Author Archives: Cindy

New Test Leper

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I’ve been having this issue with my skin lately, and I have decided to share this information with the world. Here’s the deal: a couple of weeks before the wedding, I started getting zits on my forehead. Not surprising, I figured it was stress-related, and my body somehow knew that I was about to be the subject of a hundred or so photographs, so it decided to screw up my face. Fine, whatever. Good thing we sprang for the make-up artist on our wedding day. A few weeks after the wedding, I started getting bumps all over my chest. They didn’t appear to be pimples exactly, they were just little red bumps. But they didn’t itch. After I had those for a couple of weeks, the bumps on my chest started to spread up the sides of my neck and onto my jawline. Ok, fine, time to call the dermatologist. (I should mention that I already have a dermatologist because I had a particularly horrible breakout a couple of years ago, and this is the same doctor who helped me with that.) Meanwhile, Dave and I have taken to referring to it as The Plague (said in overly dramatic voice), which is basically what it feels/looks like.

I saw the dermatologist yesterday. She said that all the red bumps are indeed a form of acne, and by the way God, do I need to remind you that I am almost 30 freakin’ years old and this phase of my life is supposed to be over? Ok, thanks. So she put me on an antibiotic that’s supposed to help acne, although this is one of the drugs that I tried two years ago that did absolutely nothing for me, so I’m not terribly optimistic. If it doesn’t work, it may mean that I have to take the drug that fixed my acne two years ago, which is a rather controversial medication called Accutane. Now, while it will absolutely 100% kick my acne’s ass, here’s what I don’t like about Accutane:

1) It dries out all of my skin, not just what’s on my face, so I end up having to basically rub myself down with cocoa butter every day.
2) It makes my lips so dry that they peel, crack and bleed on a daily basis. (And I’m a lip balm addict, so that’s saying a lot.)
3) It causes such severe birth defects that the legal restrictions on this drug are insane. Each pill comes pre-wrapped in a package with a little icon of a pregnant woman with a red Ghostbusters “NO!” slash across her. I have to sign an affidavit stating that I will use 2 forms of birth control while I’m on it. I have to go for monthly pregnancy tests. (A nurse once told me that they even make post-menopausal women go for the pregnancy tests too, just to cover their asses.) I’m supposed to have monthly “pregnancy avoidance counseling” (ha!) with my doctor. Because if I get pregnant, God will murder ten kittens. No seriously, if I were to get pregnant, I would most likely have to get an abortion, and that would not be fun. Honestly, as tedious as all the hoops are that I have to jump through, mostly it just makes me paranoid. So obviously, I’m trying to avoid taking this particular drug.

Meanwhile, I have this antibiotic, and my dermatologist recommended that I also consider using one of those zit creams with benzoyl peroxide in them. I know I’ve used those types of things back in high school, and I knew I had a bad reaction to them, but the main thing I remembered was waking up with my eyes swollen shut, which is pretty horrible. So I thought, well maybe I’ll try it just on the bumps on my neck and chest – that’s far enough away from my eyes that it shouldn’t make them puff up. So when I was at the drug store, I grabbed some stuff with benzoyl peroxide in it, and I put it on before I went to bed last night.

This morning, my eyes were neither swollen nor puffy, but my neck and chest… oh my god. The redness. The itching. The color that’s been bleached out of the pillowcase (WTF?!). But mostly, it’s the Red that bothers me. Y’all, I am literally a red neck. Holy hell, what do I do with this? Make-up doesn’t cover it. I just put tons of blush on my face, so it looks like a sunburn. Which, you know, combined with the pre-existing pimples, is really super attractive.

Tonight I’m giving myself a soothing, pore-clarifying masque made from avocado and all kinds of other organic stuff. Because it was on sale at the drug store. And because I am no longer using that benzoyl peroxide crap that wants to eat my damn face off. I don’t know if there is any such things as clear-skin vibes, but if there are, please send them my way. This is getting ridiculous. Thanks.

P.S. I can’t wait to see what kind of Google hits I get from this post. Itchy red chest bumps, woo-hoo!
P.S.S. If anyone gets the song reference in the title, I will be duly impressed.

Yoo-hoo! Down here!

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And here I thought something was horribly wrong with my HTML skills. Apparently this sidebar issue has squat to do with me. I sent an email to Blogger help, and this is the email they sent back:

Hi there,
The spacing issue you’ve been experiencing was the result of some technical issues we had over the weekend. Our engineers are aware of this problem and are working on getting it fixed. We apologize for any inconvenience while we resolve this issue.
Thanks for your patience and for using Blogger!
Sincerely,
Blogger Support

I love the informal “hi there” that they use to start the email. Because, you know, me and Blogger support are old buddies. Anyway, I suppose I just have to wait for them to figure out what the hell they’ve done to my blog. At least I’m not alone, I noticed the same problem happening over at One Good Thing.

Ok, so the weekend. You remember how we got some bedroom furniture? And then we decided – after the furniture was delivered, no less – to completely redecorate the room down to the freakin’ baseboards? Yeah. The contractor guy did the crown moulding on Thursday, which looks great. And in the spirit of having a whole new and improved bedroom, I rented a steam cleaner from the supermarket and cleaned the carpet. Then I decided to do all of the carpets in the house while I was at it. Have you ever tried to steam clean a flight of stairs? Lord have mercy, I am in pain. The good news is that we finished up all of our renovations to our bedroom last night, which made me happy. In fact, I was as happy as one could expect, seeing as I was hunched over at a 45-degree angle with excruciating back spasms.

So yay! for the new bedroom. And yay! for the massage I scheduled for tomorrow. Now please excuse me while I go shove some more tylenol down my throat.

this day in history

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Warning: cheese ahead. Sentimentality ensues.

The mind tends to wander during the morning commute. This morning it occurred to me that today is June 23rd, so it was exactly one year ago today that I started flying to California every week for my job. It was one of the more miserable work-related experiences of my career – Dave and I had just started dating and I was so happy, and being forced to be gone for 5 out of every 7 days felt like torture. I was so lonely and depressed when I was when I was in California, and I felt like there was this big metaphorical rainbow hanging over Seattle, like, “your happiness lies here! Stick around and see what happens!” The weeks went in slow motion, and the weekends flew by at warp speed. However, my leaving absolutely cemented Dave as the best boyfriend I had ever had, because he was the first guy I had ever dated who volunteered to take care of my cat when I went out of town. Sure, there might have been a boyfriend or two in my past who would have grudgingly checked in on her if I had asked or offered bribes, but Dave welcomed her into his house without my even asking him to do so. And considering what a needy little fusspot my Teenie is, that pretty much sealed him into that “oh my god I can’t believe it he’s the most amazing guy I’ve ever met” category. Which, I’m happy to report, is still the category that he lives in today. I don’t know of anyone else who would get out of bed in the middle of trying to take a nap to go fetch some Thai take-out for me, or who would help me clean just to calm my obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Fast-forward to June 23rd of this year, I have a much better job that allows me to stay in town, and I married that fantastic boyfriend so I get to sleep with him every single night – not just on weekends. I’m happier than I ever thought I could be. This morning I’ve been reading some of those emails that we sent each other when I was traveling last summer (yes, I saved them, what of it?), and it’s made me feel all sentimental and squishy. I can’t wait to get home to give my hubby a big smooch. (Sorry, y’all, I know that was really cheesy.)

And while I’m speaking of my fantastic husband, he has volunteered to work from home today while a contractor is installing new baseboards and crown moulding in our bedroom. Dave and I bought all this stuff to fix up our bedroom when we got our new furniture. We moved things around, painted the walls, tore off the old baseboards… and then we realize that neither one of us can cut the new ones into a 45-degree angle so they’ll line up in the corners. It’s freakin’ impossible. So I called around and found a guy who’ll do it for a surprisingly reasonable hourly rate. In a perfect world, it’ll be done by the time I get home from work today. Here’s hoping.

Oh, but just as an aside? The thought of a man I don’t know spending the better part of a day in my bedroom totally freaks me out. Yeeesh, creepy.

want to take my mid-life crisis for a spin?

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I generally don’t write anything here about work, ever since I got paranoid after hearing about people like Dooce and the Sarcastic Journalist who got fired for blogging about their jobs. So this technically isn’t a post about my job, but there is a very strange phenomenon with the culture here at the Giant Software Company that I find fascinating. There seems to be an awful lot of employees here – almost exclusively male, from my observation – who have made insane amounts of money in their careers, and they spend it on things that most of us would never even think about spending our hard-earned money on. I mean, sure there are all the geek toys, and I suppose that’s inherent with any software company, that the nerds have to outdo each other as far as who has the newest/coolest laptop, cell phone, digital camera, PDA, whatever. For anyone who knows the passion that I have for my iPod, it’s clear that I am guilty of this too, to some extent. But then, some purchases are just dumb. For example, I’ve seen several people riding around on those silly-looking Segway scooter things. So not only do you look like an idiot, you look like an idiot who wasted $5K because your ass is too lazy to walk from your office to the men’s room. And we wonder why the obesity epidemic is spiraling out of control in this country. Right.

But then, there are the luxury sports car guys. These guys are in a class totally by themselves. They are outta control with the money that they spend on cars. Until I moved to this part of the country, I had never seen a Lotus in real life, and now I see them on a semi-regular basis. If you drive through any of the parking garages here at the Giant Software Company, sure, you’ll find lots of standard-issue sedans, mini-vans and the like – even the occasional hybrid, God bless ’em – but then there are all of these insanely overpriced sports cars. They’re usually parked in the isolated parts of the garage where no one else parks, far away from the other cars, because the owners don’t want to risk that another car might park next to them, carelessly open their door and scratch their precious automobile. (When I was thinking about this post in my head, I thought “car thief’s dream” to describe the parking garages here. Then I remembered that there are security cameras everywhere, so um, perhaps not.) I’m not saying that there’s necessarily anything wrong with owning a luxury sports car, but to have one as your daily commute-to-work vehicle? Seems a bit silly to me. It’s not like these are fuel-efficient cars, so why drive them every day? Unless… oh wait, that’s right. The whole point of owning it is to show off in a “looky-look at what I can afford!” kind of way. Which in my opinion? Is really pathetic.

This became really evident to me this morning when I was driving to work. I was stuck in traffic at a red light. In front of me, there was a Porsche Boxster convertible. To my right, there was a BMW Z3, also a convertible. Both cars had their tops down – which, ok fine, it was 65 degrees and sunny. Both drivers were white males, who looked like they were in their 40’s, and they both had parking decals that indicated that they work at the same company as myself. I started mentally playing “who’s the bigger asshole?” in my head.

– Porsche guy – full head of gray hair: 1 point
– BMW guy – brown hair, but he’s losing it fast: 1 point
– Porsche guy – Oakley “yeah, I look cool” sunglasses (I could see him pretty well in his rearview mirror): 1 point
– BMW guy – pretty standard, non-flashy sunglasses, look like they might be prescription: 0 points
– BMW guy – also wearing a really dorky plaid shirt: 0 points (I could subtract points for this instead of just giving him zero, but I can’t see what Porsche guy is wearing to compare)
– Porsche guy – is that an earring that I see reflected in his sideview mirror???: 5 points
– Porsche guy – oh wait, I think he just has a weirdly-shaped earlobe: -5 points
– Porsche guy – talking on his cell phone (the person on the other end must love him for that, all that wind from his convertible hitting the receiver): 1 point
– BMW guy – takes a sip out of a Starbucks cup: 1 point
– BMW guy – tries to speed up and cut us all off as soon as the light turns green: 1 point

So, they were both equal assholes, but in different ways. I’m not sure what the lesson to be learned is in this scenario, except that if you’re a man of a certain age, there are certain automobiles that you should not be caught driving, because women in their 20’s (who, presumably, are at least one of the target demographics that you’re trying to impress) will make fun of you on their blogs. The end.

good things

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Almost a week and no new post. What can I tell you, life is good but there’s not a whole lot going on right now. And the couple of (minor) bad things aren’t really things that I want to talk about here. So, here’s a rundown of some recent happy stuff:

I’ve exercised 3 out of the past 4 days. Sunday, I went for a bike ride. Monday, I ran several errands after work (AND cooked dinner, thank you) so I took the night off. Tuesday, I went for a walk. And last night, I rode my bike again. Considering that I haven’t worked out very much over the past few months, it’s not really all that surprising that I’m now sore as hell. I almost had to get Dave to carry me up the stairs last night when I went to bed. Ouch.

Also, we bought bedroom furniture over the weekend, and it’s getting delivered today. For those of you who have not been privy to see the inside of our bedroom, allow me to give you a quick rundown of its current furnishings:
1) A bed – which I helped Dave pick out last year long before I moved in, so it’s a really nice, super-comfy bed.
2) A TV, which is not on a table, oh no, but a TV tray. The cable box, DVD player, etc., are all on the floor. We are so classy.

So after the furniture guys arrive today, in our bedroom we shall add to our collection:
3) An armoire in which to hide the TV and all of its accoutrements.
4) A bureau – no more keeping my underwear in a box in the closet! Hooray!
5) Two nightstands
6) A trunk to put at the foot of the bed, which will serve as storage, as well as a nice jumping point to help my arthritic little Teenie get on and off the bed.

So I’m very happy about that, and I’m already planning my weekend around setting up all the new furniture. In other big-shopping news, Dave got a new pc, so I’m going to set up his old one for my parents. Their current computer is about 6 years old, so I’m finally (FINALLY!) going to get them off of Windows 98. My motivation for wanting to upgrade them is perhaps a bit more selfish than you might think. The main reason why I’m so eager to get them a new computer is because Windows XP has that nifty Remote Assistance feature, which should make all future tech support calls from my parents much less of a headache. Hoo-freakin’-ray!