Tag Archives: stress

The Stress (Fracture) Is Really Getting To Me

limpingchickenSo I may or may not have a stress fracture in my foot.  I may or may not have had it for a few days now.  I’ve had them before, and I’m pretty sure that’s what’s going on now, but I don’t really know because…ahem…I haven’t been to the doctor.  I think I’ve blogged before about my dislike of going to the doctor.  It’s like some weird cult: they strip you down, clothe you in a shapeless one-size-reveals-everyone’s-backside garment, take your money, say a lot of strange-sounding words you don’t understand, and expect you to nod obediently.   The x-rays and scans and suction cup machines never show anything concrete, so you have to take it all on faith, and you keep getting bills for about four months.  Though, come to think of it, cults just take all your money up front, so that last part is not very cult-like.  But it is very doctor-like.  So, I’ve just been walking around on a (probably) broken foot.  It’s (probably) fine.

Actually, it’s really starting to hurt.  But I’m kind of getting into it.  “Check me out, I’m a tough guy!  I walk around on a broken bone like it’s nothing!  I chew gravel for fun and I laugh at pain!  Not only can I walk on a broken foot, but I can do it in heels–watch!  Oh, God…”  In retrospect, not the best idea in the world.  My office wife is pissed at me, mostly because she’s the one who has to drive me around while I heal.  Also, it’s getting more difficult to find work-appropriate shoes that will fit around the swelling.  And the top of my foot is starting to turn colors.  Still, I have not gone to the doctor.  I keep hoping it will go away on its own, not unlike my last few relationships.

Drinking-BeerI’ve been trying to take it easy once I get home.  Prop up my foot, maybe put a pack of frozen peas on it, crack a beer–nature’s painkiller–and watch a movie.  Except, I just realized I’m out of allergy medicine, there’s no one around to drive me to the store, and the nearest store that sells my medicine is four blocks away.  That sound you hear?  That’s my office wife laughing her ass off.  Well, maybe the non-stop sneezing will distract me from the throbbing pain in my foot.  Or maybe I’ll forget about how miserable my allergies make me when my foot falls off.   I’m all about the positive.  And yes, Office Wife, I will call the doctor tomorrow.

Oh, God.  I’m out of beer, too.  Now that’s a f*cking emergency!

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Friends don’t let friends drive moving vans

Two friends

Two friends (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This is the story of how a friendship was born:

We all have different ways of dealing with stress.  Some people drink, some people turn to religion, some people become extreme couponers.  Me, I swear profusely and laugh at completely inappropriate things.  Until recently, I had my own office at work, so it wasn’t a big deal.  Then we made a new hire, and she got put in with me.  I was a little worried about this.  I’m not exactly–what’s that term?–safe for work.  Why would The Powers That Be hire a young and impressionable girl and then deliberately put her in an office with me?  I’m still not sure.  But they did.

I was good for about twenty minutes before I dropped my first expletive.  For me, that’s extremely impressive.  I’ve been known to utter sentences that contained more obscenities than non-obscenities.  I’ve crafted phrases that have used profanity as subject, verb, and object.  For a second, I was really afraid I was going to get a formal complaint.  I apologized for my impropriety.  My new officemate looked at me and said, “What?  Oh, I didn’t even notice.”

Huge f*&%ing sigh of relief!

Since then, I have learned her preferences in candy, lunch destinations, and breakfast muffins, and she has learned the true extent of my shameful addiction to caffeine as well as the depths to which I am willing to sink for the sake of making a joke.  I probably still should have been trying to behave myself around her so she wouldn’t run screaming from the office and file a complaint about the vile cretins surrounding her.  However, when you see each other at 7 AM and spend hours together going through paperwork to get a report in by the deadline, barriers tend to go down.  I was a little disturbed by the fact that she prefers Ryan Gosling to Johnny Depp, but she’s about five minutes old, so I let it pass.  JD can be too much for some people.  It’s okay.

Duct-tape Moving Van

Duct-tape Moving Van (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Officemate–she’s really more of an Office Sister at this point–moved house this past weekend, which is why I haven’t updated for a while:  I helped.  Well, I tried to help.  I’m not what you might call muscular, so I’m no good with moving furniture.  But I can pack like a champ, so that’s mostly what I did.  I packed and vacuumed.  I stayed at Office Sister’s place overnight so I could get up at dawn and pack some more.  Leading up to it, I thought, “Cool!  We’ll hang out, pack some boxes, drink some wine, make inappropriate comments when our supervisors can’t overhear–it’ll be great!”

I’m going to change my name from Little Blind Girl to Little Stupid Girl.  I know better than to think things like that.  Disaster 1:  The refrigerator Office Sister and Office Brother-in-Law ordered didn’t fit the space they had so carefully measured.  Disaster 2:  The microwave didn’t fit, either.  The freaking microwave!  Disaster 3:  Saturday evening traffic in a major metropolis.  Disaster 4:  Half a dozen people who had promised to help canceled.  Disaster 5:  God finally decided to smite us with torrential rain and intermittent tornados.  I’m not saying we didn’t deserve it, but seriously, who gets tornados when they’re moving?  And on, and on, and on.

Exhaustion, tears, the occasional natural disaster:  this is how a friendship is born.  No amount of stress at work can bind two people together quite like driving through tornados and packing away your Office Sister’s bras.  By the time the moving truck had been emptied at the new house and all the furniture had been set up, there was just no point in pretending to be refined and proper.  You can’t move house without swearing and, what’s more important, you can’t move house without revealing who you really are.  Sometimes literally, if you interrupt someone just after a shower because you’re looking for somewhere to brush your teeth and everything’s already packed up.  You just can’t help seeing each other in all your glory.

And it was pretty cool.

English: Clayton Farmhouse Drive Linking the f...

English: Clayton Farmhouse Drive (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

So my Office Sister is all moved into her new home, her first actual house, and she’s the cutest thing on two legs with her funny, patient husband and her loudmouth cat (shrieked the entire way to the new house.  Hour and a half.  Oh, my God!) and I don’t even remember how many boxes of couscous we ended up unpacking.  And three different kinds of salsa.  And at least twenty pillows.  And that’s it; we’re friends.  Done.  End of story, professionalism be d%&*ed.  You can’t lay hands on someone’s lingerie and then look them in the eye without laughing.

And that’s the story of how a friendship was born.

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Famous last words #38: What could possibly go wrong?

Deutsch: "Kopfschmerzen". Die wohl b...

Deutsch: “Kopfschmerzen” (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Oh, my God.  Week from Hell.  Worst.  Week.  Ever!  to quit caffeine.  There needs to be some kind of Caffeine Anonymous program with sponsors you can call when things get tough:  “Man, I don’t know what to do.  I got three hours of sleep, I have ten errands to run after work, and my computer just blew up.  It would be so much easier to deal with all of this if I could just have some caffeine.”  “Take a deep breath, Little Blind Girl.  You can do this.  Just take it one day at a time.”

I made it through the week, more or less, with rather less in the way of running and rather more in the way of beer and Italian restaurants (sorry, Doc), but only a little more.  I thought I was safe on the weekend.  I’d done the hard part.  I’d gotten through Hell Week without caffeine.  It was Sunday evening.  What could possibly go wrong now?

Slight digression:  there are things you must never say, or even think.  They are as follows:

  1. I’ll be right back.
  2. Everything’s under control.
  3. It’s probably nothing.
  4. What does this button do?
  5. What could possibly go wrong?

Lesson learned.  No sooner had I said this to myself than my Darling Dad called and wanted to know everything about my savings and retirement situations right then over the phone, down to the last penny in the accounts and the tax consequences in the event that I predecease both parents but am survived by my step-nephew.  And he needed to know it immediately!  Slight exaggeration, but only slight.  I don’t have a step-nephew.  That I know of.

I dealt with Darling Dad, hung up the phone, sighed, and decided I needed a soda.  A non-caffeinated one, obviously.  So I started off to the convenience store across the street and what did I find hanging on the handle of my apartment door?  Was it the decapitated head of my pet horse?  A voodoo doll of me with a pin through each eye?  No.  No, it was something far worse, something calculated to cut through all of my defenses and bring me to my knees in mere seconds.

It was a bag of three bottles of Mountain Dew soda.

They were probably from my neighbor trying to be nice, after I’d had such a hard week and all (the nightmares may have clued him in, with me shouting “No!  I swear!  I’ll get the report in by Tuesday!” at 2 in the morning), but really I think it was the Karma Gods coming for me.  It’s only fair.  I knew better.

Now to publish this blog post.  So many widgets and banners and buttons on these blogs…what does this button do?

Mirage Volcano 2

Mirage Volcano 2 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’ll be right back!

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