Let's talk about toilets

Just for a second.

See, toilets these days basically run my life. Your lowly intern has not yet been given a key. We keep the door to the meta-office locked (you know, the one that holds the Real Editor's offices and the Lowly Peoples' cubicles, and the lowly intern's shoe-box that, it has been suggested, could be made into a really baller fort if I brought in some old sheets). And somehow, even though your lowly intern unlocks that door before going to the bathroom, the door always seems to be locked again when your lowly intern gets back. Then I have to beg the receptionist to let me in, and she laughs at me.

Also, if I go around lunchtime I get locked out of the whole meta-meta office, and then to get in I have to ring the doorbell. Well, theoretically. The one time that happened, I just went to lunch with the bathroom key.

Lastly, the toilet in the office building is really freaking tall. Like, my toes barely touch the floor. What is up with that? I am short, but I am not THAT short, and there is something really unsatisfying about peeing with your feet off the ground.

This was a long way of saying, I went to the train station to pee today. THAT toilet was an overachieving freak and flushed itself four times in the midst of a 15 second pee break.

I'm done talking about toilets now.


Some Lupie news: Lady Gaga is auctioning off the necklace she wore in her Poker Face video. Proceeds will go to the Lupus Foundation of America. Thanks, Lady Gaga! I liked you before, now I kind of love you! Information

15 blood tests: Mostly normal, or at least in the same place they were a year ago. In the interest of full disclosure, I did not hear the whole message the nurse practitioner left on my phone due to: she mutters, and I kept trying to listen to it outside in the traffic under the El trains. I got as far as C3, C4, ANA are all basically in range (ANA is a big factor in diagnosing, c3 and c4, I have no idea what they are but I know that their refusal to be normal was what led to my being shoved on Rituxan in my 14th year of life and 5th year of lupus), but I have yet to get as far as kidneys in the message.

You will find it strange to hear that this is frustrating to me. I have been feeling off for a year or so, and my blood tests refuse to show any evidence of this, and therefore there continues to be nothing we can do about it. Furthermore, I'm not allowed to take ibuprofin because it's hard on the kidneys. Ibuprofin doesn't work well anyway, since I spent too many years taking 800 mg three-four times a day. But they won't give me anything stronger because my doctor doesn't trust me to take meds like a responsible person and my blood tests do not show any reason for me to be in pain except for 11 years of my own immune system munching on my muscles and joints. I mean, I am not in BAD pain. It would just be nice to have a clear problem with a clear solution.

Pause for riotous laughter at the implication that there is ever a "clear" anything where my body is concerned.


In other news, spiders were fighting outside one of the editor's window yesterday. We were picking contest winners. By which I mean, watching a female try and devour her potential mate, who then fled.

And, there is nothing more fun than being handed a box of submissions and being told "This is our new first reader's audition box. He wasn't allowed to reject anything. I'd go make some copies of your form reject."

51 suggestions, I passed 13 on. Of those 13, I liked 2 okay, 5 were totally adequate, 3 I did not like but thought someone else might, 3 I hated but thought they had a good topic so if they were, like, totally rewritten they could be good.

I did, indeed, have to make more copies of the form reject.

And all this while stalling having to pee so I wouldn't get locked out.

Some suggestions:
1. Do not title a poem for 3-6 year olds "High." Do not, in it, mention not being able to see straight and request something relaxing. I do not care if the end point is that you like music, and music makes you high.
2. I love my grandmother as much as anyone. And I probably love your grandmother too. In general, I am a big fan of grandmothers. However, I cannot think of a single grandmother I would want to see in a Tinkerbell outfit.

Today, before 10 a.m. my dress strap snapped. See, I have this problem where I carry my shoulders kind of high, especially when I am tense which is not, you know, uncommon with me. And so when I have non-stretchy kind of crappy straps, they tend to break. And then they tend to be really hard to tie back together and I tend to spend the rest of my day trying to keep my shoulders down because there are other places on that strap not to mention a whole other strap that's wearing thin. When I went to the train station to pee, I cannot even BEGIN to tell you how attractive I felt.

Emily, since I know you are reading this, you should know that the wallet you made me gets me hit on infinitely more often than my good looks and charm 'round these parts. My good looks and charm: 0. The wallet you made me: 3.