Here's Your Sign

Watching one of my favorite comedian's (Bill Engvall) tonight reminded me of this incident... The morning I was to have that minor surgery, after Thanksgiving, I woke up with a raging headache. Not a migraine, but one that I could probably get rid of with some tylenol. Having been instructed not to eat or drink anything after midnight, I couldn't take anything. Driving to the hospital I was starting to feel like I was going to hurl. Outpatient surgery informed me that my surgery wasn't actually scheduled until 3:45, not 9am like the doc had told me. I still had to stay because of all this other crap they had to do to me. My friend Kim, who was there with me and has probably forgotten more medical crap than I have ever known, told me just take the pills with a sip of water. It'll all be out of my system long before the surgery. I'm a caffeine and breakfast kind of girl, so I'm already spiralling into a foul mood. After being assigned my room, the nurse starts asking me questions while I'm filling out some forms. Have I eaten or drank anything? Sure, see this bottle of water? I have drank this much (maybe 2 ounces). She was aghast, and proceeded to condemn me for doing such a horrible thing. "And we might just have to cancel your surgery and schedule it for another day and..." Hehe, really??? "Nothing against your staff, but the doctor and his staff have already pissed me off and if we could start over another day because I had a sip of water? Fine, let's do that. Can I go now?" She would have to check with the doctor. Well apparently the bit of water was A OK with the good doc. About a half hour later the same nurse came running back in..."Has anyone done a pregnancy test on you?" Hmmm don't think so? She handed me a cup and I lost it, completely lost it I was laughing so hard I could barely stand up. My thought was "Here's Your Sign" but instead I managed to say, through the bursts of laughter "If I wasn't supposed to have anything to eat or drink after midnight, how do you purpose I fill this? I bet you're glad I drank that water now!" The woman in the bed next to mine lost it...

Naming Names?

Aha! Someone was eve's dropping on my conversation the other day. We were talking about the latest coward in Omaha to go up against innocent lives with an automatic weapon. God, how pissed I was when the news was talking about his note saying at least he would be famous now. Well don't publish his name! Don't utter it on air. Ever. Don't give them what they were looking for. Remember the Virginia Tech shooting? He sent that package to the news station between shootings! In part, this article is true. Did I remember the name of the Columbine shooters? No I didn't. I don't remember the name of the guy who shot the people at Albertson's here. Already I had forgotten the name of the Virginia Tech guy. People remember the act more than the one who committed it or were victims of it. The media is who drills this information into our brains. There was a lot more reported about the shooter than the victims. Someone who is a little wacko, or a lot wacko, may see this as some kind of glory. Where the media is concerned I understand they have a certain obligation to report the news. Come on, if you don't glorify what the shooter did and focus on the humanity, the victims and there families and what they lost maybe, just maybe one guy out there will change his mind when he sees there's no recognition in it. No blaze of glory, no media frenzy. Could this maybe fall under a matter of public safety? If one channel, one broadcaster had the balls to set this kind of precedence or if the public clamored for it, maybe we could help end this type of thing. If it prevented it from happening once it would be worth it, "duty to informing the public" be damned.

Since I'm bitching about the media, on a separate note here, I really don't care what Paris Hilton, Lindsey Lohan or Britney Spears is doing! If it doesn't pertain to a movie or CD I don't want to know! Even then I really, really don't. Since Paris Hilton is only famous for being famous I would never have to hear about her again! I would put money on the fact that many reporters could not name one soldier killed in Iraq. Those are the names that should be headlines, not some twitty Hollywood starlets.

Stepping off my soapbox now...

Don't Blink

Whenever I watch this video I get a little misty-eyed, and I'm not really sure why. When I was a kid I remember people telling me how time flies as you get older, being a kid my attitude was "whatever". Of course, now I know what they were talking about. It's hard to believe I've been 30 for a year, and now I'm 31. Youth is truly wasted on the young. Time is slipping by and I'm trying to make the most of it, every chance I get. Doing things I may have put off and now I don't. We don't know how many tomorrow's we have been given so we might as well make the most of today.

Here's another song that kind of got me too. Don't you wish you could go back and tell yourself these things? An interesting twist on the "if I knew then what I know now".

It's got claws!?!

My friend's and I were talking about how maybe we got through November unscathed this year. Then I told her about putting the previous entry on here and her jaw dropped. Yup, I did it. Well November landed on my ass, literally. The day after I posted that. We made our traditional Thanksgiving trek to Utah, these friend's really are my family. Side note: Sometimes the meds I take give me a fever and sore throat for a day or so after so that was no indicator. Anyway, Thanksgiving night we were all drinking - a lot. Add a bit of snow to the rum and someone will fall on her ass, in the driveway, and not remember what she fell on. The next day I noticed a couple of scratches and what looked like two little holes on my rear. No pain, or a second thought about them. Still had the fever. Saturday night I leaned against the kitchen counter and it hurt, a lot. Still had the fever. Those two holes were now red, swollen, pea sized. The transformation from Saturday night to Sunday morning was remarkable. Now they were saucer sized, hot and bright red. After investigating the driveway I am still at a loss as to what could have caused those. On the drive home they opened up (ruined that pair of jeans) and I knew I was screwed. Already I knew what cellulitis (staph infection) was and I used Google to confirm my suspicions. Monday I was at the urgent care when they opened, by Tuesday I was in surgery to remove some of the tissue and assist in the drainage process. Gross. Morphine is very cool and I learned you can get a hangover from it. Also learned pain can be bad enough to make you black out and vomit. So here it is Sunday and I can now sit long enough to type up my tale of woe. No pun intended. It could have been worse, I know you can die from a staph infection. Thank God I recognized what it was, Thank God November is over for another year.