Once upon a time, I made what would prove to be an

extremely bad decision 

about my reproductive health. The consequences of this 

extremely bad decision 

are plaguing me still. Suffice it to say I would recommend condoms made out of 80 grit sandpaper over an IUD, were anyone to ask my opinion on the matter.

At any rate. Antibiotic intervention has once again become necessary. This sucks for a whole host of reasons. Among them:

• No Drinking – Yeah, that’s right. I’m off the fuckin’ wagon. Wanna make something of it?
• No Sex – Yeah, that’s right. I’m off the fuckin’ wagon. Wanna make something of it?
• Gastrointestinal Chaos – Which I had just managed to get under control with concerted effort, probiotics, and better food choices.
• Motherfucking Thrush – which is a thing usually only the respiratorily desperate and immuno-compromised (also babies) are prone to get. 

But, it turns out

I am a goddamned delicate flower

(pause for laughter)

No, really. I am. Practically the only reason any of this is happening is because I am a delicate flower. If there is a side effect, to any medication, procedure, or medical device I will get them all. And then usually some they didn’t really know about before.

In the case of the IUD it turns out the vast majority of people don’t have these hideous, recurring, life-altering side effects. In fact, only about .16% of users (as in, 1.6 per 1000) do. And of those, basically NONE of them end up in the hospital for 4 days on IV antibiotics. Like I did.

Nor is this, by any means, an isolated phenomenon. Last week I was speaking to my friend, the PharmD, about why I cannot take the only reliable asthma medication I have ever been able to find  because it makes me lose my voice.

(pause for collection plate to circulate to obtain supply of medication for tactical application)

When I mentioned that my M.D. had been baffled by this symptom, my friend said excitedly,

“No! It’s a side effect of that medication. It’s just super rare! You’re totally cool!”

I can’t say I was able to muster his enthusiasm on the subject.

So! I’m on antibiotics. They make me feel like shit, and smell weird, and give me thrush. In addition to this, I also seem to have developed a stye in my eye*! Puffy, tender, swollen, red; all hallmarks of hotness, for sure. Finally, after passing out on the nude beach Sunday, I have a fairly righteous sunburn on my ass. This is healing, and is thus now itchy. As(s) a result, I’ve been walking around all day scratching my butt. 

You know you want me right now. Don’t even act like you don’t.

*And OF FUCKING COURSE it is my good eye, so applying the necessary treatment makes me functionally blind for a while.

i will begin by saying that i have other, more serious feelings about the economy tumbling downhill, but they are not as amusing as the following sentiments. so.

i have not had a haircut since April. this is actually okay since i am trying to rock the long hair thing, but ultimately a trim would be nice. more upsetting is my lack of funds for other, more crucial elements of my toilet. (pronounce that twah-let, if you please)

i seem to be pathologically incapable of painting my own toenails. i’m not exactly sure why this is, apart from my debilitating lack of hand-eye coordination, but it is nevertheless true. if i try and happen to be working with red, my feet end up looking like the scene of an unsuccessful amputation attempt. and i have learned from experience, no one thinks this is cute.
i discovered the joys of the $20 pedicure on 21st avenue some years ago, and i have never looked back. i have nice feets, and a little polish can go a long way. however, due to the BTOD i have been reluctant in the extreme to go have a professional person look at my mangled toenails. finally, in desperation, i asked TBIL to paint them for me, since my halloween costume required open toed shoes. he was game, and did a decent job overall, but i doubt he’s up for semi-monthly pedicure duty, no matter how much he likes me. now that the nails are finally beginning to look normal again, it’s more a problem of funding the project than worry over horrifying the nail techs.

in this same vein, i have been forced to neglect my eyebrows to an extent which is beginning to cause me emotional distress. much in the same way i have ONE person who i allow to cut my hair, i have just one esthetician who i can trust to take care of my brows. i have sensitive skin and come from a hairy people, so the combination of my tendency to have overgrown eyebrows and to break out in a rash when i attempt to remedy the situation calls for some delicacy and skill on the part of my waxer. lucky for me, i found Jojo, and not only is she, like, one of the loveliest people i have ever met in real life, she does a fantastic job keeping the brows in check. but, scheduling can be a challenge, and brokeness has been rearing its ugly head causing me to have an ugly head. i mean seriously. ew.

and have you SEEN the price of the refill razor heads for the Venus Embrace® holy shitfire leroy! lets just say i had hairy ankles for a few weeks there.

all of this adds up to me feeling sorry for myself not only cause i am broke, but also cause i am hairy and broke. homemade pedicure nothwithstanding (and so far lacking any hair on my toeknuckles) all of this poorness leaves me all furry and frumpy.

***part of a continuing series “Wholly Unsurprising Revelations”***

i am a picky eater. much less so than when i was a child, and would condemn foods from entire ethnic groups without ever having sampled them (this is how i missed out on hummus for most of my life, i feel my narrowmindedness has been duly punished, as such) but still, it shocks the better part of my social group, an urbane sophisticated food crowd, the wide variety of things i will not eat.

part of this is habitual, part physiological.

habit amounts to a tendency to eat the things i know i like and avoid things i’m not so sure about. when i go to Slowbar they dont ask me what i want because EVERY DAMN TIME i go in there i order a pulled pork sandwich and a Heineken. (well, not anymore. now i order a Peroni, since they got rid of Heineken) i mean, it’s delicious, and i highly reccommend it as my favorite pulled pork in town, but still. such predictability!!

on the physical side of things, i am a supertaster. so, though i think this makes me special, really, all it does it make me sensitive to stuff most humans don’t seem troubled by. i fall firmly into the cilantro haters category. texture is also exceedingly important to my ability to enjoy a given food. moreover, it turns out i have a rather combative relationship with my body. it is constantly betraying me in a variety of ways. like when it falls down for no apparent reason with embarrassing frequency. my immune system leaves a great deal to be desired, and most important for this discussion, my gastrointestinal system is frequently in a hideous uproar. if i eat breakfast i usually end up feeling nasty. if I fail to eat breakfast i tend to feel queasy. the answer seems to be to sleep til one o’clock and avoid that part of the day altogether. not the most practical solution. and it is not only breakfast that causes me trouble, just that breakfast ALWAYS does, whereas other meals only do with a randomness that borders on maddening. i can’t accurately predict whether a given meal or foodstuff with go south on me. this does not tend to make me feel inclined to try lots of new and different things. though in the last few years, i’ve been brave. trying for the first time; indian, greek, lebanese, thai, and sushi. and excepting the last of these, i have found tremendous enjoyment in all this new cuisine.

yet there are still a few core things i cannot, will not, shall not eat which most people consider fundamental foodstuffs.

Tomatoes: this one baffles people. i like salsa, spaghetti, pizza, and many other tomato-based food items, but i simply cannot abide uncooked tomatoes. its definitely a texture thing. buh-leah.

Fishes: and not least because i am terrified of the buggers. also because they are yuuuuucky. nothing from the sea. except, well, i’ll eat tuna. but it has to be safely in sandwich format before i will consider it.

Mushrooms: occasionally, in my youth, i ate them, but only for recreational purposes. generally speaking, i try to avoid fungus in my life. for example when it is growing in my closet and under my bed and making it hard for me to breathe. seems like a bad thing. i also have a relative who is the Mushroom Expert for the Lincoln County Poison Control and i have heard too many stories that end: “And then she had to get a new liver, but since they couldn’t find one in 17 hours, she died.” additionally, LOOK AT THE THINGS!! scary alien things. biologists cannot even really honestly say what the hell they are. i mean, fungus had to have its own KINGDOM cause it was impossible to classify any other way. i cant think of any other eukaryotes we deign to eat. i think there’s a reason for this.

there are a million other examples, but these are the ones that seem to interfere with my eating the widest variety of common dishes. i wonder if other people have this problem; hating something everyone else seems to love and therefore have to dodge said thing with great frequency.

ah, the curse of the supertaster….

also, i LOATHE LOATHE LOATHE guacamole. seriously.

has actually, until recently, been a hate/loathe relationship. stumptown is primarily responsible for making me believe that java isn’t necessarily the foulest substance in the known universe, but i’m hardly a fan.

however, i have come to accept, that in it’s time and place, coffee can be a wonderful wonderful thing. or, perhaps more particularly, stimulants can be a wonderful wonderful thing.

usually, i’m pretty careful about when i attempt to harness this power for evil. cause as a person who can taste caffeine (not yummy) i tend to avoid things that contain it. as such, i’m pretty sensitive to it. so, when i have a cuppa at 7pm it is going to keep me cranking all night. and sometimes, when there is homework, or unavoidable chores, i simply must submit myself to this consequence for the sake of the greater good.

that being said, nothing needs to be coffee flavored as far as i can tell. because (with the exception of aforementioned stumptown, plus also haagen daas ice cream bars) all things coffee flavored taste like wretchedness. and so the lesson here i suppose is for me to realize that not all people feel this way, and that assuming that the protein shake is chocolate just because its brown is faulty reasoning. so.

is being caused by my ovaries. My troublesome, pesty ovaries. 

It is not being caused by the need for actual food. Because I had some. Ok, I had a lot. Since waking up this morning I have eaten the following:

2 Black Cherry and Almond Clif Bars
3 handfuls of Chocolate Covered Pistachios
2-4 handfuls of Trader Joes Salt and Vinegar Potato Chips
1 6″ Spicy Italian Sub
1 small bag Sour Cream n’ Onion Lays
3-7 Wild Fruit Savers

And the morning ain’t over yet. Jesus.

Plus also, that other hunger I am too much of a lady to mention here. The one in my pants.

Later:
Green Tea Frappucino
Nuts
Goldfish crackers

Someone may need to tackle me to stop this madness…

Seriously.

Mice ate through my console. Mice chewed off the wires that operated my gas flap release. MICE ate through the rubber liner inside my driver-side door (which, to be fair, was covered in chocolate). I therefore hate mice. Even more than before.

Why they are living in the garage at the body shop I do not know. I would think there were better places to scrounge a meal that in a repair garage. Mice are stupid.

I mean, considering the floor of my car is uniformly littered with all manner of taco bell, macdonalds, jack-in-the-box, and burger king miasma, you would think they could find something tastier than my electronic components.

someone horks.

Ok, technically, that’s not how that goes; except this week, it is.

Because I am a person who avoids vomit and/or vomiting with all the will I have at my disposal.

And speaking of having at my disposal, when I got home from the ER where they gave me Vicodin on an empty stomach, that’s exactly what I did. Because the toilet was too far away. Blea-ah.

And today, after my chiropractor appointment made me late for work, I get a phone call from daycare telling me that Aria has “thrown up a little” No-EH! Gramma Bev to the rescue thank goodness.

But I do find it disturbing that every member of my household vomited this week. I hope the trend does not continue.