i am a butterfly…

Posts Tagged ‘annoying’

Earlier this week, I got a song I hate stuck in my head. When Scott got home from work that evening, I insisted upon regaling him with how much I hate this song and how annoying it is that I can’t stop hearing it. Ever a glutton for punishment himself, he asked what the song was.

As I opened my mouth to tell him, it was gone. Just like that. Gone. I had no idea what song it was and it was no longer hounding me.

What a relief, right? What a win! Suddenly and unexpectedly, I was free!

Beacause I’m me, though, as soon as I couldn’t remember the song, it started driving me crazy that I couldn’t remember the song. Gentle reader, I actually turned to the intertubes and Googled what I could remember of that song, so that I could remember what it was.

Result? It’s now days later and I still haven’t managed to get the damn thing out of my head.

In case you’re wondering, the song is Phil Collins’ Against All Odds. You’re welcome.

When someone types “LOLOLOL,” are they really laughing out loud out loud out loud? And how, exactly, do you laugh out loud out loud out loud? Does that mean you’re laughing three times louder than usual?

…it’s Mother’s Day again. Yay.

Mother’s Day has actually gotten a bit easier for me over the years. Probably because my own mother lives so far away, which allows me to make a phone call and say “happy mother’s day” once, then chat about anything else. If we had to go do the big Mother’s Day brunch thing every year, with all those happy moms and their beautiful infants and children, I imagine it would be a lot more difficult to handle.

This year, Scott and I are either going hiking or heading out to the wilds of New Jersey so Scott can train a friend on some advanced Excel stuff. (One of those things is happening Saturday, but I can’t remember which.) Either way, we’ll be somewhere I can forget what day it is.

And it hasn’t even started yet.

I just called to make an appointment for the sonogram my oncologist wants. The earliest appointment they had was for the 8th. Great, said I, I’ll take it. But no, I realized, I start jury duty on the 7th, and it will be at least three days. So I had to make the appointment for the 14th, and just hope I don’t get picked for a jury.

The realization that I couldn’t take that songogram appointment on the 8th made me suddenly realized something else: guess when my new cycle is supposed to begin? If you picked May 8, you’re a winner!

That means I won’t be able to do any of the early cycle tests at the new IVF center, because I’ll be in the Bronx County courthouse all fucking day!

If I have to push these tests back yet another cycle. I’m going to be pissed.

What a bunch of bullshit that phrase is. I cringe every time I hear someone say that to someone having a hard time. It’s often a flat out lie. Even at best, it’s a platitude that only serves to minimize whatever situation a person is dealing with.

The only person getting comfort out of this phrase is the one saying it, because they can’t think og anything else to say. So they settle on some meaningless, insulting platitude and pat themselves on the back for how comforting they are in someone else’s time of need.

Over the past 6 years or so, I’ve been in a lot of doctors’ examination rooms. A lot. A real lot. As a result, I no longer hold them in the same awe in which I think people who only go to the doctor for their annual or bi-annual physicals do.

When you spend so much time in exam rooms, you have to find some way of entertaining yourself. Sometimes I bring a book, but not usually, because it always seems that someone walks in to do something to me right when I’m getting engrossed in the book, and then I have to scramble to get it put away. Instead, somewhere along the way, I started entertaining myself by looking at everything in the room. I mean, come on. You can’t tell me you haven’t been tempted to wander around the exam room, picking stuff up and reading it, opening the cabinets to see what’s inside, etc. The only thing giving you any sense of decorum is the seemingly inviolable nature of the examn room, because you’re only there once in a while.

Well, I’m there every other day sometimes. Nothing is inviolable. Even the ultrasound machine, whose buttons I’ve been known to push when I have a particularly long wait. Just to see what they do. I’ve also been known to pull out the dildocam and scan my hand. This horrifies Scott. When I tell him about it at home after appointments, he looks shocked, but he’s able to quickly put it out of his mind. Yesterday, however, he was in the exam room with me. He couldn’t put my dismaying behavior out of his mind, because it was happening right in front of him, and he was absolutely scandalized.

As I sat in the plush procedure chair*, I started getting bored. It started with me playing with the small packets of Surgilube that were piled in a box next to the ultrasound machine. I wanted to see what they said.

“Put that back,” Scott said urgently.

“I’m just looking!” I replied.

Next, I noticed the big box of Trojans in which the box of Surgilube was sitting. “Hey!” I said to Scott, “Look at all these condoms!”

“Put that back,” Scott said urgently.

“I’m just looking!” I replied.

As I reached my hand toward the dildocam, his patience completely broke, and he sternly warned me, “Don’t.” So I sighed and left the machine alone, secretly plotting to play with it on a subsequent visit when I wasn’t hampered by all his order.

That was when I noticed the packed of something or another on the shelf of the ultrasound machine, so I pulled it out to see what it was. It turned out to be a rather unique method of specimen collecting called a Male-Factorpak. It’s ingenious, really. It’s basically a condom that a man puts on and does his thing into, and it includes a twist-tie to seal the whole thing up. No missing the cup.

At this point, Scott was red in the face and called me a “train wreck” and said I was just like Xena. But if I hadn’t picked up the package of Male-Factorpaks, I never would have known that there might be ways for a physician to advise men to achieve ejaculation other than what you’d normally think of when this had to be done. What other ways might a physician advise? I maybe don’t really want to know, but you have to admit, it sparks the curiosity.

*When I say plush, I mean PLUSH. It was cushioned. It was more comfortable than my sofa.

…how many hours Xena spends crying outside the closed bedroom door when there’s nobody home.

Because when there ARE people home and the bedroom is still empty, it can go on for a very, very, very long time.

A few months ago, the Old Man flagged Scott down to ask him what we’ve been doing in the middle of the night. Perplexed, Scott asked the Old Man what he meant.

“That noise. That vibrating sound you’re making all night long in the middle of the night,” explained the Old Man.

Scott assured him that all we were doing in the middle of the night was sleeping, and he had no idea what vibrating noise the Old Man meant. He looked at Scott like he was lying, and then looked at him like he was crazy when Scott suggested he should speak to Weird Man and see if he knew what it was. As if the idea of Weird Man making strange noises in the dead of night was preposterous.

Scott was pretty put out by this conversation, as he often is when the Old Man accuses us of things and then thinks we’re lying when we deny it. This happens more often than you might think. A few nights later, though, we heard it: a pretty loud noice coming from outside that could, generously, be described as a vibrating noise. What it actually turned out to be was an FDNY ambulance, idling on the corner all night. They used to sit in the park all night, but they park people started gating the drive every night, so the ambulance couldn’t get in anymore. They sit in their assigned neigborhoods 24 hours a day, so that they’re close when a call comes in. The idle while they wait, because they have diesel engines that need to be kept warm.

So, the next day, Scott goes to the Old Man to tell him we discovered what the vibrating noise was. Surprised, the Old Man asked how we knew, and Scott explained about the ambulance. The Old Man’s reply?

“No, you know what it was? My doorbell was stuck!”

Yeah. His freakin’ doorbell was stuck. For WEEKS. And he accused us of keeping him awake at night doing gods know what to make this noise, and all but accused Scott of lying when he denied it. I’ll give you three guesses as to whether he apologized, and the answer isn’t “yes.”

Come to think of it, this reminds me a little of the time he thought he heard a jackhammer every morning.

Send email that says:

“I tried to do X, but it didn’t work. HELP! Please fix it!”

Don’t include any other details.

That’s all I got for ya today.

1. Yesterday, I called my clinic at 9:45am and said I was running late and wouldn’t make it in by 11:00. Since I’m still taking BCPs, I asked to be rescheduled for today. After being put on hold new fewer than three times by a receptionist who asked my named and what I needed each time she came back, I left a message and was told a nurse would call me. Well, a nurse did call me, to ask what happened to me that morning and let me know that they were rescheduling me for today, and that I should call if that was a problem. Clearly, my message never made it past the receptionist.
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