Velma

Well, Sunday I woke up at 5:00 AM, screaming into my pillow because I'd tried to roll over in my sleep only to discover immeasurable pain.

Just another Sunday, right?

Um, NO.

So I took ibuprofen (the medicine that God and Andrew Dunlop gave us so that we could function as adults in an ever-changing world), and I went back to sleep.

Except that later, when I woke up again, the ibuprofen had only made my neck angrier, and I could not get up. Also I could not roll over. Also I could not reach anything, including the remote for my television, my book, my knitting, and my laptop. Since not having any form of entertainment made being stuck in bed boring as well as excruciating, I grabbed my cell phone (fortunately, I had forgotten to plug it in to charge the night before, so it was within reach), and I called home.

Did I mention I was home?

Yeah.

I heard the phone ring on the other side of the house, and I prayed silently that this was not one of those days when my mother decided picking up the phone was a bad idea (she does this). But it wasn't, and she answered.

"Mum?" I said.

"Yes? Laura?"

"Yes," I replied. "I am trapped here."

If this had been a Stephen King novel, that would have been a very creepy sentence. Also it would have been nighttime, the East coast, and probably Maine.

"What?" Mum asked.

"I cannot get out of my bed."

This is one of those shameful things you say as an adult, all the while remembering those advertisements with the old lady on the ground crying out, "Help! I've fallen, and I can't get up!" The lady we made fun of on the playground in elementary school. I am that person now, but younger and with better clothes.

Mom helped me up, but I regretted it instantly.

An hour later, I was in the ER, waiting.

The ER is boring. Also it takes up to three hours for them to call your name, even if it LOOKS empty inside the waiting room. This is because everyone has better things to do than go to the ER on a Sunday, including medical staff.

To my shock, Dad had responded to Mom's notification that I was heading to the ER by also going to the ER. And so there were three of us and I felt like a four year old with two worried parents, which was slightly awkward until Dad found Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark on the ER television set, and then it was like home but with uncomfortable chairs.

It is whiplash. Which means I have this sexy collar to wear.

 

It is offensive, but it is an orthopedic device, so what can you expect? It's better than the way I was holding my head before (balanced on my right shoulder), even if I do have to eat like a dinosaur now (meaning I reach my whole head and neck toward my food like a stegosaurus, causing The Brother to hum the Jurassic Park theme at me as I ate my dinner last night. Since I am me, I made dinosaur calls as I ate instead of getting angry and throwing things at him.

 But because I am a knitter, I instantly found a better way to wear the neck collar.



There is a reason why I knit all these little scarves.

I was feeling pretty good about the whole scarf/collar combo until my friend Melanie brought up that I kind of look like Velma. Which meant nothing to me until I Googled Velma, and lo and behold, I am one orange turtleneck away from solving crime with a cowardly dog and a VW van.

Velma from Scooby-Doo. No, I did not 

draw this. It is all Hanna-Barbera, folks.

I don't know whether to be ashamed of this or proud. Without intending to, I have clearly reached cartoon immortality. I know what my Halloween costume will be now, if I ever have need of one. I mean, some people live their whole lives without ever knowing who their cosplay double is, but now I know, all it would take is a costume change and I would be Velma from Scooby-Doo, only not in a gross way. (Don't ever Google pictures of Velma and you'll never know why the gross. No really, don't Google Velma pictures. Don't.)

They also gave me muscle relaxers and prescription ibuprofen and a SHOT. The shot made me feel cozy, which was necessary, because without it I would have torn that neck collar of in a minute flat, like I want to do now. Apparently, the shot made my hyper-sensitive fear of strangulation (the reason why I don't already own a Velma-style turtleneck) fade enough that I could be comfortable in the brace thing. But the shot has worn off now, and it is only fear of agony that is keeping the brace on.

I should be okay soon, or so they tell me. But two weeks ago, they told me I was "clinically insignificant." So we'll see.

Dear Blogger (and Google)

You know how I love using you? Well, I do. You let me write, you search for things, and you're an all around neat sort of...something. Internety thing. You know what I mean.

But here's the deal Blogger/Google: You think there are more of me than there is. There is one of me. And back when I started my Blogger account, it wasn't connected to Google the way it is now. It was DIFFERENT. And then you became one. And that was fine, no problem. But then you created G-Mail, Google Docs, and Google +, and in the process of doing that, I was forced to create another e-mail address so I could use all of those things.

Then you told me to link up Blogger with G-mail, but you wouldn't let me link it to my G-Mail address, because you think I'm two (three?) people, so you made another address for me, so now I am three (four) people. And that created another problem.

Because my original e-mail address is now associated also with a G-mail address, but said G-mail address is not, for whatever reason, allowed to post comments on any of the blogs I follow (explain that to me, please), I now cannot post comments on any Blogger blog. Which would be no big deal, except that IT IS A REALLY BIG DEAL.

So you tell me my account isn't allowed to post things, and that I should log into another account, except the first account that should work is linked to the bad account, and I would have to start all new blogs if I used the other account(s).

Are you confused yet? Because I am.

I tried to solve the problem by allowing myself to be logged into two accounts at once. That's a really good option to give people, Google. If it worked. But it doesn't, because each of your sites forces me to log out of one account in order to access the other, even though they are both me.

I tried to solve the problem by inviting my other personae to write and post on this blog. Nope.

So what I would like to see happen is this: I would like for you to invent a way for me to put my various login information from all the accounts into one little program, then let me click a button and make the button merge all those logins and passwords and accounts together, to create a kind of super-account, one that would be under one e-mail address so I could log in just once and I wouldn't be forced to delete the other accounts and possibly prevent my getting-at documents saved on Google Docs by one account or a blog started by another.

Confused? So am I. That means you should fix this, right? I would really like that.

Thanks,

Laura

What's that burning?

Peru, apparently, exploded or something, because I have been without power since Tuesday night. There is no heat, there is no running water, there is no toilet-flushing, no liquids after 5:00 p.m., no internet, no Burn Notice, no lights, no refrigerator, and, above all, NO REASON TO LIVE.

"Laura, you're being dramatic!" you say. 

I say, "Try being a one-bathroom family of four when no one can flush the toilet unless they travel to the nearest town, which is 30 minutes away by car, and buy water. Talk about flushing money down the toilet."

But if all of that wasn't bad enough, there is this other problem. I have to go to work just like I do every day. Which means I have to find a way to be clean, which means washing my hair with bottled water, which is sometimes icy cold, like it was this morning.

Cold water is really cold.

Also there is no internet, so for all I know, one of the Republican candidates has already declared war on Iran. Hey--it could happen.

Not having electricity means I can't blow-dry my hair. So I came up with this ingenious solution yesterday, because I remember reading about someone doing it in Little House on The Prairie or maybe in Little Women. It was Little everything back then, apparently. And they also would wash their hair, sit by the fire, and dry it out.

Well. I was totally trying that.

So I fired up the gas fireplace a bit higher, and I tried it. IT WORKS AMAZINGLY. Especially if you are like Jo March post-train ticket, and your hair is super-short like mine. So I did it again this morning.

But between yesterday and today, something must have...changed. Maybe it was the distribution of product in my hair. Maybe the fireplace had been turned up too high for too long. It's anyone's guess. All I know is that as I was standing over the fireplace's vent, I heard a sizzling sound.

It is important to note that at no time was my hair actually touching fire OR the vent itself. My hair was touching AIR ONLY. Hot air, yes, but air all the same.

And that hot air from the fireplace totally scorched my hair.

I have like, two inches of hair? Maybe a little less in other places. But really, I cannot afford to lose hair to the fireplace or the hot air it produces. There is, quite simply, not enough hair to set fire to. Still, as I smelled that tell-tale scent of crispy-fried hair, I knew.

Now, some girls might be actually upset by the loss of hair to flame, but those girls can flush their toilet after they use it without walking down to the river and using a bucket to fill the toilet tank, and I am not one of those girls.

So, I dried my hair the rest of the way, put in the goop I use to make it look all cute and tousled, and went to work like a good little soldier. Because walking around work with fried hair is better than sitting at home with no electricity.

Happy winter, everybody.

Near Death Experience Number...I've Lost Count

I tried to leave work yesterday, but the rain was coming down in sheets and I was wearing my new cute little ballet flats (the ones I was obsessed with last week), so I waited a bit. That choice either 1. saved my life or 2. greatly complicated my drive home.

On the drive through the country, I saw fields filled with only water. The road actually had a current. Really. I don't know how many inches of rain we got in five minutes, but it was a LOT of rain. And the wind was insane. When I got to the gas station in the little town near my house, I pulled in and waited for the wind to calm down and the HAIL to stop, because it was just that bad. I don't have trouble driving in the rain, but I was thinking at that point that if visibility was poor enough, I wouldn't see a car in the opposite "lane" of the little country road I now have to take home because the bridge over the river is being torn down.

I would like to take this moment to repeat: If I were blind, I would have no idea this bridge is out, because no one took the time to, you know, post the fact the bridge being ripped apart on the state's website, or send out fliers or newspapers or...anything. Surprise! Road construction! Who knows when it will be finished--we'll get back to you!

When I could see to drive, I started my car again and made my way over a bridge and onto another road. As I traveled, I noticed a barn that had a perfectly good roof that morning...but the roof was now gone. Nice, I thought. I wonder if that other chunk of tree has fallen on the house? Then I noticed that the same house was missing shingles--that's how windy. Or how tornado-ey.

I drove down the little hill we used to race our bicycles over, across the tiny bridge over a now-roaring creek, and stopped behind a pick-up that was now executing a rather pathetic three-point turn. I could tell why: there was a tree down over the road.

But seriously. This dude was in a pick-up. Couldn't he, like, DRIVE OVER the pathetic little skinny branches? I knew I could drive over those wimpy branches. And I almost did. But as I got closer I noticed there was also something else wrong. The tree had taken a power line down. And it was now on the road, in a puddle. A puddle my car was now sitting in.

Great, I thought. I really did want a little electrocution with my commute. Whatever.

That was when my fuel light went on.

Crap.

I had to find a new way home. Those of you who know me at all are well acquainted with my sense of direction. I don't HAVE a sense of direction. I am like the opposite of one of those homing pigeon things. Spin me around in a circle and I couldn't find the bathroom in my own home. How did I expect to find a new route home when the two paths I knew about were blocked?

I'll tell you how.
Hello, gorgeous.

I pressed the little button that said "Home" and drove back along the road to my last turn. I proceeded on THAT road, and I thought I was doing okay. I was heading further North (forward) and that meant I would have to turn in that other direction, the direction that was right. I mean left. I would have to turn left (this is why that GPS comes in handy).

I went over another tiny hill and discovered--another felled tree. This one was ginormous, too big to even consider driving around, because it would have meant my car in a ditch with no suspension, sinking rapidly in Indiana clay. I turned again, zig-zagging closer to North Manchester and further from my house.

Did I mention the fuel light was on? Because it was.

That road turned onto another country road, this one unpaved. While the car sank in the mud of the "road," I stayed on the phone with the 911 ladies in two counties, because I was sort of in two counties at the same time. The poor 911 ladies could barely hear me because cell service is so bad out in the country.

That is why that movie, Deliverance, could totally happen, even though everyone has cell phones they could use to call 911 if they happened to be stalked by crazy inbred hill people. And I have seen those hillbillies. They come in the library to check their facebook pages and their Match.com requests. Seriously. They are on Match.com, so think twice before you go looking for love there.

I tried to explain this to the 911 ladies, but they couldn't hear me.

By the time I had reported the downed line, I was reaching the end of the soggy dirt (mud) road. I turned onto another road, which was, fortunately, the road I was originally trying to get to when blocked by the power line. Unfortunately, the road was mostly flooded.

At this point, I was sick and tired of all of the turning. The road was flooded, but I could still see through the flood water enough to know how deep the water was and if there was still road underneath it. So I did the Country thing. I plowed my car through the water. Yeah. Even though the nightly news told me that's an easy way to die. Whatever. They never tried to drive home in these conditions. They have HELICOPTERS.

When I arrived home, Mom opened the freezer and presented me with a bowl of hail. She had sent Paul outside to gather it, because she thought I should see.

At least my Monday night wasn't boring.

Low Expectations

I wish I could say I was surprised.

My home state cannot spell the name of my hometown. See?

It's "Roann" not "Roan." Roan is a term used to describe the color an animal's coat.

I could go on and list the many other failings of Indiana's website. But instead, I'm going to issue a challenge to you, my readers. Can you figure out what the cause of the closure of State Road 16 is (this would be between State Road 15 and State Road 19)?

If you can, I promise I will think of a way to reward you, like with cookies or praise or by letting you pick a new blog topic or something. (In other words, I will BRIBE you.)