Fresh, Hot Wastes of Time

Fred McFeely Rogers (1928-2003)

In memory of Fred Rogers, who brought such goodness to the children of the world. May angels wing you home, Mr. Rogers.

For those of you up north who are looking at the pictures of the ice and giggling to yourselves about how lame our “ice storm” was, you have to understand that the 1/4″ of ice you see completely shut down the city for the past 2 days, school was canceled, doctors’ offices closed, car wrecks were abundant, interstate highways were closed down, the airport was closed, and 9 people have died as a result of exposure to the elements or wrecks blamed on the road conditions.

Those of you who don’t believe we got ice, think again. You know who you are, and so do we. (Thanks to Recreational Chemistry for help with the image stuff!)

There’s this cold white stuff all over the ground and cars and trees and stuff!

Ok, people – it’s 2003 already and nobody can seem to decide what to call the decade. Is it the “Oh-ties”? The “Aughties”? What are they going to call the seriously dumb television show in 30 years based on this time, a la That Seventies Show?

The other day we took delivery of our new Louis Phillipe panel bed, and I ran out to get a dust ruffle and a new mattress pad and hub went to get our Oriental rug (which looks an awful lot like this) out of storage and I washed the new sheets and cleaned up the bedroom and we started to put everything together. I spent half an hour trying to get the Kool-aid barf stain out of the rug until we decided just to put that part under the bed. When I tried to put on the bed skirt, I realized the package was mislabeled and it was the wrong size. The mattress pad (viscose foam) stunk horribly, so I lit a nice soothing vanilla candle and put it on my nightstand, then curled up in the new bed in the new sheets on the new mattress pad and read a nice murder mystery book.

At this point the cat jumped up onto the bed, purring madly, and started bumping me for attention. She does the “pet me” dance for about 5 minutes before I notice the smell. Burning hair. The dumbass cat had apparently dunked her tail into the candle and caught her fur on fire, never noticing. After giving me a puzzled look because I started madly beating on her tail, she ran off.

We ended up taking off the mattress pad anyway, because it was too hot.

I’m sure you’re all dying to know how my boob’s doing. For those playing at home, I had a biopsy in 9/02, then a cleanup surgery in 10/02, then have been battling the wound since.

Last week it was completely closed and relatively pain-free. Tonight it’s opening back up and hurts like hell. I’m just a wee bit bummed, but will save the foulest language for my pillow, since it doesn’t care how many times I holler the F word at it. My doctor, on the other hand, probably would mind… but I’ll call him tomorrow and try to be coherent.

3/10/03 will mark the six month anniversary of the first surgery. I’ve been fighting this for damn near half a year. I can’t help thinking that it’s my own fault it’s happening; if I hadn’t been so dumb and gotten the worthless breast reduction, I might actually have some blood flow (and feeling, and function) and I wouldn’t have a damned wound for half a year that should have been healed up in under a month.

Kids, please take it from Auntie Addlepated. Think long and hard before getting a reduction. Or implants. On the BFAR (breast-feeding after reduction) mailing list, the stories of heartache outweigh the stories of people who are happy with their surgery by about 3 to 1. If you’re considering a reduction, go to the BFAR webpage and sign up for the BFAR info list and talk to women who have actually had the surgery. Talk to a lot of them – do not form your opinion based on what just one person tells you. I wish I had. And if you have reduction questions, don’t be shy – feel welcome to ask me.

The meetup tonight was very nice. I didn’t like the venue at all. Parking was non-existant, they were out of half-and-half, and the coffee and service were cold. It was nice to put some faces with names, and the political talk was scarce. There was plenty of talk about Christina Aguilera’a nipples, which was amusing. The giant whooshing noises that kept happening were things going way over my head, but that’s ok. Perhaps I’ll pick something up by osmosis. In any event it got me out of the house and away from the kids for a little while, even though we were sitting outside in the 53 degree weather and I didn’t even bring a jacket. (which goes back to my pisstivity about the coffee being cold)

The elm trees in my yard are already budding little leaves. Spring comes so early in this part of the world.