My Shallow Moment

Let me take a moment to post about something very important to me:  Rex's hair.

I want to write about it because Rex is talking about cutting his hair again.  Aargh!  Whenever he cuts his hair he cuts it SO SHORT, and then I feel like I have an army guy walking around our house or something.  Not that there's anything wrong with army guys, obviously, but Rex isn't one.  He even says he wants to shave his head bald.  Aaaaah!!  I should have another solid thirty years before I'm married to a baldy.  Plus, I think I've been conditioned to like his long hair ever since high school.  I still remember the first time I thought Rex was "cute."  We were in Spanish 4, he was sitting behind me in the third row, and I turned around to talk to him.  His hair had just grown out long enough to curl a little bit, and I thought, "Wow, he looks really good with curly hair!"  Then we ended up dating and, well, the rest is history.  So curly hair = a GOOD THING.  So here it is, Rex - my public declaration of the fact that I like your curly hair.  Please don't shave it off like a cancer guy!

In case you aren't sure what I'm talking about, I'll give you a quick visual tutorial:

This one is too short

This one is too long

This one is just right

See, Rex?  Now you know how to maximize on your stunningly good looks!  But I guess I have to love you anyway...even if you're a baldy... ;-)

Things I Hate

I've been in a really cranky mood for the past few days.  Don't ask me why; I just have been.  I've been feeling downright ornery and cantankerous.  I didn't want to be cranky with Rex or with any of my friends, so instead I decided to vent my frustrations by making a list of everything I hate.  By the time I got to the fiftieth item, I was laughing and feeling a lot better.  I didn't start out the list thinking that I was going to blog about it, but now that I read it over again...it's kind of funny.  Enjoy!

50 THINGS I HATE

1. Itchy turtlenecks
2. Moving to new apartments
3. Bosses who embezzle stuff
4. Middle Schoolers
5. Mosquitos
6. Supermodels
7. Blisters on my toes
8. Zits
9. Movies with sad endings
10. Fish scales
11. Fat.  All fat.
12. Alarm Clocks
13. Pills
14. Stupid Doctors
15. Mushrooms
16. The color orange
17. Math homework done in pen
18. Any book by Nicholas Sparks
19. Chunky Peanut Butter
20. Robbers
21. Comma errors
22. "Mom" tatoos
23. Whiny Cats
24. Feet
25. Cosmopolitan Magazine
26. Everything on Twitter
27. The number 27
28. Frayed hems
29. Moldy Bread
30. Every Kardashian
31. The Simpsons
32. Algae (sp?)
33. Words I can't spell
34. Pillows with insufficient fluff
35. Rum
36. Sunburns
37. Forgetting to put laundry in the dryer
38. Pull switches on fans
39. Used toilet paper
40. Coffee
41. The University of Michigan
42. Strangely dyed hair
43. Headaches
44. People who think farts are funny
45. Star Wars
46. Feminists
47. Eyebrow Piercings
48. The person who invented high heels
49. Thorns
50. This stupid list

Stealing?

Rex and I are out of toilet paper.  We meant to go to the store last night, but I was stuck at a ridiculously long school board meeting (aka it started at 6, and I left at 11 but it was still going on).  We didn't get a chance to go.

Tonight, our good friend Elle took us out to dinner because she won big gambling on the strip with her sister (and her sister's money, ha ha).  YAY Elle!  Anyway, I went to the bathroom at the restaurant, and I saw two whole rolls of toilet paper, just sitting there...  Rex and I won't be able to go to the store until tomorrow, and what if I have to...you know...GO before then?

Long story short, I took a bunch of toilet paper and stuffed it into my bra like an optimistic middle school girl.  Is that stealing, or is it opportunistic?  I mean, we needed toilet paper!  The place has a bunch of it!  Plus, if I would have had really bad diarrhea or something, it's entirely possible that I could have used that much toilet paper at their restaurant.  Last time I checked there were no restrictions or regulations on toilet paper usage.  I just had some "for here" and then some "to go."  Restaurants are always doing that sort of thing, right?  RIGHT?!?!

Okay, fine.  I'm a wackadoo.  There's a fine line between smart and crazy, and I think I crossed it somewhere.

The Endocrineologist

I've decided that you can judge a lot about a doctor by their office waiting room.  It should have been a warning sign, then, when I sat down in a waiting room that was completely devoid of magazines and decorated with dollar store fake flowers and a creepy stuffed lion.  I looked around for something to do while I waited, but the only reading material available to me was a pamphlet entitled "Why Osteoporosis is Important to You."  For the record, after reviewing the material I have decided that osteoporosis is not, in fact, important to me.

After waiting for a half an hour in the waiting room, a nurse called me back to the exam room.  She asked me the normal nurse-y string of questions, took my blood pressure and weighed me, and told me the doctor would be in to see me "soon."

Let me interject for a moment by updating you on my health situation - I no longer have a brain tumor but am still exhibiting all of the symptoms of it (including very high prolactin levels - google the symptoms of that if you're feeling brave and you don't puke easily).  Therefore I was getting checked out by an endocrineologist to try to fix me.

I sat on the exam table for a while, waiting for the doctor to arrive.  He didn't.  I read the posters on the wall.  Guess what they were about?  Osteoporosis.  This man is obsessed with osteoporosis.  I spotted a magazine in the corner of the counter.  It was WebMD magazine, but it was better than nothing.  I picked it up and found an issue of Las Vegas Bride underneath it.  Whoo hoo!  The magazine selection in the exam room almost made up for the lack of magazines in the waiting room.  I was so excited that I didn't even question why a highly qualified endocrineologist with only two magazines in his office chose WebMD and Las Vegas Bride as reading material.  Whatever - I'm not complaining.

An hour later......I was sitting on the floor reading my bridal magazine and leaning up against the wall because my posture had quickly deteriorated while sitting on the exam table.  I finished the magazine and looked at my watch.  I had been waiting for an hour and a half since I arrived at the doctor's office.  I thought perhaps I had been forgotten, so I got up to go check with the receptionist.  Before I walked out, I saw a sign on the door.  Upon closer investigation, I found that it said, "Endocrineology is a time-intensive subset of medicine.  Your wait time may be long.  Please refrain from verbally abusing our employees, or you may be asked to leave and your contract with this practice will be terminated."

Geez louise!  I wasn't going to verbally abuse anyone!  I just wanted to ask!  Feeling chastened, I retreated back to my corner to await the doctor.

Finally the doctor walked in.  He looked at me quizically and asked why I was on the floor.  I told him that I wanted something to lean up against, so I chose the wall.  I can't possibly be the first patient who has done that.

The doctor began to interview me in his nerdy Indian (Asia Indian, not Casino Indian) accent.  He asked me a bunch of questions that I have answered a million times.  I first found out about my tumor in 2007...Yes, I've had numerous MRI's....No, I have not experienced tunnel vision or frequent fainting...  I got the standard shocked response when he found out I don't want to have kids.  After our interview, he said, "Now I have to put this down for the record."  He then pulled out a weird recording device and started talking into it.  As he talked, the words he said were typed onto his computer screen.  He talked slowly and robotically.  It was creepy.  He was talking about me as if I weren't sitting right there.  It was awkward.

After about twenty minutes of discussing things, he came up with this brilliant diagnosis:  "Are you certain that you're not pregnant?"

Yes, Doctor.  That's the best you could come up with out of all of this?!  I'm pregnant?

"Are you positive?  Did you take a pregnancy test?"
 I didn't need a medical degree to come up with that diagnosis, and I was hoping for a little more help from Doctor Obvious.  Here was his response to me:

"Okay, so you say you're 'not pregnant.'  Hmmm.  Okay.  Well, I believe you, but just to be sure, I'm going to have you take a pregnancy test."

Oh you SO don't believe me....how rude!  Do you want me to outline our birth control methods to you, Doctor Disbelief?  Because let me assure you, it would take a miracle for a baby Webb to be born.  So anyway, he makes me take a test to make absolutely positively sure that I'm not pregnant (I'm not), and then he says, "Also, I think we should do a bone density scan to make sure you don't have osteoporosis."

I almost snapped.  Seriously.  I wanted to say, "WHY ARE YOU SO OBSESSED WITH OSTEOPOROSIS?!?!  I have now read the warning signs and symptoms THREE different places in your office, and I don't fit any of the risk groups.  Why are you so in love with this disease?!  I'm not pregnant, and I DON'T have osteoporosis!!  Could we please start talking about things that will actually FIX THE ISSUES AT HAND!?!?!?!"

But of course I didn't do that, because it's a bad idea to tick off your doctor.  He started talking into his recorder/typer again, which gave me a moment to cool off.  As he took notes, I heard him say, "With her extremely high prolactin levels, it is probable that the patient will experience issues of infertility."  My eyebrows shot up (I couldn't help it), and Doctor Nutso noticed.  He misunderstood my look, because he hastily added to his notes "...but fertility does not seem to be a desire or an issue for this patient."

Excuse me, Doctor?  I'm not surprised because you commented on my "probable infertility" when I already told you I don't want kids.  I'm surprised because you just spent the past twenty minutes trying to convince me that I'm secretly pregnant, and now you're saying I couldn't even get pregnant if I wanted to!  Are you insane?  Do you have osteoporosis of the brain?!

Finally the appointment was finished, over two hours after I arrived.  He sent me home with a slew of blood tests, scans, and weird freeze-your-urine tests that I have to do.  Why is he torturing me?!  Is this punishment for not being pregnant or having osteoporosis?!  I'm sorry, doctor!  I did my best!  It's my probable infertility and milk drinking that is causing my satisfactory bone and reproductive health!  Drat!

So anyway, I still don't know what's wrong.  We'll see if these tests reveal anything.  Just a heads up, though - if you come over and see a lemon ice in my freezer, it's not a lemon ice.  Don't eat it.

New Year, New Project

Hello Loyal Readers,

I have started a new project for 2013, and it has its own blog to go with it!  I will still update this blog as usual, with stories about my life, my classroom, etc.  If you are interested in my new project "My Quest For Domesticity," you can check that out at this link:  http://myquestfordomesticity.blogspot.com/  Follow me, okay?  It will encourage me to continue the project if I know someone's watching for updates.  :-)

As a preview for you, I will copy the first post from that blog to this one, but other than this post I will probably be keeping the blogs separate.


My Quest For Domesticity - Post 1


Welcome to 2013 - only 63 years ahead of the time where I actually belong.

If you're too lazy to do that math yourself (which means you are probably fully assimilated into this 2013 other-people-will-do-it-for-me culture), the year to which I am referring is 1950.  If I believed in reincarnation, I would say that I think I lived in the fifties in a past life.  I probably raised a family with three kids while my husband worked his butt off in a factory or something, and then they grew up and I died of a heart attack in 1976 shortly after I learned my oldest son had been killed in Vietnam (which would explain my current sensitivity to death and war issues).

Okay, so maybe I didn't do any of that, but I will say that I feel strangely drawn to the decade of June Cleaver.  Did people like her actually exist, or is she a figment of our nostalgic imaginations?  I like to think my foremothers bear some resemblance to the fifties ideal, but I suppose I will never know for sure.

Over Christmas Break this year, my mother-in-law showed me some books that she got from a thrift store.  They were Home Economics textbooks from the 1940's and 50's.  Essentially, this is what junior high and high school girls were reading in order to learn how to be good wives and mothers.  I obviously can't post all about the books here, but I just took a picture of one of the pages to give you an idea about what these girls were being taught:

Please notice the caption on that picture.  Ha ha!  Obviously I don't agree with everything in these books, but they did make me wonder: what would it be like if I could, temporarily, live according to the rules set out for the women I so admire?  These books were very practical, telling the women of the day how to make a bed properly, how to wrap a gift, how to be a good hostess, etc.  It basically sets out the rules of how to be a fifties housewife, an ideal I have always striven to achieve.

I can hear the angry feminists screaming at me as they read this: "What are you doing?!  After how far women have come!  After all the freedoms we have struggled to achieve!  You are taking ten steps backward and submitting yourself to the misogynistic morals that we have striven for years to shake off!  You are a disgrace to our gender!"

Pipe down, Bra Burners.  I'm truly glad that women have freedoms today, and that we can do almost any job a man can do.  That's great.  Yay girl power.  But listen - do you want to know something fun about freedom?  It means that I have the freedom to choose to whatever I want to do, including studying up on how to be a fifties housewife and then blogging about it.  Who knows?  Maybe after a few months of following these rules I'll decide that being a fifties woman is completely ridiculous and I'll become an empowered feminist like you.

I doubt it.

So anyway - here is a description of my project.  I ordered a selection of Home Economics textbooks that were used in classrooms (levels junior high through college) between the years of 1930 and 1960.  I am going to spend 2013 following as many of the rules in those books as I can.  Since jumping in to following all of the rules at once would be a little nuts (not to mention I haven't even read all of the books yet), I am going to try to follow at least one per day and make it something that I would not normally do.  Example: today I am making homemade bread using flour, yeast, etc. because "homemade from scratch is always better than buying from the store."  Stay tuned for an update on how that goes.

Each day I will try something new, and I will blog about my experiences as a fifties housewife as often as possible.  I already sort of fail at being a housewife because I have to work full time, but hey - you're not paying to read this blog and I have to do something to make money in order to buy my flour and yeast.  It's actually okay, though, because my full-time job is being a teacher.  One of my books (written in 1946) says that if women must have a career, they can choose among the following acceptable careers for women: secretary, nurse, teacher, social worker, or librarian. Sweet!  I already passed the first test by choosing an acceptable career.  I told you I would make an awesome fifties wife.

So here it is - my blog chronicling my journey to becoming like the domestic women I've always admired.  It's going to be June Cleaver and Aunt Bea with a little bit of Lucille Ball thrown in.  After all, I'm sure that after a few of these antics my husband is going say in his best Desi Arnez accent, "Christine?  You've got some 'splaining to do..."

Check back for updates periodically.  As for now, I have to go punch my bread dough before it rises out of the bowl (that's really what the directions say!).  Oh yeah, this is going to be fun.