Walking to my car with an arm load of groceries, I saw a woman standing next to the driver’s side door. With the car between me and her, I couldn’t quite tell what she was doing, but it sure seemed like she was examining the insides of the car pretty thoroughly. She looked confused enough that I didn’t think she was breaking in or anything. And besides, this is small town, middle-of-cornfields USA. Grand theft auto doesn’t really occur to me as an option here.

This was going to be awkward. I wasn’t up for awkward.

Any second now she’d realize she’d gone up to the wrong car and walk away. If I just walked more slowly we could both pretend nothing had happened.

And still she stood there, every ounce of body language projecting confusion and frustration.

So I unlocked my car. I figured when the lights went on she’d get a better look at the interior, realize it wasn’t hers, and still be far enough away from me that we could avoid discussion. I really, really wasn’t up for discussion.

She didn’t scurry away. She opened the door and started getting in.

She didn’t seem the type to hot-wire the thing, but she clearly didn’t have keys that would work. She was getting set to put her groceries across onto the passenger seat. This was no heist. Was it possible it wasn’t my car? The license plate looked pretty familiar, but I really don’t have my license plate memorized. Still, at least two of the letters were right, and the numbers seemed to flow from the letters in a predictable rhythm. Surely this was my car.

“Uh… that’s my car,” I said. I mean, what do you say to someone who is getting into your car?

“Oh my goodness!!” she bounced up and out of the car. “I’m so sorry! I couldn’t figure out why my key wasn’t working, but I guess now we know. I’m such a space cadet!!”

Continuing on in this vein, she practically ran across the parking lot to her own car and got in. And while you’d think it would have been a car similar in make, model, and color to mine, you’d be wrong. I do not drive a silver Prius.

Pippin woke me up this morning in his utterly passive-aggressive way: purring. In his defense, it was nearly 9am — long past the time for The Feeding Of Cats. So he placed himself attentively near my face, front paws neatly lined up against each other, tale curled precisely around his body, and purred. Loudly. All things considered, this is a much better way of waking me up than almost any other way I can think of, so I’m not complaining. All things considered, I even kind of like it. And I’d already slept for most of the past 12 hours, so it was ok.

…

Maybe it’s the fact that my new doctor seems to be taking me seriously, but suddenly my family members are bursting with ideas of things to ask him about. The latest include kidney function and lyme disease. Apparently it’s less likely but not impossible to get tick bites in January, and apparently enough of lyme’s vague symptoms are like enough of my vague symptoms that the fact that my lyme test last year was negative may not mean much. Apparently lyme tests are often falsely negative. Apparently going to Mayo is really the best way to figure out if this is what’s wrong with me. That makes three votes for a trip to Mayo in the last two months. I’d really rather not go, but not for any good reason. It just seems like if I go to Mayo that’s making this into a Big Deal because only Big Deal diseases go to Mayo. That’s a mental shift I can’t seem to make. What if they look at me gravely and say, “We’ve figured out what’s wrong with you. As it turns out, you are lazy. The recommended treatment is prescription strength Get Off Your Butt.”

Either that or they’ll find out that it actually is a Big Deal, and then I’ll be crushed. Basically, I’m impossible to please, so it’s easier just to spend the day lying on the couch or sitting at a coffee shop, contemplating lethargy, watching Friendfeed scroll past, and wishing I had enough brain power to participate rather than just watch. Or rather, that I had anything more interesting to say than “I’m tired and feel kinda crummy,” all the permutations of which would inevitably be translated as “please pity me” by all and sundry when really it’s just a statement of fact.

…

It took me until 4 to do anything constructive with my day. Well, no, that’s not true. I backed up my computer this morning in case it dies semi-unexpectedly. I’ve been getting blue screens lately, so I’m less and less confident that this thing will live very long. At one point the computer told me it estimated over 6 hours until the backup would be done. 10 minutes later, it said 23 minutes remained. Time flies when you’re having fun?

…

I’ve finally figured out how to use this travel watercolor brush. The idea is to squeeze water out onto the pallet and then paint as usual, dipping the brush into that water. Otherwise there’s no way to control the amount of water on the brush. But used this way it works quite well.

And I finished the fourth postcard just now, so I now have one for each person who requested one. I know good matches for two of the postcards, but the other two are kind of up for grabs. Who needs a lily? Who needs a bridge? I’m just not sure. And ultimately it doesn’t really matter, so I should just write addresses on them.

Now that I’ve finished that project, I guess the next one is to get over my fear of figure drawing and just practice. I’ll never get better at it if I don’t start.

On the other hand, I could paint a few more postcards…

…

Leaving the coffee shop, I realized it was a beautiful evening. Pitch dark since 4:30, of course, but beautiful nevertheless. So I walked the few blocks to the co-op and back to get a few groceries rather than going straight home. I’d never seen the cashier before, but she was quiet a flake. A very cheerful flake, but a flake all the same. I’d brought my own bag, so she gave me the little piece of a paper bag that can be redeemed for 5 or 10 cents or donated to the charity of the month. As usual, I refused it, since the co-op is my charity of choice. But when she questioned my “Thanks but you can keep it” with protestations that I could donate the money, and I said, “Thanks, but I’d prefer you kept the money,” she looked at me confused and said, “But I can’t get at the money.” And a beat later, “Oh, you mean the store!”

…

And now I think I’ll curl up with an episode of the Midsomer Murders before bed.

Well, I’ve now experienced a CT scan, so whenever I hear “Get a stat head CT” on House, I’ll know that the patient (who won’t turn out to have lupus, either) is about to slide in and out of a huge donut shaped machine while a mechanical male voice intones “Breathe in… hold your breath…[scan]… breathe normally” several times.

My particular CT scan required two kinds of contrast: the “Berry Smoothie” barium contrast (with a pretty picture of a cascade of different kinds of berries next to an appetizing picture of a GI tract on the label) once at night and twice in the morning, and then an IV of contrast during the scan. And boy oh boy is that IV contrast a weird experience. The tech said, “You’ll start with a metalic taste at the back of your throat. Then a hot feeling around your mouth that’ll move down your body. When it gets to your abdomen, you’ll feel like you’re peeing your pants. You aren’t. Don’t worry.” I’LL FEEL LIKE WHAT???

And she was right.

I was also a little disconcerted to have the only thing in my field of vision be labeled “Laser guider – do not stare into the beam.” So I just kept my eyes closed most of the time.

Luckily, I happened to schedule my scan for the day the radiologist comes to the clinic. And luckily the radiologist got my results to my doctor quickly. And luckily, my doctor had time to call me right away, so I only had to wait about 5 hours to hear that I don’t have tumors on my adrenal glands, or any other visible abnormalities in that area.

I’m sure I’ll be able to feel happy about that soon, but for now I’m just alternately numb and weepy. And I’m so very tired of tests. And I’m tired in general. And they still don’t know why my labs are off. But I don’t have tumors on my adrenal glands, which is a very, very good thing.

I have such a headache.

Today started with a third trip to the car repair place. The first one last week resulted in the mechanic telling me to take the car to a dealer because wheel bearings shouldn’t go out this early so it should be covered under warranty. The second one resulted in the dealer’s mechanic telling me it was more than just the bearings going out, that it would all be covered under warranty, but that they didn’t have enough time to complete the work so I’d have to come back. And so I came back. I had an appointment for a drop-off this morning at 9am, and they had reserved a rental car for me to have during the day (since when don’t they do loaners?).

And that was where the day started veering off in the wrong direction.

It was after 11 when I finally got to my office, after having been kept waiting, then told they didn’t have a car for me after all but could get one from Avis, then having the Avis guy take forever to show up from a mile away (like, half an hour or more), then being taken back to the Avis place to fill out paperwork there, then finding out that no one knew who had my drivers license and insurance card, then finally finding it in the rental guy’s pick-people-up van while he was on the phone with a friend making vacation plans, then sticking up for myself (rather uncharacteristic) by suggesting that making me pay for the day’s rental was so ludicrous as to be laughable. (That sounds very brave, but I think my actual words were, “Uh… I really don’t want to pay for this rental.” Said with “Seriously, I want you all to die,” in my tone.)

Great morning.

The early afternoon featured me being testier than necessary, followed by a phone call from the dealership saying that they’d broken the speed sensor on my wheel, that they’d overnight a new one from their distributor in Iowa, and that they’d already heard about my morning’s terrible experience, so they’d give me another day of free rental. (You better BELIEVE they’d give me another free day of rental.) After having my courage worked up for me by a friend, I called their manager and secured a promise that the car would be done by noon so that I could travel as I’d planned, though even this isn’t great because it means that I either put off my travel plans by about 3 hours or I take all my luggage (including the cat) with me to work and then up to the dealer. What a mess.

While I was on the phone with the manager, someone called and left a message that she wanted help with a program that’s far beyond her computer literacy skills. She’s wanted the same help with it every day since Friday. After half an hour on the phone with her, carefully describing (from memory) the steps she needed to take and buttons she needed to press, I finally went over to her office and spent an hour there being very, very patient. VERY patient.

By then I’d had enough, so I went home a little early, only to find a message from my doctor of which the only memorable phrases are “could be caused by a tumor” and “CAT scan.” I’m supposed to call him tomorrow to arrange that. That’s when the headache kicked in.

Two good things happened today. 1) My co-worker brought me some eggless pumpkin cookies, and 2) the dealer called to grovel quite a lot, offering me a 25% discount on all rentals through them forever, giving me the general manager’s cell phone number which I can call “for any reason” (the mind boggles), assuring me that there have been several high-level meetings about my case today, and saying that there’s good possibility the rental manager can get the service manager to give me a free routine service next time I come in.

So tomorrow I have to see about this CAT scan thing, attend a meeting I really don’t want to attend, deal with the car thing, and travel for 6 hours.

What a day.

I don’t know exactly how it happened, but I have a pretty good guess. How it happened doesn’t much matter now, though, because it won’t change the fact that I somehow got egged yesterday. And by “got egged” I mean “accidentally ingested some egg and therefore induced this mood-altering allergic reaction of mine.”

My first clue appeared yesterday evening in the form of a headache. My second clue was my inability to deal with that headache like a grown-up. My third clue was wanting to argue with everyone in sight today, and complain about everything I can’t argue with, and cry about all of that and everything those things don’t cover.

So yeah. Just leave me alone today (and probably tomorrow, and possibly the day after). I’ll be ok, and nothing’s actually wrong. It’s just that I might let down my guard and accidentally snap your head off, and neither of us wants that to happen.