Laura's Week

Ugh.

I feel like crap. It's true. Jennifer was telling us all about life in Sinus Infection Land, and I totally know how she feels.

Unfortunately, I actually don't have a sinus infection. This is just me during allergy season, and it's just plain depressing.

To make matters worse, I am totally, utterly, completely out of all my asthma meds, and the allergist won't refill them, because I won't get an MRI of my sinuses because that would make any other health costs for the rest of the year--like my asthma prescriptions. I don't want to find out I need sinus surgery when I already know there's no way I'll be able to afford having it.

Plus, if certain ignoramuses get their way, and I've already had the MRI, whatever future insurance I have when I get a job that will allow me to afford to pay for surgery will then refuse to cover the sinus surgery altogether, because it will be a pre-existing condition.

This has been pre-existing since the sixth grade. Maybe longer. Just because you aren't diagnosed doesn't magically make it so that you didn't have the illness prior to your diagnosis. It just makes your being sick official.

Why am I telling you this? 1. I want medicine and my allergist wants to yell at me instead of helping me and 2. I have had a sinus headache for 5 weeks straight now.

I'm tired of having a sinus headache.

To make matters worse, I've stopped sleeping again. This is an annoyance to say the least. Last night I finally decided a benadryl would kill two birds with one stone, and as a result, I am now at work "stoned" on an antihistamine. You could shoot me in the foot right now, and I doubt it would even hurt. I'd just use the injury as an excuse to fall asleep.

As if there wasn't enough sickness in our house, we discovered two days ago that Darcy (who had not been quite herself since the tick induced doggie anxiety began) has a rash on her leg. She felt awful Wednesday night, so bad that she didn't get up to greet me at the door. That's unheard of.

We took her to the vet and he gave her antibiotics and steroids to get rid of it. The vet's office also pressed on us another heartworm medication with the instructions to feed it to her after the other prescriptions ran out. Thursday evening, I inspected the packaging and discovered it was Ivermectin again.

How many times do we have to scream at everyone that Ivermectin will kill our dog? When we say, "Darcy can't have that medication," we don't mean she's allergic to the chemical that makes it taste like liver, she's allergic to the active ingredient. The active ingredient will kill her.

Knowing that this would continue to happen again and again until I lost my mind, I went online and ordered a screening kit from the veterinary school at Washington State University. This is so that I can be sure she's allergic to all the things we now have to assume she's allergic to and avoid like the plague just in case. It is also so that I can walk into the vet's office, find Cannon Fodder, the worthless receptionist, and shove the results in her face, explaining in small words that she can understand how much I will sue her if she kills my dog.

Meanwhile, Darcy is now on medicine she isn't allergic to, and we hope she starts feeling some improvement soon.

This week I went through every book we have in our Young Adult section and I weeded anything that hadn't been checked out in the last five years. This means we have no more 80's romance novels. Book covers adorned by women with Dynasty hair doesn't make teenagers want to pick up a book. Blood-coated vampire teeth, however, attracts everyone from kindergartners to middle-aged women.

Now I have no wasted space and when I finally get to move around all the books to fill my new shelf, I won't be moving books that no one reads anymore.

And I get to order lots and lots of new books, which makes me very happy.

Dad has decided to take up blogging. In order to do this, he had me create a blog for him and now expects me to teach him exactly what he's supposed to do to make it interesting and also to teach him to use a digital camera, upload pictures from his digital camera, and post said pictures on said blog.

This will take months, and then, if I'm not lucky, he will give up on the idea.

Prove me wrong, Dad. Prove me wrong.

He would make a good blogger, though, because his writing is amazing (even though it's very different than mine) and he can always make me laugh.

He once wrote this hilarious letter to my mother when they were still dating. He typed it on his typewriter, which added to the effect considerably. It began with Mom, armed with a handgun and escaping pursuit on a motorcycle. Those were clearly his favorite things in his youth. Mom, motorcycles, and guns. Typical man. However, he took it from hilarious action movie to a little romantic love note she likes to take out and show me to prove how amazing of a writer Dad is.

Also this week, I got a random phone call while I was at work from my alma mater. Why? Money, of course.

But not for the reason you might think.

MC called me to tell me I had a payroll check from 2006 I'd never cashed (probably because I never got it and never knew I was missing it). And it's no five dollar check, either. It's big. Like, huge, considering how much I made when I worked at the college and how many hours a week I worked. I'd hate to think how many weeks of work went into that check. No wonder I was broke in college.

I haven't decided whether this money should go toward something responsible or to a knitting venture. We'll see.

My fortune cookie was so totally right.

This weekend has been set aside for the purpose of relaxation. Why? Because next week I have to be in Kokomo all day on Friday for a conference. I also have to work on Saturday. This is sucky. But I did take off the following Monday (to cut hours), so at least I'll get a weekend, even if it isn't exactly on the weekend.

I'm thinking I will use the weekend to finish the toe of my Ellington sock, then I will move on to another project I need to finish, like the strawberry mittens.