The Geek's Meow

Yesterday was a trip to the LA County Fair, to see if I could stand a day of being semi-active.  So easy strolling, crass consumerism, piggy races, and best of all snacks!

We started the day with a margarita – they no longer come in the absurdly large shaker containers, despite the pictures showing said containers.  It was mixed weak, and I was disappointed.  Sure, blood thinners helped me feel it a little, but over all less impressive than years previous.

Then it was time for real food – so burgers and fries were the order of the day thanks to the smoky delicious smell coming off their outdoor grill.  Good burger, lacking in quality toppings.  Fries were like thicker cut McDonald’s fries, that’s the only way to explain them – they had that unique flavor I have only found at McDonald’s until now.

Indian fry bread – we got the garlic butter and parmesan cheese topped one, and it was UH-MAZE-ING.  Pools of delicious garlic rich butter, fried and flaky bread, tasty salty cheese contrast.  This is going to become one of my Fair staples.

Icees!  I got the lemonade, which had a fluffy texture that was unlike most other frozen lemonades.  The sour watermelon apple was just like a jolly rancher.  I skipped cherry because I can get it elsewhere, but I really enjoyed the lemonade for it’s sweet uniqueness.

Brief break for the piggy races.  Out of the 5-6 animal races our team won three times, one pig, one turkey, and I think the third was the duck race?  It was a whirlwind and I took my pain pill right after, so my memory is a little fuzzy.

Post piggy races was water for meds, and a shared “porakbello kabob” – mushroom (not a portabello, though) stuffed with gouda, wrapped in bacon, and cooked on the grill.  The concept is amazing – if any of the ingredients would have been better quality it would have been great.  It was still very good, but I could taste the lack in all three major elements.  Better re-created outside the fair, but a fantastic inspiration.

Quick stop for spiked lemonade, just what I needed.  A bit of rum in some lemonade, refreshing!

Then there was Dippin’ Dots ice cream – I have loved this concept since I was a small and gullible child, and I will never stop.  I got Moose Tracks, which was vanilla dots, mini peanut butter cups, and fudge chunks.  Over-frozen ice cream pellets are totally white trash food, and I don’t care in the least I will always love them.

Oh sure, there was shopping and talking and other fun stuff, but the food, man the food is why you go to the Fair!  (And the comical hats help – I returned home with a sparkly trilby perched on my noggin, a sign of a successful day.)

I’ve read articles, heard friends stories, so I am well aware that the medical profession takes reports of pain from women less seriously.  But I didn’t realize it had happened to me until well after it was over, and a friend still had to point it out.

Monday afternoon I developed a sharp stitch of pain in my right side.  I had no reason to believe it was serious, so I went on with my relaxing day – it was a holiday after all!  But after a while the pain was spreading up, taking in my lower rib cage and hurting when I would inhale deeply… so any time I needed to sigh at the game I was playing being dumb it hurt!  In the early evening I was tired from hurting and went to go lay down – BAD IDEA.  Laying down made my pain levels soar, and even being back up things still felt terrible and it was hard to breathe normally, so I got a ride to urgent care.  By this time the pain had moved up into my shoulder as well – I couldn’t think of anything that could cause pain like this.

On the way to urgent care, the pain got a little less.  I could communicate in full sentences, breathe a little better, and urgent care always takes some time to call you in.  So by the time they did, the pain was at a manageable 4 on the 1-10 pain scale.  This was unlucky for me, because they wanted to know where I was on the pain scale “right now” and when I tried to clarify that it had been MUCH WORSE there was not a flicker of acknowledgement.  They kept asking about what I could have done to cause an injury to my shoulder – did I lift anything heavy or move something?  Over and over, focusing on the shoulder, only doing a cursory touch to the pain areas, and still ignoring the side even though it hurt worse to the touch.

I got a pain injection (very clearly specified as non-narcotic) and a prescription, so they basically treated it as a strain that affected the lumbar area.  They also emphasized the prescription was non-narcotic, like I was some one trying to score opioids.   No what to do to follow up, just “this will work” and a complete dismissal of my point that there was likely no injury and that the pain was bad, worse when I tried to lay down.

A sleep-light and pain-heavy night followed.  Groggy, I got dressed for work.  Pain was back down to that magic 4 by the time I got ready to go, so I headed out to the office.  Getting off the freeway, the spike started.  Driving in, parking, up up up it goes!  I tried to lift my laptop bag and find the pain is too severe, I can’t do it.  So I go into my building and find a random coworker to find me the nearest ER covered by my insurance, Kaiser.  With her help I locate it and get back on the road, all the while the spike seems to have peaked and is going back down, so much so that at my arrival to Kaiser I wonder if I’m being a big baby and should just go back to work, or drive back down to a hospital near home.

I compromise, and go to urgent care instead of the ER.  I can breathe, with pain, but it at least feels possible by this time,  I can talk to explain that the pain is in my side, extends up into my shoulder cuff, and is causing shortness of breath.  So I get into the waiting room.

And as time goes by, the world becomes agony.  By the time they call my name I’m shuddering with pain, breathing is a struggle, and walking is torture.  They take me right to the room/cubby instead of the nurse’s station, because they don’t want to move me any more than they have to by looking at me.  The doctor is there pretty quickly, and I stammer out my issues.  They keep asking why the previous doctor treated it like a strain/injury – I honestly can’t say!  I’m hyperventilating from the pain, so they’re doing everything they can to get me comfortable while still examining me.

One episode of House, MD later (It’s gallstones, we can’t find the patient but it’s not gallstones, we found her and completed a cat scan, we lost her in the system again and we aren’t doing the chest x-ray, oh hey it’s an infected mass on the liver and pneumonia we need to admit her, nah just pneumonia, wait, is that a blood clot?) and sometime the next late morning we get a very scary, and possibly fatal, diagnosis.  That’s right, by overlooking my pain reports, that doctor Monday night could have killed me if I tried to follow his advice instead of visiting again.

I’m on the way to recovery now, after a minor procedure and a very scary time since they found the clots.  I’m finally home and on the meds I need, with follow ups scheduled and all is well.  For all I know the doctor Monday was tired, dismisses everyone’s pain, or he heard shoulder and never listened past that – but it’s also very possible that it was because I am female that he felt I was overreacting to the current pain levels and wanted me to go home and get over it.  That is terrifying to me.

I just spent the last three days in the hospital.  I’m taking this week off from posting.  See you guys next week!

Another month down, successfully made the posts I planned to make.

Now to discuss with the brain weasels – did I just scrape by, or was I actually successful?  If it’s the former, then I only get template cards from something like VistaPrint or Staples.  However if I have achieved true success, then I need to find someone who can design a card for ‘The Geek’s Meow’ that’s truly unique for me.

Ultimately, I am working on building a brand, even at the small scale.  I think it’s worth it to find someone who can work with me to get some vague ideas from the cobwebby corners of my brains onto a 3.5 x 2 inch rectangle.  After all, we got my brain to work well enough with my tattoo artist to get those beautiful kitty cats onto my shoulders!

I love costumes.  Most kids got to really go for it for Halloween (or not, if they got the store-bought plastic approximation of a costume) but that was it.

Because I did amateur modeling, I got costumes year round.  Some were absurd, like turning a giant cardboard box into a present costume for the holidays.  Some were Disney – I probably had just about every princess at some point in time, even Jasmine.  Except Sleeping Beauty, although Aurora was my favorite I can’t remember having her dress.  Classy, silly, involved, simple, all over the place.  Cowboys, sequined gowns, animals of all stripes.  Theater kept that going as I grew up.

This has not left me as an adult.  My friends throw themed parties.  My 30th was “Punk” themed, for whatever punk meant to you – Steampunk, punk rock, you punks get off my lawn?  And Halloween – oh, some years it’s PJs and a silly hat (made for a great skunk outfit), or the year I wore a ridiculous in-joke at work that I couldn’t explain to anyone who didn’t work for my company, to getting Game Master robes made for World of Warcraft GMs.  I love it.  Dress me up and let’s be silly!

Last year I had all the pieces for a good Carmen Sandiego costume – just to find out I was going to the Philippines for work.  Internet said they didn’t really celebrate Halloween (not true, at least not where I was) and a trench coat, long sleeves, gloves, slacks, fedora, etc – not ideal for the weather I was going to encounter.  So now I still have all those pieces, but because the trench coat is getting worn as, well, a coat shortly before Halloween I don’t want to rely on it for the costume.  So an excuse for a new costume!  And I have a GREAT idea…

BUT WAIT!  Halloween is on a Monday, and I have a psychiatrist appointment that morning – my shrink is going to be okay with me showing up in a costume, of course, but that crunches my morning timeline a bit.  Okay, annually my gamer group throws a Halloween bash the Saturday before Halloween – but so far no invites are out and if it is the 29th, that’s also the World Finals for League of Legends, and I have a possible out-of-town guest coming for that event (no confirmation if he can make it yet – see my issues with Planning).  If my guest can’t make it, maybe I’ll rehome my tickets, but I really am not sure.  Okay, there’s still Friday the 28th where I know there’s at least one Halloween party to which I’m invited… but there’s also a “save the date” hold on that date that may come with a faery theme… my costume has nothing to do with fairy/faery anything.  No details on time or anything, so planning brain is spinning wanting to know what and when!

Sunday – no plans, but very rarely is there a gathering (other than my tabletop game) on a Sunday.  So I could dress up and have no where to go?  Argh!

I’m still going to put together the basics of the costume for work on Monday, at the least.  But it limits how much effort and expense I want to go to, or even should.  Just the not knowing, when I want to be working on the costume, is what makes me a bit frustrated.  But still, even if I do the lazy work version, I still think it’s going to be absolute fun, and I will be sure to try to get some good pictures.  Yes, I realize I haven’t said what the costume is… isn’t the surprise part of the fun?

So I know some lovely people who are at this thing, in the desert, you might have heard of it – Burning Man.

Because my people are wildly creative sorts, I am flattered to be associated with the minds behind the Last Apothecary (http://www.sawdustbear.com/apothecary/) who made a space outpost in the Deep Playa.  Last night they had Space Storytime at The Last Apothecary, and those of us who are not out in the dust were invited to participate by sending something to be read at the event.

I am not a poet, but inspired by the poetry of the Vogons – this is a ‘Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ reference – I decided to write TERRIBLE poetry.  It didn’t come out quite as awful as expected, but it’s still pretty cheesy, which is what I was going for.  So now that it’s been read out there (or not, but the event was last night), I’m going to subject you to it, too!

There’s a rather free-form little bit of nonsense, a limerick that may already exist and I just thought I conjured up, and a poem with the rhyme scheme of an English sonnet, but none of the meter or sophistication of The Bard.

Terra Farewell
I took the second star to the right,
I went straight until morning
The universe swallowed me up.

The sky has a thirst unquenchable,
It will drink from you all you have
And then take one last sup.

The Dipper promised me much,
And in the end that vow was broken
I am left with an empty cup.

A Terrible Space Limerick
I met a fine man down from Mars
He hung out in all the best bars
But when he would drink
You can’t imagine the stink
They’d smell it out into the stars

The Spaceman’s Grave
A meteor flashed against the sky
Sweet final song of a dying world
I never thought to wonder why
A last toll should be procured
From those who boldly ventured out
With no thought of harm to self
Never a concern or doubt
When leaping off that final shelf
Into the mysteries that lay far flung
Masked in blackness of the night
To be snuffed out at a time so young
And then to be but this scar of light
The end marked only by this brief wave
And into finally the spaceman’s grave

This is a Wayback Machine of things I don’t remember, but a story that I have been told, as best I can remember how it goes.

When I was still in the womb, there were the obvious conversations about names – like you do.  My parents decided that Dad got to name a girl, and Mom would get the final say on names for a boy.  I, not being a boy, therefore fell to Dad’s judgement of proper names.  Obviously there was discussion and suggestions and talk, but that was the final call lay out.

It was declared that if I had red hair and green eyes, I was to be Colleen Aurora – making my initials “CAT”.  Since there was red hair in the family, this was a likely possible outcome.  Anything else and I was to be Katrina Irene – “KIT” as it were.  Colleen Aurora, Maiden of the Morning Lights, or Katrina Irene, Irene for my maternal grandmother I assume.

However I was an emergency c-section birth.  Even if it hadn’t been customary of the time to have the father in the waiting room, there was nobody in the room but Mom, me, and the medical staff because of the nature of the issues I caused.  Apparently there was a lot of turning, beyond the normal one flip to a head-down posture, along with other complications that I’m assured were all my fault.  Hee hee.  I was trouble from the start.

So after the birth comes the time to give the name – Mom took a look at me and decided that I did not look like a Katrina at all.  So due to the “being there” override protocol (I just made that up) she gave me the Colleen Aurora name, and the CAT initials.

As a result, my brother Andrew still has claim to a greater hurricane – Colleen has been used a few times for Tropical Depressions and the like, but I have never been responsible for wreaking havoc on the mainland.  Had I been Katrina, obviously, I would totally have trounced his tropical terror legacy.  But alas, he was the storm to be reckoned with in the family.  However I did get some of the coolest initials possible, paving the way to my crazy cat lady status.  Fair trade off, I think.

I was thrilled.  I mean like cloud 9 pleased.  This weekend I went shopping for jeans, which can be a terrible experience.

But on stop number one, Torrid, I found them.  They were boot cut, they were a little stretchy but didn’t seem to fall down if I moved like some jeans with too much stretch.  They weren’t torn or too weirdly distressed.  This made the lack of success later at Forever 21 funny, yay!

The best thing about the Torrid jeans, though, was that now that I knew from in person try ons what worked, I could avail myself of their substantial online offerings.  Decent color, good fit, just what I wanted and could acquire again and again.

Except when I put them on for real this morning and went to clip my phone to my pocket.

There is no pocket.

Oh sure, it looks like it has hip and back pockets!  These are fake pockets, the worst thing EVER in Women’s clothing lines.

Why would you fake me out and make it look like a pocket, but then, in jeans that are built for it, just not put in the actual pocket.  What if my keys need to be stashed nearby?  When I get change and don’t have time to fumble in my purse?  Why do you tease me with perfectly good potential pockets, the pull the purpose out?

Oh Torrid, you came so close to being the inheritor of my beloved Gap business (who canceled my preferred style, just before my size changed so the ones I stocked up on at the tail end of the style’s life no longer fit) but I don’t know that you can be trusted now.  You fooled me once, I’m not sure I can take it again!

TLDR; Fake pockets are the worst.  No one should endure that deception.

Shining, shimmering, splendid.

I’ve actually traveled very little, and mostly for work.  So I have a very long list of places I really want to go see.

1. The Aurora Borealis – this could be any number of places, the easiest would be Alaska.  I’d love to do a cruise, but cruises don’t run during the months this phenomenon is at it’s peak.  On the other end of the spectrum is http://www.kakslauttanen.fi/ in Finland.  Glass igloos from which to lay snuggled in a warm bed looking up at the beautiful light show!
2. Italy – Especially Southern Italy, where my husband’s family is from, full of history personal and global, I do love history.  And the food, oh how I want to eat my way across Italy!
3. Ireland – This is the land of my ancestry, and a beautiful country from everything I have heard.
4. Japan – I was Japan-crazed in high school and for some years after.  It still lingers, I found it hard to learn Korean because it kept colliding with the years I spent in Japanese language classes.  And they’re having the Rugby World Cup in 2019!
5. New York, New York – This one is, again, for the food.  Sure there’s culture and stuff I guess, but mainly I want to EAT in New York.
6. Australia and/or New Zealand – Yes, these places have very different appeals.  I think New Zealand ranks slightly higher (because Hobbits, and Fairy Penguins, and All Blacks), but Australia has an office from my company so ranks slightly more likely to happen.
7. England – Home of The Doctor (Doctor Who?), the sun never sets on the British Empire (except that maybe it will in coming years, given the road they’re headed down), so many historical things to see and experience.
8. Germany – So much history, and better food than Britain is known for.  I’ve heard great things about the people in Berlin, and I’d love to visit the site of the wall.
9. Brazil – I’ve had wonderful offers of hosts in São Paulo – this would be a party trip.  Lots of drinking and eating and staying up until all hours.
10. Hawaii – Yes, I’ve been to Maui, but there’s a lot more there.  And I never left the resort really, last trip.
11. DisneyWorld – My husband has zero interest in this one, but I love Disney and think a trip to DisneyWorld would be fun!

And that’s just off the top of my head!

For the record, I love my cat.

But maybe slightly less between the hours of 2:30 and 5:30 am, which is the time she insisted that I demonstrate my love.  Either by making sure I was awake and watching as she went on noisy adventures around my room, or coming for about 15 minutes of cuddles at a time, then allowing me to doze off again before the cycle began again.

At one point she stood on my chest and started kneading so hard it set off a coughing fit in me.  I’ve already been having breathing issues over the last couple of weeks, so cat hair and chest compression were not high on my list of requests.

What’s odd about this is how she has not been cuddly for the last few months.  Then suddenly two nights ago, I’m a snuggle-vector again.  Cats!