commotiocordis

Places Alexandria didn't apply sunscreen before volunteering all afternoon at the Earth Day festival:

Scalp. Specifically, the part of my hair. It's a vicious shade of red right now. I mean, expecting it to blister up in the next day or so, red.

Inch and a half square area of back of left hand. There's this perfect quadrilateral dude of dark pink (nowhere near the scalp color, but still), and then some assorted splotches that come out from/near that. I had almost the exact same thing last year; it comes from holding bits of artwork and cutting out things for kids and other such hand-exposing activities. It's only on the left, though, which is interesting. That might be because I use the right more, so it's not still often enough to get burned. Or I prolly didn't wipe/wash the sunscreen off of my right hand as well (you know, like you do so your hands aren't intolerably greasy) after I applied the stuff to the rest of my body.

Spot near the corner of my left eye. That one twinges me a bit every once in a while when I blink.

Lips and area surrounding them. That one twinges me even more than a bit. . . pretty constantly. That's the only one that's causing me actual pain atm, as it's the second worst and as long as nothing touches my scalpstripe that one's okay.

Twas fun though. Felt rushed, as always (last year the sibs came at the beginning of my work time and were totally bored/done by the time I got off and so I got maybe 20 minutes to look around), because I had to get home to hit the gym and then run off to volleyball. I really want to have the time to actually go through and look at everybody's (or, you know, more people's) everything instead of just scanning the booths and hitting the ones that have samples, LOL.

And OMG, so many people were there. Put it this way. Normally, getting from the exit on the highway into the park and into a parking space and then into wherever in the park you're going is going to take you a little bit if you're going on a nice day and weekend, simply in the parking space-finding, and then perhaps a short walk if you couldn't park right up close portion of the time. Not, however, more than an hour. 30 minutes of which were spent trying to go about 5 blocks down the road before even getting into the park. This is when the below-mentioned weather got brutal--hiking up and down the hills of the park about 3x as much as was needed on the way there (because I had to park really far away and then didn't know which way the festival was, so ended up retracing my steps several times) and (though in a straight line this time, thankfully) with a massive bag of binders and other miscellaneous items I rescued from the recycled art booth I was working at on the way back.

Weather was gorgeous, though. A bit warm in the sun, but that's to be expected. In the shade, though. . . this would be a day I point to when asked what would be the ideal weather for my wedding or sommat.

My allergies have been kicking my butt lately. They’ve been bad for a week or two now, but mostly in the headache plus scratchy throat accompanied by the occasional sneezing bout and uncontrollable runny nose kind of way. Which, now that I list it all, sounds like a lot, but still. And then my chest was kinda tickly all last night, like I had to cough. Woke up this morning with full-out massive chest congestiony symptoms. Not the goodish kind where you can actually cough and make yourself feel better by getting something out—it doesn’t feel like I’m actually clogged up at all, I just have the cough tickle and the sort of labored breathing, you know?

Fail, I say. I was afraid this morning that it was because I was getting sick and not just allergies, but as it hasn’t really gotten worse throughout the day, I’m assuming not. Which is good, because I’m tripping down to Columbia (‘bout 2 hours away) on a bus with the fakey!minimed people for another leg (the last one, thankfully) of the program.

Which should be interesting. It’s all day Sunday and Monday morning. Which doesn’t make me happy in itself, because I’m only going because a) it’s free and b) we’re shadowing doctory people on Monday, but the doctoryshadowing is only a few hours. The longest part (the Sunday bits) are almost all going to be me vs. the idiots (I’m sorry that sounds pretentious and snotty and horribly bitchtastic, but they’re so dumb) on some fictional case study they’ve got going on.

That, and the schedule is really weird. Meaning I’m worried about my nutso sleeping and the food stuff. I’m afraid that every meal is going to be shitty and unhealthy and pizza and such (at least one of them is pizza, another is something else in a food court-esque place, etc.) not to mention provided at times where I’m not at all hungry, and I’m going to end up not being able to eat all weekend. I planned on bringing some soup and veggies and other healthy food type things along, since the hotel we’re in has both a microwave and a fridge in every room (it’s freaking swank—we’re talking more than $100 a night standard rates for this place) but it turns out we’re only going to actually get to the hotel for the first time after 9:30pm on Sunday and leave again (presumably not to return) really early on Monday to go do more stuff. Which restricts what I can bring along with me, because that means we’re probably leaving our clothes and stuff on the bus while we do most of the stuff, meaning I’d have to lug whatever food I wanted to bring for the day on Sunday around with me. Along with whatever food they provide that I decide to stash in my bag for later rationing/sharing/saving until I’m hungry—necessary because I’ve been eating my biggest/highest caloric meal around 2am lately because I’m fail like that, and when I screw with my system too drastically I get migraines, which would really manage to ruin the weekend in a lickedysplit type manner.

But yes. Yay for that in a not-so-much-yay type of way. The shadowing will hopefully make up for it, providing I got matched with somebody in the emergency department. If I’m chasing around somebody from the path lab, I’m going to be pissed. Because I have to call my boss today (I’ve been putting it off because I feel bad because I know I’m really leaving him in the lurch) and tell him that sorry, I can’t work on Sunday night because I’m going to be out of town, and since I don’t have anybody who can cover for me . . . sosorry. I want him to just call the coaches of the volleyball teams and ask them if we can cancel Sunday and tack another day on the schedule at the end, because that way I still get paid, but idk if that’ll happen. He’ll prolly either get one of his daughters to sit up there and just keep score (since I’m pretty sure none of them can ref) or try to do it himself. Still. Prefer, I would, the money.

Got free tickets from school to a baseball game for Tuesday evening, which might be nice. I’m not interested in baseball, really, but just going out to the thing is most of the fun. It’s for the Character Council (promoting character education, blah, blah) thing I’ve been sort of taking the lead on this year. Which I’ve been really enjoying, actually. I’ve developed a quite nice relationship with one of the administrators (Mr. S.) that is in charge of the program because of it—he really recognizes both the work I’ve been doing and that I’ve got interest in doing it and has been seeking me out for other leadershippy things, both related and not, which makes me rather proud. Plus, he’s just a pretty awesome guy all around—I was in his office yesterday on a conference call to give feedback on a panel/conference on cyber bullying that I went to back in October through the Council, and afterwards we were talking about everything from school policy on things to his personal history; he reminds me a bit of my dad—managed to turn things around from a poor family where nobody went to college and barely graduating high school (him)/having to drop out of college to work (my dad) to having several degrees and working in education and co-owning a swanktastic French restaurant (this is where my dad diverges, because unfortunately, this is not a possession of ours, LOL) and such. And we (there was another girl in there for the feedbacking too; actually the daughter of my theatre teacher of previous years, point of interest) were talking about religious stereotypes—she’s Southern Baptist, which people hear and go “OMG, conservative”, as with my Catholicism; Mr. S.’s grandparents were Orthodox Jews but were unexpectedly really cool with him marrying a Gentile, etc. And he bought us sodas afterwards, which was the cementer him into the winnage column.

But Character Council leadershippyness continues, as we’ve got some kind of national character award evaluator people coming in week after next and I’ve been fingered to be one of the two smarmy, lead them around type people, which is a big deal because most of their information about us and what we do is thus going to end up coming from me and my choices of places to take them to see “character in action”. Kinda high-pressure when I think about it. Which is why I’ve been choosing not to as of yet.; Mr. S.’s going to take me through a bit of what they want to hear, what it’s going to be like, that kind of thing on Thursday, methinks--after we have the discussion period on Wednesday that we’re going to part-reproduce/part-critique when the guys come the week after. The day the national people are coming is the day of the all-day Special Olympics thing that I’ve done for the past couple of years, though, which makes me sad, because I really like doing that and I’m going to have to miss it. I don’t think I got to do it last year either because of some big test I had that day, so doublesuckage.

Indeed. I’ll be leaving for home in a few minutes, then it’s callage of the volleyball boss, then to Shop N’ Save to return the nectarine that they shafted me on; $1.07 for one piece of fruit, which is frakking outrageous in the first place, but then it was totally worthless because it had been frozen and had that nasty, ex-frozen, mealy texture—no way I wasn’t taking that back. When I went by last night, though, the lady couldn’t give me my money back because it was after the hours that the customer service/cashbox desk was open and policy was to not give any cash back then (why she couldn’t slip me a freaking dollar out of the register, idk) and they didn’t have any new nectarines to swap it with (not that I’d really want to anyway—when one’s frozen, chances are the whole batch has been exposed to the same conditions). Should be a new batch today, she said in between being bitchtastic (it’s always the same lady when I go there after going to the gym, and she’s always got this huffy, exasperated attitude that really pisses me off), so I might just swap the fruit out, but idk if I want to chance having to do the whole thing again if this one’s bad too.

Oh, and funny story.

My dad and I work out together, as you know, and we were there tonight when, right before we left, I told my dad to get on the squat machine thing because I was curious as to how much weight he could do. He sits down, leaving the machine right where the setting was when we walked over (290 lbs), and does a few reps.

He then dares me to. I figure, no way. I do 50 reps of 150 on that thing every (or almost every--sometimes I wimp out and go for 130) day I go, but that's nearly double what I normally do.

I sit down, and to my surprise, I had very little problem with it. I stopped after 5 reps simply because my back was being pressed into the seat so hard by the pushing force that it was quite uncomfortable, but my legs were barely feeling anything.

This is huge. I mean, that's a tiny bit less than twice my weight. I feel strong now.

I'm wearing one of the 6 or so sweaters I got on Sunday when the school that works out of my church (some independent thing) was in the process of tearing down the leftovers from a garage sale in the gym (where volleyball is) , and said that whatever was left was free. Sadly, ~~most~~ all of the nice pants and shoes didn't fit me, but I grabbed all the sweaters I could. Because though they're normally not my style (as most tend to be baggy in all the wrong places and generally not flattering, plus I'm usually warm anytime I'm out somewhere), I'll make an exception for free clothing. The one I've got on is knitted out of this beautiful mixed blue and green yarn and is probably my favorite just for that reason, even though the sleeves are all baggy.

And I'm not sure if I have an eye doctor appointment tomorrow or not. Because I'm scheduled to, but according to whatever statement (or some such document) we just got, the insurance hasn't been updated to cover us yet and is only on my mum. So idk. I like the glasses I have so much that I don't really want to go in there and have them say that I need a totally new prescription (which I'm pretty sure is going to happen) and make the old ones worthless. I wouldn't mind new frames, since with the insurance they'll be virtually free (when mum went, she only paid for the fact that she got those Transitions sunglass/regular glass lenses and no-line bifocals) and it'd be nice to have a spare, so it'd be okay if they were only a little different. I'd consider just putting new lenses in the old frames, but technically speaking, the old ones have been broken since I got them--the holes for the screws that hold the earpieces in have been stripped out since the day I got them, resulting in wobbly ear pieces and no real way to fix it. So yes. I don't know if I'm even going, because if the insurance isn't on, I don't really need new ones.

Idk how I'm going to fit everything in tomorrow, though. I've got the eye doctor (possibly), I've got to read Heart of Darkness (because I've been scraping through english on the fact that I read it ages ago, but I've got to write an in-class essay on Thursday, so I desperately need to reread it), I'm supposed to go volunteer at the Democratic party office downtown, and I need to start my midterm paper for AII that's due Friday, as MiniMed prevents me from doing much on Thursday without being miserable and up all bloody night. And at some point I should hit the gym, because I've been trying to go every day (as much as I can, with class and minimed and work and such) lately, and Wednesday is one of my usual days from even before the every day thing. Ahh, life around midterms. Why do you enjoy breaking my head so?

So. Wednesday? Fail.

I guess I've got to start out with the night before, which I spent staying up way later than I should have considering I had a cold, only half a root in one of my teeth, massive drugs pumped into me to keep me from noticing that I only had half a root in one of my teeth, etc. I had biology, and I thought I had english (turns out it wasn't due until today, though), and I had to write this campaign speech/essay thing for my econ class's representative to the marketing club spot (a short one, but I have heaps of trouble writing things that are self-promoting already so it actually took me the longest, added to by the fact that I was on pain killers). I finally finished everything but the english, realized it wasn't due until Thursday, and went to bed. Around 2:30 or so, I guess.

I'm still in pain from this whole root canal escapade, so in the morning, I took one of the vicodin that the dentist prescribed. A whole one again this time (I took a whole to get me through the night, but before I was doing halfs every three hours).

After a little while? ('Bout half way through first hour, I'd guess.) Started noticing it. Like, in a "Oh, I think this means that I'm high" way. While I was trying to get some work done. Not very conducive to that. Twas also when I realized that for the second chapter in a row, I'd forgotten one of the huge biology assignments at home. Which is a huge point dock that I can't afford.

2, 2.5 hours after taking it (and right in the middle of Spanish class) I started getting both v. v. hot and nauseous. So I'm sitting there, trying to get my mind to cut through the nausea long enough to come up with the answer to whatever he's asking (because he hadn't called on me in a while, which meant that I was coming up) plus possibly how to ask if I could go to the bathroom/nurse (both easy when I'm not high/sick, but when I am, almost impossible), all while breathing like I'm back on the nitrous to try and quash the nausea.

Next class, english: the hotness hadn't gone away but the nausea had gone down a bit. I get called down to the office for them to ask me if I'd done my make up hours for last year yet. Erm, yeah. In fact, I turned them in the second day of school. I was in fact complemented by the principal for being the first person to turn them in this year. Not only that, but they'd called me down at least twice before so far this year to ask the same question (and caught me and asked when I was in another office working on getting a parking pass). My answer has always been yes, guys. If you lost the papers, let me know and I can get a new set. (I handed them right to you while you were sitting at the computer you could enter them into, but whatever.) Because I'm hanging out in a teacher's room when I'm not scheduled to be on campus, I'm actually working two of them off a day. Considering I only had four to make up to begin with, I've actually got a surplus of about 30 hours or so. So I'd appreciate if you would quit disturbing me, because it's pissing all my teachers off. A bit later, I (and a bunch of other people this time, but still) get called down from the same class for pictures for this award thing. One of the worst days to take pictures of me, I'd think, as if I felt anything like I looked, it was pretty bad. ~~Though TCAB gave me this look/smile thing that made the elementary school girl-esque part of me blush trufax hard and the more adult side spend the entire walk back to class analyzing it.~~

And then right about noon, the vicodin had completely worn off. *headdesk* A mate offered me half of her peanut butter sandwich, and I forgot and bit it with my left side, and I think my head practically exploded.

12:40 or so, I take some of the acetaminophen (I had re-stolen from my siblings) before economics. Which then sucked. Not only did it turn out I made a bunch of stupid mistakes on the exam the day before by not reading the questions (it asks "which one isn't", and I mark the first one that is without reading the rest of the choices, stuff like that), but the whole class representative thing (that I signed up for only because I figured it'd look good on the resume, but still) was being postponed. The teacher ~~said she~~ didn't remember announcing to the class that you needed to write said essay and get it to her before 7:30 (even though she did announce it) after the other girl that had declared her intention to run for the spot spent the first 10 minutes of class arguing with the teacher about how she didn't "understand why you'd need to tell people why they should vote for you, why can't they just vote?" and about how "1/2 page is so long for something they don't even need!"

And this other girl? The popular ~~whorish~~ type. Basically, my only chance was for her not to actually turn in the essay (which she didn't), but instead of my just automatically winning (like happened with the secretary and social chair positions), the teacher decided they had another day to turn them in. So, since she's giving us the extra day, what if I decided that I wanted to run for secretary? No, those didn't get pushed back because. . . I don't fucking know. I told the teacher that that was bloody unfair, and she tried to justify it (saying that she didn't think she'd announced it, Katie and I told her she did, she said oh well), and then actually managed to track me down to my next class and call me in there (I have no idea how she did it, as I'm not even supposed to be on campus then, but I hang out in one teacher's room anyway so I can take the bus home, which is not on my schedule) to try and "justify" herself some more. I don't even know what exactly she said (though I know it was more of the same and nothing she didn't mention in class), because I was pissed off and in pain and stressed out and damn near tears because of everything.

So yes. Then I just hung out on the computer until the end of the day, working on application stuff, and then I had to go practice with quartet (and sucked, because I hadn't rosined my bow in like evar and didn't think about it to borrow somebody else's because I used to use such strong rosin that I didn't need to more than every few weeks). And then had to leave that early for this conference call because I was on the grant reviewing panel for this Youth Service America organization.

And so I was running around, trying to find a telephone that's not somewhere where siblings will be loud and that actually works (ruling out like all of them), and I finally gave up and got ready to use the main one and just hope nobody decides to turn up the TV when I ran my tongue over my tooth again and decided "Huh. Maybe I should figure out why that feels weird all of a sudden." *looks in the mirror* ZOMGWTF. "MOM, WE'VE GOT TO GO TO THE DENTIST NOW!" The temp filling they gave me? Gone. (Once dad explained to me what it really was, how they expected that to stay for a month until my next appointment baffled my mind. I mean, it's the same stuff marketed in drugstores to fix things until you can get to an emergency dentist appointment, meaning maybe a day at the most.) There's just a gigantic hole in the middle of that tooth.

So I call the dentist, and it's about 5:15 and they're about to close. The nice tech lady from the day before got put on the line (she actually remembered me, which made me feel special, though it was prolly because I was something like the youngest patient to get a root canal evar), and I explained what was wrong, and she was all "When do you go to school?" and I told her, and it was too early to get me in the next day, but since it had to be done, she's all "Do you think you can get here in the next 10 minutes?" And I did (she actually recognized me right when I walked through the door, which made me smile), and everybody else was packing up and leaving, but she stayed and scraped all the old fakeyfilling out (makes me think she's perhaps more of a nurse type than a tech, but idk how the dentistry chain of command works) and put in new stuff (the real kind this time, so it should actually stay, though they'll have to drill it out in October). PLUS SHE ACTUALLY ANSWERED MY QUESTIONS AGAIN, SO I HEREBY APPOINT HER DENTIST AND TELL THE OTHER PEOPLE TO GO AWAY. Another tech/nurse/whatever lady stayed and helped her too, which was nice. And then I didn't have to pay anything (which surprised me, because medicalish places always try to tack on as much stuff as they can--I remember last time my mum was in to have a baby it was all "Adhesive bandage. $7. Pain reliever. $14." for a band-aid and a couple of Tylenol, respectively). I totally missed the panel call, though, which I feel horrid about. I was the only person on the panel that didn't actually work for the organization, and I was pretty excited about doing it.

I got home around 6, and by this time the cold that I'd thought I'd gotten over (that's been coming back and going away repeatedly over the last few days) was back in full swing, plus I'd only gotten a couple hours of sleep the night before, so I went to take a nap. Woke up when I had set my alarm for, around 10:30 so I could get my dad's help on this Shakespeare thing I had to do for english, felt even worse (fever was back), and so decided to just go back to sleep when I still could (you know how you have that grace period sometimes for a few minutes after you wake up and you know that you won't be able to go to sleep if you don't right then?). Woke up this morning in tooth pain plus sore throat/headache/runny nose/the works and, randomly, a stomach ache (prolly from the cold, though, and drainage or whatnot), having had nothing done the night before and the prospect of facing all the crap today, and so decided to stay home.

And that's my story. /lol.

My internet is acting all fail like.

And my email is eating my LJ comments. I just got the past 3 days of comments lumped in there at once. They just showed up a few minutes ago.

I've taken to going with my parents everywhere they go (when I'm awake, which is not often, as I got really into a story last night and stayed up until 8am) and whenever I see somebody reading/buying Deathly Hallows (and this was my mum's idea, which is hilarious all in itself), I strike up a loud conversation with whichever parent/sibling is closest about how

( fake spoiler ) Because I'm not quite evil enough to really spoil people.

I may be going to volunteer for the Hillary Clinton campaign on Friday morning. Early morning. Like, we have to leave by 6:30am, early. Gah. Still, she and Obama and I can't remember who else are all coming to speak that day, which is really the only reason I want to volunteer; volunteering will get me in, as otherwise, it's the National Urban League conference and I'm just about as white as they come.