the elves have spoken

i have been certified fit for duty in the areas of

• Code of Business Conduct
  
• What you need to know about E-mail

although i passed with flying colors, here are some things i learned before passing the exams:

• What E-mail Is (and Is Not!)
  
• It's never a good idea to send a funny e-mail to coworkers.
  
• E-mail messages are a virus's best friend.
  
• Don't send any message that you'd be embarrassed to see on the front page of the newspaper with your name on it.

and that last one is why i'm so glad i have such low standards. i don't care, plaster my wiseass messages all over the paper! i'll just laugh.

wearing the pants (and flowers)

after reading this, suddenly i'm remembering back when min and i were getting flowers for our commitment ceremony. early on the florist, filling out her standard wedding form, said, 'so who's the groom?' and i said, 'first of all, there is no groom. second, you can put down heather.'

the completely flustered and confused look on her face was priceless. we'd already told her it was us two girls gettin hitched, and we were standing right in front of her during this whole thing, but did that stop her from asking such a stupid question? noooo.

and actually she was totally cool. it was just her being straight, clueless and trapped in HeteroVision, i'm sure. but it was still fun to freak out The Straight Person for a minute. bwahaha.

so i've been a little busy

and haven't posted recently. but in case you were wondering, not only have i been kicking ass, i'm on fire. so much that this image got sent to me yesterday as proof:

so there you go.

bite my shiny metal blog entry

my coworker michael forwarded this piece of futurama awesomeness to me. i think he could tell i liked futurama by all the paraphenelia around my cube, but that's just a wild guess.

btw for the min's-health-status followers: min is doing fair. she got an infection in her surgery site, which now is high maintenance instead of low. but it seems to be healing ok so far, so she should be doing better (less pain, more mobile) in about a week. also doing a bit better on the food front, now she's starting to eat semi-solid food. yay! much easier for this non-cook to manage. :-)

mahogany love

this woman named "mahogany love" posted today on a list i'm on. her actual email was kind of sad. but her name...well i can't resist commenting. mostly because when i was in first grade, my best friend and i loved the word "mahogany" so much that we would just say it to each other and start giggling. apparently i thought it was funny enough to say to my parents too because to this day they'll bust out with "mahogany!" just to get me to laugh.

obviously i could have a lot more fun with this woman's name, but i don't have time or mental energy to do it justice. and i think it does quite well on its own, really.

return of the min!

min got home tonight, woo! she's hanging in there, doesn't seem to be too bad with her at-home pain meds (which only took ~5 phone calls to the doctor, ~10 calls to varying pharmacies, and 2.5 hours to fill at the pharmacy). right now she's watching a dvd and getting sleepy i think. hope.

tomorrow her sister lori starts her award-winning role of nurse, and i can't describe how grateful i am. i could have taken a few days off, and i would have been fine, but then i wouldn't have vacation later (we're hoping to take a bit, in a month or so when she's better). on top of that, lori used to be a bonafide nurse, so she'll do a much better job than me. and as an extra primo good bonus, she COOKS. and min will need lots of blending, cooking and food preparation over the next several weeks. i cook like, spaghetti. homemade soup? special fruit/fortified concoctions? um. yeah, you have the wrong heather.

in more personal news, i seem to have calmed the fuck down. sorry if i weirded anybody out with my earlier rants. i'll claim stress, stress and hormones as a defense strategy. oh, and stress. in any case, things seem to be calming down externally and internally, and whether that's permanent or fleeting, i don't care. i'll take the respite either way. i likes my sanity.

and i like bouncing. bounce bounce!

murphy's law

ack. probably because i just admitted to my evil twin, min just called me to say she's having a lot of trouble all of a sudden with pain, distension and nausea. the distension makes me think it's the food she's eaten, that it's not moving down correctly. they just have her on soups, yogurt, but still. today has seen her first non-IV nourishment post-surgery. ieeeee.

also i forgot to mention earlier that today min officially lost her job. they sent her a letter explaining why (inability to work? what gives?) and in an unexpected but pleasant twist, they will continue to pay her health benefits through the end of AUGUST. 3 extra months that we don't have to worry about, if it takes her that long to get another job. hopefully she'll be able to start looking for work in a month or so, after she's healed.

so, next time you're thinking of min, please send her an extra ray of positivity for tonight's struggles and for the challenges ahead.

all part of life's rich pageantry

min is doing a lot better, yay! she's still sleeping a lot but is having a lot less pain (5 out of 10) and been going for a couple of walks down the hall each day. she is still not up for talking really but i have been sending on everyone's well wishes and prayers to her, so keep 'em coming! at this point, we are guessing she might come home monday or tuesday but our next talk with the doctor will be telling. whenever that might occur - doc has been a tad awol.

in other news, i am in this weird place where i am both loving and hating (different) recent changes in myself. fyi, good + bad does not equal null. it equals self-induced torture.

and i can torture myself with the best of them, i tell you what. when i was younger i used to cut (still have some faint scars on one arm) and journal like a bandit because i was too shy or embarassed to talk out loud. i'm sane enough not to cut anymore, and i've developed enough charm (hah) to have acquired friends who let me yammer sometimes and don't call me an idiot (to my face anyway).

but maybe that's what i need - someone to tell me to step off. wake me up. give me a reality check. but in other ways, i feel recently my eyes have been reopened to the world. i guess what i'm saying is right now i'm not sure i trust my own judgement. i feel a little lost.

sleep, glorious sleep

just back from visiting min tonight. she is doing a bit better overall but still having a pretty difficult time. lori was with her all day until i got there about 6pm, and i'm so glad she was there to help her! apparently min even got up and walked down the hall a bit, woo! so that's good. but her pain was still pretty high (never below 7, usually 8-9). fortunately that special cocktail i mentioned yesterday got put on her regular pharmaceutical rotation, so i'm sure that's why she did better today.

after lori left, within about a half hour min started falling asleep. and proceeded to sleep, on and off (mostly on), for the next 4 hours or so. believe it or not, sleep's quite an accomplishment - her pain has been so unyielding that she's barely slept over the last 3 days. so i was very glad she zonked out!

but at the same time, it was weird because i'd been away from her all day, and after i get there she falls asleep. if she hadn't been in the hospital (or sick, because for a while this was happening at home,too), i'd say it was time for a marriage counselor. i know today's sleepfest was just because she felt happy and safe once i was sitting next to her, but i still felt pretty alone. thankfully my friends in tvland were good for passing the time and helping me ignore my true feelings. tv rocks! denial, i love it! wheee!

choose your own adventure

over the last week i have:

spent 42 hours in the same clothes
screamed and laughed at almost the same instant
admitted to truths that should remain hidden
lied to keep the status quo
reveled in fruits forbidden and permissable
felt, caused, and tried to alleviate pain
enjoyed and despised silence
taken the road well travelled
wanted the other road more than life itself

i've been:
reckless
responsible
cavalier
compassionate
selfish
selfless

and most importantly, i would imagine, is that i've been without much sleep in the last two days (45 minutes in total). in other words, all the above is true, but that doesn't mean i'm not being slightly melodramatic, either, due to lack of REM. sorry to be cryptic, but there are some things you just can't blog about in intimate detail about without avoiding interpersonal crises. and yes i know that by saying that, i leave myself open to having to deal with it later. later is fine. this is enough honesty for today.

on the other hand, maybe i'm just chickenshit. maybe someday i will be a little braver and say what i really feel instead of what i think or filtering it all first. on the other other hand, maybe i should just shut up.

ok enough. i need to go to bed. and since i crammed enough metaphor and angst into the beginning of this post, here's a more legible update:

min's surgery appears to have gone smoothly. however, her recovery is not so swell. insane amounts of pain and nausea, which began to get mildly, mildly under control this afternoon. tonight she got another special cocktail from the doctor that seemed to bring things down to a 7/10 for the first time in almost 2 days. so i'm hoping she will get some solid rest tonight. her sister lori is with her (i spent last night, woo) now thru 6pm thursday. that means i can go to work tomorrow for the whole day! ironic that it's the day we're doing an offsite of a purportedly quite silly nature. good thing i can be pretty damn silly. in any case, it promises to be a diversion and i do welcome that since i'm feeling the tiniest bit loopy.

that's my cue. head: hit pillow!