kdiddy.org

I’m ripping that post title off of JiveTurkey because this is really just a list of stuff I want more of and stuff I’m sick of. Let’s start with the negativity because that’s my favorite part.

I have had enough of:

• Statements about Whitney Houston and addiction. I know her death was untimely. I know addiction is serious. I’m just so, “Oh…bummer,” about her death. People lead messed up lives, they’re taken advantage of, and then they die in the tub. Alone. Just like all the rest of us.
• Chris Brown and the cloud of bullshit that comes with him. I don’t know what the answer is when it comes to talented people who are also piece-of-shit human beings. I do know that responding to the women who tweeted appalling requests after his Grammy appearance with, “They get what’s coming to them,” or “Someone should beat them so they know better,” is pretty vile.
• “Kids these days” whining. They wear their pants too low. They listen to terrible music. They don’t know who Paul McCartney is. Yeah, you know what that makes you? A cranky old person set in their ways and the reason why no substantive changes ever happen. Shut up.
• Valentine’s Day hype. “Wah, I’m single and this day is so hard for me,” or “Please validate my relationship by gushing over the gifts that my significant other gave to me.” It’s just a day. Do it or don’t.
• Communities on the internet and, obviously, the internet in general. I think at some point I may have been concerned about the dynamics of any given group of people on the internet, but that’s not the case anymore. It’s just one facet of life. If people are being jerks to you, disengage.
• This dress is a little too small on me at the moment. I’m wearing it today and the buttons are working kind of hard. I’m really ready to get back to a normal level of activity. Speaking of which…

Cheers:

• My neck is definitely getting better. This morning I was able to put my left ear close(r) to my shoulder, which I wasn’t able to do even yesterday! (Note: I started writing this post yesterday, so that fact might be relevant when considering the jeers section.) And I thinkthe numbness in my fingers is pretty much gone. I definitely still have issues with stiffness and tightness and pain, but measurable signs of recovery are so exciting. Check out this exciting physical therapy action shot!
  

  No, that's not a booger. That's my nosering.

• The husband and the baby. I really do just love the crap out of both of those guys. Despite my aforementioned annoyed indifference toward Valentine’s Day, we had a sweet time last night getting ready for the baby’s festivities at school. He signed his Valentines while I worked my crafty magic into a Valentines box in a swirl of Spongebob wrapping paper, box cutters, pipe cleaner, and ribbon.
  

  Hold on a sec, Martha's calling me.

• The husband had another Pittsburgh Track Authority performance at Belvedere’s on Saturday and it went really, really well. Again, about 300 people showed up to hear them and the headliner, Kirk DeGeorgio, and it was really cool to see so many people dancing for them. I’m so proud of him and them. I think something big might be brewing for them.
  

  Mine's on the left. Aren't they cute? All squished together and wondering what the hell they're doing? *

• Once again, I done brought the bake sale vibe to this performance and made brownies, which everyone assumed had drugs in them. (They did not.) Both were recipes from blogs that I read that I had pinned to Pinterest. They were Peanut Butter and Fleur de Sel Brownies and Mexican Hot Chocolate Brownies.
• Along those lines, I’m finding that Pinterest is much more useful than I thought it would be when I first started using it. I do, however, need to start a board called, “Stuff I Tried from Pinterest that SUCKED,” because there have been a few duds.
• Completely unrelated, the phrase, “Where’s Wallace?” has been a common refrain in our house and circle of friends, even though the scene from The Wire that it originated from first aired like 10 years ago.

It’s all very serious and intense, but then we got a Steeler named Mike Wallace. Whenever he does something good, the refrain, “WHERE’S WALLACE?” or “WHERE WALLACE AT?” goes flying. Imagine my glee when I came across this children’s book the other day:I have now redefined my life goals and am going to become a preschool teacher so I can read this to my young charges. What could be more adorable than a bunch of 4-year-olds saying, “STRING?!?! STRING! LOOK AT ME!?”

*PTA image source

When I found out about my herniated disc, I had a couple of emotions run through me immediately. Relief, because it wasn’t something really terrible. Confusion, because how did I do this to myself? And fear/worry, because the strong possibility of surgery in my future and the relative seriousness of this injury threw me. Since then I’ve done a lot of googling and a lot of rationalizing. I’m not in constant pain so maybe I won’t need surgery, etc.

Wednesday night, we took the baby to the WWE show. Tickets to that were his big present this year. The husband and I just can not get into wrestling, but the baby really loves it so we go. The show was long and somewhere around the three-hour mark, I began to notice some pain. When we got home, I took one of the painkillers and relaxed.

A few hours later, the painkiller had worn off, and I had a hard time settling into a comfortable position in bed. This frustrated me and suddenly all of the emotions that I’d been swirling around burst out. The husband was concerned that the tears were all due to pain.

“No. I’m in pain but I’m mostly just scared and upset.”

He talked me down and I sat up for a bit to drink some water and pet the cats who had come to check on me when they heard me crying. The husband scooched up and kissed my neck. It felt better after that.

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.

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.

Early this morning, I was awakened by Florian the Kitten, who discovered his ability to walk on the baby’s keyboard, thereby turning it on and playing a few notes. I was pleased that a musically inclined psychopath had not broken in and that at least one of the beings in our household will willingly practice piano. (The baby remains convinced that he can learn piano by just sitting in the same room as the instrument.)

That event out of the way, I took a moment to say, “I’m 33. I’m 33. I’m 33.” Because that is the age that I am as of this morning.

I then came to the unfortunate realization that my birthday present from Mother Nature was cramps. Thanks, Mother Nature. A someecard would have sufficed.

That gift meant that I responded to many happy birthday wishes this morning with a wan face and a withering smile. I went to a quick Pilates class though and it really helped, if for no other reason than the fact that we ended by laying on the floor in the fetal position, which is exactly what I needed to do.

I’m wearing a very cute dress that my grandmother gave me on Saturday. It’s from Anthropologie, or Apologetic as she calls it, because she does not like calling things by their actual names. (See also: my old boyfriend Clint, who she called Elwood, or the shop Divertido in Lawrenceville, which she calls Deuteronomy, or my buddy Frank, who she calls Stush.)

Pardon the bathroom picture. We don't have any full-length mirrors at home.

My future, seasonally-depressed self is going to kick me in the face for saying this, but I’m really digging this chilly, rainy weather we’ve been having. I think because it’s the only time when it’s not only accepted to stay in your house under a pile of blankets and watching TV, but it’s actively encouraged.

I always get to a point with seasons where I’m ready for them to be over. When we have a few lingering warm or cold days at the end of a season, it angers me. Yesterday, which was kind of miserable, actually put me in a really good mood. It just felt like everything was in its place. I put a pot roast in the slow cooker in the morning. When we got home, the husband made some mashed potatoes. I donned sweatpants and an ugly sweater, then we gobbled down pot roast until we were sleepy. It was a perfect early autumn dinner.

Seeing that it’s going be creeping back up to 80 this week is making me really irritated. This is not how it’s supposed to be, understand? I have very specific visions of how life is supposed to go at this time of year and short sleeves don’t factor in them! Everything must be perfect! I will project my anxiety about my lack of control in my life onto things that no one controls! Brilliant!

Anyway. I decided to jump into the Bridge to 10k program. I had purchased the iPhone app months ago, but just wasn’t really sure when exactly I would do the runs. Each one takes at least an hour and it’s kind of tough for me to find an hour plus showering and dressing time during the day.

I headed to the gym during lunch yesterday and decided to just go ahead and do week 1 day 1, since it was relatively short and I wanted to get a feel for the program.

Everything was fine until shortly after the second running interval started. It was at that time that I realized that I needed to use the bathroom. Soon.

I struggled with deciding what to do, thinking perhaps I could hold it for a little while longer. In the meantime, I adopted new jogging methods that allowed me to cross my legs in some manner. I also made faces that communicated the storm of discomfort and panic that was raging in my brain.

Finally, I smacked the big red stop button and zoomed to the bathroom. I have to tell you that sitting on a toilet with sweaty legs is not the most…something. It’s just…not.

I debated for a minute about whether or not to return to the treadmill or just call it a day, but knowing that that week 1 day 1 portion of the app was unfinished was going to drive me crazy. So I went back.

4.35 miles in about 53 minutes, with a bathroom break in the middle and a few walking breaks as prescribed by the program. Ideally, I’d like to finish 10k in an hour. Though, really, I’d like to just finish. We’ll see where I am in six weeks.