Restraining Order

So have you ever wondered what it's like to be the person whom a really popular and catchy song is about? I hadn't until last night when, after listening to a cover of "Grenade" by my favorite cover band Karmin, I was like "I wonder how this girl feels about this song and if this is even how it really happened..." Which got me thinking, I could make a parody writing the girl's feelings to Bruno Mars. And so "Restraining Order" came to life. Considering I wrote it at like 12:30 in the morning, it sounded a bit weird, but after a few times of singing it I'm pretty damn proud. Plus I fit the word "rape-y" in there. HOW AWESOME IS THAT?!? Anyways, I just thought I'd let you guys know and in a few weeks, if all goes well with song editing and progress, there will be an official music video for "Restraining Order" and it will be awesome.

But really, I kind of imagine the first time she heard it being like, "Dammit! He said he was going to let it go!!" And for another thing, how about Rihanna's "Only Girl In The World"? If a guy wrote that, there'd be something very wrong with him, but since RIHANNA wrote it, it's obviously musical gold. Oh wait...

Not to be in ANY way at all in Chris Brown's defense for what he did to Rihanna, because that was obviously completely wrong and NOT okay. BUT he did treat her like the only girl in the world. And since there was only ONE girl, he was bound to have so much pent up rage that he couldn't take out on random hookers that didn't matter, his actions were forced upon her. NOT RAPE.

So guess who's leaving in two days!?!? ME. Guess who's super excited!? ME. Guess who has rabies?! ME!....wait, no I don't!!! I swear! But I'm excited one, because this is my first plane ride since 6th grade, and I love planes, so this is going to be awesome. Second, I got window seats on every single one of my flights SCORE. And finally in an unrelated but totally awesome anyway note, there is a ninth season of RVB and it's AWESOME. There's only two episodes, but every Monday I will be waiting eagerly for the next installment.

You'd figure there's something wrong with a 16 year old girl to do nothing but sit at the computer in anticipation for an episode of guys in their 30s voicing over a game of Halo Reach. ....I'M NOT UGLY I SWEAR!! Video games and nerdy stuff like machinima is sexy, right? RIGHT?!?!! Which is another point in why I've only ever had two whole boyfriends in the history of my entire life. Nice.

So some weird things I notice:

I WILL notice if you have really soft and plush-y toilet paper. I don't know why, but I find that to be the greatest. If you have super soft toilet paper, you're obviously going to find a cure for Ebola Aids.

That being said, I will NOT notice if you don't have super nice toilet paper. Mostly because at my house, we don't because we're poor and cheap.

Examples:

1. At the shore house in Sea Isle that my whole family has, the family that doesn't live there in the summer, leaves really nice quilted super soft toilet paper. I proceeded to wash my hands and run out of the bathroom with the roll in my hands and shoving it in everyone's face going "FEEL HOW SOFT IT IS!!!!!!!!!!"

2. My cousin's house where I babysit. I proceeded to tell the kids I was babysitting the importance of really soft toilet paper. You probably didn't need to know that.

3. Octodad's house. Octodad is my ex-boyfriend, but we're still good friends. He was boyfriend 2. Anyways, the first time I go over Octodad's house (and the only time I've ever been there) I had to go to the bathroom halfway through our kind of date/hanging out. Once in the bathroom I noticed that they had REALLY soft toilet paper. That being said, I REALLY liked Octodad and did not want him to think I was a freak who was obsessed with really soft toilet paper. So instead of running down the stairs and screaming "YOUR TOILET PAPER IS SO SOFT!" as I normally would, I walked down sulkily and fidgeted around, trying to fight the voice screaming in my head to proclaim the glory of that soft toilet paper. I really have problems.

You may be wondering why I call boyfriend 2 Octodad. This goes back to this past December. When I went for an early eye exam to see if it was the cause of my migraines, I had an eye ultrasound. Apparently my eyes were having twins. HOW COULD I NOT HAVE KNOWN?!??! Anyways, that's not the point. The point is, that a few weeks later Octodad went for his eye exam and we found out that he was having octuplets. Hence, how he became known to me as Octodad.

Boyfriend 2 and I could have worked out if I wasn't bad at relationships, but alas, we are now just friends. Which is cool and all because he's a great person and really fun to talk to. I'm very good at friendships. But relationships, with FEELINGS, I'm like a drunken baby driving a Tonka Truck straight into the oven. Because when things that involve feelings come into my life something like this happens:

"hey this is pretty nice...feelings...not sure how I feel about this...this is getting weird...GET ME OUT OF HERE!!!!!!!!!!!"

This usually has nothing to do with the other person, except for boyfriend 1, it kind of had to do with him. But I don't know, I'm not good with girl things and that means feelings and emotions and all that gooey sappy stuff that I like to stab every day with a butcher knife and then laugh as their feeble and dying bodies shrivel up and turn to ashes.....Okay that was more graphic than I intended, but you get my point.

So that's about it for now. I'll keep you updated on whether I die or not during my flight, hopefully Samuel L. Jackson will just fly in and save me though. And I'll keep you updated on "Restraining Order"s progress. I hope you guys are having a great summer.

Questionable Reasoning

So guess what? I'm moving! Just kidding, but I am going on vacation for a few weeks. I get to go across the country YAY TRAVELING! So as I believe I have mentioned before, I live in Pennsylvania. (I realize this is basically asking scary people to find me, but it's okay because I have a secret team of pirates that are ready to stab people at moment's notice, YEAH) The vacation that I am going on involves a trip to visit my family in Oregon. For those of you, like me, that are wizards at finding states and capitals on maps, you can skip this next part. But for those of you, like the other half of me, that either your attention span is too short to pay attention to such unimportant details or you just don't really care because you already got an award for knowing where everything was in the US in 5th grade, this may help.

Above is a roughly drawn scale of my travel plans. NO it's not a deformed crab or birth defected elephant. It's proof that I can't draw for my life, but I DO roughly know the general shape of my own country. YAY MEMORY! So despite the fact that I will probably sit next to creepy strangers that are interested in everything I do and I'll most likely get lost on the way from my first terminal after my first flight to the second one and I'll forever be stranded in San Francisco (not a totally bad thing), I'm pretty damn excited.

See, the last time I saw said family members, I was going through my "awkward" stage. Unfortunately this stage never really ended for me, but at that point I kinda just didn't care how I looked no matter how ugly it was. I also had bangs. I HATE BANGS. Not on other people, on other people they look awesome, but on me, since my hair is really curly, they just end up looking like devil horns. And adding my short fuse and the fact that I bathe in sarcasm, you can see how this turned out. I made you another picture to demonstrate.

As you can see, things have gone downhill for me since 6th grade. But nevertheless despite the fact that 12 year old me was quite the catch, I've also remembered that considering that I've significantly changed since then, my younger cousins who were at the most 7 or 8 are now entering the dreaded years of teen-dom. Weird. But it's pretty exciting and the main reason for this post was to let everyone know (pretty much that one person that stumbled upon this blog by accident) that I'm not positive of the internet situation down there, so I'm going to make a couple more posts this week just in case there's no computer access at all.

That's pretty much it. I hope you summer lovers are enjoying this god forsaken heat we've been getting everywhere. I can't wait for winter.

Why People Think I Have a Calcium Deficiency (Part 1)

I do not have a calcium deficiency. I wanted to state that before starting this post. Mostly because this post is about how I broke 3 of my bones, and how I broke 1 of them 3 times in the span of two years. I'm so serious.

So we'll start with my earliest and first break ever. My left elbow. When most people hear that I broke this bone they usually presume that it was from some freak sports accident, a car accident, or some other life threatening cause. This is not the case. I broke my elbow jumping off...are you ready? A swing. An average park swing.

It was the summer of third grade. Earlier this year we had gone to Disney Land... or World. Whichever one is in Florida. I always get those mixed up. Kind of like N' Synch and The Backstreet Boys.

Like I was saying, it was a pretty average day. Probably early July, before the 4th. In a moment you'll know why I knew this. So me, my brother, and my two favorite cousins were at my grandmother's house. Probably for some family thing. There was (and still is) a super awesome park at the top of the street. We kids decided to go there. And since this park was super awesome it had swings. Because parks without swings are depressing. Like pie without apples.

So we all piled onto the swings and tried to see who could go the highest. At some point we decided this was boring and everyone jumped off their swing. Except me. I kept on swinging as the figures of my brother and cousins began to fade into the tunneled slides. I was alarmed that I was being left behind, but had no idea how to jump off a swing properly. Because to eight year old me, for some reason jumping off a swing was the most complicated task in the world.

See now here's where I'm not quite sure why what happened, happened. I began to contemplate jumping. I even slowed the pumping of my legs so that I wasn't so high. But when I jumped, something obviously short circuited in my brain. Because while I was in the air momentarily, I celebrated a bit too early. "Holy crap I did it! I jumped! Without dying!" Not quite.

As I began to fall I did not think to position myself so that I would land gracefully like a cat on my feet. Instead I just began flailing my limbs. When I hit the ground, I fell in a crumpled heap. All 100 pounds (or however much I weighed back then because I was stick straight skinny before I hit 13) fell on my bent left arm. I heard a crunch and immediately started wailing.

Apparently my brother and cousins thought I was faking because after sitting and crying on the ground for five to ten minutes I had to pick my broken self up and go find them. When they saw my dirtied figure and crying face we all walked home. Luckily my aunt/godmother who was a nurse was there. She had me move my arm in certain directions and asked me to push her away and pull her arm closer with my hand. I didn't see what this had to do with my elbow, but I did it anyway. I was upset when I failed to move it much.

However since I had some range of movement and had stopped crying and reduced myself to occasional whimpering, she said that my elbow probably wasn't broken, but instead severely bruised. Despite the fact, it was awkward now and everyone felt bad that there wasn't anything they could do. I'm pretty sure my mother felt the worst because this was the first time this had happened to her children. Nevertheless to her youngest and only daughter. I'm pretty sure she felt like a failure.

To make up for this, I got ice cream on the way home. To me, this seemed like a great outcome. I was beginning to think that maybe getting hurt wasn't so bad. Unfortunately the small dose of children's Tylenol wore off in a few hours and around 10 or 11 pm my pain had escalated to a point where I felt I needed immediate medical attention. Since this was the first time her children had an injury that she couldn't cure, my mother rushed me to the ER at our local hospital. My brother was about 11 at the time and he came as well.

As soon as we entered the ER I realized that it was a mistake. The florescent bulbs were killing my tired eyes, the TVs were blaring different stations, almost everyone was crying, and it was as packed as a Krispy Kreme opening day. As my mother began to fill out the tedious forms, a man who had been shot in the face was rushed in. Immediately I felt my pain was insignificant and tugged at my mother's arm and begged her to go home. Unfortunately we had already been put on the waiting list 15 minutes earlier and about twenty people had arrived since then. My mom asked me if I thought I could sleep with the pain. We ended up staying.

About two hours later we were brought back, but we had to wait for a doctor. So we all stood in the slightly less busy hallway near the closed off curtains of patient beds. There was a wheelchair nearby. I had wanted to sit in and roll around in a wheelchair my whole life. But my pain and the fact that I was terrified for my life led me to just stand with my mother and hold her hand. Seizing the opportunity, however, my brother immediately sat down in the chair and began moving around. Eventually he fell asleep in it.

I began to doze off leaning against my mother only to be promptly awakened by some lady screaming bloody murder. I looked to where the screaming was coming from and found the curtained room about three rooms away. The lady sounded like she was dying. Then A LOT of liquid splashed on the ground. Back then I thought that she had died and all of her internal organs had just fallen on the ground. Considering that her screaming continued, that probably should have clicked in my brain that my idea was flawed, but it didn't. I know now that she was having a baby. Why she was having it in the emergency room I still don't know.

A good three hours after we had arrived at the ER we finally were called back by a doctor. The doctor showed me that stupid pain chart that does not accurately display pain at all. To see an example of the stupid pain chart and the pain chart that I should've received, go here. So it was about 1 in the morning, I was 8 and scared and this was my first time ever that I was put under pressure to describe exactly how I felt. I'm pretty sure they thought I was faking because I was like "umm I think it's 7, no, wait, am I describing how much pain I AM in or how much pain I'm NOT in? Mom?" So on the pain chart that the amazing Allie Brosh, author of Hyperbole and a Half, mad, which should be adopted by all medical facilities in the world, my pain was probably a 5.

The doctor had me do the same things my aunt had me do. Except this time I was positive someone thought I was faking, so I may have exaggerated...but only a little, I swear. Obviously concerned with my inability to do simple actions like bend my elbow (maybe a little isn't the right phrase...) so I got to get my first x-rays ever. To say I expected more would be putting it lightly. The x-ray room was basically supposed to look like the inside of a UFO. Instead it looked like some weird room in which I had to wear this really heavy bib thing. I didn't understand their explanation at the time and just presumed that I looked like someone who drooled constantly and apparently this bib was going to solve my slobbering problems.

I could never be an x-ray specialist. I would love to, but I could not stand to make someone place the arm or other body part in painful manner just to get a good x-ray. Apparently the x-ray lady didn't care about that. She told me to sit down and place my arm on the table. I did and felt accomplished. "This is easy!" I thought. "I'll be better by morning!" This was not the case. From the casual position on the table this lady proceeded to twist my elbow in a direction that it should not bend and told me I had to hold it there "or else..." I'm not kidding, that's really what she said.

The whimpering was back now and I looked at my mother with a scared expression. She just held my hand and hugged me. After the terrible expedition of x-rays was over we were told, after another half hour wait, that there was nothing wrong with me and we could go home. I couldn't believe it. What do you mean NOTHING'S WRONG?!?! There is obviously something wrong because my arm feels like it's bleeding pain. Or acid.

So my mother, still hurt from her failure to protect me, made an appointment with an arm specialist. We went to the arm specialist with our x-rays and waited. This wait took less time. In about an hour we were called back into a room with walls covered in posters of diseases and a full skeleton. I was excited. I touched the skeleton. A piece fell off. I quickly sat back down an didn't mention it. Soon two doctors came in. They set up my x-rays and turned a switch that made the film glow. They pointed out that my bone was not fully broken, but only broken halfway through and that the tissue around it was thoroughly bruised.

I was ecstatic at the fact that I had not once been called a liar yet. This doctor was awesome! Then came the next news. "We're going to put you in a cast for 2 weeks." Wait...what? B-b-but we're going down the shore in three days! My mother quickly spoke up, "Could we get a waterproof cast? We're going on vacation in a few days." The doctor acted like this request was average. "Sure! Pick out your color and we'll be right back in." I hopped off the table (because I was shorter than I am today, which is 5' 1 and 3/4") and looked at the boxes with all the different color palettes on them. I could have anything from white to florescent orange to pink or blue! Unfortunately I was not into girly colors, I knew I couldn't keep anything white for longer than five minutes, and black was boring. So I played it safe and got a cerulean color.

This cast was the cast of many soon to be casts. FOREVER. Just kidding. But having a plastic bag over your arm at the beach makes you look pretty dumb. I had fun down the shore despite the constant itch from sand that somehow mad it passed my plastic bag guard. When we got back from the shore it was time to get my cast off. Now getting your cast off for the first time is a frightening experience. Mostly because the people drag over a miniature chain saw and begin to place the blade on your cast and cut through it, sending plaster dust into your eyes and all over your clothes. AND NOTHING GETS IT OFF. However, the person taking my cast off forgot to tell me that the blade stopped when it touched skin, so I sat there the entire time waiting for my healed arm to fall off.

I was a bit upset that my arm smelled horrible and that it was much paler than my other tan arm. Also, it was stiff. BUT I had my arm back to myself and when you're 8, two weeks is like a lifetime. I was SUPPOSED to go the physical therapy, but instead I went outside and played with my brother. That was the beginning of many physical therapies that I just kind of ignored. And because my mother felt bad for not protecting me from the pain in the first place, when I said I didn't want to go to physical therapy, she didn't push the issue. That was a BIG mistake.

So that was my first adventure in breaking bones. If I only knew that I'd be injured again in only six months.

My House is Where Flies Come to Die

Flies, I would like to know what looks so enticing about my house. There are no prospective dirty foods or rancid smells that you seem to enjoy so much. There are no animals. My parents are clean freaks. I do not think that the heat/cold bothers you considering if there was a dead body outside, you would rejoice about your new toy/food. Honestly flies, do you even eat? I feel like you just fly around making that really annoying buzzing sound and just look for something to land on and get all of your potentially STD covered feet on.

Also, flies have you ever noticed that when one of you comes into my house, they never EVER come back out? I thought you'd be more concerned about Jerry and why he hasn't come home in three days. Obviously you never thought of the fact that he is DEAD. Jerry, like all other flies, sped into the shelter of our comfy home. But what seemed like a quaint place to look for dead things, turned into a nightmare. The doors and windows were all closed. There was no fresh air, no way out. No matter how many times he smashed himself into the window in a futile attempt to escape, Jerry could not find one.

Hours began to pass and Jerry no longer denied his fate. So he just perched on the window, looking outside in a sad acknowledgement that he would never feel the wind again.I went to sleep and woke up the next morning to an empty and quiet house. I went through the house, trying to find the window that Jerry had been perching on to try but alas, he was nowhere to be found. Apparently one of Jerry's friends became concerned and entered the house of doom earlier today. I do not know how long his friend has been searching, but by the time I discovered his presence, he was already downtrodden. He had figured out Jerry's fate. That same fate that was now staring him down.

I tried to help Jerry's friend. Before I go any further, I must state that I absolutely loathe flies. I don't see their purpose other than to be food for other insects and to give a reason for a fly swatter to be invented even though everyone just uses them as backscratchers. I hate flies. I really don't know why, but they just skeeve me out. Especially when it's really quiet and they just buzz right by you all of a sudden. It makes me have goosebumps and uncomfortable skin pricks for ten minutes. I mostly hate flies because from a distance I can't tell whether they're flies or bees or other things that could bite me and possibly give me things like Lyme disease.

So like I was saying, I tried to help his friend out. I opened up windows where he could potentially find a way out through a crevice (do flies even have skeletons?) or some other thing. Or die. Because for some reason when I lock flies in the space between the screen and the window they apparently have panic attacks and die or suffer some weird lack of oxygen and die. That last one doesn't even make sense, but I'm pretty sure it has to do with breathing. Anyways, despite my utter kindness, the fly still persists to find his/her own way out. I might just end it all and make it easier on everyone.

Today I had another tutor come over to give me one of my final exams. She proceeded to nonchalantly walk around my house, eat her weird pasta salad noisily, and spill her diet coke all over our dining room table. I'm not exactly positive if my test is really going to make it back to the school in tact.

Have you ever had that one food that you pretty much NEED to have around in a plentiful amount 24/7? I have. It's strawberries. I'm pretty sure if it was possible to marry strawberries, I would elope with them. There may be that slight issue of cannibalism, but it's not my fault that they taste SO DELICIOUS. Suck on that Dora.

R.I.P. JERRY THE FLY you will be missed. not really. we all actually kinda hated you. awkward.

Socks

So the other day my Spanish tutor came to my house to teach my Spanish. Normally this would not be exciting or entertaining whatsoever because this lady is very boring and a horrible teacher. Not this time.

This time, it was very funny and entertaining.

Unfortunately my Spanish teacher arrived too early. This normally wouldn't have bothered me. Mostly because we usually freak clean the house so she won't judge us the night before. However, this time, I had be really really tired the night before and promptly decided that I would clean when I woke up. I was supposed to wake up at 9:30. I actually woke up at like 1:30. Normally, this would be awesome, because sleep is great. But this day I still had to finish at least two hours worth of work plus eat meals and take my bunnies out for an hour of playtime. All of this had to occur before Spanish teacher came.

Usually, Spanish teacher comes around the times of 3:30 and 4:30. For some reason, my teacher arrived at 3:00. I had just put away my bunnies. I had not, however, cleaned. So we walk in and go to the dining room where my learning materials are. However (this is like my word of the day) where Spanish teacher would sit there happened to be a pair of socks. They were clean socks, but they were just chillin' on the table where her stuff went.

So she looks at me and goes, "calcetines?" and I, having suddenly forgotten my Spanish 1 vocabulary go, "socks." She looks at me strangely and goes, "calcetines?" and I'm like, "no socks." And this woman was adamant because she looked at me again and went, "Tus calcetines?" and I'm angry now and I go "NO, SOCKS. S-O-C-K-S. SOCKS."

By this time my teacher finally realized that I could not remember that "calcetines" meant socks in Spanish. Needless to say, she didn't stay very long. She looked at me strangely for about five minutes without saying anything. Then she handed me my papers and left.

My dad comes upstairs and he's like "who were you yelling at?" So I tell him what happened and he's like "Jess, calcetines means socks." I stood there red faced and angry. "SO WHY WOULDN'T SHE JUST ADMIT THAT SHE WAS WRONG?!!?" I'm not really sure why I got so upset over this, but I was determined to prove that somehow my teacher was wrong in the situation. I'm pretty sure my father is now ashamed of me considering he is from El Salvador and his own daughter can't say "socks" in Spanish without having a brain seizure.

I'm pretty sure my Spanish teacher isn't coming back anymore.

This sounds less funny than it actually was, because looking back on it, it was hilarious. I'm probably going to fail Spanish 2 now, but I'm pretty sure it was totally worth it. That's all.

This was Only Supposed to be a Short Recap

You can totally skip this and not read it. This was supposed to be a post about the funniest thing that happened between me and my Spanish tutor today, but I got sidetracked. Only read this if you want to know why I'm sick and not going to school. This is not very funny at all whatsoever but it has it's moments. I think it's lively. But seriously just skip it, I promise it won't hurt my feelings. Also this is EXTREMELY LONG, sorry about that. You can skip to about 3/4ths of the way down and there should be an actual short recap of what this whole post was about in about two paragraphs if you really wanna know but don't have the time. You probably don't. I wouldn't. 

So as I've mentioned earlier I have tutors come to my house. I don't think I really explained why exactly that happens. So here's a short recap on something I've probably never fully explained.

Around the beginning of August of 2010 I began to get daily headaches. Like right out of the blue. Well not right out of the blue, but it came from a generally blue like area. I had been really sick during the whole summer because I'd gotten Mononucleosis in May of last year. I know what you're thinking "I bet she kisses ALL the boys." No. That statement is entirely false. But I've heard it so much from anybody who's heard this story that I'm no longer angry about it. No, I got mono from sharing a water bottle in gym class. But I'm not really sure you can call it "sharing" when the other person(s) just takes your water bottle when your not looking and dumps all of their diseased saliva on it and then NEVER TELLS YOU. Thanks.

Anyways, if you don't know what mono is or you've never had it, mono is basically mini cancer. Except you can survive it. But it's basically cancer. It NEVER leaves your system, even after you're done with that whole terrible month or two months of practically dying. Mono's like "hmm it's been about a month and this place is getting kind of old and I'm tired of fighting off all these antibodies. I know what I'll do...I'll just stop being harmful and just absorb myself into the system. And this will be my home. FOREVER. And I'll spread my demon spawn babies whenever this person gets a fever and shares drinks/saliva with other people. AND THEN WE'LL TAKE OVER THE WORLD!!"

I wish I was joking, but that's the monologue I repeated in my head for about five months AFTER the mono bastard of a disease sunk its way into my immune system. So anyways, mono. It basically happened like this: I was at school one day and I was like "my throat's been killing me for a month now, I BET IT'S CANCER" Because whenever anything seems to be moderately wrong with me and can't be diagnosed, to me, it's cancer. Which is stupid because cancer is obviously diagnosed at some point. By the way, I'm still holding out that these headaches are the beginning of brain cancer. Just saying.

But so I'd been to the doctor a few days before and they concluded that I did not have strep throat but sent off my lovely saliva/disease/shit that was on my throat off to a lab to be cultured and tested for other diseases. Just as I whip out my phone my mother calls me. This is convenient because she was who I had planned to call. As a side note, when I'd been at the doctors and described my symptoms as: sleepy, sleepy, really painful sore throat, sleepy and headaches, she was like "oh it's probably mono, you know, the kissing disease" and then she gives me this weird look that I'm sure was supposed to mean something but because I'm really bad at being a girl and understanding girl things I just sat there with my head tilted to the side in confusion and looked at my mom and begged her to tell me what the lady said.

So after we established that I had not kissed anyone ever, we left in high hopes that it was cancer. Just kidding, we hoped it was just a bad virus. Now as another side note, I would just like to state that before I got diagnosed with mono, which is coming up, I had the best immune system in the whole world. Once a year for about two or three days I would get one, really bad sickness. Now this sickness could range from the flu to a stomach virus to strep throat in which I can't swallow which is almost as bad as a stomach virus where my mother starves me so that I stop puking and damaging my internal organs. But nevertheless, after the two or three days were over, I'd have a two day recovery period. I really only needed one day, but I took two, just to be sure. And then for the rest of the year I was totally 100% healthy.

So I answer the phone and instead of being greeted with the usual "hey, how was your day?" I was instead greeted with "guess who has mono?" Now obviously this isn't something you should tell you teenage daughter who thinks that any disease that isn't common to her is cancer. But that's how I found out. And I proceeded to freak out and look around nervously like some giant death bomb was going to be thrown at me because I'd been diagnosed with "The Kissing Disease." So I go home and crawl into bed for my routine nap. I usually don't take naps, but mono makes naps seem like the greatest things in the whole world. Naps are basically Jesus. And if Jesus came down, right then and there and offered to take all your troubles and pains away and give you the greatest life ever and you had to choose between Jesus and Naps, Jesus would lose.

The bad thing about these naps that I would take, however, was that when I would wake up (I came home at like 3ish) it would be about 7. But since you're terribly sick with some brain numbing disease you freak out because, since all the blinds are closed, you think it's 7 AM instead of PM and wonder why in God's name no one woke you for school. So you run down stairs, proud of yourself that you miraculously fell asleep in school clothes (nice one brain) and run into the living room shouting about how you're going to be late and that you need a ride NOW.

And then you see your mother curled up on the couch with a blanket and ice cream watching Nurse Jackie and your brother on his laptop on the other couch. Both are staring at you like you have cancer. And so a part of you starts freaking out because their looks obviously confirmed your fear that you have cancer and that you only have a week to live and there's so much you haven't done. Unfortunately you don't realize that in your horror you've slowly and begun saying "noooooo" and now it's really loud and you're about to cry. So now your mother is frantically trying to calm you down as you cry about how you're not ready to die and that you need to travel to see the world in the next week before you die or you'll go to hell.

Mother is worried and does not know what to say. And now you're crying about how you're even going to be late for school on the day you got diagnosed with cancer and the world is ending. Then everything in mother's head clicks and makes sense. "Sweetie, what are you talking about. You're not late for school. You came home four hours ago, it's nighttime." And as you finally take notice of your surroundings you realize that it is indeed darkish out and you realize that you DID go to school and aren't going to be late. But you're suspicious, so you stop crying and look confusedly at her and go, "So I don't have cancer?" And then everybody laughs at you and you feel a great weight lifted off your chest and what is a better way to celebrate this miracle than to go take another nap.

This happened about twice a week. I'm not joking. So number one, mono makes you tired as shit. It's like some little gremlin creeps into your room each night and uses some magical didgeridoo to suck all of your energy and life away from you so that you wake up in the morning unrefreshed and still tired despite the fact that you got like 15 hours of sleep. You want to sleep ALL THE TIME. Eating breakfast? How about a quick nap. Lunch? I'll eat up in my bed. Dinner? I just stopped eating dinner and woke up with hunger pangs in the morning.

As if the tiredness isn't bad enough, your throat WILL hurt. I'm not saying it hurts ridiculously bad, mine didn't, but it doesn't feel like a normal, healthy throat. Also, you develop what is apparently a "sexy voice" to your boyfriend at the time. Maybe that's why you broke up with him. Anyways, but if you want a perk I guess there's one. It wasn't a sexy voice, it was pretty much that sandpaper-y voice that you get when you're REALLY REALLY REALLY tired and all you want to do is sleep but boyfriend keeps calling you and demands to talk to you for hours and so you probably fall asleep during a rant of his but wake up in time to say goodnight.

Mono makes it hard to focus. I now know why kids who get mono just don't come to school for two weeks. I, on the other hand, was forced by my mother and my goddamn brain to go to school on the days that I wasn't completely dying, but only partially dying. On these days I usually fell asleep in class and got zero assignments done. I'm pretty sure I gave all my teachers another reason to hate freshmen.

Finally school ended and soon mono released my from it deathly clutches only to throw me into a pit of constant sickness. And see, here's the thing, mono symptoms don't just stop. Like it's not like one day you wake up and you're like "I FEEL INVINCIBLE!!" No. You wake up each day and slowly you are less tired, but that doesn't mean you take less naps. And your headaches slowly stop happening like every time the medicine you took wears off. And eventually one day you're like "I don't NEED constant naps, but I'm totally going to still take them until I stop feeling like this. Finally two months later (July-ish) you're like "I'M ALMOST NORMAL!!!" And you celebrate, because you're down the shore and you're going to the beach and getting a tan and reading books because you can actually focus!

But then in two weeks it's August, and one day you're just watching TV and suddenly you get this headache. And you're like, it's probably nothing and you take some Motrin or Tylenol and continue watching TV. The headache goes away in time and you're fine. But then the next day you have another headache, and this one's worse than that one you had yesterday and this time the pain meds don't really help as much. And this cycle continues until one day about a week later, you have constant headaches that are 24/7 (I say that because when I say "constant" people still ask me if I was ever "headache free." Apparently people don't know what the true meaning of "constant" is.)

So you go to sleep with a headache and then wake up with the same headache and you've even upgraded to Excedrin Migraine, but alas, nothing is working. The pediatrician has also diagnosed you with strep throat. So suddenly you're happy, because in your head you're like "this is only because of a virus. when the virus goes away, so will the headaches!" and you get really excited. You finally come to the day when you take your last steroid (no, I don't play sports, and even if I did, I doubt that having a lot of muscle would help my coordination. I'm pretty sure I would just injure people more than I already do) but these are medical steroids that don't give you moon face and beards. YAY! You're a little concerned, because the headaches haven't really improved, but you're positive that all it will take is this last pill and tomorrow everything will be all smiles and sunshine.

You were wrong. Your throat feels much better and you can talk without coughing up a fit every two seconds. But the headaches are still there. Now we're about the 3rd week of August. Last year there were five weeks in August because two were half weeks. Anyways, you're getting concerned, because you convinced your mother to drive you up to Reading, which is a good two hours away, with your best friend to go see your favorite band of all time live at the 2010 Uproar Festival. You know that if you tell mother that you're not getting better she'll cancel this. But this is basically the greatest event of your whole life. But you can't lie either, because if this gets worse, then she won't take you seriously and you'll die of something like cancerous aids.

So instead of lying or telling her, you just don't tell her anything and slowly the days that count up the concert are less and less and soon it's two days before the concert. You've by now been diagnosed by what it most likely just Viral triggered migraines that will go away on their own. You're still taking Excedrin even though it doesn't do much for you, not because you're a drug addict, but because it does more than what regular pain meds do. So you dress up and head out for the best concert of your life. Which it was. It was fucking awesome. But you also are forced to leave early. Avenged was not the headliner, they were co-headlining because of Jimmy's recent death. So after their set it done, you've done enough screaming/singing and headbanging to call up an 8/10 headache. This is not good. You've already taken Excedrin and have nothing left. So you stay for a few Disturbed songs and then decide that their seizure inducing lights and headbanging rhythms are probably making things worse. So since you don't want another visit to the emergency room, you peel out. Best Friend doesn't mind because she really only wanted to see Avenged as well. Mother hates all music that I love and eagerly drags us out.

I just realized that this was supposed to be just a "short quick recap" and that it is not. This has spiraled out into a monster of the shitty things that have happened in my life. So here's the quick version:

I got mono from gym class which I already despised, not because I hate exercise, but I hated that I got all sweaty and then had to get dressed and go to my last class smelly and sweaty like nothing happened. Then I was sick for two and a half months. Then I got strep throat which was accompanied by headaches. I got steroids for the strep. They took away the strep, not the headaches. I went to the emergency room for some liquid morphine and then left before they took my headaches away because I didn't like being in the hospital. Then Sophomore year started. I was absent. A LOT. Then I went to multiple neurologists. They diagnosed me with chronic migraines. But my case was peculiar because they just started out of the blue and were pretty much always there from the start. First neurologist is hooked on the fact that it's a viral spiked migraine and gives me a shitload of preventatives and steroids that don't work. Second neurologist is supposed to be the greatest neurologist in the area but becomes fixated on the fact that I was "mentally scarred" from being bullied from the end of school into the summer. He made me cry a lot.

Finally we arrive at my third and current neurologist. His name is Brad. We like Brad. Brad made my constant 24/7 headaches that were 8/10 all the time become 5/10 all the time. This is the greatest success we've seen in five months. But then headaches go back up. So we go back in for IV Infusion (it sounds cool as hell, but it's really not. it's basically the worst three days of your life. and i had to do it. TWICE) this time bringing it down to a 3/10. It doesn't sound like much but it is. Unfortunately you've missed like 50 days of school and are so behind in classes that it's physically and emotionally tolling to get up and go to school every day. This makes you sad. So you just stop going to school. Unfortunately you can't just up and stop school. You have to enter this thing called "Homebound Schooling".

No, your parents don't get to teach you. You get assigned tutors that you go and meet at the local library for an hour per tutor each week. But wait, you also have elective classes this semester! Homebound program does not teach electives. But you need electives as prerequisites for the classes you want to take next year. So you make a deal with your two teachers to continue by yourself. One teacher works on an honor basis and sends all work and tests home. It's a lot but you love that class. Other teacher decides, out of the goodness of her heart, to come to your house for an hour every week and teach you Spanish.

The story that was supposed to be posted her was about what went on today between me and my Spanish teacher and it was the greatest thing ever. But I would have had to explain this sooner or later so I'll post about that tomorrow.