Thursday, January 10, 2008

In and Out of the Flow of Life/Mucus

Screw neti pots and their recent surge in popularity thanks to Oprah and the New York Times - my OCD tendencies had me eying those saline nasal irrigation things for years. Normally I want one when I have a cold, since I seem to have been spared the classic runny-nose seasonal allergy crap, but with more evidence and doctors suggesting that perhaps my migraines are sinus-related, I splurged and spent $12 on the NeilMed Sinus Rinse kit. 8 oz of warm water (I did it right from the tap, livin' on the edge, instead of buying distilled water and heating it in the microwave) with the little packet of salty crap to make saline, mixed in the bottle, leaned over the sink, held it up to my nostril, and squeezed.
Gross. But the good kind of gross. Except for the part when it started snotting down the back of my throat and I had to spit out snot. That was mostly the bad kind of gross. But overall, I am pleased. I do feel better able to breathe through my nasal passages and feel they were very well cleaned and irrigated.

I'm a member of this awesome co-ed fraternity now: Alpha Alpha Alpha. They're really into travel, and they'll help you out anywhere if your car dies, and all sorts of places give you discounts if you tell them you're a member. AAA loveeeeee!!!

After spending way too much time and energy insuring my new car (have I mentioned lately I love my new car? I don't think I have. I love my new car.) I was getting renters insurance through AAA because they were significantly cheaper than anywhere else and my dad decided I needed renters insurance. Then the AAA insurance guy asked me about my car insurance and blah blah blah now I am paying a lot less and I trust AAA more than the no-name company I ended up with before. So that was all good insurance news, even though I spent a very long time going through the different quotes and people and things.
After the fiasco with my old health insurance, I decided to get new health insurance. Pay more and make sure everything was covered. I did lots of shopping around for that, filled out the application online, answered more questions over the phone last week when they called to clarify certain things about my health and insurance history, and told my mother every other day that no I hadn't heard back from the health insurance people yet. Well, the same day all my other insurance got happy, I got rejected from the health insurance. Probably because of my migraines (yes, they can do that), in which case I just need the letter to show up here that states they rejected me due to medical history and I can apply for the Illinois Lame People Insurance, but (and here is the moral of the story so I will bold it) Why is it so fucking difficult, expensive, and time-consuming to insure our health and property to a safe, legal, minimal standard?

My migraine has been much better behaved and I was all ready to do an I Love Topamax dance, then the weather shifted and it kicked my ass. Maybe less so, I'm not sure. It was a few days of bad that I first thought were the result of chocolate and didn't know what to do if it turned out chocolate was my trigger, but then I went outside and it was very clearly the weird crazy weather shift shit that normally gets me. Now the weather is back to Standard Chicago Winter and I'm doing better and I want to register for classes and such, but I still don't have this crap figured out and I don't want the same thing to happen again and I don't quite know what to do about it all. My school starts really late, so I have a few weeks, but I don't know what monumental change will happen in those few weeks to make things any clearer.

To end on a positive note: I have an audition for Wheel of Fortune on Tuesday! I got an email saying I'd been selected for an appointment time to audition for the Chicago taping of College Week! So excited!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

i miss AAA. they are fantastic.
good luck in the wheel of fortune thing. i hope you get on the show, 'cause that would be so cool. plus i kind of want to see how tall you have to be to reach that damn wheel.

 

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