Adventures with Dr. Lady Cutie Troublemaker

I had a doctor’s appointment today, not because I was sick. I just hadn’t had a physical in nearly two years, and I needed to start a relationship with a local doctor. I really like my new doc. She’s a soft spoken Indian woman who wears a bindi. She stood very close to me while asking questions, and when she looked up at me, she told me I was beautiful. I minimized my current illness, saying that I was trying to get over a cold. She said that my glands were very swollen (she called the left one “huge”) and that I was too sick for a physical, so I needed to come back after a 10-day course of antibiotics. So I guess it’s confirmed by an outside source that I’m actually quite unwell. I mean, I knew I was, but I didn’t think I was antiobiotic sick. I am.

After picking up my prescription, I went in search of the Neti Pot, recommended by Roger here and others over many years. I hit the Whole Foods in Cary first, since it was near the doctor’s office. I asked the man in the health and beauty area if he had any Net Pots. He smiled broadly and said they were completely out. He said, “You know it was on Oprah!” Oh no. In America these days, that means that there’s basically going to be a “run” on the item everywhere, in stores, online, everywhere. He called over to the other store in Raleigh, and they had just one left, which they held for me. When I went over to get it, I headed to the checkout line. There, the woman said, “I must have checked out about six of these yesterday. You know it was on Oprah!”

I have it now, finally. Going to eat some food and pour saline into my nose. Then I’m going to see if my brain can handle a practice exam!

I have learned (or confirmed) several things this morning:

• Baking banana bread is more complex a task than I was ready for this morning
• Whole Foods does not sell Baking Soda
• Neither does Eckerd’s Drug Store
• The Jack Daniels convenience store does sell eggs
• I am the most ADD person alive
• My mother is a good listener (except when Dad is talking to her in the background)
• Blogging about how difficult organic herb gardening is going to be in North Carolina is not the best use of my time

Here we go loop de loooooooop!

Originally uploaded by abbyladybug

Here we go loop de loop
Here we go loop de lie
Here we go loop de loop
All on a Saturday night

If you want to hear the Munsters version of the song, you’ve only to click right here.

Found this on my head upon waking.

I went to Artsplosure yesterday and participated in the Seeing Beyond Sight Challenge. This means that I put on a blindfold and walked around the art festival with a guide (Tom, a Flickr friend) and took pictures of items on a list (non-human animal, something with an odor, self-portrait, a family, etc.). It’s an exercise that was created by Tony Deifell. he has a book of photographs taken by blind teenagers.

It may sound odd, but it was a great experience to help you to understand what it is like to not have use of your vision. It forces you to rely on other sense completely. I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised. I think I’m a very sound-oriented person. Not that this is surprising to me. I also found myself relying upon smell a lot. Touch was probably third. Vision still played a part, because I knew immediately when I was moving from sun to shade. Families were really easy to locate because of their unique sounds: baby stroller wheels on the pavement, children’s voices, and Mother-ease.

One thing I did notice most was that I was pretty able to just trust that Tom wasn’t going to let me hurt myself, so I just walked ahead… certainly smaller steps than normal, but not fearful as I might have thought. When Tom tried to tell me about what I was approaching, I asked him to stop. I mostly wanted information about when I’d need to turn to avoid banging into someone or if I had to step up on a curve. If you click on any of the individual pictures in the slideshow that follows, I describe my experience of taking them. I think the dog and the Cigar Man are my favorite.

I ran into some people while leading Tom around who were totally cheating! They were younger girls. The girl who was leading kept telling the blindfolded girl exactly when to click and what she was approaching. The blindfolded girl actually pulled her blindfold up while we were with her!

I really enjoyed myself, and I like the pictures I took a lot. The inventor of the challenge was there. It was nice meeting him. Hopefully, I’ll get a chance to see his talk at Quail Ridge Books on Tuesday.

I’m also using this post as a chance to try out a new slide show tool for Flickr pictures. It seems very nifty and easy to use. We’ll see.

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Update: Well, that slideshow totally didn’t work! Click on the picture of me and Tony to be brought to the slideshow!

Speaking of Web 2.0, I’ve had 3+ not necessarily unwelcome, but unprepared for run-ins this week. One was on the street, “IRL” as we say on the internets. The other 2+ were online. People who live nowhere near me popped up in a way I wasn’t expecting, and I wasn’t ready for it. This is one of the both fortunate and unfortunate aspects of life in the small town that is the internet. I can run into exes I don’t want to see, or long lost friends I’ve wondered about for years. I think that on the whole, I like it, but it makes social negotiations awful tricky. I have to set my filters, friend levels, contact lists, etc, so that I’m not running into people I don’t want to run into when I’m least prepared. And sometimes I don’t like the ways I have to set them, because I’m filtering out more than I want to…

As always, the cardinal rule is “Never accept an invitation to go crazy”. If a repeated run-in is causing me undo stress, gotta do what I gotta do. As my friend Jason has always said, “It’s just the internets”.