Not dead, but almost

OH thank jeebus that the holiday season is over.  I realized finally, FINALLY, this year, that I have 'issues' with Christmas.  Deep-seeded (seated?) wretched, I HATE CHRISTMAS feelings.  And while I know those feelings need to be explored, can I just take a moment first and say HALLELUIA (<--ha see what I did there) it's OVER!?!

So, to recap:

There was a wedding, and Mike was Best Man.  Looka my son!

Yes that's me in the green dress - running...?

(also he got his grades from his first semester of college and it was 2 A's, 2B's.  He thought maybe he wasn't as smart as he used to be.  He's stupid for thinking that.)

I was starting to feel a cold or something coming on at this point, but pushed through it.  This wedding took place outside (San Diego, but it was still cold) and here you should hear foreshadowing music. Then the day after this wedding Jeff and I left for Idyllwild, a wonderful, small mountain community about 1.5 hours away from SD.  I was feeling sick with a real cold by this time, but a romantic cabin!  A week with my husband!  A HOT TUB on the deck!  Both dogs!  I pushed through.

Yeah.  I was so, so sick.  I had a sore throat like never before, and recognized my old friend Chronic Sinus Infection.  I didn't realize until the 3rd day that the romantic comfy fires we had blazing were making me SO MUCH WORSE.  By the third day I told Jeff (croaked, really) that it felt like I had one of these in my throat:

I cried every time I swallowed.  It sucked.

 

He looked up an Urgent Care that was about 35 miles away and we got ready to go - on a whim he called the place just before we left and uh, Xmas eve, it was CLOSED.  So sorry you are deathly ill, move along.  We went to the town pharmacy and I bought one of everything and went back to the cabin.  I soaked in the hot tub (so romantic what with the honking and coughing and gasping and crying) which helped because of the steam. 

Christmas morning, 2013 *honk*

 

We spent Xmas eve and day watching AMC holiday movies and he drank his beer and I had soup and I felt SO very ill, it's hard to describe how awful it was.  My throat was so sore.  I was taking 3 advil, then 2 hours later 3 Tylenol, then 2 hours later 3 advil - etcetera.  Yeah, it was FISTFULLS of pain relievers but if I didn't do it that way I cried until the next dose.  I used my neti-pot and ugh.  We left the day after Christmas, 3 days early.

 

$1,500 spent on a vacation cabin for me to be sick as fuck.  I did get dressed (xmas eve, the day we thought we were going to urgent care) and we took the dogs on a short walk:

My ears felt like they were going to burst blood like in a horror movie and I thought maybe there were a couple of very angry cats covered in lemon juice and hot sauce in my throat.  Awful.

 

The day we came home we dropped the dogs off at the house and went directly to an urgent care (rather than the VA, trying to avoid a throng.) (that didn't work out as planned.) we waited 2 hours to be seen at urgent care, with me collapsed on Jeff's shoulder the whole time.  (surrounded by a crush of humanity that was equally as sick) (luckily there were no sick children, my god the misery that would have been for everyone).  Diagnosis?  Yes yes, bad sinus infection, but also?  Strep throat.  With canker sores and *pus* on my throat.  Scrip for amoxicillin and Flonase and off we went.

 And here is what I've looked like for the last few days.  Today I'm finally up this morning, but not planning on doing anything more than washing sheets and throwing used tissues away. 

 

I haven't been this sick since before I quit work.  I remember that last sickness - you don't forget shit like this.  CHILDBIRTH was easier- I at least got a kid out of that!  I've had sinus infections every year, but not like this.  This was one for the books.

 

I hate taking antibiotics.  I refuse to go to doctors.  In fact the urgent care doc I finally saw agreed with me, at first, that maybe just the Flonase (steroidal nasal spray, anti-inflammatory) would work.  She didn't see anything on my throat at first.  I asked her to look further back, where my ears/throat/sinuses meet.  That's when she jumped back like she'd seen her grandmother naked and made a screechy noise and said (pointing at me like I was a witch) PUS!  SORES!  and I said *croak* *wahhh!* and so, there ya go.  I surprised the doc.  Moral?  Have them look again.  It was at that point that she said "sometimes antibiotics are the only way" and I said "gimme" and that was that.

 

So anywhozle, I'm back, and I'm alive.  I'm so incredibly glad the holidays are over.  I want to plant my patio and buy a new bike at the Walmart and get some new dishes (I'm giving my vintage dishes away) and just get going on the new year.

 

BTW - there is going to be a full moon - a NEW MOON! on  January 1.  How very serendipitous.  This was a fantastic year, full of really, really wonderful things.  I moved from Maryland, spent a huge amount of time reconnecting with Mike, we live in a great apartment overlooking the pool, right on the river-bed, near the ocean, in San Diego.  My life is so very blessed. 

My patio this morning, 12/29/13

But December can kiss my ass.

Woo woo stuff - the weird tale of the bobby pins

(**I have updated this post**)

I decided to start telling the tales I have of the weird stuff I have that happens to me.  I'll start with the ongoing weirdness of the bobby pins.

For the last 3 months or so I have been finding a random bobby pin just about every single time I go for a walk.  The first one I just noticed and probably thought 'huh' and I kept walking.  The next day I saw another one, this time in the elevator.  And I remember thinking 'hey! another bobby pin!'.  Then the third one I was with Jeff and I made him look at it and he said something profound like 'we are in the middle of the street woman keep walking!'

It wasn't until like 6th one that I started picking them up.  It was getting ridiculous and it was the first weird thing (in a long line of weird things) that I had something tangible to show.

I now have this pile of abandoned bobby pins:

I've lost some, because while I'm walking for exercise I attach them to my sleeve and they fall off sometimes.  It's a bummer that I don't have ALL of them, because that would have made quite the impressive pile.  I find them when I'm with Jeff, when I'm with France, when I'm with Mike, when I'm alone.

Today I was walking at Mission Bay and I was writing this blog post in my head.  I was thinking hard about the pins and since I was thinking about it and LOOKING for one I figured (laughing) that I wasn't ever going to find another one now.  Just then I looked down and bam.

I said 'woot!' and snapped a picture and kept walking and three steps later bam:

It's an unbent one, right there in the middle.

I took a couple more steps, and BAM:

Lying directly along the grass line, almost hidden, center of picture, above disgusting gum blob.

Now see - you can tell by the pictures that these pins are sometimes hidden and rather hard to see.  I have no idea why my eyes are drawn directly to them.  They are brown - they're meant to be unseen in your hair.  Sidewalks aren't exactly swept clean of sticks, twigs and leaves.  It's bizarre, is what it is.  I'm also (usually!) looking at the scenery, illustrated here:

It's distracting and all, being at the beach or by a lake or, most especially, behind both dogs and being yanked and pulled in two different directions.  Something always draws my eye directly to them.

Logically?  Scientifically?  OBECTIVELY?  these things fall out of girls hair when they're walking/running and it's just a coincidence that I find them. 

*ahem*

Do YOU think you personally, would find a bobby pin every day?  Every. single. day.?  Yeah.  I don't believe in coincidences, I know most people DO but I don't.  Something is trying to get my attention and I seriously have no idea who or what.  It's so frustrating, to be constantly *poinked* in the eyeball with these things and have no context.

Which - hello stupid spirit from the other side.  I need just a skosh more information please.  For ME, bobby pins are a vintage item.  I remember my DNA mother and her aunt, my Aunt Kay, using them.  Both women are dead.  If they are indeed the ones contacting me, I am not getting the fucking message.  This is useless communication, unless they just want to say "hi, I'm here" in which case, I get a LOT of those kinds of things.  Nice and all, but ultimately useless.

I know, I know - it's just trash and a coincidence and all that.  But that's not the feeling I get from it.  I'm certain I sound crazy pants - but there it is.

It's not the weirdest thing that has happened to me, but I thought I'd start with something small.  Get you used to the fact that I'm just exactly that weird.