Bigger, Badder, and Way More Yellow

So, here we are at the very start of the walk:I don't think, at least not on Andy's cell phone, a picture exists to show what I looked like at the end. This lack of documentation is probably best for all parties concerned.

We were doing pretty good, I think. We were somewhere in the middle of the sea of people at the start, but due to the fact that Andy, just past mile one, had to, ahem, "use the facilities," (and by no means did this translate into "honey bucket" or "porta-potty,") my friend Ann (in the sunglasses and equally yellow tee behind me) and I were racing to keep just ahead of the ambulance and patrol car that actually ended the walk.

Andy was nowhere in sight for most of the second half of the walk as, it seems, the coffee shop he'd ducked into, I'm not one to name names but let's just say it rhymes with Sully's, refused to let him use their WC unless he bought something. He had been planning on it...but not BEFORE using the bathroom as, um, hello? Would you go into a public MEN's bathroom holding your latte (or whatever?) eeeuuuwww please don't answer and let me continue believing you'd have said, "nuh uh."

So he sought out a more humane and just plain decent coffee shop, rhymes with "meets," where they were quite happy to let someone doing the AIDSwalk (hi, blinding yellow t-shirt clue enough?) do their business before giving them business. And yey for them some more, they even gave him a dollar off for being in the walk!

Anywho...I finished, which, as I said before, I was not actually sure I was going to be able to do. By the end my shoulders were killing me, so I spent the rest of the day either napping or resting or just plain not doing anything that required much walking or arm movement...and today was a little more of the same but maybe mix in laundry cuz, yeah my hip is sore, but not incapacitated, which is all I really hoped for, because dirty clothes wait for no man...or something.

So, yey for the human body's ability to heal!

Now, this could, theoretically, kick-start me into doing more walking...but I'm going to hold off on making any promises until I'm past the dreaded and much feared "day three" of any overly strenuous activity. I'm fully in that group of people that are happy-go-lucky until the magical 97th hour when their body finally realizes that whatever was done to it three days prior was really really bad and is going to get back at them for it.

Not so much yey for the human body's ability to age...

We Shall Shine Like the Sun...

So, AIDS walk. That's still today.

I've been stretching and practice-walking with my sneakers and everything. I think I wrote about how I am such the epitome of cool in my last post...nothin' like rockin' the sneakers with work clothes, oh yeah bay-bee.

But honestly? I'd rather not mess up my knees as I'm trudging around trying to make it to a mile a day (failed most days, but not for lack of trying...see chicken pox update below.) Today will be interesting to see just how far I can go...if I knew where my pedometer was, I'd take it...I seem to have misplaced it and a wee little (dirty) tupperware container that I'm sure will come back to haunt me sooner than later.

I know I've reached uber-stressy proportions when I start losing random shit. Which makes this walk all the more necessary. Even if I don't make it, it will force me to just concentrate on walking, and nothing more. Maybe (oh please) just maybe, I'll be able to clear my head of all the static.

Except maybe I won't be able to concentrate due to the BLINDING nature of our team shirts. They are definitely YELLOW. Dear lord in heaven above we promise we are not trying to mock how bright the sun is, really, it just maybe seems like it because of the particular shade of SUNSHINE YELLOW that the CFO decided upon. I will try to get a picture, but I'm packing light. I found I cannot stand to have anything across my shoulders for ANY amount of time just now...again, see below for more details, so I'm going to ask one of the peeps with a smart phone to do the honors.

And the Chicken Pox Vaccine Update:

It started Monday. I could have sworn I had the flu. My brain was so foggy I couldn't figure out a simple excel table that I had created.

I think I may have actually creaked with how stiff my joints were. And then it just kept getting worse. By Wednesday I could barely walk to work. 800 mgs of ibuprophen at a time are the only thing that kept me moving as I was more afraid of staying still and then NOT BEING ABLE TO MOVE EVER AGAIN, than hurting a little as I maneuvered about.

I actually went home EARLY and, was it Tuesday? The days seriously ran together. I slept for 12 hours straight. Got up, was good for 3, then came home again and lay down and, seriously, started wondering which of the "dangerous" side effects I was having...the ones I'd have to go to the emergency room for...the ones that ended in my not being alive anymore. And I may have cursed the makers of the vaccine, a little. Obviously? I've gotten better, a little.

The running theory is that as I was obviously immune to the chicken pox, having gotten along fine for 36 year without ever having them, even after being exposed to them countless numbers of times...) injecting myself with the actual disease is just plain crazypants! My body HATES me now and is showing it to me in so many ways on so many levels. It's saying, "This, lady, is what you get for TRYING TO KILL US!"

Or something.

So! I'm going to attempt to walk the Seattle AIDS walk circuit today in my blazing yellow team t-shirt and see how far I get. Cuz you know? I may not be taking a camera, but advil? Oh yeah, that is essential.

Well, It Is Still September...

Quick update, mostly because I'm just not in the mood to dwell.

My father...is still alive. I've kinda given up on the whole...well everything. I'm just there to listen to my mom and give her a place/person to let it all out to. We are preaching to the choir here. How many different ways can you say exasperated about someone who STILL BELIEVES he is hurting no one but himself with what he does. Moving on...

Chicken Pox Vaccine Shot 2 of 2 was Friday. Having been through round one, I thought I was all in the know about what was coming. Except the pharmacist burst my bubble by saying that the second shot is almost always never the same experience as the first. Even if it is was created from the same batch/set of poison, it's your body that is reacting to it in so many different ways....so I got a fever and in the middle of moving boxes, the ITCHIEST ARM IN THE WORLD....the injection spot had swollen up like a TB test, really. It looked scary and bad and my friends gave me ice and told me to sit down and maybe it was time to quit for the day... So more on the saga of cure-worse-than-the-disease as it comes up.

I feel cursed...I feel like everyone I've gotten semi-close to at work, like even almost hang-out-and-get-drinks/food-post-work...has left, is leaving, or thinking about leaving work. Some to more extremes than others, hence my moving boxes in the previous paragraph. But she's moving to Australia to go take care of/spend time with her mom during her cancer treatments. But I do feel like telling the other gal I've been hanging with about my curse so that she is forewarned. I'd be fearful about her thinking I'm a big weirdo, but um, yeah, that's not exactly secret knowledge.

Especially after the Avatar thing....cuz you know I had to go see the extra 9 minutes in IMAX 3-D at the Pacific Science Center, no less. I'm also not ashamed of saying so, to my coworkers, who are still trying so hard to be cool...um, we work in the accounting department. NO ONE will mistake us for cool. Ever. I've embraced this aspect. I mean, think about every movie, tv show, book, short story, novela, you name it...that has mentioned an accounting department. I know, I know, life of glamour and excitement. It might be an age thing. I am one of the more, ahem, mature, peeps in the group. I've outgrown the heavy black eyeliner and doc martins and way too much black in my wardrobe (well, maybe except for that last bit), but they maybe still want to be hip-hop super stars...or something. Whatevers.

I've signed up to to the AIDS walk next week...I hope my hip will take it. With the weather playing Indian Summer vs Thunderstorms, all my old injuries are acting up. This too is something my coworkers don't get...but that whole "sports" thing is something only one other in the group has done...though not to the extreme (sailing to Hawai'i) I did. So the injuries? Not so much. But I need to go do some stretches and maybe a little more breaking in of the sneakers I've chosen. If you're out there, my group will not be hard to spot, our CFO has decided on the YELLOW with red lettering T's for our "team." Good thing I'm not a fashion maven, but I am busting out my yellow socks to match! (And if we look like Team DHL to you too? We've already told him so....good thing he has a sense of humor.)

Everything All At Once...

-Or-

Why I'm glad it's finally September

When I last posted I was a happy-go-lucky/life is pretty boring/this is your thirties kind of lady. My biggest worry was wondering when the bruise on my arm would go away (still there for those of you keeping track.)

Had it not been for the official email from HR letting me know I was promoted, I think I'd have been looking for the hard-reset instructions for August.

Seriously, the month started pretty well, I got to see the uber-hyped Inception (good movie, but in my head I've already re-written it to be smarter...so meh, the important part was that I got out of my rut and went to see a movie! In IMAX no less!)

But then? There was that chicken pox vaccine thing, that pretty much affected what all I did for the rest of the month (and part two can be taken any time after this weekend, yey, sooooo looking forward to that...oh, let me wipe that sarcasm off the floor, sorry, I must be dripping.) 10 days of being worried if I was going to break out, which made me break out in other ways instead; days and days of feeling just plain sick; the whole "my body is toxic" feeling; ending with the latest: MY BODY IS TRYING TO KILL ME.

It helped a whole lot that I had friends "making" me go out, celebrating birthdays, and generally keeping me from sinking into a malaise that I was totally denying, but all that kinda fell apart when my dad ended up in the hospital.

Was it heat stroke? A heart, um, what do they call them when they don't want to say "attack?" Yeah, one of those (like when they never call it "cancer" even after they've lopped off your breast? Exactly.) Maybe a panic attack? I'll know more after he has his official cardiologist appointment. He's had enough mini doctor's appointments so that he's been cleared to go back to work, but the fact remains that he is not well.

Not that he's ever been. Hello, alcoholic? His spell in the hospital may have tuned him in to the fact that if he is ill to the point of requiring medication? OR hospitalization? Alcohol will be missing in that equation.

My hope of all hopes is that finally, at almost 65, this is the wake-up call that he needs, that, maybe? Just maybe? He can finally learn to get along with the world without having to fall into a drunken abusive stupor nightly. I mean, hi? How can I and, (and I'm just throwing a number out here) MILLIONS of others do without wrecking our heads and bodies nightly? And yeah, maybe we party it up on the weekends, or more like once a month (okay, maybe every two months in my case...oh all right, maybe three), but somehow, even when there might be "one too many," the need to drink myself stupid ended back in my college days. Yeah, okay, there were a few months there during the divorce...and yet, I think he was just revving up his tolerance in his 30s. Don't even make me try to calculate how much he goes through in a week.

Of course there is the other side to this...either he stops taking his new sets of pills (for sure one is for his blood pressure, my mom didn't fill me in/and bad daughter that I am, I didn't ask what the others might be), or just reaches a new level of slow suicide and kills himself by drinking AND taking his medication...but I've decided to purposely play stupid and avoid that train of thought for now...work with me.

Did I mention sooo happy it's September? Like a new month is a new beginning, or something. If I hope it hard enough will it come true? If my blogging on a 3AM is any indication of the month to come...I may have to wish harder. (No, not up all night...woke up from a nightmare filled sleep and being unconscious just does not seem all that inviting.)