hellomelissa.net

I saw a soundbite last week about the average purse weighing in at 23 pounds. I didn’t read the article until just now, but the headline stuck in my head as a nagging reminder to clean out my purse.

Once I got home from my extra-long day (I had a dentist appointment after work), carrying a lot of extra stuff, I decided that it was finally time to clean it out.

Naturally I documented the event. (Click the images to take a closer look.)

I made Sean take this picture of me with my purse so you could get a sense of how big my purse is in relation to me. This is probably the biggest purse I’ve ever carried. I’ve been impressed at how well it’s held up in the last almost-year of daily use.

Holy crap indeed! Look at all the shit I was lugging around! (Note, no actual shit was carried around despite having a dog we have to pick up after and a kid in diapers.)

Highlights in that pile of stuff include:

• several wrapped cough drops/empty wrappers from my cold/pneumonia back in December/January
• Numerous pieces of paperwork, including the receipt from my last trip to the dentist three months ago, a massage receipt from July 2009, and a bloodwork requisition I was supposed to get after my physical last September
• A crapton of receipts, mostly for the drugstore, grocery store and restaurants near my work
• The magazine I bought today (I normally use one of the cloth bags I keep in my purpose to hold larger things, but it was the only larger thing and not worth getting the bag out for
• A Dominican Republic flag I promised to mail to my best friend for her classroom. (Remember that I went in January)
• One mitten belonging to Flora
• An umbrella
• Something beaded that I can’t remember, but broke and spilled when I dumped out my purse

Obviously there is lots of other stuff there too. I didn’t even touch the zippered pockets (inside and out), because I’m usually pretty good at keeping those under control.

After some pilemaking (keep in purse/keep in house/recycle/trash), I narrowed my purse contents to the following:

Wallet, sunglasses, iPhone cable, cloth bags, headphones, Flora’s immunization card, notebooks, flag (I promise I’ll mail it soon Stacey!), business cards, USB key and some other minor things.

Hopefully this lightens the load a little bit.

I have a question for all you bloggers out there with young kids.

How do you find the time to write?

As you can see from the severe lack of content on this site lately, I’ve been having difficulty finding the time to write. There is just so much else to do!

I know that is a totally lame excuse. We all have lots to do, whether it’s kid stuff, work stuff, house stuff or other life stuff.

But seriously, how do you fit in time to write? I’d love some advice.

I’m working on migrating posts from my other blogs so that hellomelissa.net will be my predominant home on the web.

That means the site will likely be screwy for the next little while. Please bear with me. Once it’s sorted out, new content will be posted and things will go back to normal.

Today didn’t start well, but it did end well, so I think the worst of my funk has passed. Hooray for that.

I honestly think a lot of my irritability is stemming from the weather. It’s been cloudy and rainy for most of the week, and now that Daylight Savings Time is over, it’s dark by 5PM. That means I walk home from the subway in the dark when I come home from work. That always bums me out until people start putting up their Christmas lights. The Christmas lights do cheer things up.

I’ve been grumpy all week and I’m sick of it. Most of it is work-related, so I won’t go into detail here about what’s been bugging me. Partially because I don’t want to get fired if a person of interest reads it, but mostly because if I actually type out all of my irritations, I’m sure to look petty and ridiculous. Even though my issues are small (relatively speaking), they’ve really been getting under my skin and I’m having a hard time leaving them at work. That’s what is really making me grumpy.

Why is it that whenever I find recipes I want to try, it’s always after I’ve just come home from grocery shopping and none of the required ingredients were on my list?

I went and got my flu shot after work today. I was in and out of the clinic (okay, the section of the mall roped off as a clinic) within half an hour, including the 15-minute recovery time. The nurse who shot me up was nice and the shot itself wasn’t too bad, but now my arm is sore, and if previous years are any indicator, will be sore for a couple of days.

I never used to get flu shots – I always figured the chance was 50/50 whether I got the shot or not. You either get sick or you don’t. My doctor made me get one a few years ago, and when I hardly got a cold that year, let alone the flu, I became a convert.

Here’s hoping this year’s vaccine keeps my streak alive.

I locked myself out of the house earlier this evening when I took the dog for a walk. I willfully locked the door even though my keys were still in my purse, inside the house. The door was closed for about 5 seconds when I realized what I had done.

The worst part was that Sean was just coming back from Ottawa today and he wasn’t home yet.

So after Leia and I finished our walk, we got to sit outside and wait for over an hour and a half. I had no cell phone, ID or money on me. Just a dog, leash and our mail. Fortunately, I was able to throw out the bags of dog poop into the organic waste bin that we keep outside.

Sean was amused by the greeting he received in the driveway by his dog and his wife. Normally we have the good sense to wait inside for him.

I was just happy that he didn’t get stuck in traffic, or heaven forbid, have an accident.

I considered kicking in the window or the door, but figured that was a bad idea for two reasons. One was that I was wearing sandals and kicking in glass in scantily covered feet just felt like a bad idea. The other reason was that I figured that Sean would show up the minute I did anything drastic like kick in a door. Then I’d have an injured foot, a cranky husband and a broken door. Sitting quietly outside got a lot more appealing after that thought.

I might have risked all those things if I had to pee though. I live on a corner and everyone would notice if I had peed in my yard while I was waiting. One needs to be thankful for small mercies.

I got a message from my doctor this morning. She told me that my test results were back and that my pelvic ultrasound showed that I had a cyst on my right ovary. Everything else is okay. I need to go back to her in six weeks to follow up, and then I need to get another ultrasound, to make sure it doesn’t get any bigger.

I’ve been through this before, so I’m just relieved it’s not something new. It can’t be too out of the ordinary if we’re just taking the watch-and-wait approach. She didn’t tell me how big it was though, and I am curious about that – must remember to ask when I see her in November.

I’m just relieved that it was *something* and my body wasn’t paining me for no good reason. I’m thankful that the something isn’t too scary either. Here’s hoping it stays that way.

The last time, I had a cyst, I named it Eddie, after the creature on all the Iron Maiden records. It doesn’t seem right to name a new one Eddie, but Eddie Jr. sounds even more silly. Anyone know of any good names for a medical annoyance?

Oh! My Ovaries! (Sound file)

I totally get where Bart is coming from.

I went and had some medical stuff done today. The mysterious ovary-area pain is back. Oh hooray! It’s been bugging me on and off since I got the all-clear back in January of this year (see this post and this post for what I had to say about it at the time), but it’s gotten more pronounced in the last couple of months.

I went to my doctor last Monday about it, and when she examined me, she didn’t feel anything out of the ordinary. This is good as it means that it’s unlikely that there is something obviously inappropriate in the area. However, since we don’t know what exactly *is* causing the pain, we’re doing the whole “process of elimination thing” to figure things out. Hence the tests. For starters, I did a urine test after my appointment. I hate peeing in a cup, and I’m sure most other women do too. I don’t know this for sure, but I imagine men have an easier time with that. Once that test was confirmed to be clear, I had to go and get both a pelvic and an abdominal ultrasound, as well as an abdominal x-ray. I did those this morning.

I was smart this time preparation-wise. I only drank half the water I needed to drink before I left the house. I left the house early enough that I could drink the other half on the subway. This resulted in a much more comfortable train ride. I ended up at the clinic about a half hour before it opened so I tried to ignore my now very full bladder by doing the crossword and sudoku in the paper. I didn’t finish either of them but they were welcome distractions. Considering that I was a walk-in patient, they had me in and on the table less than ten minutes after they officially opened. This is much better than the times that I have booked appointments and have sat with a bursting bladder waiting my turn. Getting there first thing was a good move.

The examinations themselves went well. I do wish they’d shown me the screen while they were doing stuff. It would have been neat to see various body parts from the inside. It was also lots of fun to walk past a bunch of people sitting and waiting for x-rays clutching my gown closed to finally empty my poor abused bladder. They were in gowns too so they were probably sympathetic, but it was a narrow hallway, so I hope my behind or my crotch (I don’t remember which way I was facing) didn’t get too close to their faces.

The funniest part of the morning was when my x-ray was just finishing up. I was lying on a glass table, and they had just taken the last picture when the table started to move really slowly. I thought I was done so I asked why I was moving. The technician rushed over and put a stop to that. I asked where the brakes were – turns out she had forgotten to set them, and she was very apologetic about it. I thought it was funny and was a little giggly about it, but I figured the table couldn’t move too far as it was on a track and was attached to some pretty large hardware. No harm, no foul.

I won’t know the results of any of these tests for at least a couple of weeks. I’m mostly not too worried about them, but I am puzzled. What the heck is going on with my ovary? And how can I make it knock that shit off?