Farce

Eloise had forgotten her parasol when she walked to the store one afternoon to purchase a new hatbox.  Because of this, poor Eloise was exposed to dangerous ultraviolet radiation and her skin was tanned.  Poor Eloise!  What a dreadful thing to happen to such a fair girl and with so many young men that she passed on her way.  You would think that at least one of them would offer to shade her beneath his newspaper, but you would be mistaken.  When Eloise got back home (with her lovely new hatbox), one would almost think that she had grown up on a farm.  Heaven forbid that any man should see her in such a state: he might think her lowly and common.  Most assuredly she would have to seclude herself from the public until her skin had a chance to heal and return to its normal shade.

Thaddeus slipped his white gloves on as he was leaving the bank where he worked and entered the waiting carriage.  He was a well-educated banking accountant and worked hard for Price & Sons Bank.  Well, he certainly did not work hard, but he was industrious.  Perhaps overly so, because he now had an embarrassing blemish that he was nervously concealing: a blister on his right thumb from gripping his ink-pen for too long.  A paper cut was easy enough to explain, but a blister?  If anyone were to see such a pustule on him they might think that he was nothing but a common laborer.  He might as well stop doing anything civilized like waxing his mustache or taking his weekly bath.

Eloise looked out of the window from her bedroom where she had exiled herself.  She could see that the carriage her father had sent out was returning.  Who had he sent for this time?  Likely some business associate that he wanted to impress by showing him around the grounds of the family estate.  It was just as well that she was not leaving her room because she hated to have to introduce herself and pretend that she knew who the businessman was.  But who is this?  This does not look like any of her father’s normal associates.  This was a younger man, whose lean frame was proof that he had never done any physical labor in his life, and his mustache was so thick and majestic that one would be forgiven to confuse it for pair of stray cats that had attached themselves to his face.  Well, perhaps a brief visit from her room was in order today.

Thaddeus was uncomfortable with home visits like the one he was in the middle of, but Mister Cheddar was an important investor with Price & Sons Bank and Thaddeus’ father liked to keep a close eye on men with their proverbial fingers in his proverbial pie.  As Thaddeus was feigning interest in the tour he was receiving, his attention was caught by someone exiting the house and walking towards them.  Not just someone, but a lovely young woman with soft features and practically no chin at all.  Thaddeus seemed to recall that Mister Cheddar had a daughter that was healing from an unfortunate run-in with the harsh light of day.  This radiant creature must be her, with her long blonde hair that was tightly wrapped in a bun and a plump lower frame that was clearly used to sitting comfortably.  Oh, he is to introduce himself?  Of course!

Eloise was by his side when Thaddeus awoke in the hospital bed.  When had he been brought here?  What had befallen him?  A doctor was fetched who explained that Thaddeus’ heart was far too weak from a lack of physical exercise and that he had had a minor moment of arrest, the cause of which the doctor did not know.  He further explained that Thaddeus should be sure to strengthen his heart by joining a cricket club or coming to the hospital for regular electrical shocks that would increase his vigor significantly.  His diagnosis rendered, the doctor removed himself to another patient’s bed, leaving the two young people alone.

How truly amazing!  This lovely young man with the slight frame and voluminous mustache had a weak heart and simply looking upon Eloise, even in her ruddied state, sent him reeling—to the point of needing attention from a medical practitioner.  Clearly, she had found herself a desirable gentleman.  If only she could say what she thought of Thaddeus, but it was common knowledge that nothing was as unbecoming as a woman speaking her mind.  Even to subtly intimate that she had opinions would be too much.  The best that Eloise could hope for was that Thaddeus would show a fancy to her.

What a shame.  She would be such a lovely young woman, if not for her dark skin.  Thaddeus was no fool; he knew that just as he was expected to keep himself emaciated and well employed, young women were to keep themselves ample-bosomed and pale.  Eloise had maintained the first criterion without issue, but when looking upon her visage he had to remind himself that she was not from the Indian subcontinent.  Even so, had knew that she had spent too much time in the sunlight unprotected, so perhaps she would recover to a paleness that was not so much milky as translucent.  And how could he be one to judge so harshly when he himself was hiding an abscess on his dominant thumb?  Thaddeus decided that once he had had a chance to be invigorated with a few electrocutions that he would call upon Eloise to see if her skin’s tone had not been recovered.

Ah, young love ...

Take Five

You deserve a break.

Seriously, can you listen to that and not feel more relaxed?  Of course not.

I'm posting this song for two reasons: this song has been stuck in my head for over a week so I thought I would share and listening to this song will improve your day.

You're welcome.

Incognito

I finally made to my new ward yesterday.  While the experience was pleasant enough, one thing was rather surprising.  I went up to give my tithing to Bishop Peterson and he asked if we had met before.  I frankly asked if he was joking.  As it turned out, he really didn't recognize me.  I reminded him that he took me to the ER and sudden the light dawned on him.  I really did look different from that late night trip to the hospital.  In addition to wearing dress clothes, I was freshly shaven, wearing contact lenses rather than glasses, and I wasn't bright red.  Also, he said that I was so swollen at the time, that it looked like I had lost fifteen or twenty pounds since our last encounter (I had no idea the swelling was that bad!).  Strange encounter, but at least now he knows what I really look like.

Second Hand

It turns out that I like thrift stores.  For a long time I had a real aversion to used stuff because it reminded me of hand-me-downs, even when I was too tall to wear stuff originally meant for Ian. During the height of my comic book addiction, I went online and bought a bunch of Superman action figures from the early to mid nineties, but all of it had to be mint in box, even though I knew full well that I was planning on opening them up.  However, since I have no stuff right now, getting used stuff on the cheap is really attractive.

The thing about going to thrift stores (there's a Goodwill about ten minutes from my apartment) is that you have to very picky.  There's a lot of junk at these stores, both busted up stuff and stuff that wouldn't be worth getting new.  I did get a couple of nice work shirts recently, but it required a solid ten minutes (per shirt) of going through the racks of shirts.  Some shirts were too worn out, some were out of style, and a lot of them are the wrong size, but if you can find one shirt that's the right size and looks nice, it's worth the time.

Housewares are a little easier in that the items aren't hiding behind each other on clothing racks.  I bought a very nice set of glasses, a few storage containers, and even a rice cooker (for six bucks!).  Again, most of what you see is crap, but if you take just a little be of time, you can find some really useful stuff.

Since moving to Maryland, I've gotten three shirts, one pair of slacks, six glasses, four storage containers, a silverware drawer organizer, a three-cup capacity measuring cup, and the aforementioned rice cooker.  All for less than thirty dollars.

I know that many of my readers have had similar experiences with thrifty store and finding really useful stuff on the cheap, so I'm not convincing you of anything new.  It's still nice to have a to get needed items for the home without breaking the bank.

Punishing the Sick

I know that I usually write about what's happening in my life, but something caught my attention that I feel that I need to address.  I heard on the radio yesterday morning that Connecticut lawmakers are trying to prevent people with mental health disorders from owning guns.  After all of the tragic mass shootings where the perpetrator suffered from some form of mental illness, it's not surprising that lawmakers want to try to protect innocent people.  Here's the gist: if you voluntarily admit yourself into a mental health clinic you will be entered onto a government database that will be checked if you ever try to buy a gun, and will prevent you from doing so for five years from the time of admittance.

So why am I writing about this?  Because it's clear to me that no one involved has ever known anyone with a mental illness.  The term "mental illness" is too vague to mean anything.  Eating disorders, addictions, and depression and anxiety are all considered mental illnesses, but I don't think that Conn. lawmakers realize that.  By their accounts, because I had an anxiety attack while having a severe allergic reaction, I am not fit to operate a firearm.  I agree that people who suffer from severe mental illnesses like schizophrenia are probably not fit to handle weapons, but that's not the same thing as someone who is seeking help to overcome their alcoholism.  These lawmakers need to alter the bill to show that.

The biggest issue is that mental health clinics are supposed to be safe places for people who need it to receive help.  It can be a very difficult thing to find the strength of character to even admit to yourself that you have a problem and then to seek treatment; we don't want to make it any more difficult to do that.  Even if you don't care about guns, you'll be labelled as "mentally ill" and (unintentionally) "unfit for a guaranteed freedom" for five years.  Just for wanting to get help.

What should happen with this bill is this:First, differentiate between mental illnesses and recognize that their not all the same.  Second, don't automatically place people on a database for checking themselves into a clinic.  Instead, allow doctors to make that call by requiring them to evaluate each patient in a basic way and vote yes or no on banning them from guns for the specified five years.  With changes like this it turns sufferers of mental illness back into people instead of being accidents waiting to happen.

Since I don't live in Conn., none of this really affects me, but I'm still cheesed-off enough to rant about it.  Perhaps next post will be something that does affect me, like silly food trends.

Ox in the Mire

On Saturday, I drove down to meet Ian at a theater near his house so that we could watch The Man of Steel.  When I got to the parking lot, my car staled from over-heating.  We decided that we'd still watch the movie and take a look afterwards.  After the film, the car started, but again quickly over-heated.  We decided that I shouldn't drive the thirty minutes back home because it might kill the car.  Instead, I stayed at Ian and Amanda's for the night.

The next morning, we sought out the cause of the problem.  Ian had mentioned to me earlier that a whining sound my car made at ignition was probably a fan belt that would need attention soon, but that it likely could wait until my next oil change.  That sound was absent when I drove to the Larsen's from the theater (about a five minute drive), so we thought it might be the fan belt.  For those of you who don't know (I didn't), the fan or alternator belt powers a fan that sends vaporized coolant into the engine to keep it from overheating, as well as powering the alternator which recharges the battery (my battery light had also come on).  With this in mind, we went to the local Sears to have a mechanic look at it.

After about an hour and a half, they finally got to my car.  It was indeed the fan belt.  The mechanic brought it out to show us: it was shredded pretty well through.  Because of the way that this particular place operated, it was faster for us to go buy a replacement belt and bring it back to them for installation.  Anyway, from the time we first arrived to ask to have the car looked at to leaving with a properly functioning vehicle, it was probably about four hours.  But considering that this could have been a really bad emergency, I was happy to only pay about 50 bucks to see it all end.

I would have preferred to have gone to Church yesterday, but this was a case where my livelihood was in jeopardy, so I know that the Lord understands.

Emergency

I realize that this post was supposed to be up yesterday, but considering the circumstances, I think being up a day late is understandable.

Thursday night I was at home getting ready for bed after cleaning up from dinner when I noticed that I was scratching an itch on my stomach repeatedly.  I lifted my shirt up to investigate and saw a raised welt.  "Oh no," I thought, "I've got a bug bite.  I better not have bedbugs!"  I went into my room and looked through the bed linens.  I didn't find anything.  I thought about it a little bit and realized that having a bite appear now would be awfully strange since I hadn't noticed any bugs within the last hour or so.  Before long, other welts started to appear on my arms, legs, and torso.  "What is going on?" I wondered.  Then the palms of my hands started to itch.  That's when I figured it out.  Allergic reaction.

I didn't blog about it, but back in March I had a bad allergic reaction to something (to what I still don't know) and had to go to the Emergency Room.  That started the same way: itching that got worse and worse.  I didn't want to go to the ER again if I didn't have to, so I went to a local pharmacy and bought some Benadryl and took a dose and a half.  I also called my parents, who urged me to seek out a Priesthood blessing.  Keir and shut off his internet for the night, so I couldn't look up who my new Bishop was (I went with Ian last week to help out in Primary), but my folks took care of that for me.  While they were taking care of that, I called Margot because of all of her experiences with allergies and she asked me: "If you have insurance, why don't you want to go to the hospital?"  I didn't want to because I was hoping I wouldn't need to.  While we were talking, my hands turned bright red, like I had a bad sunburn.  I relented and said I would go.  Just as we were hanging up, I had a call from an unknown number.  It was Bishop Peterson asking how he could be of service.  I asked for a blessing and a ride to the hospital.  He said he would be over in about fifteen minutes.

By the time he came and got me, I was red head to toe and tongue and hands had started to swell.  He gave me a blessing in my apartment and then we left for the ER.  On the ride over, he was asking me about myself as a way to better get to know me; in other words, he was fulfilling his calling.  I realized after this was all over that I never learned anything about him (what he does for a living, how many children he has, etc.), but I did learn that is a kind, sincere man that is willing to help out his fellow man.  Seriously, he's a great guy.

When we got to the ER, I was pushed to the front of the queue (being bright red from an allergic reaction will do that).  As soon as my basic information was taken, I was sent back to a room.  I was given an IV along with a steroid to reduce the inflammation and swelling.  The Benadryl I had taken earlier was knocking me out at this point and I fell asleep.  I woke up a few hours later (no longer looking like a cardinal) and after giving one of the nurses my insurance information, I was discharged.  I went out to the Bishop and explained what happened and we left.  We had arrived at about 11pm and left at about 1am.  Like I said, Bishop Peterson is a great guy.

I got home, left a message for my work that I wouldn't be in the next day, and fell asleep.

I have an appointment for this coming Friday because I want to talk about my breathing problems, but since I'll be seeing a doctor anyway, this is the time to ask, "What am I allergic to?"  In the meantime, it is nice to know that I have people that care about me, even if they just met me.

R-JAM

During the lunch hour at work, several of the engineers and I meet in the conference room to hang out while we eat our sandwiches.  I'm not sure why I'm the only regular non-engineer that shows up, but that's not important.  What's important is what we do after we're done eating: R-JAM.

R-JAM is basically the classic basketball game of HORSE with fewer letters and played with a small, Fisher-Price version of a ball and hoop.  With as many as ten players, it's certainly entertaining.  Some people even try for trick shots like not looking or standing on a chair while shooting.  I'm usually one of the first people out, but after a couple of weeks at it, I actually made it to the final three on Monday.  While I had a nice buffer with a bad player going ahead of me, I also made around four or five shots during the game, a record high for me.

What's nice about not being competitive is that I enjoy playing even though I always lose.  There are some days that I'm better and others that I'm worse, but that's not why I play.  I play for the chance at camaraderie with my coworkers.  There's a lot of trash-talk that takes place while we play (most of the trash-talk directed at me as also come from me), but it's all in a good spirit.  We all keep track of our own letters and no one tries to lie to keep playing, because if we broke the rules, it wouldn't be fun.

While R-JAM only takes up a small portion of the day, it's still something that to look forward to, even if I know I'll lose.

Another Piece to the Puzzle

Not long ago I wrote about finding out some information from Isaac that I felt explained what I was experiencing with my "seizure-like events" as a lack of oxygen to my brain.  Well, I talked to Margot for a long time on Friday night and may have gotten some more useful information.

One of the things we talked about were her migraines.  I remember Allison telling me that seizures and migraines were connected, kind of like different manifestations of the same problem.  Anyway, she told me that what often happens, but not always, is that she'll lose the ability to speak or read for a while.  The way she described it was that she still knew all the words that she wanted to use, but there was a wall in the wall that prevented her from accessing them.  And when she's tried to read something, she could look at the word and recognize that she knew it, but can't get any meaning out of it.  During all of this, she can still understand when people talk to her, but can't communicate back.  While she described it using different language than I would have, it sounds pretty spot on for what I've experienced.  The biggest difference is that I usually recover from an event after about ten minutes while Margot usually takes a couple of hours to get language back.  Also of significance, Margot has a deviated septum, which I suspect that I suffer from.  She also has asthma, which could bring things back to not getting enough oxygen to the brain.

Now, I'm not a doctor and I've done the whole self-diagnosis thing before and gotten nowhere fast.  I know that I have to be diagnosed by a professional before I have any real answers, but learning about what my family is going through, especially when it's similar to my own ailments, will give me more information when I do make it to a doctor.  Which, now that my health insurance has kicked in, should be pretty soon.

Missed Connections

Due to poor planning, this post is late.  Because I don't have wifi at my apartment set up yet, it makes writing my blog posts more cumbersome to write.  It's not that I don't have any internet, because Kier has been nice enough to share with me until mine gets turned on next week.  However, he shuts off his router at night (I guess to save on electricity) and I lose my access.  I was in the middle of writing my post last night, when I lost my connection.  Colon-hyphen-open-parenthesis.

So, here I am, eating into my lunch break to make sure that I keep the blog alive.  Yes, I sacrifice for my art, I know.  Sorry about the brevity of today's post, but I do have work to do.  Hopefully I'll plan better next time and have my post up with time to spare.

On My Own, Mostly

This is the first time in my life that I have lived completely on my own.  The first time I left home was on my mission, but I had a companion the entire time.  After the mission was over, I went back home and lived with my parents and remaining siblings until I got married five years later.  I lived with Allison until our separation in late January 2012 and since then I've been the guest in someone else's home.  While I don't regret moving into my apartment, it is strange to come home and be all alone

To alleviate this a little, I did something out of character: I introduced myself to one of my neighbors.  Truly shocking.  I knocked on the door and he invited me right in. His name is Keir ("rhymes with beer" he said) and he's a retired chemist originally from New York.  Having a science background, he could relate to needing a good writer working with a bunch of engineers.  I'm not sure how old he his, but he did mention working as a busboy (after I had mentioned that I worked through school as a waiter) during the summer breaks from high school back in the 40s.  He was very friendly and said at the end of our visit that he was off to hang out with his 15-year-old grandson who didn't like being alone in the house (I forget where the rest of the family was).

I'll have to try this "being friendly" thing again sometime.

A Place of My Own

I signed a lease to an apartment this weekend.  Wait, let me try that again.  Ahem.  I signed a lease to an apartment this weekend!  That's better.

Yes, after about a month of looking at lots of different units at various locations and at varying levels of quality, I made a decision and signed a lease on Saturday.  Are you as excited as I am?

While I won't actually post my address online, I will say that I'm about ten minutes from my job and in an area that offers lots of choices for shopping and eating.  The apartment is on the third floor of the building, but I don't mind climbing stairs.  I have a central air, a washer and dryer in the unit, and a surprising amount of space for a one bedroom.

This was a difficult decision to make.  As I think should be apparent by now, I make a point to pray about big decisions to make sure that it's what I should.  When I prayed this time, I got no answer.  That caused more than a little anxiety.  But, it was a good unit, I was approved for a super low deposit and I had just gotten my first paycheck from my new job.  Pretty much everything lined up perfectly.  I text messaged Allison about it and she suggested that I "just make a decision and don't look back."  So I did.

Now, not everything is perfect.  I don't have a bed (I'm borrowing an air mattress from the Larsens) or home internet yet (I'm writing this from Ian and Amanda's place), but that will be changing in the next couple of weeks.  The point is that I have my own place again and that is very, very cathartic.  I've been staying with other people (the Kennedys, my parents, and now the Larsens) since February 2012.  That's 15 months of not having a place of my own.  While I can never adequately express my gratitude to these families for welcoming me into their homes, I'm still very pleased to be the master of my domain once again.