It's One of THOSE Days

Today has turned out to be one of "those" days.

One of "those" days when nothing quite seems to go right, yet it isn't so horrible that I can justify sitting down in the middle of the living room in a huff and crying.

It's tempting, but not justifiable.

Yet.

I had an appointment this morning at 10:30 with one of my legions of doctors, and since I typically show up in gym clothes (intending to proceed there immediately after my appointment), I decided I would dress nicely today: J. Crew blue-&-white striped shirt, skinny jeans, sandals, jewelry.

Casual, but nice.

My hair disagreed with my planned outfit, however.

I didn't wash it last night, and I didn't plan to wash it this morning, because if I wash it more frequently than every other day, my scalp mutinies, and I have to appease it with lots of Benadryl.

I hoped I'd be able to spray it with a little dry shampoo and get it to obey my will.

Nope.

By the time I realized my hair was a lost cause, it was too late to wash it and blow dry it and style it if I wanted to be able to eat breakfast before my appointment. I tried on a baseball cap with my planned outfit, but it just didn't work.


So the cute J. Crew shirt was jettisoned in favor of a chambray maxi dress, hoping I could pull it off with the baseball cap.

Chambray maxi dress had stains all down the front, that I apparently missed during the last laundry blitz, despite the fact that I specifically checked the dress for stains.

Finally, I tossed on one of my husband's cast-off T-shirts (which I've claimed, and wear more frequently than formerly due to my, um, well, my little belly. And love handles. Yay).

So now my doctor probably thinks I just run around in super-casual clothes all the time, rather than wearing more civilized, ladylike garb.

Sigh.

I ran a few errands, post-appointment, and came home. I took off my baseball cap.

My hair looked perfect.

Sigh.

Time to do laundry, bake, monitor the crock-pot, pay off the rest of the taxes the IRS claims we owe them, but that Turbo Tax said we didn't, and work on my Mystery Blog (with perfect hair).

Several items in the laundry needed stain treatment, so I applied Shout spray like a mad woman, and made sure to add OxyClean to the load, as well.

The load of lights finished washing, and I pulled out the clothes to toss them in the dryer, being sure to check each and every garment that was spot-treated before tossing it into the dryer.

All of the garments looked great, except - of course! - my favorite shirt, a white J. Crew button-down identical to today's intended blue-&-white shirt, which is the inspiration for my house-wife "uniform".

Of course, the spot on my favorite shirt - iced tea, a little tiny amount - was darker. And bigger.

What. THE. HELL?!?!?!?!?!?!

Lots of angry fuming, cursing, and stomping around the laundry room ensued (it's a huge laundry room, relative to the size of our house). I tried spraying more Shout on it and rubbing it with a white cloth.

No dice.

I rinsed out the Shout, and poured liquid OxyClean on it, waited 15 minutes, and then rubbed it with a white cloth.

Nada.

I poured a leeeeeeeeeeeeettle bit of full-strength bleach onto it and let it sit a few minutes, then rubbed it gently with a white cloth.

Nil.

So it's now sitting in a bucket filled with water and bleach, while I pray that my fairly expensive shirt isn't ruined forever.

I started working on my Mystery Blog, and was experimenting with different layouts/visual themes for the site. Unlike this personal blog, I want my Mystery Blog to be immaculately laid out and designed, because I intend to try to make money off of it, damn it.

I had one scheme I kind of liked, but wanted to look at another, so I wrote down what I thought was all the pertinent info, design-wise, and began monkeying with the font, text size, background color, etc.

At which point I realized I hadn't exactly written down all the pertinent info. Fortunately, I had taken a screen shot of the first design, so I was able to MacGuyver the information I needed, using PhotoShop and Apple Preview, but it was a tense few minutes, there, before I found the HTML color code converter I needed.

Sigh.

I also used a bit of Barkeeper's Friend to clean some rust of the washing machine interior (it's now going through its Clean Tub cycle to remove any residue), and I happened to get a tiny bit of the liquid cleanser on my thumb. No big deal. I rinsed it within 30 seconds.

But my skin doesn't care. My skin is angry. It is livid. Specifically, it is a livid shade of red, and it itches, because it's a primadonna.

And I haven't eaten lunch, yet.

So I'm going to go throw myself onto my sofa, now, with a slice of coconut-flour pound cake and a handful of cashews - which I'm calling "lunch" - and I'm going to watch Parks and Rec on Hulu while I finish my niece's Christmas stocking.

Because I'm obviously not meant to succeed at being a housewife today.

Unless that housewifeliness involves sabotaging my diet, because the pound cake turned out perfectly.

Drying Out

Houston has recently been inundated by sever storms, leaving parts of the city flooded. Three days ago, I watched on TV as civilians rescued their fellow Houstonians using their duck-hunting pirogues (flat-bottomed boats, for those not raised in the South).

I also saw the "most cowboy" thing possible for a cowboy to cowboy: roping a calf that was swimming desperately in deep water, pulling the calf into a boat, and hog-tying it so it wouldn't flail and capsize the boat. I tried to find video of the most amazingly cowboy thing ever, but failed. I have failed not only you, Dear Reader, but all the cowboys in the Houston area who spent the last several days roping cattle and horses in an effort to save them. They deserve to be viewed online and admired for their sheer... cowboyness.

Which is now a word.

Really.

I'm sure the OED will add it any day, now.

As the city of Houston attempts to dry out (hampered by the thunderstorm raging outside my house as I type), I'm also drying out, in a number of ways.

I'm drying out literally, because I had to take all of 6 steps from the car door to our front door in the pouring rain, after I went out for breakfast.

I'm also drying out metaphorically, because I've stopped taking the narcotic pain killers that have kept me going for the past few years.

About a year ago, I began thinking about it. I have a wonderful sister who is unable to take opiates (which we discovered after an emergency appendectomy back in 2008). They make her incredibly nauseated and ill. See as we have a lot of the same intolerances to foods, I began to wonder if, perhaps, we shared an intolerance to opiate pain medications.

"But, Ms. StrainedConsciousness," you say, "if you began considering this a year ago, why are you just now quitting the medicine?"

That's a good question, Dear Reader, and the answer is: fear.

I've been taking them because I feared pain, and was scared that quitting the pills would lead to an automatic resurgence in pain.

After a full year battling migraines, sciatica, and neuropathy stemming from the chemotherapy I had as a teenager, I decided to suck it up, and I found myself discussing the idea of quitting pain pills with my Pain Management doctor a week ago.

As a result of our discussion, she wrote me a prescription for 10 pills (as opposed to the usual scrip for 84), and told me how to wean myself off of them.

For the past week, I've decreased the amount taken: 1 pill per day for 3 days, then a half pill for 4 days, and finally, Tuesday night, no pills at all that day.

Before quitting the narcotics, I was typically taking a full pill every night before bed, and then sleeping for 9-11 hours. I'd wake up groggy, and usually fall back asleep for a couple of hours after 30-45 minutes of perusing the internet.

For the past two days, after not taking any pain medication the night before, I've awakened after 7-8 hours of sleep feeling refreshed and awake.

It's amazing.

I feel more lucid during the day, and I fall asleep more easily at night.

I'm still using muscle relaxants to help with spasms in my neck, shoulders, and piriformis, but mostly extended-release ones that don't make me groggy. Before I go to sleep at night - and if I have a migraine during the day - I'll take 1-2 of the "acute" muscle relaxants my doctor still prescribes (these render me unable to drive, as I'm considered impaired, so I try not to take them during the day, if I can help it).

The weather this past week has been a real challenge to my migraines, since rainy weather and high humidity tend to set them off. Despite the pain (and the fact that there isn't an acute migraine medication out there that works for me), I've managed to survive without taking pain meds during the day.

So far, so good.

There's the possibility that the withdrawal symptoms can continue to rear their ugly heads for the next two months, but I'm being vigilant, and also listening when my body says, "You know what? I know you really want to go for a walk with your husband and dog, but you can't. You're dizzy and your blood pressure just dropped. Go home, while you still can."

So for now, I'm waiting for my body and the weather to stop freaking out.

Hopefully sooner, rather than later.

Smart Phones and Credit Card Fraud

About six months ago, I was perusing the Cracked website when I came across an article in their "personal experience" series. The personal experiences range from being a professional dominatrix to what it's like to have a hand transplant (that's rejected).

Six months ago, the personal experience series was about a guy who spent $9,000 playing Game of War, famously advertised using the breasts of Kate Upton and Mariah Carey.

And can I just say that it's awesome that they're using Mariah Carey as a sex symbol? I mean, aside from the whole "objectifying women to get money" thing, she's 46 (or 45, depending on who you ask), and she totally rocks that metal bustier. Look out, Wonder Woman, she's gunning for you!

More to the point, though, I thought that someone spending $9,000 to play a game on their phone was absolutely stupid. How the hell could someone sink that much money into their phone? I thought there was no game on earth that could make me drop that much cash - or, you know, credit - on a silly game. That was what happened to people who had no self control.

Ahem.

No, I haven't lost $9,000 to an iPhone game, but I did spend about $50 over the course of 3 days, without even realizing it. I was playing Bejeweled a lot, and kept seeing ads for Township, which seemed like a more involved version of the Farmville game that initially launched on Facebook 8 years ago (and which I enjoyed playing for a while). I thought, 'That would be a nice change. Something I can dip in and out of periodically throughout the day." I downloaded it. It was free, after all!

Within about three hours, I was out of the valuable T-Bills (not treasury bills, but Township bills) that are required for... everything. Almost everything. I'd misunderstood how they were used, and only realized my error when they were all gone.

No worries, I thought. I'll just buy some more, just this once. Two dollars later, I was charged up, again. Easy.

But things have a way of snowballing, don't they? Instead of checking it occasionally, the game is timed so that some things are ready to be harvested after 1 minute, and some after hours have passed. So if you didn't constantly check in, you might miss the harvest, and with it the opportunity to earn more coins - not T-Bills - that were needed to do... stuff.

You could pay to build a market using the coins, but when you don't have enough building materials at the end of construction - and no contractor to chew out and threaten with a lawsuit - you have to use the T-Bills to buy materials.

And they go quickly.

One building required 100 T-Bills to complete, because the damned train kept delivering the wrong materials. (100 T-Bills is about equal to $5.00)

Fortunately, despite the fact that I eventually spent $50 on the game, I stopped myself after only three days. Three obsessive, can-hardly-watch-Sherlock-because-I'm-playing-the-game days.

This morning, I deleted the game - and the 1500 citizens for whom I'd worked so hard to create a lovely town. I'd started thinking, the night before, 'I need to delete this app. It's a money pit." But I didn't, because then the money I'd already spent would be wasted.

But I decided to drop the game at 6 am, after suffering a night of severe insomnia, possibly (probably) worsened by the game that had become somewhat addictive.

And then it happened.

At 9 a.m. I received a phone call from my credit card company, alerting me to possible fraud.

'Oh, good grief!' I thought. 'This is just what I need!'

Can you see where this is going?

The credit card company had noticed two suspicious transactions from 'a record store' (also known as the iTunes App Store), close together and for larger amounts than were typically charged 'at that location.'

So this afternoon, after guiltily informing my husband that the app had been deleted, and looking sheepish when he said, "It's not like you spent $20 on the game, or anything, right?", I called the credit card company and said, "Nope, that was me."

Except I said it to an automaton, not a real person.

Granted, I downloaded Tetris for my phone, but that doesn't require in-game payments to get ahead, just quick fingers.

Hey, a girl needs some variety in her digital life, right?

Lessons in Love

I've written up a few helpful hints for all the fellas, out there, who are looking to spiff up their profiles on dating sites. Here's a few of them:

1. If you want to impress "the ladies," you should definitely post on your profile about how much you LOVE LOVE LOVE flying your airplane, and how you do it every weekend. Every waking minute that you are not at work, you are flying your plane. This will cull all the girls who actually want to spend time with their potential boyfriend, leaving only those who will give you time with your one true love: the airplane.

2. Post pictures of yourself skydiving, preferably while strapped to someone else. This will impress the ladies with how much of a manly dare-devil you are, while also letting them know that you're not too obsessed with keeping up a manly visage to allow yourself to be strapped to some other dude like an overgrown kangaroo that can't give up mom, just yet. Also, it will let girls know that, after they've taken out a life insurance policy on you, it will be fairly easy to get some cash.

3. Say that you don't have kids at home, but then include your son(s)/daughter(s) in every picture you post and include them in the "Things I Can't Live Without". Because, you know, they're not always at your house (wink wink).

4. If a girl decides, post-first-date, that you're not really her type, be sure to send her a passive aggressive email letting her know that, really, you couldn't care less, even though you had already planned the activities for your next date and sent them to her. Also let her know that you are, however, offended that she doesn't want to hang out and be friends.

5. If the lady with whom you are communicating, or attempting to communicate, does not respond favorably (or at all), and you decide to send her a message letting her know how terribly terribly disappointed you are, do not punctuate or even spell out the words. After all, you don't want to seem desperate, do you?