The Agony and the Ecstasy

The Agony — I’m covered with indescribable itching — AGAIN!!

The Ecstasy — scratching it until I bleed. I know it’s the wrong thing to do, but sometimes I just can’t help it.

My darling Sweet Baboo — the mighty poison ivy slayer — finely outfitted in his coveralls and gloves and hat, standing at the ready to do battle with the blasted interlopers. With his trusty spray can at his side, he sprayed until there was nothing left to pour on the noxious weeds. I am absolutely a true believe in organic gardening, but when it comes to poison ivy, there is no mercy. Bring on the Round Up and lots of it.

That’s not where I got the rash, tho.

A few days ago, SB was clearing brush at his boss’s house. Didn’t realize what he had gotten into until I broke out the next morning. He had the urushiol on his skin but I broke out before he did!!! Isn’t that a kick in the head? I told him I got it from him and he didn’t think so — until his arms started itching later that day and he had to agree with me.

I’ve read where the rash starts anywhere from a day to 2 weeks. Haven’t ever read where a person can break out within a couple of hours. That’s my own experience.

So here I sit, my head numb from Benadryl while the rest of my body is racked with this hateful itching. AGAIN!!

From the “stop you’re killing me” files……

Another true story……

A patient came in today and was met at the front desk by one of our docs.

The patient says “doc, I can’t see anything with these new glasses.  They don’t seem strong enough”.

The doc says, “didn’t you ask me to give you a discount on your exam?”

The patient nods.

The doc says, “well that’s your problem. I gave you half off your exam, so you only see half as well.  When you want to see the whole picture, come back with more money and I’ll give you the works.”

Oy.

An interesting exercise

Just for the heck of it, I let my spam folder fill up for exactly one day. (I usually empty it everytime I log on to check my email.)

I had 100 emails in there

25 were for medications

43 were for (ahem) enlargement concoctions

19 were for watches

8 were for loans and debt consolidation

2 were for shoes

2 were for software

1 was for weight management

Who are the yahoo’s that respond to this detritus? Do the originators of this offal actually make money doing it?

I don’t click on any of it, but just the few words that come up on the subject line make me realize that there must be a lot of sick puppies out there.

I just don’t understand it.

….and For My Next Trick, Ladies and Gentlemen…..

The lower part of our building is rented by two professionals. The lunchroom is also part of the lower part, but we rarely use it. It is used mostly by the tenants downstairs. It has come to our attention that they have a bit of a “ahem” rodent problem down there. Suggestions such as “maybe taking out your trash every night” and “it’s probably not a good idea to leave dirty dishes in the sink” were met with a frosty glare. I have to say that they tried those recommendations after they were suggested, (hard to believe that it had to be suggested, but there you have it) but it was a case of horse and barn door at that point.

Enter a bug guy. (You know them — guys in brown uniforms with large spray cans of who knows what wearing rubber gloves and goggles. They always try to tell you that the can contents are not toxic to anything but bugs. Bah!!) This bug guy spent nearly two hours down there setting those snappy traps and the sticky traps. We were starting to believe that he had set a trap down for every square foot of floor space. Kind of like the Sylvester and Tweety cartoons with the yard full of dogs.

Later that day — I go downstairs to pull a couple charts for incoming patients. (We have a utility room under the stairs that is just for old charts and other odd stuff. Like mice, apparently.) Although I have tried to make the filing as simple as possible, sometimes it’s a bit confusing and will involve opening several storage boxes before finding the chart you need.

So here I am, heaving boxes here and there and not really watching what I am doing. Or where I am stepping. Suddenly, my foot (I was wearing my old faithful Börn clogs which have a rubber sole) didn’t feel quite right. Looking down, I see that I had managed to step onto one of those sticky sheets. Darn little sucker wouldn’t come off. I took off my shoe and pulled on a corner of it for all I was worth — nothing. Tried using the other hand. Nada. (Of course my thumbs are so strong, I don’t understand why I was having a problem.) Finally, after pulling on this stupid thing for what seemed like hours, and thinking to myself, “terrific, I’m going to have to go upstairs with my shoe in my hand and find somebody to get this thing off for me”, I threw the shoe on the floor. Looked at it. Looked again. Stood on it with both feet. Bent over and hit my head on a box. Swore. Twice. Stood on it again. Pulled on one corner with both wimpy thumbs. Slowly, slowly it came off — then apparently decided that it had had enough fun with me and came off all at once. At which time I fell on my butt and hit my head on a box in back of me. More cussing. Even more being glad that there was no one there to witness my theatrics. Threw the sticky little #$@&^%* down on the floor again, picked up my charts and made my way back up the stairs, thump, whsht, thump, whsht, thump……. TGIF!!

Conversations Through the Window

HIM — “I’m here to pick up the new lenses that I ordered from you people. ” (You people is always a bad sign)

ME — “Okay, Mr. XYZ — is that eyeglass lenses or contact lenses?”

HIM — “Eyeglass lenses”

(Five minutes later after much rummaging through boxes and trays, no lenses can be turned up in the lab)

ME — “Mr. XYZ, are you sure you ordered eyeglass lenses ?”

HIM — “Yup”

(Back to the lab — more digging through boxes, more peering into trays, still no lenses)

ME — “Mr. XYZ — when did you order these lenses?”

HIM — “Let me check (pulls out cell phone)(has to dial 3 times before he can be heard by the other party) Hey Mrs. XYZ — when did we order your lenses?”

HER — “TWO WEEKS AGO” (I can hear her from five feet away)

HIM — “She says two weeks ago”

ME — “Okay, so they’re for your wife, not you.”

HIM — “Yeah, that’s what I told ya.”

(Which, of course, he didn’t)

Not that it made much difference, back to the lab. Still nothing for either XYZ.

ME — “Mr. XYZ, did you order new frames with your wife’s lenses?”

HIM — “Nope”

ME — “Will your wife be using her old frames for the lenses?”

HIM — “Nope”

(Quietly entering the twilight zone)

ME — “What will she be using to hold the lenses in front of her eyes?”

HIM — “Whaddya mean?”

ME — “If you ordered eyeglass lenses, there has to be a frame to put them into so that you can look through them”

HIM — “Hold on — (out comes the cell phone again)(only has to redial twice this time) Hey Mrs. XYZ where’s the frame for your lenses?”

HER — “OH, DO THEY NEED IT? I’VE GOT IT HERE — I’LL BRING IT RIGHT DOWN“. (Honestly, this woman has pipes like Beverly Sills)

HIM — “She says she has it — she’s going to bring it right down”

Five minutes later — little lady comes in holding a very small contact lens case and hands it to me..

ME — “Oh, it was an order for contact lenses!!”

HIM — “Yeah, that’s what I told ya — you people never listen!!”

Oy.

A Heavy Snow

It’s 11am on the East Coast. The snow falling, if any, is not noticeable — it stopped pretty much about 1/2 an hour ago, leaving about 4-6 inches in it’s wake. (The weather disaster mongers were wrong once again.) The branches of the pine trees that I can see as I sit at my computer are starting to move about — not good, as this snowfall was extremely wet. Wet, heavy snow can mean power outages. And I just heard a branch from one of the pine trees come down. The sky is brightening and starting to clear.

This is my favorite time of a snowfall — clean, pristine snow, frosty air, the silence is a balm to my ears. It is a small slice of serenity before the world intrudes once more.

New England Braces Itself Again

The weather gurus are all a-dither. It’s going to snow!! Late tonight and tomorrow!! Possibly 1-2 inches per hour during the height of the storm!! What bozos — they report just about any falling frozen precipitation like it’s a re-enactment of the Blizzard of ‘78. No doubt, the grocery stores will be full to bursting with panicked people buying the obligatory milk and bread, because y’know it could be DAYS before the roads are passable and there could be power outages and hurricane force winds are not out of the realm of possibility and hey, what about those frogs and locusts…….

Fer crying in your beer, this is New England, people!!! There have been snow “events” here for centuries!! How did people ever manage to make it through without the media to guide their way?

As lame as these (ahem) meteorologists are when predicting weather and scaring the daylights out of people, it’s still alot of fun when they have to backpedal the next day because the predictions didn’t turn out quite the way they thought. Of course, it’s not their fault — the computer models that they were using predicted the track of the storm incorrectly, there would have been alot more snow but the temperature rose a couple more degrees than they thought it would, yada yada yada.

They make weather predicting too complicated. Sweet Baboo has a stick on the wall of the garage. It points up at a 45° angle when the weather is fair and down at a 45° angle when the weather is not fair. It’s never wrong. And really, that’s all I need to know. The details just muddy everything up.

A Weekend Blogger…….

……is what I seem to have become. We have the GrandDolly at our house from 2:30 until 8:00 on Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. By the time she leaves, I have just enough time to make my lunch for the next day, iron whatever clothing I will need for work, take a shower and do a little knitting before I fall into bed. You would think that I would sleep like a log on the days that we have her, but you would be wrong. I’m beginning to believe that I will never sleep properly again, at least without any kind of medication. (OTC, of course.) I feel like I am walking around in a fog most of the time — which makes for a very interesting commute to and from work, I’ll tell you that!! You know how you start daydreaming and then suddenly find yourself 3 miles farther down the road than you remember? Scary stuff.

I do most of my blog reading on the weekend anyway, so I will be a confirmed weekend blogger — at least for the near future. There are worse things in life than not posting several times a week.

Piano Music to Soothe Your Soul

I adore country music — it’s no big secret that I love Kenny Chesney and Brad Paisley. However, when I am writing, knitting, or reading, there is nothing I enjoy more than piano music. No words to listen to or figure out — just flowing, beautiful music. Keeps the mind clutter free. And I found this great site for just piano music on i-Tunes radio under Classical (Whisperings: Solo Piano Radio.) You can also visit the website for a free stream using Windows Media Player. Check it out here.

Boston’s Big Dig Tunnel Complete — $14.8 Billion Later

The original price tag was $2.6 billion — to build an underground maze of bridges, ramps, roads and a new tunnel under Boston Harbor. They went a bit over budget. But then again, what price do you pay for beauty? Or should I say to get rid of something totally ugly?

Below is a photo of the old elevated central artery in a photo from 1991. Purty, eh?

And here we have a photo from 2007, showing the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway that sits where the Central Artery once slashed through Boston. Definitely a much nicer view. One heck of a price tag, tho.