I learned to swim when I was five. Some of my friends, many in fact, learned to swim when their parents dumped them in the lake/river/pool/cesspit and forced them to learn. My parents did not do that to me. That was for the best, because I assure you it would not have worked.
As I started kindergarten, we were in the process of moving and were living in a condo. "Condominium" was too long a word for me at the time so I went around telling people I lived in a "condom", because I was too adorable and innocent to understand the error of my ways then. I'm sure my parents were so proud.
Our condo had a lap pool with an adjacent shallow area. My dad was an avid swimmer, so he would plop me in the shallow end while he swam laps. One day when we were the only ones there, I noticed the 4-foot deep markers in the "adult" area of the pool, and in my five-year-old-mind, I thought I just got measured and I'm 4 feet tall! I'm tall enough to go there! Of course, that's not how it works. I know this now, but I didn't know it then.
So while my dad was swimming away, I climbed out, walked over to the 4-foot-deep end, and jumped in. Much to my surprise, I sank underwater like a rock.
As you may or may not know, drowning doesn't look like it does in the movies (if you don't know, click that link). There's no dramatic splashing. I couldn't get my arms above the water without sinking further. I would push my arms down to try and get above the surface of the water, get a brief gasp of air, and then I was back under. Push arms down, get a gasp of air, and then back under. I had just enough time to get that little breath before slipping below the surface of the water again; there wasn't time between breaths to call for help.
Fortunately for me, my dad noticed right away what had happened and quickly swam to my rescue.
Once my parents had bought a house and we finally settled into the area, I was enrolled in after-school swim lessons. I'm sure that decision was completely unrelated to the events that happened at the condo and they had been planning it all along.
It still amazes me when I meet full-grown adults who don't know how to swim. I remember back in high school at a weekend camp when we discovered one of our friends didn't know how to swim. We wanted to go swim in the deeper part of the lake, which required we pass a simple swim test under lifeguard supervision. Our friend tried to back before reluctantly admitting she couldn't swim. After giving her healthy crap about it (because teenagers), we taught her how to swim and had her dog-paddling around the shallow end before dinner.
Seriously, if you never learned to swim, it's never too late. You can find adult swim classes online, or just find a friend to teach you. You never know when you could be at a backyard BBQ and some douchebag shoves you in the pool. Or maybe you're rafting down the river and a friend pushes you off the boat.
PS. I went clothes shopping today and bought a new swimsuit that doesn't make me look completely like an overstuffed sausage, and I just wanted to brag about that.
Tuesday, May 23, 2017
Sunday, May 21, 2017
The parking twilight zone
The other day I went to Hop Nation for a friend's comedy show. He's been hosting it Saturdays at 8pm as "WTF with Brandon Huck", but he's changing it to "What the Huck". It's very MST3K-esque, essentially a panel riffing on bad YouTube clips.
Anyway, I was a bit worried this weekend because the Roots & Vines festival was next door on Front St. Sure enough, as I approached the area all the street parking was full for blocks. I saw people who were obviously going to/coming from the festival who had quite a hike. The parking lot of the mini mall that hosts Hop Nation was packed to capacity, so I was bracing to do the same.
I started on 1st Ave behind the bar, because why not.
There were only three cars parked on the whole block, which was actually wide enough to have head-in parking on the side.
I searched everywhere for where the catch was. Was this really public parking? It was next to a manufacturing facility and looked like maybe it could have been private, but there was zero signage indicating this.
So I parked and went in the back entrance and asked the bartender, because no way could I have been this lucky.
Inside the bar, you could hear the music festival going on right outside the front door.
Me: "Is that parking back there...that's good, right? It's public?"
Bartender: "Uh, yeah."
Me: "I had to ask, because there's almost no one parked there, and that seems weird on a day like today."
Bartender: "Yeah, people are stupid."
I'm assuming everyone who came from the highway assumed all the parking in the immediate area of the festival would be full and parked on the downtown side of the train tracks instead of going just a block over and finding parking. Their loss. My gain.
Anyway, I was a bit worried this weekend because the Roots & Vines festival was next door on Front St. Sure enough, as I approached the area all the street parking was full for blocks. I saw people who were obviously going to/coming from the festival who had quite a hike. The parking lot of the mini mall that hosts Hop Nation was packed to capacity, so I was bracing to do the same.
I started on 1st Ave behind the bar, because why not.
There were only three cars parked on the whole block, which was actually wide enough to have head-in parking on the side.
I searched everywhere for where the catch was. Was this really public parking? It was next to a manufacturing facility and looked like maybe it could have been private, but there was zero signage indicating this.
So I parked and went in the back entrance and asked the bartender, because no way could I have been this lucky.
Inside the bar, you could hear the music festival going on right outside the front door.
Me: "Is that parking back there...that's good, right? It's public?"
Bartender: "Uh, yeah."
Me: "I had to ask, because there's almost no one parked there, and that seems weird on a day like today."
Bartender: "Yeah, people are stupid."
I'm assuming everyone who came from the highway assumed all the parking in the immediate area of the festival would be full and parked on the downtown side of the train tracks instead of going just a block over and finding parking. Their loss. My gain.
Thursday, May 18, 2017
It's weird living alone
On Mother's Day, my Facebook feed was flooded with pictures of friends spending the day with their moms. Taking their moms out to brunch or hiking with their moms or having a backyard BBQ with their moms.
I called my mom because she's on the opposite end of the country with me. I'm the only one in my entire extended family living in this region of the US. I grew up here, but my family and my brother (who has refused to talk with me for over a decade at this point for still unknown reasons) moved away several years ago for work.
Even before I moved, 90% of my friends had left town. And while I've made some new friends in my new home, most of them are through the current boyfriend and are seen in context with the current boyfriend. I haven't made many friends I can really hang out with on my own yet.
Sometimes, it's hard being alone. If something breaks down (like, say, your headgasket blows on the highway on a mountain pass when you're moving your entire life across the state [true story]), you have to figure out how to deal with it yourself. That's difficult, and usually expensive.
It can also be empowering, though. You're forced to be self-reliant, which absolutely sucks in the moment, but when you succeed at doing whatever the thing is that needs doing, it's a rewarding experience.
I'm grateful for support where I can get it. But it also feels good knowing I've been able to take care of myself when I need to.
Also, when you live alone you can walk around your house naked eating tacos and no one is there to tell you to stop, so that's a plus, too.
I called my mom because she's on the opposite end of the country with me. I'm the only one in my entire extended family living in this region of the US. I grew up here, but my family and my brother (who has refused to talk with me for over a decade at this point for still unknown reasons) moved away several years ago for work.
Even before I moved, 90% of my friends had left town. And while I've made some new friends in my new home, most of them are through the current boyfriend and are seen in context with the current boyfriend. I haven't made many friends I can really hang out with on my own yet.
Sometimes, it's hard being alone. If something breaks down (like, say, your headgasket blows on the highway on a mountain pass when you're moving your entire life across the state [true story]), you have to figure out how to deal with it yourself. That's difficult, and usually expensive.
It can also be empowering, though. You're forced to be self-reliant, which absolutely sucks in the moment, but when you succeed at doing whatever the thing is that needs doing, it's a rewarding experience.
I'm grateful for support where I can get it. But it also feels good knowing I've been able to take care of myself when I need to.
Also, when you live alone you can walk around your house naked eating tacos and no one is there to tell you to stop, so that's a plus, too.
Wednesday, May 10, 2017
Embracing change and uncertainty, and scorpions scare the fuck out of me
Last night at the bar I met the most awesome chick. She had quite the story and was struggling through life stuff, but was trying to get things back together. She worked at a fast food restaurant, and was clearly a little embarrassed about it. Hey, nothing wrong with an honest job. Everyone has to start somewhere.
This resulted in a conversation with the boyfriend about the jobs we started in, and the jobs we stayed in too long, and how we moved on. I started with a shitty job. I stayed in that job way too long. Now I have a career that I honestly enjoy. The road to get there was not smooth.
Back in high school, I thought I wanted to be an English teacher. In hindsight, this was a stupid thought because while I like literature, I don't love literature. I also thought I was going into web design, and I also wanted to be a massage therapist. After taking some web design classes I decided it was boring. My mom told me all massage therapists were actually prostitutes and refused to support me if I went to school to do that. Yes, that was her reasoning she gave me; no, I know that's not how it works in the real world. So after graduating high school and community college (I took college classes in high school and got my first Associate's degree a year after high school), I decided I would transfer to a four-year university and become an English teacher.
Parental support be damned, though, because by the end of my first year at university, I had moved out on my own and in with my future ex-husband, setting off a series of events that would not end well, starting with the fact that I could not afford to live on my own and continue at the university. I didn't qualify for enough financial aid due to the "expected family contribution" amount. My parents made too much.
My parents were not helping financially because I had moved in with a guy before marriage and that's sinful, and also they believed that people should pay for their own education. My mother had worked to pay for her college back when that was a thing you could feasibly do, and she graduated. My father's parent's paid for his college and he dropped out of engineering school. Ironically, he's the one who was always the breadwinner; my mother was a stay-at-home mom which is great and awesome, but making the argument that you need a university education to get by with them as an example is a bit hypocritical. Plus college costs a fuckton more today than it did when they were in school. I'm just sayin'.
So I dropped out of university. I was working minimum wage as a motel housekeeper at a cheap motel. When I moved out, I took on a second job as a newspaper carrier.
The motel was my first job. It was stable. It was secure. It was absolutely miserable though, and I stayed at it longer than I should have. I tolerated a lot of shit from them because I was young, didn't have perspective from other employers, and was afraid of what would happen if I lost the job. Between my two job's and my ex's job, we were barely making it, scraping by in the cheapest apartments in town. I was not living in a glamorous neighborhood; the DEA literally raided our building once because apparently our upstairs neighbors were dealing heroin.
The job was awful. The company I worked for was cheap. I remember when the minimum wage in Washington State went up to $8.07 an hour and the company decided to automatically give new hires and people making under that raises to $8.25 or something like that. I made $8.08 an hour, just over the new minimum. I did not get a raise. My boss shrugged and told me tough luck. I should have walked out then. But I stayed.
I had an accidental needle stick once, because it's a cheap motel full of crackheads so of course it's gonna happen. When that happens, the boss is supposed to drive you to the ER so they can fill out all the worker's comp stuff to cover your testing. If they don't, you have to pay for it yourself. My boss told me I could drive myself to the ER "if I wanted to." Because she didn't want to deal with it, I couldn't get the testing. Instead, I donated blood for the next few months and used the blood center as a makeshift free testing center, which is wrong yes I know but I was broke as fuck and my boss was a PoS. I should have walked out then. But it was a stable job...
I actually worked my way up from housekeeper to the front desk, and even into low-level management. I still hated that fucking job though. I would cry before work, and I would cry after work. Even in management with that company, I was making barely over minimum wage. My ex was pushing the kids thing, but we could barely scrape by, how could we afford kids?
So I went back to school. I made it my New Year's resolution one year. I didn't know what I was going to do, nor how I was going to afford it, but I resolved to do it. I went online, re-registered as a student at the community college, and started looking at options. Ironically, the massage therapist program my parents forbid me from was where I started looking, because it still seemed appealing. I saw a physical therapist assistant program listed next to it in the allied healthcare programs directory. At the time, I knew jack shit about the field of physical therapy. I wrote down the informational meetings in my calendar and made sure I scheduled time to go.
Within a year, I was registered for the classes needed to finish the pre-reqs my degree didn't cover.
Fun fact for consideration: if you drop out of college and try to re-enroll later in life, you are disqualified from a lot of financial aid. I had hoped that with the "expected family contribution" finally no longer looming over my head, I would qualify for something. I was wrong, because I had dropped out because I couldn't afford it at the time. That sucked. I didn't like the idea of taking on loans, but I liked the idea of working a dead-end job the rest of my life even less. So I took a deep breath and took the uncomfortable plunge into student debt.
After I did my pre-reqs and a bunch of job shadows (the program requires a minimum of 50 hours of job shadow; really you're gonna want 100 if you're thinking of applying though), I applied to the program. I waited and waited...and got rejected. The rejection letter said I never paid my application fee. After some research, I found out it was a clerical error and they had put my fee on some random person's account. I was heartbroken. It mean waiting another year to apply, which meant working another year in that horrible job that was crushing my soul.
When a boutique luxury resort that had gone into bankruptcy was reopening, I decided to give a shot at applying. The cheap motel I worked at was at the opposite end of the hospitality spectrum, but I was desperate at that point. For eight years I had worked at the motel, and in those eight years I'd seen reduced benefits and barely a scratch in pay raises compared to the cost of living. So I applied, and I got an interview, and I got a job offer, and I practically shat myself. The starting wage they offered as a front desk clerk was more than the motel offered after 8 years and working my way into management.
The new job was a bit terrifying. It was a small local business without the big corporate financial backing, and it was dragging itself out of bankruptcy. If it failed, my job was going to fail with it. It was unstable. It was uncertain. The future was unknowable. I almost didn't take it. It would have been easier to stay in my old job, a job that was stable albeit it miserable.
I took the offer and quit my old job. Then I cried. I don't know if they were tears of fear or tears of joy. I think they were a bit of both.
The new job had it's share of issues, but I was so much happier working at the resort. Being a more local operation getting off it's feet, I was able to feel like I was actually contributing in a significant way. My opinion and feedback actually mattered and influenced decisions. In two months I learned more about the hospitality industry than I ever did at the motel. I had amazing supportive bosses, was making not a lot but a more reasonable amount of money, and actually was able to look forward to going to work. When the letter from the college came a second time, I told myself before I opened it that things wouldn't be as dire if my application was rejected a second time.
It wasn't. I was able to go back to school (a prospect which my new employer was happy to be flexible with me on) and graduate and get a job and now I make an actual living wage with an actual career. I'm mired in student debt, but it's perfectly manageable with my new income. I no longer have to do a paper route in addition to another job. Life ain't half bad.
The point I am trying to make by sharing all of that too-long word-vomit is that if I had let the fear of change and uncertainty control my decisions, I might still be at that old job I hated. It took a lot for me to apply to college with zero idea how pay for it or without a firm plan of what I was even going back to school for, initially. It took a lot to quit the first stable job I'd had and dive into building up a company climbing out of bankruptcy. It was terrifying, after I graduated, to leave my hometown and drain my savings moving across the state to take on a new career in a new field. I feel they were all the right decisions, though.
I have a bracelet with a scorpion encased in resin. Scorpions scare the crap out of me, because unlike spiders or snakes which are maybe venomous or maybe not depending on the species, every species of scorpion is venomous, which freaks me out. Plus they have two pinchers and a stingy tail, which I mean like really, you need that much stabby pinchy shit? Talk about overkill.
I wear the bracelet though, despite how much scorpions freak me out, to remind me to not let fear dictate my decisions. I can listen to the fear and take it under advisement, but I cannot let it control me. Because when fear controls me, I stay in jobs I hate for too long, relationships I hate for too long, live in ghetto-ass neighborhoods for too long. But when I move beyond fear, when I can push past my comfort zone, amazing things can happen.
The takeaway is don't let fear control you. There are better things waiting outside your comfort zone. Brace yourself, take the plunge, and go out and find them.
This resulted in a conversation with the boyfriend about the jobs we started in, and the jobs we stayed in too long, and how we moved on. I started with a shitty job. I stayed in that job way too long. Now I have a career that I honestly enjoy. The road to get there was not smooth.
Back in high school, I thought I wanted to be an English teacher. In hindsight, this was a stupid thought because while I like literature, I don't love literature. I also thought I was going into web design, and I also wanted to be a massage therapist. After taking some web design classes I decided it was boring. My mom told me all massage therapists were actually prostitutes and refused to support me if I went to school to do that. Yes, that was her reasoning she gave me; no, I know that's not how it works in the real world. So after graduating high school and community college (I took college classes in high school and got my first Associate's degree a year after high school), I decided I would transfer to a four-year university and become an English teacher.
Parental support be damned, though, because by the end of my first year at university, I had moved out on my own and in with my future ex-husband, setting off a series of events that would not end well, starting with the fact that I could not afford to live on my own and continue at the university. I didn't qualify for enough financial aid due to the "expected family contribution" amount. My parents made too much.
My parents were not helping financially because I had moved in with a guy before marriage and that's sinful, and also they believed that people should pay for their own education. My mother had worked to pay for her college back when that was a thing you could feasibly do, and she graduated. My father's parent's paid for his college and he dropped out of engineering school. Ironically, he's the one who was always the breadwinner; my mother was a stay-at-home mom which is great and awesome, but making the argument that you need a university education to get by with them as an example is a bit hypocritical. Plus college costs a fuckton more today than it did when they were in school. I'm just sayin'.
So I dropped out of university. I was working minimum wage as a motel housekeeper at a cheap motel. When I moved out, I took on a second job as a newspaper carrier.
The motel was my first job. It was stable. It was secure. It was absolutely miserable though, and I stayed at it longer than I should have. I tolerated a lot of shit from them because I was young, didn't have perspective from other employers, and was afraid of what would happen if I lost the job. Between my two job's and my ex's job, we were barely making it, scraping by in the cheapest apartments in town. I was not living in a glamorous neighborhood; the DEA literally raided our building once because apparently our upstairs neighbors were dealing heroin.
The job was awful. The company I worked for was cheap. I remember when the minimum wage in Washington State went up to $8.07 an hour and the company decided to automatically give new hires and people making under that raises to $8.25 or something like that. I made $8.08 an hour, just over the new minimum. I did not get a raise. My boss shrugged and told me tough luck. I should have walked out then. But I stayed.
I had an accidental needle stick once, because it's a cheap motel full of crackheads so of course it's gonna happen. When that happens, the boss is supposed to drive you to the ER so they can fill out all the worker's comp stuff to cover your testing. If they don't, you have to pay for it yourself. My boss told me I could drive myself to the ER "if I wanted to." Because she didn't want to deal with it, I couldn't get the testing. Instead, I donated blood for the next few months and used the blood center as a makeshift free testing center, which is wrong yes I know but I was broke as fuck and my boss was a PoS. I should have walked out then. But it was a stable job...
I actually worked my way up from housekeeper to the front desk, and even into low-level management. I still hated that fucking job though. I would cry before work, and I would cry after work. Even in management with that company, I was making barely over minimum wage. My ex was pushing the kids thing, but we could barely scrape by, how could we afford kids?
So I went back to school. I made it my New Year's resolution one year. I didn't know what I was going to do, nor how I was going to afford it, but I resolved to do it. I went online, re-registered as a student at the community college, and started looking at options. Ironically, the massage therapist program my parents forbid me from was where I started looking, because it still seemed appealing. I saw a physical therapist assistant program listed next to it in the allied healthcare programs directory. At the time, I knew jack shit about the field of physical therapy. I wrote down the informational meetings in my calendar and made sure I scheduled time to go.
Within a year, I was registered for the classes needed to finish the pre-reqs my degree didn't cover.
Fun fact for consideration: if you drop out of college and try to re-enroll later in life, you are disqualified from a lot of financial aid. I had hoped that with the "expected family contribution" finally no longer looming over my head, I would qualify for something. I was wrong, because I had dropped out because I couldn't afford it at the time. That sucked. I didn't like the idea of taking on loans, but I liked the idea of working a dead-end job the rest of my life even less. So I took a deep breath and took the uncomfortable plunge into student debt.
After I did my pre-reqs and a bunch of job shadows (the program requires a minimum of 50 hours of job shadow; really you're gonna want 100 if you're thinking of applying though), I applied to the program. I waited and waited...and got rejected. The rejection letter said I never paid my application fee. After some research, I found out it was a clerical error and they had put my fee on some random person's account. I was heartbroken. It mean waiting another year to apply, which meant working another year in that horrible job that was crushing my soul.
When a boutique luxury resort that had gone into bankruptcy was reopening, I decided to give a shot at applying. The cheap motel I worked at was at the opposite end of the hospitality spectrum, but I was desperate at that point. For eight years I had worked at the motel, and in those eight years I'd seen reduced benefits and barely a scratch in pay raises compared to the cost of living. So I applied, and I got an interview, and I got a job offer, and I practically shat myself. The starting wage they offered as a front desk clerk was more than the motel offered after 8 years and working my way into management.
The new job was a bit terrifying. It was a small local business without the big corporate financial backing, and it was dragging itself out of bankruptcy. If it failed, my job was going to fail with it. It was unstable. It was uncertain. The future was unknowable. I almost didn't take it. It would have been easier to stay in my old job, a job that was stable albeit it miserable.
I took the offer and quit my old job. Then I cried. I don't know if they were tears of fear or tears of joy. I think they were a bit of both.
The new job had it's share of issues, but I was so much happier working at the resort. Being a more local operation getting off it's feet, I was able to feel like I was actually contributing in a significant way. My opinion and feedback actually mattered and influenced decisions. In two months I learned more about the hospitality industry than I ever did at the motel. I had amazing supportive bosses, was making not a lot but a more reasonable amount of money, and actually was able to look forward to going to work. When the letter from the college came a second time, I told myself before I opened it that things wouldn't be as dire if my application was rejected a second time.
It wasn't. I was able to go back to school (a prospect which my new employer was happy to be flexible with me on) and graduate and get a job and now I make an actual living wage with an actual career. I'm mired in student debt, but it's perfectly manageable with my new income. I no longer have to do a paper route in addition to another job. Life ain't half bad.
The point I am trying to make by sharing all of that too-long word-vomit is that if I had let the fear of change and uncertainty control my decisions, I might still be at that old job I hated. It took a lot for me to apply to college with zero idea how pay for it or without a firm plan of what I was even going back to school for, initially. It took a lot to quit the first stable job I'd had and dive into building up a company climbing out of bankruptcy. It was terrifying, after I graduated, to leave my hometown and drain my savings moving across the state to take on a new career in a new field. I feel they were all the right decisions, though.
I have a bracelet with a scorpion encased in resin. Scorpions scare the crap out of me, because unlike spiders or snakes which are maybe venomous or maybe not depending on the species, every species of scorpion is venomous, which freaks me out. Plus they have two pinchers and a stingy tail, which I mean like really, you need that much stabby pinchy shit? Talk about overkill.
I wear the bracelet though, despite how much scorpions freak me out, to remind me to not let fear dictate my decisions. I can listen to the fear and take it under advisement, but I cannot let it control me. Because when fear controls me, I stay in jobs I hate for too long, relationships I hate for too long, live in ghetto-ass neighborhoods for too long. But when I move beyond fear, when I can push past my comfort zone, amazing things can happen.
The takeaway is don't let fear control you. There are better things waiting outside your comfort zone. Brace yourself, take the plunge, and go out and find them.
Tuesday, May 9, 2017
Drunk in Portland, and I missed the donuts
So I went on a business trip to Portland. It was my first time in Portland. It was fun. We had a party. I learned how to play blackjack. I won about twenty notebooks, because I literally threw raffle tickets in all the prizes instead of just the big ones. I also won a GoPro in the company's big raffle! Yay win!
I also drank a lot, both at the employer-sponsored party and at the unofficial afterparty that followed in Old Town.
I vaguely recall drunkenly repairing a toilet in the bar at the afterparty. It wasn't flushing, so I lifted up the tank lid and fixed it because I used to work light maintenance at a motel and it was the same powerflush set-up I was used to. You're welcome, Kell's Irish Pub.
When I got back to my room, I apparently wrote myself a note in one of the notebooks I won.
It reads: "Dear sober Katt, This pen is also a stylus kinda cool. Jacked the hotel toiletries & packed them already. You're welcome. Tried to wash off bar stamp but failed, sorry. Don't forget cock & balls. Sincerely, drunk Katt. PS I think the cow is plotting against you. It looks sketchy."
The cow is in reference to a purple squishy cow one of the vendors was handing out. It was sitting on the other bed in my hotel room when I woke up, standing on my new GoPro, staring at me while I slept apparently.
The cock & balls was in reference to getting a donut from Voodoo Too. My hotel was only about three blocks away.
Unfortunately, Voodoo Donuts is a cash-only establishment, and drunk me blew all the cash on booze. So I was unable to get my donuts in the morning. Drunk me is a cruel person.
I also drank a lot, both at the employer-sponsored party and at the unofficial afterparty that followed in Old Town.
 |
| Picture taken while stumbling back to my hotel from Old Town. |
When I got back to my room, I apparently wrote myself a note in one of the notebooks I won.
It reads: "Dear sober Katt, This pen is also a stylus kinda cool. Jacked the hotel toiletries & packed them already. You're welcome. Tried to wash off bar stamp but failed, sorry. Don't forget cock & balls. Sincerely, drunk Katt. PS I think the cow is plotting against you. It looks sketchy."
The cow is in reference to a purple squishy cow one of the vendors was handing out. It was sitting on the other bed in my hotel room when I woke up, standing on my new GoPro, staring at me while I slept apparently.
The cock & balls was in reference to getting a donut from Voodoo Too. My hotel was only about three blocks away.
Unfortunately, Voodoo Donuts is a cash-only establishment, and drunk me blew all the cash on booze. So I was unable to get my donuts in the morning. Drunk me is a cruel person.
Thursday, May 4, 2017
Apparently my doc wants me to drink less caffeine
I got my first physical with a new primary care in Yakima recently. They asked all the usual screening questions. They even asked about domestic abuse, which I thought was interesting because I'd never been asked that. Then today I learned it can be classified as a pre-existing condition and with the AHCA vote coming up I might be fucked on that one. Shit.
Anyway my doctor was like "Do you do any drugs or alcohol?" and that's easy because I'm like no to drugs yes to moderate alcohol. I always hate having to estimate my alcohol because it will be almost nothing throughout the week and then I got out once a week and have a lot of drinks. "So, have you had more than six drinks in one night in the past year?" In the past year no; I'm not 24 anymore, unfortunately.
I almost got through when my doc asked "Oh, I almost forgot. What about caffeine?"
"Yes, please."
She glared at me for giving that answer. Doc was not amused.
"How many cups a day?"
"At least five or six."
"Black coffee or sugary drinks?"
"Um...about 50/50?"
So in short doc wants me to cut caffeine. And stop eating garbage because I'm too fat. I get enough exercise but my diet is like a trash bin because I live by myself and it's hard to cook for one so I usually live off TV dinners and that pissed doc off as well.
Like hell I'm gonna cut my coffee...
Anyway my doctor was like "Do you do any drugs or alcohol?" and that's easy because I'm like no to drugs yes to moderate alcohol. I always hate having to estimate my alcohol because it will be almost nothing throughout the week and then I got out once a week and have a lot of drinks. "So, have you had more than six drinks in one night in the past year?" In the past year no; I'm not 24 anymore, unfortunately.
I almost got through when my doc asked "Oh, I almost forgot. What about caffeine?"
"Yes, please."
She glared at me for giving that answer. Doc was not amused.
"How many cups a day?"
"At least five or six."
"Black coffee or sugary drinks?"
"Um...about 50/50?"
So in short doc wants me to cut caffeine. And stop eating garbage because I'm too fat. I get enough exercise but my diet is like a trash bin because I live by myself and it's hard to cook for one so I usually live off TV dinners and that pissed doc off as well.
Like hell I'm gonna cut my coffee...
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