Firday morning and I'll be on my way to Portland again. But this time....dun-da-dun...I'll make it to the ocean. I've only seen the Pacific once and I didn't get a chance to actually touch it:) I'm going to Lincoln City to visit my sweetie. Unfortunately, I have to be at the airport in time for my 6am flight...and okay, this is a seriously lame blog post, but I'm excited.

Well, my second CT scan (done correctly, with contrast this time) turned out just fine. There was some thickening in my sinus cavities, which we knew, but no lesions or bleeding in my noggin. Good news. Of course, test results are always a mixed bag. They show that there is nothing serious to cause me additional worry but they don't make the pain and discomfort go away and they offer no guarantee as to my overall health. The body is complex, a complicated system of feelings and physical manifestations, making it both amazingly beautiful and unbelievably terrifying. For now, I am happy for my clean scan. I have too much work this semester to have to deal with brain irregularities:)

My left arm hurts more than usual tonight; I have an icky metallic taste in my mouth; my head feels like it has been filled with poisonous jello and epoxied closed. Yes, that's right; I'm sick again.

Well, I suppose it's a bit more complicated than that. It always is, isn't it? Today, I woke up entirely too early (though not early enough to be on time), pulled on jeans and a t-shirt, and drove, coughing and sneezing, down to Home Hospital. It always strikes me as ironic when one sickness inhibits my ability to take care of another one. Luckily, today I made it to the hospital, where the other irony struck me (never have liked golf)--I'm sick and I'm in a hospital but they won't be doing anything to make me feel better. In some ways, it's kind of comforting, having "the bug that's been going around." I'm normal people sick. I'm the kind of sick that I know will get better. I'm extra tired, but I know why and eventually, I'll feel better. The hospital thing--well, that's different.

Several hours ago I had one of the experiences that all teachers come to know and long for--I turned in my grades for the semester. At 11:30am on this Monday I filled out my green sheet, stuffed it back into it's red envelope and handed it to our department secretary. Bliss!

The class that I taught this semester was distance ed Business Writing course, English 420S. This was my first foray into the world of distance ed and I am happy to say that the experience has been entirely positive. First of all, teaching in your pajamas--'nough said. Actually the course was so well-designed by the head of Professional Writing at Purdue, Dave Blakesley, that it almost ran itself. Okay, that's totally the rose-colored of it. As with any type of computer technology, we had our good hours and our bad days.

First of all, this blog. I want so much to write in it. I compose entries in my head, but somehow the demands of the day draw me away from the writing. Living with chronic illness(es) puts a strain on my ability to even stand up sometimes and the frequent dizziness makes even the refuge of my laptop closed to me. These sorts of days make me the most depressed. Make me feel like a non-productive member of society, a slacker, a waste of resources, a social parasite. I don't contribute to the world in any meaningful way on these days. On these days I am a waste and I feel guilty for it. Hell, I feel guilty for writing about how guilty I feel. I get a sick feeling inside when these days and my lack of productivity causes things that need to be done to remain incomplete, or worse yet, not even begun. I know that once again I'll have to explain this failure and apologize for it, even though I had no control over it. I know that frequently the blessing of looking healthy and attractive will be a mark against me. Any happiness that I show will be catalogued as evidence that I am "faking it." That this is my version of the dog ate my homework. My attempt to make the best out of a bad situation, to enjoy the parts of life that I can, make me into a liar . Even though I know that I am not lying, that I in fact abhor lying, their doubt makes me feel like the moral equivalent of one. I become more depressed. I push myself harder to "prove" that I am capable and worthy. This push inevitably leads to more bad days, which then result in a failure to meet expectations. Again, I am believed to be less than them. I internalize that, shoring up my own feelings of inadequacy, and this vicious cycle begins again.

I'm taking a moment this morning to point out an interesting website sponsored by Seventh Generation, a manufacturer of ecologically sound household products. This website is called Tampontification. I stumbled upon it last night in my search for full-spectrum light bulbs. Of the two brands that I've tried, Seventh Generation is the one that, to me, provides the nicest light, so much so that I am actively seeking it out. I'm in Ann Arbor right now and I found one lone bulb at the Whole Foods here, but back in Lafayette, the local health food stores don't carry them. So, last night I did what everyone who can't find what they want or need does--I went online and googled it. Actually, I just went straight to the Seventh Generation site, but I would have googled it if the url wasn't so easy to remember;) While my search yielded little in the way of satisfying results (I'm afraid that they may be discontinuing their light bulb production), I did stumble across an interesting site, the aforementioned Tampontification, sponsored by the company.

I refuse to be silent. To worry and avoid and fear speaking truth. I am not a shy person, certainly not a person who has trouble speaking her mind. But there are things that I keep hidden from the world. I'm a terrible liar, but a convincing actress. The name of my famous curtain calls--healthy cat. It's true; every day I perform the role of "normal." Not in the plain vanilla way. No one would ever accuse me of being boring or, to be honest, even normal in most of its senses. No, my performance of normal is much more specific, more "rocky road" than vanilla. I play the role of the fully able-bodied, healthy young woman. I have done so for almost twenty eight years. But now, as I prepare to enter the twenty-ninth year, I note that my costume is ragged at the edges; there are tears in the bodice and on the sleeves; my makeup is wearing thin; my hair falling out. This show cannot go on.

On my flight to Albany a couple of weeks ago, I flew US Scareways and during myflight encountered the new advertising for the captive audience. As if it isn't bad enough that we are accosted with signs, billboards, posters, commericials, trailermercials (my name for advertisements mixed in with movie previews at the theater), and so on, they are now accosting us in places where we literally can't get away from the ads. The first step of this terrifying journey was certainly the advent of the toilet advertisement. You know the one's I'm talking about--the ads hung inside bathroom stalls, impossible to avoid and imminently readable (what else is there to do?). Now, once you're airborne, paying an airline to transport you from point A to point B, you are asked to further aid them in increasing their revenue.

Women's ENews reports :

* A recent Harvard University study has confirmed what many sexual health educators, including those who spoke at the Center for Disease Control's annual conference on sexually transmitted diseases last week, have suspected: that programs where teens sign virginity or abstinence pledges may be unreliable in preventing them from engaging in sexual intercourse and their effectiveness is hard to determine because of teens' suspect self-reporting. The study found that 53 percent of 13,000 adolescents between grades 7 and 12 who said they made a virginity pledge denied doing so a year later, often after they had become sexually active. Another 10 percent who had engaged in sexual intercourse before they signed pledges or became born-again Christians reported themselves as virgins.

So, can Dubya get his head out of his ass and fund real sexual education. You know, the kind with condoms and birth control.

Well, I suppose I'm not really demanding my $9 back. After all, I read the reviews; I heard how bad it was; and yet I went to not one, but two theatres to see the premiere of The Da Vinci Code last night. It was bad, really bad. Okay, maybe that's not fair--it was boring, really boring. Tom Hanks could have been replaced by a cardboard cut-out of himself and no one would have noticed. My god, does the man emote?