My Summer from Hell - Part One: The Surgery

I just got a computer, yesterday, after 5 months of being without so my first task after restoring all my files and programs is posting for you guys. Thank you, Black Friday sales for decent computers cheap enough I can afford. The last time that I was without dedicated computer access for this long was in 1994, my freshman year of college, but most people didn't have computers then, so it wasn't quite as jarring then as it is now, especially when my entire life exists online.

So I wrote on Cheeseblarg's facebook page a while ago that y'all would find it hard to believe all the shit I had been through this summer, for those of you who aren't following along there, and you probably won't, but I assure you, it's all true, and it's absolute bullshit.

My wish for the upcoming year is that I never have to hear the words, "We're afraid it might be cancer," ever a-fucking-gain from a doctor. This summer started with a mysterious mass in my cervix. I went to the doctor in June because I was experiencing this weird feeling of all of my insides dropping when I stood up for more than 15 minutes which in itself is pretty alarming, but it was accompanied with sweating and feeling like I was going to pass out. Once it got to the point that I couldn't stand long enough to shower without feeling like I was dying, I decided I should probably do something about it, so I bucked up and went to have my lady bits probed by a stranger. I mean, she was a professional, not just some random person on the street with a speculum and a hankering for some gynecological exploring.

Since scraping my lady bits turned up nothing, we went to the next step of sonic spelunking. This revealed the aforementioned "mysterious mass" and then we went to the next step of traumatizing me forever and ever, amen.

Frankly, the whole business gives me more ammunition for the idea that there is a grand conspiracy of hatred for women in this world because I cannot believe that any kind of human rights coalition would allow the equivalent to a cervical/uterine biopsy to be done to any man without general anesthetic. And I've heard that testicular biopsies are done under local and still hurt like hell, but I'm arguing that that is not really equivalent, because testes are not muscles that try to slam shut when you drill pieces out of them causing your entire body to try to escape from what's going on in your nether regions. It was really awful.  So awful in fact, that before I even left that appointment, I made plans with my doctor, before the results came back, to have my uterus and accompanying accouterments removed as soon as possible so I would no longer have a cervix so that procedure could never ever happen to me again.

And my uterus was mint, guys, never been used, though it had been remodeled monthly since I was about 10, so I don't know if I could have gotten full price for it. Anyway, it's totally lost its value now because I took it out of the box. At the end of August, I had them remove my reproductive organs (though I kept my ovaries so they can grow cysts and be generally annoying to keep me off of hormone replacement therapy), and I finally finished healing last month after one of the holes popped open in a cinematic fashion when we thought they were all almost closed.
So that's the story of how I spent 3 months worrying that I had cancer before having a hysterectomy. I didn't have uterine or cervical cancer, but my cervix was faulty and if I had kept it, I would have continued to need biopsies regularly and it would have continued to make me feel like I was dying, and frankly, I wasn't planning on using it anyway, and I'm much happier to have it gone.

Spending all the time in a gynecologist's office, of course, led to appointments with mammography. And instead of just being routine, of course, I got my next, "it might be cancer." I was supposed to be going tomorrow, in fact, to have a lumpectomy to ensure that the tumor they found in my breast during the first biopsy is completely non-cancerous, but I got an ear infection, so now I get to add two more weeks to my 3 months of waiting to find out that this one is nothing too.

And I know that countless people who aren't so lucky would love to be told that it is nothing repeatedly, but having six months of your body constantly trolling you that is mutating and is gonna kill you only to have it yell "PSYCH" after you've had surgeries and near constant stress diarrhea, is relieving as hell, but also really fucking annoying that you had to go through all of that in the first place when your body could have just stopped growing benign tumors in the first damned place.

So that's part one of my trauma. I'm thinking I can wrap it up in one other post, hopefully, next week.

He ain't afraid of no ghosts.

Fifteen years ago tonight, after our second date, my husband told me he was in love with me and asked me to be his girlfriend. That sounds all sweet and romantic BUT, it is even more so when you take into consideration the fact that I sneezed directly into his hand during said date... and not like a cute little "achoo, 'scuse me!" sneeze. No, it was a full-on first day of the flu, "SHE SLIMED ME!" sneeze... directly into the palm of his hand.

This was one of the most embarrassing moments of my life. We were in the theater watching a movie (I Still Know What You Did Last Summer), he was to my right, had his arm around me, and was holding my left hand. I was slightly aware that this horrible flu was coming on, and this terror was building in my mind... it was a very short process, but it was something like, "OH GOD, I HAVE TO SNEEZE! I'M LEFT-HANDED. I NEED MY HAND! SURELY IF I PULL, HE'LL LET GO!!" But he didn't, and instead of being smart and sneezing into my right hand, I turned my head, tugged, met resistance, and the sneeze was there, and so was a ton of snot and slobber on his hand, which I had pulled right over my face.

I was pretty sure he was going to break it off right then, so I was pleasantly surprised when he asked me to be his girl instead of running off before the movie even ended, which, I suspect, is what I would have done had someone deposited that amount of mucus on me during a date. 

Touchy, touchy!

Is everyone in the world just WAY less gross than I am or are touchscreen computers as awful an idea as I think they are?

I'm not a Luddite. I am happy to embrace new technology when I encounter it, but look... my screen is disgusting enough with me NOT touching it. I seriously thought a guy had a mole in the middle of his forehead scrolling through my Facebook feed tonight... until I scrolled a little more and then realized there is just a mole on my monitor.

Every year around Black Friday, I fantasize about getting a new laptop to replace the one I got 4 years ago that has no backspace key, that overheats in 10 minutes of being on, that randomly scrolls through page after page without any movement from me when it is in a bad mood, but if all of the laptops currently available are ALL touchscreen, I just cannot picture myself buying one.

And that is because... I have pictured myself using one.
I spend a lot of time on my computer, so it is not uncommon for me to be eating something while computing, or picking my nose, or. . . Look, lord knows where my fingers have been or what is on them when I am using a computer, okay? I wash my hands a lot, but I'm totally not getting up to wash my hands after eating an eclair while watching shows on Project Free TV so I can stop the video to obsessively check my email or whatever.

Beyond having to place your mouth or genitals on your monitor to use your computer, I cannot think of a worse design. So, is this working for people? Or do you all just have Cheetos dust covered, sticky, nasty monitors? Or am I just really really gross?

The Day I Stopped Smoking Cloves.

A (n unfortunately true) Cautionary Tale

And in case you can't read my chicken scratch:

Remember that time in high school that I went to Dick Clark's American Bandstand 

to hit on my adult neighbor who was DJing there? And I was smoking clove cigarettes? 

And then I threw up in my hair? And  on the dance floor... and in their bathroom sink

because all the bathroom stalls were taken? 

Good times...good times.

Laughter is the best medicine cause it is free.

I'd like to talk about a major issue in my life right now. It's a downer, so prepare yourself.
So, I'm poor. I know I have said that before but when I say I am poor, I mean we survived last year on less than $6,000 income. Like super poor.
And one would think, "Oh, you're taken care of by the state," but nope.  If you don't have kids and you are poor, you can pretty much go fuck yourself... which apparently I have done by becoming ill while poor.
I have been chronically ill for about 8 years now. Longer really, but it has been steady for 8 years. I used to have a job, and I worked, and I loved working. I would even work for free, if they didn't have money to pay me because working was awesome and fun. But then I got sick and I had to go home from work all the time and had to ask people to cover for me, and my job was such that I couldn't just leave when I needed to... I had to wait for someone else to be there before I could go, so it sucked, and it made many people mad at me, and at the end of the year, I got let go. And the next year, my contract wasn't renewed. And then my day to day jobs stopped because I was making errors of judgment from being on pain pills that I was required to take... and then 4 years ago, I stopped working. I was making it through my days by refusing to eat or drink, because those things made me sick and made me have to go home, and working is hard when you have no food in you.  I know models do it, but they just have to stand there and look pretty... they don't have to keep other people safe and alive and stuff.
And the point of telling you that I am poor is to tell you I have no insurance. I have no medicaid, I ain't got shit... except a bunch of chronic illnesses that like to make me miserable and a moral code that tells me it is wrong to run up bills and not pay them.
Beyond that, I have several diseases, all autoimmune, that don't have cures.  My experiences with doctors has been this:

I am certain there is something actually wrong with me that hasn't been diagnosed, as far as my chronic pain and lessening muscle control, but I think I come off to doctors as a hypochondriac.  I say this because I complain and I complain and they just look at me cross-armed and say "Mmhm." and nothing gets done.
I had one doctor lady stand across from me, when I was pleading that she do some test, test for MS maybe because it runs in my family and I have almost all the symptoms of it, and I was being told "we don't know what is wrong so we aren't going to do any more tests on you," please test me, for the love of God, test me,  and she crossed her arms and her legs and said in a nasty accusatory tone, "Do you WANT to have MS?"
And you know, yeah, I would rather be diagnosed with MS when I have most of the symptoms of it anyway, and actually fucking be treated, than to sit in a room with shitty doctors who treat you like crap because you have problems that they don't have a name for. You get screwed because your symptoms are too hard to figure out and testing costs money and you don't have money, and people subsequently think you are making it all up, but you are in pain all the time and you know this is real.
So, I have tried to get help but all of the agencies say that there isn't enough documentation to prove that I am sick enough. Because when I am feeling my worst, I don't want to go sit in a doctor's office, or ER, for hours to tell them "I feel like shit, I am going to take some narcotics and lie in bed for the rest of the day. " Or "I feel like shit, I am puking and crapping and I can't stop." yelled through the bathroom door of the doctor's office because I don't relish the idea of wearing a diaper out in public. Or "Hi, my intestines are bleeding again. I have ulcers on every mucus membrane of my body. I can't sit up because it hurts so bad. You can't do anything about it because taking steroids all the time is going to kill me... so hi, bye, thanks for writing it down after I sat here miserable for 5 hours. That will be $500 I don't have. Please, make sure you call me every day to stress me about it which will make all of this flare worse."
And because it has been suggested that they can't do anything for me, it seems an exercise in futility to mention it. I don't WANT to spend every second thinking about being sick. I want to ignore it and do whatever I can to bring myself joy (like writing this blarg here, that I love, and interacting with all of you), but in order to get any help from any agency that is in place (disability, voc. rehab, etc), it seems that you can't have a moment of joy in your life, which is about how I feel right now. So, please, I can have help nao?

Hanukkah 2011- 3rd Night- Spuna Snax!

A common Hanukkah present theme is bargain food items, and here I am representing. I even have recipe ideas I've drawn up  for you! Enjoy!

Baru hata adanoi... I don't know how to really transcribe Hebrew but that is how it sounds to me... probably a lot like the song Ken Lee to a real Hebrew speaker...

Nom nom click/scroll

Why broken windows are bad.

Today, I would like to talk about another of my great hatreds.

When I first moved in with my husband, who was then my boyfriend, we lived in a house that belonged to one of his coworkers, who also lived there with his cat named Nigel.  Nigel liked to go outside and hunt in the overgrown jungle that surrounded the house, and so, whether by happy accident, or on purpose, I never asked, one of the panes of the French doors at the entrance of the house was busted out which made a makeshift cat door.

But of course, as the case always is, nature doesn't follow the rules of a house and the cat was not the only thing that was able to enter through that door, no, not just the cat.

There was the night that I walked out towards the bathroom and saw a large raccoon happily eating the cat food in the front room, but that is not what this is about.

This is about the flying creatures that trespassed into the house.

Moths have always bothered me (especially since I share their desire to hurt myself with bright lights) but one evening, it was kicked in to full blown phobia realms.  I went into the kitchen and opened the cabinet to get ingredients for dinner.

 I had cut up some chicken and grabbed a box of seasoned rice to make a quick fry up, and so I melted butter in the pan and poured the rice into the pan to brown it before I added the water.

 Only, some of the rice was moving.

And then I looked in the box and found a moth, obviously a mommy moth, and then I screamed, and cried in a  totally hysterical manner, before throwing the rice away and all of the boxes of rice that were in the pantry.  And then I went out to buy the biggest container of mothballs that I could possibly find.

I've gotten to the point where I no longer need to make my house smell like that of a grandma (it only took a few years), but I still am prone to screaming and flapping when a moth finds its way into my environment, and I call (read: screech)  for its immediate removal and/or murder.

Non-Famous Twitter Illustrations #3- Toenail Clipper Stealing Zombies

Today's word is "Toenail" in honor of my friend Jeri who keeps tweeting about her big toenails coming off from running the Fargo Marathon... and it is grossing me out and apparently stuck in my mind when I had to choose a random word for this post. And now you guys get to be grossed out too. Sorry... misery loves company.
Oh yeah, also, there are far too many people out there talking about detaching toenails on twitter, for the record. See how I suffer for my art.  I need an adult. D=

heeezye 

the zombies came and stole my [effing] toenail clippers. #pissed

Brilliant Product Ideas #1

Every once in a while, I come up with some brilliant ideas, instead of just pure unadulterated crap of the silly persuasion.  Unfortunately, upon presenting these ideas to the respective companies, I received the following replies (paraphrased):

Dear Ms. Rose,
That is pure unadulterated crap.
Please stop sending us unsolicited product ideas.
No love,
Us

But they were wrong, wrong I say! So I will share my amazing product ideas with you and then multinational conglomerate type companies, that I fully intend upon naming, will see how wrong they were not to steal my ideas when I was offering them up for free instead of writing about them in my AMAZINGLY popular blarg which will create a paper trail back to me, should they then decide to use said AMAZING product ideas. Early bird, yadda yadda...

So without further ado...

Marshmallow Charger Packs!

In my family, cereal was eaten more as a snack than part of a complete balanced breakfast, and as such, when I was finally able to buy myself Lucky Charms in college (it wasn't that my mom didn't let us have sugary cereal, it was just that she probably knew this problem would arise), I often found, when I went to actually eat a bowl of cereal with milk, all that was left in the box were moderately sweet oat type pieces, because, in snacking on the cereal, I, of course, had picked the majority of the delicious pink hearts, yellow moons, orange stars, green clovers, blue diamonds, purple horseshoes, red balloons, and tasty tasty rainbow marshmallows out of the box. You see, they were magically delicious, but without the crunchy sugary marshmallows, not so much. And then I thought, if only there were little charger packets of marshmallows in a separate bag, I could joyfully pick all the marshmallows out of the cereal, but then have some when I wanted to actually eat a bowl of cereal.  They could even make collector marshmallow packs to entice new buyers. Maybe team up with Zynga? This way, General Mills would be getting even more money from me, I would get more marshmallows, all would be right in the world.
It could also work in other applications, most notably, eating a bag of Lucky Charms marshmallows, by themselves, with no care for dry tasteless oat bits, at all.  But also for decorating cupcakes and cakes, putting in hot chocolate, or sticking them to your sister's face (after licking them, of course) while she is sleeping... the list is endless.

Oreo Stuf!

My other idea was born in the time of Oreo Big Stuf.  If you don't know what an Oreo Big Stuf is, picture a horrendously gigantic Oreo that has been mutated by radiation so that you would need a shoehorn to get it into your super, boss Dukes of Hazzard lunch box.  Who am I kidding?! All of my lunches were packed in plastic Publix Supermarket bags *sad face*... Anyway, I digress.
In high school, my mom was great about packing me lunches full of stuff I actually wanted to eat, which was greatly appreciated, however, when eating Oreos, it historically only takes a few bites before I grow weary of the chocolate sandwich cookie and end up chucking them, after licking out the middles.
I had a system that worked for me, which I now realize is completely grody, but I am going to tell you about it anyway, because, well, why the hell not.?! Sitting in the hallway of my wonderful high school (no really, it was the best, like summer camp for 4 years), I would happily eat the middles out of the Oreos that were packed in my lunch and, once I was done, I would give the chocolate wafers to my friend Erik, who apparently had no issue with eating cookies that had made contact with my mouth and were partially covered in my saliva... yeah.. I don't really know what that was about... but they didn't go to waste, and that was acceptable to me at the time.
The Oreo Big Stuf was much better, because it saved me grand amounts of time, as I only had to open one cookie to get the creme equivalence of 8-10 cookies, but I still felt bad about wasting the chocolate part. There had to be a better way.

My solution, which was summarily rejected by Nabisco, was selling jars of Oreo Stuf, not unlike cans of frosting, or marshmallow fluff. Selling the patented Oreo Creme, in a container, all by itself, would allow those people who really prefer the creamy center to the chocolate wafers (or were allergic to chocolate) to get what they want without accumulating a giant pile of discarded cookie outers.  Again, multifaceted product... it could be used as a filling for Oreo cakes, as a frosting for brownies, OR it could be consumed all in one sitting, using only a spoon, or maybe a finger or two, while watching "He's Just Not That into You," whilst crying...

Nabisco clearly made a grave error by rejecting this spectacular idea.


But, you know where to find me, companies, if you need a fresh new face for your R&D departments.  I have no qualifications at all, other than an active imagination, a love of food stuff, and a useless Bachelor's degree in art, but I'll be right here, waiting for your email! An apology wouldn't hurt either!

It's late, do you know where your stomach is?

It has come to my attention that many people don't actually know where their stomach is. Most people who complain of having a stomach ache are not at all talking about their stomachs, but are having intestinal pain (see It's a Gas, Gas, Gas!).  I happen to be an expert on gut pain, so here is a handy dandy graphic for you, so you can identify what part is involved in case you are having pain in your belly area. Of course I am not a doctor, but I spend enough time googling, and hearing about my guts in doctors' offices, that you can trust my anatomical knowledge:

(All of my pictures are bigafiable by clicking them, if you didn't know- and this has been edited to be less funny and more accurate, in case someone decided to refer to a humor blarg in a real emergency. Note, stomach is cartoonized for cuteness.)

I hope that helps.  

But most of all, your guts are not a laughing matter, okay maybe a little bit, but if things start getting weird in there, please see a doctor. And tweet about it, people love hearing about intestinal distress on Twitter.

A Girl and her Bunny.

My family (and I, obviously) lived in Southern California when I was a wee one. Occasionally we would take trips up into the mountains between Oceanside and Ramona.  And of course, each trip has a fairly horrific story about me attached to it.

My memory doesn't separate any of the stories, but I have been assured that there were three different occasions, so for now, you only get to hear one of them-- you would have thought that they would have learned to stop taking me up into the damned mountains though.

This story, in particular, occurred on the first trip we made. While driving happily along, as we made our ascent up the mountain, I called out to my parents, begging them to pull over and stop the car.  Watching out the window, I  had seen a very fluffy rabbit on the side of the road that I desperately wanted as a pet.  They very kindly and patiently explained to me that the bunny wasn't sleeping.  The very bloated bunny was, in fact, very dead, which meant I really didn't want it.
"But, I want a dead bunny for a pet!" I told them eagerly.
"Why?" They asked with concern.
"Because I can hug it and it won't run away!"
 Which makes some sort of sense, I guess, but is a little morbid for a 4 year old.  I suppose I didn't quite grasp the concept of decomposition.

Thankfully, they did not allow me to have the dead bunny, but they did get me a rabbit pelt, which was probably the safest alternative to keep me from becoming a serial killer.

I'm not really lovin' it.

I went to Muh Donna's last night to get dinner because I was literally starving and wanted to get some calories in me for fairly cheap that I wouldn't feel bad about losing if my food poisoning/stomach flu symptoms continue, as they have been for the past few days.

Being without sustenance for a couple days made me stupidly optimistic, it would seem, because I looked at their menu and saw "OOOH! Fancy strawberry shake! That must be made of the freshest strawberries and organic whole cream ice cream! That sounds great!"

Somewhat unsurprisingly, their new strawberry shake tastes really bad and the faux strawberry syrup with extra red food coloring makes my mouth feel like it is being stung by scorpions.

It does have a cherry on top though.

No wait, the cherry was gross too. 

Care Bears: Autopsy

I suffer from insomnia on occasion and it happens to keep me up past when anything decent is on TV.  Once I have run out of variations of Law and Order to watch (SVU is my favorite), I usually turn to On Demand. And when I am exceptionally tired but cannot sleep, my ability to read things properly is GREATLY diminished. It usually turns out pretty funny, like this month on Stars On Demand, they have the movie "Care Bears: Oopsy" which I have absolutely no interest in watching, but every time I scroll past it late at night, I read it "Care Bears: Autopsy" which seems like something else all together that I don't want to watch.  Here is an imagined scene from that movie:

Truth in Advertising- Cannibalism Edition

When it comes to advertising food, I would a) prefer that it not be personified, especially when it is a vegetarian selection, and b)  prefer it not be super happy about offering itself for consumption should it be personified.  It's gross, and off-putting, and frankly, fairly morbid.
I'm looking at you shredded mini-wheats...