Nancymarie’s House

Ed MacMahon: dead

Farrah Fawcett: dead

Michael Jackson: dead

This is the shittiest week of 2009 so far.

My health isn’t good either. I developed a nasty dry throat/swollen tonsils because of the huge differences between daytime and nighttime temps (25*C day/5*C night). I wake up with no blankets, freezing, my mouth, tongue and throat dried out and itchy. Last night, my right shoulder had a piercing pain in a muscle I think. I woke up at 6a this morning to radiating pain across both shoulders and under my right arm and right breast. Moving my right arm was impossible and my left arm could barely work without wreaking havoc. I stayed up for a bit, waiting for a chance to use the shower (ILs were hogging the water with showers and dishwasher). When I realized it would take hours for more hot water, I gobbled down a Tylenol (usually doesn’t work as a pain reliever for me) and went back to bed. I woke up every hour to roll over. I slept for 6 more hours before getting up in self defense against all the Michael Jackson tributes. I still have a twinge under my right shoulderblade, but it’s nothing compared to this morning.

I’d love a backrub.

Sunday night, we ate pizza for supper. Monday noon, we discovered the oven had been on for over 16 hours. I am amazed the house didn’t catch fire because of my forgetful stupidity.

I’m struggling to balance 2 RS P2P accounts. Men Shen is brand new to this world and it’s so hard for me to not play her all the time. Kitt Fox is steadily grinding on range and summoning, both take a long time to level. What I’m going to try out is playing Kitt M-F and Men on the weekends.

I found a snail climbing up the outside of a window. It’s so cool to watch it move along. I also have the hiccups, going on 20 minutes now. These are only going to go away on their own, I can tell.

We bought a new shower curtain. The old one had 2 holes ripped open, thusly it didn’t hang properly. The new one also has fish on it, but it’s a very dark blue and it’s kinda scary to take a shower now.

No more putting other people’s dirty dishes in the dishwasher/sink. If she/he/it leaves a plate or glass on the counter because they’re too fucking lazy, it’s damn well going to stay there. Since the ILs left for their cabin 4 days ago, Big L (MIL’s sister) and the BIL have dropped by and left used cups beside the kitchen sink. The dishwasher is empty, folks!

I’m getting to be quite a bitchy curmudgeon when dealing with sheeple. I just don’t have time to deal with someone else’s stupidity. Today was an invasion of the BIL and his girlfriend. They like to spend time here when the ILs are gone. Anyway, the gf asks me, “Is it hot enough for you?” To which I answered, “I haven’t been outside.” The Weather Channel says it’s 20*C at the airport and that’s, what, 70*F? I grew up in Iowa where the average spring temp is about 78*F and the average summer temp is cracking 100. So no, Miss I’m-Better-Thank-You-Because-I-Drink-Keith’s, it’s not fucking hot out. I really dislike this woman because she treats me like a child and calls me “hun” (the fake way, not a genuine nickname).

Can you tell I’ll be getting my period in a few days? Here’s something I want to know: why do I get so hungry just before my period hits?

One thing I could count on is getting the straight answer from my mom about any sort of weirdness with my body. With her death, I can’t call her up and ask about these lumps on my feet. I’ve had these lumps for as long as I can remember. They consist of 3 (left foot) to 4 (right foot) bumps of semi-firm flesh along the top of my arches on the inside of either foot. I prod them on occasion, checking for a pain reflex, then blissfully ignoring them until the next time my curiosity gets the better of me. Obviously they aren’t malignant or if they are, they’re taking their sweet time killing me. As Tycho Brahe once said, “I live in the fucking -future-!” I went to Firefox and looked up foot health in the Wikipedia. It contained no mention of foot lumps, so I did a general search of “lumps on side of foot” and found an informative article here. At the end of the article, I found 3 possiblities and self-determined my lumps are lipomas.

One mystery solved.

Last Sunday, I was shaving my right calf and discovered what I thought was a spider bite. After drying off, I looked at it closer and found it to be some kind of blister. It wasn’t painful and I typically don’t wear boots/socks that reach mid-calf. So, as is my want, I popped it. It leaked out some clear fluid, so I smeared medicinal ointment and slapped a Band-Aid on it. When I removed the Band-Aid a couple hours later, the blister had reformed and swelled. So, as is my other want, I ripped the top off to prevent any further sealing and swelling. When the air hit it, it burned like the dickens, so I cleaned it up and put on another Band-Aid. It’s been nice and scabby ever since, slowly healing and plotting revenge.

Yesterday, I notice 2 small, blister-like pockets an inch away from the initial wound. I’m trying to decide if the exponetial consequences are worth ripping off the skin of these new blisters. I’ve popped them many times, releasing scant amount of clear liquid, and they repay me by sealing up and refilling with fluid.

Empath had been reading from Asimov’s book, Yours, Isaac Asimov A Lifetime of Letters, and I am quite interested in it. It troubles me, though, that Asimov can be so humorous here and yet so dry and droll in his many published books and articles.

Am I surprised my doctor appointment was canceled? Not really. I expected it since Empath had to switch work shifts with a friend just so he could be there for me. The odd part is that the phone call from the office came at 8.45p, claiming the doctor is sick. I’m waiting for a call to reschedule, but I’m certain that will be delayed as well.

On the upside, the ILs have gone back to their cabin.

I was working on a BG2 story yesterday and I needed to play part of the game to get one line of dialogue correctly written. I didn’t have BG2 installed on this computer, so I had to do that before accomplishing anything. SoA went in fine, but I couldn’t find the ToB disc. I dug through all the cd cases before realizing it’s still stuck in my dead compy’s cd drive. Now it becomes a search for a paper clip to stick in the tiny hole so I can force open the drive. I do have a paper clip should anyone need it: contact me at 123 Lathin Place, Pango Pango. Fine, now I installed ToB, the official patch and baldurdash. The mods are next except I need winRAR to uncompress the files. No prob, just pop over to rarlabs and d/l it, right? Rofl, I *thought* I had the correct file – WinRAR x86 (32bit) 3.80. So I try uncompressing the portrait collection I like and wtf? I don’t have permission to open these files? o_O (Side note: I am using Vista which needs permission to breathe, but the notice came from winRAR, not Windows.) I tried all I could think of to get the zipped info out of lock and key, but nothing worked (obviously).

I’ve played BG2 before with no mods. It’s quite boring after one playthru. So the long of it is without those zipped files installed, I can’t play BG2 with the party I have in the written story. It totally pissed me off that I couldn’t open the rar files by myself, especially when I could do it last year. Because of my rage, I deleted the blog based on the story, the story from my compy, the Gmail account used to access Blogger, all the zipped files and uninstalled BG2. I went to delete the shortcut from my desktop, agreed that I wanted to delete it and viola! my recycling bin is gone. Again wtf? o_O Even Empath has no clue how I did that. He did manage to get it back for me. Crap, this reminds me I gotta take the Rena of Candlekeep links off my other blogs.

The ILs returned from their trip and didn’t say anything about the lawn! And here I wasted all that angst for nothing. Boo!!!!!!

ION, SO@24 is stopping blogging. I’ll miss his insight to the male perspective, but not the white text/black background layout.

On the medical front, I have an appointment with my eye doctor on Wednesday afternoon. I’m not looking forward to that. Yucky eyedrops. I’ve been having way too many headaches for the last month. They’re weird since they are like mini explosions sparking from the center of my brain. I do get eye strain from watching the compy screen all day, but that’s so different. I had a bad ache in Walmart on Friday. Seriously felt like I would fall down. The really sucky part is I can’t read anything with my right eye unless I get super close to the words or use my left eye to read it. Oh yeah, I have to call the doctor to comfirm the appointment; I’d written it down a month ago, but lost the sticky note the next day.

The MIL is *into* how her yard looks. It has to be raked free of grass clippings after each mow. Guess what happens to those clippings? That’s right, they go to the dump along with the household garbage. This is the only place I’ve lived where the yard needed raked. Yeah, I’ve mowed yards that were tickling my calves as I pushed the mower, but they sure as shit didn’t get raked. The clippings got left on the ground and, surprise! NOTHING HAPPENED TO THE GRASS.

Today, I wanted to mow the lawn even though the MIL will bitch about the clippings. The wind was with us, kicking up to 40kph and blowing the loosened grass down the street. It’s quite a workout especially when I realized I was using an old mower with no power. Empath took over twice when I waved a hand for relief (mower won’t shut off until it runs out of gas). I was covered with bits of grass and my shoes were green, but I enjoyed it. Fuck MIL. Let her rake up the yard or better yet, mow it her damned self.

The best thing happened while I was shoving the mower around. A snail fell out of the dogberry tree by the deck. Empath thought it was dead at first, but it poked out of its shell and righted itself. After mowing and putting the machine away, we watched the snail crawl around the deck. I suggested offering it a puddle of water to drink. Empath poured out some water and the snail went right for it. We tried to get it to crawl onto something so we could move it back to the tree, but it refused our help.

When I finally got cleaned up, we went out for lunch at DQ, intending on ice cream as a treat. We ate basket meals and noticed the Tim Horton’s across the parking lot was celebrating Camp Day. I mentioned I still had a fiver in my wallet and suggested buying a pack of Timbits instead of ice cream. Empath agreed and we walked over. As we stood in line, one of the employees asked if I wanted to buy a balloon for a dollar. I said sure and picked out a green one. When it was popped, the girl informed me I’d won free ice cream. I was stunned, thinking, Tims sells ice cream now?, but it was a coupon for a free two liter of ice cream from a grocery store. After buy the Timbits, we drove to Sobey’s and picked out mint chocolate chip with fudge.