I saw my vascular doctor* for my annual appointment yesterday. First things first – he told me everything looks great and to keep doing what I’m doing. Good news. It’s been nice to be in a place where I’m getting consistent INR* readings and my meds have been the same for months. MY PHARMACY EVEN FILLED THEM CORRECTLY LAST TIME. What a wonderful surprise that was. I AM SO SICK OF ADULTING, and doing things like harassing my pharmacy to fill my prescription appropriately.

ANYWAY.

When the doctor was leaving the exam room he said “make sure you avoid trauma.”

And me, being a smartass, said “emotional trauma?” even though I absolutely knew he meant physical trauma (because of the blood thinners).

But then we actually had a nice conversation about the importance of therapy and building a toolkit to handle our emotions/feelings/etc., because even though we think we have control of our bodies, we really don’t. OH I KNOW.

Like I said, actually a nice conversation to end it on. I had no idea my doctor was so pro therapy.

[Side note: I’ve been thisclose from losing my s word for a couple weeks and went to schedule a therapy appointment but of course my therapist has taken time off for the holidays. Good for them! I’ll just try this.]

There were also some interesting detours in my visit, like him venting to me about the medical network spending money on medical system upgrades and not on patients… and I was wondering how much of that commentary was spurred by the UnitedHealthcare CEO murder.

He also went on a tangent about how disorganized the VA is, but that is my fault because I told him I work for the federal government and he mentioned he has friends who work for VA and I asked about it – specifically that.

And finally, for my records, we discussed brain bleed vs blood clot strokes and the signs to look out for. Basically reassuring me that my struggle to find words is not me having a stroke but probably me just being stressed. Phew.

*I have Antiphospholipid Syndrome (APS), a condition where your immune system mistakenly creates antibodies that make your blood more prone to clotting. Fun, right? I manage it by taking blood thinners and regularly getting my International Normalized Ratio (INR) checked to monitor my blood’s clotting speed and adjust my medication accordingly.

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This is the whinier part of the post so proceed with caution. I will end it on a positive/grateful, I promise! But speaking of being sick of adulting…

My car has over 100K miles on it and I’ve been paying (closer) attention to how it’s driving because the timing chain and brakes are about to go to shit.

So I’m leaving for said appointment yesterday (over 40 miles away) and my car feels noticeably wobbly under my feet at low speeds. I text Steven to tell him, asking if he noticed when he drove it to get pizza the night before. He says no, but he wasn’t driving slow. Ha. He says we’ll drive it over the weekend and check it out. Perfect.

And I’m thinking, should I take the four-lane 70+ mph highway to my appointment or the two-lane 55 mph but people drive 70 mph highway to my appointment? I’m thinking if I break down I want to be on the two-lane one.

I take the four-lane one.

And don’t worry, I didn’t break down. Not even sure why I’m including all that.

So I get to my appointment, leave it and drive to another city where I do a UPS dropoff, get food, do a Kohl pickup, try to buy eggs for Steven, get hugeass tortillas at a grocery store, and stop at Tarjay where I have a HORRIBLE time trying to buy Starbucks giftcards (never again, I will remember this time! get them at a regular store), then finally go to my nail appointment where I get the most adorable mani:

We’ve taken such a detour on this story. Welcome to my brain.

It starts snowing while I’m at my mani. People are driving home much slower than they need to, but whatever. I’m listening to an audiobook and so happy to be on my way home.

I almost slide past our driveway (oops!) but make it and finally pull into the garage. I park and turn the car off and hear a strange hissing noise.

I open my door to listen better and wonder if Steven had the air compressor in Dragonstone (our other garage) on for some reason and accidentally left it on?

Then it dawns on me.

That sounds like a tire.

Mother effer.

JUST WHHHHHHHHHHHY.

So over it.

Sigh.

I feel so bad telling Steven about all my problems. He has so much going on at work and in our personal lives and every other day I am like “can you do this?” “can you fix that?” “can you look at this?”

TO MY CREDIT I try to troubleshoot and fix some things. But as I told Steven last night when we were talking about when we’d put the spare on and he asked if I was going to try on my own (because I was making it sound like it) – “I have a vagina and I don’t want to.”

Ha.

So he said, “let’s do our chores and change it!”

So we did.

He did.

It looks like a previous patch was no longer… patching?

SO I AM SPENDING MY MORNING AT THE TIRE PLACE! That’s why I have so much time to write this long-ass story cause I’ve been here for an hour and they haven’t made it to my car yet.

Okay, I promised I would end on a brightside. A few things:

• Thank f*ck that didn’t blow on the highway. GAWD. I probably would have totalled my car with the amount of traffic out yesterday. And I’ve totalled my car on the highway here before. Let’s not repeat that EVER. The garage was the perfect place for it to happen.
• When I got into the spare tire compartment I found something I’d been looking for since last summer. No idea how it got there but now I know where it is!
• I have the day off and can sit at the tire place ALL DAMN DAY.
• And finally, I’m so grateful Steven takes care of so much for us/me. At work this week, I was telling some coworkers how great he is and how he figures out and fixes everything for us/me, and they asked if Steven can do that for them too. Ha.

If you made it this far (and I really hope you didn’t, don’t you have something better to do?), thanks for reading my whiny rant about an ordinary thing that happens to people all the time and isn’t a big deal but just kind of feels like the last small thing that is threatening my sanity.

I do feel better writing it all out. So thank you!