When I was about 10, my parents, my sister, brother, two of my aunts and two of my uncles, and my two cousins Michael and Danny all went to Yogi Bear campground somewhere in Indianer to camp for a weekend in the pop-up campers. Before I got too old and cool, I absolutely LOVED the trips to the Yogi. I'm not sure if it was the one water slide down at the murky brown beach, or the idea of living in a tiny folding house for a weekend, but I loved it. My cousin Danny was the same age as me, and we were practically inseperable growing up. He was my best friend for years to come.
After arriving and parking the pop ups, we had our hearts set on sprinting down to the pool. The adults gladly agreed to get some long needed drinking in, and told us they'd meet us there later. Michael had wondered into the forest to fish or something, and mom made me take my sister along. You know that one little kid that's always trying to catch up in the foreground with the floaties? That was her. The pool was unusually desserted when we got there. Just me, my sister and Danny--Danny cannonballed into the water, and I was being shy, pokin' one toe in at a time trying to get used to it. Eventually I got in and swam for a bit, and then got out to dry off. I remember the weather wasn't all that nice that day, so it was chilly. As I was drying off, I glanced over at the two girls who had shown up and were making a ruckus. They were being real nasty to each other, in a ‘playful’ kind of way, if that’s what you’d even call it. They were calling each other names and trying to pull each others bathing suit bottoms down...something that I obviously didn't want any part of. Suddenly, one of the mini-skanks looked in my direction--I wished suddenly that I was invisible, but I wasn't. The girl asked me, 'What are you a lesbian or something!?' Even though they were clearly talking to me, I responded with, 'Are you talking to me?' They giggled, and continued tugging at each others bathing suits..."Yeah lesbian! Why are you looking at us!?'
"I wasn't looking at you."
God, I wished my future self could have come popping out of a time machine then. My future self would have said some very colorful phrases and told those girls how I really felt. Obviously, they were the ones with the lesbian tendancies, and I wasn't looking to see them naked, I just glanced over to see the commotion was and that's all it took. They stood there taunting me for what seemed like hours.
My sister was too young to even realize what was going on, and Danny had suddenly become a pro at holding his breath under water and made sure to stay there for as long as possible to avoid helping me. I kept looking to him for help but every time I would look I would just see the top of his head and a halo of bubbles. I was a very sensitive little kid, so I’m just standing there, fighting back tears and these little fatherless skankazoids were just harrassing me…when who should pull up at the perfect time, but my dad to the rescue. He yelled “What are you girls doing!!?” And of course, they scampered off innocently without another word. Danny conveniently popped out of the water and said, 'Oh, we leaving?' I frowned at him. I'm pretty sure as we were getting into the van, Danny and I yelled, "JERKS!" or "IDIOTS!" or something a kid would say...Danny's favorite phrase as a kid was 'cheapskate', so it's very possible that he yelled that at them too even though it had nothing to do with the situation.
I told my dad what happened and as any concerned parent who's child is messed with, he started yelling and was tempted to turn around and possibly drown the little bitches, or something of that nature, and we all just laughed. Then he yelled at Danny for not helping me. I felt much better. I was never one to fight. I tend to clam up under pressurized or awkward situations. I'm one of those people who doesn't think of the good comebacks until 10 minutes after the fact.
Shortly after that fiasco, Danny and I found a new way to entertain ourselves. We somehow managed to convince my dad that letting us drive the golf cart he rented around the camp for awhile was a good idea. So we drove around for probably a solid hour before a cop pulled up and started doing what cops do, and just being a jag off…asking us for our licenses, even though we were clearly 9 & 10 years old, we were laughing, like yeah, we TOTALLY have licenses! We didn't really understand what the big deal was, we were tall enough to reach the pedals, the thing didn't go over 20, and we were in a campground. It's not like we were out on the expressway.
We tried to lose him by driving down a bike path, but much to our dissapointment the bike path was a loop and looped right back around to where he was waiting for us. So we got reemed for a minute, but he let us go, and we got our drunk Uncle to drive us around for awhile. He was driving through bushes and all kinds of pollen dusted shrubbery for our amusement, Red Dog beer in hand. I almost flew off a few times, got hit in the face with a few low hanging branches, but we had a blast.
I remember Danny and I spent a lot of time on a swing set too. It was one of those swing sets that's extremely tall, with very long swings, which gave us plenty of swinging power before we jumped off them into the sand.
I have plenty more adventures with Danny and I, but I have to really fish for these memories!
Note to mom & dad: Technically, that was my first encounter with a cop. Hehe. I know...not funny.
Sorry for the slacking lately. I've discovered a few more websites to keep my busy during downtime at the office so I've been neglecting my writing a bit.
Let's see...
- http://www.awkwardfamilyphotos.com/ - Awkward Family Photos, truly a gem of a website for any bored person.
- Yahoo Answers - Pet Section - Cats - People ask the weirdest questions about their cats and you have to leave your 'answer' or 'opinion' to their question. You score points with each question. People can give you a thumbs down or a thumbs up, and also can rate your answer as the best. I am obbsessed. I've scored 655 points in 3 months. To do this, go to Yahoo, make an account if you don't already have one, scroll alllll the way down on Yahoo.com, and click Answers. I never knew it was there because it's a tiny print at the bottom of the Yahoo website, but I'm glad I found it.
- http://www.peopleofwalmart.com/ - This is a classic, and self explainatory.
- http://www.failblog.com/ - Had me in tears at work laughing.
- http://www.thewvsr.com/ - This is a blogger I discovered when looking up the side effects of Alli, the weightloss pill. I absolutely love this site, and love the reads. I was almost embarrassed, but then proud when I realized I was a top commentator. Thanks Jeff Kay, your blog has turned into my new facebook. This is the first site I check now when I get to work in the morning.
A few little updates:
I have lost about 16 pounds so far. The scale is still telling me I've lost like 4, but it's one of those gay scales where you have to move the little tab yourself. I just don't believe it, there is no possible way. My jeans are fitting looser, my double chin is gone, and I can just TELL. Why 16 you ask? Well because when I was at the doctor a month ago, I was down 10 pounds, and that was with clothes on, and I've lost some weight since. So I'm just rounding it off at about 16. I have had countless amounts of people asking me if I've been losing weight and I can finally say 'YES! YES I AM, THANK YOU FOR ASKING! SERIOUSLY THANK YOU!' I hoping that at this point, I will be where I want to be by August-ish. I had my boyfriend cracking up the other day. We were driving to go get some food for a cookout and we saw a real fat guy stopped at a stop sign. He was panting real hard like a bulldog in a sauna, and my boyfriend said, 'Man...that guy looked real fat and miserable.' We laughed, and then I made the comment, "Yea, that's why I have my heart set on losing weight, I'm sicking of being miserable and uncomfortable in the summer time." There was a pause and he started laughing and said, "You act like you are obese or something." I'm not of course. But seriously, even being 'thick' in the summer time can be excruciating. Especially for people like me who are extremely self concious. Unlike some girls, I can't be thick, and still wear skin tight belly shirts and shorts that look like underwear. I like to be somewhat conservative and try to wear clothes that can still flatter girls with some 'junk in the trunk'. Ha ha, that saying is so lame. But I've seen some girls who are like 230 pounds, wearing tube tops, cut off jean shorts in which each worldly sized buttcheek is hanging out of either pantleg, there stretch marked pimply cleavage slapping about in everyone's face, and that's just not right.
I believe in the saying, 'shake what your momma gave you', but I believe that saying was created with intentions that you'd be shaking your inherited goods with clothes on. Kind of a black person's spin off on 'dance like no one's watching'.
Well work is about over and I'm about to go the gym.
I'm up to a mile and half on the elliptacle/treadmill...I'm going for 2 miles tonight. If I can do two miles in the elliptacle, it'll take me about 40 minutes and I will burn about 450 calories. Nice. If I did it on the treadmill, it would be less calories, same amount of time. So I'm going with elliptacle. Wish me luck.
Weeeeelllllll, goood afternoon.
Tuesday afternoon I was forced to go to the doctor for an apparent bladder infection. I'd noticed it about 3 weeks ago, where I just felt like I had overstretched my stomach muscles, but they weren't unstretching themselves. I thought it was from working out, so I stopped going for a couple days, and the pain persisted. Shortly after, my lower back started to ache, and my stomach felt heavy. I felt like I was wearing a clip on Donald Duck fanny pack fulla lard. I try my very hardest to never go to the doctor, mostly because I hate it, but also because I'm always afraid that a little twinge or twitch is going to be something incurable or severe. So I made an appoitment at a place called Aunt Martha's, in a ghetto, shoot 'em up town called Kankakee, IL. Kankakee is the kind of town that should be on the show First 48 on A&E, and I often like to refer to it as "a slum of Chicago wannabe". It's not uncommon to open the newspaper everyday and read about someone getting shot at, run over, and robbed on a daily basis in this exceptional hole.
"KANKAKEE -- Authorities in Kankakee say they've charged a 21-year-old woman with involuntary manslaughter in the death of a legless man whose body was pulled from the Kankakee River this week. --Daily Harold " See? Even legless hobos aren't safe.
Since I have about a gazillion bills to pay every month, health insurance is not an option for me right now. So, I have to make an appointment at this clinic, because they take donations rather then insurance. I usually give them $10 bucks a visit. My appointment was 12:45, Tuesday afternoon, May 4th. I took a half day off work, knowing this place is slow, and took a book of scary stories to keep me company in the overfilled, over-smelly, lobby of goons. The past two times I'd been there, I waited for close to an hour and half before being called, so I was prepared.
After about an hour, I'd read almost 2 chapters of my book, when I heard a lady in the corner, stomping, huffing and checking her watch. I heard her say, "Goin on 3 hours now!"...I figured she was just exaggerating, so I carried on. Another half hour went by, and I was starting to get angsty. Normally, I wouldn't mind so much, but this place is full of loud, obnoxious, assholes who have no respect for the people around them. Half of them are coughing or picking an orafice, half of them are talking on the phone as loud as possible about how, "no man aint gonna get nuna dis jelly!' and, the rest are holding there four crying babies and filing their nails at the same time. It's quite a spectacle. Normally, I would be patient, but I was agitated with the surroundings, and incredibly uncomfortable in the tiny chair, that I finally went up to the window and asked how much longer it was going to be. I made up a lie that I had to pick up my boyfriend and had to leave at about 3:30, which is reasonable I think considering my appointment was at 12:45. The receptionist quietly explained to me, "The primary doctor had to leave to assist another clinic, and there is a new doctor in her spot, and she's very slow..." She looked through the files..."you still have 5 people in front of you, and there's 5 in the rooms right now who haven't been seen yet." This was at 2:30.
Let me tell you something, when you are hurting, or there is something unexplained happening to or in your body, the last thing you want to hear when your waiting in a doctors office, is that you will have to wait 2 or 3 more hours to see a doctor. Even when I told them the circumstances, that didn't sway them. There was NO way, I was waiting until 6 or 7 o' clock to see the doctor. If they knew she was going to get called out, they should have called all those people and rescheduled them, or told them they'd call them when it was ok to come in, or something! Come on. So, I went in to my car, and just broke down crying with fury. I was mad because they wanted me to wait, and I was mad because I didn't have insurance. In desperation, I called my poor dad and asked him if I could borrow money to see the doctor in my own town. I'd been going to him since as far back as I could remember, when I HAD insurance (on my parents', which ended at 19). But at that point, my boyfriend was getting off work, so I reluctantly asked him for the money instead. I HATE asking people for money. The guilt eats away at me worse then the Langoliers eat time zones. So I called the other doctors office, and then told me they'd take me without an appointment. Without even letting the office of Aunt Satan's Asshole know I was leaving, I booked it down the expressway to the other clinic, in my own town, 30 seconds from my house. I was in and out of there an in a hour, and it only cost me $68 bucks with a 45% discount designed to help people without insurance. I couldn't stop thanking them. I felt stupid at how many times I thanked them for helping me, but I was so happy, I couldn't help myself. Turns out, I did have a bladder infunction, and I was put on an antibiotic.
I vowed that I will never go back to that place...EVER. I am convinced too, that the doctors at Aunt Satan's are clueless idiots who shouldn't be doctors. I remembered something she said to me last time I was there, which I am not inclined to share for any reason, but I looked it up on WebMD the next day, and the website completely proved her wrong. It's sad that I believe a website over a doctor. Very sad indeed.
I am feeling better now, by the way!
Thank you Riverside clinic. Forever and always, Britt.
