29 posts tagged “things that suck”

In this house, we have 2 ways of waking up during holiday/sick-leave.

Since one of us is a morning-person, and I am not, the first scenario is where he wakes up considerably earlier than me and goes about doing whatever it is people who like mornings do. I am dragged kicking and screaming into consciousness by nature about 3 pm. Waking up still sucks, but a little less.

The other scenario, which is the one we usually go by here, is where he wakes up at 8 am in the middle of the night and wants to go for a morning walk with me. He puts on his protective suit and helmet and gently, gently tries to wake me up. I reach for my shotgun and try to shoot him in the butt, but he is getting awfully good with that kevlar shield of his.

Walk it is then. I usually open my eyes after 30 minutes or so. I hate doing stuff in the morning, and he knows it so he sometimes makes an effort to spice up these walks by showing me some cool caves. I love my golden nuclear warheads  caves, so this does the trick more often than not.

At breakfast he eats about everything we have, with yogurt, and I try not to gag too loudly. If I eat (I know, I know), I have toast. I only eat bread that looks like it survived a nuclear blast, so it was very traumatic for me when our toaster broke down last week. I only survived by the power of orange juice and vodka.

I kid, I kid. We don't have orange juice.

How do you survive your mornings?

I had the stitches removed 4 days back. By a certified nurse, at the closest health-center.

Yesterday, when I removed the Steri-Strips that I was supposed to cover the wound with for an additonal 3-4 days, I had a surprise waiting for me. 2 suspicios shadows inside my knee. So I picked the healed skin apart with a needle and took out 2 ADDITONAL LOOPS OF STRING! Goddamn!

Yes, I am that crazy of a bitch, and soon I'll be a crazy bitch with an amputated knee because of the nice little infection I probably gave myself while poking around.

But come the fuck on. I know it might be hard to tell bright blue surgical string apart from my black blood, but that was just ridiculous. How do you miss 2 complete loops of blue stitching? Huh? Found that nursing degree in our box of cereal this morning, did we?

Apart from this little "Honey, you might wanna come over here and check this the hell out"-incident, it's been peachy. It always takes a while when he comes back from these long trips abroad, and I suppose it hasn't been easy on him either. All the ex-pats in the organization where he works have it pretty well when they are abroad. Chef and all. So when I promised to make lunch for both him and Tapsa during their first day back, and took them to the supermarket, they were standing in the meat-section as bewildered as 2 bunnies on the highway. Sami was the first to recover in the produce-section.

"We need stuff from here too?"

"Well, yeah."

"Okay. Run free, woman. Do your thing"

So for me it's been lots of fun. The most fun part was watching him mop the floors. After which we finally saw the first Narnia-movie. I can hear y'all going wooooot? but remember I'm not big on fantasy and still haven't seen the last 2 LOTR-movies sober. It was okay, I suppose, but I have to say this much: the 2 boys, Edmund and Peter, you know? I completely get why they were so far back in the closet.

I ditched the crutches on day 1. They're impossible to walk with, and I seem to have a problem with things that go in three steps. Mainly the walz and crutches, both of which I should be able to handle by the end of summer. Big, fat chance. They also made me a huge attraction at this house, and Joni had a good time shouting "Run, Forrest, run!" at me while I was trying to manage myself up the stairs. So I threw them at him away.

But today was a big day for me: shower day! And the way I have been smelling the last few days, it was probably a big day for the rest of the family too.

It took me a time to unravel my leg, because it has been bandaged so that it bears a striking resemblance to something I saw at the World Cup: the football. Minus the cool patterns of course. I had a lot of bandages, something resembling a couch-padding, dressings, some incredibly cool self-adhesive cellular bandage-plate-thing that had made all of my coagulated blood go superblack (or it might be because I am the spawn of... nevermind.) to go through until I finally got to see what the wounds were like. I have to say, by the looks if it, they did a goob job, but I was a little bummed out that they hadn't taken to my wish of giving me a lightning-shaped scar. I guess you can't have everything.

Showering was an anticipated event but a lot more complicated than usual. I'm not supposed to let the wounds get wet for 2 weeks, so by that time I'll probably make an excellent flamingo. As you probably know, iodine turns red when you was it away with soap. From your skin, that is, from your best white rug or sofa there's no point in even trying. Anyway, I knew this too due to one of my professions (duh), but had totally forgotten since I don't think I've ever used iodine to clean any wounds on myself in my entire life. So I had a nifty little pink science-hour at the same time!

The packing-up-the-leg-again didn't go so well. Having the attention span of a hummigbird, I had already forgotten I was supposed to wrap myself up. And I had to undo it after the first time because I used one of the metal hooks to keep the couch-padding in place while I wrapped the last layer of bandage. After doing it over and being quite content with the end result, fightin my way into socks and pants, I was just about to exit the guest-room when I noticed the unopened pack of gauze swabs on the table.

They were supposed to go in first.

..or how not to write a thesis.

This little book of mine (book! mine!) has been the cause of a lot of stress, a lot of times when the house looked like trolls lived here and I didn't clean, and a lot of "could you put it on mute, I'm trying to write!".

Right now things are good. I've stumbled across the halls of academia, and the walls of academia have been headbutted quite a few times. Now, I've found an exit-sign. There's only this one, big Language Advisor who is stopping me from running through the door by dangling the keys just out of  my reach.

Language Advisors might still dropkick my thesis, but otherwise it is approved. So I thought I'd share with you how not to work this baby, since I know at least a few of my friends who sporadically read this still have this gorgeousness to look forward to. It's not that difficult, but you need to recognize some little things that guide you on your way. I didn't.

The key is to read your comments when you get the text back:

"Is this relevant for your study?"

Trust me, it isn't.Don't try to write about how, or why, this is relevant to your study, because that little phrase up there is academic for "this sucks. Make it go away."

"Why is this relevant for your study?"

Don't mix this one up with the first phrase. Here, you still have a little lifeline left. What you need to do now is write one or two phrases that start with "This information is key to my study because...", like below:

Some argue that bellybutton-lint is just trash. Researchers A and B have stated that bellybutton-lint might, in fact, save the earth. This is important to keep in mind while we further study the claim of C, who states that lint removed from bellybuttons is an excellent source of material for clothes

Or something like that.

"I don't understand the connection here"

Because there is none. That phrase means "this is poo" and you need to cut that argument out of the text.

These are a few sure giveaways, but remember to address each comment. when it says "discuss!" and you didn't they're just gonna keep on writing it up again and again and again. And if you feel bad killing your darlings, ie. cutting away text you've already writte, don't. They're just letters in a row.

Also, if you try to hide something into the text, like 16 pages of the letter K, you might want to rethink it. They will read the text eventually and find it. There's no place to hide.

It will suck. A lot, and several times. You go in and expect them to give you a standing ovation and they demonstrate that look! It doesn't even burn well! But just take it up the tailpipe and fix it. They are, after all, experts. You're not the first M.Sc.-student they've had writing a thesis, and you won't be the last. Editing text according to someone else's preferences is never fun and you might feel like the text really isn't yours anymore. Not true. It still is.

And writing a thesis might be compared to what I hear giving birth is like (minus the actual physical pain). It takes about nine months to finish (at the very least), sometimes it goes well but a lot of times you'd give anything to get to stop doing it. But still, once you have the finished product in your hands and can claim it as your own, you forget everything that sucked while making it.

Either this is tough, or I'm a big wuss.

First, there's this feeling that everything sucks. I'm lonely and he isn't coming home for ages. That's a little hump, and I need to get over it.

And I do.

I parade on to the next adventure, and that's when it hits me. Just around the corner is another hump. A big one.

This is the one I'm not prepared for.

Everything sucks. It sucks hard and it doesn't even suck well. It rains all the time. I meet with friends but everything still sucks. I'm blue all the time. I start to imagine him being home so much that I can almost feel it. I talk to him online and all he needs to say is "g'night starlet" and tears fill my eyes immediately. So I try to stumble on, but then comes the next neck of the journey.

I forget I'm not alone.

I am the only one at this end, and I have a hard time imagining him being homesick or missing me because I can't see it, and I can't hear it. I don't feel it.

I start to feel like he is to blame. I know it's his job and not him, but partially it is him too, because he did willingly take the job. If he loves me, then how could he abandon me like this? What gives?

And when he comes home I'll have a hard time adjusting to him being around and in my visual space all the time.

It's horrible how things like this bring out the worst egocentric characteristics in me. When did I become this needy person? It's okay to be sad and miss him, but when did all this surface? How the hell did this surprise me? Again?

And where do I go from here?

I'm 24. It's saturday, and I've spent the day working. My soon-to-be husband is halfway across the world and I haven't been able to get in touch with him for days. I'm at home, exhausted from work and spending this glorious, rainy evening washing dirty laundry.

This suuuuuuuuuuuuucks!

I forgot my wallet at home.

No harm in that but the area we live in is exclusive and you have to prove your identity to get in. My driver's license, which is the only ID I have with a picture on it (apart from my passport which I never carry around), and it's in the wallet. When this happens what you normally do is call your partner who will come get you at the gate. Unless he is Far Far Away. In that case you call one of your friends who lives right next to you and ask him to come and get you instead.

Unless he is lso a co-worker of your "husband"'s and is also Far Far Away.

I might have to camp outside my house until july and fight over leftovers with squirrels and raccoons and shit. Or take my shirt off to get the guard to let me in anyway.

The good news is that nothing has happened to me. I'm fine. Yay!

The bad news would be that a passing truck sent a rock flying my way and it left a huge dent on the windshield of our little Baby Blue. We-need-to-replace-it-before-winter-comes-and-it-explodes-big. So hold on to your paycheck.

Remember to breathe, sweetheart. That's it, exhale, inhale, now you've got it...

"..right. So can I write the final essay (a paper we have to write about the master's thesis which proves we've actually written the whole thing all by ourselves) on friday morning? And then hand it in whenever it comes back from the bookbinder's in june?"

"Sure. You don't have to give it in all at once and... wait. You're taking out your bachelor's papers now too, right?"

"Yeah, I found out I could do that too without using up any credits for the bachelor's degree that I'd need for a master's in the old study system. And if the language center approves the thesis now I'll get my master's papers in july"

"So why aren't you coming to the official graduation at 9 on friday? The dean gives a speach and there's champagne and all. Are you somewhere else earlier in the morning or...?"

"Oh no, not at all. I just don't want... to...g..."

"JENNI! Oh, come on! You're graduating! You're coming to the party!"

"But it's just for the bachelor's degree! I wrote that dissertation a year ago! And I graduated when I got out of high school years ago! And I can get wasted on champagne all by myself"

"Oh don't be stupid! You've just finished a huge load of work and you deserve to celebrate! This is a milestone in your life!"

"My butt is a milestone and It's just a bachelor's degree now. I already have one in pharmacy! And that faculty celebrated by sending us all our diplomas per mail"

"No. It's settled. You're coming. You're not getting to write the essay until the celebration is over and you've had a glass of champagne and some strawberries. 9 am on friday."

"....groan.... What do I have to wear to this fucking event?"

"You know. Clean, neat, festive clothes."

"Dress and heels it is."

"Oh, it'll be fun. You'll get a rose!"

I found out today that I was almost sued. Hi, Mom!

I wrote about it in a post I can't find right now, but we had a thief, spaced out on drugs in the pharmacy a while back. He was so out of it and so big that he didn't feel anything no matter how much the guard twisted his arms and stuff. And so when he got a hold of the guards neck with his other hand I went over to help him. The guard that is. He screamed and called us racists and was going to sue us all on assault and battery. This happened to him just because he was a gypsy!

I found out today when I talked to the guard that he had actually had the 'nads to sue us. The district attorney kindly informed him that while it would certainly be interesting to sue "the guard and that tall, dark chick from the pharmacy", it would not be possible. His case was mildly crippled by the fact that he was on a little sumthn' sumthn' and trying to steal and break things at Alko right next to us. Apparently it was also explained to him that being caught, in the midst of all this havoc with not one, but 2 items with which he was believed to intend harming people (a sharpened pair of scissors and a big knife. Hi, Mom!) did not support his case of hate-crime. The popo had a hard time believing that both the guard and that tall, dark chick from the pharmacy went "Gypsies! Let's get 'em!" in the middle of an otherwise normal day of work, and so no-one has actually been sued.

I wonder if he also tried to sue "that guy with the wicker basket who sat on top of me until the police came to get me".

Oh, and one last thing. The district attorney did, however, find it appropriate to prosecute this member of an ethnic minority since most of what he did was kind of criminal in bucketloads of ways, and having other things pending against him from before, he got a ticket for this one but is still going to jail for all the other stuff he's been up to.

That still doens't leave me free from worries. I had that other cortisone shot a few weeks back, and apart from the tendon being upset about getting stung with a needle again for a few days, I really haven't felt it at all. I still have a bit of a bruise from where the surgeon pricked me, but other than that I haven't offered the knee a thought. Stretching and paingel I have. And it's been all good.

Until yesterday.

I got up from the couch (the couch, people!) without any problems. No snap, crackle or pop, but when I stood up it was back. All that goddamn aching. It was like a security wall had just broken down and we were back in square one. Needless to say I didn't sleep much.

Don't really know what to do now, I contacted my doc but couldn't get a hold of him so I'm waiting for him to answer my e-mail. Yes, e-mail. Not allowed to call from work and I'm sure he has nothing better to do than e-mail me back. He did last time and he was really nice.

Anyway. At age 24, I feel like my body is an old battleship that has taken all it can take and is now slowly but securely plunging down in the bermuda triangle. My brain would be the tiny termite, hurrying up the big mast with a mouthful of wood, screaming "Not cool, dude! Not cool!".