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  • Happy Anniversary to a couple of couples and a big one fingered salute to a bunch of voters

    I have married 5 people.

    Of course I realize that I could state that in a less confusing way off the bat, but I choose not to.

    I’ve been married once, to a man that I married more than 12 years ago, and that I am still happily married to.

    The other 4 people are two couples that I officiated the marriages of.

    Several years back I knew a couple who was getting married. Neither of them was active in a church, so rather than hire a random person they did not know to perform the wedding, a friend of theirs became ordained online. He was legally able to perform their wedding.

    I thought that sounded great. When we got married, we had a judge come to our wedding to handle the paperwork. It worked out fine, but it would have been better if we had thought to use a friend instead. Thus sprouted the idea that I would like to marry somebody, and a couple of weeks later, before it could die off, a friend called to tell me she was engaged. Seeing my chance, I said, “Congratulations! Can I marry you?” She laughed, and asked some questions and it turned out to be the perfect solution to their problem, since they had already decided they did not want a religious ceremony.

    I read up on the details, verified that all would be legal in our state, and made sure I knew what we would all need to do. I got myself ordained online and helped them plan the wedding. I helped them write their vows. I designed the ceremony and wrote my part. The big day finally arrived and it all went off without a hitch. It was really special to me to be involved in their wedding in such a way, and they were happy to have somebody who actually cared about them perform the wedding.

    A lot of people came up to me during the reception to ask about it. A few were interested in having me perform their wedding, but I encouraged them to involve somebody they were close to. I certainly wouldn’t mind doing it, but part of the point was to further personalize the wedding day.

    A few years later another couple I knew was engaged. They wanted to get married legally and then wait a few years until they had the wedding so they could save up money and throw the party the way they wanted it. So I told them what they needed to do, and they came over to my house and we did all the paperwork in my kitchen. Then we went out for some dinner and beer. Good times.

    I’ve been thinking about it lately. Partly because the first couple recently celebrated their fifth wedding anniversary and couple number two is about to celebrate their second. A lot of it has been because of the elections and the news about craptastic discriminatory laws relating to marriage. When we passed the embarrassing thing back in 2000, Proposition 22 “California Defense of Marriage Act” I was totally disgusted both by the sentiment and the name. I am mildly sorry that so many people are insecure in their marriages, but mine isn’t in need of any defending, thank you very much.

  • a northern zodiacal constellation between Gemini and Leo

    I don’t have a thyroid. When I was born, I had one, but in 2002 some guy surgically removed it because:
    It was the size of a grapefruit.
    I couldn’t breathe.
    And oh, I had cancer.

    In about 2.5 more years if it doesn’t reoccur I can answer “no” on the cancer question for medical insurance. For right now, I can’t get medical insurance unless it is through an employer group policy.

    I have had very very VERY bad luck with doctors ever since I moved to California. That is a whole other completely traumatic story that I won’t bother going into at this time, but it has to do with the dark times. Things went very wrong soon after moving here, and a large part of it was directly caused by the doctors I was dealing with. I developed a serious distrust and dislike for doctors and I still try to avoid them. The only one I found the entire time I have lived in California that I actually liked, moved out of the state. It is made all the more unfortunate because, with this whole thyroid thing, I am now forced to see a doctor minimum once a year, or I can’t get the meds I need to stay alive. I should see them more often, but that is easier said than done.

    By 2001, which was a few years post dark time, we never saw doctors unless we were concerned a part might fall off or that we might die. Neither of those concerns happened often, so we mainly just didn’t go.

    In 1999 we had been forced to switch to a new insurance provider when the company downsized and limited benefits. The new insurance provider assigned us to a primary care physician. We never went. Then one day in 2001 we were getting out of the car and my daughter shut the door on her finger. The door CLOSED. I had to reopen it to free her. Her finger did not look good. This was one of those times where I was concerned that a part might fall off. I called the family practitioner we were assigned to, the one who had been getting monthly payments from the insurance company for each of us. I wanted to get her an appointment. They refused to see her, because they “Don’t see patients her age.” I called to yell at the insurance company and they randomly switched us to another doctor (effective the following month).

    In the fall of 2001 I was feeling generally rundown and having lots of mini-illnesses. I just was not normal. Then I came down with a horrible respiratory infection, along with a really bad sore throat and all of my glands swelled up. I was puffy. I was horribly stiff. I felt like I couldn’t breathe or swallow. Eventually the swelling from my lymph nodes went away. At which point it became extremely noticeable that my thyroid (which had been enlarged for many years and I’d been through many discussions with doctors about it) had gotten much more enlarged. It was ridiculously large. It was not something one needed to feel, it was visible. There was an alien lump growing in my neck. The alien that didn’t want to let me breathe was starting to seem like an “I might die” situation, so I went to see this random doctor that our insurance provider had selected. She was condescending. She wanted to put me on antibiotics even though she could not name a part that she felt there was a bacterial infection of (I was already done with the respiratory thing, I just had the strangling alien). She drew blood to run some tests. She was sure she knew what it was though. “It is obvious.” She told me. She sent me on my way and told me they would contact me with the test results, and get things fixed.

    They didn’t.

    I called multiple times and finally, more than a month later, somebody called me back to tell me that the reason they never called was because the test results were all normal, and I was fine. I told them that I was not fine, and they needed to refer me to a specialist. They repeated that they had performed the blood tests and it showed everything was normal. I was fine. I had nothing to worry about. I continued to contradict them and kept explaining that I was obviously NOT FINE. They eventually got me off the phone by saying that they would submit the request for a specialist for insurance approval.

    In the meantime the end of the year was approaching and we had elected to switch insurance during the last open enrollment period because I was suspecting that this would go poorly. The first doctor never did get back to me, but in January, with the new insurance rules, I self-referred to a specialist. I went in with all my notes and papers because there had been suspicious things about my thyroid for over a decade, but there were always other medical things that were more pressing to deal with, so doctors would put it off to look at more closely later. I told him my story, and he kept shaking his head and asking me to clarify things about the most recent doctor. He couldn’t believe that she had tried to run tests themselves instead of referring me to a specialist immediately. My thyroid at this point was so enlarged that it was interfering significantly with my breathing and swallowing. It was physically uncomfortable. Shirts had to be loose, necklaces were not an option. My neck felt claustrophobic and I walked around always feeling like I was right on the verge of a complete panic attack.

    He sent me in for an ultrasound, which was inconclusive. We discussed my options and eventually decided that I should just have it removed, that going in to do a biopsy first did not make sense. Sure we might find out it was cancer, but we could find out after it was removed too. It wasn’t going to get any smaller, and I was having trouble breathing.

    He referred me to a surgeon. I called to make an appointment and they wouldn’t see me for TWO MONTHS for the consultation. I tried to explain how bad I was feeling but they told me it was the first available appointment. I asked repeatedly to be called if there were cancellations and I called the specialist back to ask them to nudge the surgeons office. Two months passed with me feeling worse each day. On the day before my scheduled consultation, the surgeon’s office called to tell me that they had to cancel. They did not know when the doctor would be available to see me again, so they suggested I find a different surgeon. They didn’t even apologize.

    I called the specialist back and he gave me another surgeon’s name, but that surgeon wasn’t on my insurance. My specialist did not know of another surgeon that he felt he could personally recommend. I was on my own for finding a surgeon. Don’t forget I am ill, having panic attacks because I cannot breathe properly, and I have a serious distrust of doctors. Life was fun.

    Honestly, I got horribly depressed and did nothing for a while. In the meantime we were out for Chinese food and I got a fortune cookie that said “Any arrangements you make are likely to be your final.” I felt horrible. I wasn’t getting enough sleep, because I was never comfortable. I wasn’t getting my work done. I was miserable and felt hopeless.

    Finally when support wasn’t working, my husband and my mother moved on to harassment and bribes. I eventually managed to find three surgeons who specialized in the kind of surgery I needed and were covered by my insurance. One I ruled out because he was in his 70s, and while it was impressive that he was still operating, I decided that I didn’t want him to operate on me. Of the other two, one was actually willing to see me within 2 weeks. We went for a consultation and didn’t hate him, so we scheduled the surgery. He looked like Stanley Tucci. More like a Murder One Stanley Tucci than A Midsummer Night’s Dream Stanley Tucci, which is too bad, because Puck, The Surgeon would have been a lot more entertaining.

    The surgery went well enough. Being in the hospital is horrible, but there are definitely worse hospitals to be stuck in than Cedars. Stanley Tucci removed my gigantic thyroid. My pathology report was the single most disgusting thing I have ever read. The results of which were that they found cancer. The malignancy was encapsulated in other disgustingly described abnormal tissue. It had not spread.

    After a lot of discussion we decided against doing radiation treatment. We are able to monitor the growth of any new thyroid tissue (which might indicate a return of the cancer) through blood tests. I have to take (right now 3) pills everyday to make up for the missing thyroid. However it doesn’t just stay the same forever. Over time my levels change and I have go have blood tests and change my meds. Symptoms when things are going wrong one way or another, include depression, memory loss, hair loss (head and eyebrows), inability to handle stress, inability to focus, exhaustion, heart palpitations, being too cold, being too hot, having insomnia, having high blood pressure, having elevated cholesterol, getting muscle cramps. Of course all of these symptoms can be from other things too. It gets aggravating.

    When it comes down to it, I had cancer. It is something I think about often, even though I don’t talk about it that much. My body was making new cells to replace old cells, like it usually does, and as happens now and then, it created a mistake. Then instead of realizing it and getting rid of it, my body just decided it would make more. The cells nearby harbored it and kept it safe. I didn’t catch a disease from somebody. I didn’t have an accident. My body just decided to play a very nasty, very personal, joke on ME. “If you have to get cancer, thyroid cancer is the best kind to get.” You have no idea how many people, especially doctors, have said that to me. Fuck you, and the horse you rode in on. That doesn’t make me feel any better. I get it. I’m lucky. It could be worse. Things usually can be.

    The thing is, I know now that my body can make cancer, and that isn’t something I seem to be able to just forget about. What if next time the cells that mutiny aren’t in “one of the best places to get cancer”? I’m not talking about science, or statistics. I am talking about how I feel.

    In August of 2005 I started having a lot of unpleasant symptoms. I felt horrible. I was tired, depressed and having seriously horrific leg cramps in one leg. It was bad. The muscles would cramp and lock up so my foot and leg were deformed and it wouldn’t let go and I’d be screaming in pain. In a pretty short stretch of time I developed a very large mass in my thigh. I called my thyroid guy, because he was the only doctor I had spoken to in years, and he told me I really needed to have it looked at, sooner rather than later. I was afraid he was going to say that.

    He set me up with a guy in his building and that guy spent about 2 minutes with me before telling me he thought I should have it removed. Soon. A couple days soon.

    So, I did. It was big. Five inches diameter. Yuck. Turned out to be benign. I still have some numbness from the pressure it was putting on a nerve. I also have, yet another, fancy scar.

    So yeah, the fact I had cancer, it sticks with me. It runs through my brain every now and then.

    And don’t think that the idea I might have passed some foul little ticking time bomb on to my daughter hasn’t crossed my mind. Yeah, that thought runs through my brain too.

    Main Entry: canïcer
    Pronunciation: ‘kan(t)-s&r
    Function: noun
    Etymology: Middle English, from Latin (genitive Cancri), literally, crab; akin to Greek karkinos crab, cancer
    1 capitalized a : a northern zodiacal constellation between Gemini and Leo b (1) : the 4th sign of the zodiac in astrology — see ZODIAC table (2) : one born under the sign of Cancer
    2 [Latin, crab, cancer] a : a malignant tumor of potentially unlimited growth that expands locally by invasion and systemically by metastasis b : an abnormal bodily state marked by such tumors
    3 : something evil or malignant that spreads destructively
    4 a : an enlarged tumorlike plant growth (as that of crown gall) b : a plant disease marked by such growths
    – canïcerïous /’kan(t)s-r&s, ‘kan(t)-s&-/ adjective
    – canïcerïousïly adverb

  • Do you have a frog I can borrow?

    I feel like crap.

    CRAP

    CRAP

    CRAP

    I woke up feeling bad, sore throat, nose totally dry, but sinus cavities totally stuffed. Just yucky. My apologies to anybody I have breathed on in the last few days. I stumbled downstairs and looked in the cabinet to find something, anything, to make me feel less like crap, and I find this Zicam throat spray stuff.

    So, I spray some, and I am like:

    <i>huh

    that doesn’t taste good</i>

    I get my vitamins together and take them with water, and try to keep going about my business – but the not good…

    is turning bad…

    and getting worse…

    and soon I am making faces and twitching…

    and feeling gaggy.

    Since KFZ doesn’t happen to be blind, deaf, stupid, or comatose, she asks, “WHAT is wrong?! What are you doing?”

    Twitching and gagging, I tell her that I used the Zicam and mention that it tastes bad.

    <blockquote>bad

    bad

    bad

    BAD

    BAD

    <b>FOUL</b></blockquote> This cracks her up, and she just keeps saying:

    <blockquote>I told you so.

    I told you so!

    I told you so!!

    You just got mad, and said it couldn’t be that bad, but <font size=”+1″>I TOLD YOU SO!</font></blockquote>Now, “I told you so” is not very pleasant to hear out of any mouth, especially if you are not feeling well. It is something I am even less interested in hearing out of my kid’s mouth.

    Did I haul off and hit her? Nope.

    I just went and got the Zicam out of the cabinet and threw it the fuck away.

    Unfortunately, I think everything may taste bad FOREVER.

    The thing is, she just said it tasted “bad”. She didn’t say it tasted a special kind of bad, that grew and grew long after the moment you sprayed it, and sent your body into convulsions over the sheer nastiness of it. She just said “bad”.

    The child obviously needs to learn some new and improved communication skills.

    In the meantime, I am wandering around looking for something to wipe my tongue off on, hoping to make the taste go away. Perhaps some sort of poisonous frog will work.

  • How annoyed am I?

    One would not be incorrect to describe me as easily annoyed. The other day when discussing something that annoys me, I claimed that it was “1 of 3,584,394,031 things that irritated me”. As I consider the size of that number, I wonder if it is actually possible, given the finite (but unknown) number of total minutes in my life, whether that many things could actually annoy me before I drop.

    Alright, so with a fair amount of rounding thrown in for a variety of reasons, lets see what I can work out. I am going to base my calculation for the number of days during which I could experience potential annoyances at about 12,500, so far. I’ve rounded down because I figure that when I was very, very young, I was not annoyed nearly as often as I am now. I could be wrong in that assumption. Really, one of my very earliest solid memories (where I am certain it is MY memory and not my memory based on a story I’ve heard from relatives over and over), is, actually, of being annoyed. I was annoyed by how it felt to walk in footy pajamas and a diaper. I know that I was three, or less, years old at the time, because of the house I was in.

    I sleep on average 6 hours a night, which according to my complicated calculations, means I spend 18 hours a day awake. I believe I am annoyed more often while awake than I am while asleep, dreams aside. I am annoyed more often when I am out in public than when I am sitting by myself. However, at home I am more likely to read the news (or worse yet, randomly surf) than while I am out, and that invariable annoys me quite a lot. Therefore I do not think I need to make adjustments based on the number of days I stay at home versus going out. This gives me about 225,000 waking hours up to this point.

    I think a conservative estimate would have me annoyed by something, on average, twice per hour. This obviously does not include the times I am full on pissed off, much less the times I am furious. We are talking, annoyed, irritated, peeved, vexed- the minors. This estimate would be much higher if I hadn’t spent so many hours of my life reading fiction for pleasure. Once immersed in a book, I can tune out a great many things. At twice per hour, that takes us to approximately 450,000 annoyances. Now these would all be unique occurrences, however they would not have to be unique reasons. If it annoys me today, there is a good chance the exact same thing will annoy me tomorrow. If it happens often enough, it may graduate to infuriating me.

    Typically my feeling of annoyance lasts somewhere between a half second and forever, but I think it most often lasts around 2 minutes. This would mean I’ve spent around 15000 hours of my life annoyed, or more than a year and a half. However that did not take into account PMS, which I figure increases the number of times I am annoyed by around 2.5 times during the offending period (pun implied but not intended), or another 375 hours, bringing me to 15375 hour, or more than 1.75 years.

    Is this a lot? I have no idea, not having another personality (that I am aware of) by which to judge things. No, I do not experience black outs or time loss, thank you very much. However, I am now wondering if you reading this is annoying me. It probably is.

  • Sleep Is Usually Better

    At 1:15 AM I got up from my chair and walked away from the computer, with the intention of going to bed. I was feeling quite tired and really looking forward to some sleep. As I exited the office with Xander happily following me, in front of me, in that special way cats have, we encountered the dogs, who were way way way too excited to see me. It took a moment, but then it registered., “Shit, I haven’t fed you yet.” “No kidding lady, what the hell is the matter with you? We might have starved to death any second.”

    I wandered downstairs to do all the nightly dog ritual stuff, a couple of hours later than usual. Upon finishing though, I just wasn’t quite sleepy enough anymore. Plus I wanted to check the computer again, just in case I had gotten an email I was hoping for. Once I was at the computer, I remembered a little search I meant to do. You know, a little search, the kind that “will only take a second”. That google search made me notice an interesting article, which mentioned some medical condition I had never heard of before.

    So then I had to google that condition, but wasn’t immediately satisfied with the top results. I switched to google image search instead, because really, at 1:30 AM what I want to be doing is image searching on a medical condition, even though I am not sure what the heck it is.

    That led me to clicking on a link that I immediately wished I hadn’t clicked on. Throughout the years there have been more instances of this that I would like to remember, but I remember them all, in horrifying detail. As soon as that ‘wishing I hadn’t clicked’ occurred, one might presume that I would click the handy back button, or close the browser, or maybe even get up and leave the room and go to bed. Those who know me realize that I am mentally defective, and can probably already tell you that I stayed on the page. Not only did I stay there, but I clicked through to see the full size of the images. What is wrong with me? The list is long and really not worth going into.

    The page I had found were award winners for medical photography and illustrations. I was not aware of these awards, but now I am. Some of the photos most seriously gave me the creeps. Others were crazy cool.

    But really, I should have been sleeping instead of looking at each and every image from the Award winners and images from the IMI 2005 conference in York, including all the ones that won bronze

    ETA: 

    Okay, that is too weird – Are there actually more than 4 people reading this thing? This morning the server with those photos is locked down, and even if you try to worm around it, it says “Due to unprecedented loads on our web server we have had to temporarily remove access to past award winning images. We apologise for this restriction and are working to resume normal service as soon as possible.” That can’t possibly me my fault, can it?

    Maybe nobody has ever looked at it before at all, so my simply looking at each and every full resolution image last night was the unprecedented load. Yeah, that sounds more likely.

    Anyhow, removed the link.

  • Bummer

    Yesterday I was driving home in the carpool lane. I was not going under the speed limit, but apparently I was going way too slow for the guy coming up behind me. He zoomed up right on my ass, popped out of the carpool lane, whipped past and then rapidly pulled back into the carpool lane directly in front of me, requiring me step on my brakes. He did this over the double yellow line. This is not an unusual occurrence at all. I see people use the carpool lanes illegally often. This time was a little different. The motorcycle that had been following behind that car raced past me too and then flipped on the flashing colored lights. It was rather startling. I see people do illegal things all the time, often right in front of a police officer, but I almost never see anyone pulled over. I am always curious about the people I see already pulled over. What on earth were they doing that actually caught the attention of a police officer, since LA traffic seems to mainly be a perpetual moving violation machine.

    The car began to pull over right away, making his way across all the lanes of traffic to get to the shoulder. This annoyed one of the other drivers who tried to whip around and almost succeeded in running over the police officer, who resorted to turning on his siren to get the lady to actually take a visual survey of the lane she was moving into.

    Now if Mr. Zoomy-CutYouOff-DoubleYellowJumping Dude had done that without an officer around, I would have wished a pox upon his house. Seeing him pulled over though, turned out to be completely unsatisfying. Absolutely no “Ha!” at all. How disappointing.

  • WTF?

    We saw a sign yesterday.

    It was a custom made full color permanent sign (not home made) posted in a front yard. It said “Caution Drive Slowly Blind Dog Wanders” and had a large photo of the dog.

    Why the hell do you let your dog wander around the neighborhood at all, especially if it is blind?

  • So far today I have:

    • stressed out over a brief power outage (we had a long one a little over a week ago)
    • talked to a neighbor about the brief power outage
    • cooked and eaten breakfast
    • read the news
    • successfully searched for a bill I had misplaced
    • paid the bill
    • deleted 3718 pieces of spam
    • been told that plans to see a movie this afternoon were canceled
    • looked up info for somebody
    • sent one piece of email to provide them with my findings
    • made lunch plans
    • spent some time trying to deal with attempted hacks to a guest-book on my server

    It is fast approaching the time I should actually be leaving to meet somebody for lunch, and I have essentially accomplished NOTHING.

    Fabulous.