Professor Funny

I am really, really going to miss taking classes with this one professor. He's just great. He's so damn smart and he has a dry, unassuming, low-key wit.

Yesterday he talked about how he read something from someplace (I can't remember if it was a textbook or article) about how our magnetism comes from the solid core, not the liquid core of the Earth. He said he was surprised to read that and then said "But I read it over and over and the author kept saying the same thing."

Rollacoasta

Life hasn't necessarily been dull lately. Sad that I only blog once during a blue moon these days. I actually have a really cool idea I wanted to do this month and then never got around to it. Well, maybe it's only cool to me actually. I was/am going to write letters to people. I won't name names but I'll get whatever I need to say out there. There's good and bad that I have to say.

However, I did wake up to one great piece of news... I won a bloggie contest! Finally! And it came at a great time because my life has been so stressful lately. I won a contest hosted by one of my favorite bloggers (no really, she is one of my favorites!) June Gardens at Bye Bye Pie.

My neck is doing better. I'd say, oh, approximately 58.64% better. (Funny story: when my ortho doc asked what time the car accident occurred I replied "About 11:09 AM.") I think in a few weeks I should be almost as good as new, maybe even better because I always carry a ton of stress in my neck anyways and I've learned some good stretches for the neck.

My car is doing well. It looks purty. I just wish there was more of the money from the insurance left over to do some mechanical work on it. It just needs some things worked on due to age and wear and tear. Like the struts, shocks... my rear window defroster broke 2 years ago... etc. Anyways. :-(

I will say this, however. I am kinda terrified of driving these days. Every time I see a car approaching from a side street my heart beats a little faster. :-( I have a lot of driving experience under my belt thanks to being a school bus driver for 3 years, which includes tons of field trips, including interstate trips. I have pretty much seen it all. I almost blame myself for the accident because my school bus driving taught me to never assume that a person driving up to a stop sign on a side street will stop. I watched her slow down and yeah, I guess I did then assume she would stop.

But I was also caught off guard because I didn't know she was going to make a left turn, she didn't have her signal on. Drawing a diagram of the accident would be so much easier but I'll try to make my points with words. There was a curve in the street coupled with the fact that she was making a left turn that made her trajectory instantly shoot into my trajectory without any time for me to react/disengage. (Look at that fancy-dancy word there. Captain's orders - evasive maneuvers!)

*sigh*

Traffic is only going to get worse for awhile thanks to the approaching holidays. I don't foresee myself going out more than I have to for awhile.

To sum up:
Winning a contest = very good.
Feeling better from injuries after the car accident = good.
Having my car back = good.
Suffering a little "PTSD", if you will, from the accident = not so good.
Expensive upcoming dental bills for hubby = very bad.
Lots of homework = very-sucky-bad. (Although I only have about 5 weeks left of the semester. And I just found out I earned a 97% on my oceanography test so that's good.)
Stress galore = bad.

Fixed the boo-boos

I got my car back today. It took an extra few/several days because the wrong parts came in. So we had to wait for the right parts. But it looks bright and shiney. I have a 1/3 paint job done now. LOL. But I'm happy to have my car back. Poor thing.

As for my physical therapy, it's going nicely. My physical therapist is very into letting the body heal itself, working WITH the body, and taking it nice, slow and easy. I'm not exactly sure what I was expecting with a neck and back injury but PT invoked thoughts of having to do millions of exercises, weight lifting and stretches and stuff... but really on a level of, like, Olympic training or something.

I've had PT before but only on my ankles and yeah, I had to do all kinds of things even when it was still hurting and swollen.

So I have to do heat, then stretching very lightly--if I feel any pain I am to stop the movement--and then ice. It does help me feel better, for a little while anyway.
Today in therapy he put this ultrasound heat on my neck and back, then electric stimulation with an ice pack. Verrrrrry weird stuff. I'm feeling pretty sore right now though.

This is a disjointed post. I've also gone through mid-terms during this BS so it's just been a real stressful situation all around. Hoo boy.

One of my poor ferrets got sick over the weekend too, warranting an emergency visit to a vet. He has a bladder infection and had developed crystals in his urine, blocking him from urinating. Poor sweet boy. We had been mixing in a quality cat food with their ferret food... just because that's what my ferret shelter friend does... but maybe that's not such a good idea anymore. ANYWHO, full ferret food diet from here on out. EVO is supposed to be really good, so is 8-in-1 Ultimate diet (specifically the Ultimate line) and Totally Ferret is okay. Oh and I've heard/read good things about Zupreem I think.

We bought some Totally Ferret that day at the store but they didn't have much of a choice, and then I bought some EVO and 8-in-1 Ultimate dry food online.

I'm just grateful he is okay now. Poor, poor sweet thing. But thank goodness he seems to be on the mend, and thank goodness it wasn't anything really serious and that he managed to pass the obstruction himself, albeit I'm sure it was beyond painful for him. It usually is super serious whenever any of my animals get sick and there's usually nothing I can do or anything that can be done. That's just been my rotten, horrible luck over the years.

I have two boy ferrets right now. Apollo is about 5.5 years old and Luke is 5 years old. Apollo is what's called "adrenal", which is a horrible thing that ferrets suffer from due to irresponsible, horrible breeding practices that mess with ferrets' hormones... but the use of melatonin has been found to help these ferrets. We've been giving Apollo melatonin orally but next vet visit we're going to get the melatonin chip put in him.

Living with perfection

Ha. Ha. Ha.

My husband got really torqued off at me today because, and I quote, "You are always right. I'm sick of it." LOL! Now of course, I'm obviously not right all the time but sadly, most of the time I am and he's getting frustrated about it. In this instance what pushed him over the edge was the recall of a dentist appointment he's going to have in November. He swore it was on "this" day and I told him flat out it's on "that" day and boy did he not like that *I* was right yet again.

Switching gears... what a day I've had in the medical community. I went to this one place where everything that could go wrong, did. I checked in on the first floor like they told me to when I made my appointment for my car accident injuries. (Neck and back strain/pain and spasms.) The first floor immediately sent me down in to the basement for the radiology department.

I go down there and check in. Then I sit and wait. And wait. And wait. Everybody who came in after me was called back before me. Finally I had my husband go ask what was the hold up. About a minute later they had me change into those gowns. I wait some more. And more. And more. Then one technician calls me back but then becomes concerned she's "stealing" another technician's patient.

At this time I keep hearing that they're going to take neck and lower back X-rays which I already had done at the ER on the day of my accident, and I had a copy of them with me on disk. What I was supposed to receive today was an X-ray of my middle back. So she goes off for another 5 minutes to find the answer to that question... and after much confusion at the desk they say that I need to get dressed and go see XYZ receptionist.

I go see XYZ receptionist and she says "You do know your appointment was for 11:00, right? You're an hour late." I sighed exasperated and said "Yes, I have been here since 10:30 like I was told to be, I checked in with first floor, they sent me straight to X-ray and I have been sitting there ever since."

So she sends me back to the first floor where I need to check in. If it weren't for these people setting off the train of wrong motions... I may not have been in this mess. I was afraid that I would be told they can't see me because of this, but they did decide to see me. (More on that later.)

Then I forgot my auto insurance claim number so I had to call them and ask for the number and their address. My husband's cell phone was dying so I tried using a "courtesy phone" that "courteously" wouldn't allow me to make a 1-800 number phone call. For the love of crumb cake!

Fortunately I had my cell phone but it was out in the car. I sent hubby to go retrieve it and I was finally able to make my phone call and obtain my insurance information.

Went back to XYZ receptionist, checked in... and took a seat. I waited for about 15 minutes and then I was called back.

Let me stop for once second. You may not realize this but car accident victims apparently have a big stigma attached to them. No one wants to touch them with a 10 foot pole, I'm guessing because of litigation. Because it took so damn long for me to get an appointment with the one doctor in this town who will deign to see car accident victims... I had to revisit the Urgent Care for more muscle relaxers several days ago. Since I was put on valium on the day of the accident, I simply asked for more of that because I was out now. Well, the PA who saw me that day came in with a HUGE chip on her shoulder treating me like I was a "common drug seeker." She had a snotty attitude throughout the whole thing, pressed on my sore neck sending me into spasms and pain saying "I'm only trying to loosen you up." Then she said in a real snippy voice dripping with nasty attitude "You aren't getting any valium." She did prescribe another muscle relaxer, which is fine... that's just simply what I needed.

Now before anyone gets their panties in a twist let me say I DO know that there ARE drug seekers out there who abuse the system. But I'm sick and tired of being treated like I have some foreign disease just because I have the bad fortune to have been in a car accident. I have been to the ER only a handful of times in my adult life, never just to seek drugs. There is nothing in my record that would ever indicate I'm a drug seeker. Yes, I'm being swept up into the big fishnet that all of society is caught up in... but still. Her level of "care" was completely unacceptable and uncalled for.

Anyways... the doctor I finally saw today made up for all this. He was completely understanding about all that I've been through in the weeks, days and even minutes leading up to the exam. He apologized about the mix-up that I went through that morning. (The XYZ receptionist consulted him after she told me "You do realize your appointment was at 11:00, right?" So I'm grateful he understood that I was NOT in the wrong and decided to squeeze me in.)

He was down to earth, caring and compassionate. What a relief after all the bad crap I've been through for the past few weeks.

I'm starting physical therapy tomorrow for my neck and back strains. I'm looking forward to it but I'm not because I was hurting something fierce when I came home from my appointment today when all the doc did was press "here and there" to evaluate my pain. In the sore spots it felt like he was shoving little knives into my muscles. I even felt nauseous from it.
BUT! It's a necessary evil and I'm looking forward to healing and feeling better in the long run.

Messin' with the mind

I went to my psychology class on Thursday. Trying to put my life back together after the car accident. What a stressful, horrible, painful mess. Anyways. :-(

So we're talking about development and Piaget and all that fun jazz. My professor puts up a video from You Tube:
(Just look up "conservation task" on You Tube and you should find it if the embedding doesn't work.)



She played it once, talked about it a little more... like the difference between the younger kids and the older child in the video and their cognitive development... Then she played the beginning one more time.

After she made her points about the video, my professor shut it off in the middle of the second playing and said "Okay. That's enough of screwing with little kids' minds."

Why bother anymore?

The world is truly "guilty until proven innocent." And even then... you're still guilty.

Awful.

Continuing on...

In my last post I forgot to mention one more "problem" with blogging... the juxtaposition, if you will, regarding anonymity.

On one hand it's nice to meet new people, make new friends... I've known some bloggers who've given out their URLs to just about everybody they meet, such as their dentists. And/or they would meet people through the blog and become "real life friends" with them. Later on they would lament the loss of being able to write freely because real-life people read the blog.

You see, my first blogging experience was with LiveJournal. I started on there in 2001. I would read about a lot of people's experiences with meeting other LJers offline and becoming fast friends. I was kinda jealous of that. I met with a few LJers offline myself but never more than once. I was crestfallen that I never developed any meaningful relationships offline.

But now... perhaps this is a good thing. One thing that was never taken away from me was my ability to write what I want, when I want, and write what I needed to write.

Let me further explain LiveJournal and why I think it's been advantageous to me... You can lock your journal however you want. And you have that choice for every entry you make. It can be fully public, fully private or only people on your Friends List can see your entries. You can even make filters so only certain people on your Friends List can see what you write!

I have friends on my LJ from all over the world. I think we are able to enjoy being open and honest without worry of "real life" implications. I'm still not fully open there... my friends know my first name and the state I live in and all, but I do keep other telltale details vague. Occasionally I wish I could say more about my life, for instance I keep quiet about the exact university I am attending. But it's better to err on the vague side.

Let me end by saying this... it bugs me there is no right answer for all of this! LOL
No black and white, no clear cut solutions.
This is one reason I enjoy math so much, there is pretty much only one right answer and there is really no debate about it. (For the most part.)
It's not like life, life is so damn complicated. And blogging has become complicated. One thing I do miss is people/bloggers being open and honest, reaching out for support... Blogging seems to have locked people up into a box whereupon they must put their best foot forward and keep problems to themselves. Problems that could be, used to be, helped just by blogging about it.