Archive for February, 2008

My Tortured Valentine (part deux)

Monday, February 25th, 2008

There we were.  The Big Day looming ahead.  I thought I’d give Alex a break and tell him first thing in the morning who is Pal was.  I wrote him a note saying it’s been fun.  I’ll see you tomorrow.  I’ll be wearing a red ribbon.  I then proceeded to give a red ribbon to EVERYONE in the dorm to wear.  The first person he saw at breakfast was Cindy.  “YOU!” he said. “NO!” she said.  And so another torturous day had begun.  It was on.


I wrote another letter.  I had resorted to typing them since I’d run out of different handwritings and other people to do my dirty deeds.  This letter was a typed confession.  I realise I have been torturing you far too long.  It makes me feel bad that you are in such agony.  It must be driving you crazy, etc etc.  I printed the letter out, numbered down the side of it, one number per line (1-20 maybe).  And cut it into strips.  One line per strip.  I gave each strip to a different person in the dorm and gave them a time frame during which they should drop by Alex’s room to deliver it (in no real particular order except the last one).  I think I had line number 7 or something.  By the time I got to Alex’s room, he and Stefan had the letter laid out on a desk and were anxiously awaiting each new installment.  It started with Dear Alex,.  A couple hours later he was down to Love,.  Someone delivered a blank strip (you know, the space between Love and the signature).  Then our RA Amy went by with a strip of paper with her name signed on it.  “YOU!” he exclaimed.  “NO!  You idiot!  You thought it was me it’s not!  HAHAHAHA” she screamed.  I know this because I, on the 1st floor (with Alex’s room on the second) HEARD her.

Here are a couple more things you need to know.  On February 13, 1992, the Simpsons episode “Bart the Lover” was aired for the first time.  This was the episode where Bart finds out his teacher has a personals ad and responds to it as “Woodrow” her perfect man.  She falls in love with him and he stands her up on their meeting date.  He then feels horrible and goes to his parents for advice.  After confessing what he has done, he asks Homer and Marge how to break up with a woman, to which Homer dictates:

Dear Baby, Welcome to Dumpsville.  Population:YOU.

Marge nixes that one, but Homer comes back with: “Three words: I.  Am.  Gay.”  Then procedes to try to convince Marge to put it in the post scrip: P.S. I’m gay!

Every week a bunch of us would get together to watch the new Simpsons in Alex and Stefan’s room.  I think there were about 6-8 of us.  You also need to know that Alex’s birthday is February 15. 

The evening of Valentine’s Day, Alex got a not so nice note telling him to hold his horses and wait til tomorrow when his pal would take him to dinner for his birthday.

The evening of February 15, Alex’s birthday, he came home from band practice to get ready for his dinner date to find a note posted on his door.  It read:
 

Dear Babe,

Welcome to Dumpsville.  Population: YOU.

Did you really think I would want to spend an evening with you?

Love,

Your pal

PS I’m gay

That was at about 7.  At 7:30 I walked up to his room wearing a big tshirt over my nice clothes to try to disguise that I was dressed to go somewhere.  Alex was playing the flute so I sat down and listened.  He did a double take at my tights so I think he knew then.  I said I was going to go close my door, went downstairs, got a rose, brought it back upstairs and asked if he was ready for dinner.  The end.

PS I’m gay.

Posted in Ramblings | 1 Comment »

My Tortured Valentine (part one)

Sunday, February 17th, 2008

Secret Santa. You know the drill. Draw someone’s name, get them a gift. My freshman year in college we had Valentine’s Pals. Each of us in the dorm (about 50 people, though of course not all participated) filled out a sheet of paper with our name, and a few insights into our still-forming personalities for our “pal” to help them get us something we’d like for Valentine’s Day. The survey asked things like your favorite food, favorite color, hobbies, likes, dislikes. You get it. Mine probably said something college-chick-esque such as “writing/reading poetry” and the color black.

The day came for us to draw names and I drew my upstairs neighbor Alex. Alex was a sophomore majoring in music who played the sax (actually he could play anything and had perfect pitch, the jerk – but I digress) and was on the college soccer team. He was a friend of mine. Part of the group of dormies I hung out with. Cynical sarcastic sense of humor like mine. Which is good because of what happened when I read his survey. After his name where all the personal info was supposed to go he had written one line: Ask Stefan. Stefan was Alex’s roommate and very good friend. So I asked Stefan. And Stefan said Alex had told him nothing about the survey. So I wrote a note (in generic block letters) to Alex introducing myself as his secret Valentine pal and politely requested answers to the survey questions so that I could be the best Valentine Pal a person could be. The next time I spoke to Stefan, he still had no answer, so I got a little irked.

I wrote another note. With my left hand. It conveyed a little of my frustration and again requested he tell Stefan ANYTHING so I could be a good Valentine Pal. What did I get? Nada. And so it began.

Over the course of the week leading up to Valentine’s Day, I wrote Alex one letter a day…MINIMUM. I used different handwriting. I asked other people to write notes for me. I sprayed other girls’ perfume on notes and slipped them under his door. My letters got more and more threatening. The message was the same: Tell Stefan SOMETHING. And yet, he told Stefan nothing, so I took that as a personal affront to my being his pal and went to war. Rusty razorblades were referenced. I had my next door neighbor Jonathan write a love letter to Alex and Jonathan went further than I expected. The letter got a little steamy, and there was a bearskin rug in front of the fire… word back from Stefan on that one was that when Alex finished reading that letter he looked up and said in a slightly worried tone, “I wonder if this is a guy.”

I borrowed tapes from a large number of people in the dorm and made a kind of medley mix for Alex. It was only 2 minutes long, but it spliced together many songs starting with “Welcome to the jungle”. I was going for a letter in music and I only remember a little of it so I will try to tell you what it said.

“Welcome to the jungle. We’ve got fun ‘n games. We got everything you want, Honey we know the names. We are the people that can find whatever you may need. If you got the money, honey, we got your disease. …I wanna watch you bleed.

“Sweet child of mine

“Don’t touch me, I’m a real live wire.  Psycho killer. Q’est-ce que c’est…better run run run run, run run run away

“Oh you’re going straight to hell for that one (Robin Williams in Good Morning Vietnam)

“So sing us a song you’re the piano man…”

Okay I cannot remember any more songs but there were many and I was quite proud. I walked by Alex and Stefan’s room, heard the music, and poked my head in. I was waved in by a very excited Alex who was playing the tape over and over again. He was trying to figure out if the person who had made the tape was a pro because the splices on occasion were extremely close… Inside I smiled and thanked my dual cassette player and lightning fast reflexes (and apparent good sense of timing).

Next stop, a scavenger hunt. Alex got a note with his first location which revealed the letters ICA and his second location. The locations were all over our college. Things like “the tree in the middle of the path” and “the middle sink of House 6’s 3rd floor bathroom”. (Thing was, there were only two sinks in that bathroom so the clue taped to the back of each of those sinks read “This isn’t the middle sink, dummy”). After running all around our college, Alex returned to his room to find a lollipop taped to his door. When he assembled the clues he had a message that read, “I CANT BELIEVE YOU WASTED ALL THIS TIME ON THIS STUPID HUNT YOU BIG SUCKER”

Another night Stefan and I were hanging out while Alex was at band practice (one of the 2-3 bands he was in) and we started playing with Stefan’s computer to see if we could get it to talk. Lo and behold…we could. We, meaning Stefan. This was 1992 so we were uber excited. We had to figure out weird spellings to get the computer to say what we wanted. The name “Alex” was especially difficult and I think we eventually got it sounding as close as we could by spelling “YAhl lix” or something weird like that. We got a great message that said something to the effect of (read in zero inflection monotone computer voice) “Hell low there YAhl lix. Look. I have taken over your machine. Am I in your dreams yet? Or in your night mares ha ha ha ha ha. You should tell Steff On what you want, Yahl lix. I like saying your name. YAhl lix. YAhl Lix. YAhl Lix….” And from there we resourcefully got it onto the answering machine. This was the kind of answering machine with a cassette tape and we had the hardest time getting the message on there AND making the machine think it had a message so that it would flash. It worked, and when Alex heard it he got big eyed and asked Stefan, “Does your computer talk?” To which Stefan replied (without lying), “I wish.” Alex was truly baffled.

And I am truly tired. I tortured this guy for a week, and I can’t write it all in one sitting. So I share this with you right now, and will continue the story later. Good night. Sleep well. Happy belated Valentine’s Day.

Posted in Ramblings, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Off to see the wizard

Friday, February 8th, 2008

Today I see Dr. Li. First time this year. I’m fat…so he’ll not be too proud of me. But I started going to the gym on Tues. And I went on Wed…and I am sore, so SOMETHING is working. I go with Nicholas the slave driver. he asked me how I was feeling yesterday and I said sore but not to sore and he said that means he can push me harder next time. I politely declined (I think my exact words were: nooooo!!!!!!!!!!), to which he replied, “I want you to hate me the next day!!! THEN we’ll know we’re doing good.”

Yeah. Gotta love friends. We’ve named our gym mission Operation: Jiggly Puff. Okay that’s mine, His is Operation Jiggly Pecs. :)

Okay. I’m off.

Posted in Ramblings, Sleep Apnea, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

What’s in YOUR stomach?

Saturday, February 2nd, 2008

I have been remiss…not an entry or even a squeak since the nuclear eggs incident. I guess I kind of assume…who wants to know? Then people ask. And then more people ask. And I feel bad for not posting to begin with…and then I think “Oh it’s been too long…” and blah blah blah…the end result is me under my covers hiding from the world like the scared procrastinator I am. So here. I give you: My Upper Endoscopy. (please, hold your applause)

The final frontier of GI specialist world (for now) was my upper endoscopy. That’s the one they did after the LOWER sigmoidoscopy and the “how long does it take your gamma ray eggs to evacuate?” test. The last was far easier in that 1. they “consciously” sedated me and 2. I didn’t have to eat or drink anything nasty to prep. Nope, the only prep was that I had to stop eating and drinking at midnight the night before the procedure to ensure an empty stomach. No problem.

At 5pm I was eating at Fresh Choice and by 5:30 I was done…so being that it takes 6 hours for the average stomach to empty (and the nuclear egg test had concluded that I was normal) and my procedure was 15 hours later, you can imagine my surprise (and my doctor’s when he discovered) when I woke up and my doctor said, “Your stomach wasn’t empty.”

eh?

“I found salad.”

I was about to say, “I ate at Fresh Choice!” but he beat me to it and said, “From Fresh Choice.”

I was stunned. How did he know? Did they brand their lettuce? Then I realised that conscious sedation thing meant he’d probably had that conversation with me at least twice by now. I just didn’t remember. A few days later I got a call from him (what is up with my doctors calling me to see how I am? When did this thing happen? Has the world gone nuts? How can I have the 3 doctors in the world who care enough to do that? I am NOT complaining) and he said he was really glad we did the upper endoscopy or we never would have known my stomach didn’t empty in 6 hours (since the eggs lied). NOT that anyone came to any conclusions, unfortunately. The prognosis is: Shelby, you do not have cancer or an ulcer or anything else we can test for right now. Nothing is swollen. Nothing is broken. You have nausea and that sucks. Eat small meals frequently. Take these drugs (prilosec, prevacid and reglan if it gets bad). Your side pain…well, maybe it’s the siamese twin you never had. Who the f knows. Nonetheless, I am managing. And I have no scopes in my immediate future (except the green stuff that helps prevent plaque).

On the braces front: I went to see Dr. Quo and told her I felt like my teeth didn’t touch in the back on my left and she unfortunately confirmed that and said my bite had slipped…So now I get the old school retainer (which I wouldn’t have minded having to begin with) and maybe some “buttons” in the back to pull my teeth together again. I think “buttons” are probably brackets on some teeth but not enough to call “braces”. You know how I missed those cheek spreaders. So they took a mold (peppermint flavor) and I looked like I had made out with a patch of wet cement, and I will see them again in 2-3 weeks when we will start working on my teeth again. OH! Did I mention my ortho sent out a calendar and it was all client pix and I made the back cover?! Yeah baby.

Posted in Braces, Ramblings, Sleep Apnea, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »