Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Hatchet Wound

A week ago, I had to go to the doctor. The special lady doctor who deals exclusively in vaginas, if you catch my drift. Yeah. You know what I'm saying.

But this visit wasn't for my annual invasive swabbing. No, this time around I had something super awesome for the doctor. A doctor I had never seen before until that day, I might add.

Go do an image search for "Bartholin Gland cyst." Better yet, I'll do one for you. Just click here. I'll wait.

Had enough cartoon images of vaginas, mixed in with a few that are just a little too real? Yeah, me, too. First, let me say that what was happening in my nether regions was not quite as extreme as the "real" pictures on that image search I provided. And it's also possible that I didn't have a Bartholin Gland cyst. Could have been just a normal sebaceous cyst. But it was in that exact location, so I'm painting a nice picture for you.

Size wise, we're talking about something that was about as big as a grape. But that's probably big enough, wouldn't you agree? I mean, I like to think of my vagina as a beautiful, wondrous flower. When you have to start factoring in a foreign object and what fruit it resembles, you're probably not having a great day.

This thing had grown exponentially in the previous few days, from a little tiny zit-like thing, to a raging, angry grape. Walking had become a little difficult, what with the rubbing. So I finally made an appointment, packed my lady in the car (not Katie; I call my vagina "lady" because she's a lady), and went off to meet my doom.

But Katie did come with me.

We had to wait over an hour because some patient of my doctor's was "having a baby" and "ready to deliver any minute." Whatever. This woman should really have thought about how irritating it was for me to have a small lump protruding from my vaginal area.

Monday, April 18, 2011

Lucky #7

Here's the thing about me and Vegas: I never bet on seven. I don't think I have an aversion to it or anything. But this one time I learned how to play craps, California style -- meaning with two decks of cards, instead of dice, because somehow that's not really "gambling" according to California law, I guess -- and nobody likes seven in craps. Except the assholes who bet against the tables. But if you don't know craps, that doesn't mean anything to you.

I play roulette, too. Not as frequently as I play craps, but I've been known to become a slave to that little white ball. And at the roulette table, I never, ever bet on seven. It's just not one of my numbers, which are 13, 17, 23, 26, 27, 29, 32, and 33. And sometimes 16 and 20. It just depends. Spread the money around, people. That's the key.

Man, now I'm itching to hit the tables. It's been nine months since I was last in a casino, and before that it had been a year and a half, but I do love me some gambling.

Huh, I guess I might have an aversion to the number seven after all. But I've still left myself with that many episodes of Oprah to cover in this one post. Okay, actually eight, if you count the one that aired today. But I haven't watched it yet, and I don't know if I could write a witty, loosely connected intro about the number eight. So you get seven.

The good news is, I don't actually have a lot to say about most of these episodes. The first one in the bunch was about a woman who was arrested at the age of nineteen for selling drugs, broke out of prison a year later, and went on to live a comfortable, upper class life with her husband and three children, all of whom were in the dark about her true past. But that past caught up to her, and she had to go back to jail. You'd think that aging might have led to some growing and learning, perhaps some reflection on how all that heroin and cocaine you were doing wasn't probably the best thing, but no. This lady just kept denying that she ever sold anything, saying that she was promised a plea bargain even though both the prosecutor and her defense attorney said she hadn't been, and basically trying to play the victim role. Yeah, okay, ten to twenty years for selling a small amount of drugs is harsh. But 32 years later, I think it's okay to admit you were a dumb kid who made some mistakes.

For instance, when I was in college, I would often crawl out onto the brick ledge outside the window of my tenth story college job. And I would just sit there, on this ledge that couldn't have been more than two feet out from the side of the building. Sometimes it would be raining. Sometimes I would talk on the phone. I don't know what the hell I was thinking, but today I am okay admitting that it was a dumb thing to do.

Granted, while I was out on that ledge, I wasn't also selling heroin, but still. It was stupid.

Friday, April 8, 2011

Oprah's On!

The woman who rules my life finally came back with new episodes yesterday. But you know what? She can wait a minute. She made me wait an entire month, wherein I lost virtually all my readers, and I wandered about in life without a mission. So she can wait a day or two before I give in and start writing again.

I'm not sure my episode count is correct, but it must be close. I think yesterday's episode was #97 on the season. If Oprah is new every day until the May 25 finale, there will be a total of 132 episodes this season. I have no idea how accurate that is. I'll try to do some more sleuthing to see if I've got the correct number, but at least it's in the ballpark of 130, which is what Oprah had claimed she would be doing this season.

It doesn't help that it is now baseball season, and most Red Sox home games will start at four o'clock my time every weekday. I guarantee you that in a battle of Oprah versus baseball, baseball will win every time. Which means I'm now extra thankful for my TiVo.

The point is, we are absolutely in the home stretch. I've gotten through nearly 100 episodes of Oprah, and there are only about 35 to go. This is the real deal now, folks. I'm going to have to step up my game if I want Oprah to notice that I exist.

Which is bound to happen any day now, right?