clickmom

big dog much pee

Today was different, at least the beginnings of today was different because a tremendous great dane sized doberman pincher came to the dog park, circled around the back of me and lifted his leg on me and my dog walking/homeless lady long down coat and calf.  I didn't even notice him back there but my friends did, and then after they shooed him away as I stood there being so calm I may have freaked the other dog owners out. I could feel the warmth of his ... pee ... soaking through the layers of my super snuggly teddy bear fur lined on the inside dog walking sweatpants.  Everyone was very kind and offered to do all sorts of things to help my pee covered situation, like wipe my bag lady coat in the snow, but I just said I would toss it in the trunk of my vehicle and then the wash when I got home (which I did)  and didn't really want to make fuss.

This level of calmness and inaction on my part hilariously freaked people out and everyone was handling me with kid gloves, like I was going to blow but didn't know it yet.  It was kind of fascinating and made me wonder if I should have shown more upset-ness or everyone else would have wimped out under the circumstances.  But what was I going to do?  I had been at the park for two hours anyways and was about to leave and tend to my frost bitten cheeks when it all went down, so it wasn't like getting peed on threw a giant monkey wrench in my plans.  Also, I tell the other women that the long coat I wear is my dog walking coat because it is!  I have had it and hated it for years.  Last winter I wore it while I was tracking through the woods, so it is all torn up from thorns and also from a nail sticking out of a booth seat at the health food burrito store from the winter before and now from dog claws scraping down the front of it because there are quite a few naughty young dogs who like to jump on people at the dog park.  Really, my biggest concern was that the dirt encrusted front of the coat may have been the dirt-glue which held it together and washing it posed a risk of separating it section by section in the washer.  But my bag lady coat did come out of the washer intact, with some new mysterious white splotches, but guess what.  I don't care because it is my dog walking coat that dogs can jump on and rub their muddy dirt rolling selves against and I can relax about because if I care what I look like I leave that coat on the hook and wear something clean! 

And in the end the giant great dane sized doberman owner found out my cell phone number and texted me her apologies and offered to pay to have the coat dry cleaned.  I told her to forget about tit because I already did (except I had to remember every humiliating detail for you dear reader) but now that I have gotten the incident off my fingertips I can file it away in the "watch out for that pincher file" and go on with more important things.

Like how I almost had a full fledged migraine today.  I woke up with THE headache, but ignored it for too long and then I realized the tell tale migraine salivating had begun.  I immediately took some pain relievers and hoped for the best.  In an untreated migraine I get to the point of nausea where I am unable to take any pain relief and then spend a few hours completely incapacitated until I vomit once, think the increase in pain means death is imminent, vomit a second time and miraculously recover. If I recognize the special migraine pain early enough and take a pain killer I can get away with just having a normal headache.  Today I was a wee bit late with the pain relief so I ended up cocooned on the couch for a few hours until the pain subsided enough and then eventually stopped the pre-puking salivating. I have got to pay more attention! 

the weird dreaming continues

In my dream last night I was face to face with this guy from grad school.  He's pretty short in real life but in my dream he was a few inches shorter than me and it registered to my dream self that I was exaggerating his shortness in my dream. We were looking eye to eye-ish and I could tell he was about to tell me something very personal. He said he wanted to explain to me why he held back from really sharing in his work and with his friends and I was trying to back away and tell him he didn’t have to explain anything with me if he didn’t want to, but then he told me that I had to get naked first so he could expose his psychological and physical darkest secrets to me and I was all like, "Nope, you do not have to expose yourself to me guy from school, we aren’t even friends", but he magically removed my pants and bra with mental powers and I ended up wearing only a huge long sweater which I kept pulling down and luckily satisfied him by being uncomfortable about it and so he removed his pants despite my protests and his leg was all bandaged. The bandage surprise me and stopped telling him to stop. At that moment I realized that he only ever wore long pants when I saw him even though some of our sessions took place during the heat of August.  But then I realized none of the guys ever wore shorts. Shorts may have been too happy of a wardrobe article for this group of moody down artsy fartsy people. He peeled off the bandage and showed me a raw looking infected wound, looked into my eyes again and solemnly explained that it was a VIPER bite and told me he didn’t know how long he had to live anymore and that was why he felt like he needed to explain why he had always been so distant with his own work and with what he contributed to all of us during our critiques. He said he had been bitten a long time ago and thought it was finally taking him down.  He couldn't be authentic with us because he was worried that he was going to die. 

I think the fact that he specifically said it was a viper bite totally threw me in my dream and made me recall the dream (well, that and the part where this kid told me I had to undress first. WTF?!?!)  because I was pretty sure that a viper is a kind of snake but could not have told you before I woke up and checked on wikipedia that vipers are poisonous.  

The only thing I can possibly relate to the day before having this dream is that Sarah Palin got on TV to endorse Trump and everyone is having a hey day with the gibberish that came out of her mouth.  I may have been thinking about how some people hear the nonsense and assume it means something hopeful. This kid had that magic power.  He would talk away and say nothing and the advisers would look upon him as if he had spoken some kind of biblical level truth.  I know he said nothing because fearing that I was missing the boat I recorded his statements to me a couple of times and then transcribed them and there was nothing there.  Until the advisor would summarize what he thought he heard afterwards and it was just a moment out of crazy town because the advisor was hearing things that the kid never said but thought he heard things that were in agreement with what ever he believed to be true.  Frustrating.  Also, I watched Face Off with John Travolta and Nicholas Cage for the brilliant acting (hahaha) last night and was thinking about what  bizarre concept changing faces with some one the polar opposite of everything you stand for must be and that was bizarre, just like my dream.

Another news, we finally got some snow and sweet pea is up to her old snow tricks.  By old snow tricks I mean she gobbles up snow every second we are out in it until she is practically peeing and gobbling at the same time, which is why back then I secretly feared she might never be housebroken, and then it all melted and she could hold it in for more than 15 minutes, which was quite the relief...

 

 

Keep trying

This afternoon I look at the little space in my car where you can jam some spare change or slide your cell phone and I thought about a little enamel box of grandmas that I used to carry in my old car. I wondered where that box was and I got a little upset not knowing where I had put it. This evening after I took sweet pea out for her last walk I happened to slide the drawer of the hall table open. Hello little enamel box. Coincidence? Maybe. Spirit intervention? Maybe. I choose spirit intervention. I think she wants me to know she is still here even though despite my heart felt and compelling arguments she hasn't been able to rig the lottery in my favor. I hope she hasn't given up!

i'm trying

I pulled out the wedding photos tonight to show Evan how short I look in the husband's family photo.  All the men were 6'7" and his sister is 6'2".  I tossed some photos onto Facebook including one of my parents with my mom's best friend since elementary school and I tagged my mom's friend's daughter who I am not friends with in real life.  She commented "it was a lot of fun smile emoticon" but the thing was.... I was trying very hard to have the tiniest wedding possible and the children of my mother's best friend were not invited!!  Oh Facebook, you define the land of insincerity.

Sadly, it got cheek freezing cold again.  I can't really complain since it is January and I do live in New England (what was I thinking??) but I am totally bummed about the snowstorm they're forecasting for this weekend.  I'm not sure why since in this life of marital disability and 2/3 full nest of manly hormone it's not like we actually do anything ever, but just being involuntarily snowed in as opposed to choosing to be too lazy to get out of the house totally bums me out.

I spent the day glued to the computer creating a PDF of my latest series for the printer.  I was going to go over and drop it off tonight but then I waffled and decided to mull it all over for a couple of days.  It's all still freshly shot since it was all shot this fall and I don't feel as if I have enough distance from the work to see it objectively yet.  But there is a book fair in LA next month that I want to have it ready for. Maybe I will get discovered!! In my imagination someone spots the table for my graduate program and knowing all the talented people who have already come out of the program bee lines for the table, determined to make the big discovery of the next IT photographer, who will naturally be me.  Also, this person is a big time gallery owner who wants to broker my inevitable fabulous career starting right away. I sky rocket to a wonderful life of unconditional acceptance (like certain old white men photographers have) and live happily ever after photographing until my dying breath.  As a matter of fact, if I can't die dancing on the bar (note to self: must find a bar that plays top 40 music from the 70s and 80s) or having sex, my third choice would be camera in hand shooting something really incredible. like my devoted assistant will remove the camera from my cold dead hands and share my last magnificent capture to the world and that last capture will stop all wars, countries will disarm because violence is a thing of the past, women will get equal pay for equal work, pollution will disappear, babies stop crying on planes, folks use their turn signals, etc, etc......

Too bad you all are going to have to wait another 40 or so years for it to get good.  I'll try harder while I'm still breathing, okay? 

attention is my placebo

If one more person requests beef stew for dinner my head will explode and I will get revenge when that person has to shower my gray matter out of his eyes.  Also, it will resolve the fact that I am so fucking depressed and burned out on LIFE and taking care of everyone but myself that the thought of cooking anything, let alone beef, which I am not a fan (seriously dislike, never order and apparently, no one noticed that in all these years of serving up steaks I always seem to eat only the side dishes on those nights because even at this tremendous size I am completely invisible!) of makes me homicidal.  Because I'll be exploded and a girl can't make dinner with an exploded head.

Bad news abounds this weekend.  The editor's husband (love him) had a stroke and so did my Dad's sister.  Two strokes in 24 hours.  Thanks world. I'm thinking that all of this is supposed to teach me a lesson in being thankful that I didn't have a stroke (?) or maybe that my life could be worse, but really it all just sucks more out of me and my tanks passed over reserves a while ago. I am running on fumes.  Very weak and thin fumes.  I can't even imagine either one of them not pulling through. So I am not going to "go there" unless I have to.

The new Netflix series Making a Murderer kept popping up in front of my eyes, which I took as a signal that I should check it out.  Maybe I can learn something?  I binge watched it this weekend and it is well done, the photography in the series was  (is there an emoji for when you make a kiss on your lips and bring your thumb and pointer up to the pucker?) beautifully filmed and the story was well told.  It was a tad bit heavy on score, which makes me feel emotionally manipulated, and in the end I'm pretty sure I wouldn't recommend this series to someone who is currently personally feeling the dismal after effects of "the system", but I went ahead and watched the entire series and now I'm all angry along with the sad, so maybe that's a step in the right direction since I think there might be seven emotions I have to go through before I can get on with my life and put this fucking ordeal behind me.  It's just that the mother tiger in me wants to claw someone's face off over it and I am not allowed to deface people.  Dammit.  If only had a pet gorilla I could send in to do the job. (Wow, seriously... bad taste joke!!)  I guess a take home from this series could also be that my life could be worse because in the end of everything going on here my kid will be just fine and in the series everyone freaking ends up in jail.  I think I'll skip Wisconsin if I ever decide to put my life in storage, pimp out a camper van and go on that grand USA road trip I fantasize about.

Also, I am tempted to try this product which requires me giving up soap,shampoo and deodorant and substituting some kind of beneficial bacterial lotion/spray/I dunno what and seeing just how rank I end up smelling from this experiment. The hypothesis is that if you restore a healthy bacterial balance to your skin then you don't smell. Also, in my heart I know the hair will end up being greasy as the fries from Five Guys, because I have tried to go natural with less caustic products before, but this time I think the experiment will have some better good kind of outcome.  I might prepare in advance by taking some friendly bacteria and eating some fermented foods to get that internal balance going in the right direction.

At this point I have procrastinated for half an hour and am still struggling with the daily struggle :what to make for dinner that certain people won't toss down the garbage disposal and I can stomach despite walking around feeling kind of ill from all the stress.  Also, I am going to have to do something about the incredible rapid weight gain I have been experiencing.  Like, not eat for a couple of days, followed by a juice fast followed by wiring my jaw shut and then more friendly bacteria because I suspect that this might be contributing to me feeling so craptastic.

Speaking of feeling craptastic, can you believe that my broke ass still hurts?  I think I might have to go find an orthopedist who will take an X-ray.  Because this is how it works for me, my broke ass will hurt up until the moment of getting X-rayed and then miraculously speed heal to painlessness in the two days following the X-ray.  So, the sooner the better right?  Attention is my placebo.

mindset

Evan had another court date and now I've been crying for two days straight.  This is the most depressing thing I can imagine for both my own child and all of humanity.  I am also saddened by the the female DA and judge.  They seem to have lost any trace of caring or compassion that a person, especially a woman should have.  Don't kill me over the woman thing.  We can be mothers, we have to care more.  

I found myself sitting in that court room overflowing with empathy for the too many young men that were in there.  Some people got no sympathy from me, like the "care giver" who stole from a sick person or the drunk driver who had been caught for the second time.  But to me there was a clear distinction between people who were only hurting themselves and people who were either victimizing other people or putting them at risk.  There were people with caring family members in the wings hurting as much as I was, and I wanted to group hug them, especially the huge man with the deep booming voice who jumped out of his seat and tried desperately to get the judge to listen to him say just one thing before they escorted his young son back to jail.  She shut him up.  The young son lifted his handcuffed wrists and gave a sort of "I'll be okay. Thanks Dad" nod and hand gesture. The huge man left the court holding back this tears staring at the floor and his short wife followed behind doing the same as the son was escorted back to the jail through the side door.

It's too much to bear.

I go back and forth between this crazy anger and deep hopelessness.  It's worse because I came back to this twilight zone life I am floating around in where the husband sits on the couch all day long with an iPad in his face and pretends like that is a normal for someone his age.  I look at his life and think I'd like to be shot if I ever get to that point and I wonder if you could ask a pre diabetic him that question if he would say the same.  Then Josh only wants to play computer games when he's not in school or doing school work and I can't stand that either.  I'm glad not to have been brought up in a time where that is an option. These kids don't even know how bored stiff they are and also, I have no idea how he manages to sit in one place for that long.  It's a battle of wills to get him off his ass and his will is winning and that is so bad for his health.  So I feel guilty about letting him do what he wants to do and then it's not as if the husband is healthy enough to do anything other than sit somewhere else, so the only option we have for going places is to go somewhere else to sit and I don't want to spend my whole day sitting, but that's what I end up doing because this house is depressing as fuck and I am afraid that I might be too.

As a matter of fact, I was asking myself if there was a way to make photographs which reflected this state I'm in.  I'm trying to work things out in my mind before I head out with the camera so I don't go on autopilot and snap back into beauty or light mode where I look for beautiful or gorgeous light photos.  I think I'll start carrying my camera with me everywhere I go.  It'll be heavy, but I don't want to let opportunities go by.  And heavy seems suitable for my mindset anyway.

 

pass the tissues

So, my broke ass still hurts and now it's been over three months.  It does hurt less, but there are definitely moments when less is still way fucking too much because pain wears a girl down, you know?  AND I AM READY TO MOVE ON TO THE NEXT INJURY, WHICH IS SURELY AROUND THE CORNER, BECAUSE (SEE ABOVE) IT'S BEEN THREE MONTHS, WHICH IN MY LIFE MEANS (OH DAMN.  I hit caps lock and I'm too tired to go back and retype all that.  Excuse the caps.  I am not yelling at you, dear reader, I'm just , well, I'm gonna call it tired, but I'm cranky)  I'm starting to wonder if the residual pain might be a muscle related injury due to the fat that when I fell the end result was glutes clenched so tight for weeks that I needed more room in the seat of my pants.  Also , I am wondering if maybe this isn't a job for the utopian chiropractor, since he can always seem to fix the rare stuff that the stepford chiro can't.  I just want to cry.

Me and my awesome hearing went back to the ENT office today and it was a much different experience than my first visit when (now I'm going to sound like a horrible person) a group home of low functioning adults were all there and they did uncomfortable to watch stuff like use the bathroom in the waiting room without closing the door and rocking while humming in a corner and I tried so hard not to stare, but man, did I want to whip out a camera and click away at the chaos.  Today there were just a couple of quiet people who didn't make eye contact waiting for their turn and reading something off of their phones in the waiting room.  Aaaaahhh.  Antisocial comfort zone.  It was heaven. Anyway, the unnecessary torture of today was scratch testing for allergies.  This is how brilliant I am folks, I told the scratcher that I knew I was allergic to trees and had confirmed it with an allergy test about 20 years ago.  Since moving from stepford to new town I noticed a drastic decrease in squirrels roaming the yard, which I attribute to a drastic decrease in oak trees and squirrel food, acorns. So I bet the scratcher that I was allergic to oak trees since moving to new town I didn't seem to get hit so hard with my allergies in the spring.  

Guess what number 8 is!!  

 

 

Really, I missed my calling.  I should have been a medical detective.  If only I cared one little blip about medicine I could totally be a real Dr House.  They were totally looking for trouble with the whole scratch test (which technically and more accurately was a plunging needle under the skin 40 times on the back and 30 more on the arm test)  In the end they declared me allergic to just about every known allergen there is.  Do you think I am exaggerating??  

 

This is what they sent me home with.

But I'm figuring that if I were truly allergic to everything on that sheet I would be completely unable to function.  I suspect they may have over interpreted the slightest swelling because their real agenda was not testing me for allergies, the real agenda here was trying to sell me 2-4 years of some sub lingual allergy drops that would be custom made for my own allergies to the cost of almost 100 non insurance covered dollars a month.  I kind of distrust any doc that tries to sell you stuff, except for the stepford chiro who sells stuff for cheaper than I can get it off the internet. (I checked, original cheap skate here) 

The biggest travesty in this whole "find out why I have sinus drainage down the back of my throat for over a year and also weird hearing disturbances since mid December" ordeal is that I told the scratcher that I was not allowed to be allergic to dogs.  I can do without the cats, horses and roaches, but the dog isn't going anywhere!  Speaking of the dog, here is photo of my sweet pea, which you totally deserve to look at now that I made you look at my swollen allergic reactions.  It's compensation.  

 

Isn't she funny!!  She can not look into the camera.  I think she thinks she is in trouble when I stick it in her face.  I love that little mutt.  It's probably a bad thing that after 22 years of forbidding dogs to sleep on my bed I finally give in and let her sleep on my bed only to find out some scratch needle happy sadist at the ENT office thinks I'm allergic to her.  Pshaw!  I'll just hug a kleenex box for the next decade or so.

wink wink

There is a woman who brings her antisocial dog to the woods every day.  Normally I would be hating on that woman, but today we found ourselves there, only the two of us, so we began to chat.  And the woman told me how nice she thought my eye makeup looked.  I told her I was seeing a doctor I had never met before on my way out of the woods and I know that people treat me better when I look like I'm trying to look nice with some makeup.  Also told her that the older I get the more I need a little makeup to look lively.  She gave me that sideways glance and told me I wasn't that old.  I told her I was older than she thought.  I said "I'M 50!" and her jaw dropped to the floor.  She said she would have guessed I was in my late 30's.  I gave her a hug and the number for a good eye doctor.  And I'll never bitch about her bringing her attack dog to the woods again.

I went to an ENT today because the good doc told me I should when I described this odd hearing disturbance I've been having.  Also, I am still kind of still sick from the illness which hit me christmas eve (as in 2 weeks ago!) and I suspect there is something awry with my sinuses.  Now, I don't have an ENT, due to my avoidance of most non-dental related doctors, due to my total mistrust of most doctors in general.  This guy, it seems was the kind of doctor who gives doctor's a bad reputation.  And by bad reputation, I mean he would have sent me packing with no diagnosis and five different prescriptions had I not insisted I would not take a medication to temporarily reduce my symptoms and that I was only there to figure out what exactly the problem was. He suggested I get a hearing test (which was conveniently done right in his office) even though I told him that if anything I have more sensitive hearing since this strange hearing disturbance began.  After the hearing test he told me that my hearing was "Awesome" and the best results he had seen from a hearing test in weeks.  Duh!  I already told him I heard fine.  What I don't know is why every few days my ears pop and my hearing becomes super sonic so that I can actually hear sound bouncing off of glass surfaces and vibrations in the air.  Then it goes away after about 20 minutes.  Weird, right?  

My next attempt at diagnosis involves an allergy test (I told him I am allergic to trees and that when I feel allergic all I have to do is turn on the TV and hear about how high the tree pollen is that day.  I also told him that I had a scratch test once before and they had to administer benadryl because I had such a severe reaction to the tree scratch) but dude wants to see for himself.  After all, it doesn't hurt him to get dozens of stupid pricks on my skin.  Idiot. I also told him that the hearing thing happens if I am home or out of the house so it is unlikely to be allergies.  I know they think everyone's problems are allergy related, and normally I am all about the allergies, having my own annoying food allergies, but this time I can tell you that this is not the right path to go down.  It ain't allergies.  He also made an appointment for me to get a cat scan of my head, which will show both my sinuses and my ears.  This is where I think I might get lucky, and hopefully find an answer or at least a clue to what is going on.  But I hope you can't see crazy on a cat scan because I am a bit nervous they will find something else, like the voices in my head are really teeny tiny people whispering away in there.  Just kidding.  wink wink

The lottery is huge and I've been bargaining with my recently deceased biological sperm provider and my dead family.  What good is being a ghost if you can't help a girl out!?  For real people, I don't even have to be the sole winner!  I'd totally be willing to split the 800 million dollars.  As long as I split it with someone real nice.

dreaming about not dreaming

For along time I had a reoccurring dream that I was in our old Brooklyn apartment when I discovered some kind of secret attic tunnel which lead to another glorious apartment-which belonged to us!  The new discovery was always the same and for some crazy reason it had an industrial kitchen, which I was not entirely interested in but would decide I could work with and rooms which were not squared off which left me unsatisfied.  However, the newly discovered apartment had tons of space and I would imagine all sorts of ways to use all of the fabulous space in my new palatial apartment.  Then one day someone told me that if you dream about discovering new rooms in your house then you are really needing to uncover different aspects of your own personality.  I'm pretty sure that is when I stopped dreaming about discovering new apartments within my own apartment.

Until last night people!  

Oh lawd yes, put your hands together! It's another weird dream post.

I don't know where I began last night's dream, but it may have been in the palatial dream apartment of dreams past.  But HELLO!!  I discovered another apartment!!  Now, here is the kicker, in my dream I was amazed that I was finding an apartment in real life and not in a dream.  In my dream I recognized that I had had previous dreams and was telling myself that this was not a dream but a dream come true, which somehow had a religious kind of awe to it.  The newest discovery had completely square rooms and I was thrilled! I was leading around a contractor and I was going to somehow improve my new square room discovery.  When I got about three satisfying rooms into the new apartment tour the contractor and I were in a big squared off room with a giant picture window.  The view from the picture window was so incredible it bought me to tears, I had the thought that this was the view I wanted to look out at every day for the rest of my life. In my dream I thought "I am home."  It was a beautiful landscape with a single evergreen tree in the lower left corner and it was so breath taking (in colors that do not exist in real landscapes, only painted ones)  that the contractor and I began some hanky panky (no details for you!) and interestingly enough my vision blurred during the hanky panky and in my dream I was trying so hard to open my eyes and see this inspirational view clearly. I started to see vertical and lines (which may have been the light seeping in around the hotel window shade) and I am quite certain that if there was a video of my sleeping self I had actually opened my eyes in my sleep.  I was fighting to open my eyes in my dream. It turned out that the view wasn't as magnificent as I thought it was somehow an abstract industrial kind of painting instead of the nature view but it was a different kind of wonderful and in the end I decided to accept it.  Then there was creepy part where a doctor had to come in and test the contractor for something disease-ish and I thought I was going to catch some dreadful life threatening disease and no one would acknowledge me.  In the end the part of the dream that really stands out for me is finding the perfect apartment. 

In other news, lil sis texted me yesterday that our biological (physically, emotionally, sexually abusive) genetic material lender died.  I can't use the F word for him.  He was no F.  I had a father, he died in 2009.  This other guy, well, I guess his genes are in me somewhere, let's just hope not the crazy ones or the evil ones.  Let's just hope I got something like speedy healing or my dry elbows or some shit like that.  When there is someone who is pure evil in the family tree like that, it's hard to think that a piece of it might be living on in me.  I wasn't upset or anything, I told lil sis, that the only reason I could see for him to live a long life was for me to get long life genes.  But I did feel kind of relieved that there might be a little less fucked-up-ness walking the planet. At least it doesn't have to haunt me now that he could still be out there peddling kiddie porn or even just purchasing it.  I figured at his age he wasn't touching anyone any more.  Who knows though.  But he can't hurt anyone else now!  And for that I am thankful.  Now I just have to wait a respectable amount of time before I head down to his grave site and have my celebration/dance/champagne toast.  I did promise not to speak of him ever again if I won the lottery this week, so if this is the last you hear about him either I'm on easy street with my millions of dollars or I'm just so busy having my square room and good view life that I am not wasting my time on such a "person."

looking forward to moving forward

In the world where I can't seem to catch a break, I finally got out of bed two days ago!! Three days ago I got ambitious, got out of bed and dressed, but that was as far as it went.  I am feeling more like "myself" except for this nose congestion issue.  It's the kind of thing where I have so many tissue boxes going in every spot I might find myself, that I can't even tell you how many I ave gone through, but it's at least two full boxes by now.  And judging by the raw pain in the skin surrounding my nostrils, I would second that two box estimate.  The one thing I kept being happily surprised at was the lack of color in my nasal discharge, which to me meant there was no trace of infection.  Until ten minutes ago when I blew the freakiest looking yellow clot of mucous out I have ever seen.  I'm not sure what to even do about it, (other then immediately snap a photo-because it's worth a thousand words)  But I think I'll go and steam my face of the bathroom sink until I can't blow anything else out.

This kind of situation always reminds me of the co-worker (back in the days when I was a hysterically awful head hunter) who finally saved enough to buy herself a mink coat and spent the entire winter with a sinus infection until an ENT sucked a hardened snot covered mink hair out of her sinuses and she gave the mink away but got to breathe clear for the first time in months.  I think of that woman often.  She was great.

I hope I don't have a hardened snot encased foreign object up my nose, or maybe I do since it seems like an easy answer and I just need to have that removed.  I looked at some best doctor lists and am going to make myself an appointment with an ENT on Monday when they all open up again.  I'm kind of looking forward to having my sinuses vacuumed out.  It's gonna feel so good when they're done! 

Oh yeah, Happy New Years! 2016, hopefully the year I sell utopia and move forward with my photo career.  Or win the lottery and get to keep utopia and move forward with my photo career.  It's all good.  I'll take either combination as long as I move forward with my photo career.