Save the Tiny Turtles!

I know I shouldn't do this cause a lot of people could care less about what other people dream and I honestly wouldn't do it, except for it was just a little too creepy, the things going on in my head while sleeping, to not discuss...

So, last night I had one of the strangest dreams I've had in quite some time...considering I don't generally sleep. I'm think last night's strangeness can be attributed to the fact that right before bed I got hungry and ate some leftover lasagna and garlic bread (yes, I brushed afterwards) and the fact that I have been watching entirely too much sci-fi programming, namely 'Battelstar Galactica', for my own good [BTW: 'Scar' from mid-second season is hands-down my favorite episode of the series, followed very closely by season 1's '33', but please keep in mind I am still trying to dowload the rest of season two, so I have yet to see it].

Anyway, it was a tripod assembleage (Me, BEG and KP) on some sort of cruise ship (actual cruise ship...c'mon, we can't all live or live in our dreams, on the battlestar, although said cruise ship was capable of air travel...but not space travel). We were packing shit up (this could be because BEG has been weeding out her undersirable clothes, which is something I need to get to myself before my closet takes over). I was also seemingly suffering from some serious shoe-loss paranoia and I kept going through my shoe collection (yes, it is a collection) to make sure every shoe was present and accounted for. I suppose that Walter (my white Angora) can be blamed for that one seeing as how he recently chewed my favorite red strappy shoes to bits while I wasn't paying attention. Little bastard!

For the most part, this is all relatively normal. All things that can be blamed on some other curcumstance in my reality-based existence piling up in my head and getting to me when I sleep. However, here comes the strangeness...

For the entire duration of the dream I was either carrying around a dish of six, tiny turtles (you know, the ones you can't buy anymore cause the government is just as afraid of Salmonella as BEG-Sorry BEG!), or carrying the dish or tiny turtles around trying to save said turtles. This was all because every time I put the damned dish down, my dog would appear out of nowhere (Angus, the gigantic Golden Retreiver) , knock the dish over and start chewing on the poor turtles. Then there would be some screaming for hubby (these would be the only times he was present in the dream) and rescue of the turtles...which survived every single chew attack. Boy those little buggers were resilliant.

The entire tripod was a mission to save 6 tiny chewed on turtles. This is not something we have ever done or even spoken of (except for that one time when that wayward turtle wandered into my yard and we all thought the vulcan brought it to me) in reality. In the dream I kept taking them to the kitchen staff of the cruise ship for fixing (Probably not the best plan with the kitchen staff and all) and they kept wanting me to get KP to fix their computer, although the woman with the broken computer was the woman that played the blonde nurse married to Aaron on 'Chicago Hope'...a show I haven't seen in like a millenia.

Nevertheless, we built a suitable tiny turtle habitat, complete with faux trees and...Phat Boys Die-cast cars (I do collect these...cause they're adorable...and flat).

I literally woke up with a WTF? sort of feeling. The tripod doesn't save tiny turtles, especially tiny turtles no one is even allowed to legally possess anymore. Savin' the tiny turtles really isn't our thing.

If we had been out drinking in my dream and possibly taunting young waiter boys or taking an impromptu trip to the very non-local porn store or even perhaps had been using a disposable camera found in BEG's backseat to take pictures of a bloody, dead animal strategically placed on the sidewalk, I would have said, "Sounds like us." Hence not the case and now I'm wholly disturbed.

BTW: Check out http://paranormalstories.blogspot.com the renter on Eric's Panic Blog. She put of my tale of ghostly occurances and some pictures I submitted

It's a 'Tom Zarek' Disco Dance Party...

Look out, Apollo! When the terrorists start to dancin'...

So, yesterday I was purusing the internet for yummy pics of Jamie Bamber who for all of you that don't already know, plays Apollo on Battlestar, is English and is also quite adorable and nice to look at when he wears nothing more than a falling off towel...

'Nuff said...or unsaid as it were.

Yes, in the absence of and my impatience for new episodes, or even the re-airing of the nine I haven't seen, this is the sort of activity I have reverted to. There was also some discussion with BEG about how I like it when he touches the big board...

Mmm...Apollo and the big board! Gotta love it when he dry erases!

Okay, so now that we've covered the new Apollo (Trust me, we really would rather have him uncovered - There was also talk of a well-written letter to Sci-Fi requesting that his wardrobe be depleted to nothing but the falling towel or checking to see if on the off chance next season's costume budget was running low and offer them the suggestion of giving him a uniform with no pants)but we'd rather have him uncovered...and preferably doing something naughty with Starbuck...hmm...maybe on a raptor...but that's a whole different blogpost...

I was googling 'BSG Apollo' and I kept getting all these pictures of the old Apollo and Starbuck action figures from the original TV show. That's all fine and good and was to be expected, but they both seem to be in disco positions. Were they disco-ing? Was that part of their appeal. I know Apollo's seventies style mullet is quite huge and lifelike (Richard Hatch still has this hair-do...it's not just a hair-cut...it's a 'do) and I assume that was part of his appeal as an action figure. Even the Cylon Action figure could be accused of disco action.

At first this only mildly concerned me, but the more I saw and the further this google shit went on the more and more creepy me and BEG got as girl-type humans from middle-class families.

Somewhere along the way, I decided I wanted a new Apollo and Starbuck action figures (Once again so they can smack each other around and do naughty things - Imagine if they did exist, I would have them and they both would've been repainted and changed by now). BEG and I started to chat it up about this, pow-wow style like we usually do under such dire needs for new BSG action figures. It came up that we could buy these old Apollo action figures and re-paint them to look like Richard Hatch's new BSG character, Tom Zarek. I was all, we need to do this because they'll never make a 'Tom Zarek'. I started to google BSG action figures, finding all these disco style posed Apollo-s and Starbucks again and became increasingly amused. I know this was probably intended as a serious action move, making the most literal of the words 'ACTION FIGURE', but to me...still looks like good ol' fashioned disco goodness. And thus the plotting and scheming for 'Tom Zarek's Disco Dance Party' started. BEG said something about it being live from The Astral Queen, their first duty as a ship unhinged from the rest of the fleet and full of hardened criminals, was to build a disco ballroom. Hell, the resistance built a regulation size Pyramid Ball court. Why not a disco ballroom?

So, now I'm set forth on a mission to buy some old school Battlestar disco action figures of Starbuck and Apollo, re-paint them so Richard Hatch's likeness is wearing the prisoner jumpsuit he wears in the new Galactica as terrorist/activist/prisoner, Tom Zarek and then I will build them a decent diorama of a disco so we can act out 'Tom Zarek's Disco Dance Party'...Live from the Astral Queen's newly built disco ballroom...on film. Of course I have to file down the chins on the Hatch-es because now aged, he seems to no longer have a definable chin. "Hey, Hatch! Get that excess skin removed. You're freakin' me out!" Anthony Edwards actually suffers so badly from this disease, regression started at birth and his face seems to be just caving in altogether. It's sort of sucking back into itself... Shit! I am way off topic...Back to the big board...

Hmm...Big board...

If you have a mildly abused Apollo from childhood hanging around, collecting dust in a box somewhere or from teenhood when you bought him at a garage sale cause you thought it would be fun to actually hang him and he's been hanging on a action figure sized noose (I know my friends and I wrecked many knight-rider toys bought at rummage sales...and lets not forget when Pokey got licked), give me a shout so I can start constructing the party.

Also, Sci-Fi was playing a marathon of the original Battlestar either yesterday or today and I was reading the descriptions of the episodes, which are often similiar to new BSG descriptions and titles, but when thinking about it, I was actually thinking about old Apollo and Starbuck, both men once again, but in terms of their newer versions' relationship, boy and girl and how they flirt and slap each other around and it was really...well, it was really something else.

I leave you with this...

Found somewhere on the internet along the way. I had nothing to do with it. If it's yours, you know who you are and I applaud you. Clap! Clap! Clap! I'm sorry I'm an idiot!

All Around the Mulberry Bush...

So, I've been thinking about this. I've been sick. Cut me some slack.

When on Earth, does a monkey chase a weasel around a mulberry bush? When are these three things even in the same place. I'd have to think the zoo would be the most likely bet on finding at least two of the three things. Does the zoo even have weasels though? I don't remember, but then again, it has been quite a while since I've been to the zoo. Suppposing they do have weasels, I'm sure they are without mulberry bushes. So literally, you would have to go to the zoo...with a mulberry bush (try not to look suspicious and supposing you can find one) and abduct both a monkey and a weasel...and we all know how unruly monkeys can be. It all ends up like the stupid shit they teach in foreign language classes. I took many years of highschool German, not to mention short terms stints with French, Spanish and yes, friggin' latin. Trust me, this nursery song plays out like a bad French lesson where for some reason a monkey is riding a bicycle. It's incredibly arbitrary. Might as well just sing things like "All around the ghetto the INS chases illegal immigrants"...it's just as not likely. Or "Up to the top of the condemned building the po-po chases a meth-freak"...although entertaining...also not likely,and in the end, the meth-freak is more likely to jump from the structure than give up. I have to say, speeders...they don't give up when they're geeked! Give 'em a square peg, a round hole and a bindle of glass see what happens. By god, the peg, square or not, is goin' in that hole, even if it requires whittling. How about, "All around the hot, hot desert G-Dub chases Osama Bin Laden"? At least that shit exists and has as of now, been going on for years. At least it gives children some sort of grasp on reality. And what is this business about the cheese standing alone? Why isn't the weasel chasing the cheese? It is a rodent isn't it? We're led to believe that while the monkey is chasing the weasel around said bush, there's a hunk of cheese just off to the side, not tempting either one of them. I have to imagine that you could get a monkey to eat cheese. Cheese is tasty! I could gather an entire team to stand with the cheese. Me and mine...we're all cheese-backers...cheese-heads if you will. It's Wisonsin for the love of JP! No cheese is ever alone here! Hmm...cheese!

It's All About the Butter Lamb...

So, yesterday, after all this time of still being sick, I decided to stop being a slacker. I decided that since the poke hole from the eight inch needle jabbed into my abdomen last Thursday morning for a surpise biopsy of sorts was practically healed, I may as well try to be normal again, even if there is pain and I constantly wanna take a nap no matter where I am or what I'm doing. I got my ass up off the couch, compiled a ridiculous shopping list, which involved going to the bank and buying the new LL Cool J CD (after the release date kept getting changed and I had already made many attempts to purchase this CD even with the 'featuring Jennifer Lopez'). First, I head to Walmart to get the crap I generally buy every time I go to Walmart. I like that I have a Super Center and don't really care how Walmart treats their employees so long as I just have to go to one store to get everything I need. Walmart could torture their employees all medieval like and I would praise Joe Pesci and/or Sam Walton for being able to get a lamp, fourteen yards of ginham, and a goldfish all at the same store, saving both time and money! I don't even care if the goldfish is American or not or if their collection of American Flags were pressed in Taiwan. The less I have to shop, the better it is for all of mankind and possibly some as yet unknown alien races. Anyway, I go to Walmart, thinking everything will be dandy seeing as how it's a Tuesday morning and sort of rainy and gross. I think I'll just be able to get in and out quickly. This did not in fact happen. First, I was gonna get my birth control pills since Miranda said I could take them without stopping for the bleed. The Pharmacy was a mob scene though. Old people and small, angry Mexican women with moustaches thicker that Adama's and six or seven bratty kids apiece all clinging to their stretch pants-ed legs. I take a democratic vote amongst myself and decide in favor of the candidate for a tota psychotic break should not linger in the midst of this chaos for very long and change my mind about the pills. I'll take the hit and bleed if it means I don't have to stand around the Walmart pharmacy with some of the scariest and possibly sickest people on the face of the Earth, not to mention some of the most ancient and crusty, some with wheelchairs and canes even. I decide to browse through the new music rack and see if the new LL was one that had to be edited. Alas it was not. I snatched it up with the knowledge that I had just been saved a trip to Best Buy which no doubt would have ended with my walking out with the entire 'Stargate' thus far. I walk in to Best Buy and my brain just falls out of my head and I wander around with the checkbook rambling incoherently about Sci-Fi. Unfortunately, on my way out of the entertainment dept I grabbed Daniel Powter and saw the new Pink CD which was in fact edited and now would have me once again headed towards BB and muttering something about how there is just never enough Sci-Fi available to me at a moments notice and purchasing more depressing Patsy Cline, this, a behavior that can only be blamed on 'Space: Above & Beyond' and the depressing frakkin' episode with all the Patsy Cline and death. So, I resign and put Best Buy back on the list, headed for the parusal of the Walmart Fabrics & Crack department. I end up gathering 11 different fabrics, most of which are blue. Blue is my favorite color. This was bound to happen. I tell you, the two chicks that work in the department are some of the most ghetto bitches I have ever had to deal with. Their fingernails were so long and claw-like that they could barely operate the scissors to cut the fabric. Then they broke the tag gun thing. I waited patiently though. Finally they finished. I grabbed the rest of the stuff I needed and headed for the checkouts. It seems everybody and their cousin was there buying shit for Easter as though stores are going to run out of food by the end of the week and Easter will be totally fucked. It was madness. I had a lot of stuff so I got in line behind someone who had slightly less. She was pretty much my only option and she was a woman in Walamart Super Center on a Tuesday morning buying four, yes, four butter lambs, which by the way, are obscenely priced. It is a mighty fine thing to have a butter sculpture of a lamb on the Easter dinner table though. Mock sacrifice with a butter knife is a hell of a lot of fun. Plus, it just seems to taste a little bit better and make the world seem just a little more bright when the butter is shaped like something other than butter. Personally, I think the original butter slab design is inferior and that from this day forward all butter and butter-like substances should be shaped like animals. I think butter fish are an excellent idea. Anyway, I'm standing their, waiting...and waiting...and waiting, eyeing the KitKats, which I was out of but not close enough to grab them yet. Two freaks who had no business being together, meaning that he was a middle-aged biker, leather and all and she was a frumpy ghetto girl dressed all gangster boy and if I had to hazard a guess on her age, I wouldn't have said she was more than seventeen. Together, they were in line behind me to buy one bottle of Tylenol. This becomes creepier though because I did think for a minute that he was her dad, but then they started making out as a little, old German women gets behind them. LOGW didn't seem to like them so she kept trying to get them to go over to the self-checkouts. Creepy Couple of the Damned were resistant to her old lady pushiness. She put on the full-court press and finally, instead of just relocating to the self-checkout, slam down their one bottle of extra-strength Tylenol Geltabs and flee the store. And so LOGW is now right behind me and she's totally scoping out what's in everyone's carts and not being even remotely slealthy about it. She notices as I get to the conveyer belt that I have a large stack of fabric. I know this is not going to end well for me. She says in her thick German accent even though she's probably been in this country long enough to have lost it by now, "Oh, you sew." in a very accusatory kind of way as though the fabric is for making neo-nazi concentration camp garb and I'm the new Hitler. I said, "Yeah." very cautiously as though she might start freaking out at any second. Instead she says, all accusingly again, "When do you find the time to sew?" There I was, not wanting to be rude to the LOGW by not answering her, but also surrounded by sweaty, angry, poor people and the truth is, I don't work and don't have to. I said, cautiously again, this time for fear of a tar-feather icident incited by snot-face toddler toting brown people who probably aren't even legal (It's great to be an American), "I don't work. My husband does." Luckily, I'd managed to say it quiet enough to keep the others from tackling me and still loud enough for LOGW to hear me. Next thing she says is, "You like blue." while scrutinizing my pile of mostly blue fabric. I could only manage a nod. There's no telling what old folks are capable of and even less telling when their old and tiny and German. They're fiesty and they don't take shit from anyone. Also, some of them are just a little bit out of their minds...I blame The Holocaust. Anyway, I realize that this woman is in what seems to be the longest line anywhere to buy just a value box of knee-highs and some meds. Why didn't she go to the self-checkout? Why did she choose to hang with me and scrutinize my soon-to-be purchases? I'm like a crazy, old person magnet these days. Finally I get my turn and my attentions are forced elsewhere. LOGW knows this and leaves me to tend to my check writing. I get out of Walmart and head for the bank, which is just down the street. However, I always drive right passed the bank and have to turn around and go back. This time I was dtermined to not miss the bank. I get stuck behind a car with no brake lights and am instead forced to pay attention to the car in front of me, shooting the getting-it-right plan right out the window like a boogied tissue! I miss the turn, and have to them turn around in lunch traffic on an extremely busy road. I made it out alive and made haste for Best Buy. Got there, grabbed the Pink which was conveniently located right in the front of the store and got in a checkout line. I always end up in the same happy, black woman lane and she's all cheery and shit about working at best buy and the free weeks of magazines speel. I had to halt her, having heard it from her before and having just heard her tell it to the two customers that'd been in front of me in the line. Strangely there was a man with a girl baby dressed all in pink behind me. After Best Buy I headed for McDonald's drive thru. I figured some I-Don't-Have-Cancer McNuggets were in order. By this time of the day, the line was long and the temperature outside had increased dramatically. I had definitely left the house wearing too much clothing and was now sitting in the drive thru taking things off and discarding them on the passenger seat. I even turned on the A/C. I booked home with my nuggets just in time to see Sammy and James standing around at the end of the driveway, doing their thing. Old men are hilarious...especially when they're already drunk and one of them has a lisp and a southern accent. Regardless, I knew I was in for a lecture from Sammy for leaving the house. It ended up being something about how I'd waited for him to leave and then snuck out cause if he wasn't here, he couldn't stop me. I think it's adorable when he gets all crazed about my sneakiness as though I had actually plotted an escape. I'm not that covert when I go to Walmart. Sorry, Sammy. Anyway, he called me hard-headed like he usually does and I finally got to come in the house and eat my celebratory McDonald's. However, I realized that while out, I had missed the last episode of 'Judging Amy' a show I have watched from the beginning now on TNT because surprisingly it isn't/wasn't as wholesome of a show as I had been led to believe (Tyne Daly is priceless as Amy's mother and the entire family goes nuts the last two seasons). When I turned it on, I was right in the middle of the second ep they play in a day and it was the pilot. The show had started all over again. Dammit! So, now I'm watchin' it all over again from the beginning, two episodes a day. Actually, even if I had seen the last episode I'd probably still be watching it over and over and over again. Two words...ADRIAN PASDAR... I rest my case. After the 'JA' fiasco, I listened to my new CDs. All three are awesome. I highly recommend Daniel Powter and Pink, if you're an angry girl. I really didn't have a whole lot of faith in Powter but I have to say the album is fantabulous. It reminds me of Maroon 5. I think I listened to it like 5 times. Of course, Pink's 'I'm Not Dead' is totally for the Kelly Clarkson fans. I love new music and this time it really panned out well. These two albums I can listen to straight thru without skipping any of the tracks. It was like a new music Tuesday miracle!

P.S. If you ever get the chance to see 'Austin City Limits' with The Flaming Lips and The Shins, the lips half is definitely worth the watch. There are people in animal suits and the lead singer poors blood on his head while wearing an American flag as a cape while they perform a Black Sabbath song. I love The Flaming Lips.

BEG's Birthday Butterfly Quillow...

How I Seemingly Built a Cocoon...

So, about two months ago, it occured to me that it would soon be BEG's 27th birthday. Hmm, I thought. What should I do? What should I do? This was hard cause when I have a quandry, she's the one I call. Couldn't very well call her about her own birthday present.

It was around this time that I busted out all my stray fabric to start cutting it into quilt pieces just to get rid of it. Trust me, I have like my own personal fabric store upstairs in one of the many spare bedrooms, so this was quite an undertaking. Anyway, I was like, "I'll make her a cool quillow." She had been telling me how she couldn't find the one her mother had made her a while back. So it was practically a perfect plan...unless your a psychotic perfectionist like me! BTW: For those of you not acquainted with the quilloq concept, it's a blanket that folds into a neat, well-contained pillow.

I busted out the graph paper and colored pencils to work out a very BEG design. She likes butterflies and the color green. Easy enough, or so I thought. The design process took considerably longer than I had planned and was harder since as mentioned, she is like the other half of the design team and when I got trouble, she's the one I call. I struggled without her creative input. CPs were shitty and old, so I went out and bought two new sets (I think I actually did a post about that) and got back to work. It took about a week and had started as mostly a whim, caused by my fear that she would freeze to death in The Great White North and her of course having lost or misplaced her other one. After much work, designing and re-designing and modifying this is what I came up with...

The design was for a 19 square by 19 square blanket, making it 97 " x 97". Big enough for a queen size bed if she wanted to put it there, making the pocket a great place for her fur kids to hide, or alternately, in the hopes that she finds someone who likes her (her words), it's big enough for two and the pocket is big enough for two sets of feet. Also, since she lives in a dinky apartment with not a whole lot of room for furniture, I figured if it was big enough folded correctly, she could toss it on the floor for an impromtu seat for someone. There was ultimately a lot of thinking that went into this and without BEG's assistance no less.

So, I set out to find cool fabrics. I'm like a mad-woman at a JoAnn Fabrics. Most of the fabrics I bought were faux suede and similiar, so there was also big plans for it to be toasty warm...saving her from ever freezing to death in The Great White North, as mentioned earlier.

This was a lot of work ahead of me as the pattern for the blanket and the pocket for the reverse side, which the blanket gets folded into called for 386 fabric squares. This was a lot of cutting and omigod was my hand tired. Thank JP for sharp Fiskars!

With all the squares cut and organized by row in neat little piles on my dining room table, I got crackin'. I wanted to make sure that it was done for her birthday when KP and I go up there to poke at her cause she's the first of The Tripod to turn 27...not that me and KP are too far behind! But alas, there was a problem.

I had to crack and call her about the damned thing. I needed input on the backing color. The cat was out of the bag, but in the end, I don't know that it's such a big deal. If it was staying here, I would've put a black back on it. We decided on white for her house. I got about this far before the mystery sick showed up...

And so it sat. And then there was my sitting in the hospital all day last Saturday and well into the night, coming out with no more info than I had when I went in. Sunday, I decided that I might as well get to finishing that dang quillow since it was just a few short days until departure for BEG's birthday festivities and at least it allowed me to control something!

Monday, I finally got to it all assembled, complete with tickle-knots (anchor knots). It was around this time that it occured to hubby that it was like a cocoon that opens into a butterfly. I guess he was sort of right...

So, there it is. Finally done and ready to go. It even has it's own protective plastic zipper bag. I'm so proud of myself. The damned thing is heavier than hell and it was no easy feat with the sick and the dogs and the fact that I was basically protecting the white back with my life to keep it white. Plus it weighs a ton and there was really no easy way to deal with laying it out flat. But still, so proud!

Saturday Night Fever...

Ok, so there was no disco, no Barry Gibb...or evenTravolta in a white polyester suit (Although, I may have seen Donna Pecso, but then again it could have just been a CPR dummy), but there was actual fever, not to mention numerous other things and I did somehow manage to boggle the minds of an entire ER staff...Some of them might still be banging their heads on the walls...

Hello boy and girls and I think six ducks of varying ages in a remote Utah location. It's been a while, and this time the Sci-Fi Immersion program had nothing to do with it...not really at least...unless one can catch something from the future via a Sci-Fi TV on DVD streak. Read on for that tale, but first, there are a few things I'd like to stop and take notice of. #1 - Yes, this is post #69, and I should be doing something hellaciously wicked with it. I tried. I 've been thinking about it since I saw that it would be post #69. Alas, there was illness and I was sidetracked. These things happen...and they really like to happen to me...all the time, even if I'm already in the middle of 15 things going on all at once, all of them annoying (guess where that line came from and win...not a friggin' thing!). I didn't come up with anything, so post #69 remains even Tatum-Free (check BEG's 69th post on 'Plural'...it's been a while, but it's crazy with Tatum!), but read on for my post #69 story of how I spent all day Saturday and well into the night boggling the over-educated minds of an entire ER staff and only got to stay sick in return...It was sort of an 'I went to the ER and all I got was this lousy t-shirt' kind of tip only there was no t-shirt...I do expect a hefty bill coming in the mail though...any time now...

So, last Monday I started to feel kinda crappy. This was your general sneezing, itchy eyes, stuffy nose kind of crappy and I really just assumed with the wack-o weather we've been having lately, that it was just my allergies kicking in. Thank you mold!

As the week progressed though, I started to get worse. I started to get other weirdo symptoms that would come and go and I thought by Wednesday that I had gotten a UTI. I fear this because I had Polynephritis back in September and I certainly did not enjoy it. I wanted to nip it in the bud right away, but my insurance from hubby's newest job (oh, yeah, he doesn't work for the Japanese anymore...too many whores looming about I think) wasn't set to kick in until Saturday.

I called up the doc's office to find out what I should do. They said to push fluids and what not and take it easy. They made me an appointment for this coming Thursday...although I don't know how they thought I'd ever be able to make it that long.

Anyway, Thursday and Friday I pushed fluids. I really hate cranberry juice and as I've learned once again...not really a fan of water. But I digress. I also started to get really tired and bitchy. This wasn't pleasing anyone around me.

Friday night, hubby brought home pizza and we settled in to watch some BSG. Pretty quiet. Pretty low-key. Only, I get this sharp pain in my chest and my arm went all funny. I shook it off. I am only 26 years old and my heart has always been fine. I won the family lotto in the heart dept and basically I am the only one with a good heart...well, so far as health goes...when it comes to anything else..it's kind of black and icky, but still we move on...

Around three, Saturday morning, I sat upright in bed, wide awake. My head was pounding. I couldn't see a thing and I was freaking out, like a panic attack. Then there was some projectile vomitting and frezing to near death. I drank about a quarter of a can of coke, felt better and went back to sleep.

Saturday morning, I woke up completely exhausted and feeling like I was going to die. I took a shower, thinking it might help. It did not. I took my temperature. No fever...although I was sweating buckets and still feeling like death was coming for me. I continued to push fluids and feel like crap, gaining a seriously bad pain in my right side as well. This went on until around two when I took my temp again...and there it was a fever of 101.9! Creepy!

Hubby was at work (where else would he have been?) and I didn't really feel like going to the ER down the street where people have been known to die for what seems to be no apparently good reason and I really didn't think I should be driving the car anyway so I called my mom. She came to get me and hauled my ass back out to Waukesha to the ER out there.

The entire way there, my chest hurt and my arm was all funky again. I started to consider the notion that maybe I had had a heart attack. Mom took this opportunity to remind me that Gramps (her dad) had a heart attack when he was 28. This only really helped to freak me out more and then I recalled the VH1 'Behind the Music' of John Mellacamp and how he'd had that massive heart attack and only thought he had the flu. Here's where I started to think I was really going to die.

By the time we got to the ER, my blood pressure was all out of wack and the place was totally packed. I had to hang out in the waiting room. There was a massively bad car accident and many people vomitting (the sounds of yacking noises could be heard everywhere around me). I was literally in the waiting room for so long that I declared that if I was still waiting there on Monday I was going to steal a wheel chair and roll down the hill to my actual doc's office.

Finally, they stuck me in a room. A crappy one with no bathroom. Last time I got a room with a bathroom. This pissed me off especially with the fact that I had to pee every 27 seconds with all the fluids I'd been comsuming.

First, since I thought I had a UTI or something that had progressed to something worse, they made me pee in a cup. They also took six tubes of blood, did an EKG cause of my heart wackiness, and checked my pulse, blood pressure and temp about a thousand times before the tests came back. When there were results, there was no UTI. The EKG was fine as well. All they did come up with was the fact that my white count had practically doubled. Instead of 9,000 it had jumped to 19,000. This was apparently cause for great concern, although right now, I have no idea why.

The doc and many nurses that had joined up in the search to find the reason for this were beginning to baffle. This was not cool as just down the hall, the car accident guy was dying and then he did. They were already defeated in one case, having lost a patient. I somehow became their mission to prove they're a good ER staff as I was pretty much the only one left in the ER at this point. There had also been a shift change and although maintained my fist doctor, two more were added and there were new nurses.

It was around this time I got an IV and it was decided it could be my appendix, so they ordered a cat-scan and also a pelvic exam. At the mere thought that it was my appendix and that if it was I would have to stay in the hospital, I started to freak out. I don't like the hospital. I had no plans to camp out any longer than the ER visit that seemed to never want to end.

The nurse came to fetch me to take me to another room for the pelvic exam where I was alas without my underwear, up in stirrups and had one of those obnoxious hospital blanket that's not really even a blanket thrown over me. Next thing I know, four new nurses and another doctor barge in and declare I have to get up because they think they should do the cat-scan first. A nurse ran interference with the so-called blanket and the door just in case another team of experts wanted to barge in while I was putting my clothing back on. At this point the mormon tabernacle could've barged in to look at my cooch and I wouldn't have cared. I was like 'I've been to summer camp!' the blanket cover is not necessary!

So there I was, wandering around with a pack of nurses down to a cat-scan in just underwear, a hospital gown and my argyle knee socks. I was a sight to be seen. Had the cat-scan. Then I got the very non-pleasure of having my pelvic exam, the first I've had done by a man doctor. At that point I wasn't even caring about that. Instead I was thinking about re-arranging the furniture in my room to better suit my liking and since it didn't seem like I was leaving any time soon.

I had been cat-scanned and tested for every STD known to man, not that I thought that I had any. Married. Have no real reason to think I was catching anything.

The cat-scan showed nothing, other than the fact that I have a large ovarian cyst. Not alarming. It's been there for about five years (this was the last cat-scan I got the pleasure of having). It is bigger now and this is what they attributed the pain in my side to since they found no infection of any kind anywhere in my abdomen. Also, no STDs as previously assumed.

It was around this time they called my actual doctor and got him out of bed and basically just anyone on the staff who wanted to started coming in really just look at me in some kind of terrified awe since they couldn't seem to locate any cause for my white count having doubled in size. Also, since every time the original ER doc came in he looked completely defeated, the head ER doc was brought in on the case.

They started checking like every inch of skin on my person, checking my nail beds and drawing fluid from my knee, thinking there was a joint infection. They even slapped one of those 'INFECTIOUS' caution signs on my door on the chance that I was contagious.

I was like a human pin-cushion. They also seemed quite interested in continuing to take my blood pressure, pulse and temp every ten seconds like it was all they could think of to do. They messed with the thermometer so many times in my room over the duration of my stay, it actually stopped working altogether and they had to bring in a new one from elsewhere in the hospital.

Finally, the original ER doc came in, completely defeated and said, "Chest x-ray.", thinking at this point I might have pneumonia or lung cancer or some shit! So I got to march with my team of experts down to x-ray in my undies, gown and argyle socks. There were three chest x-rays, which they declared to be completely healthy. I think they expected worse than what they got considering I am a smoker.

I drew the line at the mention of spinal tap. I wanted no part of it, especially since I already seemed to have had a complete physical with the exception of say a mamogram and said spinal tap and they had come up with nothing. I swear, I was checked for everything from mad cow to prostate cancer, not that either were bound to happen not having a prostate and all and not being a really big meat eater and there was absultely nothing but the white count that was mysteriously doubled in size. My blood pressure had even settled and my temp had even returned to normal I had been there so long.

I demanded to be freed, which they did tried to fight me on. I wasn't having it and possessing the capability for logic that I do, I reasoned that they apparently couldn't help me. I was cranky-tired, hadn't had a cigarette in like 8 hours and really wanted a beverage that wasn't water and contained some kind of caffiene. So they were defeated.

They pulled the IV, which was really starting to bug me and they gave me a paper that basically said to see my doctor this week. Duh! I already have that Thursday appointment coming up on my way out of town to see BEG for her birthday. The paper also said I shouldn't have caffiene, smoking or sexual activity. I was like, "Fuck that!". My lungs are extraordinarily clear for a smoker as they've told me, so fuck it, I'm smoking and the caffiene...unless they want the bodies to start piling up around them, there will be mountain dew. Also, I will be fucking my husband since they couldn't find anything wrong with my female parts!

Upon my re-dressing, I actually declared something to the affect that when I got home, I was getting myself a Travolta style bubble suit. Not so attractive, but it would keep the germs and bugs out!

It's now Tuesday. I'm still hella tired. Still have the cyst pain...hoping the fucker will just rupture and get it over with already cause at least I've been through that before and since it's not infectious, it should be no big deal. So who knows? Maybe actual doc can find something on Thursday!