...when I drank waaaaaaaay too much water.

Because I am a healthy beast [sic.] now, I drink a ton of water.  And by a ton, I mean at least 64 ounces a day.  Eight eight-ounce glasses a day.  But even before I started cooking and eating vegetables and such, I drank a lot of water.  I have this irrational fear of being dehydrated.  Like I won't survive if my cells are not properly supplied with water.  Actually, that's true.  If your cells aren't properly supplied with water, you don't survive.  But I would hardly consider myself on the brink of dying.  Of thirst, anyway.  Usually because I drink a lot of water specifically to avoid that.

Anyway, this day was no different in terms of water consumption.  What was different was my level of preparation for all eventualities.  And by that I mean, I go to the bathroom before I go anywhere.  ANYWHERE.  I go to the bathroom before I get in my car to drive home.  Even though my house is literally seven minutes away from where I work, that's seven minutes of time in which any sort of calamity might walk by and think "hey, I'd like to befall this poor girl right now."  However, calamity is not the issue.  I can deal with calamity.  But it's an awful lot harder to deal with calamity when you have to go to the bathroom.  It's really an awful lot harder to deal with anything when you have to go to the bathroom.

So you can imagine I have a pretty rigorous rotation of hydration and...un-hydration?  I'm really trying to be as delicate as possible here.  I may have a bladder, but I'm still a lady, after all.

But today, I got distracted.  The only thing more powerful than my desire to prepare for eventualities is my propensity for getting distracted.  Which is good, because otherwise I'd probably be pretty insufferable.  And weird.  I'd probably have a bunker in my basement filled with canned foods and flashlights.

On this particular day, I got distracted by friends.  I went to lunch with them.  But I was running late, so I was really concerned with getting there as soon as I possibly could.  "No problem," I thought.  "I will un-hydrate when I get there."

When I got there, I was distracted by the fabulous conversation.  "No problem," I thought.  "I will un-hydrate before I leave."

When I left, I was distracted by the fact that I was baring my soul, racing the clock to spill all of my deep, dark emotional secrets before the lunch hour was up (I'm really bad about that.)  "No problem," I thought as I drove away.  "I'll be back at work soon, where I will have plenty of time to un-hydrate."

Alas.  Mine old enemy.  The shuttle.

 

What was it that I was looking at with such longing and internal conflict, you ask?

That's right.  I saw a tree.  I saw a tree and all I could think was:

By this point, I'd been waiting on the shuttle for a whopping four or five minutes.  But when you're nearing the end of your bladdatorial endurance, four or five minutes can feel like an eternity.  And when it's after about 1:00 pm, and there's only one shuttle running, it can take a second eternity for the pokey little devil to feel like comin' around.

 

 

Seriously.  How awful would that have been?

Note: This post was originally going to be about how I freak out just as much when I think about doing something horrible as I do when I actually do something horrible.  But that is a much more complicated and abstract process to illustrate.  Suffice it to say, I freaked out for a solid ten minutes after riding the shuttle back to work about what the consequences would have been had I decided to go ahead and pee behind that tree like a Boy Scout.

Another Note: Don't think I couldn't do it, either.  In China, the toilets are in the ground.  I went to China once.  I'm a pro.  Not that you needed to know that.

A Technical Note: I am aware that technically, I used "[sic]" wrong, since it's obvious that what I write is written exactly as I wrote it.  But I thought I would take a stab at using it ironically, because I am a far cry from a healthy beast, except in my own imagination.  The idea was that I was quoting my own imagination.  But the fact that I felt I needed to explain this demonstrates pretty effectively that I failed.  You can see why I never joined the debate team.

A Follow-up to the Technical Note: If you're wondering what the heck "sic" means, click here.

...when I got a little too big for my britches. Or rather, they got a little too big for me.

As I mentioned in the previous entry, I've been cooking.  A lot.  Which means I've been eating a ton of fresh food, no processed food, and a vastly increased amount of protein and vegetables.  Basically, I'm eating healthy.  But I promise I'm not insufferable about it.  It just kind of happened, with the delightful consequence that some of my clothes (which had previously gotten waaaaay too tight) are now getting a little loose.

Including my pants.

I've learned that anything--anything--can be a mechanism for valuable life lesson learning.  A few weeks ago, I did a particularly painful bit of learning.

I work at a medical school and state-run hospital.  However, I am not a doctor.  In fact, I'm probably about as far as you can get from medical personnel.  I edit research papers.  It's a trip.

But anyway, I haven't been working on the main campus for very long.  I started in March, not long before the med school let out for the summer.  Thus, this August has been my very first joyful experience with the beginning of a new term.  I was running late one day, and it just so happened to be one of the first days on campus for the first-year med students.  So I trotted up to the tinfoil lean-to where we all wait for the shuttle to come pick us up from our far-flung urban satellite parking lot, and I saw this:

Well, I'm super uncomfortable around crowds of people squeezing into a small space.  I probably would not survive in China.  I would have a mental breakdown and expire.

So I was already unhappy.  Vastly unhappy.  I was running late, and the shuttle was packed like a can of sardines.  And those sardines were all 22 years old, overexcited, and unjustly chic.  About half of them were wearing stilettos, and nearly all of them were super impressed with themselves.

Cue defensive mental sniping.

But as God once told this one dude who wrote it down, and as it was later included in this one book that talks about life and how to live it and what happens when you die and stuff like that,

"Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a...

Proverbs'd.



First Note: The lean-to is not really made of tinfoil.  Nor is it really a lean-to.

Second Note: I did actually survive in China once, for about two weeks.  But judging by my experience there with crowded spaces and sheer numbers of people, I'm thinking a more permanent arrangement probably wouldn't work out for me.

Third Note: John Smith is actually pretty nice, I liked him.  However, his real name is not John Smith.  And that doesn't change the fact that I was hardcore judging those eager beavers.

Fourth Note: I mentioned my pants because I tripped getting down off the shuttle.  And though it all happened really quickly, I'm pretty sure my pants might have had something to do with it.  Sometimes I get one foot caught in the opposite pant leg when I walk.  I don't know how I accomplish this, but it gets worse with extra fabric.

Fifth Note: Ok, ok, I mentioned my pants because I really wanted to use a clever title for this entry.  You got me.

Final Note: If you aren't familiar with the "verb'd" scheme, you need to watch The Guild.  Even if you do know how to turn any word into a nerdy gaming verb, you need to watch The Guild.  Heck, even if you've seen The Guild, you need to watch The Guild.  I have provided you with four different opportunities to click through and do this.  So do it.  Gosh.