Rough Week

Last week was rough. Wednesday wasn’t really any better than Tuesday except it was broken up by my orthodontist appointment. My old orthodontist sent my x-rays, but nothing else, so they had to guess at what wires I was wearing. They removed my bottom wire which hadn’t been off in forever, I wish I had thought to ask if I could brush and floss while it was off. When they took it off, one of my brackets went with it. I think that was number ten. Not really a big deal, they just snapped it into the wire and glued it right back down. Then, as they were putting the new chain on top, another bracket popped off. This was a little harder ‘cause the upper wire is actually tied down to the brackets, so they had to kind of wiggle it around to get enough room to put more glue on the bracket and reset it. Other than that, their office is really cramped and outdated, but what can you expect in the South? They’re all very nice though. Since my records didn’t come
through I had to pay cash for that appointment. I hope they get my stuff by next time and set me up with a payment plan again.

Wednesday evening, despite my whole face hurting and having a sinus headache, I went to the store after work. Why do you ask did I do that? Because the guy that hired me got a new job and was moving to California Friday so we were throwing him a going away party/potluck. So off to the store I went. Then I went home and started baking like crazy. I might have gone a little overboard, but I felt a need to impress my new coworkers. So I took my recipe for low-fat lemon lime layer cake and turned it into mini cupcakes. I figured it’d make two trays worth, or four dozen. I was *slightly* off. I ended up with eight dozen mini cupcakes. While I was rotating pans out of the oven I started pureeing some berries. They were frozen, and I don’t have my big food processor, just a stick blender with a chopper attachment, so I had to do it in small batches. Have you ever tried to strain frozen berry puree? It doesn’t work very well. Also, my kitchen is
quite small and has almost zero counter space, so I was constantly moving stuff around, even putting stuff in the living room to get it out of the way. I went to make the icing, then realized that I can’t mix cream cheese and powdered sugar by hand, and the stand mixer was still full of cake batter, so I set the bowl of frosting ingredients aside until I got the mixer cleaned up. What I didn’t realize is that I set it right by the oven vent, so when I went back to mix it the powdered sugar had melted, oh and I burned my hand on the now super hot bowl. The up side was the cheese was soft so I could mix it. But it was lumpy. So I got out the other attachment to my stick blender and got it smooth, and a decent amount of it splattered all over the kitchen. This whole time I was pureeing berries and trying to force them through a strainer. I tried a couple different
kinds of spatula and finally settled on a small whisk. Of course it was getting late by then so I was trying to be fast and thus splattered berry puree all over the kitchen (amazingly enough none of it got on my light pink shirt!). I finally got all the cupcakes baked, frosting made, and sorbet in the freezer. I took one last look at the disaster that was my kitchen, said screw it, and went to bed.

Thursday wasn’t too bad with everybody bringing in yummy looking food we were all anticipating a nice lunch. We had to go to group training for the Safety Conscious Work Environment. Don’t ask me what that means, I don’t know. Obviously the training was a success. The potluck was really good, tons of food. None of my coworkers knew what sorbet is “is that like yogurt??” Most of them also didn’t know what a stand mixer was either. *sigh* Everybody was raving about the sorbet. The cupcakes were ok but not great; I need to tweak the recipe a bit. I don’t think much work got done Thursday afternoon, with everybody stuffed from lunch and it being Thursday and all. The afternoon dragged by for me with nothing but more training to do. Finally it was time to go home. I hadn’t really heard from my man since Tuesday when he said he wanted to Skype to go over some mail with me (so confused on what mail he could have gotten that he needed to Skype with me about it!). So I was looking forward to chatting with him on IM when he got home
from work. Alas, the stars did not align for me. He never logged in online, and he didn't return any texts I sent. By bed time I was pretty upset, so I even tried calling him, no answer. Even the kitties could not cheer me up.

Friday I got to sleep in a bit, but not as much as I wanted. I had to get to The City by 10 for my appointment with the new doc. I was dragging but I got myself out the door mostly on time. As I neared the address for the doctor’s office I started to get a little confused because it seemed like a very residential area. When I rounded the last turn and found the address I was really confused because I found myself in the driveway of a private residence. There was no sign or label or anything to advertise that this was a doctor’s office. I sat in my car for a few moments trying to gather myself and decide if I wanted to call the doctor to make sure that the address was correct. While I was sitting there a guy pulled up behind me and asked if I lived there,
when I said no he headed towards the front door. As I was getting out of my car, UPS pulled up and headed to the front door too. Quite the busy place on a Friday morning. I took a deep breath and headed up the walk myself. I don’t know what I was expecting, but an older black lady in a house coat was not it. She pointed me into her “office” and handed me the remote to the TV before apologizing and wandering off. Sometime later she came back in a dress and shoes, apologized some more, picked up some stuff and wandered off again. Her “office” was an absolute mess. Papers and books everywhere, hardly room to move, not an empty horizontal surface in sight. And I noticed a poster for a book “Treating ADHD With an Emphasis on No Meds.” Great, just what I wanted from somebody I was trying to get a prescription from.

The doctor finally came back and sat down after fiddling with papers and trying to find things she needed. She asked me to say in one sentence what my main concern was, even if I had multiple concerns. I told her ADD, she asked why I thought I had it, I explained I had been diagnosed by a psychologist in 4th grade and again earlier this year, she then asked what I wanted from her. I was a little taken aback by that, but managed to say I needed to keep my prescription up to date without stuttering too much. It was then that she explained that she is a doctorate, not a doctor, she can’t prescribe anything. I should have just said “thank you for your time” and left, but I’m not really capable of asserting myself like that. She decided to give me
another self assessment (I don’t know why) so I sat there doing that while she answered the doorbell, tried to call my insurance (it seemed like she had NO idea what she was doing), and answered a phone call. She also explained that the man that had come right before me gave her a subpoena, and the guy at the doorbell was another subpoena. I think she talked about herself more than I talked at all. She babbled a bit more, promoted her book, asked if I’d tried going without meds (I have), and finally said she’d write me a nice little diagnosis so I could just take it to another doc and get my meds filled. The catch was she wanted me to come for another appointment. Again, I should have just asked to get it that day or not at all, but I couldn’t
bring myself to disagree. After I made the next appointment she pointed to her calendar and showed me that the notation for my appointment that day had been lost in the scribbles and that’s why she was asleep when I showed up. I was almost crying with frustration by the time she showed me the door. (As a side note, as I’m writing this, maybe I should just cancel the second appointment and ask her to send me whatever?)

After that train wreck I headed to Costco. Usually that makes me feel better, but I just felt blah. Then I headed to Hobby Lobby, I love that store. I needed some supplies for my jewelry making, and I had come up with an idea for a present that I wanted to do. As I walked through the aisles I got sniffle-y ‘cause I missed my friend that I always went with, and the little one. I kept thinking “oooh she would like this” “oh I want to get this for her!” Then getting sad ‘cause shipping stuff is hard and expensive (there’s no UPS or FedEx here). I was still feeling down when I left Hobby Lobby and headed to Petsmart. There’s no pet store where I live, so my poor kitties were lacking in proper toys and such. I definitely remedied that! I spoil the heck out of any creature under my care, and the kitties are no exception. Getting their personalized name tags made me smile a little, but I was still pretty down. After the pet store I headed to Ulta, which started making me miss my friends even more. I decided I needed to make a care package for the little one. She got her first big part in a school play and I won’t be there to see her, so I started gathering stuff that I thought she’d like and that might help with the stress of being a star. I was kind of sniffle-y ‘cause I really miss shopping with her. I also asked to get my eyebrows done, but their girl that does it wasn’t there. I wandered by their salon area and saw one of the stylists had great hair, vibrant dark red and black coifed into curls, bright red lipstick fit for a pinup, and cute stockings. On a whim I asked if they had an opening for a trim, they did, and it was with her! Turns out she’s kind of like an older version of my stylist back home. She
knows how to handle super thick hair, need little direction for styling, and doesn’t try to sell lots of product (although when I asked she pointed me towards some awesome stuff to help deal with the humidity!). I just got a trim that visit, but made an appointment to get color done the next week! As I walked out the door I realized I was smiling, that was just what I needed to lift my spirits!

Later that evening I got to Skype with my man, he apologized for missing me earlier because he had been helping process all the deer his hunting group had gotten on Sunday. The rest of the weekend went by in what seems to be the norm for me now. Cleaned, cooked, baked, read, slept, played with the kitties, surfed the internet, worked on jewelry. I really wish I had so much work to do that I could get overtime. While three days never used to seem like enough time to get everything done before, it now seems like way more time than I need. Today I am applying for grad school. Depending on how much it costs I’m going to start soon even though it won’t be reimbursed. I really need something to take up more time and keep my brain active or I will completely lose it before I’m done with this assignment.

This week looks like it will be more of the same, training, training, and more training. Although I did get some noise-cancelling headphones to wear with my iPod while I’m training so I’ll at least have music…