Sweet Catastrophe

I hate when a nap just makes you feel worse. I got no sleep last night–not for lack of trying; I got into bed at 9:45, but apparently the whole word was out to keep me awake so it was just one thing after another waking me up just as I would fall asleep. Of course this happens when I have to be up at 6am, so I thought a nap was in order for this afternoon.

Now that I’m awake, I’m groggy, I can’t cool off, my neck hurts from the stupid lumpy couch pillow, and I can’t shake off this bizarre dream I had.

Top that off with feeling bad that I wasn’t able to get in and check on Catie’s kitten. We thought the gates didn’t close until 7 or 8, but when I got there they were closed already. I tried to wait around for someone to follow in but it just wasn’t happening. I even circled around a few times but no luck. Catie will be home late tonight and I checked on Carli yesterday, so she should be perfectly fine, I just know Catie would feel a lot better if I had been able to get in and see her. Oh well.

I gotta shake this grumpiness! Ryan will be home soon for us to go out to dinner.

Farber doesn’t open back up until June 9th, and they don’t offer an option to pay inflated health fees to use their services during the summer. The guy on the phone actually laughed at me when I asked, which really pissed me off–it was a valid question; there are various services on campus that you can pay for a-la-carte during the summer months to access. Believe I’m putting in a complaint, especially after the way the rest of my day went.

So I started checking all the walk-in clinics around town and apparently we’re down to one. When all was said and done, I paid $140 for the visit alone, and $195 for blood work and a urine test. That’s $335 I paid out of pocket today. I had $145 in my PayPal account so the rest of that’s coming out of what I was using to pay rent.

What did $335 get me? Not a fucking thing. I got a visit with a doctor who answered a fucking phone call during our meeting and completely ignored my thoughts on the possibility of it being mono.

Did I get any answers for $335? No, I fucking didn’t. For $335 I got told that I need another fucking $2800 for a CT Scan to maybe figure out what’s wrong. Let’s not even think of other ways of checking me out since we’re all very aware that this is out-of-pocket.

To say I’m pissed is an understatement. I’m upset, I’m hurt, I’m angry…and to boot, I still don’t know what the fuck is wrong with me. There’s the very small hope that I may get some sort of answers from the blood work, but I think we all know by now that I just don’t have any good luck when it comes to that. It’ll all come back normal, I’m sure.

If anyone ever asks in the future why I ignore problems for so long instead of going to the doctor, this is why. I always get the runaround, whether it’s my body’s fault, or the fault of the doctors. It usually just causes more stress than it’s worth to eventually find out it’s something that isn’t a big deal.

I’m so fucking upset right now!

I mean damn….there’s no way it costs THEM $195 to process the blood work. And there’s no way it costs $2800 to turn on the CT machine. Why is it okay for them to charge so much? I just don’t fucking understand.

EDIT: Oh and I forgot to mention he prescribed me Lortab for the pain………..uhh thanks, but that’s totally not necessary and I’m really not sure how you expect me to be able to pay for Loatab after that visit bill?!

Let’s skip past how last night eventually played out to annoy me even more. On to today. I set my alarm for p.m. so I woke up just in time to be late for class. Windows Movie Maker ate my presentation and now all of the clips I was putting together are loading dark–you can barely see shadows. Fine.

I decided to make a quick web page for my presentation. No. You can’t do that either because FrontPage keeps freaking out and shutting down.

I’m tired. I’ve been rushed to finish this presentation properly and work on another with a group in between. I’m still boiling over about everything that went down last night. I still have to go actually do this presentation and then go to work. I really just want to go to bed. I need this all to be over and done. I need to stop having so much to gripe about here…

I really can’t do this anymore. I can’t get up and be at work at 6am once a week when the rest of my week finds no obligations until 11am. At work, they’ll quip that they do this every day–exactly. Your body is accustomed to this, mine isn’t. I try to go to bed earlier on these nights, but those are the nights my brain just won’t shut off and then anxiety creeps in and sleep never comes. Though, it does afford me an opportunity to watch stars desperately peddle acne treatment, as if they just really need that money…

I got 2 1/2 hours last night. Now I have to work until 3 and when I’m done there, I have to go to class. How will I do that on less than 3 hours of sleep? We may be cutting this day short. Text me some good excuses for leaving work early…

I think today I may compose a letter to Peggy, begging not to schedule me before 8am anymore. I know it’s only 2 hours, but those 2 hours mean even if I don’t get to sleep before 2, I can get five hours of sleep and I can work with that. I can.

Today we had a guest lecturer. Before class, I was napping nicely, but forced myself to head to class, as a favor to my teacher since our guest was her boss.

What did we discuss?

Leadership.

I’m so annoyed right now. I hate being lectured on idealistic bullshit. HATE.

Gah I could scream. Right, characteristics that great leaders possess are great characteristics to have, but you don’t just throw all these characteristics in a bowl and out pops a great leader! There’s more to being a great leader than possessing all these ‘good’ characteristics.

And no–leaders are not born. Get the fuck over that idea. Just because someone is inherently charismatic doesn’t mean they’ll form a leader. There’s a tad more to the process!

*headdesk* And HEY! What about this idea? I DON’T GIVE A DAMN ABOUT BECOMING A GREAT LEADER.

If you wanna come in and tell me that it’s great and helpful in the job world to possess characteristics we often associate with great leaders, that’s fine, but don’t tell me I need to strive to be a leader. WTF.

Seriously, I’m getting so sick of these ideals that in order to be happy, you must strive for something big.

Really, what’s so wrong with settling if it makes you happy? “Ohh Jade, you might miss out on something!” Right…I might miss out on something if I go to bed an hour early. I might miss out on something if I cook tonight instead of going out to eat. BIG DEAL. Whatever choices you make in life, you’re also choosing against something else, and therefore you miss out on that something else. That’s life!

Just because I’m capable of doing big things doesn’t mean I have to, nor does it mean I’m going to be unhappy if I don’t. Why can’t people understand this? Why does everyone feel like you’ve got to always be reaching for something big?

Let’s break it down into a simple example. There’s a box of cookies in front of me. There are 30 cookies in there. I only want 5. I can have 30 cookies if I want to, nothing’s stopping me, but I only want 5. Five cookies will make me happy. I have no desire to continue eating 25 more just because it’s possible. Is there something wrong with that?

God I hate going to this class. It’s such a constant reminder that people think ‘thinking big’ is necessary. What if I could pay my bills and be happy being a cashier for the rest of my life. Can someone tell me what’s SO damn wrong with something like that? Purely example of course.

I’m washing everyone’s towels. I’ve taken out more than 4 bags of trash. I cleaned out the fridge. I cleaned the toilet and put a not-so-happy little sign over the toilet reminding those penises I live with to return the seat to its proper position.

Do you think if I injected them with a little progesterone they’d care a little more?

I mean, don’t get me wrong, they’re grateful, and occasionally they express it, but I think for all I do for those two, they could express it a little more often….

And I’m gonna go postal about the toilet seat. For real. Don’t laugh, it’s not because I fall in or anything, it’s just that this is ‘my’ bathroom. The only thing I do in the upstairs bathroom is shower and blow dry my hair and that’s only because the downstairs lacks the proper equipment to do those things. The downstairs bathroom is mine. I keep it clean. Not just because I like it that way, but of course, that’s the bathroom guests use.

They can keep the upstairs bathroom as messy as they want–and I still clean it, but stay out of my friggin bathroom! Keep your shaving goop upstairs and keep my seat down dammit!!!!

I’m going to be fighting this fight for the rest of my life though, aren’t I?

Any males reading this, consider yourself warned. This is a girl-topic-heavy rant.

In October, I requested a change in my pills. Also, at the time, due to major scheduling conflicts and a brain fart, I’d had to be pill-less for two weeks. The doc at the school gave me two sample packs of Lo-Estrin 24 and a prescription for 10 more after. This is the pill that shortens your period. You’ve got 24 pills with the hormones and only 4 without-as opposed to the 20/8 of normal pills.

I took those for two months and well, obviously after being off for two weeks and switching to not only new pills, but to a new type of cycle, things were totally off, but by the end of the second month, I was evening out and really liking the new pills, so I decided to stick with them and fill my prescription.

I got home the night I was to start the newest pack and discovered I was given Lo-Estrin 20…..which is the normal 20/8 pill pack. I don’t know if the doc wrote the wrong script, or if they goofed when they filled it, but either way, it was a new pill change again, and new cycle. Can I say, ‘yay’?

So that’s what finds me here, almost writhing in pain in this chair. Actually, I have a rather high pain tolerance or I’d truly be upstairs, in bed, crying. Instead, I’m soldiering on and walking to classes and such, all the while, my innards are catching up on two months of light, easy periods and really kicking my ass. And there’s not a Pamprin in sight!

I want ice cream. I want a back rub. And I don’t want to do this extensive homework that’s due at 3:30.

I’m so sick of this work schedule crap. Twice this week I’ve been contacted because I’m still listed on the schedule to work while I’m in class and it keeps coming back as my fault even though I not only tried to give Peggy my availability in December, but on Monday, I left her a note with all the dates she needed to fix, and she’s been at work since then, I checked the schedule, and yet I’m still getting contacted…If there was an issue, she should’ve called me. After class tomorrow morning, I’m calling the work number. I’m tired of this. There’s no reason I should have to stress over this.

Classes start tomorrow and I’m really looking to have a positive week so I think I’ll get this one last gripe out instead of sleeping on it.

You’ve probably read before about our ridiculous scheduling system at Lowe’s. Basically, my manager can’t format schedules. She freaked over it last year and got our much-hated HR manager involved and they implemented a system for part-timers where we have to provide a copy of our class schedule each semester before the availability form we fill out will be accepted.

Aside from the fact that it’s just plain wrong because as a part-timer, we’re only required to be available for ten hours, and Lowe’s has no business knowing my class schedule or why I have a certain availability as long as it isn’t unreasonable– the situation causes a lot of problems.

Registration is open for only a certain amount of time during the current semester for the upcoming semester. Maybe you weren’t able to get your schedule set during this time for various reasons, or even after the fact, financial aid likes to play little games that cause people to have their schedules dropped. I’m a prime example of all of these. I don’t recall many semesters that I haven’t had to jump through hoops getting overrides and such. Generally, I know in advance what my schedule will be, but teachers still have to wait until registration opens back up to perform overrides again.

At the beginning of December, my manager told me she’d need my availability for Sp ‘08 by the 13th. I told her I could give her my definite availability right then, but I wouldn’t be able to print a schedule reflecting the correct times until January. She, of course, has golf balls for brains and insisted she couldn’t do anything until she had the school schedule. Fine.

So I turned in my schedule this morning. Which means at least 3 weeks of busted schedules for me. For the next two weeks, I believe I have 3 days that I’m supposed to be at work at 4, but I’m not available until 6, and one day I’m scheduled for a shift during a time I’m not available at all.

I’m just gonna take it day by day. I believe, on the day I’m scheduled during an unavailable period, I could probably finagle things and go in, but my willingness to do so will greatly depend on how fed up with work I am when the time comes to decide. The smart money is on me not going in.

There’s a Halo…thing going on in between here and apartment 3. I swear I’d give them all custom engraved plaques if they could make it a week without playing.

The grumpiness comes from the fact that they’re all being assy and my apartment is full of people who don’t fucking live here. Andrew is next door and I’ve got four guys in my living room, trapping me in the corner at my desk–heaven forbid I walk in front of the tv; and none of them even fucking live here.

Just add to that the fact that I dislike 3 of them, and am sick of them. Plus all the being broke stuff and school starting back tomorrow….ya know, the fun stuff *eyeroll*