Pinterest is the Devil

I'm sick.  I've been sick for several days, and I am never sick.  Unless I get ahold of a bad oyster, or more likely, bad gin.  But I am well and truly sick this time, and I don't like it.  I don't like doctors either, which presents its own quandaries.  Any hoo, I decided it was the better part of valor to stay home - to skip that meeting,  to NOT finish cleaning out the garage, and to put off starting those tomato seeds.  Again.  Instead, I thought I'd try to work on something simple, like crocheting a dishcloth.  Nothing overly involved, mind you, just your garden-variety dishcloth.

And after searching on Ravelry (love) and other yarn-manufacturer sites, I couldn't find what I wanted. (It's a dishcloth, you might say.  Shut up, I might say).  My friend, Mary, was on Pinterest the other day looking for some pattern or another, and I thought, hmmm.  Maybe I'll just hop other there real quick and see if there's something dishcloth-y over there.

Now, I've heard of Pinterest.  I see people's pins on Facebook.  Not interested.  I'm far too busy doing things like cooking and gardening and crocheting and canning and knitting to spend anytime sitting around looking at stuff on the internet.  I am waaaaay too important, too capable to need the internet to drive my creativity. I am WOMAN! But nevertheless a woman who needed a catchy dishcloth pattern.  Plus, the septic guy was here to pump the system out, so I was in a hurry. (Did you know methane gas actually EATS the concrete of your septic tank from the INSIDE?  Turns out it does.  This is not good news).

Hence, a brief search for a crochet dishcloth pattern on Pinterest.  Which I logged onto for the first time at 3:38.  It is 7:52, and I have only left my chair to get a glass of wine (2 times), make soup (1 time), and blow my nose (76 times).  I have ended up in the weirdest places and the greatest places.  I now have so many potential projects that the 21-day GYST Challenge may have to be changed to the 21-year GYST challenge. I will be 66 years old and riddled with Alzheimers, but my yard will be PERFECT.

The downside, however, is that it is, after all, the Internet.  Anyone with software can post something somewhere that will at some point end up a search result on Pinterest.  If it's kitchen cabinets and handy gardening tips, Pinterest is your place.  It's amazing.  If it's "homemade cold remedies", however, let me just tell you that a disturbing number of people have pinned a horrifying photo of a glass quart Mason jar that appears to be filled with garlic cloves, horseradish, apple cider vinegar (Hey, Manny), and the toes of baby snow leopards.  You.  Can. Not.  Tell.  Me.  that people are actually making this shit.  Not to mention drinking it.  Really?  Bonjour, indeed.

Gotta go.

Okay, So This Looks Really Bad

So, yesterday, on my pilgrimage of awesomeness during which I shopped at Boggy Creek, helped a friend pack up her house for a move, got a mammogram-O and bone density scan, made quiche, cleaned dishes, watered plants, took kids to tutoring, did errands, and came home, this was on my dashboard:

Yep.  That's right.  On my list were underwear, flea treatments, coffee, toilet paper, and probiotics.  So, all day, while traipsing about central Austin like a total badass, I had a post-it stuck on my dash in full view of the groovy, but fashionable populace which made it look like I had a raging case of diarrhea necessitating new undergarments and probably brought on by too much coffee.  Oh, and fleas.

I'm not even going to tell you about the underwear.  It wasn't for me.  Really.  I swear.

So much for feeling like a badass.

Upside: It's not a goiter.

Nobody ever tells you how dangerous your snack food can be.  Tuesday night, I was cooking dinner and wasn't going to make it.  Not even close. I could feel the tendrils of mean-mom-ness coming on and the half-glass of wine wasn't sitting all that well.  

You know that part in the horror movie where the blonde on the stilettos walks into the dark, desolate parking garage alone?  It was just like that.  Except that I was in my kitchen making pizza dough at 6 in the afternoon.  With three other people around.  Anyway, I grabbed a handful of cashews and began chewing.  No big deal.  Suddenly, one of the cashews decided to stab me.  Now, I generally consider cashews to be a relatively peaceful snack food, unlike tortilla chips which will shank you without warning, but this cashew had a score to settle.  He poked the inside of my mouth under my tongue.  I did what everyone does when stabbed in the mouth.  I swallowed the little fucker and washed him down with some cabernet.  

The rest of the evening was peaceful.  Dinner was lovely and violence-free.  The next morning, my cup of coffee was perfectly hot and delicious.  All was well.  That is, until the cashew chose to exact his revenge during breakfast.  Halfway through my homemade replica of the Starbucks protein plate minus the cheese, I noticed, mid-bite of bagel with peanut butter, that my neck felt uncomfortable and I was having some trouble swallowing.  These are rarely good signs.  

I reached up to the right side of my neck, which hurt like hell and was approximately the size of Chet's neck in Weird Science.  When T returned from walking the dogs, I asked, "Does this look swollen to you?"  "Wow," he said,  "that's really something."  I think that was a take on "that's some baby" from Seinfeld, but I wasn't exactly focused.  And then,  "you might want to get someone to look at that."  So I did.  Despite my totally irrational and pathological fear of doctors.  Which should tell you how big my neck was.

Three hours later, I'm telling my super-fabulous nurse practitioner, whom I love, the whole shocking story.  By then, my neck had reduced in size to smaller than a kiwi.  Which was apparently all she needed.  Turns out that my cashew arch-nemesis had left a microscopic calling card in one of my salivary ducts, blocking up my salivary gland.  So every time I ate something, the saliva wanted out of saliva gland prison, but that cashew was blocking the emergency exits.  And swelling at an alarming rate.  As soon as I wasn't eating, it started to go down.  Gross, right?

And here's the best part:  the prescription for a blocked salivary duct is . . . candy.  Are you kidding me?  I KNEW that whole insurance gig was a racket.  Turns out that what they do for blocked saliva glands is give you lemon drops.  Honest.  I made Kate write me a script so I could prove it to everyone that I wasn't making it up.   

The sour makes you salivate and the sucking on a hard candy creates a vacuum.  So, I ate soup and lemon drops all day long.  And by the time I got up today, I WAS CURED! 

So, what can we learn from this?  You CAN medicate with food.  Can I get an amen?