A conversation:
"Oh my god, Jeff! Look at this new shirt on Busted Tees! I'm about to cross the line of "Lost fan" to "Total Lost Geek" because I am so gonna buy it!"
"I don't get it"
"It says Drive Shaft, that's the name of Charlie's band"
"Which one is Charlie?"
"The one with the band? Called Drive Shaft?"
Blank stares
"Are you kidding me? Charlie, the guy from Lord of The Rings, the only rock star on the entire show"
"Sarah, everyone has names"
"what?"
"I'm just saying, that doesn't help. They all have names on that show."
In college I got strep throat a lot. 4 or 5 times a year, 4 years in a row. Usually, people have their tonsils taken out when that's the case but I mean, whatever...I haven't.
So, I'm pretty familiar with how my body reacts to strep. I also know that when I was in college, every time I would go to the doctor for this they would give me 2 test; the 10 minute rapid strep test and the 24 hour culture. They would always explain to me that the if the 10 minute test comes back positive then it is in fact positive. However, it has a very high false negative rate so if it comes back negative, they do the 24 hour test just to be sure. I have never had a 10 minute test come back positive in all the times I've had strep throat.
With that being said, I went to the doctor yesterday morning with all the painful symptoms I have grown so accustomed to.
As the nurse is swiping my throat for the 10 minute test she tells me that yesterday she alone had 15 people who came in with strep throat symptoms but all of their test came back negative. 15 people!
"A few of them even had those white spots on the back of their throats, but their tests were still negative!"
Ok, I can see if 2 or 3 people come in with strep throat symptoms and it turns out they don't have it, but 15 people?? No way. No way in hell. And, I'm no doctor, but look, if you have white spots on your throat, you have strep.
So, she comes in, tells me the test is negative and the doctor will be right in.
He comes in, doesn't even look at my throat and says "test is negative, you probably just have the cold virus and your throat hurts."
"Well, could you do the 24 hour culture, please?"
"We don't do that here"
"But the 10 minute test often gives a false negative"
"I don't know about that"
"I do, and it does, see - here's my story..."
and I tell, him. I'm very careful to try and not hurt his ego because he immediately seemed to be on the offensive which really bothered me. I mean, he may be a doctor and knows a lot about medicine, but I'm me and I know a lot about me. And I also know that this test always gives me a false negative, this is not a personal attack against him. It has nothing to do with him. I wasn't asking for a second opinion, just a more reliable test.
He gets so ticked off, however, that he actually leaves the room and doesn't come back for five minutes. He comes back and tells me "ok, I find your story entertaining so I will write you a prescription for an antibiotic".
I decide to take the high road and interpret his comment as "I will entertain the idea that you might have strep" as opposed to "you're a fucking idiot and I want you out of here now so I will humor you with a script for drugs."
A friend of mine who is a nurse was appalled but not surprised. "It's not like you were self diagnosing yourself with a torn back muscle so you could con the doctor out of xanax, you wanted amoxicillin".
But here's the thing, this isn't the first time I've been in a situation like this. Unless it's a routine checkup to the gyno or something, I'm not gonna go to the doctor unless something is wrong and I'm either very concerned about it or I know I need prescription medication to take care of it. I don't want to waste my time or money or the doctors time unless I really feel like the doctor can help me. When I go to the doctor, I've done my research. I pay attention to my body. I know the difference between a normal kind of "this feels different" and a not normal "this feels different". So why is it that when I go to the doctors they treat me like I'm an a-hole? Because I'm prepared to give them a full run down of whats afflicting me? Because I know what tests don't work on me? Because I know myself better than they do?
I don't go on web-MD, type in my symptoms and come into the doctor and tell them that I have either a brain tumor or Alzheimer's because I've been having trouble finding my car keys lately. But I will look on web-MD to see if I can treat my symptoms from the comfort of my own home with out having to go to the doctors. (Ok, granted, I totally self diagnosed myself with strep, but that's different. I also self diagnose UTI's for the same reason. You just know.)
I will never stop being my own strongest advocate, and I'm sure I annoy the hell out of these doctors, but the moral is, a few hours after taking my first pill I stopped feeling like every swallow was a gulp of fire and I can feel myself getting better. I couldn't say for certainty that I had strep, but if I hadn't stated my case, I would still be in a lot of pain with a bag of cough drops and some liquid lidacaine, spreading strep to every one I came in contact with assuring them that it was just a cold, the doctor told me so.
Yesterday was such a better day. Hell, even the night time after I wrote the last post was so much better. I guess I just needed to throw myself a little pity party so I could get back on with my life.
We saw Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull which I absolutely loved, despite all of it's "even for Indiana Jones this is ridiculous" ridiculousness. We went out to dinner and I ordered salmon (I hate fish) and ate half of it and was very proud of myself. I want to want to eat fish (got that?) and the salmon wasn't terrible. At one point in my life, I hated beer, but I drank it anyways and now I love beer. Why can't the same be true for fish? Debbie Downer Jeff quickly reminded me that people don't have parties where the main point is to eat grouper, but so what. Dude quit trippin, you're ruinin' my high. (5 bucks if you know what thats from.)
I also might have made the whole "quitting my job" thing more dramatic then it actually was. My last day was supposed to be this coming Sunday...I just pushed up the date.
Yesterday I made a list of things to do, I got everything done on it. Jeff came home and I had made a delicious dinner of Lemon Thyme Chicken and Roasted Potatoes and then we laughed all night. Poking each other and joking and just laughing. Despite the fact that my head was pounding, and then my throat started burning and then...here I am at 6:30 in the morning, been up for 2 hours, waiting for the doctors office to open because I'm pretty sure I have strep throat and no amount of over the counter drugs I have in my cabinet, cloriseptic spray, throat lozenges, or hot salt water will make it stop even the slightest.
Despite this, this will be a good day. If I don't get put on antibiotics, you'll find me at the beach. If I do...you'll find me anxiously awaiting the 2 hour finale of the best season of Lost ever.
Yes people, I've really been waiting for this night for 2 weeks!
I woke up this morning in a panic. A panic attack to be exact. I was having a dream in which I was going crazy. Everything around me was constantly morphing and changing, I was doing the things I do in everyday life but nothing was working out like it was supposed to. No one else was noticing that everything was totally off, but everyone was noticing how I was screwing everything up. I was screaming at the tops of my lungs, begging everyone to help me, and all of my request were ignored, like I wasn't saying anything at all. This, of course, only emphasized the fact that it was me who was going crazy, not the world around me. I woke up when the panic attack transferred from a dream to real life.
It was a terrible way to start the day.
This after yesterday, where I had been up since 3:30 am, drank all day and had several embarrassing moments including running my mouth off about Jeff's mother, who I didn't realize was in ear shot, and the obligatory "Sarah has been drinking all day so its time for her to start crying" moment. I never reached a point yesterday where I was drunk, but it was enough to be one of those days where you swear off drinking.
The worst part about depression is that you don't see it coming. You don't say "oh, I'm gonna be so sad tomorrow that I'm not going to leave my house for fear of whats out there, so, I better take the proper precautionary measures now."
So, I did nothing today. Nothing except quiting my job so I wouldn't have to leave my house today. I opened my front door at 4pm. I had kept the windows closed all day and was under the impression that it was over cast and nasty. Imagine my surprise when I realized it was absolutely gorgeous. Breezy, cool, sunny. I was instantly overwhelmed with energy to ride my bike, so I went up stairs to change, where I then had the urge to go to the gym, so I thought I better seize this opportunity while my mind is still eager.
I got to the gym and it was so crowded. This is not my normal gym time. I am not a crowd person, especially on panic attack days. I get on the only available tread mill and look out onto the crowds. I see three sets of women, all around my age, working out with their friends, thats when it hit me how lonely I am for my girl friends. Someone to shoot the shit with at the gym, to come pry me out of the house when I won't leave it, or to bring over some movies and join me.
The amount of people was too high and my fleeting motivation was too low so I stayed at the gym for all of 20 minutes. As an after thought, I stepped on the scale on my way out, which I never do.
Holy shit. I weigh 25 pounds more than I did this time last year. I knew that I had put on weight, that my clothes don't fit me quite right, that I haven't been working out like I used to, that I keep constantly finding excuses to eat whatever the hell I feel like, that I looked like a swollen chipmunk in that picture I had seen of myself a few days ago, but holy shit. This is bad.
This whole day is bad.
I ate so much candy last night that it actually hurts to brush my teeth.
Also, I just ate a grapefruit that tasted like celery.
I'm fairly certain that these two things are related.
I'm not a big fan of underwear. I only wear any about 50% of the time. (this is a huuugggeee improvement from a few years back when I wore underwear 0% of the time). The only place that I always consistently wear any is to the gym. If I'm wearing shorts I don't want to give the unintentional crotch shot, and ya know, it helps absorb the ass sweat.
A few weeks ago I bought these amazing workout pants from target. They're 3/4 length and made of the softest cotton ever known to man. They have a really wide waist band that only have a drawstring, no elastic, so I can rest them ever so comfortably on my hips without the feeling that the elastic is ever so slowing sawing it's way into my ovaries.
On Wednesday I was getting dressed to go to the gym and saw these amazing pants, sitting ever so patiently in the drawer.
"Are you going to wear me today, Sarah?" the pants said to me
"Why yes, Mister pants, I believe I will. Let me just first find some underwear..."
"Oh please don't!" Mister Pants interrupted "I love you so much and I don't want anything to come between me and you. You would be so comfortable without any pesky underwear".
"Well, alright. Just this one time". And off to the gym we went.
Jump ahead 20 minutes to me on the stair master. Step after step after step until...oh...oh no. Oh crap. My pants had fallen down. The only thing keeping them from dropping to my ankles was the fact that one of my legs was bent in a stair stepping motion, thus keeping them from falling entirely. Apparently though, the lack of elastic, the loosely tied drawstring, and the already low sit, mixed with the lack of friction that underwear would have provided meant they came off easier than Tila Tequila's clothes.
I pulled them up quickly, ran to the bathroom to fix the drawstring and then went back to the main room. No one was looking at me, or laughing, or pointing, or telling some random stranger what had just happened (which may or may not have been what I would have done had I witnessed someones bare ass on the stair master) so, I don't think any one actually noticed.
It took about six years but the underwear gods have finally proved their point.
This is a notice that I, Sarah, will be relocating soon to Tampa.
Is this a new development?
No. This is something that I have been planning for some time but have waited to tell you about because, well, I don't know. (See: Lazy)
When will the move take place?
Middle of June
Why are you moving back to Tampa?
I will be going to spa therapy school to become a licenced esthetician and massage therapist. Think happy and zin like all of the time. Also, think popping black heads out of peoples faces and poking them incessantly with little instruments of torture while they wince in pain. If you are like me, these are happy and zin like thoughts.
Where will you be living?
Whoa there! Lets not get to personal here! I mean...yes...I will be living with my parents for 9 months.
Nine Months? Are you pregnant?
Seriously, people keep asking me this. I will continue to kick you.
If Jeff moving with you?
No.
Won't you miss him?
Terribly, but it's part of the bigger plan, and we'll only be 3 hours away from each other.
What does this mean for me, your loyal reader?
Not much, there will be no rise in fees and there should only be a slight lapse in service while I relocate. The subject of my blogs might change focus slightly, possibly having more to do with my kooky mom or the fat lady with herpes who wanted me to wax her hoo hoo, but it's hard to say because, well, it hasn't happened yet.
Thank you for your support and understanding and we look forward to continuing our business with you for years to come!
...and looking for something to tickle your funny bone, check out the comments on this post.
Wow.
A lot of us have certain words and phrases that we only use in front of certain people, be it your significant other, your best friend or your parents. They're usually inside jokes and they wouldn't go over well in mixed company. For instance, I often find myself trying not to refer to Jeff as Sweetums in front of other people, or, weirder yet, I often find myself trying not to call other people Sweetums.
So last night, our friends Jason and Kyzandrha invited us over for some beers and Indiana Jones. Now, Jason is one of those people who has a thousand gadgets and electronics, so when the movie wouldn't play we were all giving him a really hard time about it. So, while he was fidgeting with the remote, trying to make something happen, he says "Hey Kyzandrha, go and eject-ulate that for me".
The room became silent for .7 seconds before every person burst into hysterics. It became obvious that this is something they say to each other, as a joke between husband and wife, but Jason went and revealed it to the world, and now I have a new favorite word.
I had to close tonight at the restaurant, meaning I would be there long after we actually stopped letting people in.
When I came home I was sad to see Jeff asleep, but had expected that.
I opened the fridge to get fix myself a late night dinner and there was a plate with big, fat seedless red grapes, perfectly and ever so delicately hulled juicy red strawberries, and slices of colby jack cheese. All of this saran wrapped with a note taped to it that read "pour vous". (this, by the way, is french for "for you")
It was exactly what I wanted for dinner.
Sometimes I catch myself staring at him wondering how I ever got so lucky.
Going out to eat is a privilege. It is a break from the mundane and allows you to be waited on, having all of your reasonable request fulfilled while a meal is made specially for you so you don't have to dirty your kitchen, make the food or even stand up to get it. We bring it to you.
We want you to be happy with your dining experience.
We want you to leave with a full belly and a happy heart after experiencing a delicious meal and laughter with friends or family.
This can't always happen, but we'll always try.
Sometimes you're in a bad mood, so there's nothing we can do to satisfy you. Sometimes the restaurant is really busy and it might take 25 minutes for you to get your dinner. Sometimes your server will screw stuff up because they're human. Sometimes the kitchen will screw things up for the same reason. Sometimes you'll order incorrectly or order something and not like it.
These are the risks you take when you go out to eat at a restaurant.
With that being said, servers make about 3 dollars an hour on average. 3 dollars. And on average we work about 4 hours a shift. That's 12 dollars a shift that goes onto a paycheck. How could anyone possibly survive on this kind of money? Because of you, my dear friends. It's your tips that make up our salaries. We totally and completely depend on you. This is why we'll always try to give you a great experience.
What is deemed as an acceptable tip is 15 - 20%. Anything more is considered exemplary, anything less is considered insulting. I've even got an easy trick for you; say your bill is $27.54. Count one dollar for every 5 dollars, rounding down. A 5 dollar tip is acceptable for that size bill.
Most people know this, but let me throw in some examples so, if you happen to be in the following situations, you can feel prepared.
Children: Children are always welcome. They are precious and adorable. Also, their meals cost 3 dollars a plate, and most of that food, as well as the crayons and any bit of anything they can get their hands on ends up on the floor stomped deep into the carpet for your server to clean up after you leave. It is not expected that you clean up after your children at a restaurant. Again, this is one of the luxuries of eating out. However, you should tip at least 25% knowing that your server will be on the ground trying to dig up pieces of french fries and cracker crumbs out of the carpet so she can get sat again.
Insisting on Taking the Bill: "Hey, when you come back, go ahead and bring the check. I'm gonna pay for it all". I cringe when I hear these words. 70% of the time the person who has offered to pay has not realized that everyone ordered a meal costing at least 15 dollars, had a few beers, and did you forget about that appetizer you got? They offer to pay because they don't think 4 people can do that much damage. But then they get the bill for $84.63 and suddenly they go into panic mode. This is more than they expected to pay. To make up for it, they leave a 5 dollar tip. Don't offer to pay for the entire bill unless you can afford to leave an acceptable tip. The larger the party, the worse the percentage is for the servers.
Side note: 5 dollars is not an acceptable tip unless your bill is 25 dollars, get over this 5 dollar thing!
Discounts: You got a discount on your bill for whatever reason.
Tip for the amount that your bill would have been without the discount.
Not Leaving a good Tip for you Server because:
You had to wait long to be seated.
Your food wasn't good.
Your drink from the bar was wrong.
Your blind date is an ass hole.
You're an ass hole.
These things have nothing to do with your server, please do not take it out on her by way of her tip because whatever your mad about that had nothing to do with her, does not get rectified. Don't shoot the messenger, ya know?
Going out to eat is a privilege. If you can not commit at least 15% of your bill in tip form for your server, don't go out to eat. It's that simple.
And look, if your server calls you fat or tells your husband that he can do better than you or spits in your food or whatever; don't just leave them a shitty tip, tell their managers or punch them in the face. But we work our asses off to provide for you and all we ask in return is a reasonable tip. We even leave a little line on your credit card receipt for you to fill it out.
It appears as though I lost my digital camera after the Radiohead concert on Tuesday night.
FRICK!
I worked a double yesterday. In between the day shift and the night shift, a few of us decided to go get some margarita. I mean, hey, it was Cinco De Mayo. Sure we had to go back to work, but trust me, know one cares if we're bringing food to your table a little on the drunk side. Like I've mentioned before, my restaurant gives us alcohol during our preshift meetings on Tuesday mornings.
So the only Mexican restaurant in our general area is a very fancy high scale one who was having zero Cinco de Mayo celebrations including a complete lack of drink specials at 3pm. So, we ordered many 8 dollar margaritas. When we were done we asked for our checks and he handed us just one, telling us that everything was on that bill. We looked. We counted in our heads. Whispers ensued. We looked again. Yep, he only charged us for 2 margaritas, a 16 dollar tab! Between us we had had six margaritas and two glasses of wine.
Fantasticism!
yes, i just made that word up. It will hear on out be used to describe the wonder of free alcohol.
Work came and went when some more of us decided to get some drinks at Fridays after work. Jeff met us up there and the drinking ensued. Five margaritas, one martini, and six beers later, Fridays was closing and kicking us out. We asked for our bill and he handed it to us telling us that everything was on that bill.
1 blue moon
1 martini
1 yeungling
= 16 dollars!
Fantasticism to the max!
Ok, now that you've soaked up the fact that I went out drinking twice yesterday, lets move on and get to the bottom of this. Several free drinks from two different bars? Both tabs being 16 dollars? 16 is the magic number, it appears.
Do you think its because they knew we were servers so they knew we would hook them up? Or do they do it to everybody? Because, seriously, we left them both 100% tip.
Maleah, my little sister, is a such a picky eater, her caliber of pickiness doesn't register on most scales. Her diet for that past 19 years has pretty much been pasta with parmesan cheese and broccoli with Parmesan cheese. This girl used to tell people she was allergic to chocolate when she was in preschool because she thought someone would force her to eat it.
Picky.
Well, now that shes in her freshman year of college two things have happened - she has branched out and started eating slightly more diverse food, and, shes grocery shopping for herself.
(By slightly more diverse food, I mean salmon and sweet potatoes. And because she never cared much for anything other than pasta and broccoli and cheese she never paid attention in the grocery store to learn things from our mom about produce and the like.)
Twice now Maleah has bought a full salmon with everything still intact. Eyes? Bones? Yes. How the hell do you not notice that when you're picking it out at the store?
But my favorite story is this; She told me that she had no idea what she should be looking for in terms of picking out sweet potatoes in the produce section. She felt like a total armature and was certain that the other people around her could tell that she was a novice. So for a few weeks she would pick one up, feel it around in her hand, look at it, but only so the other grocery store patrons would think she knew what she was doing.
She finally decided to take a stand. You're probably thinking that she must have just asked someone what qualities she should be looking for for a really great sweet potato. No, of course not. She decided that she would make up her own criteria for her sweet potatoes. So whenever she went to pick some out, she was simply search for the ones that were the most phallic.
And she no longer felt like a fraud.
I'm an NPR listener. Its on when I get into my car, we choose the radio over the TV in our house more often than not, 70% of my conversations start with "Ya know, I heard on the radio today that..." I love the unbiased news, the interesting people and the wealth of knowledge that they selflessly give to me.
But my absolute favorite show is This American Life. I actually won't listen to it on the weekends when it comes on. I get it on podcast and, along with buying old episodes to listen to, will only listen to them in the gym. This insures that I will work out for at least 1 hour because every show is so captivating to me that I will not stop working out because then I will have to stop listening.
So of course when I heard that they were doing a live broadcast in theaters nation wide on May 1st, I went home and instantly bought 2 tickets, even though the price was kind of ridiculous. 20 dollars a person is kinda high, but when your radio show comes on public radio and your TV show comes on Showtime, I guess 20 dollars a head is the middle ground.
The idea was to show some upcoming stories for the TV shows, perform some radio stories, show out takes, and answer fan mail. I didn't really know what to expect because I had never done anything like this before, but I will tell you that it went above and beyond any inclination of how I thought it might pan out.
The stories they played were phenomenal, like a 24 year old Iraqi man who wanted to get a better understanding of what Americans thought of the war, so he went from town to town (mostly in the south) propping up a booth in public places (ala- Lucy from Charlie Brown) that read "Talk to an Iraqi" and just waited for people to approach him. It was hilarious, enlightening, and dreadfully sad in the same breath.
Or a story that a man tells often about the time that he and his wife were walking in NYC and she thought Jackie Onassis was waving at her, so she waved back, only to realize that she was actually waving a cab. And also...that his wife swears he was never actually there when it happened...told by way of a cartoon. Nothing short of brilliant.
Ira Glass even explained that, yes, Tory Mallatia is in fact a real person.
There is really no point here except that This American Life is such great entertainment and if you haven't experienced the radio program, the TV show, or both, don't wait. So, Ladies and gentleman, without further adieu, Ira is waiting for you.
click here to find out the lowest gas prices in your area, determined by your zip code and updated nightly!
Pass it on so we can all save a few cents.
Oh yeah, and...HAPPY BIRTHDAY JO!!!
