My Special Talent

I have a special talent. (No, not like Steve Martin in "The Jerk") When someone close to me gets sick, or get some sort of medical condition, I get it too. No, I don't really get it, but I produce very real symptoms.

It started years ago when my mother got insomnia -- I stopped sleeping. Then, CR had her pap come back bad. Me too! But she wouldn't go back and get another pap, so mine kept coming back bad. I told my doctor, "Look, its just because I'm upset with my sister..." She said, "Yeah, ok. We're still gonna do this." I ended up having to have surgery with that one.

Over the years "close" has come to mean more of a proximity thing, rather than an emotional one. I say this because one year CR's second husband got hemorrhoids -- the painful kind. Poor thing, couldn't have happened to a nicer guy. [cough, cough] Now, I'd had those before, but they were never painful. UNTIL he had them. OMG, that was an awful week.

One year, a woman I worked with had several cysts develop in her breasts. She deliberately didn't tell me because she knew about my special talent. Guess who found a lump anyway? I was freaking out at work that day and I told her about it. She just hung her head and said, "Who told you?" Who told me what? "So nobody told you?" I felt like we were in an Abbott & Costello routine. Who told me what? "OMG. How do you do that?" I don't know which one of us was more surprised.

If only I could figure out how to make money with this "talent", ya know?

Anyway, my friend and office neighbor, JL, has been having problems with vertigo for a few weeks now. I had a stray thought around the time I started having that eye tick, "Thank goodness I didn't 'catch' vertigo..."

So today, JL was in my office and we were chatting. She mentioned that she wasn't able to get an appointment to go see the ENT for her vertigo for 2 weeks. Then she mentioned something about her eyes shaking.

My eye tick may have subsided... OMG, I just remembered something. I "caught" the eye tick from a woman I worked with years, and years ago. I'll have to email her. She'll probably get a kick out of that.

But I digress... I haven't had my crazy meds in over a week. Too busy with E. So when the eye shaking thing started, I figured it must be some sort of side effect from stopping that med so abruptly. (I finally managed to get them picked up last night, but then I forgot to take them this morning.)

So when JL said, "shaking eyes" I was like, "Are you friggin' kidding me? Is THAT what that is??!?" JL thought it was SOOO funny -- sympathetic vertigo. Woo-hoo. Can you imagine living in California with this? Is that an earthquake? No, it just looks like an earthquake. Fun times.

My Horoscope

Here's my horoscope today:

No one can question your commitment, but can you achieve something of lasting value? That remains to be seen. You are more likely to make an impression if you allow your passions to lead you. Do what you enjoy, not what others expect of you.

Dear Horoscope People:

We Cancers are literal people. I've got a lot of shit going on in my life. I need to know exactly which part of it you are referring to. Committment to what? Make an impression on whom? Details, people. I need details!

Car Care Tip from E

The last 2, or maybe 3 cars I've owned have had 2 trip meters. Generally we use one for the mileage between fillups. But the other I rarely use.

E has been changing my oil for a few months now, and he uses that 2nd trip meter to clock the mileage between oil changes.

I thought that was a great idea and decided to share it with all of you.

Facebook

Hey, I forgot to mention, I'm on Facebook now. Look me up!

General Update

I hope everyone and their property fared well during the recent torrential rains. While I personally didn't have any property issues, I apparently missed the memo that some of the towns between my house and work were built on a flood plain. Getting home was a challenge last Friday night. Here's some pics of the flooding nearby:

http://www.kansas.com/static/slides/091208flooding/
http://www.kansas.com/static/slides/091208readerspics/

My apologies for the wait between updates, but there really hasn't been a lot going on. E is doing really well. My mother called to talk to him the other day and she said she had a really nice discussion with him. He was polite and funny and I could tell by her tone that she was pleasantly surprised.

E actually called CR on her birthday. While I did remind him, I sort of expected him to send her a text message. I talked to her later in the day and I could tell she was really surprised he called too. He talked to her for a few minutes and then he abruptly ended the conversation with, "Well, I've got things to do so I've gotta go." In the old days he would have just hung up on her. So he's still making progress.

He's also been taking the responsibility to re-schedule his counselor appointments. Its only happened a couple of times, but that's still a big step forward.

This week, he has an appointment to see if he qualifies for "vocational rehabilitation". I'm not 100% sure what that is, but everyone I've talked to about him says it will be good for him, so we're going. But he also has an appointment with his med dr. that same afternoon. I told him I can't take off work for 2 appointments in one day so he can either reschedule the med dr. or he can go by himself. He said he'd go by himself.

Actually the new cocktail of drugs has been working really well for him. He doesn't have huge mood swings. He doesn't get angry and fly off the handle. He jokes around and laughs a lot.

Now if only I could find a way to pay for his meds, life would be great!

Photo Phun Results

From earlier in the week, here's some of my creations using the links I posted.

E's graduation pic, cartoonized.
(BTW, he loves this picture!)

An old picture of C used for a 1952 yby photo. With some sort of skin condition.

C again, yb-ized to 1962. Looking eerily like my mother.



An old pic of the little guy used for the 1952 lady. Same skin condition. Doesn't "she" look surprised?
"Hey, does anyone know why I'm wearing pearls... and a dress?"


1976... on the short bus.
My co-worker said,
"Stop it! You're using the yb-izer for evil now."
At least he's not wearing pearls.

Photo Phun

I stumbled across a couple of links that are a lot of fun to play with (in case you don't read my gadget news):

Turn any picture into an old yearbook photo: http://www.yearbookyourself.com

Turn any picture into a cartoon: http://mintywhite.com/tech/freeware/befunky-cartoonizer-turns-your-pictures-into-cartoons/

Make your own avatar: http://www.buscarmessenger.com/avatars.swf

Animate yourself: http://www.gizmoz.com

Bought a new fridge!

Having E living with me these past few months has shown me that the fridge I had was a single-person's fridge. There just wasn't room for the my science experiments, plus his science experiments, plus the regular food, plus left-overs. And the freezer... fahgedaboudit.

So I bought a 25cu behemoth.


E measured the opening, with the old fridge in it at 36.5" So I thought, "Great! The width won't be a problem." HA! For whatever reason, when we got home that night, I decided to re-measure the width. Apparently E doesn't know how to work a tape measure very well because I measured the width as 35.75"

Wanna guess the width of the fridge? Yep, 35.75"

Here's the picture of the clearance.


That's cabinet + ZERO CLEARANCE + fridge.

And its a very smart fridge, too. As we were putting the food back in the fridge, I kept sticking my hand in there, going, "I don't think it's getting cold." Turns out, it wasn't. It doesn't try to cool things down when the door is open.

Also, again whilst loading it up, suddenly the light went out. "What kind of crap is this?" We thought maybe the light bulb had jiggled loose during transit, but couldn't get the cover off because it was so flippin' hot. Seriously, the light bulb should have lasted more than 10 minutes.

Later, after the door had been closed a few minutes, I'm getting ready to put more stuff in there and VIOLA! The light is on! Not a dead bulb at all. Just a signal, "Hey! Moron! Shut the door already!!"

Best Ice Cream EVER!

If you're having a craving, look for Bryer's Chocolate Cookies & Cream. It's heaven on earth!

But you need to scope it out in advance. I've only seen it at ONE Dillon's store in my area.