Cranky Fibro Girl

Harnessing the healing power of snark

Me, Twitter, And The Week That Was

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Sunday

10:22am If I hear again that “UNC doing well in the NCAA tourney makes ALL ACC schools look better”, the Demon Deacon and I are going on a rampage.

11:09am The taxes are done! The taxes are done! Time for a celebratory Coke!

7:01pm Dear Lane Bryant: We who are already buying Big Girls’ Clothes don’t need to wear rhinestone-embellished anything. Don’t make us feel worse.

Tuesday

10:46am I’m so flattered that Pip just brought me a toy that I’m completely ignoring her scratching the s&*^ out of the couch. I’m so easy.

12:13pm There is pollen everywhere, AND it’s snowing. I didn’t know that pollen and snow could co-exist without the earth exploding.

2:54pm Dear Atlanta Weather: Please pick a mood and stick with it. Sincerely, My Fibromyalgia.

Wednesday

1:18pm I will admit that, at least today, fibromyalgia has made me its bitch.

6:26pm Fed cats at 5. Two hours later, they allege said “feeding” never occurred.

Thursday

9:14am It seem that the Internet Gremlins have eaten my website. I hope it gives them unrelenting, fiery heartburn.

10:51am I think I just accidentally watched some bird porn. Remind me never to look out my windows again.

4:28pm I think it sort of defeats the purpose when a so-called “inspirational” quote makes you yell “Bite me!” at the top of your lungs.

5:41pm 6 separate incidences of cat barfs + 1 website hacked = complete justification for going out and spending some money

Friday

12:46pm Man, my cat could really use a Xanax right now. He’s not GETTING one, I’m just saying, is all.

Saturday

10:19am OK. Time to throw my gnarly, knotted-up body on the mercy of my massage therapist. Lucky her.

The Difference Between Teenagers And Adults

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1. Me: sitting down to tutor a high school student.

Me: “OK, please get out your Spanish book.”

My student: “Oh. I was supposed to bring my book?”

Me: “THUNK.” (The sound of my head hitting the table in despair.)

2. Me: getting ready to teach a class of businesspeople.

Manager: “[Student 1] and [Student 2] can’t be here today because they are on a business trip. So they were wondering if you’d mind teaching this class on a conference call, because they don’t want to miss anything.”

Me: unable to respond, due to the tears of joy running down my face.

Apparently This Is How You Use Your Powers When You’re An Engineer

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If I had to identify one of the most outstanding characteristics of my personality, it would unfortunately have to be my Stunning Inability To Locate Myself In Time And Space. I get lost all the time, so often in fact that there now exists a Greatest Hits Collection of my best “getting lost” stories:

-the time I got lost leading a group of friends who were helping us move into our new house

-the time in grad school when I got lost on The Loop in Athens, GA-it was a LOOP for crying out loud, with a FIXED NUMBER of places you could go. Eventually I HAD to find something that looked familiar-and called my husband (then boyfriend) who was in grad school in Atlanta to announce that, “It’s pitch black and I have no idea where I am. Oh and by the way, I’m completely out of gas and am running on fumes. And even if you wanted to come and rescue me you couldn’t, because there’s no way to tell you how to find me. Tell my parents I love them.”

-the time I was driving down Interstate 85, headed to the same place I’d gone every single Monday night for an entire year, missed my exit, got off the highway, turned around, and headed back in the opposite direction (because, HELLO, that’s supposed to work!), somehow ended up on an entirely different Interstate and had to call my husband to guide me home so I didn’t accidentally end up in Alabama.

-the time I was in Phoenix and had to physically drive to the airport in order to change my ticket so I could fly home early. But I didn’t actually know how to get to the airport from my hotel, even though I had driven that route only 4 days earlier, so I called my husband and asked him to guide me there. (I don’t think he minded that much, because it did give him an excuse to fire up Google Earth). Then I had to drive back to my hotel, the exact same way that I had just come only minutes earlier. But I got lost again and had to have him reverse all the directions for me verbally in order to make it back safely.

I truly am one of those people who needs to wear an ID bracelet at all times. But instead of having a medical alert mine would need to say, “While extremely proficient in exploring the realms of the mind, wearer is completely incapable of navigating herself around the physical world.” [Read more…] about Apparently This Is How You Use Your Powers When You’re An Engineer

(Censored)

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I haven’t posted anything new for the past few days, because lately I just haven’t felt good.

I’ve been trying really hard to figure out how I can turn this into a funny story, but all of my brain space has been taken up by thinking about how badly I feel. If a little cartoon balloon appeared over me right now and let you see inside my head, it would just be filled with symbols like, “*!@*!!*^@&*” to disguise what I have actually been thinking.

It all started because I am currently in the middle of one of my “from-one-extreme-to-the-other” sleeping cycles. About three weeks ago, all I could do was sleep. I could not stay awake for more than a couple of hours. (Important Side Note: This is a perfect example of why I should not be allowed to watch shows like “House” on TV, because during this time I was absolutely convinced that I had African Sleeping Sickness, as opposed to, say, just being really tired from helping twelve people prepare for their final exam in Spanish.)

But now I have swung to the opposite end of the pendulum, and now I am always awake. I thought that maybe a new bedtime location might help ease my insomnia, so last week I tried sleeping on the couch to see if that was any better.

Um, not so much. All that did was painfully pull a muscle in my neck and cause me to walk around for the next three days with my head permanently turned to the left. That was fun, and not at all embarrassing.

In any event, I’ve had a lot of extra free time to fill up (due to the not sleeping), so I decided to spend some time outside in our garden.

Have you seen the “Simpsons” episode (Episode #284, “Blame It On Lisa”) where Lisa is sponsoring an orphan named Renaldo, and when the Simpsons go to Brazil to meet him they find him running down the street fleeing monkeys, because, as he explains it to them, “I am like candy to them [the monkeys]!”? Well, that is EXACTLY what happens to me when I go outside in the summer. Only with bugs, not monkeys.

My husband and I spent the weekend working in our yard, and today I look like I’m covered with some horribly disfiguring and highly contagious plague-like disease from Biblical times. Even my husband, who is a very calm, rational engineer rarely given to any kind of dramatic statement, looked at me this morning and said, “Oh, man!”

So if anyone needs me this week, I’ll be pretty easy to find. Just follow the hydrocortisone trail and the sounds of the TV to the living room, where I will be sitting, bolt upright and wide awake, surfing the channels to find the new, dramatic medical condition which features insomnia contracted from multiple mosquito bites.