My Body Is Rebelling Against Me

Today's blog is a big EFF YOU to my body, so please only continue reading if you want to hear some whining. I never would have supposed that you guys like to read this kind of stuff, but the feedback I got on my last un-sunshiney post let me know that it's OK to use my blog for venting, if needed. That said... it's time for me to talk some serious shit to my body, because it has been slowly FAILING me this past half a year or so. Fair warning: There is some talk of "lady things" in this blog. Proceed at your own risk.

Let's start with the infamous and much-lamented Shoulder/Neck/Arm Pain that I've been battling since late July (which, over the course of the last several months, has transitioned from super painful to simply disturbing, because it's making parts of my arm/hand numb throughout the day). Trying to avoid expensive medical bills from an MRI, I attempted 12 sessions with a chiropractor this fall to see if it would help. It did help... but only because I wasn't using my body for anything strenuous in the meantime. (I'd stopped going to the gym, afraid to aggravate the pain.) Now that I'm trying to workout again, the ache is back in full force and the tingling/numbing is getting worse. Time to see an orthopedic doctor to get this shit solved once and for all. I have an appointment on Wednesday and I expect some damn answers!

Next, remember the Cyst and Infection that took up host in my body back in August? That mothereffer came out of NOWHERE and knocked me down pretty hard, physically and emotionally. Having just moved across the country alone with an absolutely shattered heart, the last thing I needed was an excruciating pain in a very sensitive part of my body to keep me lying in a hot bath tub for a week, sobbing uncontrollably and using up mad electricity to keep that water hot. I didn't go into the details of having the infection treated (because... ew), but that was damn near traumatizing, too. To boot, I've read that this type of cyst is prone to repeat appearances. So there's THAT to look forward to. God dammit.

And hey, now let's talk about some freshly Bizarre Menstrual Cycles that have otherwise been incredibly stable and predictable for the last 10+ years. It's been a damn dog's age since I've been surprised by my period (I track that shit like a boss), but I've gotten it five times now in the last three months... most recently, for 3 weeks and counting. DA fahk?? What am I supposed to do with that?!?!? WHAT IS GOING ON.

In other "falling apart" news, I Freaking Fainted a few weeks ago after experiencing some out-of-nowhere abdominal pains. Now, I'm absolutely prone to fainting, so fainting itself isn't new for me. But it was still a shitty afternoon activity, especially while I was alone at my apartment. Fortunately, I was on my bed when it happened, so at least I didn't fall on my face or anything (which I have done in the past). And those abdominal pains? Probably absolutely nothing because they were gone within 20 minutes of me coming to. They were just enough to scare me into fainting.

Finally (I HOPE), there's been an Ache in My Lower Spine that's gradually become worse since August. Over the last few months, I've continued to try to convince myself that there were logical reasons why my back would hurt in that spot, but I've hit a wall with that wishful thinking; there's no good explanation at this point. I'm going to have the orthopedic doctor I see on Wednesday inspect this, too. Mystery spine pain is terrifying.

I've struggled with anxieties my whole life, but none so much as my health-related anxieties. I'm a hypochondriac (my mother - a nurse - will confirm this with a chuckle, even though I don't think it's funny at all), but part of my toolbox of coping skills involves trying to assure myself that the mystery pains I feel in my body are probably nothing.  And usually, that's right. Usually, they're nothing. But it's becoming REALLY hard to convince myself that I'm totally healthy lately. I feel like I'm actually falling apart.

Complaining is not my favorite thing to do, but you wouldn't know it by speaking to me at any point during the last six months. I feel like I'm the worst person to know, the worst person to be friends with, the worst person to listen to. Now I'm even complaining about complaining. BUT HEY, you asked for it ;)

Thanks for letting me do some body-bitching. Hopefully the orthopedic doctor I see on Wednesday begins to answer at least some of these questions for me...

I hope YOU'RE in good health! If you're not, please feel free to do some bitching of your own in the comments. We can commiserate.

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Afternoon Harassment... and My Workouts of the Week

I keep starting this blog and then deleting it. I was trying to make it chatty and light-hearted but that's not really an accurate reflection of how I'm feeling. Yesterday started out fine with me walking to Home Depot to pick up some tools I needed to hang up a new curtain rod in my bedroom - something that's been an ongoing project for several days now, believe it or not. Popping into Old Navy after Home Depot resulted in a new pair of grey Rock Star jeans and a new grey flannel - also not too shabby. 

However on the way home from my errands, I popped into a Starbuck's to try a Pumpkin Spice Latte for the first time ever... and was solidly sexually harassed in line by a loser meathead creep who obviously had no social skills or manners. What began as a stranger being mildly rude ("I like the way you look, are you married?") turned into an encounter that wouldn't end, even as I walked away from him to wait for my order. Long story short, he ended up saying something to me that took the "conversation" (should we even call it that?) from awkward/uncomfortable to completely effing unacceptable. Without raising my voice or making a scene, I let him know that he was being incredibly rude and that no one with any respect for herself would want to hear the kind of things he was saying. Not like I could have beaten him up instead, though giving him a hard knee to the groin was what I really wanted to do.

The worst part was that the Pumpkin Spice Latte was really, really good, and this guy nearly ruined the whole experience for me.

Well, no, in sooth, that was not the worst part. The worst part was feeling powerless to do much of anything about having someone say something so sexually off-color to me, that would make me feel so uncomfortable in a place as public as the line at a Starbuck's. I couldn't wash off the sliminess of hearing it. He couldn't take it back once he said it. Without having physically touched me, he ruined my afternoon.

After that I went home and tried once again to put up the curtain rod in my bedroom using my new tools, but it was one thing going wrong after another. You might be wondering how putting up a curtain rod could be such a big to-do... I couldn't tell you. But it's not working and I keep having to go back out to pick up new tools or hardware to finish the job. Without a car, walking to all of these stores is getting really old, and makes my projects take forever. 

With the frustration of my failing curtain rods and the lingering feeling of having been harassed earlier, suddenly my whole day felt like it was falling apart. Dramatic much? So I put the curtain project on hold and shifted gears to something that seemed like it would be more successful - hanging up a heavy mirror on one of my walls, using the help of a brand new stud-finder tool that I'd just purchased earlier that day. All seemed like it was going well, with the stud-finder seemingly working to pinpoint the stud in the wall I would be drilling into. If you follow me on Instagram, you might know where I'm headed with this...

So then I just gave up and ate Ben & Jerry's ice cream the rest of the night.

And on that note, here are all my workouts from the past week!

9/15 (cardio and upper body)

15 mins elliptical

3x: 

  - 15 M, 5 lbs each hand

  - 15 T, 5 lbs each hand

  - 15 Y, 5 lbs each hand

15 chest press on exercise ball, 10 lbs each hand

10 overhead press on exercise ball, 10 lbs each hand

9/16 (core and cardio)

20 leg raises + reverse crunch

30 alternating weighted side bends, 15 lbs each hand

20 cobras

20 Russian get ups, holding 7.5 lbs

30 Brazilian crunches

30 weighted v-sit twists, holding 15 lbs

lying tornadoes (down and up once)

20 lying overhead raise + double crunch, holding 7.5 lbs

15 mins elliptical

9/18 (lower body)

2:30 jumping jacks

3x:  15 squats holding 25 lbs

3x:  15 single leg bridges each leg

1:15 jumping jacks

3x:  20 calf raises, 25 lbs each hand

3x:  30 alternating forward lunges

1:20 jumping jacks

9/19 (upper body)

5 mins elliptical

3x:  12 lat pulldowns, 37.5 lbs

3x:  12 tricep extensions on exercise ball, 5 lbs each hand

3x:  12 overhead press on exercise ball, 10 lbs each hand

3x:  12 M prone on exercise ball, 5 lbs each hand

3x:  12 chest press on exercise ball, 10 lbs each hand

3x:  12 deltoid flys, 5 lbs each hand

3x:  12 bent over rows each arm, holding 10 lbs

3x:  12 Y prone on exercise ball, 5 lbs each hand

The Patriots are playing today, so I'm going to head over to my friend J-Rod's house to watch that this afternoon. If all goes as planned (and I don't really bank on that these days), I'll be bringing along some Dunkin Donuts Munchkins with bacon inserted into them... which is something I thought up last week and would like to see to fruition this week. Nothing like donuts and bacon to take your mind off of sexual harassment and failed home projects, I always say.

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A Human-Sized Spider Tried Showering With Me

Hey do you guys remember that time I was almost eaten by a human-sized spider (practically)?

That son-of-a-bitch's cousin came back this weekend to claim some revenge.

Its plan was decent enough: Wait till I am naked, unarmed and completely unassuming in the safety of the bathroom in my empty apartment, with no one around to help me or even hear me cry for help. He thought he was safe, crouching along the side of the tub in the dark corner of the room, partially veiled by the shadow of the shower curtain.

As I drew back the curtain to suddenly reveal his hideous form...

.  jesus christ  .

 .... he made his move!

I MEAN. GOOD GOD. I don't need to describe its girth- you can clearly see the shower drain in there for scale. This is no joke people!

Too bad for him and all of his enormous limbs, he forgot to consider the fact that he was perilously close to a drain, and that I had ready access to water. So I washed his ass down the drain! But I swear to god guys, he tried to CLIMB BACK OUT. With his huge arms! Like at the end of [insert title of any action/horror/suspense movie ever] where you think the bad guy is dead, but in reality he's not quite dead yet and is coming back for one more go. It was momentarily TERRIFYING till I, again, remembered which one of us was in charge of the situation and turned on the spout.

Guess he never heard that classic warning song for arachnids - The Itsy Bitsy Spider. Or maybe he thought it didn't apply to him, since he was neither itsy nor bitsy.

In any case, I live to fight bathe another day.

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That Shet I Don't Like About Traveling

Having just gotten back from a cross-country trip to/from Massachusetts, I've got some freshies in my head when it comes to some things that really grind my gears when traveling.

This is just some of that shet I don't like about getting from hither to yon:

- Businessmen going through the first class line. I hate them and want to punch them all in the throats. Specifically when they're wearing light colored khakis with a navy blue blazer with gold buttons on the cuffs. That outfit especially makes me want to make you choke on your company-bought smart phone.

- Layovers that are less than an hour long. It's just too damn stressful to get to your connecting flights with a layover that short.

- People who take up more than their 1 single purchased seat. Just because I don't take up the entire width of my seat doesn't mean I need you to help me fill in the rest of the space. I don't understand how on earth you'd think it's appropriate to be in my seat. How many times do our never-met-before bodies need to touch each other before you realize you're invading someone else's personal space in what is already a claustrophobic environment? Totally effing rude. PUSH. OVER.

- People who need to be told multiple times to power down their electronics or put their seats upright. Why can't people follow basic instructions? The flight attendant isn't your babysitter. Do you need her to follow you into the restroom and remind you a few times to wipe ya bum as well??

- People who - despite being seated in the back of the plane with at least 120 people in front of them who are not moving anytime soon - insist upon standing up in the aisle immediately to get their bags from the overhead compartment when we pull up to the jetway. If you're wondering, on my last flight the same schmuck was guilty of BOTH of the last two offenses.

- People who insist upon talking about themselves to the poor stranger beside them for an entire flight. After listening to one particular ass clown rattle on about himself for most of a 2-hour flight, I turned around to glance at his "listener" who was gazing out the window in the saddest way, just trying to ignore the person talking at him. Dude, he doesn't want to hear about your budding music career or your experiences playing at a dry wedding in Pennsylvania or your "affinity for dogs"... and neither do the rest of us. You gotta know your audience, brah. And on this plane, your audience is a ton of strangers who want you to shut the crap up.

- Silver Linings Playbook. Saw it on the TV on the plane. Didn't care for it. I don't like it when movie-makers expect us to believe that two people "fall in love" after only speaking a couple of times. Or, in the case of Silver Linings Playbook, after speaking once. It's lazy story-writing and I refuse to just overlook it and suspend my disbelief when it's the basis of your entire movie. SAWRY.

- People who bring onion-ladden or other stinky foods onto the plane to eat in very close quarters. I only did this one time on a bus a few years ago before I realized it was a bad idea for everyone involved. On my last flight, a woman literally brought sushi to eat. Sushi! Were you trying to win a contest for who could bring the most awkward food onto a flight?? GAH.

- People who use the entire width of an escalator. To stand still. In an airport. Where everyone is in a rush to either get to their next flight or get the fuck home. You're an inconsiderate asshole.

Here's something I do like... a lot:

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I Was Almost Eaten By A Human-Sized Spider

Practically.

The other night I was getting ready for bed at around 10:30ish and picked up a pile of clothes off of the floor when ALL OF A SUDDEN a behemoth of a spider came galloping out from beneath the pile and sprinted across the rug and under our bed. I literally screamed. Like, not shrieked or eeked. I fucking screamed. Of note is that Dave, a seasoned veteran attuned to my tendency to sometimes.... overreact, didn't even come into the room or inquire from the other room what the trouble was.

I am - 9 times out of 10 - the one who "takes care of" spiders or creepy bug issues in our home. But that night, I wasn't even considering being the one to rid our home of the biggest spider I've ever seen. No-effing-way. Nope.

This thing was the freaking My Buddy of spiders - pretty much life-size and wearing overalls. (Unrelated sidebar: You should know that as a child, I had the My Buddy and Mallory had the Kid Sister. Telling? #BigSistersGetWhatTheyWant #AlsoIWasATomboy #WhatupMatchboxCars?!) There was not a chance that we were getting close enough to it to swat it with a shoe or some other hard surface, because we'd be risking losing our hands to this predator's most-likely-ferocious piranha teeth.

So we had two choices:  Either surrender our entire apartment to the pseudo-tarantula or find a way to 86 it without getting near it.

We went for the latter. Once we had it cornered under our bed, Dave fetched the vacuum cleaner and set out chasing the Cloverfield spider around beneath our bed with the hose attachment of the vacuum till he managed to suck it up.

Size-wise, this pic makes it look a little bigger than it really is. But each of those legs is over half an inch long and its body looked like the size of a yellow jacket. SO. It probably could have eaten and digested me in a matter of minutes.

Probably.

Does this picture give you the weirds like it gives me the weirds? What was a spider that size doing inside my home? And - more importantly - does it have any buddies hanging out in any other nooks and crannies that I should know about? Creatures this size don't just get a free ride in this apartment. I WILL start charging rent. 

In Which Canada Effs Us in the A

Our (Dave's) car was broken into on Tuesday night, while it was parked inside of our building's locked parking garage.

I finished working at 3pm on Wednesday and got all ready to go to the gym. I was feeling pretty good, pleased that I was getting to the gym so early in the afternoon. I stepped out of the elevator into the garage of our building and as I approached the car said to myself.... "Is that back window open??" I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me. "Shit.... Did I leave a window wide open???"

NOPE. Didn't leave it open.

.   fahk  .

The back passenger window had been completely smashed to oblivion. There was glass ALL over the ground next to the car, inside the car, under the car. I had no idea car windows could be demolished so thoroughly - parts of the window had been reduced to not much more than glass powder.

A quick check showed that yes, some things had been stolen. I was most heartbroken to see that Dave's huge book of like 300-400 CDs was gone - music that he's been accumulating his entire life. My own CD book was stolen from my car back in 2003 and I can honestly say I never fully emotionally recovered from it (I'm serious), so I couldn't imagine how David was going to feel when he heard the news.

Eventually I noticed that the truck next to us had also had one of its windows smashed:

.   a-holes  .

UGH. Why are there people out there who do shitty things like this? I don't think we'll EVER be able to remove all this glass from the car.

I filed a police report but nothing will come of it. I was told to clean it up as best I could and to just go get the window repaired. Terrific.

Meanwhile I'm now more uncomfortable than I already was about going down to the parking garage by myself.

On a semi-positive end note, Dave let me know last night that he had just recently completed a massive project of loading ALL of his CDs onto his computer. No music was lost in this B&E.