there are no clean bathrooms in corpus christi

it's true. i used several bathrooms while in corpus and none of them were clean, not even the one in our hotel, er i mean motel, room. but i digress. other than the dirty potties i had a really great time on our short trip. i won't bore you much with words, i'll bore you with pictures!

exit corn products road to get to the hojo!

we had dinner at fajitaville the first night, then went to an HEB in scary town. actually, most of corpus is scary town. after that it was back to the hojo for some olympics watching. the next morning we went to the texas state aquarium and the uss lexington. here are a ton of pictures. 

then we went to whataburger by the bay! it's 2 stories! haha! after that we went back to the hojo to dry off (corpus christi is sweaty). then we had dinner at bill miller and watched a shitload of olympics while drinking skittles vodka and pineapple upside-down cake cocktails. 

before we left on wednesday morning we went back to whataburger by the bay for breakfast and they were out of honey butter. no honey butter chicken biscuits?! boooooooo. but i had the pancakes and they were surprisingly delicious. 

then we went to see the selena statue! 

until next time, corpus christi! 

on finally getting a hair cut

for years my friend rachel cut my hair. then about a year ago she moved to nashville. ahhhh! i mean, i miss her tons for reasons other than just her excellent haircutting skills and how she would never let her personal tragedy interfere with her ability to do good hair.* i normally only get my hair cut 2, maaaaybe 3 times a year. so rachel cut my hair last summer before she moved and then i had it cut at the end of january. my sister and i found a nice salon is a nice, quiet area that we really liked. and then it closed. of course it did! i liked the girl who cut my hair but not enough to try to track her down wherever she is now. a friend of a friend works here and i'm not kidding when i say that that is the worst business website on earth. so i'm in kind of a crunch because i really need to get my hair cut tomorrow. it's my last day off for a while that i am free to get a hair cut. of course i didn't realize that until last night. so i called to see if my friend's friend had ANY availability tomorrow and i got an answering machine (even though they are currently open) and it said to leave a message and they would return my call. yeah, that's not going to happen. i don't have time to be playin' phone tag with a salon. that is ridiculous. 

so i scoured yelp until i decided i would just bite the bullet and schedule an appointment with someone at chuck edwards. seriously, how beautiful is that site? i was able to book online without having to call or leave a message anywhere. THEN i continued reading the yelp reviews and i saw one from my friend alicia (who has also suffered since rachel moved). that was reassuring. so tomorrow at 11:00 i am getting probably 6 inches of hair cut off. i cannot freaking wait. 

*a little steel magnolias reference for you. 

teeny tiny vacation before mini vacation

just earlier today i was thinking that i should blog about my upcoming trip to chicago in 3 weeks but then a couple of hours ago my friend bonnie and i started planning a trip to corpus christi next week. just monday-wednesday but that's really all the time i need at the beach. i don't actually think we'll be spending much time on the actual beach anyway, just exploring around town and drinking summer-y cocktails ie anything containing mango rum. 

i found a howard johnson there that is only $50 a night! i stayed at a hojo on south padre a few (uhh 7?) years ago and i actually really enjoyed it. it was on the other side of the island from the "good" beaches so it was considerably cheaper than the other places. the hojo in corpus has a 3.7/5 rating on hotels.com which is more than good enough for me. and bonnie is so easy going, as long as it's not bug infested i don't think she'll care at all. and i know she'll be down with hitting the aquarium and maybe a museum or two instead of sweltering on the beach all day getting a sunburn. 

and you better believe i'm looking up dive bars on yelp! when i went to south padre the best time we had was at a dive bar across the parking lot from the hotel called the pirate's den. i'm hoping this weird lizardoz sub pub lives up to my beach-town-dive-bar expectations. 

and i've already made a 3 hour playlist on spotify which is how long it takes to get to corpus christi from new braunfels (where we'll be leaving from). i'm out of control. i wish i could plan things for a living. trips, parties, whatever, i'm a natural planner! 

going back

i've spent a lot of time over the last 24 hours reading back in this here blog and man, i've done a lot of bitching about health related stuff! BUT i also used to do stuff and be interested in things like music and movies! i also used to be kind of funny. so maybe i'll make an effort to try to be more like that girl again? i think that would be fun. 

i like to complain sometimes (all the time)

we've been having a somewhat "mild" summer so far this year. not many days over 100 and whatnot. but anything over 90 still makes me feel like shit. since i have fibromyalgia i am lucky enough to experience pretty severe muscle pain, headaches, anxiety, fatigue, and depression when the temperatures rise. i also cannot sleep at all. i have horrible muscle aches all the time and they are nearly unbearable when i'm sitting still, like laying in bed. so i sleep for 3-4 hours a night and then wake up in worse pain than i was when i went to bed. the lack of sleep causes muscle fatigue, and when you add that to muscle pain, you have a serious problem. 

as if i'm not already far enough in the dumps, i have nights like tonight where i get really down on myself for being antisocial. it's not that i don't want to hang out with you (and you and you) but i just don't have it in me. i'm lucky enough to make it to work every day. i've only missed one day of work so far this summer and since i was out so many days back in april for surgery, i can't really afford to miss much more this year. anyway, i just always feel like the biggest asshole when i have to cancel plans or not show up to something i said i would be at. i miss my friends :( 

i just spent the last hour looking through my old photos on facebook of times when i felt better, physically and mentally. it's not helping! i mean, it cheers me up for a second and then i get sad that i'm not having similar good times right now. it's lame, i know. at least in the fall/winter when it finally cools off i won't have 50 million sinus infections bringing me down like the last couple of years. so once it get below 85 or so, watch out world! 

sweat it out, sweat it out

i took the most amazing bath this weekend. that might sound totally weird and/or creepy but i don't care. let me preface this by saying that i've been taking relaxation baths a few times a week for about a year now. that bath is 2 cups of epsom salt, a cup of buttermilk, and a few drops of lavender oil. it's great. it really does help me relax and it helps with all the muscle pain and cramps that i get (especially in the summertime). well this new bath is a detoxifying bath that includes all the previous ingredients with the addition of about a tablespoon of baking soda and a coule of tablespoons of freshly shaved ginger root. i ran the bath as hot as i could possibly stand it, turned on some blind pilot, grabbed my kindle, and sat in the tub for 30+ minutes. 

i can't really describe what it felt like but i cannot recommend it highly enough. i've only been in a sauna once and i hated it because i couldn't breathe. i have this weird thing where i hate/can't breathe in really hot air. like, when the heater is on in the car i have to roll down my window to feel like i can catch my breath. anyway, this ginger bath made me sweat like i was in a sauna. my eyebrows were sweating! i ended up having to put my kindle down about 20 minutes in because i was getting super light headed and i didn't want to end up dropping it in the water or something. 

i felt absolutely amazing, albiet sweaty, afterwards. i added more lavender than i normally do and i think that plus the detoxing helped temporarily reduce this giant knot i have on the back of my neck. it would be wonderful maybe i continue these baths and the knot is reduced permanently. don't even get me started on this thing either, it's the worst. i've already been to the doctor about it twice this summer. ugh, whatever. anyway, this bath was a great way to cleanse myself of the drinks i had friday night before and during the blind pilot show! 

another update

hello!

it's been 18 days since my surgeries and i'm doing pretty great. the healing process in my throat seems to have slowed down a bit and the left side is still a bit raw and has felt the same for the past 5 or 6 days. my doctor says it looks fine though and not to worry, it is actually healing. my sinuses and nose feel great. i got my sinuses vacuumed out again this past thursday and it was a little less awful than the first time and i don't have to go back for 2 weeks. 

i go back to work on thursday and i definitely don't want to. i haven't technically been medically cleared to go back but i know i'm able to go back now. i am not super happy with my job so being away for 3 weeks is going to make it really tough to go back. ugh.

earlier tonight i was watching the mets vs phillies on espn and the announcers were talking about jonathon niese and how he had a nose job in the off-season. apparently it started as a cosmetic thing but then niese actually discovered that his nasal passages were blocked and he had a deviated septum. one of the announcers said, "yeah, they told me that i had a deviated septum but then when i found out what the surgery entailed i told them i would just learn to breathe through one nostril. you get two black eyes from that surgery!" first off, the surgery really isn't that bad. maybe it's because my throat hurt so incredibly bad the first few days that i didn't notice any other pain but i really never experienced any in my nose or sinuses. secondly, i did not get two black eyes from having a septoplasty. my friend jason actually inquired about that a few days after the surgery. i told him that i didn't have them but if they developed i would be sure to take a picture for him. i wouldn't say that i wanted two black eyes but it would have been kind of funny. i mean, it's not like i was even leaving the house during that time so it wouldn't have really mattered. 

just checking in

well, here i am 9 days after surgery and i have to tell you, i'm doing pretty well. the day before i was scheduled to go in my doctor called and told me that he was adding a septoplasty to my list of procedures. i knew that my nose was a little wonky because the first time i went in he did a nasal endoscopy and the scope wouldn't fit down my left nostril at all. so anyway, i started getting super nervous about that for some reason, even though everything i read said it wouldn't be that bad.

the first couple of days immediately following the surgery weren't too bad because the anesthesia was still wearing off. i ate some pudding and applesauce those days but i think that's about it. mostly i just slept and tried to drink as much juice and gatorade as possible. i won't lie to y'all and tell you that it all felt awesome, because it certainly didn't, but it was nothing like i was expecting. 

i had my first post-op appointment on thursday and my doctor said that everything is healing very well. then he vacuumed out my nose for an hour. i'm not kidding. it was pretty awful. in fact, it was by far the worst thing about this entire experience. it didn't hurt, perse, but the pressure of having a really long metal tube shoved into your face is super uncomfortable. i think it presses on some weird nerves too because i almost passed out about 3 times. when i had that first endoscopy done i almost passed out while he was trying to look down the left nostril. i was super embarrassed but he said it wasn't that uncommon. then when it happened during the vacuum session he said that it happens all the time, which was a relief. i still felt bad because it kept happening and every time it did he would have to stop for 5-10 minutes while i laid there and try to get it together. it felt pretty damn great afterwards though, to have all of that stuff sucked out. i could breathe! 

my doctor told me that during the surgery when he got into my sinuses that he could not believe how inflamed they were. and this was just a normal day, i hadn't been sick or anything leading up to the surgery. he actually used the word "impressive" to describe the amount of swelling happening in there. it was even more swelling than my ct scan had revealed a couple of weeks prior. anyway, i'm just glad to have that shit taken care of! i'm not out of the woods yet, i have a lot of upkeep to do in terms of rinses and irrigation but it's a small price to pay to possibly never have sinuses that scary looking again!

in terms of the tonsillectomy, i was under the impression that it was going to be the worst part but i don't think it was. i guess the recovery is longer but i also was led to believe that the pain was going to basically be unbearable. sure, it's been rough here and there but it really hasn't been much worse than a really bad sore throat, of which i have had PLENTY. i'm well on my way to a normal diet again and even ate fajitas (slowly) tonight! on friday, after resisting for an entire week, i busted out a flashlight and looked at the back of my throat. hoooooly shit, y'all. what has been seen can never been unseen. i'm sure if you're really gross and want to know, you can google imagine search that shit but wow, it was gross. i just couldn't resist any longer, i HAD to know what i looked like in there. i'm excited to check again in a week or two to see my throat without my huge (and i'm talking HUGE) tonsils in the way. 

final preparations

with my surgery on thursday i am trying to get all of my ducks in a row and, to be honest, i'm starting to spazz a little. i just feel like i have so much to do to prepare even though it really isn't much and i've already done most of it. to prepare for my recovery period i have procured the following items:

new comfy sheets

a bed wedge 

liquid tylenol

liquid zyrtec

an old lady nightgown

probiotic packets to mix with applesauce (so the amoxicillin won't make me sick)

a kindle touch

a roku 2 

a shitload of saline nasal spray

60 otter pops

i have also rearranged the furniture in my bedroom so my bed is close to the door so i can have easier access to the bathroom. i got all of my prescriptions filled today at work and i just need to remember to pick them up tomorrow before i leave (tomorrow is my last day to work before the procedures). i need to do some more grocery shopping and i need to call the doctor's office to get a couple of questions out of the way. other than that i think i'm pretty much set? ugh i don't know. this feels worse than trying to pack for a vacation even though it really shouldn't. i'm going to have at least one family member around AT ALL TIMES for the first few days so even if i have forgotten something i can always send them to get it. i think i'm just trying to find something to freak out about so i don't freak out about the actual surgery. i'm not worried that anything bad is going to happen to me while i'm "under the knife" but i'm really concerned with the level of discomfort that i'm going to be in afterwards. i've never had surgery before. i mean, i've had a couple of oral procedures done that required anesthesia but nothing that took more than a few minutes. i do remember being remarkably pain free after having my impacted wisdom teeth removed though. maybe that's a good sign? 

the idea of taking so many liquid medications makes me want to gag. i'll be taking vicodin, amoxicillin, tylenol, and zyrtec in liquid form for at least a week, if not longer. vom. i'm totally getting my vicodin and amoxicillin flavored at my pharmacy though. i'm thinking maybe grapeaide for one and strawberry swirl for the other? my tylenol is grape and the zyrtec is cherry. i figured i would mix things up so that they don't all have the same flavor. 

i have already planned out my last 3 meals as well. on wednesday morning i will have tacodeli for breakfast, chick-fil-a for lunch, and homemade pot roast for dinner (made by my sister). i'm pretty excited about all of it!

now, what are some movies/tv shows on netflix instant and books for kindle that you guys recommend for while i'm recovering? i need stuff that is pretty light/easy to keep up with since i may be in and out of consciousness thanks to the painkillers.  

let's pretend i've been doing something interesting

it looks like the last time i blogged was when i was sick a couple of months ago. i'd like to say that i got better and have been so extremely busy doing interesting and exciting things but that's just not true. no, instead i've been sick on and off pretty much all year and have mostly just been working and trying to relax when i'm not working. in 9 days i am having surgery to remove my tonsils and adenoids as well as to remove dead tissue from my maxillary sinuses and open them up. the hope is that once my sinuses are able to drain better i might not get so many sinus infections. and apparently my tonsils are in pretty bad shape. just gigantic with scar tissue. lovely, i know. i am definitely looking forward to no more sore throats and possibly no more (or at least not as many) sinus infections. what i'm not looking forward to is 2-3 weeks of recovery. it's going to suck but i know it will be worth it in the end. i'm going to read my kindle and watch lots of netflix during the recovery period. oh, and take lots of liquid vicodin.

holy infections, batman!

on friday evening i randomly got a really bad sore throat. then i got what i call airplane ears. you know, where your ears feel like they're going to explode from pressure? my tonsils were red and swollen with white bumps. i knew pretty much instantly that i had strep throat. the only other time in my life that i've gotten so sick so quickly was with strep when i was, like, 12. 

on saturday i developed a majorly runny nose. then on sunday i started coughing. i was going to try to ride it out without going to the doctor because all they would do is put me on antibiotics and antibiotics don't really do much for strep. they can shorten it by about a day which isn't really worth the crappy side effects if you ask me. on monday night my airplane ears turned into icepick ears. the pain was so bad that i couldn't sleep. 

i finally caved and went to the doctor tuesday evening. he came into the exam room and asked for my symptoms. i listed all of them and he said, "you've just describe the common cold virus." okay guy, i know it sounds like a cold but i promise you i would not be here if it were just a cold. he said he would, "check me out, just in case." he looked in my throat and said, "whoa, we need to swab that!" then he looked in my right ear and said, "have you been aggressively q-tipping your ears?" why the hell would i do that when they hurt this bad?! he said my ear was super red, inflamed, and irritated. then he looked in my left ear and asked me if one hurt worse than the other. i told him the left did and he said, "yeah, that one is way worse than the right and the right one is pretty bad." 

so you want the diagnosis? strep throat, middle ear infection (bacterial), sinus infection (bacterial), and an upper respiratory infection (viral). my friend paul said that if i had a yeast infection i would probably win some sort of infection prize. then i informed him that the #1 cause of yeast infections is antibiotics. so maybe i'll win that infection prize after all! wah wah. so i'm on steroids, antibiotics and narcotics for the cough+pain.

and on saturday i'm co-hosting a bridal shower. kill me now. please don't, but you know. i'm just miserable and i'm trying to figure out how i'm going to get everything done in time. 

this is not a retraction

a while back i did some serious blogging about falling out of love with one of my favorite bands (gomez). well, not exactly falling out of love with but definitely not loving their new album. and the fact that i haven't seen them live in i don't know how long. no really, i can't quite remember the last time i saw them. i thiiink it was july 2009? is that right? whoa. i don't know. 

anyway, they're doing a big quinceanera tour to celebrate 15 years of playing together and they are FINALLY doing something that wilco, and other bands, have been doing for years. setlist requests! maybe if enough people band together and request as an organized group we won't have to hear any of the new songs. i kid. sort of. sorry, guys. so i think i'm going to go to the shows. two great friends of mine are getting married the day before the first show and many of my friends that i met through gomez will be in town for the wedding and i believe they're all planning on going to the first night before heading back to their respective home cities. how can i resist seeing the band that brought us all together with my wonderful friends? i don't think i can.

untitled

i don't think i've ever been the type of person to make new year's resolutions, probably because i know that i won't keep them. but i kind of think i should resolve to get off the couch and stop watching so damn much csi. it's all part of a vicious cycle where i convince myself that i lack the energy to do anything thus actually giving away any energy that i might have had into the cushions of my couch.

i may have the physical energy to socialize but most of the time i lack the intellectual and mental energy to interact with people on any level deeper than casual. i don't have anything interesting to talk about and i constantly find myself struggling with my attention span which makes me a pretty poor listener. it also means that i'm constantly rewinding all these damn episodes of csi because i wasn't paying attention when they flashed that fingerprint match across the screen.

ugh, my attention span is making it difficult for me to write this blog or even to remember why i started this post in the first place. maybe i need to up my vitamin regimen.

is this thing on?

hi. i have a blog? i'm mostly here to document the 2 nights i saw wilco a few weeks back. i had already forgotten some of the details so i decided i would come here and put it down, for my sake.

i was lucky enough to get into wilco's austin city limits taping on november 30. it was incredible. it was my third taping this year but i don't know if it was the best. arcade fire's was probably still the best for me but that's only because i've only seen them a few times whereas i've seen wilco a million times. anyway, the next night i saw them again when they played a concert to the general public. afterwards i was able to convince my very wonderful friend who works for acl live that we should go down to where the band was hanging out. he was understandably concerned that maybe it would be awkward or i would turn into a psycho since they're my favorite band. i assured him that i could handle my shit (i've met jeff before and i was totally normal) so we went!

i talked with nels cline for a while about my nephew who is basically named after him. he seemed to genuinely appreciate hearing about him and he even asked if i had a picture of him. i showed him this one and he said, "whoa, psychedelic!" 

as we were getting ready to leave i spotted john so i ran over to him to tell him how much i love it's just that simple and that it's always reminded me of neil young. he said, "really? i thought i was channeling danko when i wrote that." then we talked about the last waltz for a couple of minutes. i love those moments where you realize why you like something. we like the same music so it's only natural that i'm going to like the music he makes. i had a similar conversation with ben kweller a few years ago. it's like the pieces fall into place.

maybe someday i'll blog about my life. or something. 

pop! goes the weasel

i swear i'll update my blog for real eventually but this is too fun not to share. i made this from a couple pictures my friend amber took when we got together to celebrate sam's birthday this year. i can't stop laughing at it!

here's the deal

the deal is, i suck at blogging. but check this out!

i co-hosted a bridal shower for one of my best and oldest friends on saturday. it was way more work than i ever anticipated it would be but everything turned out perfect. 

alison and her fiance are both from louisiana so we used that as the theme for the food and drinks. we served popcorn with tony's, voodoo'd eggs (deviled eggs with crawfish and jalapenos), and cajun cocktail nuts as the appetizers. for lunch we had emeril's red beans and rice, a build your own muffaletta bar, and louisiana sunburst salad, a recipe from palace cafe in new orleans. dessert was bread pudding with many different toppings, hurricane cupcakes (passion fruit cupcakes with and orange/cherry buttercream), and creole ginger bourbon cupcakes with vanilla bean buttercream. the cupcakes were my brain children and i think they turned out really, really well if i do say so myself. we also served hurricanes, iced tea, abita beer, and abita root beer. i have zero pictures of the whole spread which is pretty upsetting. i was just too busy hosting and socializing to even think about it.

up next is alison's bachelorette party. it's going to be very low-key and awesome. we're going to go to a local-ish winery for a tasting and then spend the night at a house on the lake. my sister and i are in charge of dinner and i'm thinking we'll do pork loin with risotto to pair with red wine and roasted chicken with mashed potatoes to pair with white wine and people can decide which they want, or have a little of each. then i'm going to make a banana chocolate icebox cake for dessert. it's all going to be so delicious, i can't wait! 

this looks familiar

long time no see...yeah, yeah, yeah. anyway, i just stumbled across this stereogum list of the 40 best new bands and couldn't help but notice something...

the exact same font i used on my 30 day song challenge graphic! and, well, the exact same idea. i'm not saying the copied me because that is ridiculously unlikely but it is a mighty strange coincidence. 

fires, weddings, showers...

as many of you are probably aware, we had some pretty serious wildfires in the central texas area last sunday. we had to evacuate my house and i was gone for 2 nights. i wasn't home when the sheriff came by to evacuate us so all i had was the clothes on my back. i had to go to work on monday wearing the dress and sandals that i had worn to brunch the day before. it was a cute outfit but weird to wear to work where i do. but i digress, everything is fine for us and i ache for those less fortunate it than we were. 

in october i have a couple of weddings to go to that i'm really looking forward to attending. then there's alison's bridal shower! and then in november sometime is alison's bachelorette party. ahhh! so much going on but it's all good stuff so i'm very excited. and of course the wedding in december!

this weekend is the austin city limits music festival. i bought a one-day pass for sunday a loooong time ago but have since decided that i cannot attend. even with the temperatures in the mid-high 90s instead of 105+ it's just too hot for me to spend a day outside. i will be miserable and it could honestly cause me a lot of pain and discomfort for several days after. i'm a bit bummed because i haven't been to the festival in 4 years and some of my favorites acts are playing on sunday but i just can't do it. damn fibromyalgia.  

and while i'm mentioning all these weddings i might as well tell you about the amazing wedding that is taking place in february. my wonderful friends jason and lisa are getting married and i could not be more excited for them. i'm also excited because i get to hang with some out of town weddings guests that i love dearly. it's going to be a wonderful weekend for sure! 

may 21, 2011

on may 21st i went to a day party with a couple of friends and had a really, really fun time. we drank tito's with pineapple juice and ginger ale and shared many laughs.

1. kelly, the funnest guy i know

2. me trying to take a long-arm picture with kelly and failing

3. me trying to take another long-arm picture with kelly and failing (he's just too tall!)

4. kelly and i cracking up as he finally takes a long-arm picture of us

5. me trying to look normal for a  picture with amber

6. me looking normal(ish) for a picture with amber

seriously, click on that collage to enlarge it and see what my face really looks like it some of those pictures. hilarious!

the reason this particular day stands out so much in my mind isn't just because of how much fun we had but because i woke up on the morning of may 22nd feeling like i was going to die and i have felt that to some scale every single day since then. some days i'm in more pain and some days i'm in less pain but the pain is always there. the physical pain and then the emotional pain that comes along with physically feeling like shit all the time. i've seen kelly and amber maybe 2 or 3 times since may 21st and that really bums me out. my darling joshua just moved to washington dc and i barely got to spend any time with him his last summer in austin because of this stupid condition. 

if you think this central texas heat is bad, try living through it with a disease like fibromyalgia. yesterday i went to the grocery store and put gas in my car and by the time i got home i could barely move and i had a crippling headache from barely being outside. i have a ticket to attend the last day of acl fest and if it hasn't cooled off significantly by then, i don't know if i can go. i would be putting myself at a huge, huge risk and i don't know if it's going to be worth it. 

some days i think i'm doing alright and other days i think back to what the "old stefanie" would be doing with her spare time and it probably wouldn't be, "recording reruns of csi to watch while she lays on the couch for hours at a time." i used to leave the house for reasons other than work and grocery shopping. i used to eat at restaurants, i used to drink at bars, i used to laugh with my friends. now i do none of those things. fibromyalgia is rough enough from a psychological standpoint, adding a pity party isn't really necessary. 

i'm sorry if it seems that all i ever write about is my illness but, uhh, i guess it's all i have going on these days. 

playlists

when i take my ambien at night instead of falling asleep, i stay up later making playlists in spotify. weird, right? i don't just make playlists, i also craft and cut things out of magazines for future craft inspiration. totally weird. anyway, if you have spotify you can check out my profile and see these silly mixes i've been making. 

in related news, i need a new sleep aid. i mean, ambien is awesome and i have a blast staying up and creating things but i really need to sleep as well. boo.