A New Neurologist – Part I

It’s been a week and a half now–I’m just now getting a chance to sit down and write about it–but I finally had my first appointment with a new Neurologist (Dr. M) for my migraines.  I absolutely loved her!  I’m so happy I decided to “shop around” for a doctor with whom I felt more comfortable.  I highly recommend this–it’s most definitely worth it!

To back up a little in the Saga of the New Neurologist, I decided after a visit with my original Neurologist (Dr. P) last May that I wanted to find a new doctor.  Not because he wasn’t a good doctor (he is), but because we weren’t a good match.  I felt anxious, rushed, and flustered at every appointment.  (Well, we only had two, so I should say both appointments.)  My migraines have a strong menstrual connection, and I felt uncomfortable taking to him about that aspect.  Partially due to my reluctance to talk to a man about my menstrual cycle, hormones, use of the pill, and birth control options, and partially due to his lack of sufficient tack during these discussions. 

Once I made the decision to switch Neurologists, the challenge began.  I knew I wanted a female doc, and there weren’t very many female Neurologists in Dayton, OH on my insurance plan.  One of the few (Dr. M)happened to be part of the same practice as Dr. P, so I called and attempted to switch to her.  However, I hit a brick wall in the form of the office staff.  After giving me a different run around during the first conversation, the second time I called they stonewalled me by stating that the practice didn’t allow transfers from one doctor to another.  Ladies (and gentlemen), if anyone tells you this, while it’s possible that it’s true, it’s unlikely.  So, don’t give up easily and definitely not before you’ve tried all avenues.

Long story short, it took several months, but I ended up talking to Dr. P (who happens to be the founder of the practice) and explained the situation to him (in friendly, vague terms of “I’d just feel more comfortable discussing things with a female doctor”).  He told me that they didn’t have any policy against switching doctors within the practice, unless the patient was unhappy with the type of care they received.  After I assured him that I was content with the quality of care and just preferred talking to a woman, he made the necessary arrangements for me to get an appointment with Dr. M.  See, easy as pie!  (Well, besides the endless phone calls and 6 month lapse in care because of the hang up, but I’m over being bitter.)

So, what was so great about Dr. M?  First, she took time to listen AND answer my abundance of questions.  Second, she spent a lot of time going over my history, which tells me that she wants to start at the beginning in order to find a workable treatment plan.  Thirdly, she gave me options, which gives me the feeling of active participation that I’m looking for.  Finally, I feel very comfortable conversing with her.  Plus, she happens to have a migraine pattern similar to mine, which makes me feel like she knows were I’m coming from.      

And so, I’m still chipping away at #21.

It irks me when…

…I forget to put my wedding ring on in the morning before going to work. 

Then–all day long–I feel naked and exposed without it.  Yes, I know it’s just a band of metal on my finger, but it’s a constant presence that I miss dearly when it’s not where it belongs.   Silly and a bit girly, but 100% true.

New Fav’s

A co-worker made me a copy of the Twilight soundtrack…and made my week in the process!  I’ve been on YouTube since I got home today looking up other songs by the bands I “discovered” on my already well-listened-to Twilight CD.  And I’ve found a few new favorites, including Muse, Plain White T’s (which aren’t actually on the CD), Paramore, Collective Soul, and Rob Pattinson.

I absolutely love this song.  I was going to use the actual music video with Muse, but it’s a bit strange for my taste.  (Honestly, it wasn’t just another excuse to plug Twilight, I promise!)

By the way, I found this acoustic version of December (Collective Soul).  I loved it!

Topic of the day for Friday, March 13th

Today’s conversation topic of the day (at least here at work) has been gardening.  I think we’re all feeling the effects of the lengthening daylight hours, (slightly) warmer weather, and re-emerged songbirds.  I love talking about gardening almost as much as I love gardening itself.  Not only do I get get to share my success stories, I get to pick others’ brains and glean new ideas from them. 

I’m planning on planting spinach, beets, carrots, and perhaps some lettuce this weekend.  I need to get started–I have three times as much garden space this year as we had last year!  I am definitely going to be kept busy all spring and summer.  I also need to start preparing the small strip of lawn that we’re converting to space for raspberry canes and a larger strawberry bed.  (Those strawberries are always trying to take over new space!  I started with 4 spindly plants less than two years ago; now they’re running amuck!)

So, who else has started planting (or at least planning)?

Top ten thoughts of my day

10.  I’m ready for spring.  The birds have been proclaiming that spring has arrived every morning for the past week or so, but 20 and 30 degree weather does not equal spring, at least in my book.

9. Robins are definitely year round inhabitants here in Southwest Ohio.  They are VERY happily eating worms in my lawn!

8. My hubby and I met for lunch today, which is a first since we moved to Dayton.  I LOVE that we work in the same city again.

7. I’ve been debating over going to see an upcoming movie called Little Ashes, starring (among others) Robert Pattinson of Edward Cullen/Twilight fame.  From an artistic standpoint, I think it looks brilliant.  However, there’s a small, very petty part of me that’s scared to see my onscreen hunk play a gay–sorry, bisexual–role.  I’m very curious; first because the story of Salvadore Dali is an interesting one, and second because I’m curious to see what else Robert Pattinson can do onscreen.

Salvadore Dali's 'Lincoln in Dalivision'

   

6. I’m making pot roast for dinner tomorrow night.  I have everything ready to go so I can throw it in the crock pot just before I leave in the morning.  That way we get to look forward to the house smelling delicious when we come home from work at the end of the day. 

5. I hate underwear that bunch.  WHY did they go to using cheap, crappy elastic?  (I mean, security is essential in that, ah, area.)  Oh, because they can make more profit per pair of underwear sold.  Awesome, now I get to deal with the consequences on a daily basis.  Ok, rant over!

4. The Ohio Supreme Court heard arguements today in a case in which a Cincinnati, Ohio mother is suing her former employer for firing her for taking breaks to pump breast milk during her work day.  I think you can guess what I think about that. 

3. I’m just a little proud of the homemade hamburger buns I made yesterday–sesame seeds and all baby!

2. Quote of the day: “Huh, it must work on bruises, too.” –my husband, upon seeing Rhianna’s newest  Cover Girl commercial 

1. Happy birthday Terra!

Odds N Ends

Since today is a list sorta day…

~I hate Ohio weather.  No wonder all the retirees who have the funds move to Florida for the winter.  It’s in the single digits (with windchill) here today, but we’re supposed to gain an extra 10 degrees every day this week.  So, by Friday it’ll be 60 degrees out.  Grrr, no wonder I’m STILL sick.

~I’m going to come out and admit that I’ve now seen Twilight not once, but twice.  I feel so bad because I cheated on my friend–we had agreed to wait to see it (together) until it comes out on DVD.  Oops, sorry A!  (She knows–and has forgiven me readily–but I still feel guilty.)  I’m now totally, amazingly, pathetically hooked, and I can’t wait to see it again!  Now I desperately want the soundtrack, too.  It’s awesome   (As a side note, hubby took me to see the movie the first time I saw it and he thought it was OK–which is a compliment.)

~God bless my mother.  I received no fewer than four emails from her last night.  They were timestamped 1:11am, 1:47am, 1:47am, and 3:20am.  (The middle two were duplicates.)  The one from 1:47am read (in part),

here is quiet.  and middle of the night.  I had a very long spell with very little sleep  2 births back to back.  now my day/night is mixed up.”

As I learned well by a very young age, such is the life of a dedicated midwife.

~Hubby and I watched The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King on TV last night.  We had two totally random conversations based on the end of the movie, one about “gay hobbit love” (forgive my hubby’s lack of tact) and the other about “elf-mutts”.  The GHL conversation began during the scene when Pippin, Sam, Frodo, and Merry are back in the shire, sharing a drink together.  Hubby claims they’re making eyes at each other.  (It is, admittedly, a sappy scene.)  I explained to him that they’re just happy to be home and alive after their adventure, but no, he’s certain they all madly want to jump each other.  I explained that Sam was going to marry Rosie, his hobbit lass.  Just a cover up, says hubby.  (Yes, I know this topic has been debated previously elsewhere.  Don’t tell hubs, it’ll just fuel his side of the debate!)  The E-M story centered around Aragorn & Arwen’s kiss at the end of the movie.  My dear hubby is convinced that elf parts & human parts don’t line up, and, even if they did, Aragorn & Arwen would produce weird, mutant elf-mutts.  I contend that it doesn’t matter how many chromosomes they have, their babies would be GORGEOUS!

 ~I just finished reading Trickster’s Queen by Tamora Pierce, one of my favorite YA authors.  I might feel a little guilty reading her books–I’m probably a bit old for them (??)–but nonetheless I love them and I love her.  One of my favorite Tamora Pierce quotes is this:

I am deeply unhappy that college education standards, as evidenced by all those online lists, is still that of white men who died over a century ago and fear for the best and brightest minds educated on a standard that does not address the fact that we live in a global culture that does not recognize the primacy of the values of dead, white, European men.”

Also:

Books are still the main yardstick by which I measure true wealth.”

And finally (in reference to her early years as a very young writer):

I tried to write the kind of thing I was reading, with one difference: the books I loved were missing teenaged girl warriors. I couldn’t understand this lapse of attention on the part of the writers I loved, so until I could talk them into correcting this small problem, I wrote about those girls, the fearless, bold, athletic creatures that I was not, but wanted so badly to be.”

~I also recently read Ironside by Holly Black, The Parting & The Forbidden by Beverly Lewis, Club Dead & Dead to the World by Charlaine Harris, and Trickster’s Choice by Tamora Pierce (prequel to Trickster’s Queen).  They are all very different books, but all of them good in their own way and definitely worth reading.

~I usually give up something for Lent, so this year I decided to do something instead.  I chose to pray twice a day (morning and night).  I did really well Ash Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.  Not so much this weekend.  Routine helps me, so hopefully I’ll get back on track by tomorrow.

~We found out Saturday that friends of ours here in Dayton are expecting!  We have out-of-town friends with kids, but this will be our first friend-baby close enough to visit on a regular basis.  I’m very excited!  Congrats A and T!

4 Book Reviews in Twenty Minutes

My mother always admonished us for using the word ‘hate’.  “Hate is a very strong word,” she would tell us.  That said–and no offense to my mom–I hate winter. 

Oh, I like snow.  But, the cold and the ice and the lack of sunlight make me gloomy.  So, I try to keep myself occupied by reading a lot during the winter months.  A good book can transport me away from the snow and ice and gloomy skies here in Ohio to make winter more bearable, at least for a short time.

So, here’s what I’ve been reading lately…

The Twilight Series (Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse, and Breaking Dawn) by Stephenie Meyer 

To be honest, I hadn’t heard about the books until the Twilight movie was released.  All the hype (including the swarms of crazed teenage girls swooning over Robert Pattinson) and the fact that it was a vampire story initially turned me off from reading Twilight.  I kept hearing it was a good story, however, so I eventually borrowed a copy from a friend (who had urged me to read it) and started reading.  I started Twilight around 11pm and couldn’t put it down until I’d finished it around 5am the same night.  The other three books were the same–I loved them!  Stephenie Meyer has a wonderful writing style with very vivid characters.  The Twilight books are better described as an intimate, epic romance story (without being raunchy) that happens to include vampire characters.  I can’t recommend them enough! 

I have Meyer’s book The Host reserved at the library and I can’t wait until it comes in so I can read more of her work.

Dead Until Dark & Living Dead in Dallas by Charlaine Harris 

I’m almost ashamed to admit it, but after reading the Twilight books I was a little fascinated with vampires/vampire books/vampire culture.  (To be honest, I think I was hoping for another Twilight to come along because I was so disappointed the books were over.)  Charlaine Harris’s writing is about as different from Stephenie Meyer’s writing as you can get.  Regardless, I enjoyed the first two Sookie Stackhouse novels.  Harris’s writing style is very light…almost flippant.  Even so, she craftily tackles such social issues as homophobia, racism, and ‘vampire-ism’ in her books.  The main character in the books is Sookie Stackhouse, a bartender in the rural south who happens to be able to read people’s thoughts.  In Dead Until Dark, she meets Bill, the town’s first vampire inhabitant, and they fall in love.  Together, they solve a string of murders that occur shortly after Bill moves into town.  In Living Dead in Dallas, Bill & Sookie go to Dallas, TX to solve a mystery involving the vampires living there. 

As a side note, HBO’s new series True Blood is based on these books.  The series was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best TV Series Drama and Anna Paquin (who plays Sookie Stackhouse) won a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Drama Series.  I haven’t seen the show (we don’t get HBO), but I’ve heard that it’s good…and also that there’s a lot of sex on it (one of the characters is a bit of a womanizer).   

Tithe: A Modern Faerie Tale & Valiant: A Modern Tale of Faerie by Holly Black 

I picked up Tithe on a whim as I was browsing in the library and the cover caught my attention.  I’d never heard of the author, Holly Black, nor read any of her books.  Tithe is about a 16 year-old girl, Kaye, who travels the country with her mom’s rock band.  Kaye has been visited by faeries in her childhood, and–when she and her mother are forced to move back to her childhood home–she meets an injured faerie knight.  This meeting begins the process of Kaye being catapulted into the faerie’s world.  I enjoyed Tithe enough to check out another of Black’s books, Valiant, the next time I was at the library.  That said, I have to admit that Black’s books are a little edgy for my taste.  The thing I do like about her is that she creates a new social structure and brings together a faerie vocabulary in her stories, which I find refreshing.  Tithe & Valiant aren’t necessarily intertwined stories (you can read one without reading the other), but I recently found out that Black wrote a sequel to Tithe, called Ironside.  Yep, I’ll be reading that one, too.

   Baby Proof by Emily Giffin 

First off, I have to say that I’ve read, and liked, Emily Giffin’s books Something Borrowed and Something Blue.  However, I didn’t care for Baby Proof.  Giffin’s stories are very…well, girly.  If you’re me (a tom-boy), you have to be in the right mood to read them.  I think I could have enjoyed Baby Proof, but it just wasn’t what I was looking for at the time I sat down to read it.  The story is about a woman, Claudia, who doesn’t want to have children.  After much searching, she meets a man, Ben, who doesn’t wish to procreate, either.  They fall in love and get married.  Fast forward a few years and–boom!–Ben decides that he wants a baby.  He tells Claudia that having a baby is now a deal-breaker for him and he will leave her if she doesn’t change her mind.  The majority of the book is about Claudia’s inner struggle between the man she loves and the child-free marriage she wants to have. 

I also have a Stephen King novel–I just haven’t started it yet.  I’ve never read anything by King–I always assumed that his kind of writing isn’t my kind of reading.  But, I figured I should read one of his books just so I can say that I have!  And I found a Black Stallion book that I must have missed when I was younger.  Yes, I know I’m “too old” for those books, but I really don’t care.  They were my favorites back in the day!

I’m pretty sure that I didn’t read 25 books in 2008 , so I’m trying to get a head start on 2009.

 

And in comes 2009…

In a nutshell (wherever that phrase came from), HAPPY NEW YEAR!

I can’t count how many, but a lot of my friends & co-workers have been saying that they hope 2009 is a better year than 2008.  And, if I’m being completely honest, I have to count myself in that number, too. 

That said, here’s my list of why 2008 was still a terrific year:

*I finally started meeting people with similar interests & making friends in Dayton.  (Yay for friends!)

*Many of my out-of-town friends are starting new careers, relationships and/or a family, and this crazy project called home-ownership.  It’s a bit sappy, but it gives me the warm fuzzies to know my friends are happy.

*I’ve expanded my horse-show wardrobe to the point that I can begin showing whenever my horse & budget are ready.  (Possible goal for 2009?)

*My hubby & I celebrated our 1 year wedding anniversary in 2008.

*We’ve completed a lot of work around the barn during the past year.  It’s not a show barn by any means, but it’s safe & functional, which is what matters to us.  And the sweat to get it that way was all ours, so we own the success 100%!

*2008 brought me a tiled kitchen floor, which made me silly happy!  Tile is SO much better than ugly brown carpet!

So, while 2008 may not have been a stellar year overall, it had some great moments & will be missed just as much as 2007.  Enjoy 2009!

Finally, a new job!

Good news: I finally left the old, far away, icky job for a new, close, happier job.  I work here.  The people are terrific, and of course the pets are wonderful.  There are a few downsides–which I’ll post about some other time–but overall I love it!

Since I took a significant (but worth it) salary cut, I’m currently also working at Williams-Sonoma part-time.  It’s like a kid in a candy shop…I want to buy EVERYTHING!!!  So far, I have restrained myself, but I”m not sure how long I can last…

So, life is much better.

What I’ve been up to…

I just realized it’s been August since my last post.  That makes me so sad!  That said, I’ve been job hunting my little ass off.  My current job, and boss(es), SUCK.  I’d love to be more eloquent about it, but suckiness is the most respectful term I can come up with. 

I need out, NOW.  I’ve been looking for about two years, but with the wedding & house buying & project horses during that time, well… 

Before I was picky, but now I’ll be happy with whatever I find first. 

I’ve been working on it pretty much whenever I’m not at work.  Hubby, Mr. Amazing that he is, has been taking care of everything–cooking, cleaning, the pets, you name it–so I can focus on finding & applying for jobs.  What would I do without him? 

Every day I drag myself to work by telling myself it’ll be my last day.  It’s one thing to hate your job, but it’s another to hate who you work for.  And no, I’m not being petty, promise. 

I probably won’t post again until I start a new job.  Hopefully that will be…tomorrow?