I'm falling apart. I'm 26 years old, I eat well, exercise (commute) daily, and yet I know many of the doctors in the health center (and beyond) by their first names. Pathetic. Gradually, the permanent ("I don't know what else can be done for this") maladies are building up. First it was the freak heart that decides to beat really slowly and skip every now and then, preventing enough oxygen from going to the brain. For those of you who are not science majors, this is a bad thing. Dan can tell you that it results in a glazed look, followed occasionally by spaghetti legs and hurtling of the heaviest part of the body in the direction of gravity. I have had a near miss with the side of a bathtub, and a not so near not so miss occasion with our kitchen table. It's not fun to peel yourself off the floor wondering why you have an egg on the back of your head. So that's the freak heart. Not much to do about it, unless I 'want' to put in a pacemaker. Not really an option right now with homeland security the way it is.
The second most recent malady is the shoulder tendonitis, caused by (ahem) grinding roots in a pycnometer. (science major or not, I don't feel like explaining this one period). I got a nice little steroid shot for that, but now the elbow on the other arm is experiencing similar pains, during certain 'strenuous activities' such as pulling the covers over me at night.
It probably doesn't help that I finally must admit that I am becoming somewhat addicted to coffee--it all started by joining the labmates when they had their afternoon cup or two. I started drinking it because our lab was freezing and it provided some nice warm comfort during the winter. THen spring and summer came, and I wondered why the heck I would get these nasty headaches around 3:00 pm every day. These headaches were highly correlated to the lack of coffee. I started off by doctoring it up with lots of cream and sugar, then decided that cream and sugar was bad for me, so I was left with the coffee alone. One of these days I guess I will have to break the habit, but certainly not while I'm in grad school... Actually, I have always envied people who smoked, because when they're stressed out, they KNEW what they had to do to calm down. For the first time in my life now, I have something that can (sometimes) give me the boost I need at 3:00 pm...OK, maybe it just staves off the headaches, but whatever works, right? A good old-fashioned Twix bar can also do the trick, but like I said, sugar is not good for you.
OK, so it's clear that I have nothing else to say--I've been waiting for Dan to finish with a Western blot (a series of papers that you stack one on top of the other to see whether you have a certain protein or not...cool, huh?). He said he would be done in '10 minutes', which is now 22 and counting. Not that we're pressed for time or anything--we're off to Wal-Mart (gag) to buy some canning jars to make spaghetti sauce with the buttload of tomatoes we have at our house now. We made approximately 12 liters of kickbutt salsa last night, and hopefully the spaghetti sauce will turn out OK too. I'm not sure when we became all domesticated and stuff, but I'd say we're well on our way to a good civilized midwestern household (minus the kids part). I even started crocheting another afghan this past weekend. Yes, this is number x in the line of x-1 afghans that I have made over the years. I don't know how many I have made (too many to count), but this is the first one that I'm actually using a pattern for. Impressive, eh? It's actually a pattern in a book called "Vanna's afghans all through the house". Who knew that she was that talented?? She can clap AND crochet! Wow.
The call has come in. Dan is done. Yay. Time to go to Wal-Mart. Ciao.