchasing supplies for his birthday party. We got back to the house and then went swimming. Guess what happened? Yeah. Scab - yellow - loose - cuticle clippers. Lather, rinse, repeat...right? So that was Sunday.

I told TJ that this whole freezing of the warts thing has been one of the most disgusting experiences of my life. That includes childbirth, ladies and gentlemen. There were innumerable things occurring throughout those last eventful days that ranked up there in the "most disgusting things EVER" category, but this whole wart-capades things has them beat. None of that delivery/surgery/recovery stuff made me want to throw up in my mouth a little.

Here it is, nearly 2 weeks later. Things have calmed down mightily, and I'm very thankful. I have a painful scab on the back of my hand, and some ugly spots on my leg. The leg warts haven't done anything nearly as spectacular as the hand one did, either. I don't know whether to be relieved or mildly disappointed. :)

So. I told you it was gross. I make no apologies...it was too gross not to share. Kudos to those of you that managed to read this far. I'm off to blog about my morning today. Much less disgusting, I promise. See y'all later!

posted by Jen @ 10:54 PM 3 comments

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