birds and the faces

My friend SOB sent me this picture and it completely made my week.

For some reason the caption doesn't come with the picture but here it is:

Fifth-graders react as they watch real photos of a developing fetus inside the uterus while senior health educator Andy Wentling presents "Life Begins," at the Robert Crown Centers for Health Education. (Chuck Berman/Chicago Tribune) (Chuck Berman/Chicago Tribune)

And the article (which you should read because it will make this blog post make a ton more sense)


Well, first of all, Kudos to Mr. Berman.  This is probably the best piece of photojournalism (that hasn't made me so miserable that I want to move to Mars) that I've seen since the picture of President G-Dubs Bush touring Fort Detrick in shoe-covering booties and one of those guests-in-surgery scrub caps (the poofy ones).

And the best part about it is its a total accurate depiction of what I (and the friends that I've polled) felt when we came face to face with sex education.  In some way, this picture is incredibly comforting.  My knowledge of what 5th graders know these days is limited but I am glad to hear they are still shocked/disgusted/mildly entertained by what happens when we all grow up.  

I remember the first time someone explained to me how my body was going to "change," my first thought was, "Old teacher lady says Whaaaaa?" and then my second  was, "me and my body have talked it over and we've decided that all this is NOT going to happen." 

But, you know, it did.  And I've handled it with all the awkwardness and bitterness that you would expect (although thank everything above that I got to learn from Ms. Officer instead of Mr. Boyer, who would wear the shortest of shorts and then put one foot up on a chair... I won't describe the rest, but needless to say he should have been fired...and I'm sure it was a scarring experience for the young gentlemen in my year).  

When Sean sent this article to me, he had it linked from Fox Nation, a website with the tagline - "The Fox Nation is for those opposed to intolerance, excessive government control of our lives, and attempts to monopolize opinion or suppress freedom of thought, expression, and worship."  Which is a statement that has just enough substance for people to use it against each other but not really enough to actually give a real point of view.

Anyway - it gave me the opportunity to read the comments generated by the readership. 

Here's the thing, commenters - you really have no idea what you're talking about.  First of all - everyone gets the "how a baby grows" talk together.  They separate boys v. girls for the "our bodies ourselves" portion.  Boys should have to know what has to happen inside a lady for a baby to come out, because otherwise they would not run to the corner store for ice cream and dino nuggets once they knocked a girl up.

Also, my Mom knew girl whose parents had told her that if she ever let a boy touch her hand she would immediately get pregnant, which is an excellent example of why we don't let parents be in charge of the "how babies are made" discussion.

And the idea that sex ed is making more teenage girls pregnant is laughable.  I'm pretty sure that if you showed every single teenage girl the video they made me watch in 9th grade (the one where the baby actually gets borned), once a month for like a year or so  - we would have exactly No unplanned pregnancies.

Anyway - its an amazing picture, and the organization that is going out there and making sure kids get all the information they need deserves all the support they need - if anything for making it so that normal parents can have this conversation instead:

Mom - "So uh, I guess I am supposed to have a talk with you about stuff."
Son - "Oh. Uh..."
Mom - "So you know everything you're supposed to know, right?  About everything."
Son - "Yeah.  I'm good."
Mom - "Great.  Good talk then."
 

in and maybe out

I have been thinking about breathing a lot over the past few weeks.  For a variety of reasons (some of which I will eventually get into on the blog) breath has been on my mind.

I came down with a post-Green River cold on Saturday that is still lingering (and will probably continue to make me grouchy for the next week or so).  My nose has been conquered by massive globs of mucus that my sinuses are powerless against, making it nearly impossible to breath in and out through my nose.

Which means that I have taken to holding my breath for minutes at a time.  It isn't until I start to get a little dizzy that I remember to breathe through my mouth.  It would make sense to just breath through my mouth all the time, but that leaves me with my mouth hanging open for fifteen or twenty minutes at a time like a particularly dim bovine. 

I'm not sure what the best option is in this case...assuming my nasal passages will continue to be held captive for a day or two more - how do I keep myself from eventually passing out?

dinner time

So Boyfriend and I are moving (DUH.) so in preparation we are doing the one thing we've managed to forget the past two times.

We are eating everything in the house so we don't have to move it.  This is all fun and games until you run out of normal food and are eating everything else.

So tonight's dinner is tater tots, baked beans and the piece de resistance - store brand velveta (that expired in July) mixed with salsa.

Do you eat it all together, do you eat everything separately with tortilla chips and/or ketchup or do you cover everything with Costco brand giardiniera and wash it down with a Miller Lite?

Oh, Brother

My brother recently tweeted that he is going to donate plasma because, "[its] The only way [he] can think to make money."

Apparently the plasma industry is a booming one. You can make $25 a donation, and you can donate twice a week. That's fifty bucks...which is, good? I guess for bodily fluids.

This is the difference between my brother and I, while we share the same sense of humor and nose and you know, genetic make-up, if I was in a position where I needed to make money (which is what some people would call, "getting a Job.") one of the last things I would probably come up with is, take fluids out of my body for cash. It seems impractical for one (I don't really do needles)...and kind of like a not answer...

I mean, I guess if you only need to be making fifty dollars a week (and, not to belittle the point but, he owes me $75, which means I can either get cash or plasma donations apparently. I'm taking the green backs because everytime I hear the word "plasma" I think "placenta" and am immediatly grossed out beyond belief) than plasma donation is better than, uh, working at McDonalds for 10 hours, or working behind a desk for 5 hours or mowing 3 lawns...

except its not, because its not a job, and eventually, Baby Brother, you're going to need to get an actual one of those. You know, you fill out an application and make a resume and take a shower and shake some hands, lie a little about your qualifications and then show up, consistently at the same scheduled time on the same scheduled days...

Now, don't think this has to be boring - you can do ALL kinds of dumb shit and people will pay you for it.

Example - you can tutor kids. You might think you would actually need to know how to count and read - but no, if you do it through a tutoring place they give you all that crap...you just read out of the book and change a life. BAM!

There are a vast array of retail options where you can spend most of your day trying to look busy so your boss won't give you stuff to do, and the rest of the day playing with money. Sometimes you can eat stuff for free.

And then really, let me tell you, in my experience, sitting at a desk with varied amounts of responsibilities does have its benefits. You get to interact with people, sometimes, and do "fun projects" sometimes, but also, you get to write blogs and ponder the great mysteries of the world, like really, why anyone thought Snow Dogs was a good idea.

Naturally - this is a little bit more mentally challenging than donating parts of you body, but I think you will find it equally as rewarding.

And if not, you should look into what else you can donate, as I have heard kidneys go for a few dollars AND you already have two of them. Bonus.

Uh-oh

Mother: Lyme Disease.

Father: Jacked up intern.

Brother: Rabies.


---I'm not going outside. EVER.

talk about your gas giants...

Apparently, Mars farts.

This makes my day better.

Not quite as fun as sexy.

So, according to the backs' of several buses in the Chicago area, "Syphilis is back."

Which is weird...

Because I don't really remember it leaving.

boo, Paris Nails, boo.

Just a heads up: This post is g-ross. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Right now I am soaking my left foot in warmish-hot water in which epsom salts have been dissolved. Its about 95 degrees outside and not much cooler in my bedroom. My body isn't quite sure why I'm so mad at it. Today has been quite the terrible day as far as my body is concerned. Long pants for the first time in a month (jeans no less!), sneakers for the first time in two months and now, a hot bath made specifically for my left foot as the rest of me sits around sweating and wondering what exactly it did to make me so goddamned angry at it.

Oh body. Its not your fault.

Remember a mere week ago when I extolled the virtues of my first mani-pedi in a long while. How I celebrated my girlyness and vanity (if you don't remember, it was only two entries ago...scroll down. I'll wait...).

That was before I got the oddest sensation in the big toe of my left foot. It was this sharp tingling. I ignored it for awhile because I have foot problems all the time and all those years of breaking toes and twisting and whatnot I figured it would go away in time. Well, a few days went by and I started waking up in the middle of the night due to the pain. Things had gotten out of control. I was in Maryland at the time and my sucky-balls insurance only works in IL and besides, it was a Sunday so I went to the next best thing to a doctor. I went to Lizzie. It was handy that I was sitting next to her in bed at the time.

She confirmed my fears... it was an ingrown toenail. After being totally disgusted I took more advil than my liver probably cared for me to and waited until I got back to Chi-town to make an appointment with a podiatrist.

I explained the situation to my boss so he'd pity me and give me the afternoon off for my appointment. He did what he does best and told me horror stories about the pain and the bleeding and the general life-alteringness of this procedure.

It took 15 minutes.

No joke. I was in and out of the office in about the time it takes to watch a tivo-ed sitcom. I walked back into the office (not that I wanted too, I just thought it would be better to go back in that afternoon than have to get up early the next morning) with my big old bandaged toe (and flip flops no less. That paired with my general hobo-ish exterior yesterday pretty much confirmed all the reasons I'm sure I'm going to die alone). Everyone in the office was dutifully impressed by my pain tolerence as was I (forgetting convienently the face contortions I had performed while the doctor was anethsetizing my foot, prompting him to say, "Holy cow. Are you about to have an anyurism?") until of course, the lidocane wore off and my body suddenly realized I had paid someone to chop off a significant portion of my toe nail.

Okay, lets back track.

Back in the day. My toenails were very important to me. Kind of like callouses. When dancing on pointe, it is crucial that your toenails be cut in such a way that when you're balancing on them they don't start cutting in to the skin. As it makes the whole balancing in a tiny box of wood a whole bunch more uncomfortable.

Anywho...the pain started about an hour and a half after the surgury. People, I was about to go back to the office and be like, "Put it back on!" because the pain of the ingrown situation was way less dire than the post surgury "Hey that's why we have toenails in the first place!" pain.

I took about 12 more advil and felt bad for myself. The pain was gone once I took the bandage off but the totally disgustingness of what it looked like and the realization that I had to wear actual shoes in 90 degree heat I took some more advil and continued to feel bad for myself.

Then with the feet soaking I considered burning Paris Nails down. The nail place that started this whole charade is on my shit list for realz. I mean, is it kosher for me to walk in there and be like, "YOU BROKE ME. I want my money back!"?

Also, I promise this is the last post about my feet.

a moment of silence, please

There comes a day in every young-ish girls' life when she realizes that she is never going to dance on pointe again and she can finally do something about those nasty callouses. Ladies and gentlemen, for one young(-ish) girl-- that day was today.

Today I let some poor defenseless Asian girl shave 22 years of callouses off my feet.

Let me explain (now that you've had a chance to vom all over your keyboard)-- I was/still am one of those kids who refused to wear shoes in the summer. I spent my summers running around barefoot-- not just in the grass, sand and concrete but also cobblestones and broken shells of Nantucket (seriously, the road outside my Grandmother's house on Nantucket is literally made of broken oyster shells. And I would run and skip up and down that thing like I was walking on pillows). To this day-- the most you can expect out of me during the summer months is flip flops. And I have been known to walk around many a large US metropolis totally barefoot, which is not only hard on the tootsies, but a good way to get the foot herpes.

Not only am I a filthy hippie when it comes to footwear, I've also spent a majority of my life trying to keep my feet from throbbing due to the turning and balancing and jumping I did on them (not so much anymore). I remember vividly one of the "older girls" limping into Dee's with her pointe shoes on, cursing the Gods that told her that shaving off her callouses during a pedicure was a good idea. She was in pain for the next four months. After that I swore I would never let anyone near my callouses, particularly when I started doing a lot of barefoot work.

Anyway, my feet were getting to be pretty bad news. I kept putting off getting a pedicure because I don't really like the idea of people touching my feet and it seemed kind of silly since I didn't have any reason to get a pedi. Also there was a secret little part of me that hoped that maybe I would some day shed fifteen pounds, gain some strength and a massive amount of flexibility and become a dancer again. Although, if the past three years are any indication that's probably not going to happen. Although I did bust out some serious foutes at the bar this weekend (barefoot, obvi)...I think it was time to put the dream in the scrapbook and try not to have such crackwhore feet. The salon across the street has $30 mani-pedi specials during the week and I have a bar mitzvah to look hot at this weekend (not to mention a fiesta del tragedy) and work is making me want to kill myself, so I went for it.

I'm not gonna front, it was pretty g-ross looking at like 22 years of foot skin peeling off (Oh, I'm sorry-- were you eating?!) but my feet feel really nice and they look kind of attractive, like attractive enough for me to allow someone else to look at the bottom of them.

While I was getting all pampered I kept thinking about Courtney's post about nail salons-- I have no doubt that the poor girl was bitching about absolutely filthy my feet were.

Anyway, I'm a whole new girl.

Oh, and Reason number 349023420345721 why I should NEVER, EVER get a manicure EVER-- Because it takes me LESS than a HOUR to totally fuck up at least one of my nails. Seriously, I had been home for twenty minutes before I screwed up my thumb nail. Does anyone know if I can just go into a random salon and ask if they'll fix it?

Stupid insticts

I love cats. I think cats are the queens of the animal kingdom. I think dogs are obnoxious and slobbery and just lame. I am re-thinking all this love...

Today, Belinda and I got home from my first training sesh at the ice rink as I get ready for the Olympics and I got myself a Hershey bar and turned on the TV preping myself for some unwind time when I stepped on something that I assumed was a stuffed animal...

...until I looked at it.

See, what Belinda forgot to tell me when she let me move in is her outdoor kitties are very much intouch with their lion-like instints.

It was a dead...something. Rodent sized. With its innards all on the floor. Are you disgusted yet?! Well, I. STEPPED. In. It.

Thankfully I have a habit of walking on my toes so it just hit my big toe, but the big toe on my right foot will never be the same, people.

So once my brain took the 45 seconds to process what I was actually looking at I screamed for like, an hour and ran upstairs and into Belinda's room still screaming. Thankfully she was really calm about it and was like, "Oh yea, happens all the time." Although she did tell me that Kiwi does normally eat all the innards and just leave the fur as a present for her...

I take it back. Cats are stupid. But at least they're smarter than dogs.

You can't spell, "I've really lost the will to live" without I-V-Y

It is not going away. Everyone said it would go away but they lied. They are liars. I am still covered in this nonsense and I'm wondering if it's due to the wonder drugs that are running merrily through my system and effing everything up. If that wasn't bad enough, it seems to be spreading. It was on my forearms but now its on my upper arms (and getting bigger) as well as on on.my.FACE! Well, luckily its the underside of my chin way over next to my right ear. But still?! SO. GROSS. and totally ruining everything about my new adventure in Nantucket (which is totally awesome, btw). I know its pretty ridiculous to be bitching about this, especially because I AM on Nantucket and not a poor, starving child in Somalia. But this really, really sucks and makes me a)totally terrified to be outdoors and b)desperatly miss New York City where we didn't have silly things like plants to fuck everything up. According to About.com it could take as many as 20 days for the Iv to have its way with me. So far, its been 10, and that's counting the days before I saw it so it may actually just have been 7. Faaaaantastic.

I'm gonna go clean my grandma's house because I do not want to go out in public, because I hate everything.

The Ivy Update

TWO THINGS:
1- this is a tmi post. On many levels. Just a heads up. Don't say I didn't warn you, foo'
2- if you had a hand in my chromosome I would appreciate it if you would stop reading right. Now. For all of our sanities. Thanks.

So, according to my mother, who is the foremost expert on poison ivy I could find without getting out of my chair, the ditty about The Iv (as I now call it, which sounds like the Hiv, but is way less traumatic and uh, not permanent) is "three days coming, three days with it, three days going," according to my astute college graduate calculations, that's nine days. Saying that I got it the day of my party, I have until the 12th or 13th with this crap, and as it stands now, it looks like it plans to be around for a bit longer than that. Anywhoodle, this time frame totally overlapped all my time in Maryland.

Enter A Boy. He is not The Boy. He just happens to be around a lot while I'm in Maryland and he's a decent enough human being for being raised in this god-forsaken hell hole of a town. We met socially on many occasions in high school and now that we've all grown up a little bit, things have shifted slightly into new territory. Sort of. When things look like they're about to start shifting, other things get in the way. Namely Annie. Who is neither sweet, nor nice and is also kind of a bone head. But she's my friend and I love her, when she's not ruining everything for me. So! Annie is in NYC. I am here. Boy is here. Things are gonna be delicious, no? No.

Because I look like Jeff Goldblume in The Fly. Not a joke people. I sat on my bed with my siblings and I was like, "can this happen?" and they both try to break it to me nicely, "hell no Rachel, you are disgusting."

Having zero self esteem on a normal day, it has managed to dip into negative double digits with this predicament. So I made up a believable but totally lame stall tactic, which will turn into me blowing him off and feeling really bad about it.

That's right ladies and gentlemen, I got cockblocked by Mother Nature.

irony is an ugly, dirty whore

I graduated from college on June 1. On June 2, I was no longer a resident of the city of New York (well, Brooklyn, but whatever). On June 3 I celebrated my return to country-bumpkin Maryland life with a quaint, little, backyard graduation party. The party was delightful. A good 90% of my favorite people were around to help me eat delicious food and shower me with wonderful presents. I looked adorable. My hair was as straight and non-poofy as one can expect from Maryland humidity. Today is June 6. Every appendage (meaning both arms and legs and (very possibly) neck) I have is covered in poison ivy. I haven't had poison ivy since I was ten when I got it on my eyes (not pleasant, btw) at summer sleep-away camp. I am itchy, cracked out on benadryll and wondering if I made the biggest mistake ever when I left my nice, warm concrete jungle.

scratchy scratch

I am itchy.

Really, really, (really) itchy.

I was told with my new medication that I would get dry skin and chapped lips. I was like, "eh. whatevs. gimme the drugs." I was blessed with increadibly smooth skin (thanks Italian genome!) and so have never had to be one of those every-morning mosturizers. Now?! Every 6 hours or so. Or I peel. People, I cannot even begin to discuss how absolutly disgusted I am by my body at this point. And its not just my legs, its my arms, stomach and the part in my hair and my face. I've been experimenting with the various kinds of lotion I already own, but its looking like I'm gonna have to take it up a notch. Does anyone have a really amazing moisturizer?! Preferably one with Alpha Hydroxy Acid, which are a must.

And while we're talking about my disgusting body (because thats a fun topic), my lips. Gross. Gee-ross. I can not be without my Burts Bees for more than 5 minutes or I start to twitch. Egh.

How much are you enjoying reading this blog?!

I'm also itchy. Because in two days I'll finally be home. I'm getting my 48 hour homesickness itch. I've never gotten homesick for Maryland, but everytime I know I'm about to get home I start to miss it, even though 2 or 3 days after I get back there I immediatly want to be back in the city.

Easter Break is shaping up to be increadibly awesome. At some point I'm gonna have to break it to my Mom that she isn't actually going to see me until Saturday or Sunday. There's gonna be a lot of traveling, mostly on completely foreign public transportation but it's going to lead me to my friends--all of whom I have not seen in far too long!

Okay after a delicious 2 hour nap (a thing I don't get nearly enough of anymore), I'm going to class.

I'm gonna die.

So as I've discussed before. I am, on occasion, a raging hypochondriac. This is probably due to the fact that I've spent most of my life not getting sick. I get the occasional flu and I did have a fun week or two of chicken pox, but for the most part I was an increadibly healthy kid juxstaposed to my brother who was a regular at various ERs in the DC and outlying suburban areas due to raging asthma and allergy problems.

The fact that he got all the attention what with his habit of stopping breathing and everything as a child, paired with my obsession with medical dramas staring attractive emotionally broken doctors, I developed the habit of thinking that most things that seem to be wrong with me are probably life threatening. However, since I don't like doctors or copays I normally just suffer in silence, lying awake at night knowing that the leg cramp is obviously necretitis and my significant other is at some point or another going to put me in a coma then rip out half my thigh muscle.

Since I am not normally sick, I don't go to the doctor and I very rarely use prescription drugs. Enter my brand new prescription. I don't have a serious problem (its definatly not life threatening) however this medication has some crazy-serious side effects. My doctor has spent about 4 hours over the past month lecturing me about the fact that there is a very real possibility that if I do something wrong when on these meds I could very well die. Immediatly. Without warning.

Great.

So I started this morning. They said to take it with a meal which, I don't actually eat meals so-- already doing great. I swallowed the pill with a large glass of water and some oatmeal and waited. Then wondered what I was waiting for. Obviously, nothing was going to happen. I wasn't going to start hallucinating or anything (unfortunatly). After feeling slightly retarded for a few minutes I started waiting for all of the wonderful side effects of this drug.

Bad idea.

On the platform waiting for the subway, I was positive I was going to die due to my stomache and mild sweating. This is after one.dose. I had a stomache for most of the morning and in a wild panic I bought myself lunch (something I never do- I eat fruit and chex mix for lunch) and the stomache returned. At this point, I'm pretty sure I'm gonna die while crossing Broadway infront of the Cosi.

Right now I'm nursing myself back to health with M&M's and Sprite. I feel okay. Although I have a strange feeling that a great deal of this blog will now be dedicated to my medical concerns.

Sorry.

three things

According to this opinion piece in The Washington Post (or as I love to call it, The WaPo) A new Wal Mart opens every three days in The United States. Doesn't that make you feel dirty? Like, need to take a three day shower, dirty?

And because we all need a good laugh all the time (especially when we feel so effin' dirty) Hissyfit linked This Gem. It's miraculous.

Also, Hi IMDB, I called this (half way down, regarding Stuart Little's parentals being showered with Golden Globes) three days ago. Pick up the pace, homeslice.

auld lang might-just-suck

So far in 2006 I have:
When given vast stretches of free time, been completely unproductive
Over eatten out of boredom and the alive and well fat kid inside of me
Watched absurd amounts of television
Spent money I don't have on things I don't need
Done nothing to get closer to where I want to be a year from now.

...2006 is looking curiously similar to 2005.

I hate the idea of a new beginning on New Year's. It is entirely too much pressure for one twenty-four hour period. The idea that you're going to let a night of drunken shennanigans determine how the rest of your year goes doesn't seem quite so brilliant when stone-cold sober (as I am for about the 3rd time all break-- I told you there was nothing to do here). 2004 and 2005 were, for the most part, pretty sweet new years eves. I did the thing like its cliched to be done. Then I built up all this pressure for 2006 because 2004 and 2005, while awesome, were not as productive in various (read: most) facets of my life. This New Years Eve, while exceedingly rockin' in many a way, did not have the ending I had invisioned. Though the whole "crumpled magic celery dress on the floor" (read: chair. the magic celery dress never ends up on the floor) thing did occur-- it just wasn't how I had planned it.

Anyway. 2006 has so far been spent mostly in the company of Hugh Laurie and the rest of the cast of House as I tore through C's season 1 DVDs. In retrospect this wasn't the best idea as I will be celebrating Epiphany (Jan 6th, for all you heathens out there) having all 4 wisdom teeth extracted (a word that continues to send chills up my spine). The watching of the House and the overthinking (because, seriously, I have nothing else to do) of all the what-ifs has made me completely positive that in the process of the extraction I will crash and then need a lumbar puncture, which will go badly and I may or may not be paralyzed from it. Then they're gonna find out that I may in fact not need my teeth extracted at all, but I actually might have vasculitis, they can't be sure until they test my bone marrow which will leave me pretty much hating life and refusing any sort of other medical tests even though they may actual save my life until of course the doctor (who sometimes looks like Dr. House and sometimes looks like Dr. Derek Shepard because, guess what?!, it's my complete mental breakdown) comes into my room and tells me to trust him because he's going to save me, which of course I do. And then right as I'm about to have surgery he bursts in to say that I'm going to be okay! That it was just the fact that I wore those stupidly gorgeous 5 inch stilletos for 5 hours on New Year's Eve and then walked barefoot in Downtown Baltimore which gave me a serious syphillis of the foot, which is hard to diagnose but totally curable. Then Dr. Derek Shepard (who is who this overthought always ends up being about because a good head of hair wins out every time) decides that he can't life without me and he cures me and we move to Fiji.

So. If you never hear from me again, its probably because I'm in Fiji, with Dr. Derek Shepard doing 2006 like it was meant to be done.

Happy 2006 Lovelies.