Me And My Big Mouth

You know how I said, back in December, that I wasn't sick or in crisis? Yeah, not so much, apparently. All during this past fall, leading up to Christmas, I've been feeling really tired, or "punk", as the old man likes to say. I thought it was just stuff going on; my aunt's illness, the insanity that was the first weekend of the Christmas holidays, the comings and goings, that were just wearing me out, making me feel down. After all, depression is my old friend, someone who comes to visit a couple of times a year and gives me the excuse to binge-eat. But being depressed doesn't account for the blowfish that's passing as my neck these days, or the low-grade fever that puts roses in my cheeks like I'm a Victorian damsel wasting from consumption.

So I went to the doctor. Okay, so I actually went to the Doc-In-The-Box, because I haven't had a proper doctor in a few years, yearly healthcare switch-a-roos making it hard to keep the same one, and I admit it: I hate going to the doctor.

I sat around for two hours in the dry desert heat that passes as room temperature in that place, reading Bradbury's "Something Wicked This Way Comes" (an apt title for the situation, no?). The nurse came in and stuck me with the needle three times, trying to get blood. When she couldn't get more than a splash, she decided I was dehydrated, and they sent me home. Yeah, that was worth it. With my two now-bruised arms, a fever, a goiter on my neck, and the Care Bears starting their delirium dance in front of my eyes, I shakily drove home.

It's at this point I decided a real doctor might be a good call, because Jesus Christ! Who the hell has to stick you that many times and still can't get blood? And who wouldn't be dehydrated in a place that felt like high summer in the Sahara?

Unfortunately, a real doctor's office won't just let you come on in - you have to get an appointment, so now I'm biding my time until next week. This entails a great deal of lying around and being grumpy, because A) I'm a lousy patient. It makes me batsa to do nothing and there is no such animal as Rest in a house with three men, two of whom never shut up, B) Even though making my bed is enough to wear me out right now, I can still manuever housework and dinner faster than my well-meaning husband, who freaks out if he has to scramble eggs, and oh-my-god it took him an hour to clean up the kitchen after a dinner of stir-fry, for crying out loud! No lie - he actually wrote down how to boil eggs. Even the kids were all, "What the...?" at that one.

So I guess the moral of this story is: oh hell, I don't know - does it have to have a moral? Should you put any stock in the words of a woman who is currently hanging out with the Swear Bears? (Kiss My Ass Bear just put I Love You Bear in a half-nelson - never could stand those insipid little pastel bastards - punch him again, man!)