Hypochrondia and Puppy Parties

The external temperature reading on my dashboard read 99 degrees Fahrenheit today.

The temperature on the inside of the car was pretty darn close to 99 degrees, too. This was because my air conditioning is currently broken. It hasn't worked since the end of last summer.

This pretty much sucks monkey butt because a.) we live in Florida, b.) it's blazing hot here, c.) and it is July, which means it is never less than 90 degrees.

I have completely given up trying to look even remotely cute, like, ever. I'm resigned to being a big, sweaty slob.

I guess that's okay. I'm not trying to impress anyone.

The heat feels hideous because I have picked up a sick bug...again.

I am hacking in a very un-ladylike fashion and my throat feels like I swallowed a small kitten that didn't give up easily.

This "new" coughing thing ticks me off because I just got over a cough last week. The "old" cough was a side effect of a blood pressure medication, so I was switched to a new one.

It took weeks to get the first wicked junk out of my system. Every time I coughed ~ not even kidding ~ I pissed myself and my brain bounced around inside my skull. It thought my eyeballs were going to fall out at the end.

The only good thing brought about the entire debacle was the cough syrup. It made me pleasantly zingy and tres productive. I could understand why people became crack heads.

So, I literally had a two days reprieve from my side effect cough.

Then my husband got sick. He shuffled his butt to the doctor and I was all, like, "Thank Gawd that ain't me, y'all! Yeee-hawwww"

I woke up with a wicked sore throat the next morning.

Then I started coughing. Last night, I coughed so hard and long that I wet my pants.

I think that I am just going to give in and buy some of those Poise or Serenity pads. I don't care any more, as must be apparent to you all as you peruse my blog and note my obsession with bodily functions.

I dragged my butt to the doctor this morning.

I heart that I PAY this dude to listen to my hypochondriac tendencies, whereas my husband merely tells me that I am a hypochondriac, then tells me what I need to change. It's all very un-fun to be told what one needs to change. Sometimes you just want someone to smile, nod and humor you.

Oh, and also my doctor can actually order scientific tests and gnarly stuff like that. He can tell me if there is a physiological reason that I am fat. And I'm certain it is physiological.

Perhaps ~ just perhaps ~ it isn't the bottles of wine I "occasionally" enjoy in the evenings. Maybe there is something jacked up with my hormones which can be fixed with medicine. I loooove it when things can be fixed with medicine.

"I think there is something wrong with me," I said to my doctor this morning. "Like, other than my sore throat and cough."

"Oh, now, what do you mean," he asked, all concerned-like. He coddles, instead of dismisses me like someone I know. I love it. I need a live-in person to coddle me, nod and look concerned. Like someone "on staff." That would be radical.

I explained that I am up to running almost three and a half miles 3-4 times a week. I'm kicking it on the Bridge to 10 K program on my way to a half marathon. I asked to have some more blood work done, including thyroid and hormone levels.

Because I'm eating boat loads of vegetables which is causing explosive diarrhea. On our last grocery run we bought three to five pound bags of frozen fish. I don't even like fish; I have spent weeks trying to make fish taste better. I also spent about twenty bucks on cans of low sodium tuna, which I DO like. I could ~ and do ~ eat tuna every day. All of my problems with blood pressure and cholesterol will be solved soon, I'm sure, when I die of mercury poisoning.

Something I just don't understand is why all of this "low sodium" crap COSTS more? My low sodium tomato soup ~mmmm~ and low sodium tuna is waaaaaaay more expensive than the normal stuff. I mean, they take some of the salt out...so wouldn't it be cheaper? It makes me angry.

I hope there is some easy explanation for this whole thing, because I think that I am the hardest-working, healthiest-eating fat girl on the planet.

After my appointment at which I was sufficiently coddled, we took Ragnar to the puppy party.

It was interesting to see him come out of his shell around the other puppies. The other puppies all happened to be females, which was an added bonus for Sir Ragnar. He attempted to hump every single one of them. Good boy.

We also heard him bark for the very first time today.

He has a very deep bark that will hopefully be very intimidating if we can train him to only bark when the doorbell rings

I'm so psyched; it's a very satisfying bark ~ like that of a big, beefy truck horn. Hopefully he will make a very good watch dog. We have an alarm system, but it will just be good to have extra protection in a town where the most prevalent crime is burglaries.

We drove home in the blazing heat. The thermometer read 101 degrees.

I got home, put the tot to bed, the puppy in the kennel and ripped off my clothes and laid in bed under the ceiling fan. I slept for the rest of the afternoon. I didn't go out again because to do so would be cruel and inhumane. I thought about those people who work outside in the heat every day and said a pray of thankfulness for our blessings.

It is thoughts like these that make me NOT want to get my air conditioning fixed. It is a good lesson to me ~ a great reality check ~ that we have it so good.

Fifty percent of our cars have air conditioning. Our house is air conditioned. We HAVE a house. My husband has three jobs and we can pay our bills. We HAVE our health (with only minor, fixable and cosmetic issues going on). We have food in the pantry and the fridge. We have clean water.

I think I will choose not to fix the air conditioning in my car, just to stay aware of all of the issues above. God has given us so many blessings and we often take them for granted. Perhaps if we don't have something and it results in a little bit of temporary discomfort, it will help remind us of what we DO have...which is a lot.

We are most definitely blessed.

Padma Lakshmi and The State of my Panty Drawer

Today a snitch made off with every single pair of earphones in the house.

So, I was forced to make up my own soundtrack on the daily jog. My thoughts were a pitifully sad state of affairs this morning. They went something like this:

"How does Padma Lakshmi look the way that she does?"

"In that butt shot scene in "Fast and Furious" where the woman is wearing satin yellow hot pants, what did she do exactly to make her inner thighs not touch all the way up to her crotch?"

And:

"Exactly how much effort would I have to expend to lose the belly flap that has seemed to form after the birth of this third child ~ the high maintenance nature of it being that it requires applications of cornstarch powder throughout the day to keep it fresh?"

But mostly I thought about the pathetic state of affairs of my underwear drawer.

Some would correct me, saying that I should call it a "lingerie drawer." However, calling the contents of this drawer "lingerie" would sort of like be calling that Malibu Musk aerosol spray I purchased at the dollar store, "eau de parfum."

I first thought about the underwear situation a couple months ago, shortly after our monumental road trip from Iowa to Florida.

The said underpants had been carelessly (on my part) thrown into my friend Kaat's load of laundry and were not given another thought until I saw ~ with a horror that brought a stars into my vision ~ that she had very carefully folded my panties and set them apart from her clothes.

I stared at the neat little pile, speechless and mortified. They were the white, granny, multi-pack fare ~ the kind bought at Target for $4.99. The crotches were  dingy  and some even had holes in unmentionable places.

My panties have not always looked like this.

I remember with a sense of loss and remorse the panties I had purchased when my husband returned from Iraq. I even take them out and look at them every once in a while. I made the mistake once of trying one of them on recently.  It made me throw up in my mouth a little. I took them off immediately.

The year he was gone was spent in the gym. All the lunges, running and weights had improved the general situation going on with my body to the point where I didn't mind the full-length mirror in the bathroom so much anymore. It wasn't a bikini bod, by any means, but it was satisfactory.

I blame the Brazilian butt bikinis for getting me knocked up on the very first day that my husband came home.

That was the end of my adorable Victoria Secret  lingerie stash, because I was immediately green with morning sickness and anything that wasn't waist high wasn't comfortable enough.

The lace, frilly pairs of panties were packed away in a box and were not thought of again until this morning when I was forced to be left alone with my own thoughts on my jog.

The thoughts should have made me go a little bit further or longer, but they didn't. I came back early to make them mercifully stop.

Oh, and I have a lot of laundry to do; I'm out of clean underwear.