Niagara

So I just went to Niagara Falls. SO beautiful. I totally went lame and cried my ass off on Maid of the Mist, exclaiming, "it is just TOO beautiful!"
But I took my friend John who is in the Peace Corps. So I knew from the beginning that he just wanted to see me at his house.
I, however, have a limited amount of vacation. I work in an office, for crying out loud. My 2 weeks are like gold. So i decided that I wanted to do Niagara Falls. I plan the entire trip, knowing it will all come out of my pocket. (As a side note, this is not the point; I don't mind that part at all, it is just relevant to the story following.)

I pick a sweet room. (Almost a pun, it was the Jr. Presidential Suite...) I wanted a jacuzzi because living in my apartment, I never get to take a bath and I really miss those. So I am going all out. Full-on vacation. The room itself costs more than I spent for 5 nights in Paris, air inclusive. Again, all fine. My choice.

So the first night I go to take my beloved jacuzzi. John decides he wants to go for a walk and leaves me in the hotel room. I run the bath; I specifically brought a bath fizzy for just this occasion. I get in and start to feel the stress melting away. I am in there for awhile and I start to feel woozy. Did I make it too hot? I end up pouring cold water over my head, trying to cool off. I decide this is the point at which "smart" people just get out of the tub.

John comes back and finds me, in a towel standing in the middle of the doorway, about to completely pass out. And you know those stupid towels they give you in hotels. I even left a comment card: "If you have a jacuzzi, you should really have robes in the room, or at LEAST bigger towels!" He has to help me to the couch and bring me cold water. Not the greatest start to my "I-work-in-the-field-of-publishing-of-course-i-can-afford-this-totally-
ridiculous-trip-on-my-credit-card" trip.

So the next night we do the whole ordeal: Maid of the Mist (I can sob just thinking about it), Cave of the Wind, Nasty border patrol person asking me where I am going when I walk over Rainbow Bridge. The whole thing. We have a voucher for the dinner, and end up going to the hotel restaurant to use it up. I am sure we will go over, but decide the minute I get there I need a martini. So I get the martini, get an appetizer, get the fancy $35 pork dinner. Again, it is my vacation. I'm not going to live with regrets. John gets a drink too. Then we end up getting another. End of the night, we have spent way more than that little voucher allows for. They bring it over, and who do they give it to? John. Has he paid for the trip? No. The gas to get there? No. So I am annoyed. I take the bill and pay it, then wait for the slip to sign. Do they bring it BACK to me? Nope. It goes back to John. Because he really looks more like the "Diane" of the group.

Annoyance is minor, I move on, have a great time, etc. (See me having a great time, left. I am in yellow, not the 90-year-old man in orange.)

So the following day, the trip is over. All my great joy is coming to and end. They have this great system where you call an automated number with the little slip they give you when you drop your car off, and in 10 minutes your car is outside. (I love not having to deal with people.)
We walk outside with all the lugguge, and I swear the conversation went like this:

Me: "Hi, I see my car. Can we just get right in it?"
Valet guy (only to John): "Sir, can i have your slip?"
Me: "Oh yeah, I have that slip somewhere."

I dig it out of my pocket and give it to the guy with a smile. I can totally be understanding.

Valet guy: "Ok, while your keys are being retrieved, sir, do you need any directions for getting out of here today?

John looks at me.

Me: "Nope, I think we've got it all under control."

Now I start to bristle. I mean, enough is enough. Not that I am bossy person, but I clearly wear some pants here.

Valet guy gets the keys and bring them over. "Sir, your keys."

I snatch the keys out of his hand and can't even help but curtly reply, "They are MY keys. THANKS."

I mean, ok. So you stereotypically think the "man" is in charge of the entire trip; it is his car, his credit card, his keys. Well, let him tip you then. A-hole. Guess what? He didn't. The tip came from my ANGRY hand when I took the keys from the sexist valet man.

Anyway, what a rant. But it is SO tiresome.

Dude, where are my tonsils?

Leigh asked for this tale. This saga. It isn’t very funny.

As a kid, I think I was borderline between needing to get my tonsils out and the doctor just wanting to leave them be. I got strep throat enough that I could diagnose it myself immediately, and when I did my tonsils mightily swelled. But I grew up at the time when they were coming off that big tonsil-removal phase, and were then thinking that they should try to keep them in as often as possible. So on I went, with tonsils in place.

By the time I got to college, I was probably only getting sick with strep or tonsillitis about 1-2 times a year. But the sick got worse. One time, I went to bed and apparently my fever came on full force while I was sleeping. I had these horrible, nightmarish dreams about The Mists of Avalon, which I was reading at the time. I was standing in a field holding a sword up toward the sky and speaking in a language I don’t even know (weird that my fevered brain makes up languages... does that make me brilliant, or just totally insane?) and it was struck by lightning, and I kept yelling something up to the sky. And I would wake up and turn over or go get water, and go back to sleep and this dream would just keep happening over and over, and I wanted to make it stop but it would come right back the minute I dozed off. I woke up in the morning and went downstairs, where my whole family was. (No idea why—must have been a holiday or something.)

As soon as I got down the stairs, I ran to the bathroom and threw up, then walked out and passed out in the middle of the living room, just as my sister was saying I looked a little “green.” This became my new tonsillitis-induced fever habit. It was a Sunday and I had to leave for college the next day, so I get into the back of my own car, leaving the driving to my friend who only had a permit, and telling another person I was driving back that he was the driver in charge of things that day. (Funny I didn’t let the one with a license drive; I guess it was all those stories about him speeding his station wagon through Ossining at 80 miles an hour that deterred me.) I was sitting in the backseat with some guy I think I never met before but was driving back as a favor. So there I am, crammed in with all of our stuff and a fucking gerbil underneath my feet because some girl asked the permit boy if he could take it and I am a big sucker who agreed before realizing it would be ME put out by the thing. I am confused and half-delirious, sucking down Thera -flu from a travel mug and looking like death while this poor guy who just wanted to get back to school is stuck in the backseat with disgustingly sick me for 5½ hours. We stopped at a rest area and although I didn’t see myself, I know it couldn’t have been good because all 3 of the guys with me kept asking me if I was ok. I do know I kept zoning out and just staring while they were talking.

I slept most of the ride, waking up just to see permit boy speeding through the snow and tried screaming at him that he had to slow down and my car sucked in the snow, but my voice wouldn’t raise itself above an angry whisper. (He did slow down, right after telling me I had to stop freaking out and then skidded across the lane almost into the guard rail. Don’t we already know that I am always right??)

Anyway, this was just one of the times when tonsillitis came on like that, and I’d wake up feeling like death. Last year, I came down with tonsillitis again and it wouldn’t go away after 2 rounds of antibiotics. So they had to put me on another round and steroids. Now that was an experience. I only had to take thep rednisone for a few days, but holy crap! That shit messes with your mind! I would come to work and when someone brought me something to do, it would prompt me to just get ridiculously angry. So I would be like “why the FUCK do I have to do THIS? GOD!” Then in 2 minutes I’d feel so bad, I’d start crying. Then in another 2 minutes, I’d think it was all so silly and just laugh maniacally. I can’t have things messing with my emotions like that! I am already too messed up! I went to cut my avocado for lunch and realized that I didn’t have a knife in my drawer, which I thought I did. So I stared at it, and then cried. Meanwhile, there are knives in the kitchen. But I had the “’roid rage” so I couldn’t relax.

So my tonsils would go down enough that I could kind of breath again, but not ever did they go down to normal. It was like they were constantly on the verge of being like, “and you have tonsillitis...NOW! No, NOW!”

Between 1 of the rounds of antibiotics I went to an ENT who told me I needed to take Zyrtec. He thought that was perhaps why my throat was red. I couldn’t even really respond to that. It made me really angry. Not that there is anything wrong with taking Zyrtec, but I am really anti-medicating every damn thing without really even looking into what it is, and didn’t need Zyrtec! (This was also the guy who when I opened my mouth and said, “Ahh !” responded with “oh my! What big tonsils you have!” It was very fairy tale.) I told him I wanted to get my tonsils out, and he said that a the ripe old age of 26, I was “a bit old” for that kind of procedure and it would be horrible and painful. I pointed out the whole “I can’t breathe, when I go to sleep I have tonsil-induced apnea because they block my air passages, and my voice is new and NOT improved.” He didn’t buy it!

I“got better” after the 3 antibiotics and steroids, and then came down with tonsillitis again within about a month. Which I guess means that I was never really better. I had yet another round of antibiotics and steroids.

I went to my primary care doctor, who is also anti-medication. He was very pro-tonsil removal, and kept telling me that I had to get better so they could take the tonsils out.
Like I didn’t already want that?? Anyway, at this point I was being bounced between my doctor, my allergist, and Mr. “thinks-Diane-is-old” ENT.

So finally, finally, I found a new ENT. I went in and did the “AHH!” thing, and he looked in for 2 seconds and said, “You need to get your tonsils out!” They weren’t even infected at this point, so I knew I had found my match.

(Leigh can back me on what they looked like when they got infected—it was a really unpretty scene in there. When that happened, even the other ENT leaned towards removal. But when they shrank back a big I got a lot of “ehh, you’re old, do you really want to?” Stupid doctors.)

I scheduled my surgery for 2 weeks after my medications ended, and hoped and prayed I didn’t get sick. The doctor said you were supposed to be well and off medicine for 4 weeks, but that because of my jaded tonsil past, they were pushing it. (Hooray!)

The place was weird. You walked yourself up to the surgery room, carrying your own IV bag, and wearing that giant puffy head cover. I got myself into the bed, and when they strapped down my arms I went, “Woah, ok. I’m not as OK with this now”and they immediately started the drugs. So I started laughing and going, “It’s so funny to be here. There are a lot of people here! I feel like I’m on TV!”

Then I woke up hysterically crying (someone doesn’t do so well with anesthesia and this is her reaction all the time) and the nurse was really mean to me! I was freezing cold, probably because of the insanely low blood pressure I had. So I asked for more and more blankets, and then when I finally started to feel better, I asked her to take them off. She went “YOU were the one who wanted them?! Can you remember that?” Meanwhile, post-tonsillectomy voice isn’t all that menacing, so when I went, “Yeah!” and wanted to be rude, it came out as a pained, raspy grunt.

I also flip out after surgery that I need to get out of there. The anesthesia makes me feel totally panicked, and I asked when I could go. They made me drink a glass of water, and then said I could get up and get dressed. As soon as I moved, I felt really nauseated. I held my stomach so the nurse came back and went “oh, nauseous now? Why didn’t you tell me when your IV was still in?! Well, now I can’t do anything for you. And I won’t let you throw up in the car with your sister, because she will FLIP OUT. It will be all brown and gross from the blood you swallowed during surgery, so you better do it here.” Although her description made me want to vomit even more, I am one stubborn wench. So I sat down and told myself throwing up was not an option, and we were going home. The nausea passed.

The recovery really did suck. I sounded like a hearing impaired person and sucked down my liquid hydrocodone every 4 hours to the minute. It did take a week and a half to feel better, but now I feel AMAZINGLY better.

Anyway, turns out my surgery was supposed to only be about 45 minutes maximum,
and it took 2 hours. I asked the doctor at the post-op about that, and he said that my tonsils were “really gross.” Apparently from the infections, they were all necrotic tissue (ewwwww!) and not only were they so huge that he had a hard time working around them, but when he tried to cut into them, they just “disintegrated” so it was slow work.
This also means that nobody told me how much my tonsils weighed after the surgery, which my allergist said they should. Hmph. Too bad I couldn’t take the disgusting pieces and bring them back to that first ENT and say, “I call my ‘heartburn’ dead tissue bits. Here you go!”

Hot Tooth

The strangeness of events that happen to me extend even to the medical realm. I was going to this dentist that I really wasn’t a fan of, but he was on our insurance, and I was in high school, so I was in that “whatever” phase. He filled a cavity for me...

[wait, wait—total side note—is it my Irishness or something that makes me have the WORST teeth in the world? I mean, I brush. I may not floss every day, but I floss. I use mouthwash. And my teeth are practically falling out of my head! Ugh!]

...and the cavity never stopped hurting. In fact, it got a bit worse. I went to him and he was all, “just give it a bit more time, let me check it...yeah, it’s fine.” And I couldn’t eat on that side of my mouth for months. I was getting really into tepid foods because those were the only things that didn’t pain me. So I ended up going back, and to my great luck, he wasn’t in the office that day. I got to see his dental hire, this girl straight out of dental school who was working with him for the time being before going back for a specialty. So she sees me, and takes me seriously. No writing me off. No acting like I don’t know when my own tooth hurts.

She decided to open up the cavity and see what was going on. She warned me that there was a chance that she would open it up and then I’d have to come back for a root canal, but thought that more likely I would just end up having to get it refilled. So fine. I am sitting in the chair, all prone and slack-jawed. She is talking to me about something or other (which I HATE! Why do dentists do that to you?? Just to show the power they have over you? You can’t answer! You can’t even really nod! You have to just sit there and listen to whatever they feel like telling you and can’t talk back. Ugh!), and all of a sudden she starts yelling “HOT TOOTH! I GOT A HOT TOOTH IN HERE!”
I could do little more than widen my eyes and go “uht? UHT? Ot oot?” The dental assistant came rushing in, and as I had the spit sucker and multiple hands in my mouth, they let me know that my “hot tooth” meant I had to get the root canal immediately. They were rushing around prepping and frankly, it was making me a bit nervous.

(In case you are hoping for further information on the term “hot tooth,” I have done you the favor of pasting below the following paragraph from www.doctorspiller.com/root_canals:

“On the other hand, some people present with what we call a hot tooth. A hot tooth is one in which the nerve is alive, but badly inflamed. The tooth is generally already very painful [mine was!], especially to hot or cold stimuli [yes! YES!]. These are the ones that require multiple shots to get numb enough to work on painlessly. A vast majority of these will numb out with a few carpules of anesthesia administered in the normal ways. A few, however, are so inflamed and acidic that the anesthesia cannot diffuse into the nerve fibers well enough to totally destroy the sensations generated by the nerve in the tooth. In these cases, we may resort to intrapulpal anesthesia. In this procedure, we will drill very quickly directly though the top of the tooth into the nerve chamber (a few seconds is generally sufficient time) and deliver a quick squirt of anesthesia directly into the nerve inside the tooth [oh, we are so getting to this part and what THAT feels like in a few seconds]. It's fast, and always effective.”)

So back to me (isn’t that what blogging is all about?), I am sitting there dreading the whole procedure. I had never had a root canal before, but the things I heard weren’t really fabulous. So as they start setting up for this sudden, immediate root canal, I can do nothing but stare over to the painting of a sailboat on the far wall. I believe I still hate paintings of sailboats because they are ALWAYS in dentists’ offices. At least, my dentists had them. Perhaps they are supposed to be calming? Like the “lite fm” music that they always play. Because really, how can you not just relax and open wide when you hear Celine Dion?

The doctor (I have no idea of her name, hence the “doctor” and “she” business) then lets me know that what she has to do is directly inject the Novocain into the root itself, in order to do the root canal. I had some other Novocain that day and the aforementioned terrible tooth history, so I felt like it would just be more of the same.

Well. Not so much. I am a pretty quiet person; I think I go with the flow. She stuck that needle into the root of my tooth and I vocally protested, used one hand to grip the arm of the chair with a force that probably would have broken a bone, and flailed my free arm for about 3 solid seconds. Which doesn’t sound like a lot, but it really is. It was excruciating. And perhaps because this came before all that other crap I had to have, like getting all 4 impacted wisdom teeth out at the same time, this stands out as the SINGLE most painful dental experience of my life.

But then, I guess looking on the bright side (as I am so inclined to always do), after that 3 seconds of torturous pain, I had absolutely no further pain for the rest of the procedure. She did whatever had to be done, and I felt nothing. I practically dozed off.

And then that doctor decided that what she was going back to school for her as a specialty was root canals! So I’d like to think that my “hot tooth” kind of played a role in shaping her future.

My Murder of Crows

This person at work was telling me about how there is a black market out there for baby crows. People will find a nest, scramble up the tree, and while their cohorts wait in the car, they grab the babies while the mama crows are all cawing and pecking at them, menacingly circling their heads. (Doesn’t your job suddenly seem a little better?)


I kind of didn’t get it, but thought that may be because I am a bird hater. But I mean, of all the birds, crows are my favorite. I think I can just relate to them; they like shiny things, sound somewhat coarse, and mimic people. I read that when you sit there going “Hello! Hello!” the crow will eventually repeat it; then you move on to a new word, and soon you can have this verbal crow. Their life span is between 3 and 5 years; so it’s like a cooler version of the parrot (I mean, really—crow can kick parrot’s ass) without the serious commitment. You don’t have to worry about how your grandkids will feel about the crow. Also, you can get a bunch and call it a murder. Apparently scientifically they do call it a flock and it is more just poetic to call it a murder. But that doesn’t make it wrong!

So now I have this plan of getting a murder of crows, and having them do my bidding. I can sit home and be like “crow, get my slippers!” and send the crow into my room. I bet with their intelligence and sharp beaks, they can even open my beer. Or, I can be out somewhere and just yell, “Bring me home, my pretties!” and my murder will all swoop down and grab hold of me, lifting me into the sky and to home. Hopefully their talons won’t just tear my clothes off and I go falling naked from the sky. But my crows wouldn’t let that happen.

A mother's love...

So I was on the phone with my mother the other day. The very woman who gave me birth. And she says to me, “I pray for you ever day because you are going to hell.” So I pause for a moment and then ask, “Why?”

“You don’t go to church. So you are going to hell.”
Me: “So your God is a forgiving God, eh?”
“If you don’t go to church, you go to hell. Do you even believe in Christ?”
Me: “I believe that Christ makes a good story...”
“WHAT?”
Me: “I mean, I can’t believe in the bible, I think it was made up by a bunch of men. Stories to teach.”
“Have you ever even READ the bible?”
Me: “I took a course in bible studies in college. So I read parts.”
“Well, you are still going to hell.”
Me: “What about everybody else?”
“You and Cara are going to hell. Your other sisters go to church.”
Me: “But they don’t believe in it. They just go because they think they are supposed to, and feel like they have to bring their kids.”
“Well, they still go. When Jesus returns, he won’t bring your soul up to heaven.”
Me: “And is he going to take a plane here?”
“NO, he is going to come on a cloud.”
Me: “I studied clouds. They are just dust particles surrounded by water. You can’t float on that.”
“Jesus can.”
Me: “Then why wouldn’t Jesus use something faster? More efficient?”
“Maybe he will just show up. You know, appear.”
Me: “Like Star Trek?”
“I never saw Star Trek.”
Me: “Me neither, but they do that. They ‘beam’ places.”
“Then maybe, yes.”
Me: “Well, I guess I’ll just be in hell then. Thanks for the call.”

Moving truck horror

Right before I left for college my parents were selling the house in White Plains. They had nowhere to go, so most everything we owned was being put in storage. Now, the house wasn’t a mansion, by any means. But it was pretty roomy. There are 5 of us, and we all had our own room. There were even 2 apartments in the basement, and an attic full of crap. So we are talking a lot of stuff.

Moving day comes, and for some reason me and my closest sister are the only ones around to deal with the moving men. They load up this gigantic truck, and it was packed to the brim. They had this one really skinny guy in there at the end, cramming things all over. I think they couldn’t have fit another couch cushion in that thing. So we are supposed to head over to the storage place, meet them there, and then watch them unload everything. On the way, we realize that we need to buy a padlock, so we stop off for a few minutes to get one. As we are 1 block away from the storage place, we see the movers standing around on the side of the road. As my sister is saying, “What the hell are they all just doing standing there?” I look down to the right (I was in the passenger side) and go, “oh. Ohhhh.”

The moving truck had apparently not been able to make it up the hill and the brakes went out (personal opinion? They overloaded it) and when the truck started to roll backwards, all the guys jumped out of the cab and the truck slid back, then turned and lodged itself sideways in this tiny ditch. It was a perfect fit. The cab was sticking up, but the box part was practically made for this ditch. And it is the ONLY ditch on the entirety of 9A that I know of.

So we go over, park the car, and run down there, then call my dad on a pay phone (ahh, the simpler times before cell phones were everywhere) and tell him about it. He just got all quiet, then said, “...is there a fire?” And when I said no, he kind of relaxed. So there was nothing else we could do and we ended up heading home.

Basically, people from the area ended up getting lawn chairs and sitting on the side of 9A to watch this whole fiasco. (Really, why??) They got one of those construction vehicles to come and try to pry the box out of the ditch. But the truck was so heavy, so every time the back of the backhoe thing (backhoe? Is that right?) would lift up from the weight, and then it would drop the truck. So it was repeatedly slamming the truck, and all of our belongings, up and down in the ditch.

They put chains around the truck to try and lift it out, and the chains were rubbing and causing sparks. So they had to get the fire department there, and they were waiting with their hoses for the whole thing to just burst into flames. Luckily, that never happened.

Finally, it got to the point that they decided to just cut a hole in the side of the truck and slowly lift things out of it until there was enough weight gone to lift the truck out. At this point, my parents decided to just go out to dinner. (I was too young to realize it was much more about the wine than the dinner, but I’m betting that was the important part.)

My friend Leigh came with us out to dinner, and on her way home had to drive by the incident. Even though it sounds weird in the retelling, the whole thing was extremely dramatic; she sees the flashing lights, firemen, hoses, police officers, trashy people on lawn chairs, and calls me hysterically crying. “Diane!! I JUST SAW YOUR TV ON 9A!! IT IS JUST SITTING THERE IN THE RIGHT LANE! OH GOD! IT’S AWFUL!”

Eventually they got the truck out and as they turned it over, glass and mirror just came pouring out of the hole. The good side here was that my parents had this hideous, awful, nasty mirrored wall unit thing in the living room, which was completely destroyed. Heh.

So all of our stuff went into storage, but we had to get 2 storage rooms—1 was for the stuff that seemed to be ok, and 1 was for everything that was completely broken so that the insurance company could come and look at it and go “oh yeah. Broken.” And determine how much money our broken crap was worth.

So anyway. I have yet to hear of anybody else who has had a worse moving experience.

Seinfeld

I had to share my favorite quote from Seinfeld:

"Ah, you're crazy."
"Am I? Or am I so sane that you just blew your mind?"
"It's impossible!"
"Is it? Or is it so possible that your head is spinning like a top?!"
"It can't be!"
"Can’t it? Or is your entire world just crashing down all around you?"
"Alright, that's enough."

I like to say this to people.