I fail at confessing

Remember that time yesterday when I decided to do a confession post because I am doing a race this weekend that I've kept "secret" because I said I wasn't signing up for any more races right now? Then I wrote the whole post, published it, and didn't realize until much later that I never even mentioned the race at all.

 

However, I also taught an entire science lesson on organisms yesterday and didn't once mistakenly say "orgasm" so in my book Tuesday is still being recorded as a win.

 

The running store where I work part time is putting on a 20 mile race this weekend, perfectly timed out for people training for fall marathons. Which isn't me, but our store puts on fabulous races, it's completely flat for the first 19 miles, and has a sweet North Face shirt, so....why wouldn't I do it? Other than the fact that I've done exactly one double digit run in the past month or so?

 

I also talked all about my beloved Yonanas machine yesterday. I'm so obsessed with it that I forgot that it's not exactly a common household appliance. So if you didn't know, a Yonanas turns frozen bananas into soft serve ice cream consistency. No, I'm not going to say "it's just like ice cream!". Get real. But it feels like ice cream, it's cold, it's sweet, and if you're looking for a middle ground between enjoying ice cream every night and not seeing a new and frightening digit in the tens place on the scale*, it's your man.

 

*Speaking hypothetically, and not from experience, of course.

 





Today I did something very brave, and I expect everyone to applaud my heroism. Actually, before I even did this thing I was up at 4:50am and ran 8 miles, so let's all applaud that first, even though it was at a pathetic 9:58 pace. But after that, I went to work.....wearing the same dress that just recently prompted someone to accuse me of being pregnant. That's right, I got back on the horse and wore it again.

 

I wanted to post a picture but Eric wasn't home when I got home to take it, and it's essential that I'm in pajamas within 1.5 minutes of walking in my front door. I would normally have done a timer selfie, being a considerate blogger and all, but as far as we know our camera is still somewhere in Grand Turk so that's no longer possible. However, I did take a picture of the Yonanas machine.

 





A gorgeous iPhone picture taken while waiting for my dinner to heat up. You're welcome.

 

Any funny slip of the tongue stories to share? On our cruise, during the super serious safety briefing the cruise director said "In your rooms, there is no stroking allowed" (instead of no smoking) and just about all 4,500 people busted out laughing.

 

PS Fairly sure that I jinxed myself and I'll say "orgasm" tomorrow.

Tuesday Confessions

Once again, that time has come where I feel I have some things to confess and some other things to say that I can spin into sounding like confessions so it seems like this blog post has a theme. 

1. I posted about my introvert's weekend on Sunday. Upon reflection, I think another reason I couldn't handle human contact was because I was having really bad anxiety and couldn't deal with the added anxiety of social interaction on top of that. 

The superintendent came to our school for the first day yesterday and it messed with my head. I think I can safely say that anytime you have a visit from someone higher on the food chain, in any line of work, it's stressful. When you work for an organization with almost 20,000 employees and the head honcho comes, it's a big deal. 

tl:dr I'm even more neurotic than you thought.

2. I let the scale dictate my day yesterday. 

Yeah, you're not really supposed to do that, but that's only for when you don't like the number. I usually weigh myself pretty rarely, but Operation Get Un-fat Post Cruise is in full effect. I was quite pleased to see I was back down to my pre-cruise weight. Not my pre-buttercream extravaganza weight, but baby steps. 

3. I think I've gotten slower. 

Right after my delightful weigh in yesterday I ran 6 miles. It was at an 8:59 pace. I don't even remember when I saw a pace that began with an 8 last, and it's not just because I haven't been wearing my Garmin. I'm happy with the pace, but it definitely felt like it took some effort. Of course, this morning I ran 7 miles at the same time of day on the same route at a 9:40 pace and it felt twice as hard, but running is weird like that.

4. Vacation was a little weird, because we are not that couple.

By "that couple", I mean the one that is in constant contact and does everything together, the way we were for 10 days. Obviously we like spending time together. But we also like spending time alone, and have a strict policy that if one of us has a social engagement that the other one doesn't find interesting, we just....go alone. Crazy, right? We also don't talk during the day, unless it's a text like "stopping at the grocery store, need anything?". I mean, we live together, I really don't see the point of talking on the phone all day when we can just talk in person at night. Maybe it's just the line of work I'm in. I'm pretty psycho about guarding every second of my child free time at work. I allow only the absolute minimum for chit chat. Every second I waste with that is one second more until I finish and can go home.

That being said, I loved spending every second together and we didn't even run out things to talk about! But the other 355 days of the year it's quality, not quantity.

5. I don't believe fruit is dessert, but I am obsessed with yonanas. Don't knock it till you try it. If you are laughing at me right now, you are probably a person who is able to do one or all of the following:

• eat one piece of chocolate and say "So rich! You really only need one to be satisfied!" and actually mean it
• make chocolate chip cookies, put a twist tie on the bag with leftover chocolate chips, and have those same chocolate chips when you go to make cookies again months later (because you didn't eat them by the handfuls after dinner as soon as the cookies were gone)
• receive candy as a gift, put it in your pantry, and forget all about it
• have a blog and not name it after your love/addiction to chocolate

I have no idea this lifestyle is like, nor will I ever. These are actually all examples I've seen from members of my own family, so I'm not quite sure what went wrong with me. 

My point is, I'm in love with chocolate, but it's a dangerous, abusive kind of love, the kind where it's impossible for me to have it in my house and not eat it, and I'm also in love with being able to zip my pants. That's where Yonanas comes in. It's delicious, it's something sweet after dinner, and it takes a hot minute to make so I can't go crazy with it. 

Did you ever have such good customer service that you want to sing it from the rooftops? Probably not, because it never happens. I had a meltdown because I've been making Yonanas every single night and important part of my machine somehow disappeared. I swear, I washed it with all the other pieces and the next morning it wasn't in the dish drain. I emailed the company this morning to ask how to replace it, because they didn't have replacement parts for sale on their website. They shipped me a replacement part, free of cost, before the school day was even over! I really need all companies to learn from their example.

Ok, I really need answers here. Please leave in the comments what your job is, and what your average stress level is. One is laying here, looking at this. 

This post needed pictures, and I like reliving vacation.

9 is not being able to leave the house all weekend, and 10 is like....brain surgeon. Go.

A peek into an introvert's weekend

 
I kind of feel like that Buzzfeed article on introverts that I posted last week changed my life a little bit. It's taken me from feeling like a total freak to feeling like I can just throw around a buzzword to explain my behavior. Although to be honest, since I began blogging almost 3 years ago (WOW), I've felt like much less of a freak because as my fellow bloggers know, blogging is where you find your people.
 
This weekend was characterized by intense introverted behavior and therefore resulted in no events interesting enough to photograph. So instead, I decided to illustrate by recycling old photographs from up to 5 years ago.
 
Friday was Eric's birthday. We were supposed to have a party and play a Sharknado drinking game and eat crabs. Sounds awesome, right?

Probably would have been just like this.

 
After four days of us both coming home stressed and overwhelmed about setting up our classrooms, Eric decided to cancel the party about 10pm Thursday night. In addition to having no time to throw a party together, he was like "I just really don't want to come home tomorrow and have people here".
 
I've long suspected, based on my reading, that Eric is a partial introvert. FYI, Buzzfeed and Wikipedia count as reading, I never claimed to be a psychologist here. We are extreme opposites in social situations. Eric has charisma that would make Oprah jealous and loves being the center of attention. I sit in faculty meetings at a school I've worked in for 8 years silently rehearsing the one sentence I want to share for ten minutes before I get up the courage to raise my hand (which is maybe 50% of the time). I'm completely comfortable with all my coworkers. Individually. Just not when they are all looking at me at the same time.  It's the same thing in grad school and I've had the same 20 people in every single class for 3 years now.

 

Perfect example: we do not know this woman. We do know that guy photobombing in the back though,

 
But, according to Wikipedia, the key is that introverts get energy from being alone, and lose energy in groups. It also said that extroverts should be teachers. I feel that would explain why I have an incredibly strong desire not to speak to a single person from the time I arrive home from work until the time I go to bed. Not every night, only like 90% of them.
 
So instead of partying, Eric stayed at work late, and I got kicked out of work (they had to wax the floors) and came home and ran 7 miles. I was brave enough to wear my Garmin and was actually under a 10:00 mile pace (9:45)!
 


The birthday boy

 
I did go get him his favorite wings and put candles in the container and sang to him as he came in the door. My dad was really sad to hear I didn't have pictures of that, but putting candles in Styrofoam is much more of a fire hazard than frosting, and required close monitoring and precise timing.
 

Here's a picture of him blowing out candles on the snickers cheesecake I made him 3 years ago.

 
Yes, if you've read between the lines here, that meant there was no cake to put any candles in, by birthday boy request. Going on a cruise is an amazing experience, but, here's a little warning. It's all fun and games when you're in international waters, having butter on everything and your third dessert that night. But when you come home fat the fun and games are over.
 
Saturday morning I did seek out a little human interaction and reunited with Lily for a morning run at the harbor and it was absolutely wonderful to have company. We did a half marathon at a 10:12 pace. It may have been crazy slow, but I haven't done a run over 7 miles since my 6 hour race an entire month ago, so seeing I still have the ability to knock out a double digit run was a huge confidence booster.
 
Saturday night I was supposed to meet my BFFs Carolyn and John (Eric had to work) to see an outdoor movie. Here's where even my introverted behavior gets embarrassing. As it got closer, I realized I didn't want to go for several reasons.
 
1. Driving
2. Being around people
3. Staying up late
4. Having to look presentable, or at least, appropriate for public consumption
5. Leaving the couch
6. It was a horror movie and I'm scared of horror movies and really hate watching them
 


Not sure I've ever actually stayed up for the late show.


 
Obviously this led to me canceling. At least it was a bestie so I knew I could just list the above reasons without judgment and not have to come up with some dumb ass excuse.
 


All alone. My happy place.



 

I'm pretty sure my Saturday night contained two of the greatest pleasures known to man. Getting in bed early, and not setting an alarm clock because you can stay there as long as you like in the morning. The key is that you get into bed early, but you don't feel that pressure of "OMG I NEED TO FALL ASLEEP ASAP" where you keep looking at the clock like "ok if I fall asleep now I'll get 6 hours. Ok now 5 and a half". You can stay up reading as late as you want, or do what I did and read one sentence about Jon Snow and pass out.
 

Sleeping is the best. PS no idea who's bed this is. If it's yours, please speak up.

Speaking of Jon Snow, you can thank Kari for this.


source

Since most commenters are fellow bloggers and therefore fellow crazy introverts, what's your most antisocial reason for canceling plans? And if you are an extrovert - what's that like?


A rave and a rant. Spoiler: the rant is longer

I thought I was going to get back to some good running mileage this week, but when I woke up yesterday the humidity was at 96%. I managed to make it 5 miles before crying uncle. I decided to do Jillian Michael's 30 Day Shred (a 20 minute workout dvd) after to pretend that I had intended on having a shorter run to make time to continue to work all my other body parts that were sore from Insanity on our cruise. 

Today I ran 7, and it was better, but still the kind of run where the reaction to realizing my shoe was untied was "THANK GOD. A break!". 

Getting up actually hasn't been that bad, knock on wood. I think I discovered the secret. Going to bed on time. It's only been 3 days, but so far I've been doing really well at resisting the siren's call of the internet and TV at night. It's tough, but I just have to remind myself that Buzzfeed and Seinfeld reruns will be there the next day.

However, I highly recommend dropping everything and reading this article immediately. Here's a preview.



I don't usually talk about my job on here, for obviously reasons, but that's all I really have to say about running today and I've already shared all of my vacation pictures, so I'm out of other options. So I'm going to use the time tested rant/rave format.

Warning: the following paragraph contains no sarcasm, so if that's a deal breaker, please skip it.

Rave: My kids. Not exactly a shocker, but this year because I'm looping with my previous class. For non teachers, that means that I move on to fourth grade along with all my third graders from last year. I'm actually ridiculously excited about this. Last spring, when I met with my boss about my upcoming teaching assignment, she said "you have two options: the first is to loop with your class" and I just caught her off and started yelling "YES YES THANK YOU YES" like a Miss America pageant winner and never ever heard the other option. Ok, maybe that part was a little sarcastic but it does accurately describe the meeting.

Rant: Setting up my classroom. Look, I got into this business to hang out with kids, not become an interior decorator. Every other year I've managed to get away with that just fine, but once again, here comes my nemesis Pinterest ruining my life again. It's done to classrooms the same thing it's done to weddings.

As I've mentioned, I was born without that required female gene that gives you an unquenchable desire to make every space you occupy look cute. I don't know what happened, but I don't have it. When we moved in to this apartment, I slapped some vacation pictures in frames and called it decorated (and those same 2009 pictures are still up). 

I don't ask myself "how can I make this kitchen look totes adorbs?". I ask myself "how can I create the fastest route to the coffee maker in the morning?"

I don't ask myself "how can I make my living room into a sanctuary, full of complementary colors and patterns, promoting relaxation and fung shui?" I point the couch toward the TV and call it good.

I don't do "themes". My wedding theme was "getting married". My classroom theme is "learn". 

That "decorating" or "my home " or whatever board Pinterest assigns you when you sign up? Mine's empty. I don't even know what it's called. Because I don't care.

I bring this same focus on functional and practical over cute and precious to work. Now every other classroom looks like Pinterest exploded and mine.....doesn't. I would like it to look nice, but I would also like to be a professional surfer. I just don't possess that skill set. So I spend the whole week filled with feelings of inadequacy, stress and self loathing and once again, I blame Pinterest.

I'm not going to ask something like "are you good at decorating?" because I already know the answer, it's yes, unless you are me. 

Do you seem to lack a skill set that everyone or at least most people seem to have? Please say yes so I'm not the only one.

Adapting to real life

Buzzfeed has been even more dead on than usual lately. When we returned to land on Saturday and I was asking people what I missed in the world, someone told me "well, not much, but there were a lot of really funny Buzzfeed articles". PS I'm so sorry I can't remember who said that, so feel free to take credit in the comments. I missed A LOT in the blog world and even the real world and was trying to catch up really quickly.

First of all, finally my love for Wegmans has been documented, and I think everyone from Upstate NY will agree 100%. The one about Wegmans being your "night out" as a teenager - this was my life from ages 13 to... well let's just say for awhile.

Then I'm going to tag along to Kari's post about being in introvert, because Abbi linked to an article in her comments that seriously is my whole life. This might as well have been written about me and me alone.

YUP

As always, returning from vacation and adapting to real life again is HARD. Like, tonight I wanted to eat dinner. Not only did I have to cook the food myself, I had to go to the store to buy it first. I even had to clean up afterwards. Total BS. 

To compound that problem, today was my first official day back to work. If you've been paying attention at a level that people rarely do when it comes to blogs, you'd be wondering "back to work? you've been whining about having to work all summer". Well yes, I have, but that was summer school, my second job, and other optional, low stress work. (Not optional in terms of paying bills, but optional in terms of contractual obligations). Today was actually the beginning of the new school year (for teachers), which is a horse of a different color. Did that make sense? No? Let's move along anyway.

I am very lucky to:
a. have a job
b. like my job

but I think anyone who has experienced a Sunday night will agree that not working will always be superior to working, if for no other reason than it means more sleep and less pants with zippers. Returning to work is even harder coming off a week where every day the biggest problem was deciding which activity would be the most fun.

Luckily, my life doesn't suck, it's actually pretty good, so I think I will adapt. In time.

Yesterday I ran 5.25 miles. It felt pretty much how you might expect after 10 days of nonstop rich food and hydrating with liquor almost exclusively.

This morning I was up at 5:30 to attempt to get my back into my routine. I ran 7 miles with no watch and actually felt pretty decent. Now I've probably jinxed myself for tomorrow though.

What's your favorite thing about not being at work?

The best ten days of my life

I'm back from 10 glorious days on vacation with my husband! To avoid the crushing depression of having to return to real life, I'm spending today uploading pictures to Facebook and writing this blog post. I spent a LOT of time fantasizing about this vacation, mainly while running, and it exceeded even my wildest expectations. 

I would really like to post the 325 pictures that I already put on Facebook, plus all the ones that didn't make it to Facebook, and spend 8 hours writing a detailed description of all our adventures over a series of 10 posts. But in the interest of maintaining readership on a public blog, I'll do my best to hit the highlights in an amusing manner.

I'm married to a huge Harry Potter fan, so when I found out we were cruising out of Port Canaveral, I knew we had to fly down early to see Harry Potter world. 

 I thought we'd spend the entire day in Harry's village or whatever. I really tried to read the first book (for my 3rd time!) but I only managed to get about 65% done before our visit. I figured it would be like when your friend invites you to their work happy hour, and then you spend the whole time nodding and smiling while they use acronyms you don't get and complain about people you don't know. Actually, teachers are the worst for this, don't ever hang out with them if you're in another profession.

Color me uninformed. Little did I know that Harry Potter was just one little section (out of 7!) of an entire amusement park in Universal Studios. Thank goodness my mom gave me a guidebook and I spent more time reading that then Harry Potter. We spent about 2 hours checking out the Wizarding World.

Whatever Butterbeer is, it's delicious.

 The next 10 hours were spent exploring the rest of Islands of Adventure. Despite the fact that I'd only seen one of the movies featured, it was freaking awesome. Eric said the rides were the best he'd ever been on, and that's coming from someone who grew up less than 30 minutes from Cedar Point.

We were actually IN Jurassic Park.

Saturday, it was time for our cruise. I had three goals.

1. Come back just as white

2. Come back ten pounds heavier

3. Eat soft serve no less than twice a day

I'm sad to report I failed on all three counts. I slathered on SPF50 every morning and reapplied all day, but by the end, I noticed that my skin was no longer the same color as this robe. Even Eric noticed.

Couples that spa together, stay together.

We did eat soft serve twice most days.

Ending a night with softserve cones on the deck - perfection.

The times we didn't we supplemented with brownies or other desserts, which should have made #2 a done deal. I only gained five pounds. Luckily though, I'd already gained a few before the trip, probably due in no small part to my adventures with buttercream. Don't bother looking for it in pictures, I've already sucked in/cropped/hit behind Eric/added an instagram filter as necessary.

Tiramisu and a bread pudding to share.  The waiter asked "May I pour hot vanilla sauce
on it?". Um, yes. 

Totally worth it. I'll gladly eat a salad for lunch for the first month of school in exchange for 7 days of unbelievable cuisine. 

Anyway, I think I know the problem. I went into the trip fully prepared to work out once and only once: a jog on the track so that my Garmin would show I was running in the middle of the ocean. I did that, and it was at a 2:45 minute mile pace, thank you very much. 

This amuses me way too much.

But Eric actually wanted to keep in shape or something. The first morning of our trip, we docked in Nassau at 8:30, and apparently Eric intended to hit the gym first. He ordered room service for 6am. I forgot room service was even an option, so when I woke up to a knock at the door, I was positive this was happening.

I don't have a program to capture video on my home computer and didn't feel like downloading one so you can enjoy that 4 second netflix clip captured on an iphone and uploaded to Youtube illegally. If you don't know what that is, it's the scene from Titanic when they wake the steerage passengers up after they hit the iceberg, but honestly if you don't know what that is I don't know if I can have you in my life anymore.

 I ran 5 miles with this view. 

Then, we did a circuit Eric created at the gym - yeah, I actually lifted weights. I was even still sore from lifting them with Eric in our hotel in Orlando 3 days earlier!

While working out, we met a guy who teaches Insanity classes in NYC. I don't know if I've ever mentioned this, but Eric did the whole Insanity program this spring. By the way, it works. I didn't think you could improve on perfection, but he somehow got even hotter and more chiseled.

So our new friend Sam taught us a private Insanity class Mon-Thu! Again, you can't argue with this view.

Speaking of sexy - you're welcome.

Insanity is one hard workout. I died. I also ran a few times, and did a yoga and a pilates class (because they were free with our room and the other plebians passengers had to pay $12 for them).

Being on a cruise, especially as it pulls away from the pier, is the best representation of humanity I have ever witnessed. Everyone is happy, dancing, cheering, polite, and ready to be best friends with everyone. It's like the polar opposite of being in a Walmart or DMV.

Mexican Fiesta deck party's 400 person conga line Thursday night.

Our cruise stopped in four ports. Once again, I'll try to hit the highlights. 

Sunday: Nassau, Bahamas.

We wandered around, and found a rum distillery with free tours.

Yup.

Back on board, we busted into the red velvet champagne we had brought on board (sounds amazing, doesn't it? It wasn't.) and got pretty for the first cruise elegant night.

Monday: Fun day at sea. We did our first Insanity class, went to the spa, had breakfast, then sat on the adults only deck for like 3 hours staring at the ocean, dozing, reading, and playing chess. How about every week starts like that? Oh, then after dinner we went back up and watched the sunset in a hot tub. 

No big deal, just pure bliss and perfection.

Tuesday: San Juan, Puerto Rico. We walked over to Castillo San Cristobal, a fort that had amazing city views. It was also super high up and we climbed a lot of hills, which may have contributed to my minimal weight gain.

Balls.

A real dungeon! Not going to lie, I mainly wanted to be "imprisoned" here to
better identify with Game of Thrones characters. 

Drinks on the ship were watered down and ridiculously overpriced, so Eric chugged this teeny tiny Coors light for $1!

 Wednesday: Virgin Islands. We docked at St. Thomas.



We did our only excursion of the trip here, taking a Ferry to snorkel at St. John. It was a very generous birthday gift from my dad - I can't thank him enough, because the beach there was absolutely amazing. It's one of the top ten beaches in the world! Plus we got to ride past Michael Jordan's house on the way over.

Michael Jordan's house!

Trunk Bay Beach. We snorkeled here. No words. Also #nofilter

Yeah, I'll allow this, so you can fully appreciate how unbelievable this beach was.
And how hardcore I am for snorkeling without the flippers or life vest.

There was an underwater trail - plaques explaining what you were seeing and where to go along a live coral reef. I really just felt like I needed to pinch myself because I couldn't believe how lucky we were to be there. That's a rare non-sarcastic sentiment in this blog. 

Wednesday night was our last cruise elegant night and we wised up and asked someone else to take a pic. I mean, I am a blogger, after all.



Thursday: Grand Turk (part of Turks and Caicos). 



I was dying to rent a bike to tour the island (it's only 4 miles long!) but we didn't bring enough cash. Instead, we took a cab to "downtown". I got hot walking around, so I just walked off the street into the ocean. I would really like this option more often.

This may come as a relief to you - I don't have any pictures of downtown. Because that's where Eric lost our camera. I had been backing up our pictures to my tablet every night and our camera was super old, dented, scratched, and basically no longer the greatest. Also, when he came back from searching for it to tell me it was officially gone, I was laying on a beach chair with this view. 

I don't think there's any first world pain that could have upset me here.

 To my real life friends and family: he's pretty pissed at himself so let's not ever bring this up.

Because it was paradise, we took a few more iPhone photos.

Friday was our last day at sea. So sad. We weren't really interested in the show that night, so we took advantage of having our private spa all to ourselves!

You may remember my rant about Carnival when we first booked our trip for June and then had to work. As a result, they rebooked us and upgraded us to a spa room. We've never flown first class, or really had any special privileges or anything, so the fact that we had access to a private spa that other passengers couldn't go in was extremely exciting.

Arriving and finding our spa vouches and slippers.

See? PRIVATE. Only 50 of the 4,500 passengers could go!

Special fancy thalassotherapy pool (basically a hot tub).

After the hot tub, we got to go through a series of four thermal rooms that all purportedly have magical powers to make you superhuman. Since I'm always cold, even in the Caribbean, I just liked them because they were thermal and had hot, ergonomic chairs that overlooked the ocean.

Laconium room

Tepidarium

The other rooms were steam rooms so I couldn't get a picture but they were sweet. 

And that was our fabulous, wonderful, just absolutely perfect vacation! To anyone still reading - thanks for indulging me! 

What was your favorite vacation? Anyone been on a cruise? What did you think?

Just another manic Monday - except a million times worse

Words cannot express how happy I am that I took the time to explain in detail my deep seated fear of needles. If I hadn't, none of you wonderful readers would fully be able to appreciate my traumatic experience yesterday.

Eric and I got back from Harrison's birthday party around 11pm on Sunday, and I actually rallied and was up at 5:30 Monday to go for a 5 mile run. Before work, I went to my doctor for a physical, the reason I got the blood drawn last week.

That meant I was kicking Monday morning off with a weigh in. The number wasn't really what I wanted it to be (who am I kidding, it never is, look at the freaking name of this blog), but luckily having a near stranger call me a fat ass to my face recently had prepared me for that.

I brought up my problem with constantly being freezing like I'm on an excursion to Antartica no matter what.

To illustrate, here's a picture from yesterday. I decided to paint my gross chalk boards black. I had to instagram it, because that's really shocking. I've never in my 30 years painted a wall. I'm not sure what went wrong, but I was born without that "make things look nice" gene that all other women seem to have. 

The point is, I was doing manual labor, in August, with no air conditioning, and you can clearly see that I am wearing long sleeves, and what you can't tell is that it's a long sleeved fleece. Yeah.

My doctor thought we should test my iron to look into this. I agreed. That was why I specifically said to the technician (aka my golden angel) "I'd like my iron checked" right before she stabbed me. She had replied "yes, it says that here on your order". 

Well, apparently like half the stuff they were supposed to check for never got checked. My doctor told me I needed more blood drawn. I barely restrained myself from screaming "what the hell did you do with the other blood? It was only 5 days ago, don't tell me you already threw it away! Pull that back out and test it again!". But that didn't seem to be an option, so I tried to resign myself to more needles. 

Things got worse. Somehow, I was coerced into also getting a tetanus shot. Now I was facing two needles. Luckily, my sister got me through my sending me some adorable pictures to focus on.

A very nice nurse gave me my tetanus shot and it actually wasn't as bad as I'd imagined (although it hurts today). Something about my demeanor clued her in to the fact that I wasn't thrilled with the turn of events. It was possibly the fact that I was hyperventilating and yelling "I'M JUST GOING TO STARE AT THIS PICTURE OF MY NEPHEW" while trying to catch my breath. She offered to have the blood taker come to the exam room instead of me going down to the lab. I appreciated her offer, but I really wanted to respond with "unless there's something about this room that allows her to extract my blood without the needle, I don't really see how that will help anything". The ten second walk down the hall wasn't really my concern here.

Side note: When I tell Eric stories, I usually refer to my inner monologue as though that's what actually was said and he ends up really confused. 

On top of all that all this extra torture made me like an hour late for work. It was an adults-only day, which sounds dirty, but I actually just mean I wasn't responsible for caring for children, like I normally am. I hate being late so while I was waiting for the shots I blew up the phones of pretty much everyone I work with, from my boss on down, telling them my sob story and not to judge me for being late, and when I finally arrived, they were all like "yeah no one really cares about you being late". 

Good news though! After work tomorrow, Eric and I are off on vacation! We'll be in Orlando for 3 days, and then on a Caribbean cruise for a bliss filled week. Eric is a major Harry Potter fan, so we're making a stop at Wizard-palooza or whatever in Universal Studios. I've tried to read the first book twice now and could never get into it, but I am trying to force myself to get through it for this trip. I'm 40% done. Now if there was a Twilight world, that I could get on board with. Actually, my BFF Carolyn will be in the REAL Forks while we are meeting Harry Potter, and I'm insanely jealous. And apparently, you can actually go to Hunger Games summer camp, so we will definitely be signing up for 2014. 

If you could "enter" any world from a book or movie, which would it be? I think mine is pretty clear. If there was a Game of Thrones world, I'd sell every possession I own to get there before you could say "Winter is coming". Also, Eric and I have been on the official The Office fan tour in Scranton. We had a drink at Poor Richards and everything!