I may have already posted about this, but I kind of feel like it's time again. It's sort of my duty to provide this type of public service.

You're not British.

There, I said it.

Just because you watched Harry Potter and Downton Abbey along with everyone else and you noticed that they put a "u" in some of their "-or" words, and they say certain slang terms that are just now making it over here, it does not mean you're British.

It means you're trying to be cool.

If you feel that you might, in fact, be British, here is a test that can help you to decide:

First off, have you ever been to England, Ireland, Wales, or Scotland? If so, was it for more than a month?

Secondly, were you born and raised in America?

Third, do you watch a lot of shows on BBC America?

If you answered "yes" to the first question and "no" to the second two, you might be British. Maybe. If not, you're definitely not.

Adding a "u" to words like "favorite" and saying everything is "bloody brilliant" on Facebook is not going to change that. Sorry.

Maybe go get a job. That might make you feel better about who you really are. Or, and this is way out there, just stop trying to be cool. Just be yourself.

Ah. I feel much better now. Brilliant, in fact (the smart kind, not the cool British kind).

My awesome sister took me out this past weekend for my birthday. We stayed in a super fancy hotel downtown and had room service and went to a baseball game and the comic expo. It was super awesome, and definitely worth the heat.

I was still pretty tired and stuff from feeling like crap, but most of our activities involved large amounts of sitting, so it worked out great. We even got to go to one of those Japanese restaurants where they Hibachi it up right in front of you, and that was magnificent. Especially because they made too much fried rice, so I got this ginormous pile, and I was still having some steroid hunger at that point, so that just hit the flipping spot.

So much ricey goodness.

I also experienced the majority of my facial steroidy swelling over the weekend, so that was fun. Every time I went into a bathroom, I could look in the mirror and get a peek at what I would look like if I gained a hundred pounds.

Not a good look.

By Sunday night, my face was approximately the size of a small European country, and I was getting emails from Campbell's about copyright infringement.

However, I hit the water really hard and stayed in my cool office all day yesterday, and the swelling decreased significantly.  It's really shocking, though, how much water your body will hold and how fast it changes what you look like. Weird.

So, great weekend, and I'm still (slowly) recovering. I wish there was a way that I could stop feeling like a 90-year-old lady, but every day is a tiny bit better, and that's probably the best I'm going to get. Singing is the next thing on the horizon, and hopefully my head gets opened up fully within a week or two so I can get back to some real practice. I managed two minutes of humming yesterday, and that's it.

Probably not going to cut it. Ah, well. It'll get there. I hope.

Yesterday was kind of a huge day for me. I finished all of my meds (thank goodness, because those steroids are not making me a funner person), and I went to see my ear, nose and throat doctor for my prognosis regarding the hearing loss from the infection. It was freaking me out all day, because there's just no way I can function as a singer with this type of hearing and I was worried that maybe there was still some infection floating around in my jaw that would require surgery.

Wrong and wrong!

He said it looks like everything is clearing up and I'm on my way back to normal, it's just progressing slowly so the healing seems to take forever, but I'm not experiencing anything abnormal at all. Phew.

I realized I was asking a lot of questions when, at the end, he's like, "Stop with the decongestants, too. They can make you weird, and at this point they're too drying." 

So I said, "Well, I'm done with the steroids, too, so that should help with that part." 

He looks at me and says, "Yeah. Those....um...those...can make you weird. Probably good you're done with those. Feel like they're making you a little weird?"

"Yep. Making me a lot weird."

"Yeaaaaahhhh. Good, good to be done on those, too."

Thanks, doc. I know I'm a weirdo. Hopefully within a few days this med-induced weirdness will leave me free to be my normally weird self, which is just weird enough for me, thank you very much.

So, yes, huge day. Can't even get into the feelings part. Too much good.

Happy Friday!

Yesterday was the kind of day where everything at work just keeps exploding. However, on the plus side, since I felt like poop, I could just convince myself that it was because I wasn't quite myself, and that really helped.

It's all about rationalizing.

I know I must be feeling a little better this morning, because, although there is no way I'm allowed to do anything even remotely related to cleaning yet (I guess dusting and cleaning chemicals aren't conducive to nice, un-swollen airways and ears...argh), I am wandering through my house, feeling like a derelict who has allowed a huge bomb of filth to explode, and failed to even try to stop the damage. Or a hobo. Whatever. I think derelict feels fancier, so I'm going with that.

Worst part is, I totally know it's the truth. It IS bad in here (at least according to my usual cleaning schedule, which has not been followed in almost 13 days). Also, I know that my husband would be totally up to doing some dusting, etc., if he had any energy left at all after dealing with work and my crazy-pants self (which he might because he's kind of got super powers that way), but he can't disturb the dust, either. It's not really at that point yet, and it would stir up more trouble than just leaving it for another week.

Fortunately, there's always laundry. My machine is going to get a workout today, whether it likes it or not. Can I fold it? Maybe. We'll see. I'm just so excited that I can work from home today in my pajamas, at least for part of the day. I am definitely not ready for normal yet.

This is slow.

I hate slow.

But it is slow AND crazy, and I am definitely used to crazy. Just got to go with it.

Well, I did it! I made it through my birthday and am now firmly entrenched in my mid-30s. 

Not that exciting for everyone else, but for me, 35 just sounds so old, so I'm glad I didn't have any sort of major emotional upheaval, which could've definitely been the case, as I'm still on some pretty good steroids, which are making me craaaaaaaaazyyyy.

Only a few more days, though. 

Anyway, it was a very nice day, and even though I was kind of tired from all the activity (a morning of TV-watching, followed by a movie and then dinner at my mom's...old people, watch out!), I still feel a little better this morning than I did yesterday, and I have a tiny bit less pressure in my head on the bad side, so that's great, too.

If we could just tone down the med-induced paranoiac side effects, I'd probably be at like 75% normal capacity already.

Oh, well.

Back to a normal day at work today, which isn't usually my day to work in the office, but everyone takes off a lot in the summer, and I'm always the one to take shifts. Not that that's a huge deal, but it would've been nice to have a little more recovery time. This is going a lot slower than I had imagined, and I'm feeling kind of frustrated with myself, and it's hard to be sure how much of it is the pills and how much of it is me.

I will say one thing, though. Props to all the ladies out there having hot flashes, because they've been waking me up all night for like a week, presumably because of the 'roids (yeah, I like to abbreviate it so it sounds like hemorrhoids, because that is hilarious) and just whoa. Just. Whoa. That is not fun. I'm a coldish person by nature, and so I'm really not used to that. It is definitely every bit as unpleasant as it sounds, plus you're tired as crap in the morning because you woke up every fifteen minutes feeling like somebody just turned your thermostat up to 90.

So, overall, I'm really excited that I'm progressing further away from the creepy hellish place that is the hospital, and that I was able to get out of the house a little bit on my birthday, and that life is slowly returning to normal. It's just the slow part that I take issue with. Can I get a fast-forward button or something? That'd be great.

Alright, alright. I'm back. But I have a really good reason for not writing anything in the last week.

I've had an infection. IN MY HEAD.

Yep, stayed in the hospital and everything. Sounds like a nice little mini-break, right? It was just so totally not, I can't even explain it. Last month I had had this massive sinus congestiony, cold-like, possibly allergy attackish thing going on for a week or so, and I thought it had cleared up, but obviously IT HAD NOT. IT WAS IN MY HEAD ALL THE TIME.

Insidious little turd.

Anyhow, I've had this fluid building up in my left ear for a couple of weeks and then last Thursday night (after a particularly triumphant 2nd place at trivia, mind you), BAM! I wake up in the middle of the night with a horrendous earache. The kind you only see in movies where you are either having insects tunnel through your brain, or a serial killer is repeatedly stabbing you in the ear with an icepick. Take your choice...I prefer the icepick one because it grosses me out less and it seems to describe the intense stabbiness that went on in my head for the next three days without ceasing. 

So I went to the ER (after having already gone in to see my regular doctor just a couple of days earlier because I was concerned about a swollen lymph node on that side and swollen tonsils, so go figure) and the guy puts me on antibiotics and sends me home with some Lortab. Which, by the way, is the  dumbest thing I've ever taken. Did nothing but hurt my stomach.

So, as you may have guessed, these remedies did nothing. I ended up in my doctor's office the next morning (trying to avoid the higher ER copay, which as you will soon see, was unavoidable), and after seeing my lovely swollen jaw, etc., the PA (who is probably the one always stuck with Saturday office hours) sends me to the ER in the neighboring town, because the CT-scan machine in our hospital was broken. Great.

I get to Santa Fe and go into the ER, where they promptly remove my clothing (not my bra, which I had to wear continuously until the next evening because they didn't want to take out my IV for bra-removal purposes...seriously...like I wasn't uncomfortable enough), pop in an IV and send me off for the scan.

One problem:  I'm allergic to the iodine they use with those pesky things. Got an incomplete picture, but they decided it was probably mastoiditis. Yum.

At this point, they decide to keep me in, supposedly just for overnight iv antibiotics. Now, they didn't tell me this until I was checking out, but it turns out that the reason I got that big old room all to myself in a deserted section of the pediatrics wing is because they were pretty sure it was going to be meningitis, in which case they'd have to isolate me from the other prisoners patients. Yeah. Nice to know, guys.

I was also visited by five different doctors, none of whom decided to approve any decent pain meds for me on that long, long Saturday, so I had a day full of Oxycodone and Tylenol and absolutely no pain relief. None. Every time I tried to ask, I felt like they would think I was seeking drugs or I was just being a baby, so I don't think I really got my point across as well as possible. I think next time, I'll try a more violent approach. Because, seriously. Worst pain ever.

Sunday morning arrived, and I finally said, "Look. I need something different. Could you please try that lovely drug you gave me right before the CT-scan? That was the only thing that helped at all. Otherwise, could you throw me some ibuprofen, because I am going to die here. For reals." They went and asked a doctor (don't know which one, but I really don't care...bless you, buddy) and got me the right meds. Hallelujah.

However, at this point, I was getting a bad headache, which is not a good sign when meningitis is on the table, and the antibiotics hadn't really started working yet. So when the doctor (who is, apparently, the guy that makes this call) came in to see how I was doing and I was worse, he was like, "Okay. Let's give this a couple more hours and if your pain isn't improving, we'll need to do a spinal tap."

WHAT WHAT WHAT? Spinal tap? Methinks not. At this point, I'm crying and my husband's over in the corner, trying to be manly and supportive, but I'm sure that, deep down inside, he was crapping his pants right along with me. Fortunately, the doctor took off pretty quickly so I could have my major freakout in private.

Fortunately, my pain starting easing and my swelling starting subsiding and my jaw calmed down. Just in time. Doctor comes back and says, "Looks like the antibiotics are working. Let's just up your dosage and keep you in here another night, just to be safe."

Hu-fricking-zzah. No spinal tap. 

At this point, this young ear-nose-throat specialist guy comes in and decides everyone was wrong and it's viral, but none of the other doctors (or even any of the nurses) jumped on that train with him, since the antibiotics had started to work already. That and he totally disagreed with everything else they'd all said, so I was confused about my diagnosis until I read my discharge papers the next morning. Which said pretty much the same thing they'd told me they thought was wrong when they checked me in. Nice one, guy. Way to confuse the sleep-deprived lady. Good call.

Anyhow, the nurses were all lovely, the food was horrible (except the piece of turkey, which my husband ate because I couldn't chew and he thought was awesome), and I have never been so glad to shower and do in laundry in my whole life. Hospitals are full of all the things that inhabit my worst nightmares.

Now to see if I regain my hearing in my left ear. Ugh.

Pretty good reason for not blogging, eh? Yeah. I win.

Okay, so we went camping over the weekend, and that was really fun and all, but seriously. I have this sinusy, sore-throat crap that won't go away, and I haven't been able to really sing for TWO WEEKS.

Two weeks. That's almost a lifetime. How am I supposed to get any work done, or get better, or learn new stuff, if I can't actually sing anything?

I've tried. It still hurts.

I had a little cold/allergy thingy, and I sang just fine almost all of the way through that, only taking a day or two off, but this is ridiculous. My throat is red and swollen, and my left tonsil looks like it's trying to make a break for the front of my mouth. Swallowing is also super awesome.

Plus, I went to the doctor yesterday and it is, indeed, allergies. So no magic pill. Well, she gave me antibiotics, but said I should wait a few days before deciding to take them. Thank goodness, because antibiotics are not my favorites.

Singing is my favorite.

Can't do it.

Lame.

I'm also pretty sure my breath smells like the bowels of hell, because that's what my mouth tastes like, no matter how much I brush. I know it's from the post-nasal drip, but I can't seem to do anything about it, so I feel self-conscious about it. Really a lot. I feel like I need to wear a warning sign on my shirt and I also need to draw stink lines in the air so people will know it's bad and not to approach. If life was a cartoon, those lines would just be there, but they're not, so that's still more work for me.

It should be like that. Sigh.

At any rate, let's hope all of the trial lessons I have scheduled this week go well. It's no good when you can't sing for people when you're trying to show them something. Or, at least, it's no good for me.

Argh.