Stones

For the past few months I have had some stomach issues, but it's mostly been mild and I seem to have always have a sensitive stomach, so I didn't think much of it.

About a week and a half ago I started feeling some movement under my right rib. It wasn't painful. If anything, I found it oddly pleasant. But it did worry me. I looked at an anatomy chart and realized that under my right rib is my gallbladder. Until then, I had no idea what a gallbladder even was, now I know that it releases bile to help digest foods containing fat. It is helpful, but not vital. A person can live without one.

About three maybe four days ago, the feeling in my gallbladder became unpleasant and has been increasingly more painful.

Looking online, I am pretty sure I have one of these:


These are gallstones and they are surprisingly attractive.

I have a doctors appointment tomorrow where I will find out for sure. If it is in fact a gallstone and I have to have it surgically removed, I hope to keep the stone.
I feel mostly okay at this moment, but the pain comes in waves. Sometimes it is so bad I can't stand up or even think straight.

The pain seems to get worse towards the evening, but this morning was pretty bad as well.

From what I've been reading, I think what happened was that the gallstone had been loose in my gallbladder, but then a couple days ago became lodged in a duct, which caused the pain to begin.

Anyway, the past few days I've felt pretty miserable. I can't tell if I am being a baby, or if my misery is reasonable. Since late yesterday afternoon I've been staying in bed, because it seems to help.
The thing about stomach pain which is so difficult for me, is it is more than just physical pain. Since the digestive system is so closely linked to the nervous system (think of how certain emotional states cause certain feelings in your stomach or bowels.and vice versa) I've also felt emotional discomfort.
All that being said, it isn't fully bad. As i mentioned, the pain comes in waves. So when the pain isn't, like right now, I get to experience the fun of laying around in bed without feeling as if I should be up and doing something.
It really makes me feel for my mom who has had chronic pain for something like 7 years now.

Rats off to ya!

I posted this earlier, but didn't notice till now that the bottom half didn't show up in my browser, so am re-posting it.
Ever since last week I've had troubled relationship with the toilet.

(warning, what follows may leave you too with a troubled toilet relationship. Read at your own risk!)


You see, last week's episode of This American Life opened with a story was about a couple who came home to their apartment in Portland one evening to discover a rat had climbed up through their plumbing and into their toilet. Not once, but TWICE!

Ever since, whenever I'm on the can, I can't stop imagining a rat finding its way into my toilet and taking liberties with the most vulnerable parts of my body.

I can recognize that my fear is not especially rational, but that doesn't lessen it. When you have offered your exposed bottom to a device which may or may not lead directly to rat world and you aren't even able keep your eyes on it, you are in a pretty vulnerable position.

I keep hoping that as time passes I will stop thinking about the possibility of a rat wreaking havoc on defenseless behind whenever I enter the bathroom and I'm sure that eventually I will, but if anything this week of thinking about it has intensified my apprehension.

How awful would it be if I developed an overwhelming phobia of toilets. I would have to go in the shower or in a bucket and then dump it in the toilet or something.

I don't think this is very likely to happen.

In or out.

One thing that has long been curious to me, is why do some people, when learning about the troubling elements from Church history leave immediately, while others stay around a long time before eventually leaving(or even not leaving). I myself spent at least two to three years having serious doubts about The Church, trying to reconcile the difficult things I was continually learning about the church with the aspects I loved and believed. (similar to several people I know) Whereas other people I've known leave the Church almost immediately after learning of it's uncomfortable past. Both groups seem to have been equally devoted to the Church before their doubting, and frequently I have wondered, what is it that separates these two approaches. (aside from the fact that some people who leave quickly were just looking for a reason to not believe. I'm sure that happens, but among people I know it seems less common.)

Today, something finally dawned on me. People who leave the Church quickly tend to have a more 'things are either this way or that way' sort of approach to life. When applied to the Church they would take the approach that either the Church is totally true, or it isn't true at all. In thinking of the people I know who left the Church quickly, this seems to characterize their approach to many issues.

I do not mean to attach any judgment to this. While I personally tend towards not being that way, I think it can have some benefits. For example, I think my life would have been simpler if I was able to have quickly left the Church.

I don't think this is the only factor separating these two groups of people, but it seems like a significant one.

I think the way a person's parents approached religion can be a factor. Children of parents who took a more restrictive approach to religion will often feel a bigger backlash and resentment if they learn things which don't support the traditional restrictive views they were raised with. If a person is raised to think their Church is ABC and anything outside of that is wrong, will have a difficult time when learning their Church also includes DEFGHIJKLMN. Whereas a person who was raised believing their church is ABCDEFGHIJ, probably won't have as hard a time when they learn it also includes KLMNOPQRSTUV.
But this again goes back to 'things are this way or that way' sort of thinking. Perhaps they view the world in those terms because that is how it was presented to them by their parents. Or they inherited that approach to things genetically from their parents.

Grocery store music

Whenever I hear a song in the grocery store that I think has artistic merit, I think about how disheartening it might be to hear one of your songs being played in a grocery store.
Background music in a grocery store seems like one of the lowest forms of artistic expression. Something deliberately not meant to have a strong impact on the listener, but rather to be as non-intrusive and easily digestible as possible.
I imagine the artist buying groceries, feeling at first a surge of excitement at the recognition of his own music over the speakers but then saddened to realize that this is what his or her music has come to.
Well, I was listening to an interview on Npr with some 'Creed' sounding musician who surprised me when he said that hearing his music in the grocery store is one of the best feelings in the world.

Rats off to ya!

Ever since last week I've had troubled relationship with the toilet.

(warning, what follows may leave you too with a troubled toilet relationship. Read at your own risk!)

Space.

I have been noticing an upswing in describing something large as being able to be seen from space. I've been hearing it often in reference to the oil spill. Just now on npr I heard that description used to describe this giant beaver dam.
I find this description not helpful at all.
Where is space? One mile up? 100? The moon? Pluto?
I know my house can be seen from space. I've checked myself on Google earth. But my house isn't very big. We have good optics that can see things from far away, so seeing something from space isn't very impressive, or helpful in understanding the size of the object.
Perhaps if these descriptions were more specific, ex: '___can be seen with the naked from the space station', it would be useful to me.


P.S. (written 5/12)
I don't want it seem as if I was really worked up about this issue. I am not at all. I just happened to be listening to npr with my laptop in front of me and so noted my observation. I am also not worked up about the possibility of having seemed worked up, I was just looking back at this and wanted to include post script. I am also not worked up about having seemed to be worked up about having seemed to be worked up.

Lord Neanderthal.

I was reading an interesting article today about the mapping of the neanderthal genome on the npr website.(Turns out humans DID have sex with Neanderthals. European's at least. Genes specific to neanderthals are found in people of European Ancestory but not African. Which makes sense since neanderthals lived in Europe. How widespread the human Neanderthal love affair went is unknown. Theoretically it may have only happened once, though that seems unlikely)
The article on Npr included this photo of an artist depiction of a neanderthal.



Looking at it, I thought the face looked awfully familiar.




Then it dawned on me.. It is none other than our Lord and Saviour...Jesus!


(if you are wondering why I say this dumbfounded looking man is Jesus, click here)

After getting over my surprise that Jesus was actually a neanderthal, I noticed the picture also reminded me of someone else.
None other than our other Lord and Savior....Cat Stevens!



Their face is kind of similar, but mostly I am thinking about the short bangs/big beard.

So not only Jesus was a Neanderthal, but he was clearly a friend or acquaintance of Cat Stevens. Maybe he asked C. Stevens to give him a hair cut, or he just liked Cat's hair enough to style his own the same way. Either way, these neanderthal genes have shown there is a lot we didn't know about Jesus.(or Cat Stevens)

Rainbow prints

For some reason, Glen has taken a liking to standing in my watercolor pallet(it is a rectangular plate with inch high walls) while grooming himself. This leads to rainbow paw prints over the kitchen counter.
In other cat news, ever since he jumped from the window sill onto my face and experienced my startled, angry reaction, he seems to have learned to not jump on our stomachs(or faces) anymore. He carefully jumps in between us.
I also wonder if he might be bi-polar. For a few days he will be wild then seem melancholy for several days and then a few days being even-tempered. Maybe he is just going through puberty.
Cats: the most boring thing to hear about unless it is your own.

Really great thing.

There is this medication which I have taken for a couple years now which doesn't really have an equivalent and has no generic form that for some reason my insurance did not cover. It cost me nearly 200$/month.
This is quite a bit of money for a person like me(poor), but I didn't really have any alternatives. If I could not take this medicine I gladly would.

Because it was so expensive, I would buy only a few pills at a time. As a consequence of this, I had to go into my local Rite Aid at least once or twice a week, making me a 'regular'. Everyone knows knows my name and even recognizes my voice on the phone.
One lady in particular is working almost every time I go in. She is what you probably imagine if you imagined a sweet, kindhearted old lady and I refer to her as 'Grandma'(not to her face). When I go in, she seems genuinely happy to see me as I am to see her.
One day, as I was getting my usual 4 pills, a miracle occurred: there was no charge! It was covered by my insurance!
This was about one week after Obama's health care bill had passed. I have no idea if it was related or not. Perhaps it was connected to one of the changes which took effect immediately, perhaps not, but I like to imagine it is.
Either way, this has a big impact on my life. As you can imagine, I was extremely excited to learn this medication is now covered.
It has been over a month and I don't see 'Grandma' nearly as much, but it is well worth the money I save.
There is no larger principal to this story which inspired me to write about it. It is just something I was really excited about and am still excited about whenever it's remembered.

Plants and signs and shelves.

Here are a few of the things I have been doing with my free time since graduation.(I have quite a bit of free time these days and I LOVE IT!)


I made signs for my herb/vegetable garden. Here are some scanned images:

















I made a present for my Grandpa. It is a long story but at the beginning of last quarter I suddenly had to come up with $6000 or I couldn't register for classes and wouldn't have been able to graduate when I did. Thankfully my rich grandpa(he helped found Enron, but is not a crook. He retired before all the shady business went down.) pulled through. This was a present I made to thank him. The pot was made by Marissa. The sign by myself and the plant by mother nature(vs. nurture):










I built and installed a shelf two days ago.
I saw something similar in the New York Times and really liked it.
I am thinking of putting in two more shelves so the windows if filled with plants, however, marissa and I will be moving in a few months, so I'm not sure if I want to put that much work into something I will have to take down soon:



(my camera battery is dead and I can't find the charger, so I took this photo with my mac's photobooth feature. In case you were wondering why the quality is so low)


I also ate some funny candy:




In addition to my inside garden, I also planted an outside garden(marissa helped quite a bit with the outside garden. She did much of the hard work. ie. pulling out the plants and weeds that were already in our tiny little garden space. There was one especially troublesome weed plant that took me almost an hour to pull out. A few of the leaves from it were left in the soil and within days put down considerable roots)



I made a wooden box for something I never ended up using it for and Marissa had the brilliant idea that I could use it as a shelf for my tea things.






(Not that you were interested but that ceramic tile is normally on the wall above the mountain painting. I don't remember why it was on top of the box when I took this photo. And the pencil is normally in my hand writing important documents.)

There are some more things I could post but...my caffeine buzz is starting to wear off.

2nd

Today is the second! My favorite day of the month.
The reason?
Food stamps!!!!
Hurray!!!!
Thank you liberals for setting up a system which allows me to eat healthy despite being poor!!
Thank you tax payers for financing this system.
No thank you tea baggers for opposing these sort of organizations.(but I also thank you for continuing to pay your taxes and supporting me.)
Hello Trader Joe's and the co-op. Thank you for having delicious, healthy food at good prices!
Thank you farmers and food processors for providing the food to grocery stores.
And most of all, thank you to me. Thank you Christopher and God bless you with the force of a million tumble weeds blowing into your face.
To all my poor friends, you should really look into getting food stamps. It is easy to do and really makes a big difference.
To all the tea baggers again.

A true story.

I 8 a sl8 on a g8 with my l8 gr8 m8 on a d8. We then went str8 to our est8 to deb8 our in8 tr8s and cr8 pl8s. Although she was ir8 it did not neg8 our f8 or make us h8. We read the gold pl8s while feeling sed8. We then chose to conjug8 and procr8. Then we talked about the number seven.

I swear all of this is true.