Warning: this entry will NOT be a reaction to the political climate of the US. It will be about panties and perhaps something other stupid thing. If you want political punditism, type something blindly into your browser’s navigation tool and I’m sure that you’ll hit a page that talks about recounts or Ohio or crowing about four more years of morality and keeping wolves from eating our babies. But not here. Not today. I’m done.
Yesterday was the day I get to go to class, but it was a weird day. First of all, I was alternately starving and also not at all interested in food. Also, there was the demonic worm of a migraine trying to wiggle its way into my right temple, which normally would be fine, especially when I can nestle down into the driver’s seat in my car and listen to Rhett Miller and other non-angry tunes on the iPod and wear sunglasses. However, the sun itself was toying with the world, coming out and going back again with agonizing frequency. It was a dark kind of day and I was wearing my very dark DKNY sunglasses, so it was too gloomy to keep them on when the sun was behind the clouds but it was much too bright to leave them off completely. Also, I couldn’t just flip them up onto my head during dark moments because they sort of squeezed my head and made the demonic worm chortle in its joy. And also, hungry! Not hungry! I really wanted something from McDonalds, so I got a Diet Coke which turned out to be regular Coke, which tastes like malted battery acid and then I worried that it was a portent of doom for day’s events, but then I was back on the highway and was making such good time that it seemed stupid to turn around and demand a replacement for a $1.30 cup of soda. And besides, I was hungry! So hungry that I wasn’t! Ow, the sun.
Aside from the strangeness that was Tuesday, I really didn’t have much to say in class, which is unlike me. I think it was the headache, although I was also tossing around my future educational plans and how dismayed I am to now learn that UWM only offers an MA and you must get an MA before enrolling as a PhD, but the PhD basically replicates a bunch of the MA classes, in fact, you have to repeat the first 30 credits or so verbatim. So it just seems like rolling a big rock up a hill again and again and again, only to have a crow eat out your liver when you get up to the top. And then the professor let us out early, ostensibly to get to the polls, but since I was in line ten minutes before the polls opened (and still managed to be voter #41 in my normally sleepy little ward), I had already done my part to turn Wisconsin blue on the big electoral map. I just hit the road and did not even stop at one of the delightful yuppy grocery stores to goggle at their decadent cheese displays (because seriously, there is only so much snooty cheese you can have in your house, especially when one of the residents of said house is allergic to milk fat, thank you very much). Well, and also because one of the stores is all natural and vegan foods and I would have felt weird walking around wearing my leather jacket and shoes.
I managed to make it home in an incredible 80 minutes (which must break some kind of space/time continuum, because I wasn’t going THAT much over the speed limit), had an Oreo ice cream sandwich and watched Celebrity Poker on Ricky Fitts and marveled at how Chevy Chase was a stone cold bitchass sore loser to Shannon Elizabeth instead of making myself tense by watching election returns.
Then Esteban got home from setting up Ward and June’s wireless network (look at the parents being all twenty-first century! Aren’t they cute?) and started ranting about the election until I asked him to stop because he was depressing me. So then he freaked out because the bed was damp, thinking that the roof or perhaps the cat had leaked, but then I realized that it was damp because my t-shirt was wet. Why? Because of The Soap and The Splashing and apparently it is not physically possible for me to bend over far enough to rinse as directed by The Soap without drenching the fun pillows as well as most of the bathroom vanity. Or perhaps there is something I don’t understand about The Splash. I can’t figure it out. It’s a mystery. I was willing to accept this as a mystery, and Esteban didn’t care about the wet t-shirt because “well, hello, it’s really hot!” but dislikes the wet mess that I leave all over the vanity, and being a technology geek, suggested that I videotape myself washing my face. Ladies and gentlemen, my husband. The solution of wiping it up apparently evades my fragile mind after the next step in my regime, which involves deep and personal introspection with my Tweezerman and my lighted magnification mirror. Seriously, I think I go into a religious trance in front of that thing because don’t talk to me, don’t expect me to answer, can’t you see that I’m plucking! And that’s when the revelation came that Esteban has been using my precious tribe of Tweezermen to battle his thickets of man hair. Who knows what kind of dark ops they’ve had to endure. They probably have posttraumatic stress disorder. And then I use the very same instrument on my eyebrows? Can I get a “Gah”, brothers and sisters? Hallelujah.
I’ve offered to buy him a machete from the J. Peterman catalog, but he scoffed. I don’t think he believes I’m serious. I’m sorry, but I will share many things. I will tolerate the yellowing of one half of my 400 thread count pristine white sheets until it looks like I’m sleeping with that guy who posed for the Shroud of Turin. Not to mention two words: pee schmeng. But I must demand respect for my collection of Tweezermans. If he covets them so much, he can go buy one for himself. And this totally negates his ability to talk smack about my expensive Soap, since he’s apparently also standing there in front of my girly magnifying mirror, going into the plucking trance on his own. From a purely anthropological standpoint, however, I find it interesting that apparently you CAN turn a country boy into a metrosexual, if you have enough time and patience. Or five gay men and a corporate spending account at Diesel.
After that, I realized I was too het up about man hair and had also forgotten about my inability to sleep while taking the ‘sone, so I popped back up and took some of my codeine cough syrup. However, this new prescription tastes incredibly bad. Like, instead of Robotussin, they mixed codeine into some hair spray or something.
I don’t understand it. Past codeine cough syrups have tasted fine, just like a more tangy version of regular Robotussin. And it’s not like I can’t swallow anything (wakka chicka wakka chicka) because I can chug NyQuil like I’m at a white trash fraternity party. The interesting thing is that the last batch of codeine cough syrup that I had (or maybe it was Vicodin cough syrup) tasted beyond nasty as well. So now I’m wondering if my doctor is now flagging my prescriptions to have them make it taste bad so that I don’t OD on it or something. Has my file been flagged as a codeine whore? Did one of you guys rat me out? Did you? Last night I took my teaspoon of syrup, then rinsed my mouth out twice and then finally glugged some strong dark wildflower honey directly out of the jar and I still had a bitter aftertaste. It’s almost awe-inspiring that something could taste THAT bad.
When I was living in England in 97, almost our entire group of 30 students (excluding me, strangely enough) contracted what we started to call “black lung disease”. No one seemed able to get antibiotics while they were in England, but they were often given an over the counter syrup that had some narcotic which was not available in the US. Apparently it was truly noxious stuff and in a malicious twist, was so viscous that you couldn’t really swallow it and one was forced to pull it off the spoon with one’s teeth, like an angry slime mold. I once was reduced to cruel hysterics by watching one of my friends wrangle the sludge onto a spoon and then contort his face as he tried to negotiate it down his throat without letting it touch his tongue, finally announcing with a strangled voice, “Oh my god, why do I have to CHEW it?”
So either my doctor is afraid that I’m turning into a codeine junkie (seriously, who snitched?) or this is retribution for laughing at Brian’s narcotic bile taffy. So each night is a decision between gagging followed by happy golden sleep or taking the palatable NyQuil but walking around dazed and somewhat comatose for several hours in the morning.
And also, I swear that the codeine is making me smell like I’m bathing in Ben Gay.
Karma is such a spiteful bitch. Which is probably why I admire her so.
Oh, and the panty thing I mentioned in the Warning above: Today I am wearing boy cut panties and you know what? They looked so cute on the rack, especially with their cotton candy pinkness and white polka dots (which matches, of course, my pink cami and white hooded sweatshirt, thus completing a perfect panty matching triumvirate). I had grand hopes but wearing them, not so good. So much material, so little zigga zigga, to quote the immortal words of one Ms Scary Spice.
Ah the Spice Girls. The world was a much more simple place back then.
Lots of changes and discussion on the Bad Bar Con here.
