My back yard connects to this long alley-like forest of mostly maples with a few evergreens here and there. The squirrels love it, to the point it's kind of creepy. We have a LOT of squirrels out there, at any time of the day you can look out the window and see at least 3 cavorting around our back deck and about a hundred leaping and chasing each other around the trees.

Two weeks ago we saw a really horrifying, nightmare-inducing "yiffing" pile of them as we walked a friend's doggie thru the woods. By "yiffing pile" what I mean is like 14 of them all engaged in filthy sex acts with each other. It was disturbing. Anyway long story short the squirrel population has tripled since it started snowing. It's like their winter wonderland now.

Going outside to play in the snow and looking for gear suitable for it, and I can't find anything really. All my boots have high heels on them. But this reminds me of this stupid weird thing tommy told me about. When he was a kid his grandmother ('Nana') was a depression era grandmother like mine and many of ours were, who had all these strange, cheap methods to getting stuff done. He told me that whenever he went to play in the snow or walk to school from her house (he lived with his Nana part of the week) she would put the plastic bags from Wonder Bread over his shoes and tie them off with rubber bands at the top. That was her way of "waterproofing them".

I laughed so hard at that mental image of him running around with wonder bread bags on his feet, I mean, they are very identifiable items, bright blue and red "WONDER" written across them. So everyone had to know he had freaking bread bags on his feet. But he just said "well they worked really good, and at the end of the day your feet would smell like rotten yeast. It was kind of cool."

Dont feel sorry for me. Im not ill. There is just this weird convoluted string of events and odd medical mishaps that led to this.

Then just recently I went to a different doc (thanks to a reaction to one of the yellow pills), and it turns out he's like the real Dr. Feelgood. Only more evil, oh and also an arrogant buff jerk who looks alot like Anderson Cooper. He tells me, and I am quoting here, "Well there are 7 levels of painkillers that I would prescribe, and these ones here on your list (Dr. Feelgood points to some pretty knock-em painkillers for my back that worked perfectly fine before I nearly died from a reaction to them) I would prescribe to say a 4 year old with a broken arm. You should get something stronger."

I kid you not.

Now, those pills, pre-reaction, really did work great, they made me moderately loopy but happily pain free for roughly 4 hours. Then this doctor goes on to chat me up about Bahrain and how he was in Iraq for the past year with the army something or other. I bet he was a Dr. Feelgood there too I'm sure, and was just loved by all his troops. So anyway, he convinces me to switch, not that I have a choice since the reaction I already mentioned. So now on top of the weird reactions to the other pills, the chronic pain (except for four hours a day) that is causing depression issues, the horror that I'm going to grow a beard from the steroids, I am also probably going to become addicted to some freaky painkillers. I'll be just like the painkiller addicted celebrities! I do love them.

My husband is getting concerned because of the mood swings and strange crying jags, then the need to go grocery shopping for jello. But at least he knows better than to suggest I add to the pill pile with happy pills.

weeeee

I'm so happy to be back in the US! [go ahead, ask me how many of these medical problems I had 6 months ago with what they consider here "third world doctors"! HA! NONE]

Add to this that I just had someone I cared deeply about throw away my friendship so fast it made my head spin. But that I dont want to talk about because it's the only thing I actually care about in this whole entry. Maybe they make a pill for that?

I have dig cable net. On MY pc. As in, not on a borrowed laptop, hooking up using pirated wifi. So everything is on my old screen, with my actual bookmarks and whatnot. It's been 5 months and honestly everything looks so weird!

I've been absent this past week, lost that pirated wifi lol so had to wait for the comcast hookup. or cox or whatever the hell it is called.

Today I unpacked four more boxes of 'knicknacks' which included a box of photos and loads and loads of unique, beautiful and sometimes just bizarre collectibles we've managed to.. well... collect. in our 6 years living in the middle east.

What a long strange trip it's been.

I don't quite miss it yet, and I think I am glad to be back in the states for now but.. it's less black and white than that. There ARE things I miss. I miss my job. I miss my friends. I miss my hairdresser. I definitely miss my waxer (holy mother of jot what is up with the price of waxing here???) I still don't fit in here though. Everything feels strange in America.

Of course, it is nice to have cable tv. Sopranos unedited (i never saw the last two seasons!) Deadwood season 3, Rescue Me (!!!) ROME season 2.. HGTV. National Geographic, PBS which I'm a huge horking freaking fan of.. etc.

I miss the Arabic world though. Yes, I'm serious. It was unique and there are many things in their culture that I found worthy and worth treasuring. Maybe I will get the energy to write a decent journal entry on the things I found in the Arabic world that I think should be brought to light in the Western world.

Did I mention that everyone here looks naked?

On a side note, I just totally forgot how to write the css/xhtml code for setting this entry in comic sans ms black. Wow. I've become brain damaged enroute perhaps?