Notify the troops

Dear Immune System:

You have done an admirable job defending against enemy forces for the past week. However, your resolve is beginning to weaken and it is beginning to affect your station.

Therefore, as your commander in chief, I hereby request that you stand down and surrender to enemy forces. We shall negotiate peaceful terms and you shall finally have rest.

In return, the body that you defend shall become ill, but once the enemy forces have run their course, it shall rise again, better, stronger, and faster.

Regards,

Molly

Cheerier things, as promised

OK, I can’t leave you all hanging with that last post. My life isn’t that dramatic all the time.

My birthday came the Sunday before last, so Saturday night my roommates threw a shindig at our humble abode. A few of the Philly volunteers came over with a cake and a card, and we hung out, played games, drank and talked.

This is how awesome the Philly JVs are: They got me a plastic ring with the Virgin Mary on it. The card read: “We know you really like Jesus, so we got you a ring with a picture of his mom on it.” :)

The next day there was an FJV party at the Philly JV house, so we went over there to help host. (The free food was a good incentive, too.) There was more cake, too! After some milling around, meeting and greeting, we took off for Mass at Old St. Joe’s, the oldest Jesuit parish in Philadelphia.

In case there was any doubt that I would have a blessed 23rd year, the priest at Mass quoted Lamb, one of my favorite books, in the homily. And there was Adoration with Taize for an hour after Mass. I didn’t know about it until the priest placed the host in the monstrance, but I had a rosary in my purse and decided to stay for a while. My friend Katie, a Philly JV, stayed with me. Further, they announced that this week, a relic of St. John Vianney will be at the parish for veneration from October 1st-7th. I’m headed there after work today to check it out.

When I got home, my roomies gave me their gift—a little chest of drawers with coupons in it. The coupons were for things like outings with each roommate (movie night with Mark, cooking with Christine, a trip to Walt Whitman’s grave (!) with Stephanie, a trip to the store for sweet things with Amber, and a walk to the waterfront with Jenna). JV community life is pretty sweet.

We went on retreat the following Thursday—the southern region of JVC east headed to Our Lady of Matapani (mad-uh-puh-NYE) in Maryland for a community-based retreat. In our completely unbiased opinion, we think we’re the best community. Hands down. :P

Matapani is a beautiful facility. The buildings were arranged in an oval, with a chapel at one end and a meeting hall on the other. There were cabins on either side. The buildings surrounded a big grassy area with a gazebo. Each cabin had a porch, where we spent a significant amount of time jamming with a guitar, a fiddle, a harmonica and a voice (they just can’t shut me up) improvising music. We got a football game going behind the cabins. There was personal, one-on-one time with each community member (we call these meetings “dyads”), big community meetings, Mass and a community mate game (much like the newlywed game). We won at the community part (we shall not speak of the bonus round, which 1) is the reason we lost and 2) had nothing to do with community. We’re not bitter or anything…)

Thrown into this whole weekend were the following factors: I woke up on my birthday with a cold, and consequently lost my voice for the entire duration of the retreat (excluding the porch jam session). Four out of six Camden JVs have succumbed to this illness in the last two weeks. Amber and I seem to be suffering from its lingering effects (sweet Amber has an ear infection. I just can’t stop coughing and have very low energy). We also pulled the mother of all pranks on the Philadelphia JVs (they had it coming—they started the war). It was quite the whirlwind of secrecy, guile, deception, and logistics to pull it off.

We came back to work on Monday, but Monday night I didn’t fall asleep until 6am because I kept coughing. (Before you ask, no, we did not have any cough syrup. No, I didn’t buy any when I got sick. But that’s only because I didn’t have a cough then.) So when I walked into work the following day, they sent me right back home because I looked terrible.

So I spent yesterday at home on the couch. I watched the best sick day movie in the world—Robin Hood: Men in Tights. I was there when TWO birthday packages came in the mail, so they cheered me right up. I slept like a baby, both during the day and last night. I still don’t feel 100%, but at least I can function.

Those were some happy days. I love the days following a birthday, when the surprises sort of trickle in. It shall be a good year.

On a lighter note

It hit me after posting yesterday that I’ve put some pretty heavy stuff on the blog since I arrived. I should try and lighten the mood around here.

Good or funny things that have happened in the past few weeks:

The Camden JV house pooled its resources over the weekend to enter a raffle, and we ended up winning FREE ORGANIC MILK for a WHOLE YEAR! Woot! Simply living is awesome when you get 52 coupons for free anything, let alone organic dairy products!

Last night Mark, out of the kindness of his heart (and his stipend), bought flowers for his roommates. :)We are a lucky group of girls to have him around.

None of us has gone running for a while because there’s been some pretty shady activity on and around the bridge. Our favorite bicycle cop told us a few times once we got there not to cross the bridge because it didn’t look safe for us. I knew it was too good to be true, having a safe place to run. I think the shady stuff picked back up as soon as the mornings started getting darker. But the happy phoenix from the ashes is that we’ve been doing yoga together to get some exercise in. Yoga and weight routines… I’d better have some decent muscles come springtime!

We’re a particularly musical household. Mark practices guitar a lot, and I’m sure I’ll start borrowing his chord books to learn as soon as my guitar arrives. Last night, after the guitar’s curtain call, I was drying my hair and belting out selections from Les Miserables, which gave us all a lot to talk about. Good times.

I’m developing a fascination with Lady Gaga. Between a beautiful voice and the masquerade thing she has going on, I’m overlooking how weird she is. Wouldn’t it be fun to be her for a day?
My birthday is coming up and all I really want to do is go to Independance Hall and check out all the historical stuff in Philly. I've been there before, but I'd like to go refresh. I have a sentimental weakness for American history.
We used our leftover apples to make apple crisp for dessert last night. Hello, autumn. You smell like baked apples and cinnamon.
It feels good to write about less heavy things than work. I'll remember to do this more often.

Numb me, drill me, floss me, bill me

For a nearly 22-year-old woman, you'd think I'd have learned to keep my teeth in decent shape. But no, ladies and gents. I had my first filling today.

Ow. I mean really. Ow.

I nearly cried in the dentist's chair. I really hope I never need a root canal. I looked like a total wimp.

BUT, my mom and I went shopping for my first new clothes in over a year. Say hello to new jeans with no holes in them! Ah, simple joys. I wasn't feeling so great when we started because I was still pretty numb. And cringing in pain and discomfort wears you out pretty badly. But eventually the novacane wore off and I got a second wind. So it was still a good day.

Back in the saddle

I'm home from the beach, back at work, and fighting a cold-- and oddly, in a decent mood. Maybe that's just because I'm still fresh from the vacation. Expect pictures soon, though I only got a few good ones.

I did FINALLY meet Miss Ellery, and I think I'm in love! She's a tall little thing; 24 inches long at just under three months. So she has a lot of length but not a lot of muscle tone to move it around. She notices everything, expecially sound-wise-- I noticed that she paid special attention when someone started singing (erm, guitly) and when the music from the TV changed. Let's get this girl into piano lessons, stat!

Less than two weeks left of work!

Hulk sick.

Hulk sick.

Hulk no feel good.

Hulk consequently bummed out.

Hulk had a really great New Year's celebration and Holy Mary, Mother of God Feast day (happens to be January 1st), but Hulk still quite down now that Hulk home.

Because Hulk sick. Hulk quite sick.

I have come down with the flu. Great. Just looking at my computer screen hurts.

I had a great New Year's Eve, and the flu symptoms (which, according to WebMD.com, tend to come on suddenly) hit yesterday evening. The stuffy nose and dry cough came a few days before. Now I'm dizzy, feeling weak, and my intestines have mutinied.

At least there's a few days left of break to try and recover.

Ugh. Hulk not happy about this.

Insomnia, anyone?

I am so over this insomnia. Now I wish I could convince my body of that.

I ran my butt off at the gym today so that I could sleep like a rock tonight, and here it is, almost 3 am (4 am if you note the fact that we just "fell back" three hours ago), and I can't sleep. Frickin' workout. It should have made me sleepy; now I'm just really sore. And wide awake.

I used part of the time to read a novel for young adult literature, but that only ate up two hours (big print, wide margins). I'm going to go read for my other class. I really should jump ahead, since I have two midterms this week. But I'm at that awful point where studying goes in my eyes and out the back of my brain.

The thing is, I really am tired. But when I lie down to sleep, my brain decides it's going to triple its activity level and it feels like a freight train is running though the middle of my head as I lie there. I guess there's a lot on my mind, and I also guess (all right, I don't guess. I know.) that I don't have much of an outlet for it. So here I'm am, just stewing about it all.

St. John Vianney said once that God commands us to pray, but forbids us to worry. In a sense, I'm not really worried. Just pensive. So much so that it keeps me up at night.

Atypical pneumonia or episodic asthma

That's what the second doctor this week thinks is wrong. My whooping cough culture isn't back yet, so we're really not sure.

I get an inhaler and nasal spray, and if this doesn't go away in a month, it's probably pneumonia.

Sigh. I'll hit the pharmacy later to pick everything up. I really hope it works. I don't want to have pneumonia.

Pertussis cultures are not fun

I finally dragged my sorry self to the doctor today. Imagine the looks on the health care workers' faces when I said that the symptoms have lasted for six weeks...

The doc (who was a very nice doctor) kept gushing about how I'm otherwise as healthy as an ox (that is, until he checked my heart rate. I had to explain that it races when anyone touches me- I'm not unhealthy, just starved for physical contact!). He said that he's had two cases of pertussis (a fancy name for whooping cough) in the past two weeks, which is what made him think that that's what's up. He kept reassuring me that it's no where near a conclusive guess, but he gave me the culture anyway.

A pertussis culture, by the way, is not the most pleasant thing you will ever experience. I can get through throat cultures without gagging just fine, thanks to years of vocal training (I can lift my soft palette so high that you could stick a corn cob down my throat and I could take it). But a pertussis culture is different. They don't use a cotton swab, they use a very thin (albeit sharp) metal wire. And they do take it from the back of your throat, but not through your mouth. They stuck the wires up my nostrils, pushed through to the very back of my throat, and twisted it around for a while before gently yanking it back out (well, I suppose this entire ordeal was done gently, so there was no need to specify there). It isn't painful, per se. Just very uncomfortable. I'm not used to anything in the back of my throaat, much less that high up. Much less with the rest of it sticking out of the other side of my face through my nose.

Home from Oregon, going to the doctor ASAP

The good news is that I had a lovely time down south with the family. I'm perfectly contented to go back to work tomorrow, since my mind and psyche have been cleansed by the sea.

The bad news is that I'm entering into the sixth week of this "cold," although I'm pretty damn sure it's not a cold. I've had a bunch of fevers, I have no energy left after work (not even for a twenty-minute workout) and I'm coughing like Typhoid Mary. I'm sick and tired of feeling sick and tired, but I think I figured it would just go away. Off to the walk-in clinic tomorrow to see what's up. I had really hoped it was allergies, but they it would have stopped when I left town. Apparently there's something raging within my system.

"Hey, Issac, what do nettles look like?"

Quoth my radio call to my partner this afternoon.

The question was prompted by the burning sensation from my elbow to my hand after having stuck my arm through a harmless-looking bush on the side of the road. Once it started looking like a million mosquitoes had had at it on my skin, I figured it had to be nettles. Big fun.

The sad thing is that I've had nettles a bunch of times before when I was little, but every time someone said, "See those? Those are nettles," I was too preoccupied with the stinging to actually process what nettles actually look like.

I also accidentally got lost in a county truck for forty minutes (when I finally radioed for help, it turned out I was about a block away from the shop. But, since I have no internal compass, I still needed turn-by-turn directions. I am so cool like that...) Later when I was recording all of our fuel mumbo-jumbo, the diesel pump popped and squirted me in the face.

Although strangely, I had a really good day. It was just eventful.

Happy 4th, if you're reading this then!

I am so lame

I've figured out why I never worked out in high school. It was the hours I was keeping.

Every morning when I get up for work, I promise myself I'll hit the gym when I come home. But when I come home, I'm hungry. So I eat, and then the fact that I've been up so long slowly sinks in. By 6pm, all I want is to lie low and get some sleep.

Hence, no work out in a week. I keep picking days to go for it, and then I end up falling asleep at home.

This is not good. It took me months to get into decent enough shape that my body would want exercise. I'll go this week, I promise (who am I promising? All right, faithful readers (all 2.4 of you), be my witnesses).