Bein' Haved

Well, I'm still alive and kicking. Just barely. My head hasn't exploded yet. The Man checks my blood pressure about four or five times a day, and it's been high a couple of times, but 140ish high, not scary high. Most of the time it's been fine. I have an appointment to get an MRI next week, and then I go back to the doctor the week after that. So I'm off work for two weeks. An unexpected vacation. I'm under strict orders from The Man to do nothing. So I'm stuck on the couch all day, reading books and surfing the web. The tragedy never ends.

For the first time I have a rainbow collection of pills I have to take spread out all through the day. Pain pills, muscle relaxers, high blood pressure pills. All kinds of pills. I knew I was cool when I had to take a pill to counteract a side effect of one of the other pressure pills. When I get hot, I break out in red bumps like I'm covered in chicken pox. I've blogged about that before. One of my pills makes that worse. I decided to pamper myself with a nice hot bubble bath today and ended up looking like a dalmatian. What was I thinking.

I'm trying to keep upbeat about this whole pinched nerve thing. This is like unexpected research for the sequel to Sassafras. I haven't gotten that far here, but Joan gets shot and never fully recovers. She ends up with nerve damage in her right side. She can't lift her arm above her head, her hand is weak and her fingers are numb. Pretty much like me, except it's my left side, not my right, and I can lift my arm no problem, but the weakness and numbness is definitely there. It's strange being able to move my fingers, but they feel like they're asleep. Just lifting a large glass of water with my left hand hurts, but it's a weird, numb pain. Like I know I might drop it if I'm not careful. At least it's better now. Monday my whole hand was numb, even my forearm felt funny. In the sequel, Joan's trying to be a trouper about the whole thing, but Rick feels guilty and tries to be Superman to take care of her, whether she wants him to or not. Pretty much like real life. The Man is pampering me to within an inch of my life.

It's a good feeling.

Degenerate

I know what you're thinking. Two posts in two days and then I'm going to disappear for another couple of months. But you're wrong. I have a good excuse for not blogging lately. I'm a degenerate. Or at least, something in my neck or back degenerated and now I have a pinched nerve. For a few days I've had pain in my shoulder every now and then. If you've ever slept with your arm twisted funny and ended up sore and stiff you know what I mean. It wasn't constant and it wasn't unbearable. I didn't even like complaining about it because The Man has constant painful back pain. I was just a little sore.

Then Sunday I couldn't take it anymore. I was working, and my shoulder really hurt. It was really bothering me. I was getting grumpier and grumpier. I finally decided to go home about two hours early. It was either that or start telling customers where to go and what to do when they got there. I would have stayed, but I needed to take something for the pain. I have a little aspirin bottle in my purse full of assorted pills, but I wasn't sure what was what. I try to keep a couple of The Man's pain pills and happy pills with me in case he needs one while we're out somewhere, but I didn't want to end up taking one of his happy pills instead of one of my aspirins. I figured I'd go home and take a couple of pills and everything would be fine in the morning.

Wrong.

I got up in the morning and didn't feel any better. I decided to stay home, but my plan didn't quite work. I didn't stay home. I took a couple of pain pills and went back to bed. When I woke up again about 10 my left hand was tingly and numb. So it was off to the Urgent Care clinic. They made me wave my arms around and took some x-rays. I don't remember the exact diagnosis, something about a pinched nerve due to a degeneration of something or other. Oh, and my blood pressure was kind of high. The doctor gave me a note saying not to go back to work until Wednesday and said to go see my regular doctor.

Luckily, The Man already had an appointment with the doctor for today, so they were able to squeeze me in after him. For some reason the doctor was more worried about my blood pressure than the pain in my arm. Probably because my blood pressure was 220 over 110. He made me drink a huge glass of water to make my blood more watery. The next time they tested me it was down to 140 or so over something else. Out of the head exploding range but still high.

So now I have another appointment for tomorrow morning to see if my pressure is better. And if my arm still hurts I get to have an MRI. Whoo hoo!

Happy Dance

I'm doing a major happy dance right now. I finally got the CD I ordered of my favorite album of all time. The Fine Art of Surfacing by the Boomtown Rats is the CD I would want on a deserted island. I had an 8-track of it, then a cassette. I think I used to have it on vinyl, too, but I'm not sure. I played the cassette in my Mustang so often my boyfriend at the time got pissed at me once and threw the cassette out the window. I broke up with him shortly after that.

I searched E-bay for it once and could only find an old album. I didn't have a record player, but I bought it anyway. I have a record player now, but it's broken and I despaired of ever hearing my favorite songs again. Then a week or two ago I Googled it on a whim and found out they issued a remastered CD with bonus tracks that used to be B sides to singles.

Just in case I'm a total dinosaur and somebody reading this has no idea what a B side is, you used to be able to buy little records with just one song, called believe it or not a single. There were really two songs, one on each side, but usually only one side was a decent song and the other side, the B side, was a lame piece of shit. So comparing something to a B side is like saying it blows. I've only listened to the CD twice so far tonight, so I haven't come to a conclusion on the B side songs yet. They don't outright suck, I just don't recognize them. Each song on the original version is so familiar, and then suddenly there's these other songs I've never heard before.

On the other hand, the live version of Nothing Happened Today does officially suck. Just so you know.

Thoroughly In The Gutter

The other day a man called at work and asked me to look for a number in Phoenix. I thought he wanted me to look at his penis. I had an image of some dirty old man sitting in a recliner, holding the receiver down in front of his crotch. I'm glad I was too speechless to say anything until after he said something about Arizona and I realized he was saying Phoenix, not penis.

Then just yesterday someone called for a number in Stayton and I thought she said Satan. Maybe I need to clean my ears, or get a new headset.

On the bright side, today the manager type people came around and gave me little awards for being my group's MVP for January and February and an All Star Team Performer, whatever the hell that means, for April. Because I rock, you know?

Plus I got an Outstanding test call a month or so ago, and finally got to spin the prize wheel for it. The last two times I did that I won $25 gift cards to Quik Trip both times, but this time I won a Pirates of the Caribbean dice game. $25 worth of gas and snacks would be nice, but the game was surprisingly easy and we all had fun playing it after dinner tonight.