I’ve been clicking through blogs, stalking people on Facebook, researching all sorts of biznass, and generally using the Internets as a temporary distraction from insomnia.
You know The Internets has got you when, upon logging into your gmail account, you are greeted with “Waking up at 2 AM? Get some sleep. Get the facts about Insomnia”. Yes, it’s one of those Google-generated ads that subtly populate gmail pages, and yes I do actually read those ads, no matter what. (What? I was in the advertising industry for seven years, you’ve got to assume that something rubbed off on me!)
Le Sigh. Does that counting sheep thing really work? I have tried it but usually get distracted in under 30 seconds and sooner or later (sometimes, shockingly “sooner”) I am thinking about the plight of monks in Myanmar or how on EARTH to convert grams to teaspoons and what, exactly, is the problem with not believing in the current fashion trends/best selling authors/government. Everything runs it’s time of popularity. Even New Kids On The Block*no longer wears acid-wash, pleated denim.
*This is the first New Kids On The Block reference on this blog, I doubt I could recognize a song of theirs if I tried. I grew up listening to Bach and Chopin and Rachmaninoff…not New Kids On The Block**
**I will never be able to abbreviate them to NKOTB, because I can never figure out what in the world people are so obsessed about when they simply write “NKOTB”…I keep trying to pronounce it phonetically, or try and remember what is so important about “En-kott-obb”.***
***You may now shun me.
I am fighting with my phone. I have service in odd-ball places and normal-person places, my camera works just fine, the mp3 player is so fancy I still don’t know how to use it…but I am fighting with my phone.
There’s the first reason, the hating to listen to voice mail; and there’s the ugly, monstrous, second reason–apparently my X still has my phone number.
Now, I am of the opinion that there are certain instances where phone numbers should be erased, deleted, forgotten. Instances like when that really cute guy doesn’t remember your name, for the 17th time in a row. Or when your favorite Chinese take-out place becomes a tacky tattoo parlor. Or when the coffee shop around the corner stops using sugar. Or when you leave a psycho x-husband. Numbers. Should. Be. Deleted.
I was the dutiful, comply-with-rules-of-disengagement one who promptly black-listed the X, deleted his phone number and tried to forget all of that nasty, sticky, X stuff.
And then? Then my phone decides to hate me. Big Time.
The situation: A slowish weeknight last week, watching some sort of T.V…heidikins receives a text from an unknown area code stating the following:
Stranger: Heidi–is this still your phone number?
heidikins: That depends, who is this?
Stranger: Someone in [redacted city] who has been thinking about you, how are you?
heidikins: (audibly, and not in a text) “What! The! Hell! Are you kidding me?!?” (obviously, no response was sent.)
X: The other day I saw a blonde girl with a big hairy guy walking down the street and I thought of you. I also walked past [redacted landmark] and remembered how much you loved it, how happy you were that day.
X: What? No response for ol’ [redacted name]? I just wanted to make sure you’re ok. I haven’t heard from you forever, how are you?
X: Do you still have the same email address? [answer: no.] I tried emailing you the other day to no avail…
heidikins: “Seriously? What the hell is wrong with him!? Does he never get the hint?!
X: It was just a “Hey, haven’t talked to you, what have you been up to” email. No big deal. It’s just been a long time, just want to make sure life is going well for you.
X: I’m done with school for good in a couple of weeks–then I can fully concentrate on the [redacted sports team I now hate by association] for the summer! How about you?
At this point I turned off my phone, I couldn’t handle the constant bleeping reminders of a whole life I willingly left behind. And in the second place, why does he feel like he has to “make sure I am doing ok”?!? He could have cared less when we were together, why the sudden urge? Ugh.
But despite the dramatic, difficult-to-deal with emotions this little non-exchange brought to the surface, I am generally pissed. I mean, I know it’s a free country and everything, and I suppose a (bastardly, dead-beat) person could text another person at any point for whatever reasons. In recent months I have received several spam text messages for all sorts of ridiculous things…but not a single one brought up a spewage of memory vomit like these did.
New Rule: No drunk-dialing, no x-texting, and definitely no drunk-x-texting–while I was not intoxicated during this transaction, but I would bet good stiletto-money that he was sloppy-faced drunk. I would also bet that whatever poor girl he’s somehow suckered into dating him has recently picked a fight, left him or otherwise broke up with him. And in some ways that makes me happy…but mostly that makes me feel sorry for him.
*See how I take the repeated x-texting and turn it into drunk-x-texting and the demise of his assumed relationship? Yeah, I’m mature like that.
I am constantly amazed how quickly life can change, aren’t you? One minute you’re chit-chatting about nothing in particular, the next minute Everything is Serious. One moment you’re texting a friend, the next you find out Bad News. One day everything is completely normal, the next it’s Chaos.
Well, a year ago today I was just traipsing back from the airport to pick up a friend (and, for the record, NOT texting) minutes later my life was literally spinning out of control. Serious. Bad News. And Chaos.
So, there I am, driving Miss Daisy–may she rest in peace–chatting with my friend Nate about his trip to Washington, D.C. and all of a sudden I am literally spinning through the intersection. A man who was being chased by three different police departments (see all the cop cars with the twinkly red and blue lights…ok, so they aren’t actually twinkly, don’t judge, ok?) zoomed right through a red light going approximately 55 miles per hour and slammed into me, T-Bone style. I spun out of control, he kept going and, according to the 3 different officers who told me about it, a half-block later he got out of his vehicle, started running on foot, and was chomped in the gut by a ginormous German Shepherd named Blade or Shark or Monster, or something ferocious-sounding like that.
And then I was on T.V. wearing my pajamas with smudgy mascara and no bra, because, at 11:30 pm on a Tuesday, that’s how I roll, yo. Too bad I couldn’t have had a picture with the German Shepherd; we could have been on talk shows as the terrible two-some who caught that particular Bad Guy.
I was really lucky, I walked away. Granted, I was hyperventilating and shaking like a leaf, but I was walking. I wasn’t bleeding. I didn’t have bones sticking out of my body. I didn’t have cuts on my face or hands or shattered glass embedded in my scalp. I wasn’t splayed out on the asphalt in pieces. Nate & I both were remarkably lucky.
Mostly.
Except…well, “lucky” is a relative term, right?
Here’s what…I ended up with a lot of skeletal and muscle damage that I still feel every. single. day. I had class 4 (out of 5) whiplash and was in neck-traction for weeks to try and keep my neck from compressing into my spine. I had a couple of bulgy disks in my spine, and in case you have never had bulgy disks in your spine, those suckers hurt like crazy. Non-stop hurt. The muscles in my back were so stretched and torn that my ribs kept popping out of place; my muscles were not strong enough to keep them lined up neatly in my rib-cage. Have you ever had a rib popped back in? What about six or seven? What about six or seven twice a week? Gaaaah! It is something I hope and pray every day I will never have to experience again. I had perpetual bruises on my back and my chest from my physical therapist working my ribs back in place. Hello, torture. I’m telling you, Guantanamo could learn a lesson or two from my P.T.
Besides having an achey-brakey neck, shoulders and back…I had some major issues with my hips. Apparently, when I spun-out my pelvis twisted farther than my body, or my body twisted farther than my pelvis…at any rate, they did not twist together and the end result was my pelvis sitting wonky on the base of my spine. Wonky Pelvis, people. Your pelvis is supposed to be a nice triangle, not a freaky trapezoid. Do me a favor, make a “gun” shape with both your hands; index and thumb fingers out, pinky, ring and middle finger folded into your palm. Are you doing it? With your palms facing you, touch your thumbs together and your index fingers together. You should have a nice little triangle, yes? Now, this is what your pelvic bone is supposed to look like under normal, non-wonky circumstances. Now take your left hand and rotate your hand counter-clockwise until your palm is facing the floor…that’s what happened to my pelvis. Big. Trouble. HUGE. Trouble. One leg was shorter than the other, I didn’t sit flat, I didn’t stand straight, I couldn’t lie down without being in pain.
The good thing is this particular brand of Trouble is fixable without surgery. I went through–and am still doing–physical therapy to move my pelvis back to a nice, even, triangle shape. The easy part is a set of 20-ish stretches and strength-training exercises done only on my left side, to help those muscles. The excruciating part is cracking your pelvic bone. Not like Crack! broken. But like cracking your knuckles…did you know your pelvic bone can crack like your knuckles? Yeah, I didn’t know that either. And when my physical therapist did her voodoo magic and cracked my pelvis I screamed, and then I swore, and then I cried. It kind of feels like having a flat-head screw driver attached to the front of a freight train thrust upwards through your skeleton. I needed this torture treatment done at least once a week for months. A freight train, people, a freight train. Shudder.
All that being said…the physical side-effects of my car accident were not most difficult. The physical stuff was a beast–and in some ways still is–but the Life As I Know It stopping without warning was the worst. I couldn’t work, I couldn’t exercise, I couldn’t do anything of any real value to me–at the time. I hated driving, I hated doctors, I hated having to be packed in ice for 12 hours a day. I was depressed. I gained a ton of weight. I felt like I had stopped Life cold turkey and I went through major withdrawals. It was terrible. Months went by and my physical body was starting to heal but I was still a complete wreck. I hated myself, I hated what I had become. I had been full of energy, bounding along full-speed ahead. Doing Things. Going Places. Being Someone. And then it all stopped, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do to make it come back. Ugh, just thinking about all this again is giving me anxiety.
I didn’t talk about it much. It’s hard to explain how everything was so different when I looked exactly the same. I wasn’t in a cast, I didn’t have physical scars on my face…I looked fine. And perhaps that was part of the problem. No one would guess that just under the slightly bloated surface I was absolutely drowning.
Every time I see a yellow VW bug I feel sad. Part of that is because I miss Miss Daisy, she feels like a real life friend (and I’m totally wearing yellow shoes today to remember her). But I really miss Life Like It Was Before My Car Accident. In so many ways it was just…easier. Sigh. I feel like I’m okay, 12 months have come and gone; I’ve been to over a hundred doctor appointments and racked up thousands and thousands of dollars in medical bills (Thank you, Insurance!*). I’m not “back to 100%” and I don’t know if I will ever be at 100%. But I’m still progressing, physically and emotionally, and that is what is important to me. It is difficult not to fall back into that depressed, stagnant, deep black hole. I keep trying to remind myself to look ahead instead of backward. It’s a daily struggle.
A million thanks to those of you who constantly supported me over the last year; but particularly to Handsome and Lurch who took the brunt of my sobbing and wallowing and who always responded positively and with undeserved encouragement. I could not have made it through this without you, thank you from the bottom of my heart.
*Do me a favor, will you? Call your auto insurance company and request your PIP be increased to the maximum, allowed amount. PIP is your Personal Injury Protection. This is the dollar amount your insurance company will pay for your medical bills. Minimum requirements vary from state to state, but in Utah the minimum is $2,000. Which means that unless you change your policy, if you get hurt in a car accident, your auto insurance company will only pay for $2,000 of medical care. $2,000 will buy you one ride in an ambulance, a few hours in the E.R. and a bandaid. The maximum available PIP coverage varies by insurance company, some max out at $25,000, some at $100,000. Make the call, find out where you are at and request the maximum amount of coverage. The extra $5 a month could not be better spent, I promise you.
**Also, if you have a friend/family member who has been in a serious car accident, or, heaven forbid, they get in a serious car accident, please try and remember that it takes months and months to heal. Be kind. Be considerate. Call to say hello. Invite them to lunch. Listen to them chat/vent/cry. And then gently remind them that there is an end, it’s a long way off, but it’s there. Can you do that for me?
R.I.P
heidikins
Who became dead April 1, 2009.
(This is not a joke. Stop laughing.)
Ages ago, before I started slaving working here, the Internet Monitoring Bots at my company blocked all the fun sites like YouTube, and Facebook, and Flickr. It is annoying to not be able to check out the tunes from last night’s American Idol, but I understand the amount of time clickity-click-clicked away with status updates and possible inappropriate searches. I get it. It’s annoying, but I get it.
The Internet Monitoring Bots (IMB) have hit a new low. Blogspot blogs are inaccessible on about half of the company computers (luckily, I wasn’t included in that half). Gchat has been spotty for months now with my random “hanging up” on persons I’m chatting with…which is just rude and I apologize if it has happened to you. It’s not you, it’s me. Well, no, it’s not me either, it’s those damn IMB. However, the IMB have hit a new low. Gmail has been blocked completely. Ditto on Google Reader.
Let me repeat that, I can no longer access Gmail. I can no longer access Google Reader. What. The. Hell. What am I supposed to do all day? I realize their idea is that I will work all day. Here’s what. I make somewhere north of 65 phone calls a day. I am on the phone constantly. Which means, I am on hold constantly. Which means, I have three and four minute chunks of time to catch up on a blog or two. It’s either that or draw pictures on my company-issued notepad and proceed to use this “wallpaper” to beautify my cube. Which one do you think H.R. would be more upset about? Wasting paper (my company is on the Green Bandwagon)? Or harmlessly check up on my friends? That’s right. Option B. I leave a smaller carbon footprint by using my already-running (WimpySauce) P.C. to peruse the virtuous nuggets of wisdom left for me on The Internets–via Google Reader–than if I were to use reams of paper to redecorate my desk.
You know what I need…I need an Undercover Google Reader. One that looks like Outlook or something. That way IMB won’t know what’s going on, I will look to be the Most Productive Employee…I mean, I am productive, but Outlook Reader would make me even MORE productive. And I can prove it. Now if someone Super Smart would invent that, stat. Then we can all go along our daily Google-fueled business and pretend like this IMB-coupe never happened. Mmmmkay?
Filed under: All about me, Handsome V, Life 101, Love 101, Relationships, Things That Suck
Sometimes, life sucks.
And then sometimes it sucks a little bit more.
I have this friend, see, and right now? Her life sucks. And because she’s my friend, and because of the nature of the sucktitude, it cannot be discussed with The Internets. When this happens, some people, like my friend, feel like pulling their hair out. Or their fingernails. Or something.
So, what cannot be discussed on The Internets? Well, some people feel that issues that are uber-personal, uber-private, or of a somewhat delicate nature shouldn’t be blabbed about willy-nilly like. Not that my friend is willy-nilly. She’s actually pretty normal, above-average even. But even above-average people sometimes agree that there are certain subjects involving certain other parties that should be kept off-line. Or at least kept off-line until they have been discussed/resolved with previously mentioned other parties.
Ok, so in RealSpeak, my friend is having Issues. A Crisis even. And do you know what the best thing is for a crisis? Chocolate. And Ice-Cream. And Road Trips. And lots and lots of couch-time with a therapist–whether that is a friend or the lovely invention that is wireless Internet and a laptop. Unfortunately for my friend, options three and four are impossible at this particular juncture, and options one and two will only last as long as the current stockpile of chocolate and ice-cream can withstand the Crisis Management Task Force–That’d be my friend, lover of all things chocolate and/or ice-cream.
Gaaaaah! My friend is cranky. Without any REAL way to solve said current Crisis, the only thing to do is to rehash this Crisis 18 times per day to 7 different friends and hope that Crisis Management can get with the program and solve the problem before all her friends start screening her calls, ignoring her desperate texts and emails and forcing her to make a Costco run for more chocolate, more ice-cream, and yoga pants in two sizes larger.
How about you give my friend a little love, tell her your favorite “Bad Day Remedies”. Your favorite movie, your favorite activity, your favorite something! Be specific, this is a Crisis we’re talking about people!
Oh, and Happy Friggin’ St. Patrick’s Day. Take Luck!
I want it to be Spring. Really. I do.
And the weather of late has hinted that it was, in fact, Spring–depsite that damn Groundhog. (Which is different than a Hedgehog…which is what I’m talking about on Very Bookish today. Check it out.)
There is snow, and cold, and ice, and Weather Alerts, and I don’t want to deal with boots and gloves and hats and ice-scrapers and slidey roads anymore.
And the boiler in my apartment building has been broken since Friday. That’s right, Friday. And it’s been snowy. And it won’t be fixed until Wednesday….which means that I am in hell-frozen-over agony. Hello, coldness. It’s perhaps 47 degrees in my apartment, and the windows are oozing cold weather and the walls are cold to the touch and the hardwood floors are like ice.
Dear Spring,
Where the hell are you?
…..
Dear Landlord,
What the hell?
….
Dear Universe,
How about you throw me a good one, mmmmkay?
….
Love, heidikins-who-is-frozen
My face feels like it’s going to explode.
I’m sure you don’t want all the gory details, but I have a naaaasty sinus cold and I literally would not be surprised if brain matter started dripping out of my nasal cavities. I’m exhausted. I’ve been sleeping a ton and drinking OJ like it’s going out of style, but I still can’t kick this.
Damnit! I hate being sick.
Dear DayQuill People,
Why don’t your pills work for me anymore? Seriously, I’ve been popping those orange suckers like they’re chocolate chips and nothing is happening! Please to fix asap.
Love, heidikins
Dear NyQuill People,
I realize that your knock-me-out-for-18-hours meds are a gift from the gods…however could you please work on the taste? Throwing up before taking an 18-hour siesta kind of defeats the purpose, don’t you think? So how about we say that you’ll work on that, alright?
Love, heidikins
Dear Self,
Stop. Getting. Sick. Seriously, this is getting really old. Buck up and knock it off with the multiple cold’s and flu’s and generally nastiness. Really, this is not a joke, one more weekend spent in bed with a pile of used Kleenex and absolutely no energy and we’ll be in a real fight. Stop it!
Love, heidikins
Hope you didn’t spend your weekend curled up on the couch, moaning in agony…or checking eBay for a new sinus/nose/face/whatever.
Happy Monday. Blah!
I realize that–for most of you–Economics is a convaluted mess; marginal return, econometrics of change, supply, demand, blah, blah, blaaaaah. You don’t have to understand any of this to realize that economics affects your life everyday. I’m sure, that unless you are living under a rock, you realize that the current state of the American economy is pathetic, and even if you cannot explain or define all of the contributing issues, you are aware of the strain that many people are under. This is not a tutuorial, this is about something really important.
…heidikins stepping off Econ soap-box…
…heidikins would like to apologize for ranting about her major, it’s a bit of a soft spot…
…heidikins will now stop referring to herself in the third person…
Supply and Demand. The basics of Econ 101, and now these two simple concepts and working to ruin my quest for the perfect lip gloss. That’s right, I said “ruin.” Ben Bernanke is single-handedly trying to destroy my lips.
Ok, perhaps that is a bit of an over-statement. But Ben Bernanke is definitely spear-heading the nationwide effort to decimate my kisser.
The facts:
- I have dry skin.
- I live in a dry state.
- Most lip gloss/chapstick has glycerin in it.
- Glycerin sucks moisture out of the air to inject into your skin.
- Problem is when the air has 0% humidity, there’s nothing for glycerin to suck.
- So, the sneaky little molecules suck moisture out of whatever is close.
- Like, my skin.
- Specificaly, my lips.
- That’s right, most lip gloss makes my lips more cracked and scary looking.
- Except for one.
- The one that Ben Bernanke–with his crafty supply/demand rules–is eliminating from fine retail establishments everywhere.
Natural Ice, with it’s metholatumy goodness, is the only thing that can fix my lips. I don’t wear lipstick because I already have freakishly reddish pink lips (and I’m lazy), I don’t wear that sticky-sparkly stuff because it drives me crazy, so Natural Ice is the only thing I really need. Natural Ice is the only thing I really want. And it has stopped being sold in 90% of retailers. Target, Wal*Mart, Shop-Ko, K-Mart, Smith’s, Albertson’s, Costco, Sam’s Club, Maverick, 7-11, Chevron. Everyone carries Chapstick-brand lip balm, but no one carries Natural Ice. This is a major problem!
Yes, I know I can order Natural Ice online, which is totally fine and something I definitely plan on doing every time I need a little lip-moisture. However, I would like to know why Ben Bernanke insists on ruining my chance at buying locally and supporting my local economy. Why? I mean, I know he has a lot of really important things going on and such, but these are my lips we’re talking about! I don’t want them to be all white and cracky and rough, I want lusciously delicious lips, soft and kissable. Not flaky and chappy. So, Mr. Bernanke, if you wouldn’t mind bending those Supply & Demand rules a smidge so I can pick up a biggish supply of Natural Ice at the grocery store up the street, that would be awesome.
What do you love/want/need that is impossible to find in stores? And who is the jerky Fat Cat who is ruining your quest for this product and, consequently, the rest of your life?
Or, six-o-dark-hundred in the freaking morning…ya know, whatever.
My “new” job–the one where I have to talk to assshats and keep my cool at the same time–is, well, a bit precarious. When I was hired in August I joined a department of about twenty-five people, two teams and two managers. Over the ensuing months that changed to one manager of fifteen, then twelve, then nine, and now five. Five Peons, the grunt-force of my company. Luckily, I am still one of those five and am actually doing really well, however frustrating and monotonous those days can be. But, I’m still there. My security badge still works and my (measly) paycheck continues to be deposited into my bank account.
However, comma, that kind of twisted job security can only last for so long.
We have been told that our department, the Peon Department, is being disolved on January 1. As of this writing (pre-Seattle, thank you schedule-in-advance publishing), I still have no idea what will happen, or where I will be when I go back to work. For all I know, I may show-up in January with no desk and no team of co-workers.
Happy Freakin’ New Year.
I don’t know what will happen, but at this point there is nothing I can do about that. I am not new to unemployment – in the last 16 months I have been unemployed for 7 months, I know how it works. That doesn’t mean that I want to jump back onto that wagon, especially in this economy. Utah has been recently ranked as the fastest growing state in the nation. Sure, part of that is that we have ginormous families. The other part is that more and more people keep moving here. Looking for jobs. You can see where I’m going with this, can’t you. I need to keep my job, and it kills me that there is absolutely nothing I can do at this point but wait it out. Sucktacular.
But hey, it could be worse–and thankfully, it’s not. Today is my 3-year divorciversary; I’d rather be unemployed in a craptastic economy a thousand times over than spending another day with the X.
I’ll keep you posted on the job thing, that other thing? It is so far away and so long ago, at this point it’s just a bad dream with fuzzy memories.
Expectations. They are kind of a bitch.
Expectations can easily ruin a positive experience, simply because expectations were too high, or even just different than the reality of the outcome. Expectations can quickly turn a person into someone else, without their doing anything at all. Expectations can turn anything into something else. Expectations change everything.
Generally, I think it is less painful to go through life with smaller-than-average expectations; if you don’t expect anything you won’t be disappointed. Sometimes, I will admit, an added expectation will make for a pleasant surprise. However, that may or may not be the case…it’s usually not the case.
I have not been completely disappointed recently, nor do I intend to be in the near future (see previous paragraph about smaller-than-average expectations). However, this weekend I was thinking about expectations, why we have them, and how we can change them into something that is reasonable enough to be met. I’m not an expert on expectations, I haven’t studied them or even really paid much attention to how they affect my life. Until, shockingly, one slips in and starts to mess things up.
Yeah, that thing I said earlier about not being completely disappointed? Not exactly true. Not exactly false either, but the fact remain that I was disappointed. I had set my heart on something that, upon further inspection, was impossible. The problem was that I had a really hard time changing my heart. I still have a hard time changing my heart. I can’t help but want something that I can’t really have, and the problem is I can’t have it.
And I still want it. And I can’t really talk about it.
I just wanted you all to know, expectations are a bitch.
