April 3rd

So, here I am eating potato chips and drinking a beer despite the fact that yesterday, I learned my cholesterol is 204. For one who knows me this is entirely unsatisfactory for several reasons. One, I like numbers: heart rates, workout times, percentages in zone, race time, how fast I did something, how much I weight, how fast my Harley goes, how long I've been doing something, how many flight hours, how many traps, and on and on. Especially for a person who has a Masters Degree in Holistic Nutrition, 204 is unbelievable. I chalk it up to (I know...I know) the nachos I had at Taco Bell and the load of french fries I had at a greek restaurant the other day. It certainly has nothing to do with the fact that I've downed up to four drinks a night and am not eating well or making good decisions about my diet. It's not my fault; that's my story and I'm sticking to it. So that's my current state of mind. Despite the fact that it's entirely unsat that my cholesterol is about 50 points too high (I've had it tested as low as 150) I'm still sitting here drinking beer and eating potato chips. The last week of my life has been an exercise in anger management and patience. I thought I had mastered both but once again, God has stepped in and said, "SCHYA! WHATEVER!" Day 1: lots of briefs. No big deal. Day 2....Navy Medical. For those that haven't had the pleasure of dealing with a socialized medical system which is basically what military medicine is, let me forwarn you that no matter what Hillary Clinton says, we DON'T need socialized medicine. Do you know why it takes weeks...months to get an appointment despite the fact that you are dying from cancer now? Because the PA (that's Physicians Assistant...that's right, you don't even get an official MD) is so busy wasting time chatting someone up that people end up waiting hours and days to be seen. There's no way I can do this justice. Imagine spending 8 hours waiting to see a doctor for a simple signature, being told to go home because he's done for the day (at 3 or 4:00 pm) and then when you get to see him finally (the next day after waiting another 2 hours or so), he spends a whopping two minutes clicking buttons on a computer and 20 minutes asking questions about your personal life that have absolutely no bearing on your medical profile. This is the limit for me. I think at this point, I'm probably lucky that he didn't suggest I see a psychologist for being unstable. My behavior was deplorable but frankly, I wasn't much in the mood to care. This was another interesting experience at medical and almost deserves its own post but since I'm feeling ornery, it's included here. So I'm in immunizations for 4 hours waiting for 1) a shot I've already received that the jack ass at my previous medical dept didn't log and 2) only takes 30 seconds. 4 hours. Did I mention FOUR HOURS? Plenty of time to catch up on....anything. But since we were told we weren't allowed to bring computers into medical, we're forced to sit in a hot room and read (if we can stay awake that long). This is why they issue these neat uniforms; so the droll doesn't show. So this chief sits down next to me and the only thing I said for the next 30 minutes was my initial "how's it going?". That's all it took to loose the flood gates. This man talked incessantly about his children, his job, his philosophy on life, you name it. Unreal the personal information he shared with me. At one point he briefly asked about my career. I mentioned F14's and he said, "So, how do you like those F16's?" OK. I can deal with that. That's about all I got to say about that because he delved into some other topic. He also asked briefly about my family and said I had put it off due to career. 5 minutes later he asked how many children I had. Make the bad man stop.... On top of all this, someone seems to have determined that the answer for me is definitely "no". Like for everything. Like getting specific directions for the post office in Solana Beach and then not being able to find it. Wasting 30 minutes of my already limited time. Getting to a store (that I drove 30 miles to go to) only to walk up as they clicked the door locked at the end of the day. Like the girl at the coffee shop taking a break every time I show up to get an espresso. Like the face plant I took today on the gravel track by the Q caused by stakes that entirely blend into the background (being wtinessed by several construction workers). Looking for the UPS store that the guys said was at the Exchange and that "you couldn't miss it" only to find that one, indeed, could miss it....numerous times. (No, I never did find it.) Like being issued 60 pounds of gear and being told that you can only bring 40 pounds of gear onto the flight that takes you to your next stop (seriously. I don't make this up) Only a few examples of the dozens of examples this week. Like now when I went to drink my beer...it was all gone. Who came and drank that while I wasn't looking. Seriously? Wow, I really need some love...and another beer. I know, this is the standard American whining about how I didn't get my coffee and that's fine. I'm a bad person who's spoiled. Oh well. It would be nice to catch a break because when you're heading off to the middle east for a year, when you're leaving all the people you love, when you're leaving the once place on planet earth that you really feel is home, it's the little things that make it bearable. You expect life to be painful once you get in the desert but certainly not here. Let's just get this over with so I can go home and see my husband. If it's just a case of being a bad dream, could someone please wake me now? I'd rather have insomnia.