2005-11-25 - 10:51 a.m.

Tuesday, November 15th, 2005

There is no reason for this post other than me being happy with my tweed and my new bangs and my sparkly scarf.

EDIT: What I meant was more that you must all be sick of all the tweed (like, "Does that girl wear anything else?!") but apparently "picture of Evelynne" trumps "picture of tweed" for many of you. :)

November 22, 2005

Last weekend we painted two walls in the new maydia room and realized it was too warm of a brown to go with the carpet and couch. I was sad. The color is so beautiful. I've tried taking pictures of it but I can't get the color right on my monitor, and who knows what it'll look like on yours.

But we have a new color and I'm excited about that, too. It is the color of HOT CHOCOLATE. Seriously. And the carpet is kinda like the color of the homemade whipped cream I made today for my pumpkin pie. Basically the room is going to look like the lighter brown shade on my hatbox:

I am a little nervous about painting a room such a straight-up brown. We are even painting the windowsills and nondescript floor molding the same color (the windows have no side/top trim) but with some gloss to it. But I really like the color! And I like monochromatic color schemes! And the room gets full sun from noon on (it faces south and west and has four windows) so it's not like you'll feel you're in a cave.

Well, we'll see. It's only paint, right!?

Friday, November 25, 2005

I hate winter. Hate, hate, hate. I turn into a complete moron in the winter. I get cranky and start freaking out that I'm going to die. I hate this.

The thing that triggers anxiety for me is the fact that I'm a hypochondriac. I'm terribly afraid of dying. I don't care if I get a chronic disease that I have to manage carefully for the next fifty years, but I really, really don't want to get something fatal. Most of the time I can deal with strange vague "symptoms" by promising myself that if I still have the symptom in two weeks, I'll go to the doctor. Of course, after two DAYS it's usually gone, so this has worked really well in general.

Possible TMI ahead.

The type of disease I'm most afraid of getting is the kind that's fatal and hard to detect. I'm not so worried about something I can live with that increases risk and requires lifestyle changes (diabetes, etc.). No, I've always been freaked out about ovarian cancer. About a month ago I read an article that said that it wasn't all that hard to detect after all, and I had none of the symptoms for it, so that put my mind at ease. Then I had my annual exam and got poked and prodded and pronounced fine, so I figured all was well.

But then last Sunday, I noticed that suddenly (i.e. it wasn't happening the week before) I was feeling really stuffed after eating, the way I do if I've eaten far too much of something too delicious to stop eating, except it happened when I'd only eaten a small-to-average meal. And wouldn't you know, this is one of the earliest symptoms of ovarian cancer, so of course I started panicking. I tried eating less, thinking maybe something had changed with my appetite, but all that did was make me feel starving at inopportune times, and I think I lost a pound or two (which I do NOT want to do). Absolutely everything else about me is completely normal, it's just this feeling of being bloated. Well, and the lower back pain, but I thought that was muscular, and I have upper back muscular pain too. But what if it's not? What if that low back pain, the muscle that's hard to reach, what if I can't reach it because it's not a muscle at all, it's something internal that's paining me intermittantly? Supposedly this feeling is also a symptom of IBS, but I've had that for years and have never had this specific symptom, so why would it suddenly appear now? (Blahblahblahblahblah, you get the picture.)

So of course, I tell myself, "If you still feel like this in two weeks, go back to the doctor and get a more thorough exam." But instead of having the symptoms go away, they're STILL HERE, a week later. I am NOT happy. I'm obsessing about it. Poindexter alternates between nicely comforting me and telling me, "You're FINE!"

In order to calm myself down some, I have to go for long walks. This would be fine except that IT'S THIRTY FREAKING DEGREES OUT, the time of year when I usually slack with exercising, maybe hopping around (our phrase for doing an aerobics tape) for twenty minutes and congratulating myself for moving around at all. Unfortunately, hopping around doesn't do the trick, it has to be walking, so I have been out there in my miraculous coat in this freezing weather trying to walk away my stupid fears. It doesn't make them go away, but it calms me down a little bit, which is a relief. Yesterday when I went out for a walk I told Poindexter:

Evelynne: I gotta go for a walk.
Poindexter: [incredulous] Why?
Evelynne: BECAUSE I'M *INSANE*!!!!
Poindexter: [laughs] Yes, you are. [meaning, because I am walking in this weather]
Evelynne: AND WALKING IS THE ONLY WAY TO STAVE OFF THE INSANITY!
Poindexter: Why don't you hop around?
Evelynne: It doesn't work. It has to be walking.

I mean, really. What are the odds that I'd get the specific disease I'm so freaked out about getting? When I was a kid, I was freaked out about getting appendicitis after the girl across the street had it. I'm OK with appendicitis now. They do wonders with laproscopic surgery these days. Since I can't seem to stop fretting, I started reading up on what tests they recommend for this, and I'm at the point where if I still feel this next weekend, I'm ready to just pay out-of-pocket for whatever tests I have to so I can freaking RELAX. UGH.

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