Disgusting clinics for Insurance-less chaps

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.

Our California Adventure, Part 2

So we took a few more pictures at the Arizona Welcome Center before departing towards Flagstaff. The temperature finally started to climb and after a few hours we were in the 70's.  Going from 20ish degrees to 70 in a matter of hours is completely awesome.  Once we reached Flagstaff, it was like we were going through a portal into a different world.  We were traveling upward, feeling more and more like we were in a spaceship (I call Ben's Jetta, the 'spaceship'), and the canyons were so deep and vast I was getting lost just letting my eyes wander in them.  It was all great and thrilling and what not--but that air pressure! Oh my God, that AIR PRESSURE! It got so bad at one point, I couldn't hear Ben talking to me, and Primus that was blasting out of the radio, sounded like a distant voice in the cactus speckled horizen somewhere.  It was truly frightening.  I questioned whether or not I'd ever be able to hear again. Ben yelled, 'Brittney, you'll be fine!! Just wait until you fly somewhere!" Not very reassuring, but I'd take it...and that's when I saw it--so quick I could barely tell, but I saw it--My first palm tree.  Granite, I have seen palm trees, my Uncle used to have one sitting out by his pond when I was kid that would fizzle and die in about a month, but nothing compared to seeing them in their own palm-appropriate climaxed homes.

After about a half hour of pressurized agony, my ears popped, and sounds of life flooded back into them. We were on a 5 lane highway at this point, out of the mountains, and we decided to stop and get beer and leave a pee.  Arizona is gorgeous. We were blessed to have great weather that weekend too so the sun was shining, it was now 78 degrees, and the first gas station we stopped at was surrounded in enourmous green palms.  The gas station was another story.  I went to pee and the lock was broken, and apparenly a starving artists had used poo to create artwork on the walls. Nonetheless, they had toilet paper and a pot to pee in so I did my best to not touch any surfaces, and bolted out to the beer cooler with the quickest of speed. Arizona has 30 packs of Bud Light cans...which we excitedly took two of.  Illinois has 30 packs of Busch Light/Natural Ice/ & Icehouse--The "dirty thirties" of Busch Light used to excite me very much, I mean, who can beat buying 30 beers for $12.00? The Natural Ice and Icehouse however, no thanks. A few of those and you'll be eating floor pronto.

So we hopped back on the expressway once again for about another hour when low and behold, the most amazing sight we'd ever seen--the archway for the California border.  We were stopped by border patrol who proceeded to ask us if we had any fruit, which we replied, 'no'. Then he mad a remark about Bud Light and told us we should be drinking Miller, to which we replied, 'gross' and carried on.

We were pumped.  I think we both smiled from ear to ear for the hour drive to Indio.  When we finally got there it was the best thing I've ever seen.

The festival itself was very unorganized.  We had to drive to 4 or 5 different gates and none of the employees seemed to have a clue what was going on or that they were on the job. One of them was smoking a cigarette and playing hackie sack. We asked him if he knew were 3 day pass camping parking was and without missing a kick he said, "Dude, I have no idea!' and laughed. This little escapade had seriously ruined our excitement. Ben sarcastically thanked him, and we turned around again.  Eventually we found a group of campers who had gone through the same ordeal, and directed us in the right path.  We finally got to our campsite, and shut the car off for the next 3 days.  Ben and I cracked our first Bud Lights, and washed down the memories of having been stuck in a car for the past 31 hours. The tent went up, we changed clothes, and hiked it to the concert grounds.

Once inside, we were pretty impressed. I was starving to death as we'd only eaten snacks and junk the whole way there, so I enjoyed a brat while Ben enjoyed the 31 different beer options.  He finally settled with a 'Magic Hat', I had a Pabst Blue Ribbon (this was the closest to a watered down domestic they had...I can't do the hoppy black beers, it's like drinking liquid black liquorice...no thank you).

The concert was good, but honestly, at that point, all I could think about was crawling into the tent, into our nice warm thermal sleeping bags (and air mattress, we like to camp classy) and get a good full nights sleep. Once we got back to the campsite, I drank one more beer, Ben cooked up a steak and then we were in bed. Ben passed out in about 10 seconds, and I was just about to doze off when a group nearby, who were quietly listening too some Bob Marley, suddenly decided it would be a good idea to blast Tupac at maximum volume.  The car was right next to our tent, and I swear I almost started crying. I mean seriously? You're at a hippie music festival blasting Tupac at one in the morning? So in a fit of rage, I marched out there and nicely asked them if they could turn it down, as we had just driven from Chicago and just wanted to sleep, they reluctantly agreed.  I must've sounded like such a buzzkill, but I didn't care, I wasn't going stay up for the sake of a bunch of drunk frat hippies to blast Tupac and pretend to be ghetto.

The next morning we woke up and immediately lit up the grill to cook some breakfast.  All we had was meat, so we ate porkchops.  Ben washed it down with a Bloody Mary and I was just trying to drink as much water as possible.  I've learned from my previous 3 music festivals that waking up, rolling out of your tent and cracking a beer at 8 a.m. is not such a good idea.  The last time I tried that in Rothbury music fest in Michigan, I wound up drinking 6 beers in an hour and half, on an empty stomach and 1 hour of sleep and ended up puking in my tent for 6 hours. Not fun.  We had left home at 1 am that morning and arrived at our destination about 4 hours later, once we got to the campsite, got the tent up and started our celebration, it was about 7 am. I missed the whole first day, and Ben came to get me around 6 p.m. with a bottle of Pepto and a beer. What can I say, we were at a music festival, and I'm a trooper.  We watched one more show that night, then went back to our tent, nibbled a few blocks of cheese with some diet coke and went to bed. But anyway, that's a whole other story, back to California...

We were just sitting there, eating our porkchops like cavemen (we were lacking utensils), when a stranger came pummeling into our campsite like a train wreck.  He'd managed to find a small rug, and collapsed onto it like a failed jenga game.  He used one of our folding chairs as a foot rest, and proceeded to smoke a bowl without any thought as to where he was. 

Ben and I looked at him curiously.  I had to get up and walk away because of my uncontrollable laughter, not to mention his barn door was open and I was getting an unintended peep show.  Finally after a minute of silence Ben finally asks, "Hey guy--Do you want a bloody mary?"  As if he came out of a trance he looked up and said, "Oh man...no thanks" He 'repositioned' himself, took a few more drags, and eventually wandered off.  But that wasn't the last we saw of him, he came back a little while later, wearing clothes this time, and we soon figured out that he was indeed our neighbor. 

We made friends with our neighbors after a little while, I wish very much that I could remember their names, but I can't.  There were two couples, the stoned man in the picture and his girlfriend, and another couple. The other guy was constantly dressed like a sailor, and had a big firey red beard, and his strange, yet intriguing girlfriend. She was weird, but I couldn't help liking her. Come to think of it, the sailor's name was Matt. I remember that because we were playing frisbee with them and I just remember I kept seeing his name MATTHEW written across it, but I can't remember anyone else.  Matt and his girlfriend actually lived in the mountains of Sacramento, in a tent ironically. So this experience was nothing new for them.  They were born to live as tree huggers apparently, but we liked them.  We stuck by them as much as possible during our stay.

That day, Ben and I went to the fair grounds early to check out some stores and sculptures and what not. Music festivals are always riddled with overpriced shops and sculptures. Phish was playing a day show this day too (Halloween).  I actually had money for this fest though, so I splurged on myself a little. I can't go to California with no money and buy nothing! So I'd taken out a small loan before we went. It was intended to pay on bills, but it ended up working out in my favor, so I had about $300 extra to spend on myself. So I bought a purse, some chap stick and a Phish hoodie, which I've been wearing almost every day since then (seriously, I don't go anywhere without it).

We attended the 2nd concert again that night, which again, was amazing.  By this time though our feet were so sore and throbbing, all I wanted to was sit.  We headed back to our campsite and turned in for the night.

The next morning was the last day of our California trip.  We got another night of good sleep and hung out with our neighbors all day.  Sadly, we also packed up our stuff and got the car all ready to go.  We were leaving that night after the concert.

Once again the show was amazing, Phish came out to play the encore, and we decided to leave to beat the crowd. You'd be surprised how many people leave minutes after a festival.  We said our good-byes to our temporary and only best friends from California that we would never see or hear from again. Since Pat and his girlfriend were living outside, they had no phones.  We waved our last good-byes and they faded into the dark swarm of people enjoying 'Esther', the encore. We exited the fair grounds, passed all the shops, gave it one last look over, and...

We were back.  Back in the spaceship to start on a trip back home to Peotone.  We hopped back onto the expressway, and I fell asleep.

3 hours later, in Arizona somewhere around Flagstaff we stopped at a rest stop and slept a few more hours.  About 5:30 am, I made Ben get in the passenger seat and fell back asleep and I drove until about mid-New Mexico, where we switched and I took a nap again.  I just wanted to point out that I drove through the Flagstaff mountains all by myself, thank you very much.  Ben woke up sometime later and yelled, "Oh my God! You drove through Flagstaff by yourself!"....Yeah, I don't even like driving on the expressway, let alone a winding mountain side at 8000 sea level.  So I was pretty dang proud of myself.  I'll tell you what though, those Arizonians are not phased by those mountains at all, they fly through there like they are part of the Indy 500, and I was fluxuating between 70-80...that is butt clenching speed for a scaredy-cat like me.  That's probably the hardest I've focused in my life.

I woke up sometime later in New Mexico.  New Mexico takes about 7 hours to drive through from what I remember, but we were in the dreaded Panhandle again before we knew it.  Our stop in Texas wasn't as nearly as bad the second time. We stopped a Famous Daves and enjoyed some Texan food, then we were back on the road.  I drove for about 7 more hours, while Ben slept a little more.  By this time, we were in the middle of Oklahoma. Remember in Part 1 of my story, I said that Oklahoma was crap? Well, here's why.

We eventually switched once Ben woke up, and I had stupidly pouded a half a bottle of water.  I'd practically been dehydrating myself the whole trip to avoid having to stop every hour, and although I was doing a great job, I was also depriving myself.  So we had to stop, so I could do what I'm best at, and pee.  We pulled up to a gas station that had been being advertised for a few miles, but when we reached it, it was nothing but a desolate, empty box.  So we had to drive 6 or 7 more miles to a rest area.  First,

we discovered something very dissapointing about Oklahoma just then, besides the fact that it has the most depressingly dark and scary highways in the United States, almost every exit requires a toll. Cash only. We had barely enough change to get to the stop, and had to get 10 bucks in quarters just to be safe. Second, Ben got pulled over by a very bitchy dyke cop...there was road construction on both sides, so Ben pulled onto the left shoulder.  The cop flew out of her car, and before Ben even got the window rolled down, she was screaming, "FIRST OF ALL, YOU NEVER PULL OVER ON TO THE LEFT LANE, YOU COULD GET US BOTH KILLED, SECOND OF ALL, YOU WERE GOING TOO SLOW IN THE PASSING LANE. IF YOU FEEL THE NEED TO GO SLOW, GET OVER!" And that was it, she stormed off, jumped back in her cruiser, and took off about 300 mph down the street. No warning, nothing.  Ben was going 65 in a 60.  Please explain to me how that is too slow when we are going over the speed limit?  This, just giving me another reason to loathe cops and their retard decisions. Just because you're a cop, doesn't give you authority to be a jag off at any given moment.  Get off your power trip lady, go to a gay bar or something and get some phone numbers for crying out loud. Third, there were signs all over the roads warning of deer.  I was trying my very hardest to fall asleep, but I was so sleep deprived, that my body was what I called 'airplane mode'.  It didn't want to sleep but didn't want to be awake either, I was just sort of a zombie, waiting for a deer to come sprinting out of the woods at any given second--when suddenly, Ben jerked the car violently and yelled 'HOLY SHIT!'...I looked up just in time to see a buck, sprawled across both lanes. Antlers sticking up in the air like trees.  We had just enough time and room to squeeze around it, going 75 mph, and I'm pretty sure we both peed a little. Shortly after, we came to another dreaded toll. Ben put the appropriate amount of money in, and the gate wouldn't open.  Ben called the number on the box to report it, and we took off.  At that point, I declared defeat against the dreaded state of Oklahoma.  There was just too many close calls, dykes and dear carcasses for our liking, and we were so tired we were both seeing trails and what not.  We pulled into the next rest stop, and much to our delight, the sign read 'Missouri Welcome Center'.  I was so happy to see that sign, I'm pretty sure I deliriously laughed to myself on my way into the bathroom.  Being on the road that long with no sleep, no lights and such will drive a person loony.  I'm pretty sure I was laughing with joy though.

The next morning, about 5:30, I made Ben move again, I was done sleeping, I wanted to get home.  I gunned it to the nearest town, grabbed a pop and a granola bar, and got us to St. Louis in about 4 hours.  We stopped at a Panera bread, got some good food, and crossed the border into Illinois 15 minutes later.  4 more hours later, we were home.  I'd never been so frickin' happy to see that stupid little town, and flat lands and cold weather.  I'm pretty sure the extreme air pressure did something to my ears too because everything sounded 20 times louder.  We got up into our stupid little apartment, and collapsed onto our stupid uncomfortable furniture.

I had never slept in a more comfortable bed that night. We'd drove across the Western part of the country, seen mountains, drove through mountains, made new friends and been places and seen things together for the first time.  It was truly an experience to remember.  After all said and done though, there's still no place like home.

Our California Adventure, Part 1

So, last October Ben and I took a trip to California.  It was a 31 hour drive. We drove to California to attend Phish Fest 8, in a town called Indio, about 80 miles South of Mexico. 

We left at about 7 pm, Wednesday night October 28th to start our adventure.  That night we drove until about 1:30 in the morning, about 2 hours past St. Louis. We passed the arch for the second time, and it's so much prettier at night then it is during the day.  The town looks a lot scummier in the dark though.  I'm convinced that aside from the arch, St. Louis is not as beautiful as people say it is. It's very industrial looking with a lot of old rickety roads and such.  It doesn't have a welcoming feeling to me.  It kind of reminds me of the strips of houses and stuff along the sides of the roads, right before you get into Chicago. Just run down and uninviting.

We finally stopped at a little hotel, that was being ran by an Indian family.  It was raining, and we had to talk to the woman through a peice of bullet proof glass (since it was after hours).  She spoke perfect English, but was pretending she didn't understand Ben as he was trying to bargain with her. We would only be staying roughly 5-6 hours, so she hesitantly knocked off 10 bucks, which was still a rip off. 

The next day it was still raining, and we continued our trip in Oklahoma.  Oklahoma is crap. 'Nuff said about Oklahoma.

We ventured onward into the panhandle of Texas where we came to a strip of restaurants designed specifically for travelers.  It was about 5 pm and about 18 degrees that day in the panhandle, and both of us were sporting hoodies and sandles. Ben had on shorts, I was wearing yoga pants. We must've looked like morons stumbling into that Cracker Barrel.  We passed a restaurant called The Big Texan, which we laughed at and drove by...the placed looked like a Vegas whore house...Our waitress came to our table and squalked, "Hey ya'll! My name is (Debbie?) what can I get ya'll to drink!?'  We told her. She came back with them, and then Ben asked her how long of a drive it was to New Mexico? She dumbly replied, "About 5 hours", and she left.  I suddenly had the strong urge of crapping myself, and Ben looked very upset.  We were at midpoint, and quickly regretting our decision to drive to California.  We started going over our options of finding the nearest airport and flying the rest of the way, but then what would we do with the car? So that was quickly forgotten.  We reluctantly choked down the rest of our food, since both of us felt pretty dissapointed and sick, and got back into the Jetta.  45 minutes later we were passing over the border of New Mexico.  We both immediately said to each other, "New Mexico!? What was that girl talking about?! IDIOT!" But we were so happy, we stopped at rest stop and nearly kissed the ground with elation.  There was just something about Texas that really depressed us. Plus, we passed our midway point. 

We were bashing on Texans for awhile, since that girl had obviously never been out side of the state, then it started to snow.  Not enough to cause any driving problems, but just enough to add something more the beautiful scenery. We were winding through mountains, and the snow was glittering like crystals on the walls of the mountains before they would melt away. We were mesmerized I think, because we didn't talk until we got to the hotel.

We slept great that night, and got up early Friday morning and had some hotel bagels and OJ in the morning. I got to take a quick shower, and we got back into the car.  It was just peaking about 6:30 a.m., and the sun was just coming up over the mountains...once again, something indescribable.

This was probably the best time of the whole trip, mostly because we knew that afternoon we'd be to our destination and be drinking beers and lounging under palms. New Mexico went fairly quickly, and we then crossed the border into Arizona at about 9 am.  It had been snowing in Arizona obviously, because Ben was making snow balls, once again, in our shorts and sandals.

For those of you who have ever been to this welcome center...are these not the weirdest stalls ever?  The doors are only about 4 feet long, if you stand up, you can easily see into the stall next to you. It's quite strange.  I managed to get in there and get my business done before a slap happy group of doily-lovin' old geriatrics came walkering in there with their fanny packs and neon visors.  They were whoopin and laughing like it was Bingo night at the Atrium. As I was walking out, a tour bus full of kids went tearing off into the direction of the bathrooms as well, so I dodged a bullet.  I just imagined all those little girls playing peek-a-boo under the stall doors with those poor old women. Probably gave them heart attacks, or at most, bowel movements.

And that is where I leave you today, tune in tomorrow where I will be posting the rest of our trip, and of course, more pictures.

PS: About 3 months later, we were watching the Travel Channel, and not only was the Big Texan voted number 16 out of 101 best restaurants in America, but Adam Richman from Man vs. Food was there doing the 72 oz steak challenge.  Yeah--we were kicking ourselves in the ass...

So Friday...

...I easily pulled on a pair of jeans that were too tight on me 2 months ago.

Couldn't be happier.

Poster the Cat

Most of you have already met Poster Nutbag.  He is Ben and mine's fury feline friend whom we named after the Phish song 'Harpua'.  Harpua is actually a dog who gets into a fight with Poster. I think that's pretty much what the wholes story/song is about, I've never really understood it to be honest. Ben can tell the whole story backwards and frontwards and in different languages I think.  Poster is a long haired Maine Coon mix.  For awhile, we were definate that he was a Norwegian Forest Cat, but since they are so similar in so many ways, we are having a really hard time figuring it out, so now we are leaning more towards a Maine Coon.


In the morning, Poster likes to promptly wake us up at 4 am by clawing the corners of our box spring.  When he does this, he shakes the whole bed, and the sound is definately in my top 10 most irritating sounds.

Ben leaves for work shortly after, and I get up sometime around 7:40 depending on whether or not I am going to the gym. First I take a shower, and Poster sits outside and waits. I get out of the shower, Poster sits on my feet.  Poster continues to sit on my feet, even while I am using the toilet. I try to scoot him away with my foot, but this usually causes a reaction in which he provides what I call 'a death grip' onto my foot, and nibbles it gleefully as if he's triumphed over a small animal.  After several attempts to shake him off, he gives up and then turns towards the shower and watches the water bead down the shower curtain for a little while. Eventually, he gets into the bathtub, and attack the water too.  Watching is not enough, he must interact with it. Once he is finished with that, he will climb up onto the toilet, and try to get out the closed window, only the blinds are closed too, and he must first get those out of the way to get to the window, which is also closed mind you. So it ends up just being a lot of pointless noise.

He spends most of the day very effortlessly pulling open our magnetized cabinets and exploring the wonders of the pots and pans universe. The other night, he was hiding in there and I didn't know. So I bent down to peek in the dark cave-like cabinet, and make sure I didn't close him in there, and sure as hell, he sprang out at me a serial killer, landed about 3 feet away from the cabinet, couldn't get traction on the wood floor, ran in place for a few seconds, then very dramatically bounded up the stairs.  Pans and baking sheets came pouring out like the cabinet was throwing up, and I almost fell on my ass.  I haven't gasped that loud since I was 12 and thought there was someone hiding in my room next to my dresser, but it turned out to be a George Harrison poster--seriously, it was that scary.  When an unsuspecting furry werewolf jumps out at you in the darkness, spilling pots and pans all over the floor, you tell me that wouldn't scare the bejesus outta you?

Poster always enjoys making an extravagant toilet paper trail from the upstairs bathroom down to the first floor (as seen in an earlier post).

He also likes to chirp at birds out the window, eat bugs, poop, eat and pooping some more. When he's not eating or pooping, he's sleeping.

He's taken a new interest to his 'room' as we call it, which is actually just a broom closet where his litter box, food and water have been homed. He spends a lot time in there, catching lady bugs, eating more than he should, pushing his water bowl all over. He prefers it to be right next to the litter box, I'm guessing so he can wash his feet when he gets out, kind of like we used to do before we got into a pool when we were kids.  Realistically though, this creates problems, because the dumb ass puts it right in front of his box, so when he scurries out of the litter box to avoid smelling his own poop, he showers the bowl with litter on his way out. Returns later, sniffs and says, "Nope, not drinking that" which results in more pushing, more puddles, and a retarded wet and thirsty cat. We clean the bowl all the time. Usually I just wipe it out because supposedly if you wash the bowl with detergent, they can smell it and have a hard time drinking it. But we've given up trying to figure out the 'bowl pushing' ritual, because he won't stop, and seems to find pleasure in doing it, so oh well.

Speaking of litter box...Poster left such a bad poop the other day, I could smell it two rooms away...and the smell wasn't just passing through, it was getting worse and worse and seemed to be following me.  Ben was sleeping on the couch near me and I wondered whether or not he could smell it in his sleep.  I'm surprised it didn't wake him up.  So I was forced to clean the box earlier then normal to rid of this feces catastrophe.
 
At night, he usually has a small burst of energy where he will run around the house 35-40 times, do the 'lizard crawl' on the couch, then finally collapse in front of the TV where he then licks his his crotch for an hour.  He will follow us to bed, and sleep in various positions, usually on our chests or in between our legs. It's not very comfortable to have a large furry thing louging all over you through out the night.  It was ok when he was kitten, but now he's a big furry werewolf, and it's not ok anymore.  I usually wake up and have to physically remove him from the bed because simple shooing doesn't work.
 
I've come to the conclusion that Poster is a very needy cat. He follows both of us wherever we go, and hates to see us leave in the morning. He will try his very hardest to follow us outside, and even tries to trick us by sticking his paw in the door as we close it.  He loves us.

Well it's only 1:30 and I feel this is going to be a very long afternoon.
 
I'm going to the gym after work too, if I have any energy left when I leave here.

63 degrees

Good afternoon again,

It would be an even better afternoon if this 'chill' would kindly remove itself from the forecast.  It's dissapointing when you walk outside thinking it's going to be 75 and breezy, and it's 63 and breezy. Jeans and hoodie weather.  On Saturday, Ben and I were preparing for a birthday party we decided to have for him.  It was about 62-64ish that day, and it just wasn't quite warm enough to even have the windows open.  I was so dissapointed. I kept glancing at our thermometor outside in hopes that it would warm up later in the afternoon, but I had no such luck, it stayed a steady and chilly 63.

The party was fun, just a group of our friends, a few we don't even really talk too, we had lots of beer and I ate way too much cheese. I got rid of 4 blocks of cheese that night though between myself and the party attendees. Enough said about that.

So the weightloss thing you ask? Oh, it's going the same.  Just me fighting with the scale and me losing. I thought about this morning and decided that my metabolism has flatlined.  It's non-exsistant.  My army has retreated and I'm battling that peice of crap all by myself with a nerf gun.

The only thing that I can think of that is slowing this process down for me so badly is me working in an office. Sitting on my butt 8 hours a day with no movement. 

I feel like the more I try and the more I think about it, the less that happens. I've been listening to everyone but myself for the past 4 months, and from now on, I'm listening to myself.  I'm going to keep working out, and keep eating good, stop worrying about it, stop listening to everyone's advice on what to eat, what not to eat, what to drink and what not to drink, what to do at the gym...I just don't care anymore. I'm just going to carry on with what I'm doing and live my life and I'm confident the weight will start peeling off eventually.

Well my 'friend' is here for her monthly visit, and I'm fighting a migraine right now, so I'm gonna go.

Sorry for the short post, I will post more later, scouts honor.

Sue Finley and Toilet Paper Trails

Good afternoon!

So, funny story...I got a friend request on Facebook from a person named Sue Finley this morning. I have been promptly denying any unusual requests for the obvious fact of what happen previously with Psycho. There were no pictures, no posts, and no information on 'Sue Finley' what so ever, other than that they graduated in 2005 from Manteno.  That wasn't a huge school, and I was friends with a lot of '05 kids, and I think I would have remembered a Sue Finley. So a fairly popular kid who graduated in '05 happen to be my friend and online, so I asked him about Sue.  He said that there is no such person, and the name didn't even sound familiar. So I came to the quick conclusion that 'Sue Finley' is really just a cover for Connie Rosenbrock...aka 'Sue Finley, the concerned employee' aka, our psycho co-worker!  So instead of adding her, I wrote her a private message on FB for her to see when she checks back later to see if I've added her:

Nice try Connie...it's getting pathetic now, really pathetic...By the way, there is no Sue Finley in the graduating class of '05 in Manteno, psycho. I don't know what you're trying to accomplish, but all I can tell you is that all you've accomplished is making yourself out to be a psychopath. Now please quit stalking my page, and please stay out of my life unless it's WORK related.

I mean, come on. She just wants me to add her so that she can snoop through my page and use it against me again. I'm seriously at a loss for words anymore...if anyone was in my situation, what would you do? We can't say anything to her, because we don't neccesarily know that it is her, we are just assuming. But who else would it be? I'm just done with her, period. So she can sit there and write anonymous e-mails all day, and find ways to get us fired until she's blue in the face, but I am certain that eventually, she will slip up a little peice of her plan and the truth will come out.

My other co-worker, Lynnette, who was Sue Finley's original target, came to my desk today and said loudly, 'You know what? My great-grandma used to think my name was Sue! She would call me Sue all day...You should just start calling me, Sue Finley Owens!' I laughed until my stomach hurt. At least now when Pyscho decides to try and ruin my life, I have people to talk too about it. They are all experiencing her behavior for themselves, and we can all just laugh about it. Before Lynnette and Rochelle worked here, I had nobody. Just me and Psycho.

Anyway, Poster has discovered a new fascination with toilet paper. I was getting ready for work and as I'm going up the stairs I see a trail of TP starting at the landing (see pic) and ending on the roll. How he managed to get it that far without ripping it is beyond me. I yelled at him, and he hid under the bed for awhile. I did laugh though, but secretly so that he couldn't see. I was afraid if he saw me laughing, he'd think it was ok to make toilet paper trails and forts and whatever other magical toilet paper oddeties can be discovered. The toilet paper was salvaged.

He also has a bad habit of sleeping on my chest. Which is very uncomfortable. I wake up in the middle of the night feeling claustrophic from a giant, fat, furry body lounging on my chest plate.

Well it's time to go.  Everyone message Sue Finley on Facebook and tell her what a freak she is.

Byebye!