Snowboarding, Sickness, and a Breakdown at the Grocery Store
By Honey on Jan 7, 2009 in Life
Phew! One way or the other, I’ve been out of commission as far as the blogging thing goes lately. This has happened for several reasons:
- This is by far the busiest time of year at work,
- I ended up having to take time off because I was sicker than I’ve ever been before, and
- I took even more time off for a vacation – snowboarding in Flagstaff!
But now I’m back, and in an effort to not think about work when I’m at home (I set my “out of office” at my work Outlook to say that even though I’m in the office, I can’t answer external e-mails until January 15) I’ve decided to rev up my writing again. It’s about time!
My Kidney Infection
I finished my two week course of antibiotics Monday, and went back to the doctor today for a checkup to make sure that everything worked out okay. Unfortunately, there was still blood and other crap in my urine (glamorous, I know) so the doctor is sending me directly to the lab this Friday for a more detailed urinalysis than they can run at her office. They are also going to draw blood, and the doctor wants me to go back to her office for a regular physical regardless.
Plus, now that they have these funky results from the urinalysis I am all paranoid. Do I have a fever? Is my back starting to hurt again? Did I permanently damage my kidneys? PLUS, the BF and I have barely had sex because we want to wait until a week after I’m off the antibiotics, and since I’m concerned that the fact that we had sex the day before I went for my original urinalysis (awesome, awesome, AWESOME sex, btw) is what is clouding my results, he’s completely cut off until Friday at least. Very frustrating.
Snowboarding
However, I didn’t let the fact that I’d been sick stop me from celebrating New Year’s! The BF had been talking and talking about how he wanted to take a snowboarding trip. Now, we went snowboarding one day last year (which was my first time ever) and while I did impressively for someone in their late twenties who had never done it before, I wasn’t tearing up the slopes and didn’t particularly enjoy myself. I was, shall we say, less than enthused by the idea of spending a bunch of money to do something that I’d done before and didn’t really enjoy. And then my dad (who usually gives me money for Christmas) was only able to give me half as much as in previous years.
Obviously I understood the circumstances (my dad sells RVs on commission, and this is patently not the best time in American history to do that!), but I had really been looking forward to getting my hair cut and colored (the last time this happened was right when I started my new job, and I actually cut the bottom layer off of my hair myself about 3 months ago because I couldn’t afford to go to the salon) and if I used my Christmas money for this trip then I wouldn’t be able to get my hair done. But he was so excited about it and planned this whole thing with another couple we know, so I caved. I did put my foot down about some of the costs – there was no way I could afford to pay for half the trip – and he agreed to pay for transportation costs and the hotel. I would just have to cover some food while there, my snowboard rental, and the petsitter. Okay, fine.
I was slightly better this time around than the time before…however, the BF, while extraordinarily patient when I sucked, was totally mean and impatient the second I started to show some promise. He essentially told me that he didn’t want to hang out with me until I paid extra money to take a lesson. Which I did, and the lesson taught me how to do precisely what I had been doing, after which the instructors said “Great job! You’re ready to go down on your own.” Argh, $40 wasted. But on our day off from snowboarding we ate at a vegetarian bistro, went used-book hunting, and saw The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, so it wasn’t a total loss.
The Grocery Store
We got back late Friday night (saving in petsitting costs and giving me a rebate for returning my snowboard early) and spent Saturday recuperating. Sunday we cleaned the house (it was in disarray from the holidays) and then the BF said that he wanted to go grocery shopping with me. Now, I had previously told him that I’d really rather prefer that he not go to the grocery store because we spend at least 30% more on total crap when he goes. He insisted that he’d be frugal.
Then after going to the three stores (since we are veggie there are some specialty things that only Whole Foods sells, and we of course have to go to Trader Joe’s in addition to the regular grocery store) we have spent nearly $600.
I am driving and actually burst into tears on the drive home. I feel like he lied to me and then stole money. I skipped getting my hair done, something I had been looking forward to for months, to go on a trip to do something I don’t like, where he treated me like crap, and then we spent double what I have ever spent on any shopping trip before? On the snack food he likes to eat when he smokes pot, when I don’t eat snack food and rarely smoke?
He managed to calm me down that night, and then I still spent the entire commute home from work the next day crying (admittedly in part because traffic was awful and it took me an hour and a half to get home). I managed to talk to him about it again when I had calmed down and he said that I should suggest a plan I think is fair and as long as it seems reasonable he will do it. What a relief – I am thinking about asking him to split the cost of animal care with me, since I think paying for half the cat food and litter will make up the difference.
In all, though, I’ve had better holiday seasons. Here’s to better things in 2009! What have you all been up to?
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