Sick Days.

I've been sick since Thanksgiving, and I've managed to pass on my illness to Drew. This experience has revealed a few things about us:

1.) We have completely different styles of taking care of illness. Drew goes by the (arguably more sane) method of actually going to the doctor right when he gets sick. He then is armed with medical advice, prescriptions, and, I think, just feels safer knowing that someone with a medical degree knows that he's taken ill.

I, on the other hand, view illness as a test of my strength. Aside from pushing off going to a doctor (which costs money! And they ask you questions (which I also interpret as tests that I can either pass or fail, of course.)), I also hesitate to use any sort of medicine. I like to think that my body will eventual overcome what ails me and that I'm stronger than the pain of a headache. Which, yes, is insane.

2.) Which brings me to the next revelation - I'm willing to get potentially sub-standard medical care if it's cheaper. I'll definitely either go to the campus wellness center or just call my pharmacist father instead of seeing a real doctor where there might be a copay for a visit. My cheapness is usually restricted to things like saving up for a purse for years or not getting yogurt at the store because it's too fancy. But now I've taken it to new levels. (My newest line at the pharmacy is "Is this the generic brand? Yes, that's good enough.")

3.) Filling out medical forms is extremely amusing. The receptionist asked Drew who he'd like as his emergency contact. He said to put my information down, and then she asked what my relation to Drew was. He first said "girlfriend." For some reason, something about that sounded a little floozy to me. It sounded equivalent to "This girl I've been seeing for about two weeks. She's pretty nice. ...What's your name again?". So I gave Drew a look that I thought communicated that message. In an attempt to correct this, I said "partner" while he murmured "Best buddy." I'm still not sure what the receptionist wrote down.

I'm bracing for a future call that goes something like this:

"Hi, I'm sorry to say that Drew is in a coma. His emergency records say to call you. Are you his best buddy?"

"Of course, yes, I'm his best buddy. Is he okay?"

"Forgot to lock the door last night."

"Well, nothing is missing, is it?"

"No, but just because nothing came out doesn't mean nothing came in here...I checked the closet for a creeper. We're safe."

"...That's a great attitude."

This is why we can't go to nice places.

A few nights ago, Drew and I traveled up to Evanston for dinner. We found an amazing BBQ place with possibly the best nachos and milkshakes I've ever had. But better than the food was the entertainment. We were seated in a booth with very high backs on the seats, so that you can't see over it. It was very cool, sort of like being in your own room in the restaurant.

As we sat down, we heard the family next to us talking. The conversation started getting increasingly out of control. It seems that the father brought his two sons, one college-age and one around ten, to the restaurant for a "nice night." He kept making proclamations in a heavily accented voice like "I am going to tell you something important. Are you listening? Okay. 'No pain, no gain.'"

Needless to say, it was a pretty entertaining evening. We had a very good time listening to their stories and arguments. As they were leaving, we heard the mother say "There were people sitting in the next booth? I didn't notice. They didn't say anything for the whole meal!"

Uh, embarrassing. That's because we were listening to you the whole time, lady.

You have two items in your shopping cart.

I have a very complicated relationship with shopping of all kinds - online, in person, those people in the middle of the mall that try to attack you with various beauty products. I'm not naturally a very good shopper when it comes to real life stores. I typically need to have a mission, especially in malls. Otherwise, I get pretty overwhelmed quickly. I start looking bedraggled, my eyes get bloodshot, and I turn into a five year old, very concerned about when I'll eat next (and seriously in need of a nap). I've narrowed this problem down to two possible sources: terrible air quality and lighting in most stores or my general inability to spend money.

The problem with the spending money thing is that I just need a lot of time. If no one was in the stores with me, I would pick up things that I thought I liked, walk around with them for maybe an hour or so, and talk to myself about the pros and cons of handing over my debit card. Then I could make a reasonable decision. But do you know how crazy you look if you enter and exit a store upwards of three times in an hour? Pretty darn crazy. I know.

My shopping difficulties have resulted in quite a few positives. I don't really own all that much, I typically really like what I do own, and I'm pretty good at saving money. The major negative is that my anti-shopping personality conflicts with the part of me that thinks I can shop my way into being a new person. I have this version of myself that I think I'd like to be. It's fairly close to who I am, but I live in a better decorated apartment and I wear better clothes. The trouble is, then, that I enter every store thinking that I can manifest my dream self by buying a really great cardigan. Rarely do I find that awesome sweater and, even if I do, rarely can I part with money without feeling flu-like.

This complicated back and forth with retail therapy got even more complicated when I discovered online shopping during my senior year of college. Shopping online, while it seemed to solve all my problems, just prolonged my personality ticks. Now I could shop whenever I wanted, but with no one judging how long it took me to make decisions! I could pick things out, put them into that shopping cart, and just wait. Walk away, make a sandwich, consider whether it was worth the cost. If I still wanted it in a few days, it was probably worth the money.

It sounded like the perfect solution, but did I mention that I could shop Any Time? And that I could obsess about a pair of socks For Days? And that the woman working at my college mail center thought that I was running a seriously shady business with the amount of packages that I would receive in a given week?

I've since chilled out with the online shopping. And also regular shopping, for the most part. So uh, now I just don't really buy clothes that often. And I just wear shoes and jeans into the ground. I have one pair of boots that I wore every day in the winter. And I don't own a pair of jeans that don't have a hole in them. Oh, and I wore a pair of flats for so long last summer that the sole ripped off. ...and I still wore them. For months.

So uh, yeah, this approach doesn't seem to be working, either. Unless sole-less shoes and T-shirts from American Eagle's Summer 2006 collection is a good look for this spring. Then I'm golden.

Serious Lapses of Judgment

I'm sort of worried about my sense of perception lately. First, I went to IKEA and bought three small, shrubby plants as a centerpiece for my dining room table. I was very careful with carrying them home, I arranged them in my apartment, and I watered them daily. On day three, I thought about trimming them and transferring them into the ceramic pots I had bought for them.

Then it hit me, out of nowhere. Those are not real plants. In no way do they look like real plants. I looked in the pots to find not dirt, but a plastic disk that was supposed to look like dirt. I also found about 3 inches of water, just sitting there. I had been living in an alternate reality for half a week.

(To be fair, Drew also thought they were real, but he saw me treating them like real plants. I feel that that might have influenced his opinion of the whole situation.)

My second troubling thing happened today. Every day that I'm on campus, I check my mailbox in the department. This is around 3 or 4 times a week. Today, I took a second look at the mailbox that I've been checking all this time and realized that it's not my mailbox. For around 5 weeks, I've missed all the mail in my box. I've missed FIVE WEEKS of work. I'm pretty sure my boss thought that I became extremely lazy and was blowing off all the work he gave me to do. Not a great reputation-builder.

I'm hoping this lapse in judgment is short-lived. In the meantime, I'll be continuing my routine of taking an empty watering can and pretending to water my fake plants. I'm a creature of habit.

Updates and Neighbor Adventures

I realized today that I have sadly neglected this blog. So, some updates:

-Drew moved to Chicago about a month ago to take a very exciting new job! We've been watching Mad Men marathons and eating Giordano's pizza (for Valentine's Day, in the shape of a heart!) with reckless abandon. Basically, we're going to be 300 pounds by summertime. It's awesome.

-I've been considering moving, mostly due to an increased neighbor involvement and encouragement from Drew. A snippet of what's been going on on the homefront:

A group of young, upstanding boys have decided to make my floor's hallway their ground zero of pot smoking. Come on, guys, let's at least go home to do this. I wouldn't be that annoyed except they sit directly in front of my door for stretches of several hours, preventing me from leaving and from thinking non-drug addled thoughts.

My neighbor (mother of Crazy Next Door) decided to stop by one day this week, after I was stuck talking to her at the laundromat for an hour. During this hour, she told me that I'm too nice, that I'll probably end up decapitated (!) in a bath tub because "people in this place are CRAZY, girl"), and that I must keep an eye on my laundry, as it might be stolen. She has proof that this happens because she saw people steal 1500 dollars from a dryer once. She never explained why there was that amount of money in a dryer to begin with. Anyway, after that pleasant event, she encountered me a few days later in the hallway, where she asked me my pant size. Apparently she has some clothes for me that she thinks I'd like. I tried to get out of this quickly, and I thought that I had succeeded.

A few hours later, I heard a knock on my door. Now, I refuse to answer knocks at the door, unless I know that someone is coming over. I'm absolutely certain that I won't want to talk to whoever unexpectedly shows up at my door. However, the visitor knocked four times over the course of 2 minutes, and then she started yelling "It's your neighbor! I hear the TV! I know you're there!"

Darn. Not the first time viewing 16 and Pregnant has led to a bad situation.

I answered the door, and I found my neighbor smoking in my doorway. She asked if she could use my cellphone to locate her 35 year old daughter. Um, okay. After this call, she told me that she'd be back in a bit to give me clothes.

I had to think of a way to get out of this, of course, so I turned on the shower. I figured that if she came back and heard the shower, she'd leave. I sat down on the bathroom floor next to the running shower to wait. Yes, this was a low point of my life.

When Neighbor returned, she knocked, and knocked, and knocked. She waited out the duration of a normal shower. She continued knocking. She started talking to herself. Okay, time to step in. I shut off the shower, switched sweaters, and answered the door. I made up some excuse about having to get ready for class. I'm pretty sure that she realized that having completely dry hair and just wearing a different sweater didn't equal having taken a shower. Not so smooth.

After this awkward series of encounters, I decided that moving might be in my future. I can't bring myself to sit on the bathroom floor again to hide from my neighbors. Because "they're CRAZY, girl."

Hi, Neighbor.

-"Hi, how are you?"

-"Good. I have all this stuff to carry. You can go up the stairs first."

-"Thanks."

-"I can't walk as fast as you. I'm old. I'm 71."

-"Oh, wow. You look great, though."

-"Eh, thanks. I have 9 kids and 15 grandkids."

-"That's great! Congratulations."

-"...all my friends are dead."

Wow. Heavy.