That's My Bix!

Last week,  I started feeling my niggling little cold morphing into what was the undeniable signs of wimpy lung bronchities. Sometimes I wonder about living in an iron lung: could it really be that bad? Would you have to work on spreadsheets? Couldn’t you just say “Oh, sure, I could whip up that spreadsheet, with conditional formatting and a triple layer pivot but did I mention that I’m stuck in an iron lung?” And then people would feel badly about asking me to do shit and go the hell away. Is that the same as being a Bubble Boy? I’ll bet now that there’s the internet, it’s not even that bad.

I finally gave up and went to visit my doctor. When I got to the doctor’s office, they made me put on a stupid Spamthrax mask. I don’t have Spamthrax. I actually got the Spamthrax vaccine because of my stupid limp lung condition, but whatever. I humored them.

Long time readers of this blog (and yes, I’ll be putting the archives back at some point, with all of my free time and shit) might remember that I used to go to Dr. Perky, who was so very awesome and also, perky. Dr. Perky transferred to do some work for the government (I imagine that she uses her perkiness to operate on aliens in Roswell or perhaps give Malia her flu shot) and I got my current doctor, whom I don’t believe has a nickname. She’s lithe and beautiful and always has amazing make up and I thought immediately that I’d hate her, but in actuality, I love her even more than Dr. Perky. She is Awesome. Dr. Awesome. A few years ago, she confessed that she saw me at the farmer’s market with Esteban one morning but didn’t want to say anything because she was afraid we’d think she was stalking us. And this last time, I was mentioning her nurse, and when I stumbled over the name, Dr. Awesome said “Oh, it’s Debbie. In fact, whenever you don’t know a woman’s name in Wisconsin, just say ‘Debbie’ because she’ll probably answer. For guys, it’s ‘Mike’.” She also called one of her co-doctors “a farty bastard” or something like that once, and for that, she can now do no wrong.

Also, when she walked in the door of the exam room and saw me sitting, she said “Oh my god, you can take off that stupid mask.” And rolled her eyes. LOVE HER.

Dr. Awesome agreed that I was well on my biennial route to having pneumonia (seriously, what’s with the even years?) so she hooked me up with the Limp Lungs Cocktail of prednisone, codeine cough syrup and a Z-pack. None of these things by themselves work at all, two of them might work, but the trifecta? Works every time. Not being sick is nice, but I loathe being on the ‘sone. Between the spurts of fake energy (I feel totally like kicking ass on all of my household projects, but then I try to carry a (fucking) laundry basket across the house and I start to sweat for half an hour and my muscles quiver and I get very close to swooning, not in the Jonas Brothers way but for a much more weak and pathetic reason), the lack of sleep (hellooooo grudging 1 am bedtime!), lack of appetite (I imagine this is how thin people are able to stop eating something really delicious, because I earnestly am choking down most everything just so that I can take the stupid medication without burning a hole in my gut. I don’t WANT to eat anything, unless it’s a Hostess Fruit Pie, which of course, I won’t because I have vowed to only eat baked goods if they are less than 365 days old) and the general random bouts of fever for NO REASON WHATSOEVER, I’m kind of miserable.

I was supposed to have a business trip this weekend to Tampa but that got pre-empted, so instead I spent all weekend trying to get Weetacon business in order. Every year, it gets down to T-minus 7 days and I am suddenly faced with so many things that could have been done months and months ago! Stupid things! Like, why do I always wait until the last minute to make the annual collage? Or why am I always messing with the Charity Raffle bags on the Tuesday before people are arriving? These things aren’t time sensitive! It is because I am stupid, I think. And also because, in hindsight, I am prepping for other things that end up getting kibboshed and then having to redo and whatnot. But this year, I am determined! It will not be that way again! Triumph! Prednisone! Huzzah!

Today was the first day in the last ten when I actually felt well enough to attempt to run an errand or twelve. Actually, I shouldn’t say that: I did attempt a trek to a mega craft store because for some reason, I was absolutely convinced that it was crucial to fetch Charify Raffle gift bags and that all planning could move no further until I had those items. Which was totally the Prednisone talking, because just driving across town felt like way too much exertion, and then I tried to engage two different workers of mega craft store with questions and managed to confuse the hell out of both of them. Heck, I knew what I was trying to say and I couldn’t even understand what I meant. They ended up giving me major discounts, I think because they thought I was a crazy woman. Also, I sweated at them the entire time. Hey! Who needs those stupid Michael’s coupons, just go into the store sweating and speaking in tongues and they’ll hit you with a 60% discount just to get you to leave their store.

Today, I ended up going back to the mega craft store because I have two Amy Casey prints that have been languishing in my house for ages. Well, one was for ages, and the other less time because it showed up on 20×200 and I had to gank it for my very own last month. I thought about turing on the sweat again and speaking like Margot Kidder, to try to coax another discount because seriously, when did custom framing become more expensive than, oh, a CAR. Seriously, to have two prints framed, it costs more than the car my mother bought for me to drive in high school. In fact, it costs more than that car and also the GAS for that car, which, by the way, is quite a lot because I think it was a 72 Grand Prix, which was so large you could sit three chunky teenage girls in the front seat and not have any “cootie overlap”. (God, we were dorks.)

I also made a stop at the laundromat with our two (TWO) down comforters that had been doused with pug pee in 8 days time. Seriously, the dog is 99.99% housetrained, but apparently that two hundredths of a percent occurs on whatever unfortunate down comforter happens to be on our bed. The laundromat wouldn’t take the down comforters, because they both had labels that clearly said DRY CLEAN ONLY on large tags that were impossible to hide casually with one’s hand. I ended up dropping it at the actual dry cleaners (oh fine), where it will cost an arm and a leg (but not as much as having something custom framed… yes, still bitter).

Then I hit Target, where I had a list that I followed more or less to the letter. The only bad thing was that I was plagued by a trio of stay-at-home moms. They were always within one or two aisles of me and were always but always talking. I couldn’t help but hear their conversation, tried as I did to ignore them. I felt like I was getting dumber, just internalizing it, and finally changed my route around the store (does anyone else do this? Up through the clothes, then across the back, then zig back through housewares and then hit the H&B and media section, ending up in the groceries? Just me then?) and yet the bitches followed me! Always an aisle away! Could not break them! I rushed through the last bit of my shopping and then checked out, where I was cringing for the total (because yeah, totally didn’t follow the list to the letter, and lied at the beginning of this paragraph. I cannot walk through the dog and cat aisle without caving, people. Can. Not. Do. It.) but it ended up not being too bad, which was just weird. And then the three chicks got in line BEHIND ME and continued with the same conversational thread they had been on since the detergent aisle! Did she? She did not. I swear, I was like, oh my god, whatever, you’re so lame. And then my kids were like, so tired, and I was like, yeah, I’m over this.

I am almost positive that they were sirens, luring me to the rocks.  Or perhaps a Greek chorus, scaring me the hell out of there. Either way, I hope I don’t see them and their weird Monday Shopping With Bump-Its In Their Hair outfits ever again.

Ok, that last paragraph just went to a very weird place, so I’m taking this as a sign that the Prednisone is starting to take hold again.