The rest of us

I was struggling with what to write about today until just now.  Sometimes you come across someone who is just completely off the farm, and that just happened for me.

I have had about 4 tall glasses of water this morning and I’ve been peeing like a middle-aged mom on a road trip.  I just took my second trip to the room where people rest and here’s what I saw:

1. Man is washing his hands – ok, this is pretty normal
2. Man is about 5′3″ with enormous ears and a humpty dumpty build – I’m thinking this guy has got to be funny to witness, shame he’s on his way out
3. Man flicks wrists to get rid of water, skips paper towels – a bit unusual to leave your hands wet
4. Man walks over to urinal next to me – huh, peeing after the hand wash?  And with wet hands? Not on his way out, after all.
5. Man angles himself 45-degrees away from me – there is a divider: nothing can be seen, yet he feels the need to angle so far away he’s practically peeing on the wall.  If he aims himself back at the urinal from this extreme angle, there’s a serious possibility he’ll wee right into one of his pleats.
6. Man pees for literally 0.068 seconds.  Like a single shot of a water pistol you bought at Wal Mart hitting a wall.
7. Man zips his fly up so fast I almost yelped.  The zipper sounded like a Hollywood laser gun.  This zipper velocity is a risk no man I know would ever take – there is nothing on earth that warrants rushing the zipper.  We’ve all seen Something About Mary.
8. Man walks away from the urinal, and goes into a stall.  I start looking for hidden cameras and Ashton Kutcher.  What in the hell is happening in this bathroom?
9. Man closes stall door and locks it.  Toilet paper roll makes its signature sound. Once more.  Nothing.  Door unlocks.  Man walks out.  Man leaves bathroom.  No second hand-wash.

It took me about 20 seconds to notice that I had stopped peeing, I was spellbound.  I had just witnessed “bathroom in reverse.”

So today, it’s just the freaks vs the rest of the population.  Thanks for making our lives that much more interesting.

People actively trying to get fatter

I’ve been on a bit of a health kick lately and when I was reflecting on lbs. past this morning (I’ve lost about 19 oz. in the last month – one step at a time), I realized something.  You’re either actively trying to get fitter, or actively trying to get fatter.  There is no in-between.  There is no actively trying to stay the same.

I know this because I’ve experienced both ends of the spectrum.  I have the, “Holy crap, I’m fat and lazy and have a resting heart rate of a hummingbird on meth and I’m in my late 20s and my dad is in better shape than I am and I’m going to die before my parents and miss out on the inheritance,” days.  Hopefully, those days are behind me.  Right now, I’m having the, “I am going to bike 100 miles a week for the rest of my life, have washboard abs, and not look like a Swiffer commercial where the thin, cute wife has a bald, fat husband with heart disease in a bright yellow shirt stretched over man boobs.”  Seriously, pay more attention to the next Swiffer ad.

When you’re in “get fatter” mode, you’re just telling yourself that you enjoy eating out and good food and who gives a crap if you have a little plump around you.  Then you realize that you can actually hear your own heartbeat after you finish eating a steak and you can see a vein in your leg pulsing as your heart struggles to get oxygen to your ever-expanding empire of fat.  Sort of like ancient Rome, your expansionist ways will ultimately be your undoing.

But my “get fitter” mode is also unrealistic, I fear.  I’m sort of like a kamikaze pilot about fitness, throwing myself at improving my health headlong and ultimately burning myself out.  They call people like me, “roller coaster dieters,” or something like that, because of the highs and lows.  Well, I’m back on the climb, folks.  Or is that the descent?  Which one is good?  It’s sort of like saying someone is off the wagon.  Or on the wagon…  Is the wagon good or bad?  Nobody knows.  We just know that when there’s a positive and a negative involved, we like to put people around something that rolls.

People who think that getting blood drawn might actually kill them

So here’s a shot aimed squarely at myself.  I had to go to the doctor this morning to have some blood drawn.  This appointment has been on the books since about 10 days ago, meaning that I had 9 days to imagine just how bad it was going to be when the nurse started fishing around in the crook of my elbow for an un-findable vein, eventually moving the needle around so much that it would cut my arm in half and send a blood shower across the room.

The events that transpired this morning were a little less exciting than I had originally imagined.

In case you were wondering who I’m expecting to see in the exam room when I’m sitting in a hospital…

I am a complete chicken when it comes to doctors and hospitals.  I build it up in my mind that everything is going to hurt super bad, that little needles are going to tear my flesh open, that when I stick my tongue out and say, “Ahh,” the doctor is going to say something along the lines of, “MY GOD!  Dr. Linda Sashimi (only women and Asians get into medical school any more), get in here!  We have a case of Multiple Parkinscoliosisitis of the tongue.  We must operate now!  The procedure is going to involve tearing your arms and legs off with no anesthesia, dipping you in gasoline, and lighting you on fire as you listen to When a Man Loves A Woman.”

I am one of those people that avoids talking to the doctor about my problems because I’m worried about what the answers might be.  Sort of like those people who don’t open their bills, only it concerns my mortality.

If there are any doctors reading, I have a numbness in my left thigh.  What is it?  Only tell me if it’s not serious.  Otherwise, I’d honestly just rather have it kill me.

People who stay at home when they’re sick

Ok, yes, I missed yesterday. Why? Because I am sick. And why am I sick? Because someone else who was sick came to work and rubbed their sickness all over our workplace like a cat in heat.

I know, I know; this is a very complicated idea that is incredibly difficult to understand: people get sick from other sick people. If you are a sick person, you can get other people sick. Let that sink in for a while. Actually, why don’t you let that sink in for a few days at home.

I think one of the big reasons that people come into work sick these days is because they are trying to be career-oriented. Once, a few years ago, I called in sick and said that I could still be on a conference call later in the day, but I wasn’t coming in. The hell-bitch on the other end of the phone responded, “If you’re sick enough to not come into work, you shouldn’t be on a conference call.” Damn, lady: I have a cold, not Parkinson’s.

People in the workplace have a distrust when it comes to sick days, thus people act like combat marines: “NO, I CAN PUSH FORWARD, I CAN GET THAT TPS REPORT OUT TODAY.” This misplaced toughness is just stupid and ridiculous. Yes, I think if you can still move your arms and fingers, you should aim to get some work done while you’re sick, but you don’t need to go to the office and contaminate everyone else, their families, their families’ workplaces, and on.

Well, I have to go. I have a tee time….doctor’s appointment. Yeah, Dr. Tee. He’s asian.

B) People who use WebMD

So I have to call myself out on this one. I have found that when something is wrong with me, my first instinct is to say to myself, “self, you can figure this one out on your own.” To me, and many people like me, this means going to webMD.

Usually, a trip to webMD starts out pleasantly. I am greeted by a nice, cool color scheme and a friendly looking semi-transparent man that I can click on to identify my ailments. No screaming amputees on the other side of these walls, just calm aqua and taupe. I click on the arm, click on the finger, tell it that it tingles a little bit and then webMD goes into its back room to think about it for a few seconds before giving me the prognosis.

And my top results?

Aah, so that little tingle in my finger is just MS. How wonderful.

It’s unlikely that I will go and see a doctor at this point. I usually just go straight into prayer. And the good news is that it isn’t necessarily MS, it could just be a stroke or social anxiety disorder, so I don’t really need to worry that much.

After a few minutes of silent meditation, the tingling starts to subside, offering me the moment of clarity that I needed to realize that I was just sitting on my hand before the symptoms began. Did you know that sitting on your hand can give you MS?

In a funnier episode involving my wife, I was awakened in the middle of the night by a strange, irrational person who was convinced she had meningitis. There was indeed a stiff neck and a slight temperature. I asked this person who had taken my wife’s otherwise logical body what had given her that idea? Ignoring me, she fetched the laptop, entering her symptoms and spinning the computer around there on the bed, much like you see in a movie after there has been a “transfer of funds”: bacterial meningitis. Neighbors to this bad news were “whiplash” and a list of alternating conditions that kill / cripple you instantly (snakebite, sudden death syndrome, an E! marathon) and pretty innocuous problems like “you probably slept wrong, dumbass”. Of course, being the medical professionals we are, it is the serious ones that are most likely.

A cool towel or 2 later, the once 98.7 degree temperature had fallen down into a normal range (98.6) and the neck was starting to soften. Hyperbole hung its head and walked out of our bedroom, and by a strange miracle, my wife did not have meningitis that night.

webMD saved me that fateful evening. I would have almost certainly missed Conan otherwise.

- F I N -