Back at Work

Back at work now and things are fine.

Well, fine except for a few little things. If you want to call a potential brain tumor a little thing. But I'll get to that later.

First of all, and perhaps most importantly, since I have returned to work I have been quite concerned about the quality of the coffee here. My first day back and my sleep was a little rough the night before, so I poured myself a cup of coffee, thinking it would be just what I needed. I added a teaspoon of whitener into it, and oddly enough, nothing happened. It took it in, but then, like somehow dissolved away. Puzzled, I poured another heaping teaspoon. The result was similar. It could not be whitened. Dismayed, I started dumping a whole bunch in, and finally got it down to like a dark caramel color, it was the best I could do. I don't know what kind of coffee they use or how they get it like that. It was like a whole pot of that sludge that forms on the bottom of the pot if you leave it on all day. And it also seemed to have some kind of a laxative component to it, which would be OK for a bunch of elderly people with slow moving bowells, but for me,I don't really the extra stimulation. So now I have been avoiding the coffee. I discussed the situation at lenght with Geoff, and we are tossing around some ideas. We may either A)purchase an inexpensive travel mug and bring coffee from home or B)Buy some kind of Hazelnut cream or something to try to make the coffee taste better or C)Stop drinking coffee altogether. I am hesitant to move forward with option B, because in the past I've had some bad experiences with Hazelnut cream at work (read also "The Great Hazelnut Heist" for background info). I am also loathe to consider option C because I feel that I need some form of caffeine to get me through the day these days, especially since my twelve month old baby persists on sleeping like a newborn and waking up all night long.

So. It's a big decision and I will need to put a lot of thought into it. I will let you know how my discussions progress in this regard.



I have already had quite enough to deal with. And then yesterday I got a pamphlet from the Acoustic Brain Tumor Network. I have never heard of this said Acoustic Brain Tumor, so I started to leaf through the pamphlet. The symptoms are: headache (Yikes), Dizzyness (Yikes), Defness in one ear (Okay, so I don't have defness, at least not that I know of... although I do have to frequently ask people to repeat themselves. And people have said that I am tone def. I don't know if that's related to general defness or not. Def is a weird word isn't it. It seems to short to be a real word. It almost seems like slang for another word, as in "Yo, dog, that dope was def!" That's how I talk usually.) Anyways. Another symptom: ringing in the ears (Yikes). The last thing was facial tics. I don't actually have facial tics, I thought, feeling relieved. But then I started to wonder. Is it possible to have a facial tic and not know it?? I mean, how can I really see my own face?? I only look at it for a few minutes every morning when I apply my makeup regimen of bronzer and Blistex. It not only seems possible, but even probable. But the good news is that it's a benign tumor, so the prognosis is generally quite good. Temporarily, I feel reassured about this. But then, I start to wonder: can there ever really be such a thing as a 'good' brain tumor?? So naturally I am quite stressed.
Anyways, I must be going. I will let you know how these events unfold.
God willing.