While you were away I chewed your shoes and used all of your toothpaste.

Some days I wonder if anyone else had as random thoughts as I tend to have.  It’s more than just my general lack of any sort of an attention span.  For instance, there is ALWAYS music running through my head.  This morning, in the shower, it was “How Much Is That Doggie In The Window” and now it’s “Reconstruction Site”.  There is absolutely no rhyme or reason to what gets stuck in my head.

Then there are the random thoughts.  My mind wanders continuously.  I think thing like, “Hmm, I wonder if Willy Wonka’s elevator ever landed” or “Exactly how does the internet find my iphone?”  I think about baseball and somehow end up pondering the fuel efficiency on my 1976 Buick Regal I drove in high school.

Heat Madness

Anyone who lives in the South knows it.  Each summer it strikes with the onset of hot and humid days.  When the heat index creeps over 105 people start to lose their minds.  Tempers flare, insanity takes over the public conscience, and the only remedy is a trip to the lake or a cold front.

Southerners are renowned for their manners and friendliness, but I suppose that is mostly because Northers don’t visit during July and August.  The higher the mercury climbs the ruder the population gets.

This is my ninth summer in the medical clinic I work for and every year we see the onset of the heat bring temper-tantrums and general hysteria.  Even in the super-chilled air of the clinic patients are rude and whiny and angry.  Less actual illness, more irritability.

I’m always happy when September comes.

Hello world

Haven’t blogged in days. Just can’t find anything interesting to say, I guess. Wrapped up in College World Series.

My story…

So the National Parkinson’s Foundation sent me an email asking me to tell my PD story.  I’m not special, they want all their members to do this.  It did get me thinking though.  First, not all that many PD patients are third generation patients.  Second, the percentage of PD patients my age is tiny, most people are diagnosed in their 60’s and 70’s, even early onset patients are mostly in their 40’s and early 50’s.  Third, I  my mother lives with me and my husband so in some capacity, I am both a patient and a caregiver.  Poor Chris, he is constantly on call for anything mom and me can’t do, open jars, put up curtains or pictures, move furniture…

I don’t know if I even have a story.  Not one that every other PD patient hasn’t heard before.  My hand shakes and drops things, I feel like my right leg is being controlled by someone else sometimes and all I do is fight with it, some days I feel like I take medication all day long, sometimes my medication doesn’t work very much at all.

If I had a story about having PD it would be more about tripping over cats, and careening through a hotel lobby like a mad woman the first time I experienced propelling, or laughing over my mom falling out the back door only because she wasn’t hurt because she fell on her dinner she had just bought (mashed potatoes everywhere).  We stay pretty positive, no drama, no period of disbelief, no self-pity.  We just are who we are at my house.

Why?

Why are people in such a hurry to get to work every morning?

Why is it okay to wear something ugly if it’s “in style” (example, those hideous Ugg boots) but not okay to wear something ugly if it’s not?

Why did the music industry kill country music and turn it into generic pop twang?

Why won’t the laundry fairies come to my house at night?

Why can’t magic be real?  I have a growing list of people I want turned into toads or worse.

Why do people always feel the need to make fun of me for being a Cubs fan?  Isn’t being a fan about more than just winning?  What about loyalty?  If it were easy to root for a team all of the time you wouldn’t really be a fan.

Why is liberal a bad word but conservative isn’t?  I’m proud of my liberal-ness.

Why don’t parents send there kids outside to play anymore?  When I was a kid were weren’t allowed to play inside during the summer.

Why do my co-workers insist upon sending me religious emails when they all know that I am unashamedly not religious?

Why do people believe in angels and not ghosts?

Why is it so strange that I’d rather watch baseball than soap operas?

Why can’t Oz be a real place?

Why can’t we have more holidays that require us to dress up in costumes?

Why do people just assumed that if you are married you want to have kids?

Why is it so much easier to gain weight than to lose it?

Why can’t I just be beamed home instead of fighting traffic every afternoon?

Why does the dryer only eat one sock?  Does the dryer monster only have one foot or does it prefer to wear mismatched socks?

Why am I the only one who find it odd that my sister wears Christmas socks all year?

Why can’t I be a super hero?

Why can’t there be a “magic pill”?

Why can’t we all just get along?

Why are none of these answers on Wikkipedia?

Yesterday

As some of you know, I work in an outpatient clinic at a local hospital.  We get used to seeing the unusual happen around here.  Once, a prisoner from the state prison system said he needed to use the bathroom and while his guards waited outside he climbed up on the sink, removed a ceiling tile, and escaped.  We were all locked in the building until the police located him about an hour later.  

We see temper tantrums, heart attacks, insanity, and general chaos every day.  It’s just a part of working with sick people.  You adjust to it, it all becomes routine after a few years of working with it.

Yesterday, we had an incident that shook up even the most veteran staff.  A patient sitting in one of the exam rooms shot himself in the back of the head.  In the middle of a busy clinic, this patient decides to kill himself.  Chaos doesn’t ever begin to describe the rest of the afternoon.

I guess maybe the patient lived alone and was afraid that no one would find their body.  Or maybe they figured that if something went wrong there would be doctors and nurses around.  I don’t know.

The scary thing is that someone made it into the clinic with a loaded gun and no one knew.  This person was just suicidal but what if the next person is suicidal and angry too?

The thing is, you can’t go to work everyday, or to McDonald’s or the mall or out of your house in general worrying that there might be someone with a gun intending to shoot themselves or anyone else.  You can’t live in fear so you have to set the incident behind you and act as if it was a random act that won’t happen again.

I will say this.  I am no fan of guns.  I think they should all be banned.  Period.  No exceptions for hunting, no exceptions for collectors, no exceptions for rednecks or idiots.

iphones and orange jello

I have never been what anyone would call cool or trendy.  I have a hard time keeping up with what’s popular, partly because I have no patience for it and partly because I just don’t care.  So last year when my husband bought an iphone I just didn’t expect to be particularly impressed.  I was wrong.

Very few times have I ever really lusted after anything.  I wanted an iphone bad and when my ipod died (ipod sad face is the worst sight in modern technology) I wanted one even more.  The iphone is all of my favorite things in one sleek package.  It’s a music player, there is an app that allows you to follow all the MLB games and even listen to streaming radio broadcasts, and it’s also a phone (which comes in handy on the rare event that I actually answer it).  

Well today, my very own iphone should be delivered to my home.  I am geeked!  It’s better than Christmas!  

Also, I would like to take this opportunity to express my love for sugar-free orange jello.  I mix diet 7up in to give it a little zip and top it with a little fat-free whipped cream.  And to my strange sister who does not like jello, well that’s just another reason why Katie is my favorite sister.

The highs and lows of being a Cubs fan

0-6 road trip where the Cubs apparently forgot to bring bats along since they struggled to score even a single run most games.  Then, they return to Wrigley on Monday and go on a scoring run but are somehow completely unable to keep the Pirates from scoring.  Sad.

I know that it’s early in the season.  I know that the Cubs have had terrible luck with injuries so far.  I know that every team during the course of the season goes through a slump or two.  None of that has made me feel much better.  

Tonight, I want a win.  This year I want a World Series.  I know, it’s terrible and demanding but even the Blackhawks won a playoff series and two years ago they were the laughingstock of the NHL.  

1000

I have had 999 hits on my blog site.  Now I am fully aware that other bloggers get 1000 hit a day, but for my little rambling blog it’s sort of a milestone.  So I’d like to thank you all, whomever you are, for visiting.

Subjects I never thought I would blog about…

So American Idol is taking over my town tonight.  

Kris Allen is a student at UCA and his parents live twenty minutes away.  Apparently, when an “Idol” contestant makes it to the final three the show comes to their hometown to film a concert so last week we had 20,000 people lining the streets downtown for a parade and concert.  

Tonight they are back!  The cameras are back to film crowd reaction for the announcement of the winner.  There are thousands of people wearing Kris Allen tee-shirts and roaming groups of pre-teen girls bursting into tears whenever they hear his name.  It’s like Beatles-mania only much, much more pathetic.

So if he wins, I’m assuming the whole town is going to turn into a nightmare carnival of pre-adolesent girls and soccer moms.