Second time is a charm

Ok, my dear friend over at Don't Floss With Tinsel pointed me to this site My Heritage that lets you upload a photo to compare your facial features to those of 3,200 famous people and see whom you most resemble.

The results from first photo I uploaded were not encouraging. My facial features were 49 percent like Mark Almond (who?) and 47% like the bearded UnaBomber look-alike Jim Henson.

That struck me as funny because Mr. Stapler's favorite endearment for me is "Muppet Face." Is he onto something?

I tried a different photo, the one shown in my profile and things suddenly got worse, then better.

The fairly hideous but talented Willem DaFoe matches my features 64 percent. The cadaverous David Carradine and the not-so-hot Anthony Quinn were at 52 percent and 51 percent respectively.

I was only saved from leaping off a bridge by my stunning resemblance to Beyonce Knowles (54 percent, and she is quite the Muppet Face herself).

Even better, it says I look like my ambisexual idol, Johnny Depp (53%). Hey, if I am slightly more than half as hot as Johnny Depp, that is quite sufficient for me. And now, if I ever meet Mr. Depp, I have an instant conversation starter just in case he ever decides to dump that French Vanessa chick. Ah, a girl needs dreams.

Thank you for your concern

It appears I may live.

After my leaving the emergency room so abruptly, I called a cardiologist. Two, actually. At the first one my conversation went like this:

Me: "Hi. I'm not a patient of Dr. Heng, but I went to the Urgent Care Center the other day with chest pains and the doctor told me to go to the emergency room and I went but I didn't wait because it was a zoo and I had to leave and I apparently need a stress test and blood work so I need to see a cardiologist I have a PPO can I see the doctor without a referral or do I need a referral?"

Receptionist: "Are you a patient of Dr. Heng?"

Me: (thinking, "Well, duh, you dope, I just spat out my whole life story, are you not listening??") "Uh, no."

Receptionist: "Can I put you on hold?"

Me: "Sure."

And then I hung up.

I figured, hey, if the receptionist is this stupid, I do not want to meet the doctor.

With the next doc, everything went swimmingly. Receptionist paid attention, made an appt for the next day.

I was of course the youngest person in the waiting room by at least 20 years. Everyone else there was major fucked up. By the time I got in the examining room, I had decided that if I had a heart problem, it was suddenly cured, because I just wasn't ready to be that sick yet.

Dr. Qiu was charming, funny ("Why is a beautiful woman like you not married? Are your standards too high? Yes? You're smart. Men are idiots.") and reassuring. He wants to do a stress test but says he is 99 percent sure I am ok and my problems are from coughing too much.

So Tuesday I hop on the treadmill for some fun. I can hardly wait. But I am determined to be well.

My night off

Here's what I discovered tonight:

You can go to the emergency room with chest pain, fill out the forms, get interviewed, get so sick of waiting for hours that you go home AND NO ONE WILL CALL YOU TO SEE IF YOU DROPPED DEAD ON THE WAY HOME.

Don't you think they should?

I don't think this issue is serious. I went to the doc in the box (again) and they did and EKG and it said I was ok. They just sent me to the ER as a precaution since my chest hurt. I will go to the doc tomorrow, promise.

I met some wonderful nice people and did my spiritual practice, which consisted of a mantra from A Course In Miracles, kind of zen-like:

Nothing real can be threatened.
Nothing unreal exists.
Therein lies the peace of god.

Of course this is denying the reality of the body, but that is ok with me. Why not? It isn't going to last anyway.

Oh spare me

Mr. Stapler and I are doing the slow motion breakup thing. Too sick of each other to stay together, too lonely to stay apart. Our relationship has deteriorated to mostly talking on the phone and IMing each other at this point.

Today he IMed me at work. Hey, why work at work? It just wastes your valuable screwing off time!

I informed him that I would be going to BlogHer this summer. I don't need his permission - it was just something to talk about to keep me from sounding totally boring and loser-ish. But at the same time I knew what he thought of blogging, and I knewit wasn't good.

'I just think time is better spent relating to people, reading, exercising or playing with the dog," he IMed about blogging.

It pissed me off, sure. But I would be more pissed off if I didn't know him and that he basically disapproves of all human endeavor other than his hobbies, which are 1) sleeping 2) sleeping some more 3) watching baseball 4) taking a nap and 5) playing the guitar a little. Oops, I forgot shopping for guitars on eBay and reorganizing his music downloads for the 1000th time. Perhaps spanking the monkey, but never tells me about that. But I know. Women always do.

I don't mind that he does all that stuff. Well, ok, the napping did get a little tedious. But I could put up with it.

I just don't understand why it is ok to put down my hobbies all the time. I don't need to have someone else make me feel bad about my life. I am perfectly capable of doing that myself.

Public service announcement

I never thought I would get arthritis. I thought arthritis was for old, cranky people whose dispositions had somehow settled into their joints.

Little did I know that it was the arthritis making them cranky, not the other way around.

A few months ago I started to get all these weird stiffnesses. My right ring finger would no longer move smoothly - it would not move at all, then suddenly pop into place. My right shoulder got so painful that I could not lift my arm over my head without screaming like a girly-girl.

Our newspaper carries a medical advice column, Dr. Gott. The cool thing about Dr. Gott is that he will toss out folk remedies and let his audience do a kind of populist testing.

One of his folk remedies that his readers swear by is grape juice and Certo pectin for arthritis (another is sleeping with a bar of soap under your sheets at the foot of your bed for leg cramps). The recipe is 3 or 4 ounces of grape juice to 1 tablespoon Certo liquid pectin, taken once in the morning and once at night.

Sounds weird, but it worked for me. My painful, stuck joints are completely normal, even though I have tapered off the Certo and juice to about 4 or 5 times a week. Better than Vioxx any day.

One for the ages

Sometimes my posts come off as bitter, cynical or angry, I know. What I am actually aiming for is funny but I know I don't always achieve that.

I was trying to think of an amusing post I could craft to end the week with (don't try and kid me, the week begins on Monday and we all know it!) but nothing I could ever think up could top this.

Her tale of a tiny decrepit dog, a stuffed animal, and true love - or is it lust? - had me rolling on the floor. Ah, there is hope for us old girls.