Taste of Pain: Day Two

It's now day two of my wisdom teeth recovery, and it looks like someone sucker-punched me about seven times. Minus the bruising. My cheeks are huge, which is weird because they weren't too bad yesterday and it seems like overnight they just ballooned up.

Luckily the pain still isn't too bad. I've taken less medication today than I did yesterday, so the fact that I feel less pain with less medication is a good thing. I'm hoping to be pain free by Saturday. The only thing left to deal with then would be the swelling. I keep putting ice on them to try and cut it down a little bit, but it's just not working.

Two things I really, really want to do though: (1) eat solid food and (2) leave my house. I've already made it past the 24 hour mark on my lock-down, but I don't know how much longer I'm going to be stuck in the house and it's killing me. It's been nothing but soup, juice, and sweatpants since I got home after surgery, and I need a change of pace. Stat.

Removal of Wisdom: Day One

The title is kind of tricky: I didn't have any wisdom removed. The only wisdom that was taken away from me was in the from of teeth; I had my wisdom teeth pulled this morning, and let me tell you, it is not a fun experience.

You can't eat or drink anything within eight hours of the surgery, which would be fine if you could actually eat something afterwards - the pain is excruciating, and it hurts so bad that it makes me nauseous some times. Luckily they give you some pretty sweet pain killers, otherwise I would be passed out on the floor. The swelling isn't too bad yet, and I've been keeping an ice pack on my cheeks to keep the swelling down. My mom has been a complete champ though. She makes me soup and brings me water and juice and my pills. Thank god she has tomorrow off too so she can take care of me again :)

I'd never had surgery before, so I didn't know what to expect. I've heard numerous horror stories, and so far they're slowly becoming true. I just hope I can heal up quickly before I start getting super grumpy. It that case, my mom won't like me very much anymore...

Will I Always Be Sick on Christmas?

I think at this point I just need to accept that I'm always going to be sick on Christmas. Last year was probably the worst Christmas of my life - I had gotten a migraine early that morning, and then once it was finally starting to let up another wave of headache of nausea hit. Even I thought that it was impossible to get two migraines in one day. Apparently not so. And this year? Well this year was another story:

Thursday I woke up with my tonsils all swollen, a runny nose, a fever, and a headache. It hurt to swallow, it hurt to stand up, I was always dizzy. Pretty much the greatest combination ever... but I went to work anyway, and went to my grandmother's house (like always) for Christmas Eve dinner. So I woke up yesterday morning and felt even worse. I started to look up my symptoms and the first thing that pops up on WedMD is Strep Throat. I started get a little nervous - I had the headaches and the loss of appetite and the swollen tonsils that had white patches on them (yeah it's a little gross but try living with it before you get all grossed out; it's far worse to see in person) and my throat was all red. So my self-diagnosis was strep. I felt fine during the day because I was hopped-up on Tylenol and cough medicine, but once night came around I was feeling pretty shitty again. Once again, another Christmas spent being sick.

And then my parents dragged me to the doctors today. The verdict: not strep throat, but still some sort of infection. They didn't put me on an antibiotic so I'm still contagious even though I feel a lot better already, and they had to send a culture to the lab for testing. I should get the results by Wednesday.

The only good thing to come out of this? I have to reschedule my wisdom teeth! The doctor said it wouldn't be wise to still get my wisdom teeth out Tuesday morning, because the infection could be viral (and not just bacterial like she hopes it is) and it would spread through my entire body. And that wouldn't be good. So all I'm required to do for the rest of the day is rest and drink a lot of water and just relax so I'll feel well enough to go back to work tomorrow. Too bad I have no idea how to relax. This should be interesting....

I Might Be a Complete Fatass, But....

I might be a complete fatass, but even my arteries were clogging today when I was watching Paula's Home Cooking on Food Network.

I was watching Food network today, which I do on a regular basis, and Paula's Home Cooking with Paula Deen came on. Now I normally don't watch this show because her southern accent bugs the shit out of me, but I was busy doing something else so I wasn't paying attention. That is, until she said she was making Macaroni and Cheese. It's no secret that I love Macaroni and Cheese, so it definitely caught my attention. Until, however, I saw her actually make it. Now let me take you through this step by step, because you will probably throw up yourself once you hear what is in it:

So this is what it looks like. Doesn't look too bad, now does it? WRONG. To start, you melt a half a stick of butter and two-and-half cups of shredded cheddar cheese together. After it looks like a giant melty heart-attack, you stir in sour cream, whole milk, the macaroni, three eggs (because Southern people like eggs in their macaroni and cheese? I don't know, it boggles my mind), some salt and pepper, and a can of condensed cheese soup. You bake it in a crock pot for two-and-half hours before you take the lid off, sprinkle another half-inch layer of cheese on it, then bake if for another half hour. As if there isn't enough calories in the thing from the cheese alone, you need to add the eggs and all of the sodium of the cheese soup. I literally almost threw up in my mouth when I watched her take a bite.

I try to eat healthy, I really do. I splurge every once in a while, just like any normal person, but I would honestly never make anything that even closely resembled that. There are over 1,000 calories in the shredded cheese alone. Could you imagine? Eating one serving of that and you go over what would be considered an entire day's worth of calories!

Blogger's Block

It's been a week since my last post, but I've had absolutely nothing to write about. I'll get an idea of something to write about while I'm at work (which is where I've spent most of my time over the past week), and if I don't forget the idea altogether, I'll go to write about it and realize that it's the dumbest thing ever and have nothing to say about it anymore!

I've decided I'm calling this lull in ideas my period of blogger's block. Writers have writer's block, why can't bloggers have there own thing? I'm fresh out of ideas for right now, and I have no idea when some more are going to hit me. I probably won't have anything interesting until spring semester - for some reason a lot of crazy shit happens at Penn State. There's usually a lot to talk about when I'm at school. Whether that's always a good thing is another story....

I'm knee deep into break now, though, and I can't say it's been the most interesting. Working in retail for holiday is the most frustrating thing in the world. Every customer decides that they're going to yell at you, even though you don't work for corporate and you don't make the clothes or decide what clothes are going to be in the store or whether or not the store has the size they're looking for or if the store has boxes that we give away for free (which don't ever go into Gap and bitch that there are no gift boxes left - we give them out for free when most stores charge you for them; that's why most stores have them and we don't because everyone takes them from us!).

But honestly, this break hasn't been completely terrible. Yes, I've worked a lot, but the money will be great when I finally get paid. Plus, it's been a distraction from me worrying about my grades all week; which I finally got and I had nothing to be worried about. I actually brought my grades back up (after a depressing last semester) and now I'm finally happy with my grades again! I also got to see the bffs Saturday night for the first time in months, which is always amazing. And we had a little musical experience that was awesome: I've been arranging "The Chain" by Ingrid Michaelson for my friend's a cappella group at Penn State, and Saturday we did a little impromptu recording of it on Garage Band. It was awesome, I honestly didn't want to show them the arrangement yet because it isn't perfect but it was totally worth doing because now I can make it completely perfect.

That was a lot more than I ever expected to post... which is weird because it was supposed to be a post about how I have nothing to blog about? Weird.

The Final Push

Word of advice: if you get to what I call "The Final Push," or the last few days before all of your papers are due, make sure you've actually written said papers. Don't wait until the last few days you have left to start them, because you will lose sleep and you will go mentally insane.

The past few days have probably been the roughest of the semester. Like I said before, I had my Western Civ exam Friday morning (which went really well by the way; I haven't gotten my grade yet, but I'm expecting good things to come out of it), and ever since then I've been consumed in writing my papers. Well, aside from our surprise birthday dinner for our friend Brandi, which has been the only distraction this entire weekend. That and me being sick... but that's a different story. And honestly, it's a very short one: I've been feeling kind of sick since Thursday night, but it's starting to go away so I should be okay soon enough. Might just be all the stress.

But I think I might have prioritized things incorrectly: my Western Lit paper is due Tuesday, so I decided to write that before my English paper which is due by 5:00 PM today. Yeah, wrong idea. And now all I have to write is a fricken novel on slave women in the Antebellum South. Can't wait to jump on that. The only bad part is I haven't done all of the readings for it, and I need to turn it in before I leave Tuesday morning. Problem: I'll probably be pulling an all-nighter Monday night then, and I need to drive for five hours Tuesday morning and then go to work for 9 hours. Anyone else see the problem with that? Good.

If I can just pull my shit together and sit down and write my paper, though, I can probably bang it out in a few hours. Hopefully. If not, looks like I'm failing HIST 020 this semester, which sucks because I need it for my major. And I definitely don't want to have to take this class again. Why have I been slacking so much this semester!?!

How Did Finals Creep Up So Fast?

So I'm writing this post in the library because finals start Monday and I have so much left to do. It's a little ridiculous. How did finals creep up so fast? It seems like we just got back from Thanksgiving break, but apparently it's been almost two weeks since break! That's nutty!

I have an exam tomorrow and I can't wait for it to be over - studying for that has taken up all my time. Time that I could be using to write my papers/take-home exams that are all due Monday!

The game plan is finish up my studying early tonight and then start my take-home essay for Western Lit. If I can get that done tonight or early tomorrow, I can finish my English paper tomorrow and then have Saturday and Sunday to write my ridiculously long U.S. History paper.

Then it's just a French final Monday and a five-hour-long car ride on Tuesday until Fall Semester is officially over! Break can't come soon enough; I seriously need a break....

What a Crazy Weekend

This weekend has been pretty crazy so far: last night I went to Hershey with my roommates to see Dane Cook perform, then today was my friend Brandi's a cappella concert, and then I found out that they would like me to arrange The Chain by Ingrid Michaelson for them for their Spring concert. So let's break it down, shall we?

Yesterday was Dane Cook and it was awesome. We left school at around 5:00, and after getting stuck in traffic and eating Subway and getting stuck in traffic (again) in the parking lot, we got into the Giant Center at about 7:45. The show was supposed to start at 8:00 and we were all the way up in Row S, which was extremely far away from the stage. Until the greatest thing ever happened: an old man that worked at the Center came up to us and asked if we wanted to get upgraded, for free, to be about 30 feet away from the stage. They hadn't sold all of the tickets that were close down to the floor so were moved from the middle-of-west-bejesus to right down in front! It was amazing! The show was great, he was hilarious, as always, and then we drove back to school (after stopping at Sheetz for slushies, obviously).

Then I woke up sort of bright and early (I don't know, does 10:00 really count as early anymore?) and started working on my English paper that is due Monday. Actually, let's rephrase that: I took out my stuff to work on my paper at 10:00, but I decided not to work on it until 1:00 PM, at which time I wrote two pages, stopped working on it, and took a "break" which lasted for about an hour and half. Yeah, there's that motivation for you.

Then it was time for Brandi's concert. It was pretty long, but it was free and amazing, so who could complain? They were much better than they were last semester, and they sound awesome. We were talking for a little bit about how they should sing Ingrid Michaelson for their next concert, which ended up turning into me volunteering to arrange The Chain for them, which ended up being me being told by the director that I should definitely arrange it and they'll probably sing it for their concert in the Spring. That's pretty ridiculous, if you ask me.

So when I got back to my room I decided that working on arranging that was much more important than working on my paper. So now I'm almost three-quarters of the way through the arrangement, and they don't even need it for another month and a half. Sweet. How much of my paper have I gotten done since what I worked on this morning? None of it. It's exactly as long as it was this afternoon when I stopped. Problem: it's not even halfway done. Can we say I'm screwed? I have dress rehearsal tomorrow night, which cuts into the amount of time I have to work on my paper and it's due Monday afternoon. Hopefully I can get it done.... maybe I shouldn't have blogged then.... oh well, too late now! I would promise to crack down and start working on my paper again, but that would be lying. I know as soon as I'm done posting this I'll be on Facebook or I'll go back to arranging that song. Why am I so unmotivated?!?

End Of the Semester Slump

Now that we're halfway through the first week back from Thanksgiving break, the end-of-the-semester-slump is finally starting to set in. There's only two weeks of classes and one week of finals standing in the way now. And it's killing me. I have an oral quiz tomorrow, a paper due Monday, an exam next Friday, three papers and a take-home exam due the following Monday (December 14th), and a French final that same day.

All I want to do is sleep; I wish my papers would write themselves; my brain is already starting to move into winter break-mode. All motivation is gone, attempting work is hopeless. I'm in the same situation as I was a year ago: I'm so close to the end that I just want it to be over with, without actually doing any of the work.

But as I think about it, I'm miles away from where I was a year ago. First off, I'm happy; this semester has been great to me. I get along with my roommates, I've gotten a lot accomplished, I'm taking classes I like, I finally love it here. I wish I still had my blog that I started a year ago just so I could read it and compare the posts from that to the posts from this. I know there used to be a lot of complaining, a lot woe-is-me, a lot of hatred for my roommate and for Penn State in general. But all that's changed. And to think I almost transferred....

None of that matters now though. I don't have anything to complain about now accept for the amount of stuff I have to do. It also doesn't help that I have a dress rehearsal Sunday/a band concert Monday and that I'm seeing Dane Cook Friday night in Hershey with my roommates. Yeah, it's cool you can be jealous, it's fine. So pretty much I don't want to do anything because I'm so excited about that. But once it's over, I'm going to spend all day Saturday in the library writing papers and studying for exams. That'll be a blast.....

I can't believe how fast this semester has flown. It seems like I was just moving in a few weeks ago, but it's already months. So much has happened this semester, I can't even begin to talk about it all right now. I just need to get focused; two weeks (well, one and a half now) and a final and then I have three weeks off with no homework. I can't wait. The only thing I'm not looking forward to is getting my wisdom teeth out after Christmas... shoot me now please.

Tik Tok, On The Clock

This music video is trashy, and it's one of my new obsessions. Well, I'm addicted to the song, not so much on the video. It's Tik Tok by Ke$ha. And yes, the 's' is actually a '$' which makes it so much classier, don't you think? When did trashy-pop become so awesome?