In which I give myself ulcers..
I'm supposed to be catching up on all of my late work right now.. But I feel like I need to warm up first, so here we go.
Today I went to go see "Baby Mama" with my dad. It was, as anticipated, quite hilarious, and I highly recommend it. We had a bit of an altercation, though. My dad is extremely conservative and morally upright. I'm realistic. I was getting ready for the movie, packing a Starbucks Frappachino [the bottled kind, without crushed ice], a can of Pringles, and a jar of jalopeno cheese dip into my huge purse. He flipped out, and started berating me. I told him to chill out, that I've snuck freaking pizza into a movie theater before, and that nobody cares, that the stuff at the concession stands is way overpriced. He said that's not the point, that it's dishonest, and chips are loud, and he'd buy me some popcorn there if I really wanted something to eat. I shrilled at him a bit more about his being an uptight prig, but finally I unpacked my purse [slamming things down, shut, etc, whenever I got the chance to make sure he knew I was still pissed] and was silent all the way to the theater. I even noticed at one point that I was standing in Brain Ninja stance, and completely not on purpose either. At the theater I made a great show of deciding what I wanted from the concession stand ["Oh, look what they have here - chips and dip."], finally deciding upon a small root beer [I almost made it a medium, just to make it more expensive] and a medium popcorn [this I did size up Just Because, and I contemplated going for a large] even though their popcorn is crap. I remained chilly throughout the movie, and a little bit afterward, though by that time I'd calmed down a little bit. At one point I thought, "Man, I'm probably going to have at least one ulcer by the time I'm 21. And this is nothing compared to how pissed off I get daily at school."
After the movie, on our way out of the theater, I saw one of the theater clean-up people waiting by the door for everyone to exit the theater, so that they could clean up all the dumped popcorn and crap. As I was walking past this person, I caught a glimpse of their face - and would have done a double-take if I wasn't already out the door. I could have sworn it was Prison. In fact, I'm fairly positive it was. I hesitated outside the door, looking at the cup of melted ice and watered-down root beer in one hand, the bag of popcorn one-fifth still full in the other.. And I felt the urge to go back in there and dump them both on him, or at least on the floor somewhere so he'd have to clean it up. It was dark in the theater - it's not like he'd even know it was me, necessarily. Then I almost told my dad about it, that I thought it was Prison back there.. Then I decided that I didn't want to know what would come of that. My dad's way overprotective of me, and it's bizarre to think that he would pick a fight - physically fit he is not - but that's the sense I got of it. And even pissed off at my dad as I was, I didn't want to drag him into that. Besides, scrawny as Prison is, crazy people are sometimes unnaturally strong. And then there was another thought - that my dad might just shrill a lecture on morality at Prison. And I needed to pee, and didn't want to have to wait around while he took half an hour to outline everything Prison has done that is wrong and ungentlemanly and will send him to hell. So in the end, I did nothing. I kept walking, and I dumped my leftover theater food in a trash can. It wasn't as satisfactory, but hey - at least my karma didn't suffer for it.
.............. Shit, shit, shit. I've been doing a little bit of work on my To Kill a Mockingbird essay, and I've been unable to sit still.. I've been twitchy and aggravated, physically discomforted, and have a general feeling of being unsettled.. Even now I feel like I can't sit still, I just sort of ache all over and feel like something's wrong..
There is something that's been nagging at the back of my mind. Something that has been silently creeping underneath all my thoughts, a low threat.. When I went to the doctor a couple of weeks ago for my chest x-ray, to see if I had bronchitis or pneumonia or what, they originally said it was bronchitis. They called my mom early the next morning, and told her that there were some shadows in my lungs, and that they thought I should get another chest x-ray.. and a TB test. I lived in the Marshall Islands for ten years, and we had to get frequent tests for TB there because it was pretty rampant among the native Marshallese.. My mother, brother, and sister have all tested positive for exposure to TB, but they don't have it. This is likely because they lived in South Africa for a few years before I was born, and there they had to get shots against TB that makes the test show up false positive. I know it's unlikely that I'll actually have TB.. I mean, it would have shown up sooner, right? It's been four years since I left the island.
We resolved that I would get another chest x-ray a month after my original one, and if there was still shadows, then we would get me a TB test.
My cough still hasn't gone away.. And just now, I gave in to an impulse I've been having - looking up the symptoms of TB. I came across a word that I recognized, but couldn't recall the meaning of. As I always do when I come across a curious word, I went to dictionary.com.. And here is the definition of "malaise", one of the symptoms of TB:
1.a condition of general bodily weakness or discomfort, often marking the onset of a disease.
2.a vague or unfocused feeling of mental uneasiness, lethargy, or discomfort.
Well, shit. I really hope this is all just medical student's disease, that I'm just freaked out about it and thus imagining that I have it..
But it's starting to scare me.
I mean, I know it's probably nothing. My mom's a nurse, and she's confident that it's probably just bronchitis or pneumonia. But she also used that word: "probably". Which means there's a chance that it's not.
I'm probably just over-thinking this, giving myself another ulcer. Probably.
Today I went to go see "Baby Mama" with my dad. It was, as anticipated, quite hilarious, and I highly recommend it. We had a bit of an altercation, though. My dad is extremely conservative and morally upright. I'm realistic. I was getting ready for the movie, packing a Starbucks Frappachino [the bottled kind, without crushed ice], a can of Pringles, and a jar of jalopeno cheese dip into my huge purse. He flipped out, and started berating me. I told him to chill out, that I've snuck freaking pizza into a movie theater before, and that nobody cares, that the stuff at the concession stands is way overpriced. He said that's not the point, that it's dishonest, and chips are loud, and he'd buy me some popcorn there if I really wanted something to eat. I shrilled at him a bit more about his being an uptight prig, but finally I unpacked my purse [slamming things down, shut, etc, whenever I got the chance to make sure he knew I was still pissed] and was silent all the way to the theater. I even noticed at one point that I was standing in Brain Ninja stance, and completely not on purpose either. At the theater I made a great show of deciding what I wanted from the concession stand ["Oh, look what they have here - chips and dip."], finally deciding upon a small root beer [I almost made it a medium, just to make it more expensive] and a medium popcorn [this I did size up Just Because, and I contemplated going for a large] even though their popcorn is crap. I remained chilly throughout the movie, and a little bit afterward, though by that time I'd calmed down a little bit. At one point I thought, "Man, I'm probably going to have at least one ulcer by the time I'm 21. And this is nothing compared to how pissed off I get daily at school."
After the movie, on our way out of the theater, I saw one of the theater clean-up people waiting by the door for everyone to exit the theater, so that they could clean up all the dumped popcorn and crap. As I was walking past this person, I caught a glimpse of their face - and would have done a double-take if I wasn't already out the door. I could have sworn it was Prison. In fact, I'm fairly positive it was. I hesitated outside the door, looking at the cup of melted ice and watered-down root beer in one hand, the bag of popcorn one-fifth still full in the other.. And I felt the urge to go back in there and dump them both on him, or at least on the floor somewhere so he'd have to clean it up. It was dark in the theater - it's not like he'd even know it was me, necessarily. Then I almost told my dad about it, that I thought it was Prison back there.. Then I decided that I didn't want to know what would come of that. My dad's way overprotective of me, and it's bizarre to think that he would pick a fight - physically fit he is not - but that's the sense I got of it. And even pissed off at my dad as I was, I didn't want to drag him into that. Besides, scrawny as Prison is, crazy people are sometimes unnaturally strong. And then there was another thought - that my dad might just shrill a lecture on morality at Prison. And I needed to pee, and didn't want to have to wait around while he took half an hour to outline everything Prison has done that is wrong and ungentlemanly and will send him to hell. So in the end, I did nothing. I kept walking, and I dumped my leftover theater food in a trash can. It wasn't as satisfactory, but hey - at least my karma didn't suffer for it.
.............. Shit, shit, shit. I've been doing a little bit of work on my To Kill a Mockingbird essay, and I've been unable to sit still.. I've been twitchy and aggravated, physically discomforted, and have a general feeling of being unsettled.. Even now I feel like I can't sit still, I just sort of ache all over and feel like something's wrong..
There is something that's been nagging at the back of my mind. Something that has been silently creeping underneath all my thoughts, a low threat.. When I went to the doctor a couple of weeks ago for my chest x-ray, to see if I had bronchitis or pneumonia or what, they originally said it was bronchitis. They called my mom early the next morning, and told her that there were some shadows in my lungs, and that they thought I should get another chest x-ray.. and a TB test. I lived in the Marshall Islands for ten years, and we had to get frequent tests for TB there because it was pretty rampant among the native Marshallese.. My mother, brother, and sister have all tested positive for exposure to TB, but they don't have it. This is likely because they lived in South Africa for a few years before I was born, and there they had to get shots against TB that makes the test show up false positive. I know it's unlikely that I'll actually have TB.. I mean, it would have shown up sooner, right? It's been four years since I left the island.
We resolved that I would get another chest x-ray a month after my original one, and if there was still shadows, then we would get me a TB test.
My cough still hasn't gone away.. And just now, I gave in to an impulse I've been having - looking up the symptoms of TB. I came across a word that I recognized, but couldn't recall the meaning of. As I always do when I come across a curious word, I went to dictionary.com.. And here is the definition of "malaise", one of the symptoms of TB:
1.a condition of general bodily weakness or discomfort, often marking the onset of a disease.
2.a vague or unfocused feeling of mental uneasiness, lethargy, or discomfort.
Well, shit. I really hope this is all just medical student's disease, that I'm just freaked out about it and thus imagining that I have it..
But it's starting to scare me.
I mean, I know it's probably nothing. My mom's a nurse, and she's confident that it's probably just bronchitis or pneumonia. But she also used that word: "probably". Which means there's a chance that it's not.
I'm probably just over-thinking this, giving myself another ulcer. Probably.