1/20/11 – Thursday

I have no Crooked Acres pictures today, unfortunately, so you’ll have to put up with me yammering about a variety of topics, and then cat pics.

But I know that’s how you like it, you naughty readers.

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On Tuesday morning, I left the house at 6:30. I had an appointment at the hematologist’s office in South Huntsville to have blood drawn (they have a lab on-site in the office) at 8. When kittens are going to the adoption center, I like to take them as early in the day as possible so that they can have several hours to adjust to being in a cage and having people walk by, and all that. So I got to Petsmart, got the kittens settled in, and then headed to the hematologist’s office. I got there right on time, went and signed in, and then settled in the waiting room with my iPod.

People were moving through the waiting room at a pretty quick pace, so I figured I wouldn’t be waiting long to be called back to the lab. Eventually, a small group came in, sat down, and then the woman went back for her treatment, leaving a grandfather and grandson behind. I don’t know how old the boy was – I’m as bad at aging humans as I am at aging kittens – but I’d guess maybe 5ish. He had some toy that looked like a pretend laptop, and was playing a spelling game on it. After he’d played a couple of games, his grandfather asked if he was hungry, and they went off in search of a vending machine.

They came back a few minutes later, and Grampa opened a bag of chips and handed it to the boy.

I glanced at the clock on my iPod to see the time, and thought judgmental thoughts about feeding a little boy potato chips at 8:30 in the morning.

And then I thought “WTF, it’s 8:30? What the fuck is the holdup?”

(Yes, yes, I see you there, your hand up in the air, all “Ooh, ooh, Mister Kott-air!” No, Horseshack, I’m sorry, I DID have an appointment (I called the day before to double-check) and the receptionist DID see me, because after I signed in, she told me I didn’t have a co-pay. So sit the hell down and let me tell the story.)

The little boy, who had a case of ants in his pants, fidgeted all over the place, then knelt down on the floor so that he could use his chair as a desk. The trumpeting sound of a fart came a moment later, and he laaaaaughed and laughed. I glanced up at him, and it was all I could do not to laugh along with him, but I managed to keep a straight face.

(Can I help it if farts are funny?)

For the next half hour, people kept coming into the waiting room and were then called back within three or four minutes. There I sat, getting more and more pissed off, and at the one hour mark, I got up and walked out of that goddamn waiting room and vowed never to return. When I got to the parking lot, I called Fred on my cell phone, and as I stomped across the parking lot my voice got louder and louder, and I don’t even remember what I said, but there were many many instances of “fuck” thrown in. (This is notable because – probably contrary to how y’all think I am – I don’t generally swear in public, not unless it’s under my breath to the person next to me, and not unless I actually KNOW the person next to me.)

Fred agreed that they were motherfuckers and told me to go get something to eat. So I hung up the phone and continued my mini come-apart in the privacy of my car.

My doctor referred me to the hematologist/ oncologist in the Fall of 2009, and I’ve been to that office probably 7 or 8 times. Never once – except for a couple of the lab appointments – have I gotten out of there in less than an hour and a half. One memorable time, I spent three goddamn hours waiting to see the doctor, and saw him for a grand total of about seven minutes.

Now, I KNOW that my life is not such that I have a large number of SUPER important things to do, and I know my time is NOT SO VALUABLE to anyone but me. I know that I don’t have cancer and perhaps my little iron-level check is not so very important in the grand scheme of things, but JESUS GODDAMN MOTHERFUCKING CHRIST ON A TASTY RITZ CRACKER it is incredibly fucking offensive to me that EVERY SINGLE GODDAMN TIME I’ve been to that office, they’ve let me COOL MY FUCKING HEELS for hours and then come in WITHOUT APOLOGY and spent the minimum amount of time required so that they can bill my insurance company hundreds of dollars for the honor of being in the presence of a hematologist/ oncologist (oh, except wait – SOMETIMES I get to cool my goddamn heels for hours and saw the nurse instead. I wonder if they charge the same whether I see the doctor or his nurse? Bet they do.) and I have fucking SAT THERE AND SMILED AND TAKEN IT AND RETURNED TO THAT GODDAMN OFFICE REPEATEDLY.

Ladies and gentlemen, may I offer to you: FUCK THAT SHIT.

So I pulled myself together, and I went and got myself an egg mcmuffin, and I headed to wherever the hell I went next.

Where the hell did I go next?

Oh, right. I went to my gynecologist’s office to pick up estrogen patch samples. Because when I was there last week, she sent me to have blood drawn to have my estrogen levels checked since I’d taken myself off the estrogen. As it turned out, I have just about no estrogen in my body (“I don’t know why you aren’t having hot flashes,” she said to me on the phone. I don’t know, maybe not everyone who goes through surgical menopause has hot flashes? Perhaps?) and blah blah blah SO YOUNG and blah blah blah IF YOU WERE 53 INSTEAD OF 43 and blah blah blah lowest dose of estrogen, let’s give it a try.

So I picked up the patches and drove to Petsmart to see how the Bradys were doing, and then I went to Bed, Bath & Beyond and browsed for a bit. I headed into Madison, and stopped by TJ Maxx to kill some time, and then I headed to my Primary Care doctor’s office for my 11:30 appointment.

I got to that appointment at 11:15, told the lady at the desk that I knew I was early, paid my co-pay, and had barely sat down when they called me back to be weighed and have my blood pressure checked and all that. My doctor came into the room about five minutes late AND SHE APOLOGIZED FOR MAKING ME WAIT, and began the physical.

Since I’d seen the gynecologist the week before and am having a mammogram next week, it was mostly a matter of going down the checklist and making sure everything was in order before she had me undress and did a skin check. She recommended that I wait until after my plastic surgery next month to restart the estrogen patches because starting them can cause breast tenderness and increase clotting, and you don’t want that to happen during surgery. So wait I shall.

Then she said “And you’re having iron infusions, right?” and I said “Well, now, THAT we need to discuss.”

I told her of my issues with that particular doctor’s office, and I got all worked up again, only I didn’t swear a single time (I bet you didn’t know I could do that, did you?) and I finished with “Since the iron infusion in the Fall of 2009, I’ve been fine. Can’t you monitor my iron levels?”

“I certainly can,” she said. “And if they drop and you need to see a hematologist again, I’ll refer you to another office, because there are plenty of them around!”

I really really love my doctor. A lot. She is The Awesome.

She said that ordinarily she’d have blood drawn, but since I’m going for my preop appointment with the plastic surgeon on Friday, she’d just give me a lab slip, and they could do all the blood tests at once.

Then I ran over to Publix, bought a ton of stuff, and came home.

It was almost 1:00 when I got home, and BOY was the house quiet without a big bunch of Bradys running around. Alice was curled up in a cat bed on the guest bed and looked very satisfied with herself. I spent the rest of the day trying to recover from the rage headache that had sprung up as I stomped out of the hematologist’s waiting room, took a nap on the couch, and did very little else.

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I got up early yesterday morning, puttered around the house, and decided that it was time to make the vanilla bean scones I’ve been thinking about making since I first saw the recipe last week. I made them, got them in the oven, and then decided to go ahead and make the macaroni and cheese with shrimp I was planning to have for lunch. (I had half a vanilla bean scone with my breakfast, and it was blah and bland and just generally a great big motherfucking disappointment.)

This mac and cheese with shrimp is what I had to buy a ton of stuff for at the grocery store on Tuesday. It takes half a pound of feta, half a pound of gruyere (which was so expensive I wanted to cry, but I was dying to try the recipe), fresh parsley, and fresh dill. It was an involved sort of recipe that required shredding of the gruyere, crumbling of the feta, making a white sauce, making a topping of panko bread crumbs, and chopping the hell out of parsley and dill.

After all that work, the shredding, the chopping, the yanking the tail off the shrimp and fighting off every cat in the house who went on alert when they smelled shrimp, after all that, the mac and cheese with shrimp?

It kinda sucked. There was too much pasta, not enough shrimp, and the fact that there was lemon zest in the recipe made it just taste plain weird. I usually like lemon quite a lot, but it didn’t taste right in this particular dish.

I ended up picking out the shrimp and eating that and a little of the pasta, and dumping a lot of pasta in the pig bucket.

All in all, a very disappointing day on the cooking and baking front. The pigs really liked their vanilla bean scones and cheesy pasta, though!

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Lisa, who was doing adoptions Tuesday night and adopted Marcia and Cindy out, sent me this picture of the boys in their cage (and that’s Jan in the front, all “Why are you looking at THEM instead of petting ME?”)

Are they not the cutest little snugglebugs?

“Well, well, well. Now that those little brats are gone, I guess you’re stuck taking pictures of ME, lady. WOE IS YOU.”

More pictures of the Bradys from my hard drive:

Jan in action.

Greg, keeping an eye on things.

Cindy, watching the birds. You should have seen her tail whipping back and forth!

Would you look at Cindy, being all bratty? “Lady, we is tryin’ to sleep! You go away!”

Playful Bobby. Who says he can’t entertain himself?

I love it when they put their ears back like that.

“Who, me? Playin. With this toy. Why you ask?”

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“I can’t believe you took that hussy Jan Brady away from me. Who’m I gonna snuggle with NOW?”

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Joe Bob, resting up and conserving his energy for picking on Stinkerbelle.

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Previously
2010: THAT DAMN MAN LOVES TO KEEP ME OFF-BALANCE.
2008: I tend to assume if someone wants to know something specific, they’ll ask.
2008: No entry.
2007: No entry.
2006: I think I took my first steps toward being an adult yesterday.
2005: Who the fuck knew?
2004: A Kitchenaid mixer!
2003: “My ass. Please let him go for my ass, and not my throat or my eyes, I’ve got plenty of ass to spare.”
2002: No entry.
2001: No entry.
2000: Double ear infection, thankyouverymuch.