kdiddy.org

I haven’t posted much about our kitten, Florian, because a) I don’t post that much, period (I got bills to pay, son) and b) of the many things on my bucket list, “Morph into a cat blogger” is not one of them. Other peoples’ cats are, I think, even less interesting than other peoples’ kids. But if we’re going to start stacking uninteresting things against each other, the internet will fold in on itself. (Read: there’s a lot of subjective joy to be had here. Find what you like and ignore the rest.)

I have to say, though, that this kitten is remarkably goofy. I don’t know if that’s common of all kittens or if he spent his brief time in the shelter huffing glue. He sleeps on my neck. He attacks his own tail. He tries to kill his dry cat food. He randomly starts fights with Greedo, who regularly sports an expression of withered annoyance when interacting with his younger brother. He gets his nose all up in Greedo’s butt, then emerges with this disgusted snarl on his face, like he can’t believe someone’s anus can smell so bad.

Florian regularly acts like such a fool, we’ve started calling him Derp, as in:

It's another piece of inexplicable internet humor. Don't ask me to explain why it's funny. It just is.

He’s just not clear on what his killer instincts are telling him to do, which results in the tail-chasing and the dry-cat-food-killing. He’s also not sure what the hell to do about sunlight. It creeps into the house at weird angles through the windows and then it just SITS there, which just bugs him out. He reminds me so much of Simple Dog from Hyperbole and a Half.

Recently, he noticed that there are little motes of dust that float in through the beams of sunlight and this has pissed him off greatly. His quest to KILL ALL THE DUST has had some unfortunate results, like this morning when he attempted to jump on top of our dresser, only to not quite make it high enough. He bounced off of the dresser, which sent him backwards. He grabbed a few of my necklaces and earrings to keep him company on the way down.

This is him this morning, sizing up the sun and the dust before retreating, at which point his tail scares the shit out of him. The glance at my slovenly bedroom is a bonus.

I spent a good portion of the day yesterday sneezing, but was certain that I was in the early stages of seasonal allergies. “Woohoo! Spring!” I thought initially. Around mid-morning, my left nostril shut down while the right one went into overdrive to ensure that I had a steady stream of clear, watery snot. At that point, the first seed of doubt began to sprout in my brain, but I pushed it away.

“I’m cool. I just have allergies. I’m fine. I’m not getting a cold. I just have to stand in the middle of my office and forget what I was going to do while letting a Kleenex hang out of my nose. It’s my process.”

After dinner, I could feel my head start to feel like dough and finally admitted defeat. “I have a cold. Dammit,” I said. Only it sounded more like, “I hab a code. Dammid.” I was also coming to terms with the fact that I definitely had a stye in my right eyelid. I stood in the middle of my bedroom half-naked, having deliriously removed my pants at some point, and declared, “This sucks.” The combination of ailments made me feel as sexy as when I initially hurt my neck and had to adopt my Nosferatu posture.

This morning at the school bus stop, I was approached by one of the usual characters that I encounter from time to time in my neighborhood. This time it was the minimally-toothed, lisping lady who warned me of the used condom nearby.

Today there were no neighborhood watch emergencies. Instead she asked me if I had a fresh Kleenex, or “Kleeneksh,” as she calls them. Thoroughly out of it and breathing out of my mouth, I started to hand her the Kleenex that I had in my hand. “Well, I have this one, but I’ve been using it and so it has a little snot on it,” I said. She looked at the Kleenex, looked at me and, I swear to dog, backed away slowly.

“Sho, that’sh a no,” she said, reaching my conclusion for me since I was obviously in no shape for rational thought.

“Um, yeah, I guess so,” I replied.

“Becaushe we don’t want to shpread germsh around!” she called out over her shoulder, before wiping her nose on her sleeve.

My nose may be leaking and my eye may be swollen, but I can out-crazy the crazy lady when I really put my mind to it.

Frank and I communicate via text message almost everyday. We rarely, if ever, discuss anything important or substantial. It’s kind of like our iPhones are a perpetual 9th grade classroom and our iMessages are the notes that we pass back and forth. Occasionally, they give me a glimpse of how goofy we are.

"Watch" should be "watching." Stupid fat fingers.

I think it’s worth noting that this conversation took place on Valentine’s Day, which means that the husband and I were partaking in a very romantic viewing of that Michael J. Fox classic. It’s been on cable a lot recently and for some reason, I can’t not watch it. The husband and I discussed how popular it was when it came out, which is weird considering how little sense a lot of it makes in retrospect. I’ve also decided that there are far too few characters named “Boof” in popular culture. Also also wik, how awesome is the Beavers’ coach? (Be sure to note the fan with his junk hanging out at the end.)

So! Last Friday, I had my MRI. It was not bad at all. The only questionable part was when I was in the tiny waiting room with the other patients and someone who, I think, had taken sedation was coming out of her MRI and having a rough time coming to. She notified everyone of this by SCREAMING BLOODY MURDER. “NO! NO! NO! WHERE ARE YOU TAKING ME? WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO ME?” The other to-be-MRIed patients and I shot our heads up (gingerly, in my case) from our 1998 issues of Redbook and peered, frightened, down the hall. It was not the most reassuring sound for an MRI n00b like me. The nurses saw us getting ready to lose our shit and started shushing the woman and quickly got her out of earshot.

The MRI itself was fine. I was in the tube for about 20 minutes and didn’t really experience any feelings of claustrophobia or anxiety. The noise didn’t really bother me, either. I guess all of these years of listening to pounding dance music were good for something. After that was over, I set about the rest of my Christmas activities.

I know I say this every year, but our tree this year was the best.

It didn’t look that huge at the lot, but once we got it set up and the branches had a chance to settle, we realized that we had a gorgeous, wonderfully fragrant, evergreen beast. It bears repeating:

Christmas itself was awesome, if exhausting. I love the shit out of Christmas.

So, Tuesday I called the get the results of my MRI, which ended up being a bit of an ordeal. My doctor was at a different office than where my results were and would need to call me back later. But the office where my results were closed early. This was particularly upsetting, since the nurse had told me, “Yeah, you definitely have something going on there.” In the hours during which I had plenty of opportunity to obsess over what this meant, I had pretty much written my will because “something going on” had become flesh-eating alien brain tumor in my mind.

We had to go to PetSmart that night because the kitty litter situation in our house had gone all wrong, with both cats completely saturating the litter in their box and then revolting against us. One pooped on the floor, another puked. It was anarchy. So we were in the middle of spending a somewhat absurd amount of money on a second litter box, a 42 pound bag of litter, and other stuff and I was scrunching up my face at the wet cat food when my doctor called.

He said stuff about C5 and C6 and whatnot and then told me what was the problem: a herniated disc. As he was giving me the information for the neurosurgeon that he recommended, I interrupted him and said, “I have to have surgery?” My doctor was certain that I do, but I’m hoping that neurosurgeon will want to try something else first. Getting my neck cut open and whatnot is rather freaky and I’m not a fan of having surgery whatsoever.

So. That’s what’s going on. Thankfully, I’m not in constant pain. I only notice it when I make an effort to correct my posture from my Nosferatu stance, and I can definitely feel something hitting a nerve all the way down my arm. And my fingers and arm are still numb and tingly, but I haven’t really lost any function in them.

Stupid broken kdiddy.

So my neck woes haven’t exactly improved. The muscle relaxers and painkillers that I got from MedExpress did indeed help, only to reveal that I still had a great deal of tightness in my neck and this really cool new feature where my left arm and my left thumb and index finger were kind of numb. I called MedExpress and explained what was going on in a please-let-it-be-nothing, “That’s okay, though, right? Loss of feeling? Right?” nonchalance and they explained slowly that this was a cause for concern. They made me call my doctor, my doctor ordered me to go get X-rayed, and this morning I met with my doctor.

I had the unique experience of explaining that I did this to myself in my sleep, though I’m now realizing just how embarrassing that is and need to get a better story. “Oh, you know, I was on safari and had to tackle a lion. Yeah, my neck hurts but I messed that lion UP!” But, no, 33 is apparently the age where you just spontaneously injure yourself. Which I guess is why the cashier at CVS, after surveying my haul of Aleve, heating pad, and Ben-Gay, suggested that I get a Craftmatic adjustable bed. (She’s buried in my yard now.)

The X-rays showed that my vertebrae were slightly out of whack, most likely due to me stiffly holding my neck at a weird angle for two weeks, and were pushing on a nerve which was causing the numbness. I need to get an MRI done to make sure I haven’t completely mucked things up and in the meantime I get to take steroids to reduce the inflammation. “The steroids will make you hyper, and hungry, and…angry,” she explained. Sweet! I can’t wait to tear downstairs on Christmas morning and bite the tree in half. Here’s what I’ll be wearing:

"HULK MAKE TRADITIONAL CHRISTMAS MORNING BREAKFAST OF PANCAKES AND BACON! HO HO HO!"

I was slightly disappointed that they didn’t give me any kind of neck brace. I was really hoping to perfect my impression of Joan Cusack in Sixteen Candles.

I also went ahead and took her offer of a Percocet prescription because it makes a dandy eggnog. I am currently on EIGHT different medications for various ailments and I told Tracey last night that my purse now sounds like Paul Abdul’s with all of those pills rattling around.

Every once in awhile, I wake up to find that I’ve slept in such a way that I’ve caused my neck to spasm. It sucks, especially since it happens at least once a year. I spend the next two days or so moving very stiffly until it works itself out and I get my full range of motion back. Last week, I woke up to a slightly stiff neck that gradually got worse over the day. The next day it was pretty bad, but I figured I needed to just grit my teeth like every other time.

Fast forward to today, and I’m still dealing with my painfully stiff neck. For over a week, it’s been like this, on a frustrating cycle of loosening up somewhat during the day only to revert to its ickiness during the night. Getting out of bed in the morning is excruciating (I mean, more so than usual). I’ve adopted a posture and gait not unlike Nosferatu’s.

Me, heading upstairs to seduce the husband. Oddly, I was unsuccessful.

I kept working out on my usual schedule this week, finding some relief in yoga and Pilates during all of the stretching and floorwork. But during yesterday’s Pilates class I realized that going there was a mistake. I had to lie on my mat for at half of the 30-minute class and found myself tearing up from pain and frustration. I went to see Fat Beckett with Gayle last night and felt fairly good during that and our dinner date beforehand. (During dinner, we came up with a HEE-LAAAAR-EEE-US viral-video-to-be that I sincerely hope we can bring to life. The word “dupa” features prominently.) I put my heating pad on it for a little while before bed, but woke up this morning in possibly even more pain than ever.

I realized that I needed to quit waiting for it to get better on its own and headed to Med Express during lunch. They had mercy on me and gave me some prescription Aleve and some kind of pain medicine that makes me reeeeeeally drowsy. Hold on, gotta take a quick nap.

I’m not, by nature, a violent person. At least I don’t think so. I used to describe myself as having a short temper. But I think that was a combination of two things: my admittedly bad habit of getting irritated too easily and my tendency in my earlier days to bother having an opinion or caring about stuff that wasn’t actually worth the effort. I’ve gotten physical a few times. One time that stands out is when I was about 10 and at a high school reunion picnic with my parents. Some kid was harassing me and the other kids I was playing with. I became furious. I pushed him. He pushed back. He won. I got gravel embedded under the skin of my palms, which hurt like hell.

Most of the time, if I’m angry about something, I’ll rant about wanting to sock someone, and maybe in the moment I do. But I know that it’s not really worth whatever consequences would follow.

My thought process was not as logical this past Friday night.

I was out to see the husband’s band and a few DJs and I was, admittedly, intoxicated. I was, however, behaving and just generally having a good time, and tweeting things like:

Just don't ask me to explain any of these.

At one point, however, some guy who was not holding himself together, stumbled through the crowd and was dragging another inebriate, who was dragging a bar stool. This choo-choo train of fail ran right into me, knocking me down and trampling me a bit. My memory of this event is fuzzy, but my sister-in-law tells me that I stood up and thrust two middle fingers in the air. I then approached the guy who ran into me and talked to him for a bit in what I’m sure was an enlightening conversation. I then removed his glasses, set them on the table next to him, and slapped him across the face.

Photographers were on hand to capture my self-image

There was no retaliation on his part or on the part of his companions. Probably because I was nice enough to spare his glasses. I wear glasses. I know they’re expensive. If I had a slap coming, I would want to make sure my glasses wouldn’t get bent.

I’m really thankful that it didn’t escalate. Obviously because I wouldn’t want to test out whether or not I had any actual fighting skills but also because people starting fights at bars is so cliche and trashy. But I’m mostly just really…impressed? surprised? with myself that I got up the guts to do such a thing when the situation really called for it.

That said, I’m pretty sure I’m hanging up my gloves.

I did something kind of dumb a few weeks ago. As I mentioned the other day, I got a new iPhone. I initially went to buy it after having brunch with Laurie, Kim, and Jessica. I walked into the Apple Store with a small list of questions having to do with the fact that my laptop was from several OSes ago and could no longer support newer versions of iTunes and therefore could not update newer versions of iOS. This wasn’t a huge problem, since iPhones now have cloud storage, but the only thing to consider was that I would have trouble transferring images and contacts and stuff from old phone to new.

If you’ve been to an Apple Store, you know that everyone who is working there during your visit (all 50 of them), are extremely friendly and personable and have drunk enough of the Apple Kool-Aid that they’re JUST SO HAPPY FOR YOU THAT YOU’RE BUYING AN APPLE PRODUCT. The college student that I ended up oddly attached to was nice and kind and seemed to genuinely like me. And I’m not sure what happened, but I eventually heard myself saying, “I’ll take a MacBook Pro, please.”

The next 20 or so minutes were a blur of credit cards and rebates and Cloud set ups. I walked out of the store with a new laptop and a free-after-rebate printer in my hands. And I was pretty happy about my purchases until the fumes from the store wore off. Then I began to wonder if I’d acted foolishly.

I did want a new a laptop, though I wouldn’t have gone so far to claim that I needed one. But the one thing that I knew for certain was that I couldn’t afford one. I had, as I said, put it on a credit card, which wouldn’t have been the worst thing in the world if it wasn’t the credit card that had been the bane of my existence since I got it as a wee college senior. Its interest rate was too high and the balance had been circling the same embarrassingly high amount for years. I would pay a chunk off and then something would happen and I would need funds that I didn’t have and out it would come. But for the most part, I had protected it from big impulse purchases.

When I got home, however, the majority of my brain was still excited about my new toy. The husband looked at my haul, puzzled. “Uh, why did you buy that?” he asked. I didn’t have an answer besides, “I just really wanted it.”

We didn’t argue and the husband didn’t try to make me feel bad, but I quickly began to feel ashamed of myself for doing something so impulsive and selfish and financially reckless.

I kept the laptop in its box and over the next few days tried to determine whether or not I could really afford the payments that I would be making and trying to deal with the fact that I had essentially put myself back a whole year in paying down that card. Eventually, I realized what I needed to do.

On Saturday, I went to a different Apple Store than the one where I had purchased the laptop. I didn’t want to risk seeing my buddy from the big purchase. The face of the Genius who helped me fell when I told her the reason for my visit. She seemed personally hurt and sad that I would return such a wonderful thing. And I’d be lying if I said that a tiny part of me didn’t hope that there would some reason that they would say that they couldn’t accept the return, that I would be forced (or “forced”) to keep the shiny pretty thing. But eventually I walked out of there, empty-handed but with the promise of a thousand-dollar bad idea soon to be erased.

I’m thankful for my impulses, for whatever it is that tells me to go for it. Those impulses got me a partner that I can’t imagine my life without and a son who makes the world a little bit better every day. They got me a house that surely does it what it can to drive me crazy, but that I can tell is going to be a center for us and my kid and his kids for years to come. They certainly give me some headaches, like when they drive me to make major purchases without really thinking them through. But if I don’t do that sometimes, I don’t get the opportunity to remind myself that I’m pretty good about fixing my mistakes.

So, I’m on this rosacea medication and that illicit acne cream. And I guess they’re working because, as I mentioned on Twitter yesterday, I feel kind of like this:

What’s even worse is that while I was searching for an image of that guy, I came across this:

Why, internet? Why?

It’s not that I don’t love Richard Simmons. I find him to be endlessly entertaining, especially since he only seems to pop up in the oddest places in my cultural existence.

I’m just unnerved by salad being potentially wasted.

Anyway, I had a somewhat exciting weekend in that I finally got a new phone. My iPhone 3G was 3 years old and not in terrible shape, but it was pretty slow and rickety. I ventured to the Apple Store twice in the space of one week on this quest and I think that place needs to come with some kind of warning. Despite the fact that there’s a recession, there are always 100 customers in there. Though, of course, they’re probably not all buying stuff but are instead there to huff the fumes of pretty shiny things. The, admittedly wonderful and numerous, staff are all so…buddy buddy. All of the Apple Geniuses that I interacted with were so…I think “stoked” is the best word for them. They were so stoked that I was there, they were stoked that I was getting a new phone, they were just really stoked. This is truly the genius of Apple: that gentle hypnosis that convinces that anything you want to buy is totally awesome and you so totally deserve it just for being you.

Speaking of happiness-inducing things, I’m starting to think about the cookies that I’m going to bake for this holiday season. I have a really good cache of recipes, but I always want to find some new ones to try every year. My source for that the past however many years has been Martha Stewart, who used to always put out a special holiday issue. She doesn’t really seem to be doing that anymore. She has a “holiday handbook” but it’s light on recipes and heavy on crafts, which I don’t really get into at all. Martha seems to be on the forefront of the shift to digital media, as her magazines are now available for iPad and iPhone, plus she released a “Cookies” app just in time for the holiday baking season. Iiinteresting.

I feel the need to declare that, overall, I feel pretty alright, because I need to remember feeling this way for the times when I don’t. Like this morning, when I sent the baby upstairs to get dressed for school, only to find him 10 minutes later sitting on his bedroom floor reading a comic book. I was furious, which was perhaps an overreaction, but seriously, what the hell? Then, like an idiot, I tried to get him to walk me through his logic that led him to chill out with some reading material when it was clearly close to time to go.

“Well, you didn’t lay out any clothes for me…”

“So…that meant that you just weren’t going to need to get dressed today?”

“I don’t know.”

SIGH. Is there such a thing as the Terrible Tens? Because he seems to be in the midst. Oh, and the first person who says anything in the neighborhood of “pre-teen” gets punched.

But all of that nonsense aside, we’ve been doing a lot of our traditional fall stuff, including going to Trax Farm this past Sunday. Because October is always so busy for us, we always end up squeezing our farm trip in at around the last minute. And we always have to go with everyone else in the tri-county area who is working their annual trip in around the Steeler game. So there’s always a tense hour in the market part where you come face to face with how horrible the general population is at functioning in crowded spaces and steering grocery carts. Really, there ought to be a license for carts and things like, “Leaving your cart in the middle of the aisle while you gawk at the apple butter display instead of pushing it out of the way,” will be fineable offenses. (This, by the way, is the main thing that I hate about the Market District Giant Eagle in Shadyside. The customers’ idiotic navigation, especially in the horribly arranged produce section. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve almost hurt people’s feelings in that store. And, yeah, I take grocery shopping a little too seriously. I don’t have time for foolishness.) But we had a really good time, got our pumpkins and about 300 other precious autumn things. I had the presence of mind to be thankful that the baby didn’t put up a fuss when it was time to take his picture next to the huge wooden pumpkin, because I know in the next year or so he’s going to refuse and that will be when I become that woman who gets drunk and cries at the farm. But you guys. Look:

That’s from Sunday. And this? This is from 2005:

I can’t even. I’m doing this to myself a lot lately, which is admittedly kind of masochistic, because I can’t wrap my brain around the idea that he’s turning 10 soon. It’s just so…big. And I’m warning you now that I’m going to go all mommyblogger on your asses and put together a montage.

The other kids in our house, the furry ones, are doing pretty well, too. Florian the kitten is getting bigger everyday and is still a bit of a mad man. Greedo the cat is so chilled out by nature that this is kind of exhausting for them. I was getting concerned, but then went and spent an absurd amount of money on a cat tree. I think because there were no existing territorial issues for it, and it gave something for the kitten to attack, it seems to have made them much happier. They even hang out in it together sometimes!

Florian is quite the love bug and usually sleeps next to or on me, which is fine, except for when he gets the itch to gallivant in the middle of the night at the expense of my slumber. Last night, I became momentarily aware that he had scrambled across my forehead and had some bleary thought of, “Kitten. Scratch. Face. Ow. Register pain in morning.” I had completely forgotten about it until I saw myself in the mirror and noticed the little spot of dried blood. At this rate, I’m going to start looking like Omar from The Wire. Or, perhaps, Michael K. Williams dressed up as Omar dressed up as King Richard for Halloween or something equally ridiculous.

I have no idea why that picture exists, by the way. I just know that I’m eternally thankful that it does because the mere thought of it makes me giggle. This morning, for some reason, that scene from Forrest Gump where Jenny is throwing rocks at her molesting dad’s house came to my mind, because I’m such a naturally cheery individual. I thought about how the line, “Sometimes I guess there just aren’t enough rocks,” would make a great caption for a picture of, say, Whitney Houston smoking crack. But then I pushed it out of my head, figuring if I could dream it, then someone on the internet has already made it exist and I’m not breaking any new ground there. This is both sad on many levels and one of the reasons that the internet is so great.

Anyway. How are you doing?