Radio Head

I have this thing where I listen to the radio on my drive in to work, and as I'm turning my car off, whatever song is playing is the song that I end up humming or singing to myself all day long. This is either an awesome trait or an annoying trait, depending, of course, on the song. This morning it was Rodrigo y Gabrielle with their awesome guitar duo. So this afternoon I'm still plucking along on an imaginary guitar and pounding away on the wood of the acoustic guitar while I issue purchase orders at work.

What's even more uncanny is if I'm listening to a CD. Same thing happens, I hear the last song that was playing when I pull into work, but the funny thing is when I leave work and return to my car, I can almost be singing the exact same line of the song from when my engine shut off nine hours before. My mind just picks up where the song left off, sometimes to the exact lyric.

But on days when it's something like Collective Soul's "The World I Know"? Well then, you better not cross my path because I've been singing this garbage song in my head all day and I'm about to break. True Story.

Invites

So you all saw my super cute invites, right?  Well, I was so paranoid that some would get lost in the mail, much like random socks go missing in the dryer, never to be seen again. Nick got a call from his mom about one of her cousins who didn't get the invite in the mail. She heard about it in a round-about way {I cringed!} and the cousin asserted that she wasn't invited.  I sent out their invite on 7/22/08! I swear! Turns out, looking up addresses on whitepages.com isn't the best way to go about it, as they are frequently incorrect. Now I just hope she doesn't think she was invited last minute {guests are to RSVP by next week} and oh I just need to get over it and hope their feelings weren't inadvertently hurt!

 

I'm Still Alive

Now that a couple of days have passed since my blood draw (I believe it was my first blood draw of my whole life - is this really possible? I am 26! How is this possible? It is possible.) and I am still alive here, I'm able to view the experience with less fresh glasses. Not rosy, but less fresh/raw/it-just-happened-and-I'm-still-anxious-about-it glasses.

 

Honestly, I thought FOR SURE that I would throw up, faint, or do both. I'm so so shocked that I didn't do either. And you're probably wondering "why keep beating a dead horse, this is the 2nd or 3rd mention of it on blogger/twitter/etc. in the last few days?"  Well, if you knew my history of "doctors appointments" especially ones including needles, well you'd understand.

 

I think the Xanax probably had a lot to do with it, but to be completely honest, I still lost my shit. I basically had to lay on the exam table as flat as a pancake. I asked Nick to remove the thing they call a pillow (I disagree - def. not a pillow) from underneath the exam table paper so I could be closer to 180-degree and get the maximum blood flow to the head. When the nurse came in, I started getting dizzy and anxious (just from hearing her come in! - my free arm was already draped across my forehead so I couldn't even see anything because even just the sight of the needles could make me faint). When she tried to find a vein, I started to get antsy and move around a bit, moving my legs and feet and trying to disassociate.

 

She poked my right arm with the needle, which didn't really hurt, but then I hear an "Oops" and a scurry out the door. At this point, I was getting more and more anxious by the minute. I was probably starting to breath heavily and/or hyperventilate. The onset of an anxiety attack! Fun Monday afternoon activity.  And really? It's not the pain that gets me - I'm not really sure what it is to be honest!  I didn't even realize that I was having anxiety attacks re: doctors/needles etc. until my doctor said "why don't you try Xanax?"  

 

Back to my riveting story, a minute later, the nurse came back with another nurse (I'm assuming one who is "better" at drawing blood?) and they poked me in the left arm. They had to tourniquette my arm pretty tight because my veins were in hiding. (Poor things were just as nervous as me.) THAT made me anxious as hell, because I could feel how tight it was around my arm. The nurses and Nick kept giving me updates "You're doing great, wow, you're almost done, almost over, you're just about done, you're doing great" and that REALLY helped as well. Because honestly? It didn't feel like ANYTHING. The initial poke BARELY hurt, and after that 1 second poke, I didn't feel a thing. I don't even think I felt the needle get removed.  I make it sound like this was all a piece of cake for me, but it wasn't. I was still very much anxious and "in the zone" and freaking out. After they were done with the blood draw, my arm started to go numb, and my hands were hurting. At this point, like I said, I wasn't looking at anything, my eyes were shut, and  I was hyperventilating as well as sweating like crazy. I had a washcloth on my face and neck, and I couldn't see anything.

 

Finally, I peeked out of the washcloth and looked at my free hand, and figured out why my hands hurt - my fingers literally curled up in my hand. Picture making your fingers into a duck-bill profile, then try to touch the duck-bill profile to your forearm. YEAH, that's what my hands looks like - both of them. It was really bizarre and kind of frightening, but to tell you the truth, in hindsight, I'm glad I had something else to focus on other than the thought that I just had a needle piercing my vein and drawing blood. The nurses had to get my some hot packs to relax the muscles in my hand, they were stiff as a board and there was no moving my fingers. 

 

Anyway, to finish up the story, I laid on the table for a few extra minutes, trying to figure out what was going on with my fingers and gain my composure a bit and calm down. I think part of the anxiety that people like me face is the embarassment of having such an anxiety disorder for medical-related issues. It was very embarassing for me, but the nurse was so helpful yet unfazed, and Nick was so nice about it. I kept putting myself down, rhetorically asking myself mid-procedure "WTF. Why am I like this? Why am I such a freak?" because I just wanted to note out loud that "yes, I understand this is a weird reaction, I do realize that, I don't think this is normal" because I was so sensitive to how people would react to my reaction. I realize this is silly, but it was part of my anxiety as well. Now that it's sort of "established" with my doctor/nurse that I am this way, hopefully the next time I have to do this (way far away future!) that part of the equation won't be there.

 

Wow - I didn't think I would be so wordy about this - I didn't realize I had so much to say. But honestly, once I left that place, I felt like a million bucks to have the experience behind me. Well, more like fifty bucks, seeing as how I went home and promptly fell asleep for 15 hours. Anxiety/panic attack will do that to you. It DRAINS you, trust me!

 

Epilogue: I wrote this and left it in "draft" mode for quite a while. I typically don't talk about this with people, other than to say "Yeah, I'm not a huge fan of needles." Little do they know. But, this site has been so helpful to make me realize I'm not the only nut out there that I've decided to hit the "Post and Publish" button. If I know you in "real life" (I have what? 3 readers of this site?) I probably haven't talked in much detail about it. Although my close close friends know ALL ABOUT the time I went in for a cavity-filling and ended up throwing up my lunch (Nacho Cheese Doritos) all over the dentist office. It's actually quite cathartic to write it down on paper (screen?), and hit the publish button. Now it's not such a secret. Helps with the "apprehension of being judged" factor of the anxiety. Anyway, I thought to myself, "if someone reads this and they see a little bit of me in someone they know, maybe it'll help him/her to understand that person better." So there you have it.

Who-Hoo!

Awesome news from my wedding photography consultant - we're getting a 2nd photographer for free! It's like Christmas in August!

I survived my Dr. Appt. this afternoon... well, barely. My doctor had me take a couple of Xanax to calm me down because I freaked out at the prospect of having blood drawn last week. It seemed to help somewhat, until they brought in the needles. So I guess it didn't really work all that much. :) But - I did survive, I'm not dead, I didn't faint OR upchuck! But I still freaked waaaay out.

The nurses and Nick were super nice about it though and didn't make me feel like the freak I was feeling like inside. Honestly, there must be some official name for this "disorder" of being so freakishly afraid of needles/doctors/etc. Oh well, I'm just proud of myself for making it through without fainting. That's always the worst, and you feel like a jackass afterwards, and it's pretty scary because you can hit your head on an array of things on the way down. Last time I fainted it was on the way back from the check-out desk to the waiting chairs, so there was nothing around thankfully, but the doctor offices are so small and cramped and full of counters and sinks and trays of stuff and I'm sure I would have hit something on the way down, so I'm glad I was able to avoid that whole ordeal.

Nick was truly a gentleman and was just there by my side the whole time, putting cool washcloths on my head and neck and talking to me and trying to distract me from my crazy fearful thoughts and my inner fright. I am so damn lucky to have him in my life, I can't even describe it. Now that's out of the way - and I've truly been dreading it for a couple of weeks now - I can focus on other, more important things - such as, oh, I don't know, GETTING MARRIED!

Nick and I have a deal: he mows the lawn, and I clean the kitchen. It's fairly stereotypical, but it works for me. I abhor the thought of mowing the lawn and mowing over a frog. That's really the only thing that'd hold me back from doing it. Now you know my weird inner thoughts, I'll tell you another reason this deal isn't so bad.

I present to you: Mrs. Meyer's Lemon Verbena Countertop Cleaner. Oh, how I love thee. It smells like Aveda products, which isn't too shabby. While it's on the expensive side ($6 for a small-ish bottle) it certainly is worth it. If I'm not crabby while scraping the stove top, well that's just priceless.

Getting Married Soon! Thus, all of my free time is spent stalking the world wide web for all things wedding. So much good stuff out there, it's hard to keep track of. My "favorites" has grown exponentially... I can see how someone can have a full-time job being a wedding planner. The details! The table cards! The thank you notes! The satin or sateen or silk chair cover sashes! It's all too much... too much fun.

Don't you LOVE our wedding invitations? Me too!

I ordered them from a wedding invitation site online (my mom tried to persuade me to go to a stationary shop but this was less expensive and still great quality) at http://www.weddingpaperdivas.com/. I kind of cringe at the "diva" in their name but they have some nice stuff, if you're in the market for invitations, inner envelopes, response cards, and such. :)

We are having a photo booth at our wedding, too. I first got the idea last summer while perusing some blogs, and stumbled across pictures of someone's wedding who had it at the reception. Now it seems photo booths are a major hit (as seen at parties for BlogHer and the like) and I feel like a copy-cat, even though I've had mine booked for over 8 months. Oh well. Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery, right?

Last but not least... a woman is marrying us. I was nervous that both Nick and my parents would be somewhat old-fashioned and want a man to do the ceremony. Since neither of us is especially religious, that knocked out the idea of having a priest or minister, and we were left to our Googling devices. Surprisingly, most of the people I found online were women. When we met with our officiant, she pointed out that it's because traditionally, in the wedding officiant biz, men are the breadwinners and the women do this as a part-time job. She said it's nearly impossible to officiate weddings full-time and make a full-time salary to support yourself. So if you see a man offering his services, he's likely doing wedding officiating on top of other things to keep the cash flowing. The one man we did find seemed "off", so I googled him and found out that he also buys and sells web domains. Kind of random. He purchased something along the lines of taiwanrentalcars.com and has it up for sale. I know it's the same guy because of his unique name and also his local phone number is on both sites! Very random, and not the type of guy I'd want to marry us.

Phew - that was a long story with no real point - other than to say most people we found online were women, so there you have it. I know Revernd Christine will do a fantastic job and I'm excited to have found her.

And I swear, I'm not the girl who has been dreaming of her wedding for 20 years, etc. I am very very much looking forward to my wedding, don't get me wrong, but I'm not one of these fairy-princess brides who wear cupcake dresses. But I gotta tell you, I have a sweet spot in my heart for watching brides try on dresses. In the 5 times I've been to the bridal shop, I usually have the most fun watching other brides, rather than getting into my own dress. It's such a happy time for people and it's nice to be around such good energy.

Hopefully I'll get on a blog-roll once again. I've been neglectful, I know. Most posts to come...

Life Lesson # 200

I just drove all the way (a whole 0.5 miles - but! I had to make a left turn out of my place of work!  Left turns at noon-time are brutal!) to Wendy's for a scrumptious and healthy salad, got back to my desk, prepared the self for the glorious consumption of said salad, and alas, there's no salad dressing!

 

Life Lesson # 200 is to always check your Wendy's bag for a complete order before pulling away from the drive-through stop eating fast food.

 

Love,

Lindsay

Snippets

• This post was sitting in my "draft" box since May 7. So, today, 6/27 is not Freud's birthday, but when I wrote this, it was. Consider yourself informed.
• It's Freud's birthday today... hmm... all of a sudden I'm really craving a hotdog.  No, scratch that, a bratwurst. ;)
• I have no problem admitting to everyone that I qualify for the $600 tax refund check thing. Got mine today. It's scary how quickly I can spend $600.
• We were doing some yard work late yesterday afternoon, and then left the house for a couple of hours.  When we came back and went into the basement, we realized the slider door had been left open.  Our slider doesn't have a screen, so basically there was a wide-open gaping hole to our house for a few hours. When we went to bed, Nick locked the bedroom door "in case there were hobos bumbling around the house."  Hehe.
• There's a girl from Dexter who was on America's Next Top Model.  She made it to the Top 10 maybe?  Top Five?  Anyway, her schtick was that she was the manager of a Dairy Queen, and that she just wanted to get out of her small-town Michigan abode, and make it big in the modeling biz.  Since moving to Dexter, I have seen her at the Dairy Queen (behind the glass, serving customers) as well as catering a lunch at my work.  Yeah, that Tyra Banks show really worked out for ya.

 

 

 

Weekend

Nick and I are going on weekend # 5 out of 6 where we have something major planned for the weekend that involves going out of town.  While I can't really complain, I will complain just a little.  Don't get me wrong - the fact that we have things going on each weekend for a long stretch of time means good things are going on right now - friends, family getting married, family moving out of town on to bigger and better pastures, weekend adventures or mini-vacations - really, absolutely no room for complaints.  Other than: messy bathrooms, un-vacuumed floors, dirty mirrors, mildewy sinks, and unkempt gardens.  But I suppose, when lying on your death-bed, you don't think about those things; instead you think about the time you stayed up til 3:00 a.m. having a blast with your sister-in-law and her fun girlfriends at her bachelorette party, or the time you walked around Washington D.C. in 100-degree heat, but having a blast with your mom and sister, or (forthcoming) backpacking along beautiful Lake Michigan trails with good friends.  Ah yes, can't complain.