Wednesday, February 20, 2008
my earplugs are pink. that doesn't make me girly.
the turds next door were on a drug bender or something last night. they’ve been good the last several weeks after i gave them a talking to, but last night? not so much.
they were a little loud when i turned off my light around midnite, but with my earplugs in, it wasn’t too bad. then about 1.30AM i woke up and realized i could hear every word their tv was saying (you know what i mean). i thought perhaps my earplugs had fallen out--it happens--but no, they were lodged firmly in my ears.
i stewed for a few minutes before getting up, pulling out my earplugs, taking out my biteguard, tearing off my breath-right strip and putting on pants and a hoodie (no underwear as i am klassy). i went to knock on their door and was bowled over by the smell of skunk weed. [an aside: if you’re doing illegal shit, you do it quietly so your neighbors don’t call the cops and you end up busted for noise and drugs. duh.] i pounded on the door, someone peeped thru the hole, then walked away. i pounded again. the “good” one came to the door finally and as he was opening said “i just turned it down.” i kind of glared and said “yeah, i can hear it even with earplugs” and went back into my apartment.
they turned it down a little, but not much.
at 7ish when we got up this morning, they were still watching tv loudly (at the turned-down volume). definitely a drug bender of some kind.
fucking college kids.
posted by sarah on 02/20/2008 at 04:20 PM
Sunday, February 17, 2008
did you get collagen or are you just happy to see me?
i think i am now allergic to acetylsalicylic acid (aspirin). i’m not positive, but i think so.
friday i felt like shit at work. had a major headache. so i took some excedrin migraine. went home early and caught the 4.30 train which got me back to my apartment about 5.30. at that time i noticed my lower lip was a little swelly, but whatevs. took a nap. when i got up around 8, i looked like this. not happy.
so i took a prednisone and posted to my support group asking if it could have been the excedrin that did it to me. they said probably.
woke up at 6am saturday to go grocery shopping. still swollen but otherwise feeling fine. while we were out, my head started hurting, so after we got home i took some ibuprofen. we watched some tv and ate lunch, and i wasn’t feeling very good, so i took a nap. when i got up from that nap my eyes were poufy like whoa. so i took some more prednisone and realized that ibuprofen is also bad for me now (if indeed i am really allergic to aspirin).
krista’s friend came over to crash on our couch for the night. we watched some tv with him, and i noticed my lip and cheek were starting to swell. my head was killing me and there were huge fucking lumps on my skull. here i come to the point of my post: at this point we finally considered going to the ER, but decided against it in case they gave me an mri or ct scan. because that debt would kill us. we’re living on the edge right now anyway, and a god-knows-how-expensive mri would be too much and we’d not be able to afford to live. so we didn’t go to the hospital. because it would be too expensive.
what kind of fucking country do we live in where people even have to think about not getting life-saving treatment because it could be too expensive? why did i even have to think twice about grabbing my insurance card and heading out? oh, that’s right. because we have shit ass motherfucking insurance and live in america where healthcare is an industry and not something that exists to help people.
this morning i woke up around 10am and my upper lip was swollen to massive proportions. the final result of saturday night’s swelling. it looked like it did last june when we went to the ER (with better insurance). so we decided that we should probably go to the hospital. i showered, etc. but then we gave it some more thought. could we really afford the $100 copay for just setting foot in the ER? would they really give me any drugs that i didn’t already have? would they be doing anything other than giving me some very short term relief?
the answer to all of those questions is no. so we decided not to go to the ER after all, with the promise to ourselves that if things were not better in any noticable way by 8pm, that we would then go to the ER.
well, it’s about 8pm now, and while my lip is a little less swollen, it’s not back to normal. but, we’re not gonna go to the ER. because it’s not worth it in the financial or time-suck senses. and i really hate that we even have to think about considering our financial situation before considering my health situation. we are not the only people who have to do this. there are hundreds of thousands of people in this country who cannot get the care they need (and quite frankly have a right to) because our health care situation in this country is fucking absurd.
so i’m going to go on my “merry” way to work tomorrow morning, feeling like shit and not being able to take any analgesics because they might make the angioedema kill me, and enduring the stares of the bitches on the train because i have a duck lip. all because it was more fiscally responsible to stay home in bed than to go to the hospital and get treatment.
posted by sarah on 02/17/2008 at 08:28 PM
Saturday, February 16, 2008
awesomeness
The 5 Most Badass Presidents of All-Time
The 6 Cutest Animals That Can Still Destroy You
5 Kick-Ass Sci-Fi Apocalypses (That Could Actually Happen)
The 10 Most Insane Medical Practices in History
10 Words and Phrases You Won’t Believe Shakespeare Invented
The 6 Most Unsettling Medication Side Effects
posted by sarah on 02/16/2008 at 06:31 PM
Friday, February 15, 2008
rough
for some reason i feel like shit today. i woke up with a pretty bad headache, and it has yet to go away. it’s the kind that makes you feel a little nauseous and makes your hands shake. which is weird because this doesn’t feel like a migraine. maybe it’s just a “little” migraine. sigh. i hate feeling like this because it makes it hard for me to concentrate or look at a screen.
i finished a pair of socks on wednesday and i finished my mom’s shawl last night. i just have to block it now and then i’ll be able to send it to her. two weeks after her birthday, but that’s not too too late.
oh my god i just want to go to sleep.
posted by sarah on 02/15/2008 at 02:15 PM
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
really? no one had a comment on this?
1,450 weeks and counting
Originally uploaded by misanthropic sarah
because i thought it was fucking hilarous. i even added the “soft focus” that pregnant bellies always seem to get.
i thought i’d either get “how funny” comments or “pregnant women are beautiful mock not!” comments.
nothin’.
posted by sarah on 02/13/2008 at 10:11 PM
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
The Winter Rose
I got The Winter Rose by Jennifer Donnelly as part of the Library Thing Early Reviewers program. I read the first three chapters and decided not to keep going. The story hadn’t gripped me yet, and the dialogue was forced and annoying. There was too much telling and not enough showing. I couldn’t deal with reading 720 pages of that.
posted by sarah on 02/12/2008 at 10:39 PM
Into the Wild
I’d never heard of this book before the movie came out in 2007. But my dad had (of course) and he got it for us for xmas. Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer is not fiction. It’s written by a journalist about the life and death of a young man in the 1990s.
He (the young man) died of starvation in Alaska. He was there because he was looking for a higher truth or something--very much in the school of Thoreau and Tolstoy. He was ill-prepared and ill-educated and probably a little arrogant. Krakauer decided to follow the trail that took the young man from his ritzy home on the east coast to an abandoned bus in Alaska.
It was an enjoyable read for the most part. Fun little facts and anecdotes and glimpses into the lives of people totally unlike me.
I think Krakauer was searching for a why; why men always sought out the wilderness when they didn’t fit in or were unsettled, etc. We didn’t find that answer.
Krakauer took the position that it was a great tragedy that this kid died, but that he knew what he was getting into. Sure, parents lost their kid and stuff, but I don’t think it’s any great tragedy because he did know what he was getting into and what the risks were.
I think the book was so successful and was made into a movie because we are obsessed with the why. What makes people give everything up and just travel around like they want to? We’re such a “civilized” and consumeristic society, that we don’t get why someone would leave “all this” in favor of something “much less.” I think I know the answer to that question, but I don’t think I could ever do it myself.
posted by sarah on 02/12/2008 at 03:28 PM