Jadxia

"You always find the best ones when you stop looking for them."

Having left a frustrating up-and-down relationship, I decided I was through with men as dating partners. In fact, I was done with relationships all together. First, I decided to swear off sex and dating for a whole year (voluntarily). Since I wasn't relationship seeking, I would only converse with those who had authentic common interests. Every time a stranger tried to talk to me, I would go over the following mantra:

* I don't want anything from you.
* I am not going to give you anything.
* I am not going to have sex with you.

Once I took these items out of the equation, I found that most people had nothing of interest to say to me; I concluded these conversations quickly. The people I did speak to had interests in common with me at the time, and we had some spectacular great conversations which I might not have had if I had wasted all my time trapped in less meaningful chatter.

Be mindful that, when people have an initial attraction, it is natural for them to attempt to find a common interest when their really isn't one. If you say, "I like hang-gliding" and their response is, "Hang-gliding, I've always wanted to try that" it does not mean "I like hang-gliding, also" but rather "I think you are cute/funny/interesting and I am not opposed to hang-gliding or talking about hang-gliding if it means I can glom onto your cute/funny/interesting-ness." Walk away.

I took a look around my life
and it was bleak and empty.

Never you mind, I said
to crayola grey skies

I know the meaning of dark and lies
and grey may be neverending

But somewhere beyond the endless stone
is a candle to light within me.

It's 0346 and I can't sleep, which in and of itself is alright (I just meditate lying down when this happens; I figure it is restful), but then I got hungry. No matter how tired I am, I absolutely can't sleep if I'm even a little hungry.

So I get up to make a snack. I figure heating up some water for the beet & goat cheese raviolis I made recently can't be so very loud, right? (BTW, those are two ingredients I hate but they combine to make an awesome ravioli.) I should have known better. The quieter I try to be, especially when I'm tired, the louder I end up. In the morning I'm a goddamn bull in a china shop, I swear, and many folks have complained. The careful neuron, never very active, is still sleeping in the morning.

The end result is, quiet and using only the stove light, I proceed to knock over the stack of pan lids in the cabinet while reaching for a pot. To which AgentOrange wakes up with 'What the Jesus' while I profusely apologize, "sorry, sorry, go back to sleep, sorry".

*sigh* I try. I really do.

This is what happens when you cut things like Medicaid.

I probably have strep, having picked it up by talking to a sick friend for a bit on Tuesday. By Thursday I was debating whether or not I wanted to hit the walk-in clinic, on account my left tonsil was swollen and covered in white patches and hurt like hell when I swallowed. But as I didn't have any kind of fever or any other symptoms, I decided to wait one more day and see if it got better on its own. The clinic opens at 0900. I woke up at 0830 Friday morning with both tonsils swollen and painful. Due to the illness slowing me down and getting a little turned around while traveling, I didn't arrive until 0940. I took the VERY LAST morning appointment, which was at 1140. Got to watch the poor bastard after me get turned away and told to come back for the afternoon walk-in which starts at 1430. Having done this before, I know it is best to wait because you might be slipped in early if you do.

Settled down with a good book. Sure enough, at 1110 I was called to the back and saw the doctor. The rapid strep test came back negative, but when she looked at my throat it looked very much like strep. The rapid test is only about 80%, she told me, and is prone to giving false negatives.

She started me on antibiotics and took a couple other throat swabs for different things it could be and told me to start the medication for strep right away, but that the official test results wouldn't be done until Monday (at which point someone would call me). I went direct to the pharmacy, where they proceeded to misplace my initial prescription and then, forty minutes later, inform me that my insurance (which is unison, the DC equivalent of Medicaid) wouldn't cover high-strength amoxicillin, it needed prior authorization.

"How in hell is someone supposed to get pre-approved for amoxicillin? Should I just call in if I think I'm going to be sick sometime soon?"

The pharmacy tech agreed, but there was nothing she could do. Thankfully, amoxicillin is super-cheap so I just paid for it. After an hour waiting for meds, I was able to finally go.

Only they didn't call me with test results yesterday. I waited all day; no phone call. Early this afternoon I called them and left a message with the nurse for my results. A couple of hours went by and they didn't call me back (and I was on hold for 30 minutes just to leave that message). So I went to the clinic again, figuring it might be easier in person.

At first the front desk wanted me to use the phone in the waiting room to call the nurse's office, but I explained to her I had already done that and no one had called me back. So she went back to see what was going on. Turns out, no one had called me back because all the nurses had already left for the day (this happens when you are frighteningly understaffed from budget cuts). This is also why, although they have three front desk terminals, I've almost never seen more than two being used at one time (and many times it is just one person looking very stressed).

"The only thing I can do is leave a message for the doctor who saw you." I unhappily agreed. There's a good chance that doctor might not even be working today. All this is very frustrating, because as usual, the amoxicillin is about to give me a horrific yeast infection (I made sure to have the doctor write me an rx for that at the same time) and will probably start causing diarrhea soon, so I'd really like to know if I need to keep taking it. And for some reason, it is drying out my mouth this time around so I also have 4 canker sores where my teeth rub against my cheek, with a 5th one on the way. If it's a virus I don't need antibiotics, and if it is something besides strep it might require different antibiotics (in either case, all this awful is for nothing).

I'm pretty sure it IS strep, on account I'm feeling so much better throat-wise. And I'm still taking the meds, of course. But I wish there weren't so many continual budget cuts to healthcare. I wouldn't have had to pay for my antibiotic and someone would have called me back by now. Not to mention it wouldn't take a million years for a regular visit and you wouldn't have to sit at your doctor's office for three hours infecting everyone with strep.

http://youtu.be/TjMnFnrS2t4

"You know, all these kinds of questions, really aren't what people are concerned about right now." -- Michele Bachmann

Really? What am I, chopped gay liver? I AM concerned. Does a family have to be the 'traditional' nuclear family? What about divorced couples? Those who have remarried? Single families? Grandparents raising grandkids?

The 'traditional' nuclear family isn't even traditional. What IS traditional is polygamy, the kind that leads to cults and old men marrying young women. And women back then couldn't be president. So why do we go back to old-fashioned family values. You, Michele Bachmann, can be a second or third wife and give up this ridiculous run for office.

I'm sure you've noticed I don't spend much time here lately. That is because I have been working very hard on a 'professional' blog. (Okay, so I haven't made any money and probably won't, but it is styled like a professional blog.) So this is a shameless self-promotion of my movie review website, MovieOutburst.com.

Mostly I enjoy witty comedies and foreign dramas, but there's a slurry of other stuff in there as well. Much of it I see on Netflix.

And no, I don't mind so much that Netflix is upping their prices. I'm watching 10-20 movies a month (this month I have nineteen reviews so far), and several shows. For twenty bucks a month, I can totally dig it. We're thinking of scrapping cable entirely, and just catching current shows we like from iTunes.

SO GO TO MovieOutburst.com and 'like' it on Facebook!

There is also a TwitterFeed @MvBurst. If you don't have Twitter, you can still view the feed at http://www.twitter.com/MvBurst. It includes whenever I post new reviews, quotes I like from movies I am watching, and interesting thinks I see from other movie reviewers.

For a more media-based format, there is a Facebook Fanpage. Note that you'll have to be on Facebook to see it. I'm hoping to soon have enough fans to get the coveted personalized URL. The fanpage features occasional short movies and funny or interesting videos, and links to cool art/media stuff I see hanging around the web.

As you can see, I've been a very busy gal.

The hamburgers my boyfriend made using my homemade buns. The patties are bison mixed with bacon fat, soy sauce and a touch of Sriracha. Topping them is cheddar, caramelized onions, and ketchup. My burgers were onion, ketchup, and a homemade chipotle-mayo. Nom nom nom.

This is my first attempt, and they were delicious. Boyfriend did not want to let me buy a $30 hamburger bun pan (from KAF), declaring it 'ridiculous' and a 'waste of space'. Post-hamburger, he retracted his previous comments.

I'm busy baking a banana-blueberry-rum cake right now. Came up with the idea because I had two overripe bananas (most recipes call for three), I've been putting booze in all my fruit (made maraschinos yesterday) and I still had half a tub of sour cream just sitting in the fridge.

Hope it turns out well.

In the meantime, I keep thinking blueberries and mushrooms would be a winning combination in... something. So I turned to the handy-dandy internet and discovered a) a lovely looking pot roast, and b) blueberry mushroom risotto (aka purple rice).

I'm going with the latter at some point soon. It just sounds amazing. I can replace the Parmesan with my leftover Iberico cheese.

http://creativecooknson.blogspot.com/2011/06/blueberry-mushroom-risotto.html

Nom nom nom.